Blind Eye by Jan Coffey Page A

them, Andrew Bonn would be the one to keep some kind of painkillers in his desk. The physicist had gone out to the elevators and not returned. She moved toward his workstation, but she tripped over something. She knew even as she fell that it was a body. Landing on her knees, Marion somehow managed to hold on to her phone. The screen flipped shut, though, leaving her in darkness again. She rolled and backed away on her bottom. Taking a deep breath, she flipped the phone open again.
    The open eyes of Marvin Sheehan were staring straight into hers. She gasped and edged farther away. The metallurgist’s shirt had ridden up on his body and she could see the bullet holes black and raw in the scientist’s flesh. Blood had congealed around his body like a mat.
    Marion’s hand shook as she reached over and covered the scientist’s eyes with her hand. His face was cold. She closed the eyes.
    She made a mental note to keep track of those whom she’d seen so far. She held on to the nearest chair and pushed herself to her feet. Holding her phone up, she saw a body propping the door toward the elevators partially open. She guessed that had to be her advisor.
    She was certain Andrew Bonn would be outside of this room. He’d been the one who had assumed the delivery was for him. The only one she hadn’t seen here was Arin Bose. She turned around, holding the phone up again. His huge body was slumped over the desk. She didn’t need to go any closer to the dead scientist.
    Bile rose again in her throat. The air carried the scent of blood and death. Marion realized she couldn’t stay here. She had to find out where the other three people in their group were. She made her way to Bonn’s desk. She didn’t have to search the drawers. An economy-size bottle of Tylenol sat beside his computer monitor. She struggled to open the top. The light on her phone went off again. Working in the dark, she finally was able to open the bottle and pop some pills into her mouth. They stuck in her throat. She felt in the darkness across the top of the desk and found a mug. She stuck her finger into it and found some liquid. She didn’t hesitate, fearful of changing her mind, and swallowed the liquid to wash down the pills. Thankfully, it was water. As she drank it, she realized how thirsty she was. She turned on the phone one more time. The charge was quickly dwindling.
    She pulled open the drawers. “Thank you…thank you, Dr. Bonn.”
    The penlight she found there was a godsend. She turned off her phone and used her new light to search the drawers. A pocketknife, another penlight. A small bottle of ibuprofen, some Band-Aids, antibiotic cream,hand-sanitizer bottle. Bonn’s desk was like a first-aid station. Marion stuffed everything she could find into her pockets.
    She recalled Eaton telling everyone when they first arrived at this station about facility emergency booklets…just in case. She used the light and quickly scanned through the books and notebooks and binders on the bookshelves above his desk. “Please, let it be you who kept them.”
    On the second shelf down she found what she was looking for. She tucked the three-ring binder under one arm.
    She turned around and shone the light in the direction of the partially open door where her advisor lay. She didn’t want to go out into the corridor in the direction of the elevators. Not yet. Those elevators were the only way in or out of the facility that she knew of.
    She was afraid. It seemed unlikely, but what if the killers were still out there?
    Marion glanced down at the notebook under her arm, racking her brain for any more information they’d been given about an emergency exit. Visions of climbing up the elevator shaft flashed in her head but, without power, she didn’t know how she could even open the doors.
    Perhaps if any of the others were still alive, she thought, they could work together to get out.
    She looked at