by Riley Sager
Then another.
Then two more.
I open my eyes and see Nick continuing to pull the trigger of the unloaded gun. Like it’s a toy and he’s just a kid playing cowboy.
I don’t try to run. In my condition, I won’t get very far. All I can do is lean against the bookcase and contemplate Nick as he smiles, pleased with himself.
“Don’t worry, Jules,” he says. “I can’t shoot you. You’re too valuable.”
Nick takes several steps toward me, the gun now lowered.
“Over the years, my family has received a lot of money for people like you. It’s ironic, I know. That you, who’s so worthless on the outside, is worth so much on the inside. And that people who on the outside offer so much have inside of them things so useless that they must be replaced. You think that what we do here is murder.”
I glare at him. “Because it is.”
“No, I’m doing the world a service.”
Roughly ten feet separate us now. My grip tightens around the knife’s handle.
“Think about the people who come here,” Nick says. “Writers and artists, scientists and captains of industry. Think of all they give to the world. Now think of yourself, Jules. What are you? What do you offer? Nothing.”
He takes two more steps, closing the gap between us.
I lift the knife, barely aware of what I’m doing until it’s pressed against my neck. The blade’s edge creases the flesh beneath my chin. My pulse hammers against the steel.
“I’ll do it,” I warn Nick. “Then you’ll really be left with nothing.”
He calls my bluff.
“Go ahead,” he says with a blithe shrug. “There’ll be someone else to take your place. You’re not the only desperate person out there, Jules. There are thousands in need of shelter and money and hope. I’m sure we can find your replacement tomorrow, if need be. So go ahead. Slit your throat. It won’t stop us.”
He takes two more steps. One slow, the other a startling leap toward me.
I thrust the knife forward until it makes contact with Nick’s stomach.
There’s a pause. A breath of resistance as the blade runs up against flesh and muscle and internal organs. It passes in a flash and all that flesh, all those muscles, all those organs give way as the knife continues onward, sinking deeper into his stomach. So deep that my hand doesn’t stop moving until the edge of it is pressed against Nick’s shirt.
I gasp.
So does Nick.
The sounds are simultaneous. Two shocked, shuddering inhalations that fill the room.
I gasp again as I yank the knife away.
Nick doesn’t.
He can only moan as blood soaks his shirt, the fabric changing from white to red in seconds. Then Nick hits the floor. A swift, uninterrupted drop.
I back away from him and the blood that’s quickly spreading across the floor. That backward shuffle takes me through the bookcase passage into the study of 12A. There I do another shoulder nudge to close the bookcase in 12A, shutting off access to the passage.
Before the bookcase lumbers into place, I take one final, fleeting glance into Nick’s apartment. He’s still on the floor, still bleeding, still alive.
But probably not for long.
I let the bookcase fall back into place without a second glance.
Almost free.
Inside 12A, all traces of my existence are gone. The apartment looks just as it did when I first set foot inside it. Uninhabited. Devoid of life.
But it’s also a trap.
I know that now.
I should have known it then.
This perfect apartment with its perfect views inside a perfect building. It was all designed to be as enticing as possible to someone like me, who started out poor and stayed that way. What’s worse is that this isn’t a recent development. It’s always been the sole purpose of the Bartholomew. The only reason the building exists it to serve the rich and trap the poor.
Those servants laid out like firewood. Cornelia Swanson’s maid. Dylan and Erica and Megan and all those other men and women without families who were lured here with the promise of a reset button for their sad lives.
They deserve closure.
Even more, they deserve vengeance.
Which means only one thing.
This whole fucking place needs to be burned to the ground.
55
I start with the study, pulling books at random from the shelves to form a pile in the middle of the floor. When I’m done, I grab the copy of Heart of a Dreamer Greta had signed for Erica and hold the lighter to a corner of its dust jacket.
Fire tears across the book.
I drop it onto the pile and walk away.
In the sitting room, I remove the cushions from the crimson sofa. One is shoved under the coffee table, where I then use the lighter to set it ablaze.
In the dining room, I repeat the process—place a cushion under that ridiculously long table, light it, leave.
In the kitchen, I stuff the cushion into the oven and crank up the heat.
Sitting on the table in the breakfast nook is another copy of Heart of a Dreamer. I turn to the page Greta had signed for me and, with a flick of my thumb, light it up. I wait for a flame to bloom before dropping it down the dumbwaiter shaft.
After that, it’s up to the bedroom, with me climbing the spiral steps as fast as my battered body will allow. On the nightstand is one final copy of Heart of a Dreamer. My real copy, first read to me by Jane as we lay on her bed.
I scoop it up and carry it back downstairs.
By the time I’ve reached the foyer, the apartment has filled with smoke. Already the fires have grown out of control. A glance down the hall reveals flames crawling across the floor of the study. In the sitting room, tongues of fire lick at the underside of the coffee table while smoke rises from its surface. A light crackling sound in the dining room tells me the table there is meeting a similar fate.
Satisfied, I open the door and leave 12A for the last time.
I keep the apartment door open as I move down the hallway, letting smoke trail behind me. At the elevator, I press the down button. While waiting for it to arrive, I go to the nearby trash chute. I then flick the lighter and hold it just below the final copy of Heart of a Dreamer.
My hand resists bringing the flame any closer.
This isn’t just some random copy of the book.
It’s my copy.
Jane’s copy.
But I also understand that she’d want me to do it. This isn’t the Bartholomew of her dreams. It’s a shadow version of that fantasy realm. Something dark and rotten to its core. If Jane knew the truth about the Bartholomew, I’m sure she’d despise it as much as I do.
Without another moment’s hesitation, I place the book to the lighter’s white-hot flame. As fire leaps across its cover, I drop the book down the trash chute, where it hits the dumpster below with a soft sizzle.
The fire alarm in the rest of the building goes off just as the elevator reaches the twelfth floor. I step into it, ignoring the shrieking alarm, the flashing emergency lights, the smoke rolling out of 12A in sinuous waves.
I simply descend, staring at the elevator floor, where blood drips from beneath my hospital gown. My stitches have come loose. Warm liquid oozes from the wound, and a blossom of red appears in the front of the gown.
On my way down, I see that residents have already started to evacuate. They move down the stairs in rushed packs. Rats scurrying from the sinking ship. Between the sixth and seventh floors, Marianne Duncan sits on the landing, jostled by others coming down the staircase. Tears stream down her face.
“Rufus?” she all but screams. “Come back, baby!”
Our eyes lock for a moment, hers yellowed from jaundice, mine aflame with vengeance. I give her the finger as the elevator sinks to the next floor.
None of the retreating residents try to stop my descent. All it would take is a press of the elevator button on a lower floor. But the
y see the look on my face and the blood-stained knife in my hand and instinctively stay away.
I’m the kind of girl you don’t want to fuck with.
As the elevator comes to a stop in the lobby, I spot a small, dark shape streaking down the steps. Rufus, also making his escape. I yank open the grate and step out of the elevator, lowering my aching body just enough to scoop him up. He shivers in my arms and lets out a few sharp yaps that I hope are loud enough for Marianne to hear several floors above us.
Together, we approach the door. Charlie is there, helping the Bartholomew’s population of old and infirm get outside. He sees me and freezes, shocked, his arms dropping to his sides. This time, he doesn’t try to stop me. He knows it’s all over.
“I hope your daughter gets the care she needs,” I tell him as I pass. “Do the right thing now, and maybe one day she’ll forgive you.”
I continue on, limping out of the Bartholomew as police and fire trucks start to arrive. It’s a firefighter who spots me first, although it’s hard not to. I’m a bleeding girl in a hospital gown with bare feet, a frightened dog, a cracked family photo, and a blood-slicked knife.
Immediately, I’m swarmed by cops, who pry the knife from my hand.
I refuse to give them Rufus or the picture of my family.
I’m allowed to keep hold of them as I’m wrapped in a blanket and guided first to a waiting patrol car and then, when it arrives, to an ambulance. Soon I’m on a stretcher, being carried to the ambulance’s open back doors.
“Is anyone else inside hurt?” a cop asks me.
I give a weak nod. “A man on the twelfth floor—12B.”
I’m then loaded feetfirst into the ambulance with two EMTs. Through the open rear door, I get a tilted view of the Bartholomew itself. I look to the northern corner where George sits, stoic as ever, even as flames start to leap in the window just behind his wings. I’m about to give him a whispered goodbye when I notice movement on the other side of the roof.
A dark figure emerges from the smoke, stumbling toward the roof’s edge.
Even though he’s so high up and the heat of the fire causes the air around him to shimmer, I can tell it’s Nick. He has a towel pressed to his stomach. When a smoke-filled breeze kicks up, the towel flutters, flashing bits of red.
Two more people join him on the roof. Cops. Although their guns are drawn, they show no signs of using them. Nick has no place to run.
Still, he continues to stagger along the roof. The smoke pouring from 12A has gotten thicker, darker. It blows across him in malevolent strands, bringing him in and out of my vision.
When the smoke clears, I see that he’s reached the edge of the roof. Even though he must be aware of the cops following his path, he ignores them. Instead, he looks outward, surveying the park and the city beyond it.
Then, like his great-grandfather before him, Nicholas Bartholomew jumps.
SIX MONTHS LATER
56
Lo mien or fried rice?” Chloe says as she holds up two identical cardboard containers of Chinese food.
I shrug. “You pick. I’m fine with either.”
The two of us are in her apartment, which has, for the time being, become my apartment. After I was released from the hospital, Chloe handed me the keys and moved in with Paul.
“But what about rent?” I had asked.
“I’ve got it covered for now,” she said. “Pay me what you can when you can. After what you went through, I refuse to make you sleep on the couch.”
Yet the couch is where I am at the moment, sitting next to Chloe as we open our takeout containers. Lunch instead of dinner. Joining us this afternoon is Ingrid, fresh from her new job at a midtown Sephora. Although she’s dressed in black, her nails are a vivid purple. The bad bus station dye job is long gone, replaced with a relatively demure strawberry blond with a few pink streaks that frame her face.
“Rice for me, please” she says. “I mean, I like the taste of lo mien better, but the texture’s so icky. It reminds me of worms.”
Chloe grits her teeth and hands her the container. If they gave out Nobel Prizes for patience, she’d certainly be in contention for one. She’s been a saint since the moment I was released from the hospital with a clean bill of health. I haven’t heard her complain once.
Not about the reporters who spent a full week camped outside the building.
Not about the nightmares that sometimes leave me so shaken that I call her in the wee hours of the morning.
Not about Rufus, who yaps at her every time she enters the apartment.
And certainly not about Ingrid, who’s here more often than not, even though she now shares an apartment with Bobbie in Queens. Chloe knows that Ingrid and I are now bound by what happened. I’ve got Ingrid’s back. She’s got mine. As for Chloe, she looks out for us both.
The two of them first met while I was being held against my will in the Bartholomew. When I never came back from the shelter, Ingrid went to the police, claiming I was taken by a coven living at the Bartholomew. They didn’t believe her.
The police didn’t think anything was amiss until Chloe, returning from Vermont early after eventually receiving the texts I had sent, also contacted them. A friendly cop put the two of them in touch. After Chloe went to the Bartholomew and was told by Leslie Evelyn that I had moved out in the middle of the night, the police got a search warrant. They were on their way to the building just as I was setting fire to 12A.
The fire ended up doing less damage than I intended. Yes, 12A was burnt beyond repair, but the blaze in the basement was contained by the dumpster. Still, it was enough damage to make me worry that I could face criminal charges. The detective working the case remains doubtful that will happen. I was in shock, fearing for my life and not in my right mind.
I’ll agree the first two are true. As for the third claim, I knew exactly what I was doing.
“Even if you are charged,” the detective told me, “there’s not a judge in this whole city who won’t dismiss it. After hearing what went on there, I’m tempted to torch the place myself.”
From my understanding, that’s the general consensus across the country. Because what took place at the Bartholomew was so insidious in its efficiency.
People in need of a life-saving organ were tipped off, usually by a former Bartholomew resident. They then used a dummy corporation to purchase an apartment, paying up to a million more than its market value.
There they waited. Sometimes for months. Sometimes for years. Waiting for an apartment sitter who’d be a suitable donor of whatever it was they needed. After the surgery, the resident spent a few more weeks in the Bartholomew to recuperate. The body of the apartment sitter, meanwhile, was quietly removed via a freight elevator in the rear of the building and taken to a crematorium in New Jersey with Mafia ties.
Records found in Leslie Evelyn’s office indicate that, over the span of forty years, more than two hundred Bartholomew residents received organs harvested from one hundred twenty-six unwilling donors. Some were runaways, and some were homeless. Some had been reported missing, and some had no one in their lives to realize they were ever gone.
But now everyone knows their names. The NYPD published the full list online. So far, thirty-nine families know the fates of their long-missing relatives. Although not happy news, it’s closure, which is why I don’t blame myself for sometimes wishing Jane’s name was on that list.
Bad news is better than no news.
Almost everyone involved was brought to justice, thanks to Charlie. He took my advice and did the right thing, providing police with valuable information about how the Bartholomew operated, who worked there, who lived there, who died there.
Those who managed to escape during the fire were slowly but surely rounded up, including Marianne Duncan, the other doormen, and Bernard. All of them copped to their respective roles in the enterprise and were sentenced accordingly. Marianne began her five-year stint in jail yesterday. She’s still waiting for a new liver.
The legal fallout extended to former employees and residents, including an Oscar winner, a federal judge, and the wife of a diplomat. Marjorie Milton hired the best defense lawyer in Manhattan to represent her—until it turned out he had also used the Bartholomew’s services. Both eventually entered guilty pleas. The tabloids had a field day.
Even more shocking was the participation of Mr. Leonard. Also known as Senator Horace Leonard from the great state of Indiana. Since he was in no condition to be evacuated during the fire, he was simply left there. Police found him crawling across the floor of the room next to mine. He probably would have died were it not for Dylan’s heart pumping in his chest.
Although he won’t be sentenced until next month, even his own attorneys expect him to get life in prison. Thanks to Dylan’s heart, that could mean a lot of time behind bars.
Then again, Mr. Leonard could always kill himself, which is what Dr. Wagner did after Leslie freed him and Jeannette from the burning room. Once the three of them escaped the Bartholomew and went their separate ways, he spent two days at a Sheraton in Flushing, Queens, before putting a gun to his temple and pulling the trigger.
Jeannette went the opposite route, going home and sitting with her husband until the police arrived.
Leslie Evelyn was apprehended at Newark Liberty International Airport as she was about to board a flight to Brazil. Because she was the only major player left alive, prosecutors pummeled her with charges ranging from human trafficking to aiding and abetting to tax fraud.
After she received multiple life sentences, I sent her a list of rules she needed to follow in prison. At the top was this: No nights spent away from your cell.
I didn’t sign the letter. She knows damn well who it came from.
Out of everyone I encountered at the Bartholomew, only one person is neither dead nor facing life in prison.
Greta Manville.
According to Leslie and Jeannette, the four of them went their separate ways after using a back exit out of the Bartholomew. The police searched Greta’s apartment and the basement storage cage, finding them mostly intact. The only thing that looked amiss was an empty box in the storage case marked with a single word—Useful.