Hi Everyone,
Today is the final stop on the Blog Tour for The Killing Files which is Nikki's second novel in The Project Trilogy. I am thrilled be taking part in this wonderful Blog Tour and delighted to welcome author Nikki to my blog with a guest piece and a BIG thanks to Cara Frances from Mira Books for allowing me this opportunity to take part with some other fab book bloggers too. You can find out who else has taken part in this fabulous Blog Tour over the past 10 days below.
So without further ado, here it is............
The person’s breathing is shallow now, gravelled and raspy. I know what bleeding out sounds like—the sharp, slicing quality of oxygen intake—but this is not it. And yet, there is an urgency to the breath, a desperation that I cannot place, but it makes no sense why. I am a doctor so should know the signs, but still I cannot place them. What is wrong with me?
I blink three times and try hard to concentrate, to return my brain to function mode, focusing again on the room for clues. The edges. They are shrouded in black, but the window above affords a slip of light that plops in a puddle to my left.
It is then I see it—an arm—and a gasp slips from my mouth.
I track the limb, milky-white skin on a long, limp wrist, different to my own arms, my muscled, tanned ones, with bitten nails and dirt in the creases. Even in this murky room, I can tell that this arm is clean, scrubbed.
I keep all my attention on the body part and attempt again asking who they are, instinctively counting the time as I wait. The numbers sooth me as seconds rack up in twos, the action slowing, at least for the moment, the anxiety that is building inside, but when I ask again who is there and no one answers, a moan slips from my lips. The urine-coloured light has all but disappeared, yet somehow I start to see something slithering into view. A long, T-shirted torso. An elegant, white neck. A skull.
A face.
A scream pierces the air and I am shocked to realise it is mine. I catch my breath, frantically slap my hands up and down, straining to thrash my body forward from the seat, but still my pulse flies. Because there is a face, a face staring back at me, a face I know. Shaven hair, sharp cheekbones, gapped teeth and pool-blue eyes, eyes that even in this tar-black air, shine. My hearts races, my chest tightens. How can she be here? How have I let this happen? We are all in danger now, all of us.
‘Doc.’ The voice comes from the head on the floor.
I slam my eyes shut, not wanting to believe what is here, reciting an algorithm in a vain attempt to calm myself. ‘Doc, it’s okay.’
The voice is a cotton sheet flapping in the breeze, a rustle of green grass. ‘Doc, I’m okay.’ My eyes open. One millimetre then two, gradually allowing my sight to do the work my brain does not want to understand. My friend is here. My only friend in the world is lying crumpled on the floor beside me.
‘Patricia?’ I say, testing out the word. ‘You are out of Goldmouth prison.’
‘Yes, I got out on parole, remember? Two months after you.’
Confusion, worry. They spin round my head fast. ‘You are here. Why are you here?’
‘Because they have us,’ she says, the Irish lilt to her voice still there as I remember, but scratched now, torn. ‘The Project have caught up with us. You can’t hide from them any more.’
The Project have found me—that’s why I have woken up here in this room. They have entrapped us and there is only one way it will end: someone will die.
The Killing Files is available on Kindle and in all good bookstores and you can buy it here
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