“My men,” he croaked out, “will kill your friends unless I order them not to. Put me down.” I pretended to think about it while I let his face turn blotchy. Then I shrugged and stepped back.
He was surprisingly unruffled. “My client warned me about you.” He rubbed his throat and raised his eyebrows. “But you don’t worry me. I didn’t get where I am by being the strongest or the fastest. I got here by being smarter than all the tough guys I’ve buried over the years. See, I’m your protection. Getting in my good graces insures that nothing happens to you and yours in the future. Now, stay on my good side and give me the objects.”
“Don’t do it.” Henry was standing now, the tired lines of his face set and hard. “Kill him and get rid of the pieces. Better that his men kill all of us than let Piotr have them.”
“He’s … right. Do it.” The voice was weak and thready, but it sounded out clearly. Leon was awake. “Kill him.”
Dom’s cool indifference slipped a little. I’ll give him credit, it wasn’t by much, and it only lasted for a fraction of a second, but I saw the fear. “If that’s what you want. But you’ll be throwing more than just your own lives away. Leon’s got a momma and a sister. His sister has a baby. You understand me?”
Sheets rustled as Leon tilted his head forward. “Fuck you.” The rage on Leon’s face was naked and pure. Dominic didn’t step back from the Marine, but in his shoes I might have.
“Sounds like bullshit to me,” said Henry. “You might have paid your men enough to kill us if you don’t come out. And they might even do it instead of just keeping the money and walking away. But the idea that they would risk committing half a dozen homicides after you’re dead and gone? Unlikely.”
Dom smiled. “But you don’t know that. I have friends, too. And in my business, we tend to take a dim view when one of us is taken out. The perpetrators usually end up as chunks in a lake somewhere to discourage the idea that any of us can be killed without serious repercussions.”
“You’ll still be dead.”
“That’s enough.” I took the duffel from Anne. “Did Piotr tell you what you were stealing?”
“No, and I didn’t ask. That’s not how it works. Give me the bag.”
“How do you know that I won’t follow you and try to get them back?”
He shrugged. “If you leave the hospital within an hour of my departure, you’re friends will die, whether you catch up to me or not. Now give me the bag, I won’t ask again.”
I passed him the bag. He took it from me and unzipped it. He reached inside for a moment, and then pulled his hand back and stared into the dark interior before zipping it back up. He looked like he had put his hand in something rotten.
Piotr must have told him that he could check for fakes by touching the pieces, but I’m sure he wasn’t prepared for the sick dread that came with it. He swallowed and locked eyes with me for a moment. And for that moment, I could tell that he was wondering what he had gotten himself into.
“You probably don’t want to sleep too close to those. The last person that spent time near one ended up living in her own filth and drawing on the walls. You sure you want them?”
“I do my job.” His game face came back. “Don’t leave here for an hour. Once I make the delivery, I’ll call off my men.”
Anne stepped forward. “How will we know when that is?”
“Well, beautiful, you’ll know because these two gentlemen will keep sucking air. If they die badly in the next couple of days, then I guess I didn’t make it.”
He tipped an imaginary hat at her, and then left the room. I checked the clock, and then sat down next to Henry.
He looked tired and defeated. “You made a mistake.”
“He’ll lead me to Piotr.”
“Maybe. And maybe by the time you catch up, he’ll have had all the altar pieces long enough so that it doesn’t matter. It’s too big a risk to take.”
“You know what he’s doing. I can’t let him keep butchering people for his pit or turning them into bags. You know what he’s doing out there, and what he’ll keep doing if we don’t stop him.”
Henry leaned in. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me. “I don’t think we do know what he’s doing, Abe. He wasn’t done when we surprised him in Warsaw. You remember the room that he had the altar set up in?”
I did. The horror of the men that formed the base of the altar, pierced through the eyes but still alive. I remembered the half-finished scaffolding on the walls, and the piles of cable and iron rods in the corners. “I remember.”
“What was all that for? It surely wasn’t just to make a blood-filled fountain of youth, or he’d have used it already and been gone. He thought that whatever he was doing would give him revenge against the people who killed his country and his family.” A cold hand squeezed my guts. “He needs those pieces. He needs them for something that could give him his revenge against an entire nation.”
Henry was right. I had made a mistake.
19
Engaging Dominic had exhausted Leon, wiping out what few reserves he had left. He was sleeping. I gestured at him with my head. “How’s he doing?”
Henry glanced at Leon, maybe unconsciously, maybe to see if he was really asleep. “Crushed vertebrae and a severed spinal cord. He’ll live, but he won’t walk again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Carlos’s mother came to the hospital yesterday, she’s known Leon since he was a boy. You could see the envy in her eyes, that I still had Leon. She knows how lucky I am. How lucky he is. I know he won’t see it that way when he finds out, but it’s a blessing to be alive.”
“He doesn’t know?”
“Not yet. He’s on a lot of drugs for the pain. We’ll talk when he has a clear head and can stay awake for more than five minutes.”
Anne put a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Is there anything we can do?”
“Not giving the altar pieces away would have been good. Getting them back would be nice, too.”
“He could be anywhere by the time we get out of here. We can’t leave for an hour.”
He looked up at her, right in the eyes. “Yes, you can.”
She stared back at him, her jaw set.
I broke the silence. “We can, and we will. Don’t let Dom define your choices for you. He said his men would come for Henry and Leon if we left. How will they know?”
Anne nodded. “Because they’re here, watching.”
“I figure one in the lobby by the elevators, and one in each of the two stairwells, if they have that many guys. If we try and leave the floor, one of them will see us.”
“So, what? Try and sneak out some other way?”
“I’m afraid not. Dom is already gone. The only way to find him now is to know where he’s going. So, we have to grab his goons before the hour is up and they leave the hospital. Once they go, the next time we encounter them will be via a rifle round to the back of the skull. Dom would have done it tonight if the hospital weren’t so public. This is just a fleeting moment of safety while he gets clear. After an hour, we’re fair game once we’re out in the open. They have to kill us, Anne. Piotr doesn’t want us coming after the pieces, and we’ve seen Dom’s face.”
Henry turned to me. “You want to kill them.”
“As they say, it’s us or them.”
“I’m not talking about our options, or what course of action you’re suggesting. You want to kill them.”
“Does it matter? It’s not like we have a choice here.”
“First of all, it’s not your choice. Leon and I? We’re the hostages, not you. Second, you’re justifying what you’ve already decided to do. Even if they hadn’t threatened us, you’d still be presenting an argument for killing them.”
“Your point?”
“Take off that bandage.”
“What?”
“Wrapped around your hand. Take it off.”
I looked at my hand. I was still wearing the torn strip of my shirt wrapp
ed around it, covering the deep wound that I had gotten from Georgia’s butcher knife. The blood had dried to a dirty-looking rust brown, and the edges were crusty. “What does this have to do with me being some kind of psycho?”
“Do it and I’ll tell you.”
I untied the knot, difficult with one hand, and unwrapped the long strip of my old shirt. The creases in my palm were black with old blood, but the skin was unbroken. There was no scar.
It wasn’t a surprise to me, but I was uncomfortable revealing it to other people, like it was a shameful admission that there was something wrong with me. It was proof that I was no longer one of them. It made me an outsider.
Anne sucked in her breath. Henry just looked at my hand and nodded. “You were changed in more ways than one when you fell into that pool. You don’t age and wounds can’t mark you for long.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“If that was the extent of your metamorphosis, I would agree. But it wasn’t. You were angrier, even bloodthirsty after that. You’re faster and stronger, too. Anne, when Abe attacked Dominic earlier, what did it remind you of?”
“I wasn’t attacking him, I was forcing him to reveal his plan for controlling us, and it worked.”
Anne looked away before she answered. “You already know.”
Henry’s tone softened. “But he doesn’t. Tell him.”
I knew what she was going to say, and I didn’t want to hear it.
“A bag. He moved like one of those things. Too fast. Aggressive.”
“It’s not just that you share some of their physical traits, Abe. Remember the attack back at the house? That queen worm was in a frenzy, attacking Leon with everything it had. Until you touched it. It went docile, just like that. Instantly. Instinctively. It let you unwrap it from around Leon, and then just hung there in your hands until Anne killed it.”
“So you’re saying that I’m one of them? That it recognized someone from its own team? Those things are mindless, it doesn’t know anything.”
Henry shrugged. “I’m just saying that ever since you emerged from that pit, you’ve shared some of their traits, body and mind. You need to recognize that fact so that you can fight it. And it starts with you not killing those men.”
“I’m not one of them. If I were, I would have just taken the pieces to Piotr, right? I wouldn’t have killed two of them at your house.”
Henry put one of his perfect hands on my arm. “I know. You have free will. Maybe not as free you once were, but still free. All that means is that you have to fight harder to be the man you used to be. If you act like you’re not affected, it’s just going to lead you down a hole. Once you start believing that these decisions are all yours, you’ll defend them. You’ll believe whatever reasons you come up with, you’ll have to, and sooner or later, you and this influence will be in total agreement.”
“Are you a psychologist now, Professor?”
He shrugged. “I’m just an old man. But I know what I know. Justifying an action isn’t the same thing as judging that action. You need to decide who wants to kill those men. Is it really you?”
I sat down and closed my eyes. He was wrong. If someone declares that they’re going to murder me or mine, I have no problem killing them. That’s always been true for me. Maybe in the past I needed more provocation than just threatening it, so maybe I was a little more hair-trigger, but the basic behavior was the same.
But Henry was right about one thing. My temper was much worse. That guy ogling Anne in the hotel should have just annoyed me. Instead I lost my temper and hurt him. I didn’t decide to, I just did it. For that moment, I wasn’t in control.
I also lied about attacking Dominic. It wasn’t all part of my grand plan. I just barely stopped myself from breaking his neck. As long as I stayed by myself on the farm, I didn’t have to deal with it, but now back in the world, I could see how bad it had gotten. Henry was wrong about the symptom, but right about the disease.
“Okay. No killing. But these goons have to be dealt with. I have to know where Dominic is going.”
“That’s fine.”
“You realize that if I don’t kill them, Dominic is going to hear that I made them talk. Somebody is going to come for you eventually.”
“I’ll take that chance. Maybe if you catch up with him before that happens, you can talk him out of it.”
“You think so?”
“I have faith in you.”
20
Few things are as lonely as an empty hospital hallway. I don’t know if it’s the smell, the cold fluorescent lighting, or even the constant faint noises that point to activity and life just around some distant corner, but the end result always depressed me. I’d spent a long time in corridors like this at the end of Maggie’s life, and it was exactly the same. I might be there now, the intervening miles and years suddenly meaningless.
I had left Anne behind in the room. This wasn’t going to be pretty, and I figured that she’d been through enough at Georgia’s house. Despite Henry’s willingness to take his chances, there was no way I was letting these pieces of shit kill my friends. If it worked out that they got to keep breathing after I got what I wanted, fine. But I wasn’t going to go out of my way to coddle them.
I listened at the stairwell door. In order to be sure that we couldn’t leave the floor, they would have to watch the stairwells and the elevators here. Once we got off of this floor, it would be impossible to watch all of the possible exits from the hospital without a small army. Therefore, there must be someone watching the stairs on this floor. It was quiet behind the door, so I pushed it open and stepped inside.
As I suspected, my target was standing in the corner away from the door at the top of the stairs. He was about twenty-five or so, and wearing a red and white Nike jogging suit with the top unzipped, showing a wife beater T-shirt underneath. His hair was slicked back and he was wearing gold around his neck and on both wrists.
Actually seeing one of the men sent to kill us somehow made it more real to me, rubbed my face in it. Fire licked up from my belly and I tried to keep it from becoming more.
He recognized me as soon as I came through the door and went for his gun, hidden in the small of his back. He didn’t make it.
I hit him in the solar plexus hard enough to bounce him off the wall and he dropped to his knees on the concrete landing. I took his gun out of his waistband and tucked it behind my back. It was a Glock, so I didn’t have to worry about checking the safety.
He surprised me and came up off of his knees hard, powering an uppercut to my groin. Sharp, nauseating pain hammered into me. The restraint that I was fighting to maintain vanished in that instant, along with any plans I had to extract information from him. I was no longer thinking in human terms of strategy and manipulation. I could feel my lips split into a savage grimace.
I lifted him off the floor by his shoulders and threw him down the stairs.
Before he hit the ground I leapt after him, slamming into the concrete on the landing below a split second after he did. His face was bloody and his arm had too many joints in it.
His next words came out shrill. “You fucked up, man. Me and my boys are gonna kill you for this. Kill you, your bitch, and your nigger friends, too.”
He started to say something else, but I have no idea what. I yanked him off the floor with a snarl and threw him bodily back up the stairs. It felt good.
He sailed in a graceful arc up the stairwell until his trajectory was interrupted by the concrete wall at the landing where we started. He hit with a nice meaty slap and dropped like a rock.
I raced up the stairs and pounced on his prone form. My fingers dug into his flesh, desperate to crush and tear. My face was inches from his, my eyes drinking in his terror. Blood began to well up under my hands.
The urge to hook my fingers through his ribcage and tear him in half faltered. Begging and sobbing registered in my consciousness and I became aware of the acrid smell of urine and the tight muscles in my face
and jaw.
I let go of him and stepped back. Tried to focus on what he was saying.
“Elevator. By the elevator.”
Information. I wanted information. I took his wallet and cell phone.
“How many? Of you?” I focused. “How many of you are there?”
“Three. Just three. One by the elevator and one in a car in the parking lot.” His eyes searched my face in terror. This was obviously not the first time he’d volunteered this information in the last few seconds.
“The guy who hired you. Dominic. Where can I find him?” The words came easier now.
“Downtown Boulder, in Colorado. Dom has a front there, a real estate office. It’s called Coyote Realty. He’ll go back there, I promise. He will.”
“Don’t make any sounds. Don’t leave the stairwell.”
He shook his head violently up and down. Looking at him I could see that he was badly injured. One arm and one leg were clearly broken, and from the sound of his breathing I had probably damaged his ribs.
He wasn’t leaving under his own power any time soon. Remorse touched me. I hoped that the staff found him before too long.
I wiped my hands clean on his clothes, then took the stairs down to the next floor and exited into another, identical hospital hallway. Getting close to the guy in the car would be difficult, so I decided to handle the one at the elevator first.
I took some deep breaths and tried to calm down. I was doing the right thing. I was in control. Henry was wrong. Those three thoughts chased themselves around my head in a loop.
I needed to focus on what I was doing. I walked down the corridor and took the elevator up, back to the floor I started on. I couldn’t approach a sentry stationed near the elevators by coming at him down the hallway, that would give him plenty of time to get out his cell phone. Or worse, grab a hostage from the nurse’s station next to the elevators.
But if I popped out of the elevator ten feet away from him, I could get to him before he could react. I needed to contain him before he could pull his gun on me. For both of our sakes.
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