When Darkness Builds (The Caldera Series)

by M. C. Sutton

  Perhaps Mac’s men would run right past him.

  It was an incredible risk, but it had to be better than a mad, uncovered dash down a dark hall.

  As footsteps thundered past, he held his breath and pressed his body as far back into the darkness as he could. He prayed silently that none of Mac’s men had seen Hackett and the others make a break for it, and followed them.

  He stood there for what seemed like hours rather than minutes, motionless and unbreathing. Just as he was about to decide that all of Mac’s men had already passed and if he stayed there much longer he’d be giving them an opportunity to circle back and look for him, soft footsteps came down the hall and stopped just inside the elevator alcove.

  Jon rested a finger on the trigger of his gun.

  The figure stood there, motionless. Then he turned slightly, revealing in the moonlight a clearer outline of his lanky build. It was the kid whose nose Jon had broken. The one they called Rat. Jon suddenly remembered Bennett’s comment about the kid being not much older than Matt and Jacob. He didn’t want to have to shoot him.

  Just keep moving, kid, he thought, trying to will him on.

  “Hey, Rat!” called another of Mac’s men. More footsteps approached, and a second guy stepped into the moonlight beside Rat. “It looks like we might have lost them. You got something?”

  Keep moving. Just keep moving.

  The kid paused as if listening. “Nah,” he finally said. “There’s nothing here. Let’s just keep moving.”

  Jon let out a silent sigh of relief and removed his finger from the trigger as they disappeared up the hall. He slipped his gun into the back of his pants and set to work prying open the door of the elevator with his bare fingers. Jon still found it hard to believe that Ephraim had managed to get onto the roof of a twenty-four-story building and down the shaft without anyone noticing. He’d have to remember to ask him about it later.

  Assuming, of course, there was a later.

  Jon was more than relieved to find Ephraim’s rappelling equipment still hanging undisturbed inside the elevator shaft. The elevator car was on the first floor just below, a glow stick on top of it, radiating a soft green. A crowbar lay next to it. Jon dropped down onto the roof of the car.

  He knew he needed to cover his tracks, but it took almost as much effort to get the door closed as it had to get it open, and Jon felt the seconds ticking away. His greatest fear was that Mac would go after Emma. Based on what the guy had said to Rat in the hall, they still hadn’t found her and the others, but that didn’t mean they were out of the woods yet.

  He’s not going to let you out of here alive, Jack had said. What did that even mean?

  Jon finally got the door closed in one final, strained push.

  He grabbed the crowbar and hooked it through his belt loop, threw Ephraim’s bag over his shoulder, and climbed the rope to the third floor. Jon positioned himself just beneath the elevator doors and used the crowbar to pry them open gradually, an inch at a time, just enough to peek out. Realizing that there wasn’t ever going to be enough light to be completely sure that no one was waiting for him, Jon opened the doors and pulled himself up.

  No sooner had he set foot on the third floor than he heard the unmistakable sound of Mac’s voice.

  “Come on, I said move!”

  Jon pressed himself against the wall.

  He heard nervous chatter and shoes scuffling across the carpet—moving away from him. They definitely didn’t sound like Mac’s men. Were they hostages? And, more importantly, was Emma among them?

  He had to know.

  Stepping softly, he eased down the hallway toward the voices. He kept his body pressed up against the wall till he reached the point where the hallway opened into the prefunction area. He peered out from the shadows.

  Mac was herding a group of about twenty to thirty men and women in business suits toward the stairwell. Where in the world was he taking them?

  That’s when Jon heard the gun cock right beside his head.

  “Hold it right there, Grant,” said a voice behind him.

  Jon froze. Damn it.

  “Hand me the gun and turn around.”

  Jon passed the gun, reluctantly, to whoever was standing behind him. He put his hands up and turned around slowly.

  “And just what do you think you’re doing?” the guy said.

  He was wearing a mask, but by his voice and build, Jon recognized him. It was the kid who had watched the monitors. Hackett’s friend.

  “I thought the boss took you and the others downstairs. What’d you do, hero? Pop him and come back for the rest of us?”

  Jon shook his head. “Look, kid, I don’t know what you might have read in the news, but I’m just a retired pilot. I’m only here because your buddy let us go.”

  The guy tightened his grip on his gun. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, he’s your friend, you tell me. You really think your pal Sam would be okay with Mac blowing up a building full of people?”

  The kid’s eyes widened. “You mean Mac really did plant the bomb?”

  “That’s right, slick.”

  “My god,” he said. “I mean, I knew the guy had lost it. Shooting hostages and all. But blowing up the entire building?”

  “Wait, you mean he’s shot someone else?”

  “Yeah, as soon as Sam left with you guys. He said something about a list. Then he gathered a bunch of people up, shot a few of them, then took the others. He didn’t say where.”

  “And you just let him?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do!”

  Jon suddenly realized just how young the kid really was. “Listen,” he said, softening his voice, “you need to go figure out what Mac’s done with those hostages. Keep him from shooting anyone else. Do you think you can do that?”

  “No, but I’ll try.”

  “Good enough. Now go.”

  “Mr. Grant,” the kid said weakly. “We never really meant for anybody to get hurt.”

  Jon shook his head. “Yeah,” he answered. “No one ever does.”

  CHAPTER 33

  EMMA WASN’T SURE WHAT WOKE her up first, the intense heat radiating through the window Sam had propped her against, or the sound of Mac’s men banging on the metal doors leading to the sky bridge.

  “Aaron, I can’t hold it much longer!” Sam yelled as Aaron rushed past her with a chair. Sam grabbed it and used it to barricade the doorway. Emma doubted it would last long against the force of Mac’s men.

  “Come on, Doc,” said Sam, scooping her up.

  Emma wrapped the one arm that wasn’t numb around his neck as he ran across the sky bridge toward the convention center. Behind them, the mangled metal doors burst open, and three of Mac’s men pushed through. Before Emma could shout a warning to the others, she heard the distinctive pop of bullet through glass and watched as the three men dropped and lay still.

  Wow, there really are snipers out there, thought Emma. I guess someone is on our side after all.

  Her relief was short-lived. Two bodies lay just inside the hotel behind them. Sam’s friends.

  “Sam?” she said quietly.

  Sam didn’t respond. He just kept running, his eyes straight ahead.

  When they had crossed into the second floor of the old convention center, he set her down. “All right, Aaron,” he said, “you’re good to go from here. Just circle around this floor until you come to the stairwell on the other side. From there, you’ll be able to get to the ground floor.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Emma. “Where are you going?”

  Sam ignored her. “Just stay along the south wall—it’s the clearest. Once you get downstairs there shouldn’t be much blocking your path. Keep going south and it will lead you to the entrance of the parking deck. From there—”

  “Sam!” Emma yelled.

  Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “I asked you where you were going,” Emma said quietly.

  He squatted d
own in front of her and put a hand on her knee. “I’ve got to go back,” he said.

  Emma opened her mouth to argue.

  “Look, I know what you’re going to say, Doc. But I’ve got to go anyway. My best friend’s in there, and I can’t just leave him. I’ve got to try to talk Mac out of this and see if I can keep him from killing anyone else. Everyone in this building, from the hostages in that conference room to the guys I brought in, is in danger because of me. This is my mess, and I’ve got to try to clean it up.”

  Emma was too tired, too dizzy, and in too much pain to stop him, and she knew it. She rested her trembling hand on top of his. “Jon has a bracelet just like that,” she said quietly, noticing for the first time the bracelet on Sam’s wrist.

  “Cole made it for me,” said Sam. “It’s supposed to be good luck.”

  “Maybe it will work,” said Emma, dropping her head, the tears once again running down her cheeks.

  “You were right, you know. About what you said. In writing, we have something called M/R Units. Motivation and Response. But between that motivation and response is a space. And it’s the choices we make in that space that define us. Those choices mean nothing, though, until we act on them. The only thing I’ve managed to do so far is get a building full of innocent people almost killed. And that’s not who I want to be.”

  No, Sam. Please, no. Emma cried out from deep inside her own head, but she couldn’t form the words. If she had been more coherent, if she wasn’t past the point of both total exhaustion and physiological shock, she would have argued with him. No—she would have done a lot more than argue with him. She’d likely have knocked him over the head and dragged him out of there herself, insisting that he, Claire, and Cole would all thank her for it later. Instead, she did something she’d only done on very few occasions where there seemed to be no hope, no control left.

  She surrendered to the unfortunate inevitability.

  “Did you mean what you said?” Sam asked. “About helping Cole?”

  “Every word.”

  “And you’ll make sure he’s taken care of?”

  “I promise.”

  Sam wiped the tears from her face. “It’ll be all right, Dr. Grant,” he said. “You’ll see.” He rose, took a gun from Aaron, and headed back across the sky bridge.

  But that’s exactly the problem, Emma thought numbly as Rachael wrapped an arm around her waist to help her up. I do see.

  Emma was pretty much gone now. Rachael was patient with her, supporting most her weight as they stumbled around in the dark, trying to make their way down the hallway that wrapped around the building. Every now and then Emma would lose consciousness, only to snap back again. Only Rachael kept her from hitting the rubble-riddled floor.

  “Look, Emma, we’re almost there,” said Rachael.

  Emma opened her eyes, not even remembering when she’d closed them. Fifty feet ahead, moonlight poured through the exit into the parking garage, somehow making the surrounding area seem significantly darker. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a few people standing just beyond the exit.

  “Yeah,” said Aaron, who was struggling to keep Ephraim, half a foot taller than himself, upright. “And with any luck, whoever that is out there brought a couple of stretchers with them.”

  Luck, thought Emma.

  Rachael plopped her down and ran for the exit. Emma tried to follow her with her eyes but couldn’t keep them open. Her mind wandered, replaying the image of red and white exploding in a fiery ball in front of her. Luck, she thought again. She looked at her hand just before the flames burst toward it—and realized what that tinge of brown around her wrist was.

  It was Jon’s bracelet.

  Emma opened her eyes. If it was the bracelet she saw on her hand, then maybe, just maybe, this time she’d managed to change things. Maybe this time, everything would be all right.

  In the dim moonlight, she looked down at her hand.

  The bracelet was gone.

  “Where is it?” she cried.

  “Where’s what?” Aaron asked. He hovered over Ephraim, unconscious on the ground.

  “Jon’s bracelet!” she said. If it wasn’t around her wrist, then where in the world was it? If it wasn’t her hand that she had seen in the dream, then whose?

  “Emma, calm down. Are you talking about the bracelet with the white shells?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m pretty sure Jon has it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw him pick it up off the stage. It must have fallen off when Mac dragged you up there.”

  “Wait. Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” he said.

  Rachael reappeared just then with a couple of EMTs. Aaron got up and helped them load Ephraim onto a stretcher. For a moment, everyone was distracted.

  Emma hopped up and slipped away into the darkness.

  If she were anyone other than who she was, she’d never have found her way back. The convention center was so dark she couldn’t even see the floor beneath her. Running on nothing but adrenaline, her mind reeling with one simple goal, Emma used every ounce of her ability to know which way to turn, which step to take, and what part of the path to avoid to get back to the hotel. It was one thing to acquiesce to Sam and his need to put right what he’d done wrong. It was another thing entirely to let the father of her children go out in a violent blast of glory.

  Screw the unfortunate inevitability.

  She reached the spot just outside of the sky bridge where Sam had left them. She didn’t know where the bomb was, just that Jon had said something about a pop machine. The vending machines on the third floor, just outside the elevators, were the only ones she knew of. If Jon wasn’t there, then she’d just have to search from floor to floor.

  She darted into the stairwell that led up to the second level of the sky bridge. Though her desperate need to get to Jon in time had enabled her to push through the pain and disorientation, she wasn’t thinking nearly as clearly as she should be. A second before she popped out of the stairwell she suddenly remembered Sam saying that Mac’s men were guarding the sky bridge on the third floor.

  “Hi, Doc,” said Mac, standing in front of the door as if he’d been expecting her.

  Emma turned to run.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, grabbing her around the waist.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but a dark, suffocating hand closed over it. Emma struggled to get away, struggled to even breathe, against the intense pressure of Mac’s python arm.

  “I wouldn’t do that either, Princess,” Mac whispered in hot breaths against her ear.

  Emma froze.

  “That’s right, I know,” said Mac, his hot, sticky breath condensing against her skin. It made her sick. “He told me. He told me everything about you, and your husband. He even told me exactly what the good captain is up the hall trying to do right now. And I think you and I both know…” He paused and pressed his nose to her neck, taking a deep breath.

  Emma shuddered as a painful wave of pinpricks tingled down her spine.

  “… that there’s nothing he can do to stop it.”

  The familiar iciness started at Emma’s toes and crept slowly up her body. She struggled desperately against it, against Mac’s grip on her, but with each labored breath, the sensation grew stronger. With each gasp for air, his hand closed even tighter around her mouth, his arm around her chest, until it was impossible to breathe.

  “Don’t bother to fight it, Doc,” he said, his lips tracing the outline of her ear. “You and your kind, you think you’re so great with all your power and all your abilities. But he has power too, you know. And in the end, the cold will win. In the end, it always wins.”

  Emma, tears streaming down her face, sucked in one last desperate breath.

  And lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER 34

  MAC GRINNED IN IMMENSE SATISFACTION. He scooped her limp body into his arms and stared down at he
r disgustingly fragile frame.

  “It’s too bad, you know. You really are incredibly beautiful,” he said, his eyes scanning every delicate curve. Then he frowned. “For one of them.”

  Throwing her over his shoulder, he started across the sky bridge to the hotel with a total and elating awareness of what he was about to do. A tingle of anxious excitement washed over his body, the way it always did when he thought of the sheer destructive power, the magnitude of complete control, that they were about to show the world.

  Like a drug, it fed his elation to the point that the sniper’s bullets tearing through his leg and arm didn’t even faze him. The good doctor lying limp across his shoulder would keep them from hitting any major organs, he knew, but it didn’t matter now anyway. This body was weak, temporary, and he would soon be rid of it. What he would gain in return for his sacrifice would be immense and eternal.

  He continued to the alcove with the vending machines, where he knew Grant would be trying to unravel everything they’d accomplished. Mac chuckled as he imagined the captain staring at the pop machine, his brow furrowed, sweat running down his face, contemplating the sheer impossibility of his task.

  He pulled the doctor off his shoulder, wrapped one arm around her chest to keep her upright in front of him, then cocked his gun and pointed it at her temple.

  He stepped into the darkened alcove.

  “Grant,” he said coldly. “Why don’t you stop hiding and face me like a man?”

  It was Sam who popped out instead, his gun pointed straight at Mac’s head.

  That was, of course, until he saw the girl.

  “Dr. Grant,” he said, his face falling as he lowered his gun.

  Mac smiled. “That’s right. I thought her husband might like to see her one more time before we all die. Where is he? I know he’s here.”

  Sam hesitated, then raised his gun again. “Why, Mac? Why in the hell are you so determined to kill them that you’re willing to die in the process? What’d they ever do to you?”

  Mac threw his head back and laughed. “You don’t have the slightest clue, do you, Hackett? You’re just as bad as Grant. Him and his filthy kind, with all their power and all their knowledge. They believe they’re here to make things better. They think they’re here to save us, when all they’re really doing is screwing it up worse, with their stupid wars and their stupid politics. They think they’re so much better than us? They know absolutely nothing! This isn’t about what they have or haven’t done to me, you moron. It’s about what they’ve done to him. It’s about what they would have done to him—” He pressed the gun harder against her temple.“—if I didn’t stop them. But more importantly, it’s about what he’s promised me.”