Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)

by Gardiner, Meg

  “Killed her—he shot her. Oh, God.” Travis let his voice unravel. The bastard was terrifically convincing.

  “No, no . . . if I move from here, he’ll find me. He’s insane. Detective Sorenstam tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen. And when Sorenstam got here and tried to pull me out, Aiden turned on her.” His voice was scoured by tears and terror. “He gunned her down. He kept saying he loved her, that if she wouldn’t come back to him, she wasn’t going anywhere.”

  Harper balanced and stood up.

  “He just stood there and shot her with a shotgun, and she put up her hands and tried to protect herself and . . .”

  Travis drew a sobbing breath. Harper steadied herself.

  “Now he’s trying to kill me, too . . . yes, I’ll stay on the line, but I might have to be quiet for a while because I don’t know where he is. Yes, he’s heavily armed—he has that shotgun and an ax and he probably took Erika’s weapon, too, and oh, God . . .”

  He paused. “I’m not alone, no. There’s another girl here, Piper Westerman. She’s hurt.” Another pause. “No, she’s not with me. She’s hiding in a closet in the basement, but if he goes door to door, he’ll find her, it’s only a matter of time. . . . Yes, I’m hiding in the basement, please send SWAT, Aiden’s going to kill us all.”

  Piper stood on the catwalk above, listening. She was going to be left alive to confirm Travis’s lies.

  She put her ear to the door and nodded to Travis. “He’s coming.”

  Travis lowered his voice. “He’s coming. Oh, my God.”

  He shut off the phone. He gave Harper one last look. Then he smiled up at Piper.

  “Now,” he said.

  She inhaled. “Aiden, hurry. They’re coming. Help me.”

  Harper raised her right arm and rubbed it against her face, trying to work loose the duct tape gag. But Zero had run it all the way around her head, through her hair, with another layer over the exterior of the sweatshirt hood. Without use of her hands, she couldn’t get it off, not anytime soon. She looked around, wondering how to make some noise. She kicked at the chain but it only clanked.

  Distantly, from beyond the door where Piper stood, came the sound of uneven footsteps. Pounding along, but struggling. Harper tried to yell from behind her gag, but there was no hope of making any sense.

  Above her, Piper tensed. She raised a hand, signaling Travis. Then she unlocked the door.

  Simultaneously, Travis flipped a switch. Overhead, the emergency lighting came on, white-blue and harsh. It strobed. Flashing, flashing, quickly, God knows how many times a second.

  Then Aiden crashed through the door, and Harper knew exactly how many times a second. Exactly the right number to trigger a seizure.

  57

  Aiden stopped outside the door, pulling up sharply. His leg was a hot bolt of pain. The catwalk above the main factory floor swayed as he ran, his footsteps too loud. But Piper’s shouts sounded desperate. He had a shotgun slung over his back by a strap and his HK in his right hand.

  He should not have left them. He should have stayed with Harper and Piper—because, as he ran toward Sorenstam’s police car, he had seen a shadow patrolling the fence line. Then he’d heard voices raised, in Harper’s direction. He had quickly backtracked, slipped in a window, and worked his way toward the sounds of arguing, finding the ladder to the catwalk. But not fast enough. Now he held the rail and focused on the doorway ahead.

  Piper screamed again. “Aiden.”

  Outside the door, he flattened himself against the wall. He stuck the HK in the small of his back and pulled the shotgun over his shoulder. It had a full magazine. He breathed to calm his heart rate, to still the pounding in his head, so he could hear what was happening on the other side of the door. He couldn’t go through the door deaf and blind. Not if he wanted to keep from shooting Piper. And Harper.

  She had given him a look, before she ran, that had been like a flaming arrow between the eyes. She had seen what was in him, seen that he didn’t care if he got out. She’d said nothing—just taken Piper and gone.

  That look. He couldn’t decipher it. She had let him head off into what could have been a trap. Could she possibly have lured him and Erika here to get rid of them, out of sight, in the dead of night, and leave them for the coyotes? To clear herself of any taint, destroy the last source of testimony against her in the attack on the club?

  No. She couldn’t have. Harper had not turned on him.

  “Aiden—please.”

  Piper was yelling as loudly as a sideline cheerleader in a packed stadium. She was coherent and definite and had the lung capacity to keep screaming as if she could single-handedly carry the team across the goal line.

  It wasn’t right.

  He gripped the shotgun, his finger on the trigger.

  Piper, screaming to raise the roof, when for the last twenty minutes she had been so drained from blood loss that she could barely lift her voice above a whisper.

  This was wrong. Piper, yelling. And where was Harper?

  He leveled the barrel of the shotgun at the door. He listened.

  “Help me. Hurry.”

  Piper’s voice was nearby. Echoey, but it sounded like she was on the same level as he was. So maybe on a catwalk on the other side of the wall.

  Where was Harper? What had happened to separate them?

  Nothing good. But Piper wasn’t talking about that. She wasn’t asking him to help them. She kept calling, Help me.

  That was a mistake.

  His breathing picked up again. He tried to listen.

  And in the background, he heard it. A man’s voice.

  “. . . He has that shotgun and an ax and he probably took Erika’s weapon, too, and oh, God . . .”

  Aiden tightened his grip on the shotgun.

  “If he goes door to door, he’ll find her, it’s only a matter of time. . . . Yes, I’m hiding in the basement, please send SWAT, Aiden’s going to kill us all.”

  Shock pulsed through him, then anger, pure and white, like a phosphorous grenade exploding.

  Travis Maddox—had to be. He was imitating Harper. Aiden didn’t fully understand it, only knew two things: Harper had been telling him the truth all along. And death waited on the other side of that door. It would be thrown open by Piper Westerman.

  Piper was in there, with a liar, and she wasn’t coming out. Talking about Erika. Not true, none of it.

  And Travis was blaming Aiden for things that were about to happen.

  Aiden tried to breathe, his chest tight. He seemed to feel hands squeezing his head, trying to crush him. He eased his finger more securely against the trigger.

  He leaned his head back against the wall, just for a second, until he could draw a full breath. In his mind, he saw an image of flashing eyes and a slow smile, her hand reaching out to him. A laugh, the surprise of it. Her willingness to embrace him despite his great and dismaying faults. Her lips on his, her chest rising and falling with his, skin against skin.

  She’d been there for him all along.

  He straightened and took one more breath. He swung around, leveled the Remington, and kicked the door open.

  He saw Piper standing on the other side, straight-backed and bright-eyed and so brimming with loathing that she seemed to shine. The barrel of the shotgun centered on her and she didn’t even flinch.

  Then the strobe flashed on, and his world dissolved in twisting light.

  58

  Harper saw it with brutal clarity.

  Chained to the grate in the floor with only a small radius of movement, she peered up and saw Aiden kick the door open. It slammed back against the corrugated metal wall. He aimed the shotgun at Piper, who stood before him on the catwalk without so much as tensing. Then the strobes unraveled him.

  Harper screamed behind the duct tape, but the sound didn’t even reach the walls.


  Aiden held on to the Remington for a couple of seconds longer, but he was all at once gone, the strobe lights causing a slow rolling blackout. He didn’t fall to the floor, didn’t jerk or convulse. He blinked and looked away and then wasn’t looking. The strobes flashed fast fast fast, whatever pulse that aligned with electrical signals in the brain, and short-circuited him. He turned, slowly, to the right, losing his balance. His grip on the shotgun loosened. Piper lunged and grabbed the barrel, and she didn’t even have to wrest it from his hands. He kept turning, the spin coming in horrible black-and-white snapshots under the fiercely strobing lights.

  Harper yanked on the chain, trying to yell.

  Travis stepped away from the wall and whistled to Zero. Upstairs, Aiden went down on his knees, hard.

  Piper, under the strobe, looked like a vampire who had been unearthed, white and fast moving. The shotgun seemed to pop with light in her hands.

  “Not the plan,” Travis said. “Put it down. We’re going.”

  He strode to the ladder and climbed up. Piper set the shotgun on the catwalk at Aiden’s side.

  “We’ll watch,” Travis said. “Now let’s get clear. It won’t take long.”

  He pulled her through the door Aiden had kicked open. Then they were gone.

  Harper watched the shattering light. Aiden was on all fours, head hanging low, looking into the distance like a wolf. Harper yanked on the chain.

  Then Aiden was crawling, trying to get one hand on the rail to pull himself up. He was propping his hands on the rail. The lights flailed, white-black-white-black.

  He was standing up.

  He had the shotgun in his hand.

  He was aiming it over the railing, unsteadily, at her.

  Harper backed up. She didn’t do it consciously. Her feet just moved. But after five feet the chain caught her. She stumbled. Her left hand was bound inside the pocket of the sweatshirt, but she raised her right hand.

  Then remembered. Oh, shit.

  The big silver pistol duct-taped to her right hand. As soon as she raised it, Aiden swung the barrel of the shotgun downward. She screamed, as hard as anything she’d ever done, not even trying.

  He pulled the trigger.

  She fell backward and hit hard on her butt. The strobe lights turned the room into a firefight all by themselves.

  The shotgun failed to fire. She lowered her hand and tried to stick the barrel of the gun into the links of the chain, to somehow loosen the tape and tear free of it. Above her, Aiden swayed. He knew the gun had not fired. He looked stunned—maybe in a fugue state. He was there but he wasn’t. And she knew what he thought he was seeing.

  And if he didn’t, the next second changed his mind. The dog padded across the floor, its nails clicking on the concrete. It stopped at her side. In the strobe, every time the lights flashed, the dog seemed to be in a different place, as though it were three dogs, four, teeth and slobber. It sniffed Zero’s sweatshirt.

  Above her, Aiden regained his footing. He was slowly coming out of the postseizure state.

  He racked the slide on the shotgun. The noise was ungodly. If there was any ammunition in the magazine, he had just pumped a shell into the chamber for certain.

  At the sound, the dog snarled and raised its head toward the catwalk. It bared its teeth and barked.

  For a hard second, Aiden looked like he was trying to locate the source of the barking. The strobes flashed, the dog seeming to jump and change size with every spark of the lights. White-black-white-black. Aiden tracked the sound with the barrel of the gun.

  She inhaled and jumped away from the dog.

  The blast of the shotgun filled the room. The slug slammed into the floor. Chips of concrete flicked through the air. They hit the back of her legs. She skittered, her leg chained to the floor, circling away from where she had been.

  He thought she was Zero.

  His brain injury had left him open to seizures, especially seizures triggered by flashing lights and flash photography. She’d seen it several nights earlier, at Joe’s Cafe, when he turned away from strobing camera flashes. He had hinted at it, tried to explain. She understood that he hadn’t suffered a grand mal seizure, but what a doctor friend had once explained to her as a complex partial seizure. The brain had fired uncontrollably. Now he was coming back.

  Coming back badly. Because complex partial seizures unwound slowly, and during that time, the person was in an altered state of consciousness. Going through that kind of seizure sometimes resulted in delusions.

  The shotgun racked again. He fired. The sound seemed to fill her entire life.

  The dog was dauntless. It ran to the foot of the ladder and jumped, barking wildly. The lights blanched the room, making Harper nauseated and disoriented. But if she didn’t keep moving, she was dead. He wouldn’t keep missing her. He didn’t have to. He didn’t have to keep firing from thirty feet away. All he had to do was climb down the ladder and walk over to her.

  She had to find a way to communicate.

  He fired again. The shot hit the chain near her foot. She cringed. She was shaking, head to toe. Keep moving. Think.

  At the foot of the ladder, the dog jumped and snarled. It raised up on its hind legs and put its paws on the rungs, snapping feverishly.

  Aiden was coming down.

  59

  Aiden gripped the ladder. He swung around and began to descend. A strange ringing filled his head, swelling and diminishing over and over, cyclically. The lights continued to flash, blackwhiteblackwhite, and an aura spit at the edges of his vision, a fiery electric tracer, a sine wave that danced like dry lightning in a black thunderstorm. The taste in his mouth was metallic.

  The shotgun in his right hand was heavy. Three shells left before he had to reload.

  He needed to climb down as fast as possible. Zero was below him, and Zero was always armed.

  Beyond the ringing came another sound, something animal, something violent. Below him, in the strobing pit.

  He didn’t know where he was exactly. How he’d gotten here. The walls were moving, whiteblackwhiteblack. His hands were in front of him, and the pain in his leg seemed to be from a heated iron bar.

  Go. Zero was there.

  Zero, who had screwed his life, killed people, set Xenon ablaze, and turned loose his thugs on Erika.

  He continued to climb down, painfully, the shotgun clattering against the rungs.

  Somebody else. Here. Should have been.

  Piper. He had heard her. Voice, she was screaming. His name. Where was Piper?

  He felt as if he were caught in a stream of air and electricity. Buzzing noise. Something had happened to him. He seemed to be made of pain, and so vague that he didn’t know where his body ended and the air and walls began. He should be able to see colors, but the lights—whiteblackwhite. He was in a tunnel, racing through a focused stream of lights and energy. His hands were half-numb. He kept climbing down the ladder.

  Sound beneath him, growing louder. Through the sine wave thrum, barking. He worked his way down the ladder, his hands flashing in the light, moving with jerks, not seeming attached to him.

  He half jumped, half fell to the ground. When he turned, he saw Zero.

  His breath jammed in his lungs. Ten yards away, Zero crouched on the floor. Whiteblackwhite. The piebald room was etched with shadows and pitiless light, on and off, blackwhite, and his perspective wasn’t 3-D, somehow both flat and stretched, warped and zooming. Zero crouched on the floor close to rusting machinery, one hand jammed in the pocket of his gray hoodie, hiding Aiden didn’t know what. The other hand, right hand—on the concrete. Gun in it.

  Drop the weapon.

  He tried to say it, heard the words with painful clarity in his mind. No sound came out of his mouth.

  Drop the weapon. “Dro . . .”

  He stumbled. His feet didn’t s
eem responsive, and the room was throbbing whiteblack. Zero had moved. Slipped sideways. Now looking up at him. That gun.

  How much time had passed? There was a lapse. He felt a slicing sense of urgency. Time gone, how much?

  From a million miles away, a million years, he seemed to know he was back on the floor of the club at Xenon, lights stroking, music droning, shapes shifting in panicked flight. Whiteblackred, blood misting the air. Whitegoldorange, the swoop and spill of flame before it caught the wall behind the bar and erupted in ravenous rapture.

  He saw Zero, facing him this time, right there. Hood pulled over his head, shadowing his face. Not the gas mask now, not the shining flame eyes, but the same slight form, armed and eager, face almost glittering in the shifting light whitesilver, a strip of mask around his lower face.

  He walked toward him, two steps, the shotgun coming up in his hands, the ringing rising to a wail.

  He saw the dog half a second before it lunged at him.

  Harper crouched, ready to throw herself one way or the other like a soccer goalkeeper facing a penalty shot, knowing it wouldn’t matter as long as she moved. Aiden was going to fire at her, twelve-gauge from fifteen feet, she would either guess right or not. She couldn’t wait, couldn’t try to judge it. The sickening strobe light made it impossible to see his movements smoothly. By the time she could tell which way he was swinging the barrel, it would be too late.

  Then in the flash of white light, the dog was a snapshot of furious movement. Muscle and its torn face, teeth, midair.

  It launched at Aiden. In that moment, she thought it was salvation and death, putting an end to this and ruining her only hope, her heart. Darkness, another blast of jerking light.

  Aiden swung the butt of the shotgun. It hit the dog in the side of the head. Eagle cried out hideously, and his flight continued to a limp collapse on the floor.

  Harper backed up, giving herself a foot of slack in the chain. Another flip of the light and Aiden was facing her again. He braced himself and held the shotgun with the assurance of an experienced soldier and lawman.