Survival Instinct (Instinct Series)

by Janie Crouch

  “Nadine, talk to me.”

  Nadine moaned again. “I’m okay. I think I’m okay.”

  Chloe finally got her seatbelt to release, and she dropped onto the ceiling of the car. She reached over to help Nadine do the same.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Chloe said, kicking at her door to get it open. “The stalker, he’s here and wants to kill us. Kill me.”

  The door gave way and Chloe eased herself out, then turned to help Nadine.

  “Do you have your phone?” Hers had been resting in the cup holder and now she had no idea where it was.

  “Yes,” Nadine said as Chloe helped them both stand. She tapped the screen. “No service. We’re too far out.”

  “We’ve got to run.”

  They began moving away from the car.

  “But which way?” Nadine asked.

  Chloe tried to think through the fear and pain in her head from where she’d hit the window. She had no idea where the nearest town was. Paralleling the road was probably their best bet.

  “Let’s just move,” Chloe whispered. She could feel him out there. Stalking for real. Hunting. “We need to go.”

  Chloe and Nadine grasped hands, and moved their way around the car. They hadn’t gotten very far when someone stepped in front of them, shining a light.

  Nadine screamed, and then gave a tiny laugh. “Noah! Thank God. Somebody ran us off the road. You’ve got to get us out of here.”

  Chloe could feel Noah’s eyes on her the entire time Nadine was talking.

  Nadine didn’t understand, but Chloe did. Noah was the one who wanted to kill them.

  “You are evil and you must be destroyed. Burned,” Noah said in a voice that sounded nothing like the one they were used to. Nothing like the helpful intern who’d worked with them every day for months.

  Nadine was beginning to understand. “Noah?”

  Before either of them could react, he pulled out a gun. Chloe heard it make an odd sort of noise as he first shot Nadine, dropping her to the ground, then turned the weapon towards her. Chloe didn’t even have time to react to her friend’s fallen form before he shot her.

  Her hand came up to the sting in her shoulder. A dart. He’d tranquilized them.

  It was her last thought before the world faded to black.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chloe’s head was pounding when she came to. She was handcuffed to a chair inside the same cabin she and Nadine had looked at earlier.

  Noah had set this all up from the beginning.

  Nadine was sitting in a chair across from Chloe, also beginning to wake up.

  Chloe could hear Noah slamming around in the other room, muttering to himself. She was afraid he was trying to work himself up to something pretty horrific.

  “Are you okay?” She whispered to Nadine as soon as the woman’s eyes were open.

  “Yes. You?”

  Chloe just nodded.

  “Noah is the stalker?” Nadine asked, as if she couldn’t process the idea at all.

  Chloe was having difficulty grasping it herself. He’d always seem so friendly. Helpful.

  And now he had every intention of killing them, given the smell of gasoline throughout the room, by burning them.

  “Does anyone know where we are?” Chloe asked.

  “I gave the information to the security team. I also sent an email—” Nadine stopped mid-sentence.

  “What?”

  Nadine grimaced. “I didn’t do either of those things. I asked Noah to give the security team our location and asked Noah to send out the email and pictures to the rest of the creative team.”

  “And we can bet he didn’t do that. Or gave them a different location altogether. Did you tell Travis where we were going?”

  Nadine shook her head. “Only vaguely. I told him the details were in the email.”

  “So we’re on our own.”

  On their own. Tied up. And wanted dead by a madman who had fooled everyone for months.

  “Chloe, I can do that thing with my wrist. Remember? Back from when David Thompson broke it?”

  Nadine’s wrist hadn’t healed correctly and she could pop it out of joint. It would allow her to get out of the handcuffs, but it would hurt.

  “Nadine…”

  “Anything is better than burning to death in a stupid cabin in the middle of nowhere. I can take it.”

  Chloe wished she could hug her friend. Nadine had always said that Chloe was the tough one, the strong one. But not right now. Right now Nadine was the tough one.

  Noah stormed back into the room, his fists clenching and unclenching.

  “Noah, why don’t you tell us what this is all about?” Chloe asked. She needed to distract Noah and give Nadine a chance to get out of her cuffs. “You’ve worked with us for months. If something is wrong I want to try to make it right.”

  “Noah is dead,” the man said softly. Chloe would prefer the yelling.

  “Dead?”

  “My daddy said the evil killed him. The evil came in the form of a cancer and killed him.”

  A grown man referring to his father as daddy was creepy enough without all the other crazy. Chloe had no idea what Noah was talking about.

  “You’re not Noah?” Maybe he had multiple personality disorder or something.

  “I’m giving Noah a second chance to fight the evil. He’s fighting through me.”

  Chloe concentrated and tried to find Noah’s thoughts in her head. To see if he was thinking something different than what he was saying out loud. But she couldn’t find anything. She stopped trying. All it would do was exhaust her.

  And the pressure in her head was already immense. But that was from Conversation Hearts, not Noah. Conversation Hearts had finally decided to make his critical move.

  Noah might have to get in line to kill Chloe. The freight train of pressure in her head could beat him to it. She was able to feel it growing.

  “Why are you bleeding?” Noah asked, his pitch rising. “That’s a sign of the evil. I didn’t want to believe it, but you have the evil in you.”

  “Or…” Chloe raised her voice as he glanced over at Nadine to get his attention back on her. “ I was just in a car accident and am being held by a maniac who says he wants to kill me. So maybe it’s not the evil. Maybe it’s a reaction to stress.”

  She didn’t need to be psychic to know the punch was coming. But that was what she wanted. To give Nadine as much time as possible. Chloe’s head flew to the side with the force of Noah’s blow.

  At least now she didn’t need to worry about bleeding because of Conversation Hearts.

  “You are evil.” By the time Chloe dragged her head back up Noah was just inches from her face. “I didn’t want to believe it. I thought it was just the show itself that contained the evil.”

  “Like Alexandra? Is that why you went after her?”

  Noah smirked. “Alexandra Adams is selfish and needy, but she is not evil.”

  “Not according to the letters you sent her.”

  “I didn’t send those. She sent them to herself.”

  Noah laughed at the look on Chloe’s face and rocked back on his heels. “That’s right, she was using them to get your boyfriend close to her. Looks like it worked.”

  Chloe just stared at him. Was he telling the truth? What reason did he have to lie at this point? Alexandra had made all that up just to get Shane closer?

  And they’d all fallen for it. Why wouldn’t they? Why would anyone think Alexandra would resort to such measures? Chloe felt despair threaten to swamp her, as the last of her hope that Shane might burst through the door any minute died. Shane was back on the set guarding someone who wasn’t in any danger. He had no idea Chloe was in trouble.

  They truly were on their own.

  “I was going to kill her, just like her letters to herself suggested,” Noah continued. “To teach her a lesson. If you play with fire then you get burned. Crying wolf and all that.”

  Noah began to pace
back and forth. “But then I realized I had to stay the course. To complete my goal.”

  “And what is that?” Chloe asked.

  “To eliminate the evil of Day’s End. To remove those creatures of Satan you put on the screen each week to infest viewers. I have a responsibility to save America from itself. To stop the mindless viewing of a show that is evil incarnate.”

  Noah’s words were becoming more calm and purposeful as he talked. It was evident he believed everything he said. Chloe couldn’t even think of a way to reason with him.

  How do you reason with someone who believed so completely that they were correct?

  “I realized, even if I killed Alexandra Adams, although it might feel good and cause a delay temporarily in filming, the evil program would not end. The evil would continue to infect all the viewers. Alexandra Adams is not the key to Day’s End.”

  Noah took a step closer and trailed a finger gently down the cheek he had punched a few moments before. Chloe preferred the violence.

  “You are the key. Killing you is the only way to stop the evil of the program. I’ve spent months trying to figure out another way. To scare you into shutting down without hurting anyone. But nobody would listen. You wouldn’t take me seriously so I knew I had to do something more.”

  Chloe hoped Nadine would be able to get out of the cuffs soon because they were running out of time. Noah’s thoughts were becoming clearer in her mind.

  Not that she needed to hear his murderous reflections to know what he had planned. They were written all over his face.

  “I knew someone had to die.” He stopped pacing to study Chloe again. “It was going to be Mr. Westman. I didn’t like that since he’d been a soldier in our Army. Honorable. But he’d obviously lost that honor.”

  Behind him, Nadine gave her arm a sharp jerk. Her face blanched and she couldn’t stop the moan of pain that escaped her as she succeeded in dislocating her wrist. Noah turned towards her.

  “How had he lost his honor, Noah?”

  His eyes spun back to Chloe. “I told you, Noah is dead.”

  Chloe had to give Nadine just a little more time. She’d done the worst part.

  “How did Shane lose his honor?”

  “By whoring himself out to the evil. To protect the evil is just as bad as being the evil itself.”

  “That’s what you were thinking the night in the woods when you were going to shoot Shane. The night you tried to strangle me.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. Chloe knew it immediately.

  “So it’s true,” Noah’s face tightened, his skin stretching into a snarl. “You can read minds.”

  Chloe shook her head, trying to explain rationally, hoping it would help. “No. Sometimes I pick up on voices like a frequency on a radio. I just hear things others can’t.”

  “Because you’re evil.” He spat the word out.

  “No. There’s no power to it. No evil. It’s just how my brain works. Like how you’re always able to remember so many different coffee orders, exactly the way everyone likes it. I would never be able to do that because my brain doesn’t work the same way as yours. But there’s no magic to it.”

  Noah frowned and bit his lip, considering Chloe’s words. Nadine had worked her arm free and was shifting around on her chair. She couldn’t just attack Noah without some sort of weapon, not with her hurt wrist.

  Chloe needed to distract him further.

  “Come closer and look at me,” she said, careful not to use the name that seemed to trigger him. “Look me in the eye. You’ll see it’s not evil. It’s just how my brain works. You would know evil if you saw it up close, right? So come look.”

  Chloe forced herself not to cringe as he did what she asked. Noah’s breath was hot on her face.

  She opened her eyes as wide as she could, his only inches from hers. “Do you see? I’m not evil.”

  Behind him Nadine stood, making no sound. She was looking around for a weapon.

  “It’s just me. We’ve worked together for months. Laughed. Cried, even. It’s just me, Noah.”

  Chloe winced at her mistake, hoping he wouldn’t notice her calling him by name, but he did. His eyes became hard and Chloe knew she’d lost any progress she’d made.

  Nadine wasn’t ready. She was grabbing a gas canister behind him, but it wouldn’t be enough. Chloe slammed her head forward into Noah’s, both of them crying out in pain as they connected. Nadine took the opportunity to slam the plastic gas canister against him but Noah turned at the last second and it caught his arm rather than his head. Chloe watched helplessly as Noah roared with rage and slammed his fist into Nadine’s face. She crumpled to the ground and Noah began to kick her. Nadine screamed, then nothing.

  “Noah! Noah!” Chloe squirmed around in her chair, slamming the legs against the ground loudly. She had to get his attention back on her. “I’m the evil, not her.”

  Noah looked back and forth between her and Nadine, but at least he stopped kicking her.

  “It doesn’t matter where the evil started. It will end here. You both will burn.”

  He picked up the gasoline container and began pouring it over everything.

  “Not Nadine. She’s not evil,” Chloe pleaded. “She doesn’t need to die.”

  Noah wasn’t interested in listening. “She made her choice. She has always supported you. And now she has to pay for that choice.”

  Noah walked into the other room and a few minutes later Chloe could smell smoke. She pulled against the handcuffs hoping for any sort of give, but there was none.

  “Nadine,” she whispered. “Nadine, wake up!”

  Her friend didn’t move. Had Noah gotten in a well-aimed kick to the head? Chloe bit back a sob. Nadine wasn’t tied to anything. If she could just wake up, maybe she could save herself.

  “Nadine!” Chloe said it louder now, she didn’t care if Noah heard her. “Wake up!”

  Nadine shifted just the slightest bit, but didn’t move.

  Noah came back in the room.

  “Don’t do this,” Chloe said again.

  Resolve carved his features in stone. Noah was deaf to any pleas. “Now the evil will burn. The show will end. I have saved millions of souls with this one action.”

  Smoke from the kitchen was beginning to fill the room. Chloe’s head felt like it was about to explode and she wasn’t sure if it was from fear or breathing in the smoke. She could feel her nose bleeding again.

  All of which didn’t matter since she was about to die a fiery death.

  Noah trailed a gentle finger down her cheek one last time. “I hope the evil will leave you in death.”

  The pain in Chloe’s head ripped through her. A burning agony. Unable to help herself she began to scream.

  Noah took a step back staring at her, but Chloe couldn’t do anything but try to survive this agony. So much worse than it had ever been.

  Almost from a distance she saw Noah turn towards the front door and speak. “You. How did you find us?”

  Was it Shane? Had he found them? Chloe tried to look over to the door, but her vision was too blurry, the pain too intense.

  If the voice from the door answered, Chloe couldn’t hear it. But she very clearly heard the three shots ring out. Noah fell to the floor, right next to her chair, blood spurting from his chest, his eyes open in death.

  Noah wouldn’t be killing any evil today.

  Agony still bled through her head, causing Chloe to whimper and squint at the figure in the doorway. “Shane?”

  “No, not Shane.” Travis moved further in the room.

  “Travis, thank God. Get Nadine out.” She panted the words. “Noah kicked her and she’s unconscious.”

  More smoke was barreling into the room.

  Travis ignored Chloe’s comment as he pulled on her hands and saw they were cuffed. He then moved to Noah’s body, searching his pockets. When he found the key Travis returned to Chloe.

  “Travis,” Chloe pushed him towards Nadine. “Get her. I’m fi
ne.”

  He didn’t move, just stood staring at Chloe. Chloe was trying to think around the residual pain in her head that was at least easing a little now. Was he in shock at having killed Noah?

  The smoke was barreling into their room. They had to get out of here. “Travis, get your girlfriend. Deal with the guilt or whatever later.”

  But he was still staring at her. Finally, he smiled. One full of profound joy and peace. At any other time, Chloe would’ve enjoyed such a keen state of happiness on a friend.

  But given the circumstances, it was the spookiest thing she had ever seen.

  “You complete me, Chloe. You’re mine. We are meant to be.”

  At first his words didn’t register. And then they did.

  No.

  She began backing away. “No. You can’t be. No…”

  Travis took a step closer. “We will be together forever.”

  Chloe tried to suck in air but all she could breathe in was smoke and her own terror. She felt the world begin to spin around her. “No…”

  She held out a hand to stop him, catch herself, or something. But Travis caught her fingers and linked them with hers.

  “Forever.”

  The world once again faded to black.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Shane pulled the ice around himself as they sped from Chloe’s car to the burning building they could see a couple miles away. They had found Chloe’s car because of a tracker Shane had placed, but when they reached it it had been crashed and empty. Rolled into a ditch. Blood on the windows, but no one around.

  And then they’d seen the flames.

  The letters from the stalker—from Noah—kept coming back to Shane’s mind: The evil must burn.

  He pulled the ice around him more tightly. There was no room for panic. No room for emotion. Chloe didn’t need Shane right now, she needed Avalanche. And Avalanche wouldn’t stop until she was safe, wouldn’t let feelings get in the way of logic.

  He took a curve much faster than was safe, and moments later was pulling up in front of a burning cabin. The entire building was awash in flames.