Dreamlander

by K.M. Weiland

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The first thing Chris did when he surfaced in Chicago’s pre-dawn darkness was call Mike. “I need you to drive me to Harrison’s house.”

  “What happened to going off the radar?” Mike’s voice rasped with sleep.

  “It died a quick death. How soon can you get here?” Chris gave him the address.

  Mike sighed. “Give me about twenty minutes. And there better not be anybody shooting at me.”

  Chris hung up and groped through the hotel room to find his clothes and Harrison’s bundle of notebooks.

  By some miracle, his ragtag group had managed to reach the shores of Ori Réon and commandeer a ship his father referred to as a “sow.” But sow or not, Worick had been able to helm it. After a harrowing day crossing the wind-thrashed lake, they arrived on the northern shore under the cover of darkness. Chris had fallen asleep with the Orimere in his hand and a final prayer on his lips that this might all somehow work.

  Snow plastered his hotel room’s windows, and he had to drag up the sash to watch for the approach of Mike’s orange Bug. Thirty minutes later, he glanced outside to see the car idling on the curb.

  The power outage had killed the elevators, so he hiked to the nearest stairwell, ran down the first flight of stairs, and turned the corner—right into the noise-suppressed barrel of Geoff Kaufman’s handgun.

  His breath exploded from his mouth. He ducked and spun back around the corner. Behind him, the gun spat, and a poster of Willis Tower rained glass across the landing.

  How had this thug found him? Mike couldn’t have been so stupid as to let Kaufman tail him. Or maybe he could. He scrambled up the stairs.

  “Why prolong this?” Kaufman’s voice was flat. “For what I’m getting paid, I have no reason not to spend the rest of my life hunting you. Why not get it over with?”

  Chris reached the top of the stairs and pelted down the hall. Another shot ricocheted against the wall, and he threw himself into the elevator alcove. His thumb worked the button, but no reassuring orange light pinged behind the arrows.

  Kaufman’s strides measured the hall.

  Chris hurled himself around the edge of the elevator. The shot clanked against the doors. He sprinted down the hallway to the stairwell at the opposite end and blasted through the doors. The corner of the first landing provided him cover until Kaufman reached the end of the hallway, and he kept his lead all the way down the stairs and into the shadows of the lobby.

  The clerk at the desk gaped as Chris ran past.

  Outside, where the Bug waited on the curb, Mike turned from leaning against the car and looked over the roof at Chris. “There you are. I was about to come get you.”

  “Get in!”

  “What’s the hurry? We don’t even have traffic to contend with this morning.”

  Chris wrenched open the passenger door. “Just get in!”

  Mike looked past Chris, and his mouth flopped open. He ducked into the car and was flooring the gas before his door was even closed. The tires sprayed snow, finally caught traction, and spun off across the empty street. Behind Chris, the rear side window exploded.

  Mike swerved into the wrong lane. “You said nobody’d be shooting at me!”

  In a minute, the black streak of Kaufman’s pickup careened around a corner through the snow.

  “He’s following,” Chris said.

  “Wonderful. Perfect. Good thing that makes my life complete, ’cause it doesn’t look like I have long to live it!” Mike started to turn left.

  Chris snatched his arm. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m finding the police, that’s what I’m doing!”

  “We haven’t got time for the police! Go to Harrison’s.”

  “Are you out of your mind? You’re still afraid the cops are going to nail you for that whole Mactalde thing? You’re willing to risk our lives on that possibility?”

  The black truck barreled through the snow behind them.

  “No. You’re right.” Chris grabbed for his seatbelt. Mactalde had hired Kaufman to kill him. If Mactalde wanted him dead, he wouldn’t draw attention to Chris by framing him for his disappearance.

  He slammed the side of his fist against the glove box, and it fell open in his lap. “Where’s your phone?”

  “It’s on the fritz.” Mike swerved onto the highway ramp, and the junk in the glove box tumbled to the floor. “Everything’s on the fritz right now because of the storms.”

  Chris clawed through the mess to find the phone and power it up. “We’ve got a signal.”

  “Yeah, and now we’ve also got traffic to deal with.”

  “Get in front of that semi and stay there.” He dialed the police station and got an earful of static.

  Kaufman’s truck roared up on the shoulder of the road and loomed in Chris’s side mirror.

  “The semi’s too slow!” Mike yelled.

  “Just floor it! Weave in and out of traffic!”

  Mike stomped on the gas, and the Bug shuddered into the other lane. “I can hardly see the traffic through the snow! How am I supposed to weave in and out?”

  The static in Chris’s ear dissolved into a choppy female voice. “Hel—lo, this—9—1.”

  “Get somebody out to 11 East Hunter Street in the South Side! We’ve got a man in a black pickup trying to run us down. He’s shooting at us.” Static erupted again, and he threw the phone back into the glove box. “Get off at the next exit.”

  The Bug caught a patch of ice, slid sideways onto the ramp, and lost traction for precious seconds until Mike could pull it back into the turn. The truck juddered behind them as Kaufman fought to brake in time to follow.

  Mike smacked the steering wheel. “He overshot it! He missed the exit!”

  The truck churned into reverse, snow spewing from its wheels.

  “He’s pulling back around!” Chris said. “Get off the ramp. We’ll try to lose him in the side streets.”

  Mike kept the gas pedal to the floor as they raced through the streets. His eyes flicked back and forth between the speedometer and the rearview mirror. “We’re losing ground! We’re not going to make it!”

  “Only a couple more blocks.” Sirens moaned in the distance. “Cops are coming.”

  “By the time they get to us, we’re going to be too dead to waste tax money saving!”

  Kaufman smashed into their rear bumper. Metal crumpled, and cracks spidered the rear window. The Bug’s engine wheezed.

  Kaufman rammed them again. The Bug spun out on the ice and careened across the street. Barely in time to brace himself, Chris dragged his legs up against the dashboard. The car crashed into a stop sign, and the dirty orange hood and the perforated green pole pretzeled together.

  Mike raised his head from the cushion of his arms. “My car!”

  “Get out!” Chris shoved through the door.

  The truck had caught the same ice patch and crashed into the house across the street.

  “If he’s not dead, I’m gonna kill him.” Mike dragged himself out of the car.

  The truck’s passenger door sprang open, and a shot smacked into the pavement at Mike’s feet.

  Chris sprinted down the sidewalk. He dared one look over his shoulder. Mike gasped along behind him. Farther back, Kaufman ran like a trained sprinter, gun in hand, his tie flaring over his shoulder.

  Together, Chris and Mike clambered over Harrison’s fallen fence and across the yard. Chris pounded a kick just below the doorknob, and the door snapped like brittle cardboard.

  “Great.” Mike flung out his arms. “Good thinking. Smash the door. Why not let everybody in—including the bad guy!”

  “Shut it behind you, and start propping stuff in front of it. Maybe it’ll slow him down.” Dust from the desecrated door clogged the dark hallway.

  “A slow death, just what I wanted.” The door banged shut.

  Chris ran down the hallway into the living room. Harrison had bragged about the explosives hidden under the floor. Back then
, Chris had dismissed it as the ravings of a demented kook. Now, he was banking more than just his life on its truth.

  He shoved chairs out of the way, toppling piles of trash. A threadbare rug covered the floor, and he ripped it up and cast it aside. Halfway beneath the one chair Harrison had kept clear for his own use was a trapdoor.

  A shot tore through the front of the house, and something heavy hit the floor.

  “He’s shooting at me now!” Mike crawled around the corner, and Kaufman started kicking the door.

  Chris dragged open the trapdoor.

  “What is this?” Mike peered over the edge. “Panic room?”

  Chris snatched a flashlight from his coat pocket and shone it on a long lumpy pile swathed in blue plastic. Outside, sirens howled. He dropped into the shallow hole, up to his chest. Squatting, he tore open a corner of the plastic far enough to make sure it was the explosives he was after, then tied it shut again. The front door splintered, and Mike’s improvised barricade crashed.

  “Mike.” He pulled out the Orimere and the notebook with Harrison’s map of Réon Couteau. “I need you to do me one more favor.”

  Mike shook his head. “I have to tell you, I’m about out of favors, bro.”

  “I need you to knock me out.”

  “What?” Mike rocked back on his heels.

  Tires screeched outside, and men started yelling.

  “Before the cops get here, I need you to knock me out.” He held out the heavy flashlight.

  “What are you trying to do now? Frame me?”

  “Just do it. Please.” If Mike had been the one asking him, he probably wouldn’t have done it, and he couldn’t blame Mike if he didn’t either. “Trust me just one more time.”

  Mike raised both hands and shook his head. “I’m not doing this. This is crazy.”

  “It’s the last time. I promise. You have no idea how much is riding on this.”

  Footsteps ran up the sidewalk. Kaufman’s pistol started coughing, and the staccato report of the officers’ weapons replied.

  Chris held the flashlight out farther. “We’re running out of time. Just give me one good crack behind the ear.”

  “That could kill you!”

  “Mike!” He lunged halfway out of the hole and snagged his friend’s sleeve. “I’ve told you the truth, every bit of it. I don’t care if you believe me about the dreams or not, it’s true. And if I don’t get back there right now, people are going to die!”

  “I don’t believe you.” Mike reached for the flashlight. “I don’t. But you do deserve a smack in the head.”

  The front door rattled. “Anybody in there?” a man called. “Everyone okay?”

  Chris clenched the heat of the Orimere in one hand and reached back with the other to touch the mound of explosives. “Tell them I fell and hit my head.”

  Mike wrapped both hands around the flashlight. “If somebody had told me this is where we’d end up, I would have fought my own battles.”

  “Do it.”

  The flashlight crashed into the side of his head. His vision flashed into darkness—

  —and he jerked upright to find a wild-eyed Parry scrambling toward him.

  Harrison’s green notebook and the clothes he’d been wearing in Chicago lay scattered around his bedroll.

  He propped himself up on one elbow. “Did it happen?”

  “Don’t know.” Parry pointed behind him. “I’m too busy wondering if that was supposed to happen.”

  The tromp of hoofbeats thudded all around the camp.