Run Away

by Harlan Coben

  She started up the stairs. Ash did a little hop-step, so he could take the lead, but she blocked him off with her body and disapproving glare. So he stayed one step back. No one passed them on the stairs. In the distance they could hear the faint hum of someone playing a television too loudly.

  Other than that, not a sound.

  Ash glanced down the corridor of the second floor as Dee Dee continued to ascend.

  No one. That was good.

  When they reached the third floor, Dee Dee looked back at him. Ash nodded. They both took out their guns. They kept them low, by their sides, and maybe if someone opened a door right now, what with the crappy lighting in this place, maybe that person wouldn’t see that they were both carrying FN 5.7s with twenty-round mags.

  They made their way to apartment B. Ash knocked on the heavy metal door.

  They were ready.

  No answer.

  He knocked again. Nothing.

  “Someone has to be home,” Dee Dee whispered. “We saw Greene come in.”

  Ash took a look at the heavy metal door, put on, no doubt, to fortify against break-ins, but it had been done stupidly. The door was made of steel, but the doorframe was wood.

  Not strong wood based on what Ash had seen of this place.

  Ash took out his gun and nodded for Dee Dee to get ready. He raised his foot and kicked in the spot where the bolt slid into the wood.

  The wood gave way as if it were made of dried twigs.

  The door flew open. Ash and Dee Dee rushed inside.

  No one.

  Two single mattresses lay on either side of the floor. There were dried bloodstains on the floor. Ash took it all in, took it in fast, and knew something was seriously wrong. He looked on the floor. He bent down.

  “What?” Dee Dee whispered.

  “Yellow tape.”

  “What?”

  “This was a crime scene.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  They heard a door nearby open.

  Dee Dee moved fast. She dropped her weapon onto the mattress, stepped outside, and closed what was left of the door behind her. A man had exited his apartment. He wore earbuds with music turned up so loud, Dee Dee could hear it from fifteen feet away.

  He was near the stairs, almost ready to start heading down, and he hadn’t seen her yet. She stayed frozen, hoping that he wouldn’t turn toward her.

  But he did.

  When the man saw her, he pulled out his earbuds.

  Dee Dee rewarded him with her full-wattage smile.

  “Hello,” she said, almost making this simple greeting a double entendre. “I’m looking for Cornelius.”

  “Wrong floor.”

  “Oh?”

  “Cornelius is on the second floor. Apartment B.”

  “Silly me.”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked as though he was going to come toward her. That wouldn’t be good. She slipped her hand into her back pocket and readied the switchblade.

  She’d have to slice this guy’s throat. Do it quickly and quietly.

  Dee Dee waved at him. “Thanks for the help. Take care now.”

  The man looked as though he might keep walking back toward her, but it was almost as though something primitive told him it was best to move on.

  “Yeah,” he said, pulling up. “You too.”

  They looked at each other another long moment before the man turned and hurried down the stairs. Dee Dee listened for a second, wondering whether he might stop on the second floor and warn Cornelius. But she could hear him reach the ground floor and push open that graffiti-filled door.

  When he was gone, Ash exited the apartment door and handed Dee Dee her gun. He’d heard it all. They moved silently to the stairwell and made their way to the second-floor apartment B. Ash put his ear near the door.

  Voices. Several of them.

  Ash gave the signal. They got the guns ready. The plan was simple. Burst in with guns a-blazing. Kill any and all inhabitants.

  He pointed the gun at the lock so as to shoot it—no need for any kind of subtlety—but suddenly two things happened at once.

  The doorknob started to turn.

  And from down the corridor, a man shouted, “Rocco, look out!”

  * * *

  “Rocco, look out!”

  Simon heard the first burst of gunfire as Rocco pulled open the door.

  They say time slows down at times of great danger, almost like Neo being able to see and dodge bullets in The Matrix. That was just an illusion, of course. Time is constant. But Simon remembered reading that this particular time illusion was caused by how we store memory. The richer and denser the memory of an event—for example, during moments when you are terrified—the longer you perceive that event lasted.

  This phenomenon also explains why time seems to go faster as you age. When you’re a child, experiences are new and so your memories are fresh and intense—so again time seems to slow down. As you grow older, especially when you are stuck in a routine, very few new or vibrant memories are being laid and so time flies by. That’s why when a child looks back on summer, it seemed to last forever. For adults, it’s barely a blink.

  So now, as Simon heard a man—Luther—scream through the bullet blasts—time seemed to be knee-deep in molasses.

  Rocco pulled the door all the way open.

  Simon stood a few feet behind Rocco, so the big man’s broad back and shoulders blocked his view. He could see nothing.

  But he could hear the bullets.

  Rocco’s body convulsed. He hitched and jerked, almost as if he were doing some kind of macabre dance. His feet started backpedaling.

  More bullets landed.

  When the big man finally dropped on his back, the building shook. Rocco’s eyes were open and stared unseeing at the ceiling. Blood blanketed his chest.

  Now Simon could see the doorway.

  Two people.

  A man approximately thirty was turned to his left, firing his weapon down the corridor, probably in the direction of the now-silent Luther. A woman with short red hair, maybe a few years younger than the man, aimed down and fired two more bullets into Rocco’s head.

  Then she raised the gun toward Cornelius.

  Simon yelled, “No!”

  Cornelius was already moving, already reacting, but it wasn’t going to be enough. The woman was too close, the shot too easy.

  She would not miss.

  Simon launched himself toward her, trying to get to the woman before she could shoot. He screamed, hoping to distract her, hoping to buy Cornelius tenths of a second.

  Just as the woman began to pull the trigger, Simon reached the door and shoved hard. The edge of the door slammed against her forearm, throwing off the woman’s aim just enough.

  No time to hesitate.

  When Simon landed on his feet, he reached around the door for the woman’s wrist. His fingers found skin—some part of the arm maybe—and his hand started to encircle it. He almost had a grip on her, a good grip, but then someone, maybe the man, crashed his body against the other side of the door.

  The door smashed into Simon’s face, sending him spiraling.

  Simon tumbled onto Rocco’s dead body.

  The young woman stepped into the room and aimed the gun at Cornelius, who was trying to get his gun out of his pocket while running for the fire-escape window.

  But Cornelius was too late.

  He had no chance.

  Simon didn’t know if time was slowing down or if the calculations running through his brain had sped up. But he could see the truth now.

  There was no way both he and Cornelius could survive.

  No way.

  Which left Simon with no choice.

  From his spot on the ground, he kicked the door, so that it would close on the woman. Almost casually, the woman stopped it with her foot. It had seemed a weak effort on Simon’s part, a poor attempt to stop her entry.

  But it had bought Simon time.

&n
bsp; Not enough time to stop the carnage.

  But enough time for Simon to scramble-jump toward Cornelius.

  The move had surprised the woman. She had expected Simon to come at her. But he’d gone the other direction. It wouldn’t save Simon. Just the opposite, in fact. It put him in the path of the gunfire.

  His body was all that stood between the woman’s bullets and Cornelius.

  She fired anyway.

  Simon felt the searing pain as a bullet smacked his lower back on the left.

  He didn’t stop.

  He felt another hit him in the right shoulder.

  Simon flung himself toward Cornelius like a defensive end on a blindside blitz, wrapping his arms around his friend’s waist.

  He tackled Cornelius into the window.

  Time must have slowed down for Cornelius too. Cornelius didn’t fight his natural instincts. He went with the tackle, letting his body fall back, using the time to pull his gun all the way out.

  The two men both fell backward. The window shattered upon impact.

  Cornelius had his gun out now. He reached over Simon’s shoulder and fired as they started to fall.

  Somewhere in the hail of gunfire, Simon heard a man grunt and a woman scream, “Ash!”

  Cornelius and Simon, still entwined, landed hard on the fire-escape grate—Cornelius on his back, Simon, his grip slackening, on top of him.

  The impact knocked the gun from Cornelius’s hand. Simon watched the gun plummet toward hard asphalt.

  The woman again, her cry pained: “Ash! No!”

  Simon’s eyes started to flutter. His mouth filled with something coppery, and he realized that it was blood. He managed then to roll off Cornelius. Simon tried to speak. He wanted to tell Cornelius to run, that the redheaded woman wasn’t hit and that she’d be on them soon.

  But the words wouldn’t come out.

  He looked at Cornelius. Cornelius shook his head.

  He wouldn’t leave.

  This whole thing—from Rocco turning the knob to now—took fewer than five seconds.

  From inside the room, the woman let loose a primitive, guttural scream.

  And now, even in this state, even as he could feel some sort of life force leaving his body, Simon realized that the young woman was coming toward them.

  Go, Simon tried to tell Cornelius.

  He wouldn’t.

  Simon could see the redheaded woman reaching the window. The gun was in her hand.

  Again: no choice.

  Using whatever strength he had left—and perhaps the element of surprise—Simon pushed Cornelius down the fire-escape steps.

  Cornelius started tumbling down them, head feet, head feet, like a somersault.

  It might hurt, Simon thought. It might break a few bones.

  But it probably wouldn’t kill him.

  There was nothing left now. Simon knew that. He could hear the sirens nearing, but they’d be too late. He dropped onto his back and looked up into the young woman’s green eyes. He’d maybe held out a glimmer of hope that there would be some mercy in them, some hesitation, but once he saw them, once his gaze met hers, he knew that whatever last hope he had was gone.

  She would kill him. And she would enjoy it.

  She leaned her body out the window. She pointed the gun at his head.

  And then she was gone.

  From behind her, someone had pushed her out the window. Simon heard the scream and then a sick splat as she landed on the asphalt.

  Simon looked up and saw another woman—an old woman wearing an odd gray uniform with red stripes—appear. She looked at him with concern, hurried out to the fire escape, and tried to stem the bleeding.

  “It’s over,” the woman said to him.

  He wanted to ask her who she was, if she knew Paige, anything, but his mouth had too much blood in it. He felt his body weakening and slackening, his eyes rolling back. As the darkness descended, he could still hear the sirens.

  “Our children will be safe now.”

  And then there was nothing.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Eight

  One month passed.

  Simon’s injuries required three operations, eighteen days in the same hospital as Ingrid, several morphine drips, and two weeks (thus far) of physical therapy. There was pain and damage and perhaps, in an odd reminder of Elena Ramirez, he would walk with a limp or even a cane for the remainder of his days, but his injuries ended up not being life-threatening.

  Cornelius came out of it all with a sprained ankle and minor bruises. Rocco and Luther had both been killed by gunfire. Same with a hired hit man named Ashley “Ash” Davis. His partner, a young cult member named Diane “Dee Dee” Lahoy, had landed headfirst, cracking her skull. She had not yet regained consciousness and all indications were that she never would.

  Detective Isaac Fagbenle tried to explain it to him, though it was taking some time for various law enforcement authorities to put it all together. There was something about a cult called Truth Haven and secret adoptions and hired hits.

  But details were beyond sketchy.

  To complicate matters, Casper Vartage, the leader of Truth Haven, had died of natural causes. His two sons claimed complete innocence and had top-notch lawyers protecting them. Maybe, the lawyers claimed, Casper Vartage had done something—that they couldn’t say—but he was dead now and his sons knew nothing.

  “We’ll get them,” Fagbenle had told Simon.

  But Simon wasn’t so sure. The two killers who could best testify as to what the Vartage sons may have done were both out of commission. The police’s best hope seemed to be the woman who had saved Simon’s life, a woman who identified herself as Mother Adiona. They couldn’t find a real name for her. That was how long she’d been in the cult. And they really couldn’t hold her. She had committed no crime other than maybe saving Simon’s life.

  There was other stuff, of course. When Elena Ramirez learned about the illegal adoptions, Ash and Dee Dee, the police concluded, had killed her. There was CCTV of her at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store getting in a car driven by Dee Dee Lahoy. It was believed that she was then taken to an empty cabin and murdered there, but her body had not yet been found. When the killers then looked at the texts on Elena’s mobile phone and saw her communications with Simon, they knew that he had to be silenced too. There was more—how the half brothers, including Aaron Corval, had discovered each other, how they swore to keep their relationship a secret until they found their father, how one named Henry Thorpe discovered his mother too and that she had been a former cult member who ended up confronting and thus tipping off the Vartages.

  But there had been nothing new about Paige.

  During Simon’s fifth night in the hospital, when the pain was pretty bad and he’d hit the morphine pump for all he was worth, he woke up in a semi-daze to see Mother Adiona sitting by his bedside.

  “They were slaughtering all the sons,” Mother Adiona said to him.

  Simon knew this, though the motive remained murky. Maybe the cult was trying to cover up their past crime of selling babies. Or maybe the murders of these men were part of some weird ritual or prophesy. No one seemed to know.

  “I believe in the Truth, Mr. Greene. It sustains me. I have been its servant for almost my entire life. I birthed a son, and the Truth told me that he would be one of our next leaders. I raised him as such. I birthed another son and when the Truth told me that this son would not be able to stay with us, I let him go, even though that meant I would never see my own boy again.”

  Simon watched her through the hazy gauze of his painkillers.

  “But last year, I used a DNA site because I wanted to know what became of my son. Harmless enough. Just a little knowledge. A little”—she almost smiled—“truth. Do you know what I found?”

  Simon shook his head.

  “My son’s name is Nathan Brannon. He was raised by Hugh and Maria Brannon, two schoolteachers, in Tallahassee, Florida. He graduated with honors from Flori
da State. He married his high school sweetheart and has three boys—the oldest is ten, and then six-year-old twins. He’s now a schoolteacher too—fifth grade—and by all accounts is a good man.”

  Simon tried to sit up, but the drugs had left him too exhausted.

  “He wanted to meet me. My son, I mean. But I turned him down. Can you imagine how hard that was, Mr. Greene?”

  Simon shook his head and managed to say, “No, I can’t.”

  “But you see, it was enough for me to know that my son was happy. It had to be. It was what the Truth wanted.”

  Simon moved his hand closer to hers. The older woman took it. They sat there for a moment, in the dark, the rustle of the hospital distant background music.

  “But then I found out that they wanted to murder my boy.” She finally looked down and met his eye. “I spent my whole life bending for my beliefs. But this…you bend too far, you break. Do you understand?”

  “Of course.”

  “So I had to stop them. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. But I had no choice.”

  “Thank you,” Simon said.

  “I have to go back now.”

  “Back where?”

  “Truth Haven. It’s still my home.”

  Mother Adiona rose and moved toward the door.

  “Please.” Simon swallowed. “My daughter. She was dating one of these sons.”

  “So I heard.”

  “She’s missing.”

  “I heard that too.”

  “Please help me,” Simon said. “You’re a parent. You understand.”

  “I do.” Mother Adiona opened the door. “But I don’t know anything more.”

  And then she was gone.

  A week later, Simon begged Fagbenle to let him study the files. Fagbenle, perhaps pitying him, acquiesced.

  Ingrid seemed to be improving, so there was some glimmer of light there. Despite what you see on television, you don’t just come out of a coma. The process is more two steps up, one step back. Ingrid had regained consciousness and spoken to him twice in short spurts. In both cases, Ingrid had been encouragingly lucid. But the last one was over a week ago. There had been no improvement since then.

  From the day he was shot, Simon kept digging because the biggest question remained unanswered.