Deadfall

by Anna Carey

  “You’re Richard Reynolds,” Ben says. “You supplied the memory drug to AAE.”

  The doctor doesn’t respond, but the muscles in his jaw tense. He sits down on the edge of the bed and rests his head in his hands. “At least it’s over.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s over’?” Ben asks. “Nothing is over.”

  He raises his chin, and you see his eyes are red. “I’ve just known someone was coming for me. I worried I’d be with my kids, that my wife might be there and—”

  “We’re not going to kill you,” you interrupt, “We need to know about the hunters. Where you met them and how we can find them.”

  Reynolds studies Salto in her medical gown, in the jeans with stains on the front. He eyes your ripped hoodie. The white sneakers you woke up in are now a dull gray, your hair in a tangled braid. His eyes dart to the watch Rafe wears on his right wrist.

  “You’re the kids, then,” he says. “I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Why would you?” Rafe asks.

  “Some of you were here for the trials.” He gives Rafe’s knife a quick glance.

  “Here? In this hospital?” You look at Salto and Rafe—neither of them seemed to remember it.

  “No, somewhere else.”

  “You have to be more specific than that,” Rafe says, anger rising in his voice. “We don’t have a lot of time. AAE—who runs it? Who brought you in? We need names, addresses.”

  “I don’t know anything about the hunters—I only worked with the targets.” Reynolds’s eyes flick back and forth between you and Rafe.

  “Bullshit,” Ben says. “Who was responsible for the hunters when they came back from the island? Broken bones, gashes, cuts. Who was treating them if you weren’t?”

  The man looks away. Rubs his forehead with the back of his hand. “I don’t know, kid. I’m a neurologist—I haven’t done that sort of thing since med school.”

  As he says those last words, his tone rises, almost cheerful. You know he’s lying. “Why would they use other doctors when they have you? You were already being paid.”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I don’t understand everything about AAE.”

  Your eyes meet Rafe’s. “Why should we believe that?”

  “You don’t have to believe it.”

  Rafe lunges forward. The man flinches, bringing his arm up instinctually. Rafe grabs his hair, yanking his head back so his throat is exposed. He presses the knife against his Adam’s apple. “That is not an answer.”

  “Okay, okay. Look—I’ll tell you what I know. Someone get him off me.”

  “Rafe . . . don’t hurt him,” you say, watching how close Rafe is, the blade pushing against the skin, about to draw blood. He’s holding the knife so tightly his knuckles are white. Finally he steps back, letting the doctor go.

  Reynolds continues, “There’s one guy who’s the head of it. But I don’t even know his real name, and I don’t know where he lives. I don’t make arrangements to see them—they decide when we meet. They decide everything.”

  “What does he call himself? What does he look like?” Ben asks.

  The man rubs his temples. “What’s going to happen to me after this?”

  “What’s going to happen to you?” Rafe says, his voice breaking. “Are you kidding me, guy? She doesn’t know where she lived or anything about her life before,” he says, pointing to you. “Some men gave you money to help kids forget things so they’d be easier to kill. You can just stop the self-pitying bullshit. You need to start telling us the truth. Real things, things that are actually gonna help us.”

  “Is there a drug that reverses the memory loss?” you ask.

  “No,” Reynolds says, “but he told me it was starting to wear off for most people. The tests we did originally were experimental. It was to treat PTSD patients. I was already doing that research when he approached me. He wanted to use it in higher doses.”

  “Who approached you?” you ask.

  Reynolds puts his head in his hands. “He called himself Cal, but I know that isn’t his name. I don’t even know if he lives in New York—he might’ve just met me here. He’d drop off instructions for me on how to find him. I saw him four times over two years. He’d always have an unmarked cab pick me up. When I got in, he’d be there.”

  “What did he look like?” Salto says.

  “He’s a little older than me—fifties, I don’t know. Blond hair, almost white. Blue eyes, maybe? There’s this scar on his left hand. . . .” The doctor points at his own hand, to the soft tissue beside his thumb. “It’s this long curved scar. It kind of looks like a question mark. He couldn’t bend his left thumb.”

  “So you did treat hunters. Cut the lies, Reynolds.” Ben crosses his arms over his chest.

  Reynolds rubs the back of his head. “I’ve already told you enough.”

  “No, you haven’t,” you say, stepping closer to the bed.

  “Okay, okay.” He sighs. “There’s one more thing I could show you, but if we get caught it’s over for all of us. There’s this document I have access to—it doesn’t have names, just addresses. It’s in my office.” When he says it he points up, to the floors above. “It lists the places I’d treat them. Sometimes it was a house, other times it was an unused office space. It always changed.”

  “We need those addresses,” Rafe says. “How do we get that file?”

  The doctor looks at the doorway. “I have to get on to my computer.”

  “Okay,” Rafe says, gesturing to the door with the knife. “Let’s go. Now.”

  Upstairs, Reynolds leads you and Rafe past a sitting room, then into his office. It’s narrow, with one long wall of glass. Ben and Salto are in the stairwell, keeping watch. You didn’t want to draw attention with too many of you going into the office.

  Reynolds waits for his computer to power up. He opens his bottom desk drawer, feeling around the underside of it. You glance at Rafe, afraid the doctor might be looking for a weapon. In an instant Rafe ducks down and grabs Reynolds’s hand.

  “Relax . . . it’s the password.” Reynolds opens his palm, showing him the crumpled Post-it note inside. Written across it is a string of numbers and letters. Below that is another code, the second one even longer.

  “What do you have to do?” you ask. “How long will it take?”

  “I’ve only accessed it before when they wanted me to treat someone,” he says. “I have to go to this site. . . .”

  The screen he pulls up is black, with only a tiny box in the center of it, the cursor blinking, waiting. He sets the Post-it down beside the keyboard and types. The screen changes, a list of links coming up instead. “The third one down—that should be the list of addresses,” he says. “I can pull it from their server.”

  He types the second set of numbers in, but then waits. He hits RETURN again.

  “What’s going on? Is this how it usually works?” you ask.

  Reynolds hits another few numbers, then RETURN again.

  “Go easy,” Rafe says, nudging his hand away from the keyboard. But it’s already too late. The screen shuts down. The site disappears, returning back to the hospital’s homepage.

  “What just happened?” you ask.

  Reynolds backs away from the computer. “I don’t know. It’s never done that before.”

  “Start it up again.” But almost as soon as you say it, the screen goes completely dark.

  “You triggered something. . . .” Rafe grabs the front of Reynolds’s lab coat and takes a few quick steps, pushing him against the wall.

  Reynolds holds his hands out at his sides. “I didn’t, I swear. It must have happened automatically—this is the only time I’ve ever logged in unprompted.”

  “I’m giving you one last chance,” Rafe says. “Tell us something we can use. Now. Or I’ll kill you before they can do the honors.”

  Reynolds squeezes his eyes shut. His hands are shaking. “There’s a Laundromat on Long Island. It’s in Hicksville. I treated a few of the h
unters there. Wash-o-Matic. They use it as a meeting place, a drop-off spot, whatever they need.”

  “If you tell them you gave us that information, we’ll come back for you,” Rafe says. “We will find you and end this.”

  Reynolds’s eyes are still shut. “With these people . . . I’m already dead.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  YOU’VE JUST REACHED the hallway door when the lights go out. Rafe opens it a crack and looks into the corridor. Everything is dark. There’s silence, and then the lights come back on, but they’re dimmed.

  “Something short-circuited,” a voice down the hall yells. “Get in touch with Rob, see if he knows what happened.”

  “Generator’s working,” someone calls. “Thank god. Is it just our floor?”

  You hear quick, uneven footsteps as people emerge from their offices. Doors open and close. A figure in a white coat hurries past, then disappears down the hall opposite you.

  “This isn’t random,” Rafe says. “The code triggered something. They shut off the power to create chaos. The hunters are here.”

  “If the generators are working, the elevators are working. We can try getting out that way. People won’t want to use them.”

  You step into the hall, looking toward the stairwell where Ben and Salto were hiding, watching through the door. The window is empty. They’re not there.

  You check the phone in the front pocket of your sweatshirt, but there are no missed calls, no texts to say where they went. They wouldn’t have left without word. . . .

  “We need to get Ben and Salto,” you say. “Something’s not right.”

  “Maybe he freaked out,” Rafe suggests.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” you say, already heading toward the stairwell.

  Rafe shakes his head. “We have to get out of here, Lena. They’ll meet us back at the camp.”

  “Please, just one minute.”

  “Lena . . .”

  You throw him the disposable phone. “Just in case.”

  You go to the stairwell, opening the door slowly to minimize the sound. The steps are only half lit, every other floor in shadow. Salto and Ben aren’t on the landing. You go up one flight to check if they changed positions, or tried to exit a different way. You hear Salto yell somewhere below, then the sound of a scuffle.

  Peering over the railing, you see Salto struggling with a man three flights down. He wears a simple navy coat and jeans, a baseball cap shielding his face. She has a handful of the man’s coat and pulls him backward. He stumbles and hits the wall, making a low gasping sound. Salto tries to swipe at him, but he regains his balance and pushes her away.

  You race down the stairs, launching yourself onto the hunter’s back. You wrap your arms around his neck and squeeze, trying to cut off his air supply. He thrashes under your weight, spinning around, trying to get free. He thrusts himself backward—ramming you into the hard concrete wall, over and over. You squeeze harder, but the last blow hits the base of your skull. Pain explodes in your head and you lose your grip on his neck.

  You fall off and hit the ground, hard. You roll over onto your side, trying to stand, as Salto launches herself at the hunter once more. He gets a hand free, pulls a gun from the back of his jeans, and shoots. The bullet rips through her shoulder and enters the wall, sending up a small cloud of plaster and dust.

  You take the knife from your belt and hurl yourself at him, landing one clean slice across his side. He flinches and takes a step back. Your next cut is at his wrist, your hand darting out so quickly he doesn’t pull his arm away in time. He drops the gun.

  You have him now. You hold the knife up, coming at him. He takes one step backward, toward the wall.

  The sound of footsteps thundering up the stairs distracts you and you turn, bracing yourself for another hunter, another attack. But it’s just Ben, breathless, hurtling himself around the stairs and up onto the landing. In the moment it takes you to register his arrival, the hunter races up one flight of stairs and leaves the stairwell through a door above.

  You don’t bother to chase him—you’re more concerned with Salto. You kneel down beside her. The bullet hit her in her right shoulder, just above her bicep, before burying itself in the wall. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Ben already has her cradled in his arms. One hand is over the wound, pressing down, his fingers red with blood.

  “I went to go find Aggy and Devon,” he says. “I only left for five minutes.”

  “We have to move.” You text Rafe to meet you outside the hospital, in the alleyway.

  Salto winces, holding her arm in pain.

  “More of them might be coming. . . .” Ben helps Salto stand and she leans against his chest.

  You glance up the stairwell, nervous that the man will come back this way. You pull off your baggy sweatshirt and help it over her head, easing her hands into the sleeves.

  “You have to walk out of here like everything is normal,” you tell her, your voice even. “You have to do that for us, just until we get outside.”

  You comb her hair away from her face, wiping a smear of blood from her cheek. She’s losing color. You don’t know how much time you have.

  The ninth floor is only half lit. Someone down the hall is calling for emergency procedures, urging a few visitors to head back to the lobby. A group of nurses is clustered at the end of the hall. You don’t look at them as you turn right, then take another right toward the elevators. Ben is walking with Salto, their heads down. You hit the elevator button, over and over again, as you wait for them to catch up.

  “We have to get her back to base,” you say. “Where were Aggy and Devon?”

  “They were outside, on the other end of the hospital—I told them to go. They’re probably already back there,” Ben says.

  Inside the elevator, Salto leans against the wall, clutching the metal bar behind her. She holds her arm to her side at an awkward angle. “He came out of nowhere,” she says.

  “Opening those files triggered an alarm. We didn’t know until it was too late.”

  The elevator descends another floor, then another. The buttons above the door light up as they count down. Six . . . five . . . four . . .

  “I’m done. It’s over for me.” Salto shakes her head. “How am I going to get away from them when I can’t even move my arm? How am I going to fight back?”

  “We’ll take care of you,” Ben says. “We’ll keep you hidden.”

  Salto covers her face with her hand. “You’re hurt, too, Ben. What happens when they find us? What then?”

  “They won’t get to us—not before we get to them,” you say. “Ben, take her to base and Rafe and I will track down the lead Reynolds gave us. He told us about a drop-off point where the hunters met for pickups or treatment.”

  “That could be a trap,” Ben says.

  “We don’t have anything else to go on,” you say. “So we don’t have a choice.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  REYNOLDS STARTS THE car, but he has no idea where he’s going. All he knows is he needs to get away from the hospital. He pulls out of the garage, scanning the sidewalk for anyone suspicious. He drives east, merging onto the FDR.

  A noise from the backseat sets him on edge. He peers in the rearview mirror and sees a man there, silhouetted in the evening light.

  The man is calm, still. “Keep driving,” he says. He points north. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”

  Reynolds knows he has no choice. He knows it’s over.

  His hands are slippery against the wheel. As he drives, he thinks only of his wife and his sons. The birthday when they surprised him with the Mets game. Nina always hated driving on the highway, so he’d been at the wheel.

  Do you want a clue? Tell us when you want your first clue, she’d said. Jackson laughed in the backseat, amused at the idea of this secret between him and his mom. Peter was too young to understand.

  Reynolds can almost picture them there. He loses himself in the memory as he drives, his eyes on the road
as they take 95 and cut west. It’s the man’s voice from behind him that brings him back.

  “Turn off here.”

  The barrel of the gun is wedged just below the headrest, between the metal spokes that attach it to the seat. It’s cold against Reynolds’s neck. He looks at the exit off the highway. There are a few scattered buildings, their windows dark. “Here?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  He takes the exit. The man points to an empty parking lot under the bridge. Reynolds pulls into a space on the far side and turns off the engine. When he hits the lights he’s aware of just how isolated they are.

  “I didn’t tell them anything,” he says.

  The man reaches into the front seat and hits the button to unlock the doors. He’s wearing leather gloves.

  “Let me talk to Cal about this,” Reynolds continues. “I’m close to getting the second round of the drug; it should arrive within the week. This can all be sorted out.”

  “Get out of the car.”

  “Tell him to meet me here—I saw the targets. I can tell you everything about them. Maybe it’ll help.”

  He’s still talking, but Reynolds does what the man says. A breeze whips off the Hudson, coming through the spaces between buildings and cutting through his thin white doctor’s coat.

  “None of it matters now. They know who you are.”

  The man says it as if that’s explanation enough. Then he points his gun toward the entrance of the George Washington Bridge. The massive gray structure is lit up against the New Jersey skyline.

  “I can do more for him if I’m alive.”

  “Just walk,” the man says. “You have time to get used to the idea. I’ll be right behind you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THE PAY PHONE smells like cigarette smoke. The buttons are gritty, the metal sides covered with stickers advertising local bands, locksmiths, and Long Island towing services. After three rings Celia picks up. Somewhere in the background you can hear the noise of a busy office, then a siren fading to silence.

  “It’s me.”

  “I’m glad. How are you? Where are you?” she replies.