Thicker Than Blood

by Penny Rudolph

  A block of Styrofoam, wedged inside the flaps of the fourth box, gave a shrill screech when she dislodged it. Gingerly, Rachel lifted it out, exposing perhaps a dozen brown bottles labeled with long names. Nothing more.

  The box scraped softly on the floor as she pushed it back into place.

  In the silence that followed came an odd echo. Footsteps? She froze, hand still on the lid.

  Yes.

  The security guard must be making his round.

  She clicked off the Maglite and stood in the alien darkness, listening to her own heartbeat.

  And the footsteps.

  For the first time, the full impact of what she was doing flooded her mind, swamping her resolve. She could very likely go to jail.

  Terrors grew in the darkness like poisonous berries. The tops of her arms and the back of her neck went cold.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Had the guard left, or only paused to listen? Two more endless minutes passed before she decided he was gone.

  There were two more cartons, both plain cardboard, unmarked and unopened. She found a place under the flap of one and gently pulled upward.

  Inside were brown jars. She lifted one and shined the light on the label. Acetic anhydride. The next was sodium carbonate. Baking soda? No, that was bicarbonate. A slender bottle with a rubber collar and pressure cap was only a third full with liquid. The label was bright red: Ether.

  The second carton was heavier. The flap sliced her hand as it opened. Rachel squeezed her eyes shut against the sting and put the cut to her lips.

  Inside was another box. She tried to lift it out, but the fit was too tight for her fingers. Turning the carton on its side, she tilted it. The inner box slipped from its sheath.

  Raw excitement nearly choked her.

  The last thing she had expected was that it would be so obvious.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The inner carton was marked DOUBLE UO GLOBAL, the red logo flanked by two slender black cats like a coat of arms—the same gaudy logos Rachel saw in the cargo of the crashed plane.

  Her hands fluttered over the box, in surprise. She tore open the flap. A dozen slightly shiny, rich brown blocks the size of bricks winked back at her flashlight.

  She needed to see nothing more.

  She locked the storeroom and, muscles screaming with tension, tiptoed back down the laboratory aisle to the office.

  Something was slapping against the outside wall. A tree limb? But this was the fifth floor. Spooked, she moved the drape, peered out the window. Nothing there.

  Swallowing a growing urge to flee, she turned back to the file cabinet, fumbled in the dimness for the lower drawer, and slowly slid it open.

  A hand closed around her arm like a vise.

  Panic exploded. She tried to turn, but another hand closed on her other arm.

  She shot out a foot, but only grazed the attacker’s ankle.

  “Wha.…” His word ended in a hiss as she rammed an elbow into his midsection.

  The hand grasping her right arm loosened, but the vise-like fist on her left tightened and slammed her into the file cabinet. A heavy book, from the top of the cabinet, smacked into her face.

  She grabbed the book, turned, and stared into the face of Harry Hunsinger.

  A gagging sound erupted when she shoved the edge of the book hard into his Adam’s apple.

  He staggered and dropped his hand from her arm.

  She dodged, trying to get the desk between them.

  He lunged. Snatched at her shoulder. Missed.

  Gulping air, she raced toward the laboratory’s exit door. But the security cop downstairs might have heard something, might be making his way to the lab.

  Harry Hunsinger had a right to be here. She did not.

  Rachel veered right down a cabinet-lined aisle, trying to remember where it led.

  Harry might lift weights, but he was no runner: His footsteps did not seem to gain on her.

  Was there another exit from the lab? She couldn’t remember.

  The row of stainless steel cabinets seemed to go on forever. Her foot caught the base of a stool. Pain ripped into her ankle. She spun sideways and pitched headfirst into a cabinet door. Metal crashed against tile. The stool went down, striking Harry’s racing feet. He thudded to the floor.

  Closing her eyes against a sudden dizziness, Rachel tried to regain her feet. Pain sliced up her leg.

  She dropped to her knees and crawled, knowing from the scuffle behind her that Harry was rising again. And that she would be an easy target now.

  Ahead, another stool jutted into the aisle. She grabbed its legs, flung it toward Harry, and was rewarded with a grunt when he failed to sidestep in time.

  A cabinet door next to her swung open. Something rolled out and shattered on the tile. A strong acid odor rose from the debris.

  Rachel’s eye caught on a square of blacker darkness between the cabinets—a place for the knees of the technician who perched on the stool.

  Trap or hiding place?

  Unable to run, she was trapped anyway. She crept in.

  The space ran the full width of the cabinet. She crawled through into another aisle and again tried to stand. Her ankle would have none of it. She dropped to her knees and crawled toward the row of offices. From somewhere to her right came the sound of running footsteps.

  She could move no faster.

  Finding another stool in her path, she tugged it into the aisle, slipped into the knee hole behind it, and drew the stool toward her, clutching its legs as if it were a life raft.

  With barely enough room to turn around, she ran her tongue across dry lips and tasted blood. Her fingers found the cut just beneath her eye. She wiped her hand on her jeans and closed her eyes to think.

  Had the guard at the desk in the lobby heard the running feet, the crashing stool? Or was he too far away? Regardless, Harry would certainly seek his help.

  How much time did she have?

  In the air hung the harsh odor of the spilled acid, now mixed with dust.

  Quick footsteps were moving toward her.

  She opened her eyes to find a bluish glow had dawned at both sides of her cubbyhole. Harry had turned on the fluorescent lights overhead.

  Hugging her knees, and the chrome stool legs to her chest, Rachel tried to make herself smaller, as if that would matter if he yanked away the stool and peered in.

  She saw his shoes as he passed: wing tips, the color of ox blood. They made dry little gasps with each step.

  A door opened, and she heard something scrape along the floor, then the door closed. Had he gone in search of the guard?

  But the steps now retraced their way along her aisle.

  Again, she watched the wing tips pass.

  Then the steps were coming down the opposite aisle. Rachel bent as far as she could to gain a line of view. The wing tips avoided a large shard of thick brown glass; smaller bits crunched under the soles.

  He must know she was in one of the cubbyholes, but he did not seem to be stopping long enough to peer behind any of the stools.

  Eight more steps. Nine. Each with a little crackle of ground glass. Another door opened. If he went downstairs to call the guard, she might have enough time to escape.

  But he would not have to leave. He could telephone.

  The sound of water running.

  She ran cold fingertips across her forehead. Had he cut himself? Was he washing off blood? If he was occupied for a moment, this might be her only chance.

  She nudged the stool away, slipped into the aisle and pulled herself to her feet, wincing at the pain in her ankle, but standing.

  The fluorescent light, unbearably bright, seemed to hone in on her like a headlight on a jackrabbit. Scanning the walls, she spotted a set of switches and limped as quickly as she could toward them.

  The water was still running. Surely he would notice when she turned the lights off.

  She threw all the switches and ran, hobbling, but still upright, alm
ost blind now in the renewed darkness.

  She would have to pass the offices to reach the exit. Darting a glance over her shoulder, she saw Harry, silhouetted in yellow light, at a sink in one of the storerooms. She hobbled on.

  Almost immediately she heard his quick steps again behind her but could not run faster.

  Dodging inside an office, she grabbed the chair near the desk. It was heavy and she staggered a little under its weight. She spun around and feinted the legs at him like an old-time lion tamer.

  He kept coming, driving her back, toward the windows. She jabbed at him again. One of the chair legs hit him in the chest and air whooshed from his lungs.

  Something thudded dully against the window at her shoulder and her eyes jerked from Harry to the window, but she saw nothing.

  Harry grabbed the bottom of the chair, shoved it at her.

  She veered, lunged off balance. A chair leg shattered the window, opening a gaping jagged hole and sprinkling her with bits of broken glass.

  Rachel braced herself for his next lunge, but when it came, she crumpled under the force of it and the chair bulldozed her through the glass.

  Her blood seemed to stop dead in her veins as her brain leapt ahead, imagining five floors of windows speeding past, her own body splayed and broken on the sidewalk below.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  But she didn’t fall.

  Or perhaps she had already fallen.

  She was sprawled, prone.

  Harry landed on her back, forcing out her breath and slamming her face-first against the rough, cold surface beneath her. Pain erupting in her cheek, she struggled to raise her head. A salty stream of blood ran into her mouth and dripped from her chin.

  Wrenching sideways, she rammed the side of her fist into his Adam’s apple. Despite the gurgling sound that came from his lips, he clutched at her still.

  She twisted, drew her knees to her chest, and thrust her feet hard into his gut, spinning him backward.

  Freed of his weight, her body seemed to rise by itself. The ground beneath her gave a dizzying lurch and she stared down at flat little knobs of metal.

  Harry’s foot smashed into the backs of her knees, knocking her legs from under her.

  The world swayed sickeningly. She was on some sort of plank, gripping a thick metal rope.

  Far below, Rachel glimpsed the sidewalk. Bile rose to her throat, almost choking her. All that protected her from plunging to the street nearly a hundred feet below was a flimsy window washer’s platform.

  Blood was leaking in slow drips from her right hand. She saw she was clutching a shard of glass. There was no pain, only the searing, choking taste of acid in her throat. A lone pair of headlights was moving down the deserted street. She forced herself to go limp and waited for the next blow. When it came, she didn’t resist, but gave way.

  Harry crashed past her shoulder, slamming into the waist-high railing that surrounded the platform on three sides.

  With a giant shudder, cables groaning, the platform swung out, and seemed to hover endlessly in the air before smashing back against the wall.

  Rachel landed on his chest, her knees pinning his arms.

  His eyes were like the heads of nails. Blood trickled from his nose toward the side of his mouth. He jerked sideways, tried to roll away.

  She moved the dagger of broken glass to the small space between the open buttons of his shirt collar. “Move again and you’ll be blowing bubbles.”

  Malevolent eyes fixed on hers, but he stayed quiet.

  “Jason found out about the drugs, didn’t he?”

  The eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets.

  She pressed the edge of glass into his skin. The thin line of blood that appeared looked black in the pale streetlight. “He found out about your little after-hours bonus work, so you killed him.”

  Something like bewilderment passed across the eyes that stared up at her. A hand shot out, pinning her shoulder against the railing, but she kept the shard of glass steady, pressed against his throat. Blood dribbled onto his collar.

  The hand against her shoulder retreated. “I saw the car, the blood on the fender.” She ground the words out. “And I saw your stash in the storeroom.”

  Harry’s head moved right, then left like a drunken metronome. She stared at the darkening place on his collar, steeled herself for another attack, but his eyes, still bulging slightly, just stared into her face.

  Then his mouth curled. “People die in this city every week from the stuff made in washtubs.” He spit the words into her face.

  “Right. You’re doing a good deed. You got quality control.”

  “If I don’t make it for them, a thousand others will. And they won’t be nearly as careful.”

  “Is that what you told Jason?”

  A dry, harsh chuckle came from Harry’s throat.

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “I didn’t.”

  When it came, she was totally unprepared.

  His fist landed in the center of her chest, spilling her backward against the building like a rag doll. Glass splintered and pain flashed up her arm as it fell back inside the building and her hand struck something like wool. Carpet. The floor of the office.

  He was standing over her, legs straddling hers, black against a slightly paler sky. In the distance, a siren whooped.

  With no more thought than a cornered dog, she shot both legs against his ankles. He toppled, flinging out an arm, sprawling against the right railing, sending the platform dancing.

  The cable groaned. The floor beneath Rachel lurched and seemed to sink a little. She screamed: “Don’t move! Your hand is on the control!”

  But he didn’t hear or didn’t care because the cable screeched again and the platform began to slip lower.

  Rachel dug her fingers into the carpeted floor of the office, but the sinking platform drew her with it. Her hand slipped, caught on the edge of the window frame where the glass had completely broken away.

  Harry hadn’t moved.

  The platform shuddered.

  With both hands, she clawed at the frame.

  The window washer’s platform sank, slowly at first. Then, with a sudden wrench and a shriek of metal, it was gone.

  Rachel clutched at the window casing, legs dangling, arms shrilling with pain.

  The crash, when it came from below, left a thick-aired deadness in its wake. She braced herself against the wall.

  Something slapped against the toe of her sneaker. The platform cable. If she could use it to climb just a foot or so, she might get back through the window.

  The cable trembled with a life of its own.

  Her numb, blue-white fingers began slipping from the window frame and she barely had time to weave her legs about the steel rope.

  She loosened one hand and moved it higher, then the other. The ridge of the window casing appeared, emptying the world of everything else. Higher. Once more. Now.

  Beyond thought, she coiled herself like a snake and lunged.

  Her body seemed to hang weightless in mid-air.

  Then, as if she had left one life and entered another, she was lying on the office floor, gulping air, scarcely aware of the sirens throbbing on the street below.

  Rachel wobbled to her feet. Breath like ground glass in her lungs, legs threatening to buckle, she ran as if a mouse in some dimly remembered maze through dark corridors, down stairs, more stairs. She lurched through the empty lobby and unsteadily made her way down the steps of the inert escalator. The stripes of steel made her dizzy.

  At last, the cafeteria. She tried to weave her way among the tables but knocked some askew. The kitchen. The back door. A Dumpster looming in the darkness.

  On the side street, in the building’s shadow, Rachel waited until her heaving, sputtering breathing slowed.

  As if returning from an evening stroll, she passed the three squad cars and an ambulance, clustered like a pack of dogs at the building’s entrance, and crossed the street to the parki
ng garage.

  She was inserting the key into the lock when a blue-white light exploded, pinning her against the door like a butterfly on an exhibit board.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “Stop where you are.”

  Rachel swayed on her feet, her exhausted brain unable to process.

  “Do not turn around. Put your hands on top of your head.”

  Mute, blood pounding in her ears, she moved her shaking hands to her head. It was over. Everything. The life she had tried so desperately to build from the debris of mistakes was over.

  “An officer is approaching behind you. Please do not move.”

  A hand touched her shoulder and a normal voice ordered her to turn around. Slowly she obeyed, squinting into the light that still held her like a spear. She could see a black face with cheeks like overripe plums appraising her.

  “Officer Milton!” he said.

  Was he introducing himself? It sounded like a command. Numbly she tried to think what she was supposed to do. Hands patted down her sides all the way to her ankles. He signaled to someone across the street and the awful light spun away, drowning her in equally blinding darkness.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Pulse pounding like the wings of a bird caught by a cat, her throat refused to produce a voice. Finally, shakily, “I live here.”

  “Right. You live in a parking lot.”

  “I…own it.”

  There was a pause as he absorbed this.

  “You look all cut up.”

  “I fell. There was some broken glass.”

  “Mind coming down to the station for a few minutes?”

  She fought down laughter that would have turned hysterical if it had reached her lips. “I…I guess not.”

  333

  The room was a drab yellow with green linoleum that smelled of floor cleaner. Rachel sat at a small metal table. The noise her nervous fingers made on the Styrofoam cup that had held coffee seemed unbearably loud.

  She couldn’t remember drinking the coffee, but knew she must have. Her head tottered, unsteady on her neck as she struggled to straighten shoulders that betrayed defeat although there was no one else in the room to notice.

  The clock on the otherwise blank wall made a whirring sound. The time was five twenty-six. They had stopped at an all-night clinic where she had collected six stitches in her forehead, eight in her arm. She was sure she had compounded any case against her by lying, by telling the not unkind Officer Milton that she had not been able to sleep, had been jogging, had stepped on something in the dark and fallen on some broken glass.