by Callie Hart
******
I can’t walk properly. I can’t put any weight onto my left leg; every time I try, a searing, sharp pain stabs through my nerve endings. Not just the nerve endings in my leg, but all over my body, quick and wicked as lightning. It’s breathtaking in its severity—so much so that I almost lose consciousness as the guy in the ski mask drags me by the arm down the corridor.
“You’re going to take me out of the secret door,” he says, ignoring my labored breathing. I’m hopping and skipping, trying to keep up with him, but he seems oblivious. “Once we’re out of the secret door, you’re going to wait out of sight while I hail a taxi. We’ll both sit in the back. You’re going to pretend like I’m your friend. You’re not going to try and raise the alarm. If you do, it’ll all be out of my control. I won’t be able to help you anymore. Do you understand?”
“There isn’t a secret door. There’s only the loading dock entrance, and—”
“The loading dock entrance, then. The loading dock. The loading dock. Yes.” He says the words, and it’s final. I can’t argue with him. I can’t suggest another option. Something’s not right with this guy, I can tell. Aside from being a violent criminal, I suspect he is also suffering from some sort of mental disorder that causes him to fixate on things. When he wanted me to apologize in my office, it was almost as if he was anxious. His volatile actions were driven by some desperate need for me to do as he bid me. He won’t stop talking about rules—rules that I must follow, and a completely different set of rules that he needs to follow. And now, yanking me by the arm, it seems imperative that we reach the loading dock as quickly as humanly possible.
He obviously doesn’t know the way, so he continually shoves me out in front of him, forcing me to stand on my injured leg, and every time I transfer weight onto it my stomach turns. I’m going to throw up soon, and I won’t be able to hold back. I already know he won’t like that.
He keeps me away from the windows. He stands on my right as we make painfully slow progress down the stairs, blocking the view outside so I can’t see what’s going on. I think that maybe there are people out there, gathered on the steps of the museum. I don’t have a watch on, and I’m too scared to pull my cell phone from the waist band of my skirt to check the time on there, so I have no idea what the hour is, but it feels late. Late enough that the museum should be open now. The fact that it’s not tells me he’s barred the entranceway somehow, and that other staff members have been alerted to the fact that something untoward is happening inside the building. Do the police know? Dear god, I hope so.
It takes forever to reach the ground floor. My hip hurts, and so does my back. The side of my head hurts, too. My skin feels strange; I think maybe there’s dried blood on my temple and further down, over my cheek.
Where is Rooke right now? My heart turns over in my chest when I think about him. If he were here… God, I can’t even think about that. I’ll burst into tears, and I need to stay as calm as possible. I know it, though. If Rooke were here, I already know he would have put this psycho down.
It feels like a million years ago that I arrived at the museum and saw that the Christmas tree had been erected. When I see it in the foyer now, my heart trips over itself. There, at the base of the tree, Amanda, the security guard that checked my bag earlier, is laying on the floor in a crimson pool of blood. She’s face down, her head twisted to one side at an odd angle, her eyes open and unseeing. I can’t see her neck, but I can imagine what it must look like. It hits me that I didn’t believe the guy had killed anyone until now. I thought that he was just trying to scare me, but seeing Amanda laid out like this, clearly dead, blows that theory out of the water. Cold fear coils itself into knots in the pit of my stomach.
I am never getting out of this museum. I am never getting out of here alive.
“Hurry. Move.” The guy prods me in the back, and a flash of pain lights up the inside of my head. “I don’t like the way she’s looking at me,” he whispers.
I look around, hoping to see someone else down here on the ground floor with us, but there’s no one. A second later it dawns on me: he means Amanda. He doesn’t like the way Amanda is looking at him. Except she’s not looking at him, of course, she’s not looking at anyone, because she’s dead. He shivers, and it’s like he’s seeing her body for the very first time, like he had nothing to do with her current state of being. He blocks the view through the entranceway as he leads me in the direction of the gift shop. “Where is it?” Where’s the loading dock?”
Behind me, the slap of hands on the door echoes out loudly, nearly startling me out of my skin. “Hey! Hey, come out here!” Someone screams. A wall of sound erupts outside, and the guy in the ski mask curses loudly.
“They’ve seen us. They know where we are. It’s too late.”
I shake my head, knowing what too late means for me. “It’s not. It’s dark in here. They can only see shadows moving. They won’t have any idea what’s going on. Come on. Let’s go before she wakes up.”
He rocks back, holding the knife in his hand out toward me, his eyes growing wide. “What do you mean, wakes up?”
I point at Amanda. “I mean, she’s sleeping right now but if we stay here for much longer, she’s going to wake up, and she’ll be really upset, won’t she? Don’t you think she’ll be really upset?”
A mad look glimmers in the guy’s eyes. “You mean she only pretended to die?”
This is a dangerous game to play, but I need to test out my theory. If this guy is unhinged, perhaps there’s a way to trick him into letting me go. I stare at Amanda’s lifeless body and sorrow wells up inside me. She was a lovely person. She didn’t deserve this. “Yes. I think she only pretended,” I say firmly. “I think she’ll be coming back soon.”
This seems to startle him. He takes a tentative step towards Amanda’s body and then appears to think better of it. He swallows so hard I can see his Adam’s apple bob beneath the thick wool of his mask. “I knew it,” he whispers. “I fucking knew it.” Whirling around, I think he’s going to grab hold of my arm again but instead he fists a handful of my hair, snarling. “You want her to wake up,” he snaps. “You want to work with her to kill me, I fucking know you do. Well I don’t die, either, Doc. I’ll come back to life, too. I’ll haunt you for all eternity if I don’t get out of here soon. I’m beginning to lose patience.”
“All right, all right, let’s go. I don’t want her to wake up, I promise.” I move as quickly as I can across the lobby of the museum, favoring my good side as I head toward the service entrance that leads to the loading dock. The noise from outside grows louder and more frantic as we move away from the entrance, a bubbling, riotous sound, and I almost scream for help. There’s nothing any of them can do for me, though. With his knife so expertly held in his hand, I know this guy will stab me to death before I can even get a word out.
Amazingly, the loading dock is deserted. It makes no sense. I thought there would be people out here for sure, but there’s no one. A stack of empty flattened cardboard boxes leans against a trash compactor. The wrapper from some McDonalds delicacy swirls around on an eddy of wind, trapped in the narrow, dirty courtyard. I look up, hoping to see a face in a window or the dark suggestion of a sniper on one of the surrounding building’s roofs, however we are alone. No one hiding in the shadows. No one watching on from above. Just me and the guy in the ski mask. Fuck.
He pushes me out of the doorway and onto the stained concrete of the loading dock. I hear something—metal scrapping on metal—and I freeze. I’m too scared to turn around. “Go stand by the compactor over there,” the guy tells me. I walk forward, holding my breath. The guy in the ski mask spins me around, grabbing hold of my wrist. He’s holding onto something—a scuffed, rusting pair of handcuffs. They look like they’ve been used before. He snaps one side of the cuffs around the blue steel handle that is welded to the side of the trash compactor, then gives me a pointed look.
“You call for help, you die. Understand?”
I nod.
He jerks me closer to the compactor, about to circle the other cuff around my wrist, when a shrill, obnoxious ringing splits the silence. My phone. The cell phone I still have tucked into the waistband of my skirt, concealed beneath my shirt. I can feel it vibrating cheerfully against the skin of my back, letting me know I have an incoming call. The guy in the ski mask looks stunned.
“What the fuck?” He runs his hands over my body, searching for the phone. When he finds it, he looks like he’s just been shot in the gut. “What’s this?” he whispers. Holding up the phone in front of me, I can see Ali’s name on the screen, clear as day. The guy in the ski mask shakes his head slowly, his eyes unblinking. “You sneaky fucking bitch. You’ve had this on you the whole time? You’ve had this on you the whole fucking time?”
He punches me. I see his fist coming, but I’m paralyzed by fear and I do nothing to avoid the blow. He strikes me, and it feels like fireworks going off inside my head. For a moment I can’t see anything. A pure white light fills my vision, followed by a dizzying blackness that threatens to swallow me up. I stagger backwards, my legs going out from underneath me. I can do nothing to break my fall. I hit the ground hard, tailbone first, the back of my head connecting with something on the way down. I can’t even comprehend the pain. It leaves me winded and confused.
“I thought we were friends,” the guy says softly. “I thought you knew better than to keep secrets from me, Doc.” He’s on top of me, then. I can’t see him for a second, and panic spreads like poison through my veins. If I can’t see him, how can I protect myself? The cold, hard terror of the knife presses up against my neck. “The security guard struggled. Are you going to struggle?”
Stale coffee and cigarettes: his breath is rancid. The stink fills my head, and I try to turn away from it. He has hold of me, though. He won’t let go. My sight returns to me in frightening bursts of light, until I can finally see him clearly again. I almost wish I couldn’t.
He presses down on the knife, and the sharpened steel breaks my skin. It’s as if I’ve needed the shock this brings to wake me from some kind of stupor. I scream. I scream so hard and so loud that it feels like the cry is being forcefully ripped from my throat, barbed wire tearing up my windpipe. The guy on top of me hisses. He hits me again.
I have to get up. I have to get away.
Now.
If I don’t…
If I don’t…
If I don’t…
I scramble, reaching for something, anything to defend myself with. To my left, the cardboard boxes are rocking wildly. The guy’s foot is hitting them as he wrestles with me and the movement is on the verge of knocking them over. I lay my hands flat against his chest, and I push. He hardly moves. Laughing, he takes his knife and he slices slowly over my shoulder, his teeth only an inch away from my face. I register the pain, can tell he’s damaging my body, but I can’t really feel it. Not the way I should. My heart is surging behind my ribcage. Quickly, without even thinking, I bring my right knee up, slamming it into his body. I miss his balls, but the surprise of the movement knocks him sideways. The cardboard boxes come crashing down onto his back, scattering everywhere, and I seize the opportunity. I push him again, this time with enough force that I manage to roll him off of me. The guy doesn’t fight me. He’s hysterical, hacking and coughing in between his manic bouts of laughter.
I jump to my feet, and he mirrors me, getting up onto his knees first, then standing slowly, his pale blue eyes fixed on me. “What now?” he asks, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “How fast can you run with bare feet? How fast do you think I can run?”
My feet are bare. My stockings are ripped and torn, barely still on my body. Looking down, I see that I’m covered in blood and I have no idea where it’s coming from. The guy steps forward, making the small gap between us even smaller. “Are you a Sagittarius?” he asks. “My mother was a Sagittarius. She was just like you. Arrogant. Ungrateful. She didn’t see it coming, either.”
I back up, knowing the move to be a mistake. I’m literally putting myself in a corner. There’s no escape route behind me. No way out. The trash compactor is to my left, and there’s no way to make a dash for it to my right without him catching me. I’m out of options. I don’t know what to do.
He creeps forward toward me.
I take another step back. Wildly, I look around, searching for anything that might help me. Anything at all. Then...I see it: a long wooden pole, laying on the ground. There’s a large metal hook on the end of the pole—I’ve seen the janitorial staff using it to pack down the garbage in the compactor when it’s getting full. It’s meant to be used to open the windows inside the museum, the ones too high to be reached by hand, or even using a ladder.
Can I reach it? Am I brave enough to even try?
It’s not really a matter of bravery anymore, though. I have this one option available to me, and I have to take it otherwise I am going to die. It’s as simple as that. I move quickly. I lunge, dropping to the ground, and I snatch at the pole, trying to clasp hold of it. I’m an inch short. The guy in the ski mask is moving, too. He rushes forward, presumably seeing what I’m reaching for, and he tries to get there first.
I have witnessed this moment before in countless movies. The moment where the hero and the villain are both grasping for the gun that has been kicked just out of reach. The whole situation would feel ridiculous if it weren’t for the fact that I know this is it for me. When I was laid out on the floor upstairs, contemplating my death, for that very brief second I wasn’t scared. I am now, though. I am really, very afraid.
I surge forward, kicking at the ground, nudging myself forward, and my hand closes around the rough, splintered wood of the pole. The guy in the ski mask is almost on top of me. I twist onto my back, lifting the pole with both hands. I hit him with it. It strikes the side of his head, and I know immediately that the blow wasn’t hard enough. The guy in the ski mask tips his head to one side, smiling grimly. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?” he snaps. “You just don’t know when to give up.”
I suppose he’s right. I’m clearly beaten, but something inside me refuses to back down. I crawl backward, away from him, still gripping tightly onto the pole. I only stop when my back hits the wall. The guy approaches little by little.
“I tell you what. I’ll let you hit me again. One good swing. How about that?” He stops in front of me, legs planted wide. Amusement chases pity across what little I can see of his face. “One really good, hard swing, and then we stop playing games with each other, Doc. No more fucking around. Okay?”
I can’t breathe. He waits for me to say something, to move, to do something, but I’m frozen to the spot, the wooden pole held out in front of me.
He takes another step forward, and my body reacts. I’m not in control anymore. My arms are swinging, thrusting with every ounce of strength they possess, and I feel the moment that the hook hits him. I don’t even hit him that hard, but metal glances off of the side of his temple and the iron sinks into his skull, and there’s a moment…this long, drawn out moment where he just looks at me, like he can’t really believe what’s just happened. I can barely believe it myself.
He sinks to his knees, blinking wildly, and the movement rips the pole from my hands. It clatters to the ground, and his ski mask is torn from his head as the hook comes away, revealing the entirety of his face. Red hair. Weak chin. A nose that seems too large for his narrow face. I allow myself to see each of his features one by one, not taking them in as a whole. I don’t want his face to haunt me. I don’t ever want to close my eyes and see him there, waiting for me. I want him to be anonymous forever.
Blood pours freely out of the wide gash in his temple. I can’t see how deep the wound is, but the amount of blood he’s losing is terminal. It has to be. He gives one more solitary, mad bark of laughter, and then the guy topples sideways into the mountain of cardboard boxes, his body rigid and locked.
I snap out of m
y shock. I stand up, and I run. I don’t know how long it takes me to find a way around the building. I don’t know what I stand on to tear my foot open. I don’t feel any pain when I stumble and fall, cutting open my hands and my knees. I don’t know what I’m thinking as I careen around the corner, out onto the street.
I do experience the relief of a stranger picking me up off the ground and calling for help, though. And I do feel it. I do feel the relief of knowing that I’m not about to die.
EIGHTEEN
THE FALL
ROOKE
5 Years Ago
Goshen Secure Facility
“Get him, Viorelli! Fucking kill him!”
It’s pissing down outside, raindrops hammering against the windows, the sky grim and forbidding as Viorelli circles the Russian kid, Misha, who was brought in last week. Misha made some dumb mistake, sat at a table he wasn’t supposed to sit at, and Jared has taken it upon himself to teach the newbie a lesson.
I watch. I don’t get involved. Getting involved whenever Viorelli is on a rampage usually ends badly for both of us. I keep my head down and I eat my food. Everyone else stands in a circle as Misha does his best to defend himself against the fucking psychopath. They chant, they boo, they heckle. Jared’s right-hand guy, Osman, grabs a food tray and tries to hit Misha with it, and that’s when all hell really breaks loose. Jared turns on Osman, lunging at him with something. Something in his hand. Something sharp.
“I don’t need your fucking help, asshole!” he shouts.
I don’t see what happens next. The crowd takes a giant step back. The room is suddenly silent, and then Misha is shouting loudly in Russian.
“Shut the fuck up, man. Shut the fuck up, he’s fine!”