There was little for Mitch to use as a weapon. While the shank was in sight, he wanted to keep it out of play. If something went wrong, Mitch feared, someone, probably himself, would end up on the business end of that blade. Best he could do was to pull as hard as he could, get himself back on the floor, and hope that Darla came with him. Where are the damn guards?
With a loud grunt, Mitch drove his legs into the ground and essentially threw himself backward with all his might. His plan worked. Sort of. He landed on his back, and Darla’s back landed on him. Her crushing weight made it nearly impossible to breathe, though Mitch’s arms were free, and soon he had one of them wrapped around Darla’s neck.
He had a passing thought that this was the exact hold he planned to tell the guards in his seminar not to use on a patient. In a life-and-death struggle, he was seeing firsthand that rules were things to be forgotten.
Darla tried to bite Mitch’s arm, but given the odd angle, she couldn’t latch on. Instead she kicked frantically as Mitch tightened his hold. His hope was that she’d lose consciousness before she lost her life. Fortunately, it was a race that needed no winner, as a crush of correction officers finally burst into the room. They swarmed Darla, ripped her off Mitch, grunting orders that were difficult to hear in the sudden cacophonous din.
In a furious cluster of motion, the security team had Darla facedown on the floor. A female guard sat on her back, pinning her to the ground with her knees. Another guard delivered blows to Darla’s head as she futilely resisted efforts to wrench her arms behind her back.
Mitch heard a hiss as someone fired pepper spray point blank into Darla’s face. The room quickly filled with a terrible stench that made his eyes water and his stomach do loops. Clambering past guards who continued to fill the tight quarters, Mitch grabbed hold of Penny, whom he found curled in a ball on the floor near her chair. With a grunt of effort, he managed to pull her out into the hallway, away from the poisonous air. There, he checked her pulse. A little rapid and weak, but steady. She was probably more in shock than anything else.
Strobe lights flashed. Guards were everywhere now. Sirens continued to blare, but they failed to drown out Darla’s screams.
“She slept with Charlie! She screwed my husband!”
A thought came to Mitch, several really. Are Darla’s meds off? Is she even taking them? Something felt wrong about the attack. Why Penny? Was it just a coincidence that Darla previously targeted Grace, or … was it something else?
CHAPTER 33
BUTTERY LATE-AFTERNOON LIGHT FILTERED through the tall office windows, casting a glow on Whitmore’s tight expression. Seated around the conference table in her spacious office were Mitch, Grace, and Greg Navarro.
After Grace got the call from Mitch about Penny, she rushed to Edgewater, phoning Navarro on the way. To his credit, Navarro dropped everything to join this emergency meeting with Whitmore at the facility she oversaw. He was there to deal with the legal fallout from the attempt on Penny’s life, while Grace’s concerns were those of a mother.
“Can I visit her?” Grace asked Whitmore in an anxious voice.
“By ‘her,’ you mean … Eve? Because Eve is back again, not Penny, not—” Whitmore looked down at her notes. “Not Ruby. And no. I’m afraid you can’t. Your daughter’s fine, I promise, but she’s still in the ER and visitors are not allowed.”
Grace exchanged a glance with Mitch, recalling the day they’d met and he knowingly broke that rule. “She’s a bit banged up, from what I understand,” Whitmore added, “but no serious injury. I was just on the phone with Dr. Bouvier and got a full update on her condition. As you know, Darla stabbed a corrections officer on her way to the therapy room, and he is not doing nearly as well. He’s in the ICU at Regent’s Hospital, and it’s touch and go.”
“I’m sorry to hear,” said Grace, feeling sick to her stomach that somebody else connected to her daughter, no matter how tangentially, had been put in a perilous situation.
“Thank you,” said Whitmore, who seemed deeply affected by the tragic event. “I’ll make sure to keep Mitch apprised of his situation.”
Navarro spoke up. “Grace had told me about her encounter with Darla, and I thought the name sounded familiar. So, I checked my files, and sure enough, a lawyer from my office was her public defender way back when. I remember him complaining from time to time that she was challenging to work with, but never violent. What provoked the attack, does anyone know? And where did Darla get a weapon?”