I land hard on the ground and tumble backwards. I stand up and brush the loose leaves off my coat, sucking in a few breaths.
“Would you hurry the fuck up?”
Sonja is standing by the back door, her hands on her hips, a look of expectation and worry on her face.
“I’m coming,” I reply.
“You haven’t got much time. Personally, I don’t even know why we’re here. Honestly, what good is it?”
“It’s for me. To understand what the hell is happening. I’m sorry if you don’t approve.”
The sharp cracking of a stick, followed by a rustle of undergrowth, cuts off the conversation. I turn to investigate, but, in the darkness, it’s a futile effort. On my own in the shadows, I feel a shiver run down my spine.
I put a shoulder to the door, and it gives way. I’m in the kitchen. From what I can see, it’s how I remember it. Empty bottles on the counter. Dirty plates near the sink. What looks to be a dark powder on most surfaces. Is that where they dusted for fingerprints? I imagine an eagle-eyed crime scene detective running from corner to corner with a brush and pad of dust. If they loved it down here, they must’ve wet their pants upstairs. Surely it was every investigator’s wet dream to sink themselves into such a horrific event.
The end of the kitchen. The three stairs that lead to the lounge room. I take them slowly, waiting for the moment where I can see evidence markers and body outlines, along with the destruction of coffee tables and ornaments.
I stand at the top step and look. Nothing. The room is pristine. Nothing to suggest that anything untoward took place. But I remember it so clearly! Stabbing necks, slicing throats, destruction of furniture—all so fresh in my mind, like it just happened. What I remember doesn’t correlate at all with what I’m seeing, and an overwhelming sense to puke overtakes me.
Bile rises. Burning sensation in my throat. I run down the hallway. Second door on the left. No, the right. The bathroom door is open, and I’m greeted with polished white tile. The moment I arrive at the bowl, heaving chunks explode from deep within me. I lean on the wall and flush periodically. The very thought of puking makes me vomit again.
I wash my face. Lethargy sets in. Between bouts of dizziness, I stumble back out to the hall. Sonja is standing there.
“Geez,” she says. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“Well, I don’t think I’ve been in this situation before...I don’t think.”
She folds her arms. “Perhaps you should get your shit together, because you’re close.”
“Close to what?”
“I don’t think you should go down there.”
“Down where?”
She turns her head and looks further down the hallway. I follow her gaze. Another door. Closed. Police tape attached across it. More black powder on the handle and door frame.
“Can’t we just stay here?” she pleads. “Just the two of us, away from everything?”
Softer now.
“Away... awa...aw...a...”
Her voice disappears, swallowed by the shadows.
As I approach the police-taped door, flashes of light rock my consciousness, like lightning strikes in a moonless desert. My vision is a mix of reality and experience, and I can’t tell one from the other.
I’m at the door, and every hair on my body is standing up. My senses are in overdrive. The familiarity is breathtaking. Hand near the handle. Electricity sparks. Flash. Reality. Flash. Reality.
The door opens.
A chair in the middle of the room.
And Grant Taylor is sitting in it.
Chapter 46
Grant is sobbing. His head is on his chest, and his body heaves up and down methodically. Tape binds his wrists and ankles to the chair. He isn’t wearing any shoes. There’s a swath of blood across his shirt. I don’t know if it’s his or someone else’s.
There are bodies on the floor, face down. Arms and legs intertwine, blood-stained torsos lying on top of each other. Blood. Blood everywhere. His wife and son. She is wearing a summer dress; five separate splotches cover her back. His head lies in a pool of blood.
There are moans, a scuffling of feet. The sound of resistance.
I am watching. I am there. There are two worlds folding in on one another.
“No!” Grant calls out between sobs. He musters, “Please don’t hurt her,” between heavy breaths.
“Last chance,” I say, holding Olivia close to me. I’m holding a knife to her neck, but I know I won’t use it, won’t have to exact the same carnage I’ve already accomplished. It’s not because I care about her—I really don’t. I only care about completing the mission, doing what I need to in order to get what I need. People can only be pushed so far before they crumble and break down. I’m impressed with Grant’s spirit and loyalty. Perhaps more people should be like him, lose like him, test themselves, push themselves to the edge of nothingness. This is when you find out what really matters to people.
Grant lifts his head, but he doesn’t look at me. He looks through me. His eyes are half closed and puffy. Sweat glistens everywhere on his body. “What they’ll do to me is worse. Much worse.” He sighs. “You have no idea.”
“Worse than this? There’s not much left for you to lose. Just one. Just one more thing you care about that I can take from you. Are you prepared to do this to her?” I push her into view, into his line of vision. He clenches his eyes shut and turns away. He doesn’t want to see the pain he’s putting her through.
“I’ll tell you.” He takes a deep breath and repeats his statement, as if saying it twice makes it mean twice as much.
“Tell me. And she lives. You both do.”
He looks up, this time at her. “I will. Just promise me you won’t hurt her.” I wonder what he can see, if the terror comes across, if he can see what I feel from her shaking, whimpering body.
“I promise.” But I don’t, not really.
“Oh, God. Please don’t do this.”
“Jesus Christ, Grant, I’m running out of patience. If you don’t do this now...” I trail off, squeeze her neck, and let the whine of his daughter finish my threat. “All of this is your fault, Grant. If you had only coughed it up at the start, there wouldn’t be bodies lying at your feet. I wouldn’t have to threaten you like this. But you resisted, and I am patient and willing to do whatever it takes.”
“Okay.”
Then he’s sitting at his desk, the change in environment so subtle I barely recognize the transition. His fingers glide over a keyboard, silently pressing keys. I relinquish my grip on Olivia and she dissolves into nothing. I join Grant around the other side of the desk, stand behind him. The screen is full of code. Lines and lines of script overlaid multiple times making it blur. In the middle of the screen is an empty box encapsulating a flashing curser.
Grant pushes back from the terminal, looks up at me.
“It’s...”
He whispers it to me. Tells me everything I need to know between gasps, as if his life force is being sucked away with each passing moment.
He’s right. What they will do to him is so much worse. So much worse than this. What is worse than this? Indescribable pain. Is this not indescribable? Watching your family die? Perhaps I should do him the favor, do Olivia the favor, save him the trouble of losing her later. They’ll never see it coming.
I feel a presence. At first, I think it is Sonja, but then I realize it’s something else, someone who doesn’t belong here.
What is the code?
Now I have it, locked away. Hidden. Deep.
I will ask again. What did he tell you?
It’s in a safe place where you’ll never find it. Hidden with my past: my childhood, who my foster parents were, what they did to me. There are so many twists and turns, so many rabbit holes to fall into. No. To get the key, you need a map, and you know better than anyone—you don’t store the two together.
Tell me.
No. This is my leverage. This is the only way for h
er and me to get out of here.
Tell me!
No, you’ll never let her live. I just want to make sure she’s safe. Let her go. Take me. Just me.
Tell me or she dies.
If she dies, you’ll never get anything. Believe me.
I don’t believe you. Maybe she’ll die, anyway.
Are you willing to take that risk?
“Sloan!”
I blink. The room resets. Grant is gone. A wooden desk sits alone in front of a large bay window, adorned with a lamp and stacks of papers—but no Grant. There is no chair. One wall consists of a bookshelf, holding more books than it was designed to, so someone had to stack them horizontally rather than vertically. A shaft of light pours over it all and hovers over a dark stain on the floor, like a spotlight from a search helicopter. The light moves over the room, eventually falling on my eyes. I shield them from the pain.
“Sloan!”
A voice over my shoulder. A familiar sound, though I can’t place who it’s from. Footsteps approach behind me, but I can’t move; I’m restricted from turning to see who it is. They come around from my right, an odd crunch on the polished wood floors with every step.
A man appears, wearing a dark suit, his tie loosened. He stalks me, prowling around the perimeter. It’s Kolton. His hands are in his pocket. He is careless...or carefree.
“What do you know?” He ventures. “What do you remember?”
I look down, searching my memory banks. I don’t know much. The puzzle is incomplete, and I don’t have enough pieces to finish it. It would help if I had the box so I could see the end product.
Kolton can see me struggling to remember. “Have you figured it out yet?” he asks.
“Figured out what?”
“This! All of this. What this is about?”
“I did this. I killed the family. The wife, the son, the daughter.”
“More or less,” Kolton responds.
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter. Why did you do it?”
“Because The Devil asked me to get it,” I say.
“And what did he ask you to do?”
“To get numbers from Grant.”
“Go on,” he prods.
“No! More than numbers. Characters. A code.”
“Yes. That’s what we want.”
“But you have the code. I’ve seen the page from Galdini’s file about me.”
“We don’t need a code; we need the code.”
And then I think back to the piece of paper, the numerous arrangements of the same ten characters. Which one is the right one?
“I...I don’t know.”
“Oh, but someone does,” he says.
“Is that why you’re here? To get the code?”
Another smile. “No. That’s why they’re here!”
The room goes dark.
Chapter 47
Light. Fading light. The setting sun is being swallowed by a swath of burning tall pines that dot the mountain range like a birthday cake. I lean on the paint-chipped porch railing, the planks under my feet shifting uneasily beneath me. I glimpse the Mustang at the foot of the stairs. A rumble sounds in the distance, and I look down at the rifle beside me, leaning against the balustrade.
“Not yet.” Her voice is soft but measured.
Sonja silently comes into my periphery. She leans down, her forearms resting on the rail. “Not yet,” she repeats. “Wait ’till they are closer.”
The rumble dies down, then returns, louder than before. It sounds like the earth is opening up, ready to consume us.
“Do you think we’re safe here? Do you think we can hold them off?”
She keeps her gaze to the ridgeline. “I think we’re in a bind, that’s for damn sure. But I also believe we’re exactly where we need to be.”
“You didn’t answer my other question. Can we hold them off?”
“No, I don’t think we can. That rifle there is not going to be enough.”
I turn to her. “Then let’s get out of here. We can hit the coast by Tuesday, Mexico by Thursday. You and me, let’s jump in the car and go.”
“What car?”
I turn and point. “That ...” There’s nothing there, nor any evidence it ever was.
I descend the stairs to investigate further. Then I turn back to talk to Sonja. Nothing. The house is gone as well. We’re standing on a small hill, surrounded by a mountain range. It’s like we’re standing in a crater. I spin, looking for a way out.
“Fuck!” I cry out. “This isn’t a good position to be in.”
“No,” she replies. “It’s the worst possible position to be in.”
I turn to her, grab her shoulders, and pull her toward me. “Do you remember what I told you?”
A blank look on her face.
“Remember! You have to remember! The map?”
She nods, slowly, methodically. “Yes.”
“They’re after it.”
Her eyes droop in a sad smile, a known realization.
“If they get it, it’s all over. Hold onto it,” I say. “Never let it go for anyone, whatever happens to me. It’s our only way out. Without it, we have nothing; we are nothing.”
A gust of wind buffets my pants.
She lifts her hands and places them over my eyes. Safety. Security. Love. In that moment, we could have been anywhere. In a tent in the Norwegian mountains, standing on a beach on an island in the middle of the Pacific. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’ve done your best. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But sometimes there’s no way out, no escape. And the best we can hope for is a good fight.”
Howling winds continuously yank at me. We’re torn from each other as a rumble rolls around the ridgeline and trees tumble like dominos.
“Fuck! Don’t go!”
There’s no reply. She’s gone. I am alone. The wind picks up around the perimeter and swirls around me. It picks up rocks and stones, sucking them into the tunnel where they fling around the extremities. With each revolution, they get closer, inch by inch. I am surrounded; there’s no way out. I can sense them coming, ready to crush me. I put my hands up to protect myself, but I can’t.
My hands are bound behind my back.
And a rock is on a collision course.
Chapter 48
The impact of a fist against my face rouses me from my daydream. My head flings to the left, resulting in me hitting the cold concrete floor. I’m sure I heard a loud crack as it happened, and now I taste blood filling my mouth. My face feels like a balloon; my vision is masked with hair, sweat, blood. I’m tied to a chair, which I thank God for—otherwise, I’d be sprawled out on the ground with a serious head injury.
I am righted by hands, the owners of which remain hidden. Every little sound is like an atomic bomb going off in my head. I slowly open my eyes. Things are hazy, dull. Hands are on my head, lifting my eyelids. Then the light floods in. First into my left eye, then into my right.
“Wakey, wakey...”
The words float in and out, with no particular source or end point. They are soft, spongy. The hands release my head, dropping it onto my chest. No strength. Through half-open eyes, pictures slowly combine into one: a gray concrete floor, a rusty silver drain, the legs of an empty chair.
Scuffing of feet. Black leather shoes come into view. I hear the creak of wood as the person sits, their weight shifting as they find comfort. I slowly lift my head. Gray slacks. Higher. White shirt. Black and yellow-striped tie. Higher. Sleeves rolled up. Hairy arms folded. Indecipherable tattoo. Higher. Square jaw. Higher. Cold eyes. Gray hair. Military buzzcut.
“Sloan?” Kolton asks.
“Kolton.” Words are hard to say. “I’ve got to tell you something.”
“Oh, really? What is it?”
I raise my head, pain shoots down my neck. “You hit like a bitch!”
He prepares his fist but holds it back, teetering on the edge of complete destruction.
I smile and let gra
vity pull my head down.
My lips are numb, and I can’t work my tongue properly. “What’s going on?” I blink a few times and try to look around. We’re alone in a spotlight—a life raft in the abyss. “Where am I?”
“You’re at the facility.”
Facility? “What facility?”
“The psychiatric facility.”
How could I let this happen? How could I be at Grant’s house one minute and back here the next? “How did you get me back here?”
“Back? Back?” A laugh. Pity? No. Maniacal? Definitely. “Sloan... you never left.”
I snapped my eyes open, fighting against fatigue. “What the hell are you talking about?” I try to move, but I’m bound. Looking down, I note the off-white straitjacket pulling my arms across my body and holding them in place. Although my arms are numb, I can feel my fingers pushing into my ribs. But there is something else holding me down, something restraining me to the chair. I continue to attack my binds as I get used to the light and start to see beyond the limits of the overhead bulb.
Then I stop. Stained concrete surrounds me on all sides. I note a grate in the floor at my feet. The aroma of shit and vomit fill my lungs, and I breathe through my mouth to avoid it. I know this place, as real and raw as anything I know. This is a room where bad things happen.
Kolton smirks. “Maybe the doctor will be able to help you out.”
I think back to what I did, how I left Galdini in a pool of his own blood. “I doubt it. I think you’ll find the doctor is dead.”
“Hello, Sloan.” The voice hits me like a bullet, shaking me sober. I forget about everything—the fact I’m bound to a chair, the fact a cop has kidnapped me.
Doctor Galdini comes into my vision. I watch as he taps the detective on the shoulder, who immediately stands and takes his place behind the chair. The doctor eases himself down with no ailment. I look at his face, take him all in, looking for injuries I had caused by stabbing him in the neck with a pen.
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