Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)

by Gardiner, Meg

  Aiden whispered, “And you said I was paranoid.”

  She slipped her arm around his. He was breathing hard. He was nothing but muscle and grit and, somewhere inside him, a compass that had returned to true north.

  She whispered, “Can you climb? Can you crawl?”

  “I’ll do whatever I have to.”

  They climbed down the ladder to an access hatch. Aiden flashed the light from the phone. They saw the tunnel, a two-foot-by-two-foot vent that ran horizontally through a conduit between the two basement levels. She dropped to her belly and began to eel through.

  “When I was twelve, I came here with Travis and his dad and the others,” she murmured. “We explored and found the way out to the hatch beyond the fence. It still has to be there.”

  They crawled, Aiden breathing heavily behind her. Her feet scraped along the concrete. And gradually, a new sound invaded her headspace: hissing. Somewhere, gas was still escaping from a pressure vessel. She didn’t smell anything, but odorless gases could still asphyxiate her and Aiden and the cops.

  Sixty feet down the tunnel, the concrete changed to plywood. Their elbows and knees and feet knocked against it. Aiden’s phone flashlight illuminated only a few feet ahead. Beyond the light was nothing but coal-dark echoes—until the sound stopped rebounding. Harper’s heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. Ten feet ahead, the tunnel dead-ended.

  “No,” she said.

  She seemed to unwind and run down. This far, and there was no farther. A heavy bolus of tears and despair swelled inside her, a black wave about to crest.

  “We’ll find another way,” Aiden said.

  But his voice was flat. There was no other way.

  She turned to him, wondering if he was ready to let go. If he wanted the cops to come in, for the night scope to target him, to put an end to the echoes and phantoms and the half-lit world he had fallen into.

  Then a new light appeared a few feet ahead, a panel being pulled off the side of the tunnel. She crouched, instinctively, though taking a defensive position couldn’t possibly protect her in the narrow confines of the tunnel.

  Aiden tried to shield her, though he was behind her. “Move.” He couldn’t get by.

  They heard a shuffling sound. Two hands appeared at the edge of the panel, and with a grunt, somebody boosted himself up.

  Oscar appeared.

  62

  Oscar stuck his head through the gap in the paneling. His dark curly hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat. Harper tried to stay silent, but a sound of shock and joy slipped from her lips.

  Oscar said, “Don’t just sit there staring at me. This way.”

  They crawled to the gap. Oscar jumped down and Harper wriggled out headfirst, tumbling into his grasp. Aiden followed.

  Oscar had a flashlight in his cell phone. He directed it along the corridor where they stood. It was a crawl space between the walls of the lower basement level, eighteen inches wide, dusty, covered with protruding nails from the timber construction, bricks on the floor, left-behind detritus.

  He said, “You were getting lost. Jeez, I thought you’d remember the way.”

  “I was fourteen, and—Oscar, Christ, what are you doing here? I thought you’d . . .”

  “You’re complaining?”

  “Not on my life,” she said. “Zero’s here. Travis may be, too. And earlier, I heard a storage tank hissing. Stay inside and we only have three endings.”

  He nodded, understanding: get shot, get blown up, or choke to death on escaping gas.

  He said, “None of the above. Let’s go.”

  She heard the bravado in his voice but could see that he was flighty, moving with the desperate nerves of a deer that knows it has been scented by predators. He was in a big damn hurry to get out of there. Fine with her.

  He raised on tiptoe to look behind Aiden, into the plywood tunnel. “Where’s Detective Sorenstam?”

  In the silence that stretched then, Oscar’s face crumpled. “Oh.”

  Harper nodded. Aiden stared through the walls.

  Blinking back his emotions, Oscar turned sideways and sped along the crawl space. They followed. She glanced back at Aiden. In the near- dark, he looked focused.

  “Oscar, how’d you get in?” he said.

  Oscar flicked a look over his shoulder. “Transformer box on the west side of the complex beyond the fence. Harper should remember it.”

  “That’s where we were trying to get to,” she said.

  “You hit a dead end. And you weren’t exactly silent.”

  “I’m all out of silent. All I got now is two feet and whatever fuel is left in me.”

  They reached a T junction. Oscar put a finger to his lips and turned an ear to listen to the building. Harper could hear only her heart pounding, and Aiden’s labored breathing.

  Oscar raised a hand, a hang on gesture. “We go left for a minute, then lower ourselves through a ceiling vent. It comes out onto a catwalk in a tank storage room.”

  “Then?” Aiden said.

  “Cross the catwalk, get back into the conduit on the far side of the tank room, and slide along like greased pigs till we pop up outside the fence. After that, we’re gone.”

  “Gone back to the unmarked car?” he said.

  Oscar looked at him. “To the MINI. I parked it behind a boulder just on the other side of the fence. Damned little thing, you can hide it anywhere.”

  Oscar took a big breath, like a swimmer about to dive deep. Harper touched his arm.

  “This . . . I never thought. Oscar, I—”

  “Not now, cuz. Don’t make me lose my shit.”

  I misjudged you, she wanted to say. A sense of shame overcame her. The words jammed in her throat.

  “Thank you,” she managed.

  “You’re gonna owe me, massively, when we get out. I’d negotiate my fee right now except I don’t want to get my ass shot off before I get what’s due.”

  He said it with gusto but an utter lack of conviction. She pointed at the T junction.

  “Go.”

  They rounded the corner and gingerly wedged their way along the passage. The crawl space lowered. They dropped to hands and knees.

  Keep going, Harper thought. She tried not to think about how close they were. Never consider the journey ended—not till you cross the finish line. Oscar’s cell phone flashlight swung as he scurried.

  “Ceiling vent’s just ahead,” he whispered.

  She inched along. Then she felt the floor give way, undermined by something—a crowbar, the butt of a gun—and they crashed through the ceiling beneath the crawl space.

  Below, Zero was waiting for them.

  63

  When the bottom of the crawl space gave way, Harper, Aiden, and Oscar plunged six feet into a tank room and hit the catwalk where Zero was standing. The catwalk hung from the ceiling, loosely connected by rusted bolts. Their crashing weight pulled the bolts loose and the catwalk dropped another eight feet before slamming to a sudden stop.

  Harper landed on her hands and knees with the wind knocked out of her. She tried to catch her breath. Holding as still as possible, she carefully turned her head to look back.

  The catwalk had fallen across a twelve-inch pipe that spanned the tank room. Its far end was loosely touching the wall of the room, keeping it from tipping completely, but it was wildly unstable. One entire railing had ripped off. The drop was deadly.

  So was the catwalk. Zero crouched on the far end of it, a cut-down pump-action shotgun in his hands.

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a road flare. He lit it and tossed it over the edge. It dropped, insanely white, into the depths of the tanks below and clattered onto the floor. Eerie light and shadows snaked around the room.

  Harper saw: Oscar had crashed in front of Zero and lay on his back, groaning. Aiden had la
nded in front of Oscar, five feet from her. They were like passengers lined up on a giant gangplank. Then the catwalk wobbled. She and Aiden were on one side of the pipe, Oscar and Zero on the other. Harper felt the catwalk begin to seesaw.

  She grabbed the remaining railing. It tilted. Aiden, on his knees, grabbed for the railing, too—but not quick enough. He slid off the side of the catwalk.

  Harper shouted, “No—”

  She lunged for him, but he pitched over the edge.

  And was caught on a broken piece of metal by the strap of the shotgun.

  He hung, swinging back and forth, before grabbing the strap and trying to steady himself.

  But as soon as he raised his arm, the strap slid along the metal strut it was hooked over. The strut was a ten-inch piece that remained from the broken railing. It had bent horizontal, and Aiden’s weight was slowly bending it further. It was beginning to tilt toward the floor far below. The strap of the shotgun slid an inch toward the end before stopping.

  Harper froze. The cavernous room amplified the sound of the rusty catwalk grinding against the pipe, and of metal groaning as it bore weight in ways it was never designed to.

  Cautiously, she looked around. Behind her, there was a ledge that led to the doorway out of the tank room. It was maybe three feet beyond the end of the broken catwalk. If she backed up a step, she could turn and leap for safety.

  She knew what would happen if she did. This end of the catwalk would swing upward, like a seesaw when a kid jumps off. The far side—across the pipe—would plummet. Zero was at the farthest end. He would swing fastest, hardest, take the most vicious whack.

  But Oscar would go down just as badly. It was worse here than in the other tank room where the goons had fallen. This was deeper, older, with machinery more rusting and sharp. If Oscar fell, that would be it.

  Aiden would have little chance either. If she jumped, the portion of the catwalk where he hung would rise. He would swing toward it and might be able to grab hold as it rose upright. But only for a second. Because the catwalk wasn’t secured to the pipe, the entire thing would slide off the far side like a dropped javelin. She held still.

  Zero grasped the railing with one hand. With the other, he held the sawed-off shotgun. He stared past Oscar, past Aiden, at Harper.

  “You gonna jump? Again?” he said. “You always do, don’t you?”

  “Eddie, you don’t know me. You never did,” she said.

  “I know you, bitch. Don’t matter if I call you Harper or Zannah or Fuck Me. You jump. You all do.”

  Aiden stopped reaching for the strut. With every effort he made to grasp it, the strap of the shotgun slid closer to the end. Oscar lay on the catwalk, facing Zero. In the eerie light from the flare, Harper could see that his head was bleeding heavily. He steadied himself and tried, slowly, to scoot backward away from Zero, toward her. Zero swung the shotgun toward him. One-handed, he pumped the slide. The noise was like bones cracking. Oscar stopped crawling.

  “I shoot you, yeah, it’ll change the balance and we’ll probably all fall,” Zero said. “So what? By then, you’ll be dead. So hold still.”

  Oscar held still. Aiden hung beneath the catwalk, his arms straining. The strap of the shotgun slid another inch. Maybe three inches left before it ran off the end of the strut. And gravity didn’t give time-outs.

  “SWAT’s thirty seconds away,” Aiden said. “Put down the weapon.”

  Zero’s eyes widened. His teeth clicked. Rage or amusement, she couldn’t tell.

  Harper held her balance. The catwalk moaned, complaining of the weight it was bearing. Zero continued to level the sawed-off barrel of the shotgun at Oscar.

  An immense wave of emotion hit her. All this time, she had thought of Piper as the little sister she wished she’d had. But Oscar was the real thing, a brother to her. And she understood that she loved him like family: unconditionally.

  She couldn’t just stand there. Standing still was begging for time and entropy to do their work, in the form of Eddie Azerov. But she felt the seconds being sucked away, and knew that she couldn’t save Oscar and Aiden both. Zero was waiting for Aiden to fall. Once the strap of the gun slid off the strut, the balance of weight would shift in Zero’s direction. To even it up again, Zero would blow Oscar off the catwalk. And then he’d run toward the fulcrum, the pipe in the middle of the whole precarious contraption, and he’d empty the magazine at Harper.

  Aiden hung, both hands gripping the strap on the shotgun. He looked up at the strut, and at the strap, a millimeter thick, working its inexorable way to free fall. Then he looked at her.

  “Go,” he said. It was nothing but air and desperation.

  She was five feet from him. It was close enough that maybe, maybe, she could throw herself to the floor and grab his arm, maybe hang on to him so he could get hold of the strut. She inched her foot forward and slid her hand along the railing.

  The catwalk shimmied and started to twist. She backed up again.

  Checkmate.

  She tried to believe it, even as her mind fought the idea. Do something. Jump. Scream. Call down a rain of spikes and claws. Change the balance. Nothing. That was the answer the air was sending her. Nothing.

  Aiden was slipping. Zero stared at her. He was waiting. That was all he had to do now. Wait, and it wouldn’t be long.

  “Now you know how it feels,” he said. “Watching the inevitable. Feeling it all come down on you.”

  She never knew when it became clear to her. A sound, or a visceral memory—instinct making clear what had lurked nearby all along, vague and so wrong.

  It was the sound of a chain, dragging on concrete. And as her nerves fired, this time she didn’t cringe and want to run. This time, she felt a jolt of electricity.

  She whistled.

  From the doorway above Zero’s side of the catwalk, at the entrance to the tank room, the dog padded out of the shadows. It stopped and looked over the edge at them. Then it looked up, across the room, at the doorway leading out. Harper’s hair stood on end.

  “Eddie,” she said. “Did you go into Xenon that night planning to shoot Drew? Did Travis order you to kill him? Or was that you, freestyling?”

  He cocked his head. “Shit happens to targets of opportunity.”

  His words seemed to echo in the pit. Overhead, she heard scuffles and breathing. The dog growled. In the spitting light from the flare, Zero’s teeth were visible. He was smiling at her.

  She held his gaze. Slowly, she extended her arm. A broken stump of metal protruded from the catwalk railing. Gritting her teeth, she jammed her forearm against it and sliced.

  The pain leaped on her. Blood spilled in a jagged tear up her forearm. She pulled it against her chest and let it bleed onto her shirt. Oscar looked at her with dull disbelief.

  Then she whistled, little more than air and spit, and raised her arm again, and said, “Eagle. Sic.”

  The dog gathered itself in the doorway, tiny eyes fizzing in the light from the flare. It jumped nimbly onto the catwalk.

  Zero said, “What?”

  Eagle had eyes, and teeth, only for her. But a hundred pounds of brindled muscle instantly tipped the weight on the catwalk. The balance swung in that direction.

  Harper threw herself down and reached for Aiden. She got his left arm in both her hands and held on. When she took some of his weight, the strap of the shotgun slipped from the end of the strut.

  Zero was off balance, arms wheeling. Oscar was sliding, trying to grip the catwalk but too bloodied and disoriented to manage it. The dog was charging. Zero grabbed the rail and brought the barrel of the shotgun up, finger on the trigger. Harper held on to Aiden’s arm, thinking her gamble was the wrong one, all wrong. Oscar was going to lose.

  Aiden swung, and in his right hand, he brought up the Remington. The barrel swept toward Harper’s face and she closed her eyes and the
n the roar of the shot took everything. The seesaw continued its arc. The echo of gunfire filled every space around her.

  There was a clatter of metal, and the sound of something heavy hitting the tanks and equipment far below. The seesaw stopped its arc. It slowed and swung back toward balance.

  Harper looked. She was still holding on to Aiden’s arm. Beyond the pipe, Oscar was flat on his belly, grasping the catwalk. The dog had crouched in front of him.

  Zero was gone. Aiden had shot him.

  Even as emotion arced through her, she tried to hold on to him. She had little strength left. Blood dripped from her arm. The pain throbbed.

  “Hurry,” she said.

  He swung his right arm up and dropped the shotgun on the catwalk. Then he grabbed hold, taking some of his own weight. He looked up at her.

  “He’s gone. We’re there.”

  He pulled himself up as the sound of the SWAT team drew nearer, men running through the corridor outside. Harper held still, close to him, eyeing Oscar and the dog, holding her breath so a flood of tears wouldn’t send them over for good.

  She looked up at the exit from the tank room. For a second, she saw them: Piper and Travis, eyes shining from the shadows. Piper’s face was riven with some kind of horror. Harper thought she knew what it was. Piper had heard Zero confess. She knew she’d been fooled.

  Travis leaned out and, for a moment, locked eyes with Harper. Frustration and anger spilled from him. She raised a finger and pointed it at him.

  She mouthed, I’ll find you.

  Beyond the entrance to the tank room, flashlights and laser sights appeared, coming quickly. Travis grabbed Piper’s arm and vanished.

  Harper turned toward the entrance. “Don’t shoot.”

  They all had their hands locked behind their heads when the cops finally found them.

  64

  In the end, it took two hours before the Kern County Sheriff’s deputies uncuffed Harper’s hands and declared her a witness, maybe a victim, instead of a threat.