Daddy's Girl by Lisa Scottoline

one. He focused on her. Then his blue eyes rolled back into his eye sockets. In the next instant, she felt his hand squeezing her forearm as if in a death grip.
    “Hang in, please, hang in.” Nat felt her tears welling again. She pressed harder with her scarf. Its silk ran red with fresh blood, warm under her cupped palm. The C.O.’s lips were moving. Blood bubbled from his mouth and leaked down the side of his face. He tugged on her arm. He was trying to say something.
    “Tell…my wife,” he whispered. Blood hiccupped from his mouth, a sight so grisly Nat almost cried out. He said, “ Please . Tell her.”
    “I will, I will. I’ll tell her you love her,” Nat said, finishing his sentence, her words rushing out in a choked sob.
    “No, no,” the C.O. moaned, shaking his head. “No. It’s…under the floor.”
    What? Nat blinked, shaken. What did he say? Between the sirens and her shock, she could hardly hear him. She leaned over, her ear to his mouth. “What did you say?”
    “Tell…her.” The C.O. struggled for breath. “Tell her it’s…under the floor.”
    “Okay, I’ll tell her, I promise.” Nat pressed hard but blood soaked the scarf. In the next second, the C.O.’s eyelids stopped fluttering. His blue eyes fixed. The grip on her arm loosened abruptly. His hand fell back, the fingers still bent.
    “No!” Nat knew CPR. She couldn’t let him die. She bent over, pinched his lips open, and huffed into his mouth, tasting salty, hot blood. Two breaths, then she straightened up and pressed with all her might on his chest.
    One , two , three , four. “Please, come back!” Nat bore down, pressing hard. The scarf fell off him. Blood bubbled gruesomely from the other wound. She kept pressing and counting. The C.O.’s eyes didn’t move. He didn’t react to her shouts. She finished the count of chest palpitations and bent over again, trying to breathe life into him.
    She kept pressing. She heard a sickening gurgling from his throat, and in the background, faraway shouts. Suddenly, an explosion resonated in her chest. What the hell was going on? Where had that come from? The RHU? What had blown up?
    Nat struggled not to panic. She kept pressing, but the C.O. didn’t move. She bent over and huffed a short, powerful breath into his mouth, then stopped. The poor man was dead. She had to let him go. She had tried her best. She had to get to Angus. The explosion.
    “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She wiped her eyes, streaking warmth across her face. Blood. She scrambled to her feet and ran from the room and into the hallway. A siren blared a continuous state of emergency. The lockdown announcement blasted over and over. Smoke wafted down the corridor, layering the air with gray streaks.
    She ran down the hall, veered around the corner, and sprinted for the classroom. Thick smoke billowed down the hall, singeing her eyes and filling her nostrils. She took a breath and felt herself gag. There was a fire in the prison, and she was locked inside. So was Angus. They would all burn to death.
    Suddenly there came the deafening blast of a percussive explosion. Nat was thrown to the floor. The side of her face hit the concrete. Her knees slammed down hard. She rolled in shock and pain into the cinderblock wall.
    “ NATALIE !”
    Nat opened her eyes to see Angus running through the smoke to her. He reached her, knelt down, and scooped her up in his arms.
    “Your Grace.” He grinned, his forehead bleeding, and Nat felt a rush of relief that approached delirium. Behind him was the C.O. she’d sent to him.
    “This way!” the C.O. shouted. “Move!” He hustled them to the barred door at the entrance, where another C.O. in black SWAT gear met them, unlocked the door, and hurried them all out of the prison and into the cold.

CHAPTER 7

    W rapped in a thin blue blanket, Nat sat on a gurney in the back of an idling ambulance, while an EMT dressed the gash on her cheek. He was thirtyish, with prematurely