by Shutt, Tom
Brennan stumbled to her side and rolled her over. Her coat had several tears and was dirtied in the fall, but there were only a few minor cuts on her legs and arms. One thin line of blood crossed the ridge of her forehead, and it made the side of her face look much worse than it actually was. Brennan brought his ear close to her mouth and nose, and a small exhalation of warm air told him she was still breathing. It was shallow, but she was still alive.
You have to move, the small voice in his head insisted. I can get you out of here.
That was odd; the voice didn’t usually talk so much, or in the first person. Brennan shook his head. Now wasn’t the time to wonder about his apparent psychosis. There was a much more physical threat to his wellbeing. The SUV that had been passing by during the attack now idled in the middle of the street. Doors opened on either side, and men began to disembark, each one holding a semi-automatic rifle. Dark smoke billowed from the burning wreckage of the car they had just destroyed.
“All right, time to go,” Brennan huffed, jostling Clara in an attempt to wake her up. Her eyelids fluttered slightly but remained closed. Brennan maneuvered his arms beneath her as well as he could and grunted as he heaved her over his shoulder into a fireman’s hold. She didn’t weigh much, in spite of her height, but his body was still dazed and weak from the blast. His knees wobbled as he took shaky steps into a nearby alley. With luck, Brennan figured the smoke would buy them a few seconds as they made their escape.
The wall directly to Brennan’s left gained several new pockmarks as bullets embedded themselves in the brick.
Or not.
Brennan swore loudly as more bullets whizzed past his head like an angry swarm of hornets. He sorely wished he had his gun, but he had left it at home with the assumption that his date night wouldn’t devolve into an ambush by unknown assailants.
Clara started to stir, and Brennan staggered behind a dumpster just as another staccato of gunfire erupted overhead. “What the hell is going on?” she demanded. Her voice echoed the fear that was apparent in her wide eyes. “Arthur…”
Brennan shushed her as politely as he could. It came out as a loud hiss, though, to be heard over the sound of their impending deaths. He looked around desperately for anything that could serve as a weapon. Unlike in the movies, spare metal bars weren’t just casually lying around. He pulled out his cell phone to dial for the police, only to realize that the screen had been shattered. It refused to turn on. “We’re being shot at,” he told her. “Or more likely, I am.”
“By who?”
“Don’t know, and it really isn’t the time to care about that. You need to get out of here as fast as you can and call the cops.”
She looked in dismay at the broken phone in his hand. “My phone was in my purse,” she said.
“Then you’ll have to find someone who can lend you theirs.” They both ducked down further as bullets smashed against the other side of the dumpster. Brennan recognized it as suppression fire, meant to keep them subdued until their attackers could come around the side and face them.
“What about you?” Clara asked. “I can’t just leave you here!”
“Fine, we don’t have time to argue.” It would have been better for her to run for help while he held them off, but now the odds of survival were pretty even either way for both of them. Brennan repositioned himself so that he was facing the open path away from the gunmen. “On three, I’m going to push this dumpster out to block the alley. It’s heavy, and they’ll need to stop firing for a few seconds to move it out of the way.”
“And then what will we do?”
“Run.” He stared intently into her eyes for what was likely the last time. That last bit of insight he kept to himself, though. “On the count of three,” he reminded her.
Gunfire hammered against the dumpster from just a few feet away.
“Three!” Brennan shouted. He threw his weight against the battered hunk of steel, and the dumpster groaned as it started to slide away from the wall. “Run!”
Clara took off down the alley, holding her heels in one hand. He hadn’t told her to go barefoot, but it was faster than attempting to run on several inches of borrowed height.
Smart.
The dumpster continued its slow progress. One of the wheels broke free from its bearing, and that corner abruptly lurched to the ground. Steel grinded against concrete, and while it meant it was harder for Brennan to move it into position, it also meant that his assailants would have the same difficulties.
And Brennan was a larger and stronger man than most.
Finally, the dumpster smashed against the opposite wall of the alley. Slanted on a diagonal, it completely blocked any line of sight from the other side. Brennan coughed up dust as he accidentally inhaled the odor emanating from the dumpster, and then started off down the alley in pursuit of Clara. He turned a corner and saw her dress disappearing around another bend a hundred feet away. Adrenaline surged through his veins as Brennan raced to catch up with her.
They are jumping over the dumpster.
His steps faltered as a sudden realization bashed him over the head like a slugger with a baseball bat. The voice he was hearing wasn’t the usual one that accompanied his power.
Finally, he gets it.
Now that he listened closely, he could hear the difference. It was so obvious that he wondered how he hadn’t heard it before.
You were just shot at and nearly blown up, the other voice commented dryly. More to the point, though, they are catching up to you.
How are you in my head? Brennan demanded. In his experience, the only people with that kind of power were Sleepers, and even then only when the subject was asleep.
Is that really the most pressing issue? I can help you.
True, Brennan’s power chimed in.
He turned the corner and found Clara panting against the wall beneath a broken streetlight. She cried out as he appeared, and Brennan held up his hands to show her he wasn’t a threat. “Clara, are you all right?”
She nodded wearily, not speaking as she caught her breath.
You can help by calling the police, Brennan thought to the mystery voice.
Gunshots were fired in midtown; someone will surely have called them. You two need to find safety, though. They will reach you before the authorities can find your bodies.
Brennan frowned at the imagery, but immediately took solace in the fact that he had an ally where there was none before. It was even more reassuring that his power had backed up her claim, just as it had validated Greg during the summer when he’d promised he could find Bishop.
He looked over at his companion, who was sucking in air with heaving breaths, and then glanced back at the alley they had just vacated. He knew it wasn’t enough of a lead to ditch their pursuers. His body was just about ready to give out, and Clara was on her last legs.
Fine, he replied. How the hell do we get out of here?
They have made it past your barricade.
“Shut up and help me!” Brennan shouted.
Clara shrunk away, startled, and looked at him with searching eyes. “Who are you talking to, Arthur?”
Calm down, came the voice. There is a sewer system that runs directly beneath where you are standing.
You want me to drop ten feet into a river of shit?
Technically, a river of runoff from rain. If you want to wait a little longer, your friends can accommodate you with a slightly shorter fall. About six feet, by my estimate.
Brennan gulped and glanced at Clara, who was still waiting expectantly for a response. “We need to move,” he told her.
“Already? I thought you blocked the way. Aren’t we safe now?”
“Not yet,” he said. He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward a nearby storm drain. “Help me lift this up.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Come on, grab that side,” Brennan ordered. He looped his fingers around the bars of one side and shivered as the cold, wet steel pressed again
st his skin.
“Arthur, I don’t know about—”
“Hey! We do not have time for this right now!”
Jolted into action by his voice, Clara hurried to the other side and set an uneasy hand on the storm drain. “Ooh, it’s cold!” she exclaimed, shivering at the touch.
“On three. Three!”
They heaved together, though Brennan knew he was basically pulling for both of them, and the metal grate lifted slowly out of its rectangular depression in the pavement. Brennan heard a quiet trickle of water coming from the stream below. He kept pulling on the storm drain until its momentum shifted and it slammed heavily against the concrete.
“Go, go, go!” he urged Clara.
She moved so her legs were dangling through the hole in the ground and gave Brennan one last desperate glance. With his nod, she gripped his right arm with both hands, and he gently lowered her as far as he could reach. She let go with a small yelp and fell the few remaining feet. Her foot slipped on the slimy stone below, and she collapsed into a shallow puddle of water.
Ten seconds.
Brennan quickly threaded his legs into the opening and propped himself up with his elbows on street level. His body wanted to let gravity do its work, but he forced his one good arm to reach out and grab the metal bars of the heavy storm drain. He flexed and brought it slowly to a standing position, where the slightest shift of its weight in either direction could send it crashing to the ground.
Five seconds!
Brennan let himself fall, his left arm flailing helplessly as he held on tight with the right. The storm drain fell back into its depression. Brennan felt, more than heard, the pop of his shoulder sliding out of place as his descent jerked to a halt, and his grip went slack. He fell like a rag doll to the ground and bit back a scream as he landed on the freshly dislocated shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Clara asked. She gingerly touched the arm he was cradling, and this time Brennan cried out in pain.
Be quiet, warned the anonymous witness. Keep out of sight and don’t make a sound. They are right on top of you.
Brennan couldn’t move much, but he managed to inch his body out of the direct view coming in through the storm drain. Clara seemed to understand what he was doing and helped keep pressure off his shoulder as he moved.
“Your head is bleeding,” she whispered.
He simply nodded and made a shushing gesture, minus the finger to the lips. Clara mistook his pursed lips as a sign for a kiss and, despite the gray water and gunmen surrounding them, planted her lips upon his. Either way, it stopped her from talking.
Muffled voices shouted out to each other in the alley above; Brennan could only hear enough to recognize they were speaking in German. They sounded angry, though, that much was clear. None of them had heard the storm drain slam shut, or else they would have already been rappelling into the tunnel.
Clara broke off the kiss and sat with her back against the curved wall, seemingly no longer worried about dirtying her dress. She had a dazed, far-off look in her eyes, and she held her hand lightly against her stomach. Shock could be hard on people, especially those so unaccustomed to dangerous situations.
The angry German shouting devolved into errant grumbling as the gunmen started tearing apart the alley. Brennan heard trash cans crashing to the ground, and several doors were pounded by heavy fists. There was no trace of their prey.
Brennan slipped in and out of consciousness a few times, and he did not know how much time had passed until the gunmen disappeared for good. At one point, he simply opened his eyes and heard nothing but the water trickling past his head and Clara on the verge of hyperventilating.
With a Herculean effort and a groan of pain, Brennan wriggled himself into a sitting position. He looked down with clear eyes at the damage to his left arm. It was difficult to see in the dark, but he guessed it had been burned and bloodied in the car blast. It didn’t hurt anymore, which he took to be a bad sign. His other arm, however, responded to every minor movement with a plethora of painful signals, which Brennan didn’t find any more comforting.
“You’re in pain,” Clara said in a hollow voice. Her eyes were wide and fully devoted to him, but Brennan could see she had a thousand-mile stare.
“I think I dislocated it.”
“Do you want me to pop it back into place?” she asked.
Brennan had done that exact thing once or twice, and the experience never got any less painful. Also, he had either done it himself or had a skilled partner to take care of it, and Clara was definitely not a trained Sleeper. “That sort of thing only works in the movies,” he said, letting her down gently. “But thanks.”
She nodded dully and resumed staring at the wall.
Are you still there? Brennan asked, directing the thought to the psychic Samaritan. He didn’t get a response.
The presence of someone with that kind of power was puzzling as well. They should not have been able to get inside Brennan’s head the way they had, especially when he was fully awake. Another thought occurred to him, and he briefly wondered if this was all some terrible nightmare. It would explain how a Sleeper had infiltrated his mind and—
And what, exactly? Helped you? How sinister of me, the voice replied suddenly. Trust me, you are awake. This is real. Also, you should see a doctor.
About the voices in my head?
That would be a good reason, though I was referring to your head wound. And that arm. There was a pause. And that other arm.
I’m a wreck, I get it, Brennan thought, surprising himself with how casually he was carrying on this non-verbal conversation. Just one question: are you a Sleeper?
No, came the immediate reply.
Who are you?
Brennan waited several long minutes without getting a reply. He looked over at Clara, who was making a strange lurching motion.
“We need to get to a hospital,” Brennan said. “You need to get checked out as well.”
“Sounds good,” she croaked. Less than a second later, she turned her head and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the tunnel floor. Either the wine had finally caught up to her, exacerbated by all of the running around, or else she just realized how close they had been to death. She wiped at her mouth and held her head as she looked at Brennan. “Is this what it’s always like?”
“Welcome to my life, baby. Exciting enough for you?”
Clara sighed and rose to her feet. “A little too exciting,” she said. “Come on, let’s get you to a doctor.”
Chapter Fourteen
Friday morning held all the promise in the world as Alex Brüding rolled out of bed.
She felt better than she had in a long time, in spite of the long night. Arthur Brennan was a much more interesting man than she had first envisioned. From the moment she touched his mind, she knew he was a Sleeper; the architecture of his thoughts was so similar to that of Benjamin. It was one thing for her to be told who he was, and another thing entirely to experience that intimate contact for herself.
Beneath the excitement over finally finding somebody worthy of her interest, Alex felt a bubbling anger toward Heinrich that frothed like a steaming stew threatening to boil over. She had given explicit orders that the target was not to be harmed. Or had she?
Alex closed her eyes and looked within herself. In her youth, she had imagined her mind as a long series of filing cabinets, each one filled with folders that neatly contained all of her thoughts and memories in an orderly manner that allowed her to access them at will. Somewhere along the line, she had made the upgrade to a fully computerized system.
Now, she walked among massive computer hard drives. They weren’t to scale or even technically accurate representations, but they served their purpose. Her memories pulsed like fine gemstones on the surface of each storage unit. She brought forth the memory of her rendezvous with Heinrich and replayed it.
The detective will not be killed during this operation.
Alex sighed loudly and walked into the ki
tchen. His methods were brutal and unorthodox, but Heinrich had stayed true to the letter of the agreement. She was honor-bound to pay him the remaining half of the money later this afternoon.
And without actually getting Brennan on the right path to catch this killer, she thought glumly. She opened a fresh bag of imported beans, bought late last night after her subterfuge with Brennan, and started the percolating process that would bring her up to one hundred percent.
When she’d been inside Brennan’s mind, Alex had picked up more information about the murders. Tonight was the night. If she didn’t take a more active role in the investigation, in Brennan’s life personally, then somebody else would fall victim to the serial killer’s rampage. Considering that she was among a minority of those in Odols with powers, there was a distinct possibility that she could be the next target.
“I could always change my name, leave the country, and never look back,” she said to the cup slowly being filled with black gold. She chewed her lower lip. “Benjamin would never leave me in peace for deserting him, though. I would be just as hunted by his Sleepers,” she said, imbuing the last word with disdain.
That was another concern she had to contend with. Now that she was on Benjamin’s radar, Alex was unsure of what his motives would be. Her quiet and content life of luxury was compromised, and she found herself all too easily enticed by these secret bouts of espionage.
Her coffee finished percolating, and she poured some into a wide-mouthed mug. She sighed contently as she inhaled its earthy aroma. There were few things in the world more satisfying than her morning brew.
Serial killer hunting aside, today was going to be a busy one. Alex needed to have a long chat with her father over how they could treat her mother over her final few months. Her long days of suffering were inevitable; she at least deserved to feel the sun on her skin and get out of bed more than once every few weeks.
She was also obligated to pay off the remaining half of her debt to Heinrich, as well as find a way to keep her pet detective alive long enough to fulfill his purpose to Benjamin. If she held off on paying Heinrich, his men would be less likely to hunt for Brennan, waiting as they were for their cut of the payment.