Runner (Sam Dryden Novel)

by Patrick Lee

  * * *

  It was twenty to four. The party upstairs had ended. There was no sound but Rachel’s breathing.

  In Dryden’s peripheral vision, faint light rimmed the window blinds. A vehicle slowed and stopped close by.

  Dryden turned and put his eye to the gap.

  A dark sedan. Right in front of Holly’s house.

  Two men got out fast; the driver stayed at the wheel. The two outside scanned the street up and down.

  “Rachel,” Dryden said.

  He nudged her gently with his elbow.

  She came awake, disoriented. Looked around in the darkness. Then she understood. She cocked her head as if listening, though not with her ears.

  “Two men in front of her house,” Dryden whispered. “Another inside a car. Can you read them?”

  She nodded.

  “Anyone else in the car?” Dryden asked.

  Rachel shook her head.

  Dryden was still watching them. The two men finished surveying the street. They went up the front walk, unlocked Holly’s door, and went in. Dryden could almost see Rachel’s attention swinging to follow them, her head tilting, turning by tiny degrees.

  “Their thoughts are like a checklist,” she said. “Kitchen clear. Front bath clear. Hallway clear.”

  “Sounds like a security sweep,” Dryden said. “Making sure the place is empty before the owner comes home.”

  Holly had bodyguards working for her. Interesting.

  Rachel continued listening. Dryden pictured the two men checking the place, room by room, proceeding methodically upward through its stories.

  They came back out five minutes later and stood sentry on the porch. One of them picked up the paper and set it inside. The sedan pulled away, and for a long time after that nothing happened.

  At 4:05 by the clock on the stove, the sedan came back. One of the men on the porch went down the walk to meet it. He opened the vehicle’s back door, and a woman emerged. Forty years old, give or take. Small frame, delicate features. Though the light wasn’t great, Dryden could see it was the woman from the hospital Web site photo.

  Rachel was already locked onto her.

  Dryden watched the security officer escort Holly to the front door. She went in alone, and the man took up his position again.

  Dryden thought of what Rachel had said the other night: how tricky it was to get useful information from a person’s thoughts. How often were thoughts even arranged into coherent sentences? How often were they just fragments of recent conversations, random images?

  For five minutes Rachel said nothing. Sometimes she closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate harder.

  “She’s writing an e-mail,” Rachel said. “It’s medical stuff about someone named Laney. I don’t know what half the words mean. I think some of them are the names of drugs.”

  Dryden felt the cool sensation at his temples spike again. No doubt a result of Rachel’s intense focus. He said nothing about it—hardly thought about it, even. All his attention went to wondering what the next hour might tell them.

  “Sent,” Rachel said.

  She was quiet for another minute. Her concentration seemed almost to put her in a trance. Her eyelids slipped halfway shut.

  Then they opened wide. She startled as if someone had prodded her.

  Dryden didn’t ask. He waited.

  Rachel got her feet under her and stood. She went to the east wall as if pulled there by whatever she was hearing in Holly Ferrel’s head.

  “What the hell?” Rachel whispered.

  Dryden stood, too. He was about to step away from the wall when he heard a sound: creaking wood.

  Floorboards.

  Someone was outside the apartment’s door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Rachel heard it, too. Her fix on Holly’s thoughts broke. She spun fast and stared at the door, then at Dryden.

  Dryden stooped and took the SIG SAUER from where he’d set it on the floor. He moved out from the wall, putting himself diagonal to the door, ten feet away. Rachel came to his side.

  Dryden’s eyes went to the gap where the door met the threshold. The dim stairwell light, just visible through the crack, was interrupted in two places.

  Shadows of feet. Someone standing there. Not proceeding to higher floors or descending to the exit. Just standing right there on the landing, trying to be quiet.

  For less than half a second Dryden considered the possibilities. Then he pushed all the questions away. No time.

  He thought, Rachel, go to the back bedroom. Open the slider. I’m right behind you.

  She didn’t hesitate. She turned and vanished into the darkness of the hall. Dryden followed, walking backward, keeping his eyes and the SIG trained on the door.

  He heard the slider drag open as he entered the bedroom. Behind him, Rachel’s shoes padded onto the metal surface of the balcony—it was more like a fire escape without a ladder.

  Dryden reached behind himself, felt the edge of the slider’s door frame, and backed through it. Across the bedroom and down the length of the hall, he could still see the apartment’s front door. Could still see the double shadow in the gap.

  The doorknob rattled. Rachel flinched at the sound.

  Dryden swung his head around and took in the space behind the row of town houses, the layout he’d studied earlier. He considered the buildings on the opposite side, and the offshoot alleys leading away between them. One alley was darker than the rest: a narrow passage between a four-story house and a two-story brick building. Dryden liked the look of it as an escape route. He’d liked it when he’d first seen it, hours before, and by force of habit had considered it repeatedly since then.

  Forty feet away through the depth of the apartment, the knob rattled again.

  Dryden put a leg over the rail and planted his foot at the balcony’s edge, pointed inward between the balusters. He followed with the other leg, then gestured for Rachel to do the same. He held her good arm with his free hand as she swung herself over.

  Something—a shoulder or a foot—thudded hard against the apartment’s front door.

  Dryden looked down: flat, empty pavement beneath the balcony, ten feet below them.

  He stuffed the SIG in his rear waistband and took hold of Rachel’s wrist.

  “Know what I’m doing?” he whispered.

  She nodded, nervous but ready.

  He lifted her clear of the balcony by the wrist, his other hand gripping the rail. He crouched fast, bringing his seat down onto his ankles, his arm extending as far down as he could reach, until Rachel’s feet were no more than eighteen inches above the pavement. He let go and heard her land lightly; her balance faltered and then she regained it and stepped back, clearing his way. He rose, pushed off the edge with his feet, swung down, and dropped to the ground.

  Rachel was already moving, heading for the narrow channel Dryden had visualized. He drew the SIG again and caught up with her, nearly sprinting. They’d just rounded the corner of the brick building, into the alley beside it, when he heard the apartment’s door crash inward far behind them. He looked back over his shoulder toward the sound, and in the same instant he heard another, much closer:

  The action of a pump shotgun being cycled, ten feet away in the pitch black of the alley.

  A woman’s voice. “Don’t move. You swing the sidearm toward me, I’m going to shoot you.”

  No hint of a bluff in her tone.

  Dryden kept still.

  Rachel was standing right up against him. Any shotgun blast that hit him would hit her, too, if the weapon was loaded with buckshot.

  “Eject the magazine,” the woman said. “Then eject the chambered round. Then drop the gun.”

  Out in the broader space between the rows of buildings, boot soles came down hard on the concrete. Someone had just dropped off the apartment balcony.

  “Do it,” the woman said.

  Dryden ejected the magazine. Then the chambered round. In the darkness beside him, he heard Ra
chel’s breath escape. Like hope. He let the SIG fall to the pavement.

  Footsteps ticked toward the alley from beyond its mouth. They came to a stop just out of sight, the newcomer staying clear of the shotgun’s line of fire.

  Something metallic jingled behind Dryden.

  “Turn toward me,” the woman with the shotgun said.

  Dryden turned. In the dull light he saw the glint of handcuffs. The woman threw them; he caught them out of the air.

  “Cuff yourself. Behind the back.”

  Dryden still couldn’t see the woman’s face. In the bleed of light from the wider alley he could just make out Rachel. Beyond the fear in the girl’s eyes he saw deep confusion, though at what, he couldn’t tell.

  “Behind the back,” the woman said again. “Do it.”

  Dryden put the cuffs behind his back and closed them around his wrists. A second later a flashlight came on, probably mounted to the shotgun’s barrel. Its beam played over Dryden’s lower back.

  “He’s secure,” the woman said.

  The newcomer stepped into view at the front of the alley. Another woman. Dryden got only a sense of her in the shifting beam of the flashlight.

  Rachel was turning back and forth, her gaze going from one woman to the other.

  “I can’t hear your thoughts,” Rachel said. “Either of you.”

  “Of course not, sweetie,” the newcomer said.

  She grabbed Dryden by the shirt and pulled him forward off balance, tripping him and shoving him down hard, chest-first onto the concrete. She sat astride his back, and he heard something plastic click open—some small container, it sounded like.

  “What are you doing to him?” Panic saturated Rachel’s voice.

  “Relax,” the woman said.

  Rachel didn’t relax. She screamed, “What are you doing?”

  The last word got cut off to a muffle; the other woman had clamped a hand over Rachel’s mouth.

  An instant later Dryden felt a needle penetrate his neck. Heard the plunger slide down. Felt the rush of heat beneath his skin.

  “Stop it!” Rachel screamed, pulling away the woman’s hand. “What are you doing to him?”

  The second woman was already clambering off of him. Getting to her feet. Helping the first woman restrain Rachel back there in the dark. Dryden heard it all receding away as if into a fog. A place where all sounds were hollow and sourceless. He felt the heat spread up through his neck, across his scalp. Felt the pavement beneath him draw open into a kind of darkness. Rachel’s muffled screams followed him down into it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  At times he felt almost awake. Up near the surface of sleep, where he could hear. Where he could feel.

  He was inside some kind of container. The lining felt like smooth cardboard against his cheek. Someone was carrying it, saying, Lift with your legs, easy, easy.

  * * *

  Something was whining. A steady droning sound. Jet engines, it sounded like. Small ones. A moment later there was movement, the container seeming to slide while his body wanted to hold still. Inertia, he thought, and the word seemed funny to him, though he couldn’t say why. He slid a few inches on the cardboard until his feet thudded up against the container’s end. A few seconds later the world seemed to pitch and tilt sickeningly, and something thumped dully beneath the floor. Landing gear folding up, he guessed, and then he was out again.

  * * *

  He’ll be fine. He’s coming out of it. Give him another thirty minutes.

  Are you sure?

  I’m sure, honey.

  * * *

  His throat felt like he’d been eating dryer lint. His head pounded like hell. He ran his tongue over his lips. It scraped.

  “Drink this.”

  Rachel’s voice.

  He opened his eyes and saw a juice box six inches from his face, a little pink bendy straw stuck in it and aimed at him. Rachel pushed it forward, and he got his mouth closed around it. He pursed his lips and drank. High fructose corn syrup and artificial flavoring. Same way they’d made it when he was a kid. He sucked down the entire box, saw its sides cave in, let it go, and rolled onto his back.

  He still had the cuffs on, but he was out of the container. He was lying on a couch somewhere. A little study. No windows. Bright, pale light washed in through the door, but from his angle he couldn’t see the room beyond.

  “Where are we?” Dryden asked.

  “Home,” Rachel said.

  “Your home?”

  She nodded, her eyes excited in a way he hadn’t seen them before.

  Under the headache, Dryden felt the familiar cool pulse at his temples. It felt like it had at times the night before—double or triple the intensity he’d been used to in recent days.

  He thought of the woman waiting in the dark alley. Waiting along the escape route he’d been considering for hours before that.

  “They can hear my thoughts, too,” he said.

  Rachel nodded again. “They came from Fort Detrick, like me. They said the three of us got away from there, about five years ago, and we’ve been in hiding since then. They told me a lot about it, and I told them about the last few days. They believe me, but they still want to talk to you. They want to know for sure they can trust you, and then they’ll take the cuffs off. Is that okay?”

  Dryden shut his eyes hard. Compressed them repeatedly. It was the next best thing to rubbing them.

  “Send them in,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She got up to go.

  “Wait,” Dryden said.

  Rachel stopped. Turned back to him.

  “Holly Ferrel,” Dryden said. “You heard something in her thoughts, right at the end. Right before we had to run for it.”

  The happiness receded from Rachel’s eyes.

  “What was it?” Dryden asked.

  “She was thinking about a phone call she had to make. An important one. She was rehearsing the first part of it, over and over, the way people do.”

  “What was she saying?”

  “This is Holly Ferrel. I need to speak with Martin Gaul.”

  Dryden stared. First at Rachel and then at nothing, trying to get a grasp on what it might mean.

  * * *

  A minute later the two women came into the room. Dryden saw them in detail for the first time. Both were in their thirties, lean, medium framed, medium height. Dryden got himself seated upright on the couch and faced them. One was blond, the other somewhere between blond and brunette. Their appearance was oddly unremarkable—it was, at least, far less remarkable than it could’ve been. Dryden got the impression they took great care to make themselves forgettable.

  There was a second couch facing him across the small room. The two women sat on it.

  “I’m Audrey,” the blonde said. “This is Sandra.”

  The hostility they’d shown in the alley was long gone. They seemed sympathetic, if not quite regretful. Which was fine—it was stupid to regret things that had seemed necessary at the time.

  Sandra nodded at the thought. “We just didn’t know who you were,” she said. “We’d been monitoring the area around Holly Ferrel’s house, and when the two of you showed up it was pretty hard to miss.”

  “We can’t hear Rachel’s thoughts,” Audrey said, “any more than she can hear ours. But we could hear your thoughts, and most of the time you were thinking about her. We could tell she was there with you, and that you seemed to be helping her, though we weren’t sure why. We decided to just get her the hell out of there and get the details afterward.”

  “Our questions won’t take long,” Sandra said. “Answer ours and then we’ll answer yours. Most of them, anyway, for the time being. Fair enough?”

  Dryden nodded.

  * * *

  It took half an hour. They walked him through the same story they’d no doubt heard from Rachel. Everything from the boardwalk to the town house. Then they asked him about his past. His career. He saw no reason to hold anything back.

 
When they’d finished, Sandra took a key from her pocket and removed the cuffs. Dryden worked his shoulders in slow circles, easing out the cramps.

  “You’re probably starving,” Sandra said. “We’ll tell you our side over lunch. While we get it ready, Rachel wants to show you around the place.”

  * * *

  Dryden had guessed the residence was a house, to the extent he’d thought about it. It hadn’t crossed his mind to think otherwise. The moment he stepped to the den’s doorway, he saw he’d been wrong.

  Beyond the den was a broad living room with a wall of windows. Beyond the windows was Chicago, seen from what had to be eighty stories up. The view faced south across the tops of skyscrapers from a position near the north end of downtown. It was early afternoon, and the city gleamed in sunlight under a rich blue sky.

  “We’re in the Hancock Center,” Rachel said. “This apartment takes up the entire eighty-third floor.”

  Dryden looked at her, then at Audrey and Sandra, still standing just inside the den.

  “This place is a hideout?” he asked.

  “You’d be surprised how well it works,” Sandra said. “Rich people have shaped the law to suit their privacy needs. In some ways it’s easier to anonymously own a place like this than a split-level ranch in the suburbs.”

  “There’s one other reason to live here,” Audrey said, “but if you’re lucky you won’t have to find out what it is.”

  Rachel tugged Dryden’s arm, anxious to show him around. He turned to follow her—

  “Wait,” Sandra said.

  Dryden turned back.

  Sandra was holding his SIG SAUER out to him. The magazine had been reloaded into the grip.

  “All you’ve done for Rachel,” she said, “we can’t tell you what it means to us. The least we can do is trust you.”

  Dryden took the pistol, checked the safety, and stuffed it in his waistband.

  * * *

  The apartment’s size and layout were surreal. The living room opened to the kitchen and dining room, merging into a vast space that extended to the southwest corner of the level.

  The rest of the floorplan formed a giant rectangular doughnut, centered on the building’s core. Among the other rooms were a library that spanned most of the northern stretch, and three bedrooms filling out the east end. The bedrooms were more or less equal in size, which was to say that each was huge. The room at the southeast corner was Rachel’s. She led Dryden inside. He was briefly surprised by the casual state it was in—it looked as if it had seen regular use up until this very moment.