Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Series

by Blake Crouch

  "I have to do this," Jennifer said.

  She stepped forward and Vi stepped back.

  They both froze.

  Jennifer rushed forward, and Vi rushed back.

  Like some terrible dance.

  When they stopped again, they were still six feet apart, both panting.

  Jennifer faked a step and turned, sprinting in the other direction, disappearing around the other side of the water tank.

  Vi stood motionless, listening. She could no longer hear the woman’s footsteps—nothing but the wobble of the railing, the pattering of the rain on the tank.

  She could only see several feet in each direction before the catwalk disappeared around the curve of the water tank.

  The sound of the crying babies had faded away.

  Violet said, "Jennifer?"

  She ventured three steps around the tank—nothing.

  "Jennifer?"

  She never heard the footsteps, only felt a new vibration in the catwalk, turned just in time to see Jennifer charging her in socks, the woman’s face overcome with a sudden ferocious flush, eyes gone cold and determined.

  Predatory.

  Vi watched the knife moving toward her, everything replaced by a diamond-hard streak of self-preservation.

  Twenty-four inches of walkway left little room to parry the oncoming attack, and with Vi already pressed up against the water tank, she simply reacted without thinking, her right hand deflecting the knife thrust, clenching Jennifer’s wrist, and before she realized what she was doing, she’d simultaneously struck Jennifer’s arm above the elbow and jerked her wrist back against the blow.

  The woman’s radius snapped and the knife clattered to the metal walkway and Vi drilled her chestplate with a palm-heel strike.

  From Jennifer’s charge to this moment had taken the blink of an eye, Vi running on instinct and muscle memory. Vi lunged to grab the woman, her fingertips just missing the tracksuit as the backs of Jennifer’s thighs hit the railing, her momentum carrying her torso over the edge.

  Vi caught a glimpse of the heels of her tennis shoes and then the woman was gone but for her fading scream—three and a half seconds of pure, vocalized terror.

  She’d never heard anything to rival the sound of a human body slamming into a concrete slab from a hundred and seventy-five feet.

  A thousand things breaking in the space of a millisecond.

  Then silence.

  Violet gripped the wet railing, staring down at Jennifer, sprawled far below.

  She’d killed before, but they’d been monsters.

  That woman was an innocent.

  This felt...wrong.

  She backpedaled into the water tank and sank down onto the walkway.

  "Please don’t hurt her baby," she said. "Please."

  "You are good," he said. "You are very good."

  "Will you spare her child?"

  "For no reason?"

  "I’ll earn it."

  Vi could feel herself coming unhinged, a psychotic refusal to acknowledge what had just happened.

  "That could be interesting."

  "Promise me."

  "Head back down. We’ll talk when you reach the ground."

  For several minutes, Vi sat there, unmoving.

  The drizzle had become rain and it beat down on her head, a bitter cold beginning to fester someplace deep inside of her.

  Andy

  ON the screen, I watched Violet slowly working her way down the water tower’s ladder. The camera shot came from over a hundred yards away—handheld and constantly zooming in and pulling back to correct the focus. Condensation on the lens lent a foggy overlay to the picture.

  I’d heard everything Luther had said. Watched the fight. Seen Violet throw the woman over the railing.

  Now the screen went black.

  Again, I sat in darkness, the thought crossing my mind that I had just dreamed all of this.

  Sleeping was sight and picture and color.

  Waking this unending night.

  His voice convinced me otherwise.

  "She’s amazing, isn’t she?" Luther said. "It must be something to know her. I mean, really know her. Do you really know her, Andy?"

  "Whatever you want with Violet, use me," I said. "I’ll go along with anything you want, but please, let Violet and her son go. They don’t need to be a part—"

  "You love her, huh?"

  The question more painful than anything I’d experienced sitting in this chair.

  Emotion swelling in my throat.

  "I owe her," Luther said, "and still..."

  His voice trailed off, and for a moment I could only hear him breathing, and the patter of rainfall on plastic.

  Violet

  HER feet touched the concrete slab, and despite the horror of the last fifteen minutes, the relief of being off that tower was palpable.

  She stared over at Jennifer, fought off a surge of nausea.

  Such destruction.

  Pointless.

  Vi climbed back over the barbed wire fence.

  So tired. So cold.

  Think, Violet. Think.

  She scanned the houses and buildings in the distance.

  Nothing moved in the gray, steady rain.

  She had Jennifer’s knife hidden up the right sleeve of her tracksuit, the butt of the handle resting in her palm. It had made descending the slippery ladder more difficult, but now she had it, and she prayed he hadn’t noticed.

  He was watching her, she was sure of it. Had to figure on surveillance cameras everywhere. Maybe someone helping him.

  She could make a run for it, try to reach civilization, but he had her son. Had Andy.

  Vi jogged across the road toward a brick building with a fifty-foot chimney on the far end.

  Time to get out of this freezing rain.

  "Turn left," Luther said.

  Or not.

  She veered away from the abandoned factory.

  "Now run," he said.

  She accelerated, the shuddering footfalls driving pain through her right ear, where she was beginning to suspect that Luther had stitched the earpiece into her skin.

  Otherwise, it felt good to run, the exertion warming her against the chill.

  She ran down the street for several minutes before he spoke again, passing ruined automobiles and more rotting houses.

  "The housing project. See it?"

  "I see it."

  "That’s your destination."

  The building loomed fifty yards away, rising above the oaks whose brown leaves had fallen and become rain-plastered to the pavement.

  "What’s in there, Luther?"

  Violet crossed the street and stopped out-of-breath where the sidewalk entered the courtyard of a six-story structure that resembled a crumbling L.

  "Did I tell you to stop?"

  She went on past a collapsed swingset and an overgrown sandbox, its only remnants the two-by-six board frame. A few toys had been left behind—a front-loader, a big-wheel missing its big wheel, plastic green army men scattered in the grass, casualties from some long-forgotten war.

  She approached the double-doored entrance which had been leveled years ago, the building’s windows glaring down like a hundred black eyes.

  Over the threshold into a darkness that reeked of mildew and decay.

  Her wet shoes tracked over the peeling linoleum, and the farther away she moved from the entrance, the darker, more claustrophobic it grew.

  Where the lobby intersected with the first-floor corridor, she stopped.

  Up and down the hall—pockets of black offset by pockets of dismal light that filtered in from outside.

  "Where am I going?" she asked, but no answer came.

  She let the hunting bowie slide out of her sleeve and into her hand.

  The fear paralyzing, all-consuming.

  For a long time, she stood listening.

  Water dripped.

  The soft moan of wind pushing through one of the upper corridors.

&n
bsp; And then...snapping. Cracking.

  Woodsmoke.

  Violet followed the smell into darkness and then out again.

  Daylight passed through the open door of what had been an apartment and struck a wall covered in graffiti.

  Clothes and toys and all manner of garbage littered the corridor.

  The scent of woodsmoke was getting stronger and now she could see firelight flickering across the wall at the end of the corridor.

  "Hello?" she said, and then softer, "Luther, is that you down there?"

  Violet came to the end.

  In an alcove, she saw the source of the firelight—an oil drum filled with scrap wood burning next to a busted window. Most of the smoke escaped outside, though enough had become trapped to lay down a foggy veil in the room. As she drew near, she could feel the warmth of the fire, and had just noticed the bedroll in the corner under a cardboard box when she heard the crunch of glass directly behind her.

  Violet spun around and the first thing she noticed was the smell—rancid body odor laced with booze. She stumbled back, her heart in her throat, couldn’t see anything in the semidark but the shadow of this foul-smelling person advancing toward her.

  "I have a knife," she said.

  Her back touched the wall. Nowhere else to go.

  Stood there clutching the knife and watching as a filthy man in layer upon layer of tattered clothes stepped into the gray light that filtered in through the window behind her.

  He stopped when he saw the knife.

  Vi could hear the rain striking the pavement outside and the fire hissing in the oil drum and nothing else.

  The man’s face was all but hidden under a wild beard, but his stark blue eyes shone through the tangle, staring her down.

  "What are you doing in my house?" he said.

  "Your house?"

  "My house."

  Vi glanced over at the cardboard box lined with old newspapers, the shopping cart beside it.

  "I was just cold, trying to get out of the rain," she said. "I smelled the smoke, so I came in here."

  "You just want to get warm."

  "That’s all."

  He considered this, said finally, "Put your knife away, and come on over."

  The man walked over to the oil drum. He knelt down and gathered a few scraps of wood and fed them into the fire, then held his hands over the heat.

  Violet set her knife on the windowsill and joined him, extending her hands over the flames.

  She felt lightheaded, attributed this to thirst, hunger, and the smoke she was breathing in.

  "I’m Violet," she said. "I didn’t mean to intrude."

  The man watched her. His beard was a deep, greasy black, and the few patches of skin that showed through, dirty but unwrinkled. Her first impression of him had been an old man, but now she reconsidered.

  "What are you doing out here," he asked, "in the concrete barrens?"

  Violet didn’t know how to answer that question, so she just stared down into the flames and the bed of embers underneath.

  "Don’t you know it’s dangerous out here?" he continued. "Nothing but bangers and people like me."

  In his words, Vi discerned an obvious intelligence.

  "What do you mean, ‘people like me?’" she asked.

  Now he stared into the flames, which had grown brighter.

  Out the window, Vi could see the light draining from the sky.

  Darkness falling with surprising speed.

  "You shouldn’t be here," he said.

  Luther spoke into Violet’s ear, "Tell him you want to stay the night. You have a lot to learn from him."

  She didn’t say anything.

  "Tell him or I will rip Jennifer’s baby apart right now."

  "Can I stay here tonight?" Violet said. "I don’t have anywhere to go."

  The man looked up from the fire and studied her.

  Nodded.

  "What’s your name?" Vi asked.

  It took him five seconds to answer, as if he hadn’t said the word in ages.

  "Matthew," he finally whispered.

  It was full-on dark within the hour. They sat against the wall beside the oil drum, Vi ravenously drinking water from a milk jug.

  Matthew rummaged through a plastic bag of snack food, finally withdrawing a packet of crackers. He offered the bag to Vi.

  She didn’t know when she’d eaten last.

  Reached in and grabbed a bag of potato chips, ripped them open.

  "Thank you," she said.

  They ate quickly and in silence.

  When Vi finished, she stared longingly at the bag again, but didn’t ask.

  "It’s been a lean month," Matthew said, "or I’d offer you more. I have to store up for the winter months."

  "You’re going to stay here?"

  "Where else you think I’m going to go?"

  "What will you do?"

  He pointed toward a stack of books in a corner of the room—must’ve stood six or seven feet tall.

  "When it’s warm, I spend my days at the library, but it’s too far to walk there every day in the cold. I’ve been collecting them. I’m going to read them all, starting at the top."

  "What kind of books are they?"

  "Mostly philosophy. A few classic novels. Occasional comic book thrown in for spice."

  "Philosophy, huh?"

  "I think it’s really the only thing worth reading."

  Violet studied the room. The squalor. Couldn’t imagine spending a night in this place. She knew the vast majority of the homeless suffered from debilitating mental illness, and wondered what storm raged behind Matthew’s vivid blues.

  "I’m in a bad spot," Violet said, her voice just a few notches north of a whisper, wondering if Luther could hear her now. If he could see her.

  Matthew wiped a few crumbs out of his beard and stared at Vi. He lifted a jug of Carla Rossi to his lips and took a generous pull. When he’d finished, he offered it to Violet.

  "No thank you."

  He drank some more, then rose and fed the fire from the impressive pile of scrap wood he’d lined up against the wall.

  "All these abandoned houses," he said with a smirk, "keep me warm and toasty during the snows. An endless supply of firewood."

  The wine seemed to have lifted his spirits, loosened his tongue.

  "I have everything I need here," he said. "Warmth. Drink. Food. Books."

  "What did you have before?"

  He looked at her like she’d cut him but he answered without pause.

  "An electricity bill, a cable bill, a cell phone bill, health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, homeowners insurance, VISA statement, Mastercard statement, Discovery Card statement, Mileage Plus card, AVIS card, mortgage, car payment, truck payment, line of credit, fifty hour work weeks, in-laws, accountants, annual physicals, multivitamins, Wellbutrin, Advil, a book club, a bible study group, rec center membership, golf club membership, a basketball game every other Thursday night, poker at my friend Jim’s every other month, four different stops on Thanksgiving and Christmas, sex twice a week, taxes once a year, waking in the middle of the night every night wondering how to keep everything afloat, and beautiful children who grow up so fast I can’t even look at them."

  He hit the wine again—a long and focused pull.

  His eyes shimmering.

  "I used to live a half mile from here," he said. "I’ve taken siding from my old house to keep a fire going. This place was so vibrant. Kids always playing in the streets. Block parties. A great community."

  "You were an autoworker?"

  "I worked in the GM truck assembly plant for nineteen years."

  "When did it close?"

  "Six years ago, when GM moved the operation to Korea. Everyone lost their jobs. When the plant closed, this town just died. Like the old west come to Michigan. Eight months later, the bank took our house. I didn’t handle it well. My wife left, took my boys with her."