Rooke

by Callie Hart

“What?”

  “Say you’re sorry. For lying to me.”

  I stare at the blank, anonymous knit of the woolen mask over his face. I stare at the watery blue of his irises, the bloodshot threads of broken capillaries in his eyes, the white crust of dried spit in the corners of his mouth. His lips are thin, spiteful lips that are twisted into angry, narrow lines. “I can’t—”

  I don’t finish my sentence. Lightning strikes me in the head. Or rather lightning bursts out of my head as the man takes hold of me and slams me backwards into the wall. I can’t see for a second. A weightless sense of the world tilting settles in the pit of my stomach. I can hear the weird, wet rasp of oxygen trying to get into my lungs and failing.

  His hand is around my throat. A strange prickling sensation creeps up around the sides of my head, over my cheeks, over my temples, hot, tight, unpleasant and frightening. Everything all at once. “Say you’re sorry,” he growls.

  “I’m…I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Better. Much better. Now. Take your shoes off.” He releases me, and the rush of blood to my head is dizzying. Slowly, I stoop down, removing the black pump first from my left foot and then from my right. I stand in my stockings, shivering despite the heat pumping from the floor vents.

  “Let’s go, Doc.” The man holds my hand like he’s my lover. He guides me around my desk this time, pulling me wide of the corner so I don’t hurt myself again. His sudden care is strange, given the fact that he just slammed my head into the wall.

  Out in the hallway, my stockinged feet skate on the buffed, slippery floor. The man pushes me to the left, grunting under his breath. “What’s down there?” he demands.

  “En…engineering. The system controls for the entire museum. Water pumps and…I don’t know. Air conditioning units.”

  He spins me around, facing me in the opposite direction. “And that way?”

  “Storage. Old exhibit pieces. The servers for our IT systems.”

  “What about the money?”

  “They take the money off site every night. They drop it at the bank. The night deposit. They don’t keep anything here.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Something hard and round presses between my shoulder blades. The fear that I experience in this moment is all consuming. It brings me back into myself, making my vision finally sharpen. It’s as if the world comes back into focus, growing lighter and brighter all at once. He doesn’t want to hear the truth. Telling the truth makes him mad, which in turn causes him to hurt me. I don’t want him to hurt me anymore, so I hold my hand up, quickly speaking before he can do anything. “Upstairs. Upstairs, on the fourth floor. They keep a little money up there. And some jewelry. Some of the Egyptian artifacts that were loaned to the museum from Cairo.” The museum has never had any artefacts loaned to it from Cairo. There’s never been an Egyptian exhibition here at all. The most valuable item in the entire building are the dinosaur remains on the ground floor, probably the most famous exhibition of all, but there’s no way for him to walk out of here with a T-Rex tibia, and no way for him to make any cash on it even if he did manage to escape with it. Perhaps he knows this. Perhaps he doesn’t. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he says, “I’m going to let you into a little secret, Doc. That security guard downstairs? The pretty one with the glasses? I slit her throat from ear to fucking ear. She bled out all over the floor. I watched as she died. She didn’t do as she was told, so I had to teach her a lesson. I want you to know this, because I need you to know what will happen to you if you don’t do as you are told. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? Do you understand?”

  The ground seesaws beneath my feet. It feels like I’m on the deck of a ship that’s being pitched about in a violent storm. “Yes. I hear you. I understand.” I wish I hadn’t said the fourth floor now. There are no escape routes up there. There are no easily accessible emergency exits, and at this time of day there won’t be any security guards either. There’s nothing but meeting rooms and more storage. I may have signed my own death warrant by suggesting we go up there. It was simply the first place that came into my head.

  The guy shoves me again, urging me forward. I place one foot in front of the other, holding my breath, thinking frantically. I can feel the screen of my cell phone pressing up against the bare skin of my back underneath my loose shirt. Tucked into my waistband, I know it isn’t going anywhere. I have no idea if the call connected with Ali, though. And if it did, I have no idea if she can hear anything that’s being said. There’s every chance she thought I pocket dialed her and hung up. There’s every chance that no one knows what’s going on here and I am about to die.

  SIXTEEN

  HEARSAY

  ROOKE

  You get used to the sound of sirens in New York. They are part of the sonic landscape, a staccato punctuation to the rhythm of the city. I remember just after I got out of juvi, I was laying in bed late at night, trying to sleep, and I couldn’t drift off. For hours I lay there, tossing and turning, unable to figure out what was troubling me, setting me on edge, until it came to me: there were no sirens. No ambulances. No police. No fire fighters. A heavy mantle of silence rested over the city outside my window and it felt as if time had somehow stopped, and everything was frozen still on the quiet streets below my bedroom window. I held my breath and I waited. The world, despite everything that pointed toward a darker outcome, continued to turn.

  That’s how I felt when I woke up next to Sasha and remembered I have to meet with my mother this morning—as if some dark, impending sense of doom were hanging over me, and for no good reason. Meetings with Sim Blackheath are always shitty, though. Beyond shitty. If I could avoid them altogether I would, but she’s a fucking viper. She loves to interfere, and she loves to show up unannounced to wreak havoc in my life. Ridiculous, but what the fuck. Not much to be done about it. Car thieves have mothers, too. I almost laugh out loud when I imagine telling her about Sasha.

  There’s ice on the boards as I walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Ice on the thick metal struts. Ice caked like frosting on the lovelocks clasped tightly around the steel brackets that support the dim Victorian looking lights. Beneath my feet, traffic slowly rumbles, progress marked at a sluggish ten miles an hour. Great clouds of fog billow from people’s mouths, and on the other side of the river, in Manhattan, a melancholy chorus of sirens is waking up Wall Street. Unlike that night after I got out of juvi, I can hear them plain as day now over the thump of the music I’m listening to, the thick pads of my (supposedly) noise cancelling headphones keeping the shells of my ears warm. Even so early in the morning, and even with the biting wind clawing at people’s scarves and winding its way down the backs of people’s jackets, there are tourists planted directly in the middle of the walkway, mouths hanging open in concentration as they try to capture the perfect angle of the bridge soaring up over their heads.

  I stop at the halfway point to smoke a cigarette. I’ve all but given up—I maybe smoke one cigarette a day. Two or three if I’m particularly stressed out. I’m dragging my feet toward my destination, so loitering on the bridge while I burn my way through a Marlboro seems like a prudent way to kill a minute or two. I remove my headphones, letting them sit around my neck as I rummage in my pockets for my lighter.

  “…two people. Maybe three. They’ve been trapped inside the building since seven this morning. Someone saw the body laying on the ground in the foyer.”

  “Why the hell would someone try to rob the place? It doesn’t even make any sense.”

  Conversation swells around me as I strike the wheel of the lighter and hold the small, guttering flame to the end of my smoke.

  “…cops everywhere. The road’s closed off.”

  “My meeting’s been cancelled. They’re saying there’s more than one shooter in there.”

  My ears prick at the sound of that. Shooter?

  “I always said museums are dangerous. Crowded. So many people all over the place. A terrorist attack in a place lik
e that would create complete chaos.”

  “It’s not a terrorist attack, Mike. It’s just some drunk. They said so on the news.”

  “Yeah. Right. They’re not gonna come out and say it right away, are they? That would create mass panic. They’d tell us after the fact. I heard they found these huge vats of agent orange in a disused subway station last week…”

  The men talking move on. I look around, searching the faces of the other pedestrians making their way along the bridge, and it takes less than a second to realize that something has happened. Something bad. I step out in front of two women, businesswomen in thick coats with hats pulled down low over their ears, their shoulders hunched up around their ears, braced against the cold.

  “Excuse me. Do you know what’s going on? Everyone’s talking—”

  It’s almost as if they’ve been waiting for someone to ask them. The taller of the two women nods enthusiastically. “Some psychopath broke into the Natural History Museum this morning and killed one of the security guards. There could be more people dead inside, but the police are playing it safe. They aren’t letting anyone in until they’ve managed to search the entire building.”

  The shorter, rounder woman with fogged up glasses nods, too. “They showed a picture of the dead security guard’s foot on the news. There was blood on the floor everywhere.”

  She continues to talk, but I don’t really hear what she’s saying; it’s as though my ears are stuffed with cotton wool. The museum? Someone’s broken into the museum? Sasha’s Museum? Words bounce around inside my head. Words like agent orange, and shooter, and terrorist, and blood. My hands are cold and stiff as I pat myself down, looking for the familiar shape of my cell phone in one of my pockets.

  “Are you okay? Sir, are you all right? You look a little spooked.” The tall woman places a hand on my shoulder. I can’t even feel the contact through my thick down jacket.

  “Yes, I, uh…I’m fine. Thank you.” I move out of the way, leaning against the railing as I shrug my backpack from my shoulders, continuing my search for my phone. I grip the butt of my cigarette between my teeth and I will my hands to function as I fumble with the zips. Finally I find it. I go to contacts and bring up Oscar’s number, then hit call. He answers on the fourth ring.

  “They called about twenty minutes ago,” he tells me. “Said the museum was on lockdown and I wasn’t to come into work. I don’t have a clue what’s going on over there but the blasted news reporters are making out like the place is under siege or something.”

  I’m so relieved he’s okay that for a moment it feels like I can’t breathe. “Do they know who else is inside? Do people normally go into work that early? Apart from the security crew?” It was just past dawn when I left Sasha to go home and shower, but she was dressed and looked ready to leave the house. She didn’t say if she was going straight to work, though.

  “Not usually,” Oscar says slowly. “Some of the staff do like to go in and get work done before the place opens to the public. It’s so noisy during the day, you see. But I don’t think anyone would have been in there at seven this morning. I doubt that very much.”

  “Oscar. What time does Sasha normally go into work? Is there any chance she could be inside that building?”

  “Sasha?” I haven’t mentioned Sasha to my grandfather since the first day I met her at the museum. He must be really fucking confused right now.

  “Yes. Sasha.”

  The roar of silence on the other end of the phone is deafening.

  “Oscar. C’mon.”

  “She does go in very early sometimes,” he says. “If there is anyone in there, then…there’s a good chance that it’s her.”

  SEVENTEEN

  ESCAPE

  SASHA

  My body feels like it’s being tugged in five different directions. The marble floor is cold beneath me, but for some reason my body feels really hot. Scalding, in fact, like I’ve been laying out in the sun for too long. I really should remember to wear sunscreen. Andrew always says I’m going to really mess up my skin if I don’t take better care of…

  Christopher.

  Where’s Christopher?

  I open my eyes, and my head feels like it’s splintering apart. I need a drink. Goddamn it, I really need a drink. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth, and…copper? Why does my mouth taste of copper? I try to roll onto my back, but my body feels so incredibly heavy. I’m made of lead. I’m made of stone.

  “Wakey wakey, Sleeping Beauty.”

  I try to turn my head toward the voice, but I can’t seem to manage it. I open my eyes instead, wincing against the bright light that stabs at my eyes. The light flares and then dims, not so bright after all. In fact, the room I’m in is quite dark, and smells dry, like paper or cardboard.

  “I was beginning to think you might be dead,” a voice says. I hear a scraping noise to my right, followed by a metallic tinging sound. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him crouching there, his back against the wall, something bright and sharp flashing in dirty, calloused hands. I remember then. I remember glass smashing, and overwhelming, terrible pain. I remember climbing the stairs, and I remember the anger in his voice when he realized there was nothing up here to steal, nothing worth any real money to him. After that, everything is blissfully hazy.

  “While you’ve been sleeping, I’ve been trying to decide,” the man says. He’s still wearing that ski mask over his head, but his gloves are gone now, and I can see the dark smudge of a tattoo on the back of his hand. Something large and black. A coat of arms? A shield of some kind? I can’t make out the design, but the shape of the tattoo is familiar to me.

  “I’ve been trying to decide if I’m going to let you live,” he continues. His voice is measured and even. Calm almost, though a hint of madness lurks beneath the tone of his words. “Rich white bitches like you have big houses and plenty of money, though. I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps this wasn’t a total waste of time.” He snorts, a wet, repulsive sound, and hawks phlegm into the back of his throat. He spits it onto the floor, then hums quietly to himself for a second. “You know that there’s a way out of here, right? A back door or something. You need to take me to your place. You need to give me your money, Doc. It’s the only way I can help you.”

  “Help…me?” My voice is cracked. It feels like all of me has cracked into a million little pieces.

  “Yes. There are rules in these situations. They exist in order to maintain a clear line between the person in charge, and…the other person.”

  He doesn’t want to say victim? He knows that’s what I am, surely? He wasn’t so shy about this when he was smashing my head into a wall downstairs.

  “You were meant to tell me the truth,” he says. “You were meant to do everything I told you to, and you were meant to tell the truth. That way, I could get what I came here for and you could go on your merry way. But now?”

  That sounds ominous. I don’t like the way that sounds at all. The guy in the ski mask tuts disapprovingly. “I’m supposed to kill you now,” he informs me. “I can’t really see any other way out of it.”

  “You don’t have to. You don’t have to kill me. Not if you don’t want to.”

  The guy in the ski mask sighs. “Of course I want to. Wanting isn’t relevant. I have to follow the rules, even if you don’t. How much money do you have at your house?”

  “I don’t know. Three…three hundred dollars?”

  “Three hundred? That’s it?” The guy gets to his feet, hissing like a snake. “You think I can save your life for a mere three hundred dollars? You’re fucked, lady. Well and truly fucked.” He starts toward me, and the scuffed toes of his worn leather boots fill my vision. Panic surges inside me.

  “Wait! Wait! I have…I have my mother’s engagement ring at home. It’s two carats. It…it must be worth at least fifteen thousand. And I have forty-seven thousand dollars in my bank account. I can get it for you. I can give you that.”

  “You think that’s
what your life’s worth? Forty-seven thousand and a piece of metal and rock?”

  “It’s all I have.” My voice is small, so quiet, but it echoes in the yawning corridor of the museum.

  The man in the ski mask doesn’t say anything. He stands over me, looking down at me, those cold, stark, lifeless blue eyes of his assessing me, and I know it deep down inside. This is a pivotal moment. This is where he decides if he’s going to kill me or allow me to live. If I say the wrong thing, if I even look at him the wrong way, he’s going to take that knife of his and he’s going to drive it into my chest. There will be nothing I can do about it.

  A thought occurs to me in the moments that pass. Once more I’m faced with my own death. The first time was in my car five years ago, sitting in the driver’s seat, waiting for the nose of my car to hit the cold, unfriendly waters of the East River. And now, laying on my back, on the floor of the museum, staring up into the eyes of a stranger. This time, though, I’m suddenly not afraid. I survived near drowning only to die on a daily basis, every time I remembered that my son was no longer with me. If I die today, I won’t have to suffer through the pain of that truth every time I wake up in the morning. I won’t have to stand in the doorway of his bedroom anymore, my arms wrapped around my own body as I try to hold myself up, looking at all of his things, his Matchbox cars and his electric train sets, his neatly folded clothes piled up on the end of his bed, or his threadbare teddy bear, Javier, laying face down on the dusty floorboards in front of his window. I will just be gone, and there will be nothing left. No shame. No guilt. No loneliness. No more pain. Just the welcoming arms of oblivion.

  I close my eyes.

  My death doesn’t arrive, though.

  “I suppose that’s what you’re worth, then,” my attacker whispers. “Forty-seven thousand dollars isn’t enough for some people. But I like you, Doc. It’s enough for you today.”