Then my heart stopped. The wheelchair was on its side in the hallway. She must be so far gone, she’d tipped herself out of it and then crawled...somewhere. I searched frantically, checking the kitchen, the bedroom, behind her desk. Scared, hallucinating, she must have crawled somewhere, looking for safety, but where....?
Then my eyes fell on the elevator that went to the roof. I wanted to throw up. Oh Jesus no, please. Not the roof. It was dark and she was seeing things, what if she crawled right over the edge?
I’d taken one running step towards the elevator when I thought I heard something: a terrified little sob. I spun on the spot. I didn’t hear it again but I’ve gotten good at homing in on sounds. It came from...there, down the hallway and—
I burst into her bedroom for the second time. Not behind the bed. Not under the bed. What if I was wrong? What if I was wasting time and she was on the roof? But I was sure I’d heard something.
I put my hand on the closet door. Please, please, be in here—
I pulled the door wide. Big green eyes blinked up at me. I drew in a shuddering gasp of relief.
She was sitting on the floor, hugging herself. I dropped to my knees. “It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s okay, I’m here now.”
I reached for her but she recoiled, her eyes going even wider and a throaty moan of horror rising from her chest. She flattened herself against the back wall of the closet, looking around for a way to slip past me and escape. I drew back, but in the second I’d managed to touch her, I’d felt her trembling. Not the momentary shudder of fear but a shaking, constant and uncontrollable, raw animal fear. “It’s okay,” I told her again. But she just shrank back even more.
I knelt there staring at her, desperate to help but with no idea how. It would have been scary to see anyone in that state, but when it was Yolanda, with her awe-inspiring brain, it was heartbreaking. “Please,” I choked out. But there was no reaction except fear. The Yolanda I knew wasn’t in there, or if she was, she was too far gone for me to reach. I was too late.
I remembered another night. Another woman. Kneeling over Becky’s body, willing it not to be true. This is my fault. It’s my fault, again. I brought her onto this case. I got her involved, because I liked her. “Yolanda, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” Her mind. Her most precious thing. I’d destroyed it, just like I destroy everything.
I tried to take her hand but as soon as my fingers brushed hers, she jerked away. My stomach lurched: she felt waxy and cold, as if she wasn’t in there, anymore. “Yolanda!” I said, my voice cracking. But she just shrank back: wherever she was, words were too much, too frightening. Of course: her head was full of those fucking equations. Letters, numbers, words: they all must seem like part of the same evil.
“Shh,” I tried, forcing my voice to be gentle. “Shhh!”
I kept repeating it, calming her the way I would a terrified animal. I eventually managed to slip an arm around her and pull her gently to my chest but she still didn’t surface. She just lay there trembling, staring at things I couldn’t see.
I felt my eyes go hot. What if she was gone? What if I—what if no one could ever reach her again? What if thanks to me, the woman I loved was trapped in there forever? My heart felt like someone was slowly ripping it down the center. The tears started to roll down my cheeks. Oh God, Yolanda….
The thought of losing her made me realize how wrong I’d been. I’d been so convinced that I didn’t deserve her, so scared that she’d hate me if she ever found out the truth, that I’d held back. I’d thought I couldn’t be with her. I should have taken the chance and opened up because now it was too late...and the truth was, I couldn’t be without her.
There was only one thing I could think of to comfort her: the folk song Becky had taught me, an ancient lullaby. The words were in Gaelic and I had no idea what they meant, but the tune made me think of a safe place with a crackling fire in the grate. Home.
Tears running down my cheeks, I sang.
51
Yolanda
I’D STOPPED SCREAMING. I didn’t dare open my mouth because the things that crawled and slithered and scuttled in the darkness might get into me. I could sense a huge creature beside me and it kept muttering dark incantations, making me shrink away. I prayed for death.
But then...there was a sound I recognized as coming from another world. One that I’d lived in, once, many years ago, a world with color and light. Music. And with it, a voice I recognized. It reached past all the monsters and plugged straight into my soul. I couldn’t remember names or faces but I remembered feeling safe, around that voice. I clung onto it with both hands and all my heart and I felt it begin, very slowly, to lift me.
The monsters grabbed and pulled. The ones that had managed to get inside my head told me how I wasn’t good enough, how he wouldn’t want me, how no one would want me, anymore. But I clung even tighter to that slender thread of song and felt myself being hauled up, up, up….
The first thing I saw was a shirt, a little mussed and creased. He’s always rumpled. And I sobbed because it was the most welcome sight I’d ever seen.
Gradually, my trembling stopped and the shapes around me solidified into walls and floors. I lifted my cheek from his tear-damp shirt and looked up at him.
His voice cracked and broke. “Hey you,” he managed.
I put both arms around him and hugged him very, very tight.
“Are you...okay?” I could hear the fear in his voice but I couldn’t speak, yet. I nodded, firmly enough that he could feel it. “You’re okay,” he exhaled. He crushed me to his chest. Then he pushed me back, hands gripping my forearms so hard it almost hurt. I had to blink a bunch of times before I could focus on him, but when I did, when I saw the look in his eyes, my heart lifted and swelled like a balloon. He was so overcome, he couldn’t speak: his hands just squeezed at my arms. “Don’t ever do that again!” he croaked.
I nodded weakly. I realized I could see, even though the lights were off in the bedroom. It was daylight outside!
He saw me looking at the window. “It’s a quarter to ten,” he said gently. “You were...wherever you were, for eight hours.”
And from the look on his face, he’d been with me, trying to coax me home, for almost all of it. “Sorry,” I rasped, shocked at how rough my voice sounded. I needed about eighteen gallons of water. My head was pounding and I felt like I might throw up if I so much as moved. “Eight hours,” I echoed, then shuddered, remembering. “Felt like longer.”
And then it hit home: I looked down at my empty hands: no pen, no pad of paper. “It didn’t even work,” I mumbled. I’d spent eight hours shaking in a closet like a coward. In less than an hour, Harry would be dead. We had nothing and it was all my fault. I wanted to weep, but I had no tears left.
Calahan pulled me back into his arms and hugged me tight. “You did everything you could,” he said. His arms locked tight around my shoulders. “More than you should. More than was safe.”
He retrieved my wheelchair and helped me into it. I headed for the bathroom, trying not to cry. My head felt like it was cracking open and my stomach was churning. I’d never even really had a hangover before, let alone an acid comedown.
I turned into the bathroom...and froze.
“Calahan?” I croaked. Then, louder, “Calahan?”
He burst in behind me, looking for the threat. Then he stopped, just as I had.
The white-tiled walls were covered in black marker pen. At some point during my trip, before Calahan had arrived, I’d crawled in here and written. I’d written the whole thing.
“It worked,” I said in awe.
52
Yolanda
I YELLED for Calahan to get me paper and pen while I started working through the equations in my head. Somehow, in the depths of my bad trip, I’d managed to recreate the killer’s work: now I had to solve it. And I only had forty-five minutes.
Calahan pushed paper and pen into my hands. His fingers kept cont
act with mine for just a second longer than needed and when our eyes locked…. Something was different. The pain and guilt in his eyes was still there but he looked...determined. Freed. His expression said, we need to talk.
I nodded. But we’d have to think about that later. I didn’t have time for my hangover, either. I pushed the nausea and headache and everything else away and just focused. Planets spun in my head, moons rising and falling. I frantically scribbled numbers, sketched orbits, and finally drew lines that converged on the Earth...there!
I spun on the spot and shot off towards my desk, fallen papers lifting like leaves in my wake. My stomach knotted when I saw the clock at the bottom of the screen: 10:19. Harry would be dead at 10:31. Calahan leaned over my shoulder as I typed the coordinates into a map program. The map re-centered and then zoomed to show a particular building.
“I know that place,” said Calahan, stabbing the screen with his finger. “Used to be a chemical factory. They started to demolish it to build apartments, but the EPA shut the project down because the place is a toxic nightmare.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll call Carrie.”
“Call her on the way,” I told him, already heading for the door. “We’ve only got twelve minutes!”
* * *
The factory was only a few blocks away and with the siren wailing on Calahan’s car and a little use of the sidewalk, we made it in three minutes flat. We screeched to a stop outside a huge red-brick building close to a hundred years old. There were still signs of the aborted plan to demolish it: dumpsters filled with waste and a garbage tube that snaked down from the top floor. The EPA had fenced the whole place off and warning signs were everywhere: flammable, explosive, poison.
Calahan jumped out and checked his gun. He balked when I heaved my wheelchair onto the sidewalk. “You’re not going in!”
I ignored him and swung myself into the chair, then raced over to the gate. “Chain’s been cut,” I said, examining it. “This is how he got in.”
“Get back in the car!” snapped Calahan.
I pointed at the building. “There are five floors to search. We’ve got nine minutes,”
“The FBI are coming,” he said stubbornly.
“From all the way downtown. Do you want to wait?” I checked my phone. “Eight minutes!”
Calahan cursed, glaring at me. I lifted my jaw, not backing down. I could see the battle playing out on his face. All he wanted to do was protect me...but he couldn’t let a kid die. Scowling and shaking his head, he stomped back to the car and grabbed the spare gun from the glove box, then slapped it into my palm. “If you see him, you point this at him and you holler for me! Okay?”
I nodded quickly. And we raced through the gate.
The main doors were ajar and we crept inside. It was much darker than I’d expected. Most of the windows had been boarded over and the only light came in tiny slivers and pinpricks lancing down from above. The linoleum was so dried out, it had shattered into shards. Where it was missing, you could see the timbers underneath, stained black with chemicals and in places so shot through with woodworm that it split and crumbled under my wheels. Rusted metal drums were stacked high around the walls, leaking God-knows what. You could smell the chemicals in the air, a cocktail that burned the inside of my nose and made my chest ache when I breathed. The whole place was a death trap.
Calahan put his lips to my ear. “Check down here,” he said. “I’ll start on the second floor and work up.”
I nodded. He squeezed my shoulder, gave me one last, worried look..., and ran.
I started along the hallway. The whole place was eerily quiet and the chair’s rubber tires made me almost silent. The loudest sound was my own rapid breathing as I crept along, checking each doorway I came to. Maybe Calahan was right. What the hell am I doing? I’m not a cop!
I passed offices and storerooms, all empty. I stopped as I reached a huge, open space: the whole rest of this floor was one big room, packed with pipes and tanks. And as soon as I entered it, I had that sense of wrongness again, just as I had at the other crime scenes.
He was here.
I looked down at the gun resting in my lap. I needed both hands to work the wheels. If I saw him, would I have time to snatch it up?
I crept up to a tank the size of an SUV and peeked around the corner. Nothing. I started along its length, giving the wheels short, hard shoves and then lifting my hands as I glided along, ready to grab the gun—
Something shot across my vision with a screech. For a second, it pressed right up against my face, soft and warm, alive. I was so scared, the scream choked in my throat. I slewed to a stop, almost tipping over—
The pigeon flapped across the room, its beating wings shockingly loud in the silent room, and then settled on a rafter, glaring at me for disturbing it. I sat there panting, my heart hammering. Just a bird. Just a bird.
And then I heard a footstep, down at the end of the room.
I looked frantically. Equipment racks ran the length of the room, forming a partition with a narrow hallway beyond it. I raced over to them and skidded to a stop behind the nearest rack.
Another footstep and another, coming closer. I knew it was him. The footsteps were the opposite of Calahan’s big, honest clumps. They were careful and measured, as if he’d thought through exactly where to put his weight. And they were unhurried, as if he wasn’t scared that someone had found him. As if he wasn’t scared of anything.
Closer. Closer. He was walking the length of the floor, checking to see what made the noise. Would he check behind the racks? Why didn’t I stay with Calahan?!
He stopped, no more than six feet from me, on the far side of the racks. I could feel his eyes sweeping the room. I held my breath—
He moved on down the room. I had to force myself not to let out a sigh of relief. I peeked out from behind the racks and my throat tightened. It was him: the same long, dark hair and leather jacket I’d seen when he took Harry.
Harry! He must be down at the end of this floor, where the killer came from. I started forward, as fast as I dared. I only had until the killer searched the other end and came back.
At the end of the room, I had to pick my way through a dense forest of pipes and tanks. I rounded the final corner and there, on the floor—
I let out a low moan of panic and raced over to Harry. He looked so tiny, in the middle of all this. His wrists were trapped behind his back with a zip-tie and his skin was pale. Had the killer already bled him? I reached out and touched his cheek. Was he already—?
His eyes opened, bleary and unfocused. “Loyanda?” he slurred.
Something rose and swelled inside me, warm and powerful. Something I’d been mercilessly suppressing for over a year. “Stay quiet,” I whispered. “We’re going for a ride.”
I dropped the gun into the pocket behind my seat. Then I reached down with both hands, grabbed Harry’s shoulders, and hauled him up. The angle was awkward and he was limp and floppy, a dead weight. But fear lent me strength and I managed to wrestle him onto my lap. Then I spun around and started through the forest of pipes again, going as fast as I dared. If I knocked a pipe with one of my footrests, the sound would echo through the whole room.
I finally got clear of the pipes and raced down the length of the room again, using the line of equipment racks to hide me. Long before I’d covered half the distance, I heard the killer go past, heading towards where he’d left Harry. Shit!
I tried to go faster, while still staying quiet. Any second, he’d discover what I’d done. Just a little further, please…. I reached the end of the huge room and—
There was no shout. He didn’t curse or scream. The footsteps just stopped for maybe a second. And then they were coming back towards me, this time at a full sprint.
I abandoned stealth and went all out, racing down the hallway towards the exit, hands wrenching on the wheels as hard as I could, the walls becoming a blur. I’m fast, in my chair. But I was weighed down with Harry, and he kept slithering dow
n my body, forcing me to take one hand off the wheels and haul him back up onto my lap. The exit suddenly looked a long way away. And I could hear the killer’s feet pounding on the linoleum behind me, gaining fast.
I wasn’t going to make it.
“Calahan!” I screamed. I shot past storerooms and offices, the exit growing in front of me. But I could hear the killer’s breathing now, only a step or two behind me, and I was going to have to stop to pull the door open....
I heard the metal stairs above me shake and clatter as Calahan raced down them. I reached the exit, grabbed the handle—
The world suddenly blurred and tilted as someone grabbed the back of my chair and wrenched, spinning me sickeningly fast through a hundred and eighty degrees. With one hand, I hugged Harry to my chest. With the other, I grabbed the gun.
We jolted to a stop. I slid the safety catch off and brought the gun up to point at—
My brother.
53
Yolanda
WE STARED at each other for one breath, two. I could see the recognition in his eyes. It was him. It’s true. I’m not crazy. He’s alive! And then my stomach twisted. Oh God, he—
I could feel my face crumpling as shock and elation turned to raw horror. He killed those people….
Then two hundred pounds of pure protective fury slammed into Josh from the side. Calahan and my brother hit the floor and rolled. I just sat there staring.
Josh!
It had been a year since I’d seen him but he’d aged ten. He looked as if he’d been traveling, as if he hadn’t stopped moving that entire time. He’d always been slim but now every scrap of fat had melted away to leave only lean hardness. His skin was that shade of brown you get from living rough, ground-in dirt and a deep tan. There were tattoos, too: those now-familiar black tendrils wrapped his biceps and peeked out of the neck of his tank top. His hair was greasy and brushing his shoulders and his jeans were so thick with dirt, I couldn’t tell if they were originally black or blue. My heart ached. What happened to him?
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