by Bill Alive
“Sure thing,” Mark said. He seemed to uncoil, and he hurried after Wallace up the stairs. As I followed, I could tell Mark was relieved; now he had the perfect excuse to discharge his duty with this guy rather than the devastated mother.
Wallace led us down a wide upstairs hallway into a fantastically oversized master bedroom. Seriously, it looked like they’d bought the entire actual room from some discount warehouse store. The bed itself had to be gigantic, but it was still dwarfed by the space. The long white walls surrounded us, unbroken except for a dark walk-in closet at the far end.
The closet must have been raided for the trip, because overflowing suitcases were strewn all over the sterile expanse of white carpet. Clusters of wine bottles stood at attention, and a pile of cheese packets teetered in an open cooler. Could you even pack that stuff on a plane?
“So what’s the news?” Wallace asked, as he huffed down to his knees and crammed his shirts into a case that was already overfull.
Mark cleared his throat. “We just want to let Jocelyn know that, ah, with the investigation, it’s looking like Rachel is cleared.”
“Rachel?” Wallace snapped. He heaved the case shut, but he couldn’t close the clasps. With an angry grunt, he flipped it open, heaved up to his feet, and stomped into a smaller closet I hadn’t noticed by the bed. “I thought that that Rachel girl was in jail,” he called, as he rummaged around. “Jocelyn found those damn bunny ears right behind our couch.”
“Cat ears,” Mark said. “But Rachel had lots, she handed them out freely. We’re pretty sure that pair was… dropped.”
On that last word, his voice died. He’d gone pale.
“Mark?” I said. Then I followed his look, and my chest froze.
Wallace was pointing a gun.
Chapter 54
Everything stopped.
The gun sucked me in like a black hole. The thing was enormous, at least as big as Gwen’s shotgun. He held it with both strong meaty hands, level and still.
My body was frozen and my mind was melting at warp speed panic. Wallace? Wallace?
Beside me, Mark spoke with slow, still calm. “It might be unwise to shoot us right here, in your own bedroom, with your own gun.”
“Not a problem,” Wallace said. “By the time they find you, we’ll be in a country with no extradition.”
His old man voice sounded utterly normal and cranky, like he was arguing with Mark about the best mortgage insurance.
That might sound funny, but it was horrible. It meant the gun was real.
It meant that getting shot and killed was something that could actually happen, that had happened, many thousands of times, in many thousands of rooms just as ugly and boring and terrifyingly real, and the cops would come and the doctors and eventually the carpet cleaners, and they’d complain about the mess the whole time and then go home and watch TV and clean some other floor the next day, and we wouldn’t have even left behind a stain.
Downstairs, the front door squeaked open.
Wallace scowled, and whispered in a hiss, “One sound and you both die.”
From below, Jocelyn called up, “Wallace? Honey?”
“Up here, love,” Wallace called. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
With quick, soft steps, he circled around us toward the bedroom door, keeping the gun locked toward our chests as he moved. He closed the door and clicked the lock.
“Phones on the floor,” he hissed. “Then get in the closet. Not a sound.”
It flashed through my mind to rush him, but in that gigantic bedroom, he stood at least fifteen feet away. Even if it’d been three feet, I wasn’t sure my body would obey the command anyway. My body was feeling useless, like it would do whatever he told it to do up until the last breath.
I glanced at Mark. His face was stone, but he tossed his phone onto the carpet.
I did too.
Wallace marched us across the expanse into the dark closet, then closed the door behind us.
Even in my numbing panic and shock, the closet struck me as strange.
It was enormous, for one thing, with room for a twin bed that was crammed against the far wall. A small window over the bed let in the fading outside light, but the glass was opaque with privacy-patterned contact paper, like a clear stained-glass window. Even weirder, the walls were covered with dark gray pointy foam, like the stuff that people use to soundproof a radio booth.
Soundproof. Crap.
Behind us, Wallace said, “Sit. On the floor.”
Mark sat and leaned his back against the bed. Again, like a robot, I followed his lead.
Wallace stood with his back against the door and the gun level with our heads. He was still so far away that there was no way we could lunge up before he’d shoot.
His bulgy face had begun to boil with passion, splotching with red.
“Not so close,” he barked. “Move apart. It’s loaded with shot, so I’ll get you both anyway. And hands out, where I can see them.”
Mark and I scooted along the floor to opposite sides of the bed. Somehow I knew that Mark was shielding harder than he ever had… could he shield inside, against his own terror? I was glad that one of us might still be able to think straight.
But that also meant we’d have no chance to vibe some weakness to exploit.
With us separate, Wallace scowled directly at Mark. “You. You think you’re so damn smart.”
“Mr. Lyall,” Mark said, with an air of calm respect. “If you simply lock us in here without our phones and then go catch your flight, you won’t go down for murder.”
Wallace sneered. “Is that so? You’re going to promise not to talk? Even to your cop friend?”
“It won’t matter,” Mark said, still eerily calm, like he was patiently teaching a client how to reset his password. “The worst we could prove is that you placed an order for heroin to be delivered to this house. Jocelyn is your ironclad alibi that you were very far away when the overdose occurred.”
“You’re damn straight I was!” he said. “That addict didn’t need any help.”
He must have seen me flinch with horror, because he blazed me such a glare that I thought he’d shoot me right then.
“You damn young arrogant sons of bitches,” he snarled. “You have no idea what’s coming to hit you. I worked a job I hated for more years than you’ve been alive. I had two marriages go to shit…”
He glared back at Mark. “This one could have been perfect. Except for that flea. She had to go and have a bastard addict for a kid.”
“I’m sorry,” Mark said.
Bad move. Wallace flared up, and the gun jerked toward Mark. “That kid ruined it. I waited forty years and he would have ruined it. Not just his sorry life. Mine. And hers! And of course she’s a delusional mother, she wouldn’t cut him loose, oh no. He’s got to live here. Stay with us. We couldn’t even make decent love, she made me make this whole damn fancy booth so her precious little boy wouldn’t hear her and his new daddy.”
I don’t know why I hadn’t guessed the purpose of the bed, (maybe the whole about-to-die thing?) but I couldn’t resist leaning forward so my back wouldn’t touch it. Just in case.
“She always changed the sheets, you idiot,” Wallace snapped. “She kept everything spick and span in the whole damn house. She’d have been changing the damn diapers.”
Then Mark’s poker face softened, as a revelation dawned. “Oh,” he murmured. “The baby.”
“Yes, the baby!” Wallace yelled. “I gave him one last chance, I said fine, we’ll see how long you last out of rehab. And what does he dump on us? A damn baby. Forget seeing the world, forget enjoying what little time I might have left. That damn kid made us grandparents.”
He was hissing now, his eyes bulging. The gun was starting to shake.
Mark said, still calm, “But you fixed all that too. When Jocelyn dragged you to Rachel’s apartment, you popped into the side room and grabbed that pair of cat ears. As long as Jocelyn thinks that Rachel killed he
r son, she’ll never really love Rachel’s baby. And Jocelyn does think that. And so do the cops. So you can still catch your plane.”
“And leave you to wreck us?” Wallace barked. “What am I supposed to tell her when she wants to fly home? When she turns on the news and it’s you saying it’s me who made that call?”
“Maybe she’ll believe you,” Mark said. “Leaving our bodies with your ballistics won’t help.”
Wallace cocked his head. His breathing slowed a touch, his flush started to fade, and for the first time, he seemed to really think about Mark’s proposal.
At last, he said, “You’re serious.”
“Yes,” Mark said. “I like being alive.”
“But you think I’m a murderer, don’t you?” Wallace said. “For all you know, I could take this innocent woman out into the jungle and cut her thumbs off.”
Mark flinched.
I felt queasy myself.
“All I did,” Wallace said, “was give one tiny nudge to an addict who would have dragged out his suicide for years. My years. Her years. But you don’t care if an innocent woman dies.”
Mark looked ashen.
“Lucky for you,” Wallace said, “you’re right.” He lifted up the gun and dropped one hand to his pocket. “No point in racking up an official homicide.”
“Really?” I said.
“Sure,” he said, and sprayed Mark in the face.
Mark roared in agony.
He jerked back and slammed against the bed, writhing like he’d been shot. He raised his hands to try to fend it off, but Wallace swept the spray up and down, drenching Mark’s bare hands and head. His skin was turning red. He rubbed and rubbed his eyes, then shrieked with fresh pain.
Snot was pouring out from his nose, and he must have swallowed because he started coughing hard. Then he was gasping like he couldn’t breathe.
Wallace’s lips curled with satisfaction. He kept spraying.
Somehow I finally realized I was just sitting there on the floor, frozen.
Get up! I thought. Stop him!
It must have showed in my face.
Wallace snapped me a sour glare. He swung the spray my way.
I ducked and hid my face as the first drops spattered my arms.
Then I heard him mutter, “Shit.”
The spray had stopped. He’d used it all on Mark.
But by the time I looked up, he had ditched the empty can and was backing out the closet, holding the gun level.
“Tell your friend to keep it quiet,” he snapped. “If she hears anything, you’re going to be two crazies I found doing mutual suicide.”
He shut the door and clicked the lock.
Mark choked for breath.
And the few drops on my arm began to burn.
Chapter 55
“Pepper spray?” I said. “Oh Mark, oh my God…
I scrambled over to him across the floor. Even in the fading light, I couldn’t bear to watch as he gasped. The red skin was blistering on his scalp, his cheeks, the creases around his eyes… he raised his palms to wipe his face.
“Don’t touch it! It’s oil, you’ll spread it!” I said. I scanned the bare room for a towel, anything, then yanked the bedsheet and thrust it in his hands.
Just in doing that, I accidentally brushed against his slick jacket. The side of my hand felt like it caught fire.
Mark was drenched.
“Mark, oh God, can you breathe?” I said. “Just breathe, okay? Oh God, Ceci told me once about this guy the cops had sprayed, and they didn’t know he had asthma, and if he hadn’t been in the emergency room—”
“Shut up,” Mark wheezed, muffled through the sheet he had pressed to his face.
I shut up.
Mark kept cleaning his face. Behind the sheet, his gasping breath began to even out.
When he lifted the sheet to pat his scalp, he showed a face that, although red and swollen and fairly terrifying, looked almost… relaxed.
But I recognized that squint.
“Are you… shielding?” I said. “From the pain?”
“Yes.” He winced, then gasped as his monster face twisted in pain. He forced himself to take a slow breath, and his face cleared. “But it’s very easy to get distracted.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “You need to wash it off, you can’t shield forever. That stuff feels like fire.”
“That’s how it feels when I am shielding,” he grunted. He slumped against the bed and shut his eyes. “If I stop shielding, it’s more like… thousands of red-hot needles…”
“Okay, okay!” I said. “How much longer can you hold out?”
He shrugged. Keeping his eyes closed, he said, “We’re locked in a soundproof closet, with no phones, in an isolated McMansion where the owners are leaving the country. Probably not long enough.”
“Crap, they are leaving,” I said. I stumbled up.
“What are you doing?” Mark snapped. He creaked open one eye. “That guy could still shoot us.”
“I’m just checking the window.” The contact paper made the glass opaque, so I gave the top pane a tentative tug. It stuck, then jolted down a few inches.
Through the crack, I could see Jocelyn packing their idling SUV in the driveway below. The twilight had triggered their outdoor security lights, blasting the woman in the glare like a helicopter catching a fugitive.
Then Wallace huffed into view, dragging a huge suitcase in either hand.
From the top floor, I couldn’t hear what they said over the engine, but they both laughed, and Jocelyn smiled and helped him heave a monster case into the back. They almost dropped it, and when the thing finally thunked in safe, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and she eagerly drew close.
I flashed back to her crying in that travel agency. Going to him for comfort. His thick fingers gripping her shoulder, tight.
“Mark, we can’t,” I said. “She thinks she’s just going on vacation. You heard what he said… he’s never going to let her come back home without him. He already killed Aidan, and he was willing to set Rachel up for murder. Jocelyn will have to find out… and if he thinks she’ll try to leave him…”
Mark’s eyes were closed, but his squint tightened. Slowly he said, “What exactly are you suggesting, Pete?”
“Can’t you… I mean…”
“How am I supposed to blast him at this range? And if I do, there’s no way I’ll have enough juice left to shield.”
I flinched. Mark’s skin was blistering, and who knew how long we’d be stuck here with no way to wash the oil off? It could be hours… days…
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’d do it if I could.”
“Would you?”
I faltered. The side of my hand and the spots on my arm were still roasting like the worst sunburn ever. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to stand that.
Outside, they’d gotten the second case into the back. Wallace puttered around, putting the finishing touches on their packing.
“He’s closing the trunk!” I said.
Mark groaned. “It wasn’t my choice to marry that bastard.”
“Fine!” I said. “Forget it! He was right.”
Then Mark yelled, a shout of frustration.
Wallace snapped his face up right toward us.
“Shh! Shut up! He heard that!” I hiss-whispered, as my insides jellified. Now that I might die again, Jocelyn could go jump off a rope bridge in the Himalayas. “You can’t reach him anyway, he’s super far away.”
“I can,” Mark said. “If I feel whatever I send Wallace. Like when I poked you.”
I gaped.
“Help me up, idiot!” Mark growled.
I fumbled to lift him to his feet. I tried to avoid the oil, but another smear set my elbow on fire. Mark was leaning hard, and his breaths were slow and haggard. He made me stand him at the window, one arm gripping my shoulders, the other hand pressing the wall for support.
Below, Wallace had opened up his trunk again. And p
ulled out a rifle.
“Wallace?” Jocelyn said, jerking back a step. Her voice was as small and pale as her face.
Wallace aimed the gun right at us.
Jocelyn screamed.
And Mark roared. Blood spurt from his scalp, hundreds of tiny drops dribbling down streaks through the oil still burning his skin. Flecks spattered my cheek, but I hardly noticed the sting… because I could feel his fire.
Not the full force of it, no. Not the real agony racking his arms wide and bulging his veins. But the passing of the blast, like the heat that hits your face when you open the oven.
Below, Wallace shrieked.
He dropped the gun.
He clutched his face.
And as he screamed and rubbed with frantic fright, I could see, even from up here, in the killing glare of the man’s own security light, that his cheeks and chin and hands and scalp were all blistering red.
Chapter 56
“I have to say, Mr. Falcon…” said Gwen, as she arched an eyebrow down at Mark in his hospital bed. “My entire class had to get pepper sprayed in the academy. And then shoot and hit a target. And wrestle an instructor. While still essentially on fire. Or we wouldn’t pass.”
“That’s nice,” Mark said. “I doubt they used the whole can on just your face.”
“Maybe not,” Gwen said. She smirked, though not unkindly. “I suspect he was hoping to improve your appearance.”
“I’m sure he did,” Mark said. “Enjoy it while it lasts, Miss Jensen. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to a tan.”
Gwen snorted. She’s doing that more and more these days.
“So where does that leave us, Mr. Falcon?” she said, trying to sound light. “Should you pass? Are you finally ready to graduate?”
Mark’s playful twinkle vanished. He looked wary.
Now, for the record, you should know that Mark did not look like he had a tan.
When the paramedics had finally sprung us out of that closet, he’d looked more like he might have serious burns. Hence the hospital stay.
