Mai Mingle pressed her back tightly against the wall, taking a silent, deep breath.
Cold sweat still clung to her pores, and her throat felt tight and uncomfortable. But after a few deep breaths, she finally managed to fish her heart out from the pit of her stomach and shove it back where it belonged.
The dark brown-paneled wall held a sliver of reflected light, frozen in the silence.
A rectangle of light shone in from the corridor's entrance, its weak sunlight mixed with dust motes that floated in mid-air.
On a side table in the hallway stood a bouquet of long-stemmed white lilies. Each flower was like a splayed-open skull, some raised and some lowered, all staring at the empty corridor and the intruder.
There was no one around. It was impossible for someone to have run out of the five- or six-meter-long corridor in the instant she had turned her head.
'But it couldn't have been my imagination, could it?'
