No, they were not his. They were Smith's. The shrapnel had torn him in two and parts of him had landed at Brant's feet like slabs stripped from a cow's liver.
Blue from the altered greenery engulfed his vision and the air crackled around him, obliterating all sounds. The visuals were out of phase, blurred. Blue disappeared behind a curtain of red.
Wearing bloody jungle fatigues, Kit turned to him and held out her hands, palm side up. Slick blood coated the skin of her hands and fingers. Red tears tracked through dusty cheeks. Her eyes were closed, but the bloody tears squeezed out in a steady stream.
Brant opened his eyes and his head left the pillow, his chest constricted and his lungs feeling as if he'd been held underwater for minutes. His heart rapped sharply against his ribs, beating out a snare-drum tattoo rhythm.
Jesus.
He reached for the lamp on the night stand and nearly toppled it, then managed to push the books he had piled there onto the floor. He basked in the golden cone of soft light and lay back, giving his breathing a chance to slow. His clammy neck on the pillow chilled him and he shivered.
"This is one of those times I don't mind talking to myself," he muttered. He'd been catching himself talking aloud more often recently, having actual conversations, and had vowed to stop lest he turn into one of the pitiful homeless men who stalked the downtown streets.
"Christ, Kit. Jesus Christ."
His alarm clock teetered on the edge of the table. Its blue numbers mocked him with 12:11 and the solid AM dot.
Groaning, Brant stumbled off the bed, where he had collapsed into unexpected sleep fully clothed, laying on his now-too-hot winter blankets. He straightened — slowly — and stood, knees creaking, on his cold floor.
Why the fuck had he allowed himself to fall asleep? He had no memory of the transition period. He had come here after the lake shore. He was awake one minute, the next he was asleep and wandering his usual mental minefield.
But this time was different.
This was the first time he could remember Kit's image encroaching into his dreamworld, and it unnerved him. The dream itself wasn't out of line with those he tolerated most nights, but the vivid representation of his niece and the blood — her blood, or someone else's? — on her hands jarred him even further than the entire tunnel incident and what it had led to.
The incident. He had started to think of it as the incident as if he could somehow categorize it, study it, tame it by filing it in an innocuous drawer of his life. But the fact was that it had never been innocuous. No, it had brought grief and pain along with the visions. And now his brother's little girl, and let's face it, Brant, the little girl you could have had but never did and now you regret it, that little girl was trapped in the same kind of danger he remembered from his days in Cu Chi, except that even in the midst of the jungle you knew what kind of danger you faced. Here, he had little idea what had crawled from the deep, dark foliage to wrap its vines around his daughter — his brother's daughter — or how to get her back.
What the hell was he doing, sleeping?
It was obvious to him now, suddenly, like a quick beam of blinding sunlight, that Kit had initiated the contact herself. Perhaps she had sent out an unconscious scream for help, but there was a chance she had grasped onto some remnant of what she'd noticed as a child but had (thankfully) forgotten as an adult.
Brant smelled himself and grimaced. He'd been sweating in his sleep. He dug clean laundry from his dresser and showered quickly. Again he chose black jeans, a black cotton turtleneck, and a black leather jacket. He snatched a black leather bag from a shelf.
It was night but he had to do something, prowl, get on the hunt.
First he needed to even things up a bit.
He thumbed a catch hidden under his office desk and felt the wooden flap drop down on its hinges, nestling the Glock into his hand. He pulled the gun from its clasp and tucked it away.
Not too long later he nosed his car into a rare available angle slot on Belleview near Kit and Irina's apartment.
All roads led back to this apartment. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he knew.
Inspiration, or perhaps Kit had whispered in his ear this time, while he slept.
He switched off the engine and sat behind the wheel, checking his Glock's magazine before ramming it home, racking the slide, and making sure he was ready for business. He had time to sort things out, but he wanted a view of the building while he did it.
Huddled low in his pushed-back seat, Brant went through his thoughts on the apparent kidnapping. Irina had called Ralph, distraught because Kit had disappeared from the mall, but quite a few hours earlier. Ralph had called police though Irina had weakly promised to do so. He had so many questions. Why would Irina alert Kit's father, but also want to avoid police intrusion? What was really in Kit's interest?
Brant fumed. Too many fucking questions.
How many hours had passed between Irina's call and Ralph's call to the police? What were the police doing now? He trusted Danni Colgrave more than he thought he would — she was sharp, and her dislike of Zimmerman immediately recommended her, whatever her reasons – but so far she had turned up not much. Brant seemed to be the only one who saw that Irina's story about the mall didn't add up. She claimed Kit had just disappeared from behind her, as if she'd gone into a store and left the back way. But most stores either didn't have back doors, or they were unlikely to be open. Also, Irina claimed she wasn't sure where she was when she became aware of Kit's disappearance, and something about that bothered Brant, though he couldn't put his finger on it.
He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel.
"Suddenly I became aware that Kit was not behind me any longer."
Became aware.
Brant nodded. Logic said that she might have suddenly become aware of something, but that she wouldn't so easily realize that Kit might have disappeared. The wording implied Irina's thinking was more complex, more studied. As if she had rehearsed the sentence earlier. What could be wrong with admitting that she'd ignored Kit? Maybe they'd had a bit of a fight, and Irina had walked ahead, faster. Why would she show such awareness of the situation, when the whole thing had been a surprise? Or had it?
Now that Irina had come on to him, he wasn't sure he trusted anything she uttered. To anyone.
Colgrave had initiated a wide canvass of the mall stores, but there was no real way to round up dozens of shoppers who were also potential witnesses. They would have all been gone, blissfully heading into their holiday with no knowledge that something deeply disturbing had happened while they debated the virtue of plasma over LCD or iPod over Sony, or whatever they debated while walking mindlessly through a mall to spend money they didn't have.
The mindless part — that wasn't Kit's style. Brant knew his
niece well enough that stalking the mall couldn't have been her idea. A less likely mall rat couldn't exist. Kit was almost religiously a minimalist, an anti-teenager, a bit of a philosopher, but certainly not a poster child for capitalism. Irina, on the other hand, was exactly that type, a narcissistic and shallow teen who had to have been the power behind the decision to brave the mall this close to Christmas, something Brant knew Kit would have avoided at any cost.
Brant ran the story Irina had told them over and over like a
movie in his mind's eye. The only way Kit would have joined her roommate would have been to mock and ridicule, not to consume. That Kit might well have done willingly, however.
Colgrave had probably requested security camera tapes and hard drive recordings from all the stores in Irina's itinerary, but they would take time to examine. The mall was older and hadn't been retrofitted with large numbers of overhead cameras yet, so what they had from the halls would be spotty at best. Colgrave would have somebody eyeing it now, but Brant knew it was unlikely they'd see anything helpful — except maybe the guy who'd hassled Kit. He hoped they'd get a good shot of him.
He had a clear view of the building across Prospect
from his space, but there was the chance of a police patrol catching him in the act of surveillance. A loaded handgun could give Colgrave a tough clean-up job on his behalf, and Zimmerman would just toss his ass in a holding cell.
Just then, Brant noticed a dark foreign sedan slip past him smoothly and slow down a few cars ahead before braking and disgorging two suited figures from passenger doors front and back. The two men — they were definitely males, one much taller than the other — stepped between parked cars and onto the sidewalk as the sedan accelerated quietly and disappeared around the corner.
Brant checked his luminous watch and frowned in the darkness. What could they want here at nearly one in the morning?
He patted the door handle with one hand. Was the third guy parking and then joining up with the other two? As he wondered, the two looked around not quite furtively and suddenly ducked into the doorway of Irina's building.
Brant quietly slipped the door lock and melted out of his car, senses tingling. The Glock weighed down the inside of his leather jacket, but the holster specially sewn into the lining of the coat made the gun's bulk disappear. He walked toward the doorway, intentionally stumbling a bit as he reached the sidewalk. Just another city guy getting home on unsteady feet after a bit of a bender.
The doorway was dimly lit from the inside. The men had passed beyond the lobby and were either in the ground floor apartment by now or heading up the stairs. When Brant slipped inside, the door was just inches from closing, maybe this time loudly. Not sure of the lock, he lunged and stopped it from reaching the jamb. Quietly he pushed it open and slipped through. Footsteps sounded above him on the creaky stairs, but he had known all along they would be. He followed, sticking close to the wall side of the staircase.
Sure enough, he crept up to the point where he could see two sets of legs standing at the Eye of Horus door on the third floor. From his crouch on the stairs, he knew they couldn't see him — unless they leaned way over the balustrade.
This was all well and good, but Brant wondered how he could learn what they were up to. He heard the door open above, and whispered voices in the stairwell. He strained to hear words, but they were swallowed by the echo.
His attention was suddenly diverted downwards.
The lower lobby door opened and a single set of footsteps headed for the staircase.
It had to be the driver, having parked the car and now on his way to join the others.
Brant's mind whirred. A gunfight here wouldn't necessarily lead him to where Kit was held, assuming these people were involved.
And how could they not be involved? his mind interjected.
The steps were slow, laborious — as if the third man was corpulent and out of shape — but they were inexorable, too.
Heart racing, Brant slipped back down toward the newcomer, three steps to the second floor landing.
Below him, the steps had reached the midway landing.
There was nowhere to go.
KIT
Her sleep was fitful. She rolled over and the chain grabbed her, pulled her awake, reminded her of the words she wanted to block from her mind.
I want to die.
The voice in her head, as if playing a game with her, repeated the refrain: Join the club.
Kit screwed her eyes shut so she wouldn't see the words, but her head had begun to throb and screwing her eyes closed made the throb seem louder, more painful. Her heart beat irregularly, or so it seemed as she listened through the thin pillow. What was Marissa doing, she wondered. Having visions of sugar plums?
She almost snickered, but couldn't bring herself to do it. It was almost Christmas. Maybe it already was Christmas. She didn't think so, but then again, she was losing her sense of time in the cell with the constant dim lighting.
Christmas.
What do I want for Christmas?
She'd never cared much for holidays, but now she desperately wanted to feel this one, to experience it, even though she thought of herself as unreligious. Areligious? Whatever the word was. She'd never cared for religious holidays. All that cheer. All that false hope. Now she longed for some hope, even if false. Funny how things you thought would always be so could change, just like that. She thought a Christmas tree with some tacky garland laying all over its branches would be about the best thing she could see.
No, her dumpy apartment would be best. No, her Uncle Rich opening the cell door and letting her out. No, a gun in her hand so she could defend herself against these monsters. All of the above.
Completely against her will, she allowed her eyes to open to mere slits.
There the words were, mocking her and her false hope.
I want to die.
No, she thought in a quiet night voice that wouldn't wake anyone up, I don't want to die.
I won't die.
I won't.
NINE
Brant slipped his leather lock pick case out and selected a pick by touch with practiced ease. In two seconds, the time elapsed for each step, the pick was in the second floor apartment door.
He fumbled with the pick in the dark, barely able to pick out the brass circle of the lock.
Three or four more steps, and — if he looked up — the visitor would see Brant hunched over the door.
He sighed as he felt the pick enter the keyhole and it almost seemed to him that he could feel the tumblers in his fingers.
One more step before the climber would see him if he looked up, but Brant had pegged him as a fat man and figured he would be staring down at the steps in front of him, not above at his destination.
He worked the pick and felt the lock give as if it were flesh and he had breached it. The stairs creaked and the visitor was now well within eyeball range and angle.
But Brant had pushed open the apartment door just enough and slipped inside the dark foyer, closing it quickly behind him and holding it in place just as the fat man's bulk reached the landing.
The man's breaths were huffing, repressed so as to not embarrass him in front of his comrades — probably a long-conditioned habit for someone afraid of teasing — and then the man's weight had reached the new set of steps and headed up, the wood creaking much more loudly than it had with anyone who had preceded him.
Brant still held the apartment door closed, his own breath racing — and that tingle in his neck and chest —
ignore it!
— and the hand that held the pick now trembling...
He listened for the third man's steps to reach the third floor, then he turned in the darkness, letting his breath slow and his eyes adjust. When they did, he could see the silhouettes of furniture and bookcases, a dining room set, a large TV cabinet and smaller armchairs.
Above him, the floor squeaked. He heard steps.
Brant prowled into the apartment like a panther, carefully skirting low-lying furniture until he reached doors roughly matching his memory of the upstairs apartment. This would have been Kit's room, upstairs, and that would have been Irina's. The long hallway leading to the formal dining room on the right and the kitchen on the left, with a den or storage room on the right and the big bathroom on the left, he left alone. There were no lights on throughout its length, and only the tiny glow of a night-light coming from the kitchen doorway. He sidled up to each bedroom door, one closed and the other slightly ajar, and listened carefully. The door slightly ajar left him a view of a cluttered office, large desk buried in a pile of books and papers with a PC monitor jutting through. The closed bedroom door gave him pause — if the apartment dweller was home, this is where he would be. Brant leaned his ear onto the door, until he could feel its slightly oily surface on his skin. Still nothing. In one smooth motion he turned the knob in his sure fist and opened the door just enough to locate the bed in the dark. His eyes had already adjusted, so he spotted it immediately. It was empty.
He sighed in relief.
Above him, steps criss-crossed the floor and he heard the vague sing-song of voices, though much too softly to hear indiv
idual words.
Old buildings...
Moments later he stood under Irina's bedroom, immediately below two of the voices. He could follow movements across the ceiling, though he was forced to visualize whose they were. The louder steps belonged to the men, who wore shoes. Irina would have been barefoot, or in slippers — plus she barely weighed one-ten.
The voices seemed to come from near his feet. Brant crouched to locate the source. Moments later he touched it. An ancient wrought-metal grate capped a heating vent, and from there he could hear the four voices rise and fall.
His hand swept aside a small pile of objects that went clattering to the floor with hard plastic clicks. He reached out and felt the jagged stack. Tape cassettes. He let his hand roam around the floor near the vent and finally felt the edges of an oblong box. An old-fashioned tape recorder. Brant grinned mirthlessly in the dark. Whoever slept here had peeper tendencies, that was certain. He wondered what the guy taped, but then he heard for himself.
The bed above him had begun to squeak rhythmically, and moments later the girl's voice rose in a moan that broke up and became a hitched sort of gasping in time with the bedsprings and thrusting. A male voice joined in. And then voices beyond those of the couple reached him. He wondered whether the other two were in the room.
His question was laid to rest when the rhythm became more complex, and he could swear he heard more than one male voicing his pleasure. Irina was "hosting" all three males, and — if the neighbor's stack of cassettes was any indication — she'd done so before.
Christ, was Kit involved in some sort of sex club?
Brant dismissed the thought almost as soon as it was formulated. Kit was beautiful enough to attract quite a bit of male attention, but her stubborn refusal to dress the part and play the game said much about her interests. Brant would never have pegged Kit as the sex-toy type, whereas he had seen Irina fill that role twice already in less than a day's time. Three times, if you counted what was happening now.
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