Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)

by Gardiner, Meg

  And he wasn’t going to ask her to surrender herself.

  Not like this. Not this end, she thought. If she had only a hundred heartbeats left, let them not end in terror.

  Not at Aiden’s hands.

  He didn’t see her. He couldn’t. He thought she was a killer, the killer of his hopes, of people who deserved a chance at wonder, of people he had loved. He thought he was avenging all the destruction wreaked by a psychopath. He thought Zero was ready to kill him with the gun taped to her hand.

  Not death. Not death. And if she died, she knew that Aiden would be next. Once he regained his senses, if he found her dead on the floor, he would use the next shell in the shotgun on himself.

  He turned, unevenly, then braced himself, feet shoulder-width apart. The shotgun came up, came around, centered on her. The end of the barrel, a dark eye, a portal, aimed dead at her.

  “Drop . . .” he said. It was all he could seem to get out.

  She couldn’t run. Couldn’t yell. Couldn’t even speak up for herself. Aiden couldn’t see her, not right then. He could only see the killer who’d plagued his days and nightmares for the last year.

  She stilled. She stopped moving altogether.

  She held her right hand high overhead, the gun aimed at the ceiling. But that wasn’t enough. He took a step toward her. Her left hand, taped inside the sweatshirt, might look as though it held another weapon.

  Slowly, inch by inch, she lowered her right hand.

  Aiden stepped toward Zero. Every inch of him hurt, muscles tense to the point of aching. His head screamed. He felt as though he’d spent ten minutes in an industrial dryer with ten pounds of rocks. The metallic taste in his mouth was running with blood. He had bitten his tongue.

  He had blacked out. He knew that and tried to narrow his eyes so that the flashing lights wouldn’t trigger another seizure.

  Time lost. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing before this thing began. There was only darkness, only clouds.

  Harper. Aiden seemed to hear her name in his head, flowing through him. Something about Flynn.

  Kicking open the door blackwhitelightninggray. Harper—she had looked at him. He knew why now. He understood, and it poured over him like the snaking aura that flicked its tongue at the edges of his vision: Harper had been telling the truth all along.

  Piper. She wasn’t here. Shit, what had Zero done with her? He remembered her . . . in the heat of a chaotic and dangerous moment, he had heard her screaming.

  She and Harper weren’t here. Zero was.

  He had a shotgun in his hands. Zero was straight ahead, blocking his path. Why? He had Piper, had . . . did he have Harper? Zero was trying to stop Aiden from getting to them. Standing there goading him, holding a gun, a pistol and . . .

  Aiden blinked, trying to clear his vision. The ringing in his head sounded suspiciously like sirens. Zero looked small and large at the same time, and his hand was a silver bundle that enveloped the pistol.

  “Drop it,” he said, and knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  But Zero didn’t fire. He had a clear shot, but Aiden had the drop on him. Zero couldn’t lower the gun and get off a shot before Aiden pulled the trigger on the shotgun.

  He took another step. Blackwhitesilver. He held the Remington low and pressed the stock against his hip, left hand beneath the barrel, right finger on the trigger. Three left in the chamber.

  Zero stood absolutely still while he advanced. Then Zero put the barrel of the pistol to his own head.

  60

  Chained to the floor in the factory assembly room, Harper held the pistol roughly against her temple. She heard the distant wail of sirens in the empty desert night.

  Aiden stood fifteen feet from her. The Remington shotgun was snugged low against his right hip. The muzzle was pointed at her chest. His face, flipping between white and black under the strobe lights, grew ever more focused.

  He looked like the cop he had been, the soldier he once was, walking into what was going to be a trap. And he looked like a man who’d just lost his partner and believed he was facing Erika Sorenstam’s killer. He looked like an executioner.

  She pressed the barrel of the pistol against her temple. Even under the strobe lights he had to see that.

  Didn’t he? He took another step toward her.

  The sirens grew clearer. It should have been the sound of rescue. Instead, it was a countdown to destruction. Zero was somewhere nearby, watching. If Aiden didn’t fire, Zero would. Half consciously, she wondered if Travis cared about the evidence the cops would find here. But it wouldn’t matter, not if Aiden killed her and SWAT killed him—or Zero killed them both and made it look like murder-suicide.

  She had only minutes before a tactical squad would make a dynamic entry, blasting open the factory doors and coming after Aiden.

  She had to convey that to him. But he had taken the equivalent of a massive blow to the head, from the inside out. So she stood with the barrel of the empty pistol against her temple. She held so still she thought she might become stone.

  Aiden gritted his teeth and said, more clearly this time, “Drop it.”

  She’d never felt so scared. Not even when she’d been about to double-cross Travis and Zero, driving full speed toward a police roadblock.

  She slowly dropped to her knees. It was impossible to make it look like smooth surrender, but she had to try. Her left hand was still bound to her midsection inside the pocket of the sweatshirt. Keeping the gun pressed to her temple, she lowered herself to the concrete and lay facedown. Then she slowly, oh so slowly, moved the gun away from herself, in a broad arc along the concrete, pointing it away from Aiden. He approached. In the flashing lights, he was hot light and shadow, a kaleidoscopic nightmare.

  His shadow passed over her. The barrel of the shotgun pressed against the back of her head. She flinched and let out a stifled sob.

  Aiden didn’t react. She didn’t know what happened in his mind at these times, whether a screaming filled his head along with the visual miscues. The sirens were no longer a hint on the night air but a rising wail. And now, mixed with the freakish black-white strobing, were blares of red and blue, pounding in through the windows at the top of the building. The cops were closing in.

  She could see nothing but his shadow. The lights had become another version of noise. Aiden had to know it was only a matter of moments: This was his last chance to kill Zero without witnesses.

  The barrel of the shotgun pressed heavily against the base of her skull. Aiden dropped to the concrete beside her, pressing one knee on her right forearm, as Zero had done earlier.

  He looked at her right hand. “The hell.”

  He pulled the hood of the sweatshirt off her head.

  For an eternal moment, he did nothing more. He stared at her. Even with the vicious strobe of the lights, he should have been able to see that she wasn’t Eddie Azerov, that she was the woman he had held skin to skin. But he didn’t move, didn’t say a word.

  Outside, the sirens swelled to full volume and the blue-red spin of lights filled the windows. The cops were outside. They would deploy snipers around the perimeter. A forced-entry team would prepare to bring out the battering ram and the flash-bang grenades.

  Then she heard a flick and felt a warm blade slip under the duct tape that encased her right hand. Thank God. Aiden sliced through the tape that bound the pistol to her hand and tugged the gun from her grip. He tossed it deep into the shadows, clattering it across the concrete floor.

  Next he brought the knife up to the tape that gagged her. It slipped beneath the tightly wound strands. Aiden flicked it, ripping the edge and nicking her cheek.

  He sliced the tape through and yanked it roughly from her mouth.

  “Aiden,” she said. “It’s me.”

  He breathed. His knee remained on her arm. The barrel of the shotgun remain
ed against the base of her skull.

  He said, “They’ll be here soon. You tell me what I want to know and I’ll let SWAT take us both down. They’ll kill you clean. You lay there grinning and lying to me, I’ll kill you dirty. Your choice.”

  Harper lost it then. The room seemed to crack under the force of the strobing lights. She opened her mouth and couldn’t even draw breath. The shotgun pressed against her head. Aiden breathed heavily above her.

  Then she cranked it all down. “Aiden, listen to me. You know what’s happening. It’s your nightmare. Meet the new dream, same as the old dream.”

  He went still.

  “This is the zombie dream. It’s not real,” Harper said.

  He paused another long moment, then removed his knee from her arm and rolled her over. In the strobing lights, she saw his ferocity and despair.

  She had nothing, not a weapon, not even her own face. Nothing but to empty herself in front of him.

  “It’s me, Aiden. Earlier tonight, at your place, you held on to me and told me I was not alone. I said the same to you. It’s me,” she said.

  He blinked and stared at her. She wanted more than anything to scramble and run, or grab him and hold on. She lay still.

  “It’s me.” She knew he still couldn’t see it. “Close your eyes.”

  He didn’t look anywhere close to doing that. Not when it would give Zero the jump on him. He glared at her.

  “Please. Close your eyes. Listen to my voice. Feel my face.”

  He struggled, seemingly debating, and then, staring her in the eye, shut his own.

  “Can you hear me? I love you,” she said. “I loved you the first moment I saw you at Xenon, when you came through the crowd toward me. I knew you were coming to help me. I saw it in everything about you.”

  He opened his eyes. He looked at her for an excruciating second. Then he took the gun from her head. He exhaled as though he couldn’t get any air.

  “Oh, God.” He knelt on one knee, staring at her with horror.

  “If we don’t get out of here,” she said, “it gives Zero and Travis everything they’ve wanted since day one. They’ll get away with killing us, and with killing Drew, and burning down Xenon. If we die, nobody will know you were right, that there was a third shooter. They won’t know the phantom is real.”

  “You—it’s really you.”

  “Really.”

  He reached out with an unsteady hand and brushed his fingers across her cheek. He seemed to be fighting with himself. As though he understood that all his sensory inputs were giving him one set of data, and his brain was giving him another.

  Tears leaked from Harper’s eyes and ran down her face toward the floor. “Trust me. Please.”

  His face was torn. She put her hand on his.

  “Hear me. Even if it seems crazy to you. It’s me. Really me, not him in disguise.”

  She put her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him toward her. He resisted, then he didn’t. She lifted her head and put her lips to his ear.

  “You don’t have to hide from me. I see you.”

  She kissed his cheek, shaking. Then he turned his head and kissed her on the mouth.

  A second later, he set the shotgun down and clutched her in his arms. He scanned her face. He looked like he was fighting himself, like his heart and his sight were scraping against each other. Behind him, at the high windows, the police lights swirled.

  “We’re out of time,” she said. “Zip tie. Cut my foot loose from the chain.”

  He slipped the knife under the plastic and slit the tie. Then he cut through the duct tape that bound her left hand inside the pocket, and she shucked off Zero’s sweatshirt.

  “Zero’s still here someplace,” she said. “Travis took Piper. He said they were going someplace where they could watch. And we gotta get going before the cops come in.”

  She scrambled to her feet. Aiden picked up the shotgun. He was slowly recovering his balance and bearings.

  A second later, she realized why she didn’t need to hear the sound of a battering ram to herald the cops breaching the room. The rolling door to the outside droned into action and started to clatter open. The cops had found the controls.

  She hesitated. If they surrendered, could they withstand the SWAT team storming the building? The strobes were insane. Seeing them clearly, discerning their intentions, would be difficult.

  “Aiden, put down the gun and raise your hands.”

  Aiden bent to set the shotgun on the floor—just as the flash-bang grenade rolled through the door. A second later, from the catwalk above them, Zero began firing at the cops.

  61

  Zero’s gunfire raked the air above their heads. One shot, two. Harper ducked and clawed her fingers into Aiden’s arm. The noise from the flash-bang had disoriented her, but she was already so oversaturated from the strobe and the fear that it almost didn’t matter. She ran toward a door at the back of the room. Lagging, he came along with her.

  Seconds later, the cops thundered through the rolling door. In the scarred and freakish light, Harper saw the track of a laser sight appear on the wall ahead of her. It moved from left to right, settling on the door they were aiming for. She dropped to the floor, pulling Aiden down with her.

  He resisted. She didn’t know if his impulse was to lay down his gun and shout surrender, or to turn and fire upward. Then he dropped, rolled onto his back, and swung the barrel toward the catwalk.

  “No,” she shouted.

  Zero was nothing but a shadow, flickering in the strobe light, jumping from spot to spot as the lights flashed.

  Harper yelled, “Fire and they’ll shoot you. Let the cops get him.”

  He resisted an instant longer before she yanked hard on his arm and pulled him to his feet and through the door.

  She slammed it. A shot clanged into the door from the far side. Though it was solid metal, a blister formed at Harper’s eye level.

  “Jesus shit,” she said.

  In the hallway, the abrupt absence of the strobing light left her dizzy. The walls spun. Aiden shook his head as though clearing it and braced his legs to steady himself. Another shot blistered the door.

  He looked around. Pallets were stacked along the corridor.

  “Grab one of these.”

  They pulled a pallet to the door and jammed one side under the handle. The other end nearly bumped the opposite wall. It would keep the door from being easily opened.

  Aiden slung the shotgun over his shoulder and put a hand on her arm. “We . . .” He looked unsteady. She held on to him. “Gotta get out.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Inside the factory assembly room, Zero was no longer firing. Not now that the cops were inside.

  “They won’t take us peacefully, will they?” she said. “Not even if I surrender myself.”

  “You could surrender. You could tell them all the tactical information they wanted, badge them, tell them you were the Queen of All Assault Teams, and they’d still come gunning for me. Once Zero—when he opened fire . . .”

  She understood. “It’s open season.”

  “You can get out.”

  But if she got out, he wouldn’t. The only way to keep him alive, she saw, was to keep herself at his side.

  “We’ll both get out. Run,” she said.

  They hurried down the corridor, Aiden brushing his free hand against the wall for balance. The hallway scoped to darkness. Her dizziness was abating, though the adrenaline depletion, the utter exhaustion, was taking hold.

  But he was hanging on to her. He had an arm around her waist and was supporting her. With what strength, she didn’t know.

  “Zero and Travis have a way out. You do, too,” he said. “You talked about tunnels.”

  She felt a little strength return. When they thought Piper was de
sperately wounded, she’d rejected the possibility of belly-crawling through tunnels and filthy vents. Not now.

  “The rat run,” she said.

  She had to find it. Behind them, the doorknob rattled. The wooden pallet shrieked as someone tried to force the door open.

  As they ran raggedly down the hall, she tried to orient herself. She tried to remember. The darkness had to become familiar once again before she brought it back.

  She slowed. Aiden tried to pull her along.

  She pointed. “Ahead. Should be an intersecting hallway.”

  Behind them at the door came a metallic banging sound. SWAT had found a use for the battering ram. She looked back and saw the door slam open a few inches. The pallet held in place, but a second jolt from the ram sent the door flying open.

  “Hurry.”

  She pulled Aiden around a corner into a near-black hallway. Behind them, they heard curt, muffled conversation—tactical commands, gruffly issued.

  “Your phone,” she said breathlessly.

  She’d lost the Maglite. He lit the display and they stumbled along the hall. A minute later, she found the utility closet door. If it was locked . . .

  She pulled it open. “This way.”

  They ducked inside and closed the door. Aiden swept his phone around the cramped room. A ladder bolted to the wall dropped into an access tunnel that ran between the two basement levels.

  Through the crack beneath the door, flashlight beams swung back and forth. So did the red laser targeting light of a tactical rifle. Shadows and sliding footsteps passed outside in the dusty hallway. They held their breath.

  In the hallway, in a low voice, a man said, “Flynn’s still on the phone with the dispatcher. Says the shooter has explosives—this place manufactured fuel for solid rocket boosters. If he gets a chance, he’ll set them off. Engage at will.”

  Harper squeezed her eyes shut, trembling. After another moment, the footsteps faded.