Fear

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘Control panel – lobby.’

  Miles shoved the guard through the hallway exit from the stairwell, all of them running, and as they rounded a corner into another hallway leading to the lobby, he glanced back and saw the stairwell door opening, then Sorenson in the dim light. Miles shoved Nathan and the guard forward and a bullet screamed from the doorway, hot as a devil’s finger as it rocketed past the nape of his neck. He dived for the cover of the corner as a second bullet pocked the wall an inch above where his head had been.

  The guard broke into a run for the lobby door. Nathan launched himself into the guard with all the grace of a zombie, a screaming, raving fury. They fell to the ground and Miles pulled Nathan off the man, shoved them both toward the door, keeping the gun trained on the corner.

  ‘You unlock the doors!’ Nathan screeched at the man, waggled his tongue and his fingers as though all sanity had abandoned him. ‘Or I will kill kill kill you!’

  The guard’s face paled.

  They ran into the lobby; Nathan shoved the guard to the computer. He, with trembling hands, entered in a key.

  Miles heard the locks click.

  Miles shoved the guard to the floor, told him to lie flat and be still. The guard obeyed. Please, Jesus, let us out, be open. His fear was like a fire on his skin. They hit the doors, stumbled into the brisk cool of the dark night, ran hard toward the parking lot.

  Sorenson advanced carefully to the lobby, listened, heard only the rattle of breathing of the frightened guard. He stepped into the lobby.

  ‘Front door,’ the guard said. ‘They went through the front door. There ought to be another gun in this drawer…’

  Sorenson ran past the man, tested the door, decided they wouldn’t be waiting on the other side to ambush him and ran after them. He saw them fleeing in the low gleam of the lights and ran as silently as he could, his pistol stiff-armed in front of him, keeping Nathan Ruiz’s head in his sights.

  ‘This way.’ Miles pointed to the rear of the parking lot, and they weaved along, hunkering low.

  Behind them an alarm shattered the quiet. ‘You got a car?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve got to be gone before the cops get here…’

  ‘They won’t call the cops,’ Nathan said. ‘Trust me…’

  A bullet’s whine pierced the air and Nathan fell, frantic, a scream choked in his throat. Miles whirled and saw Sorenson two rows of cars away, aim pivoting toward him. Miles fired in answer and Sorenson dropped.

  But not like he was hit.

  The parking lot was a maze of cars, some slots filled, others empty. Miles grabbed Nathan, who probed at his hair, at his scalp, for evidence of a hit, and shoved him below the line of car windows.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Nathan mumbled.

  ‘Stay low.’

  They worked their way through the cars, Miles panicking that Sorenson could simply step out into the row at the same time that they did and pick them both off. If Sorenson was close enough he’d hear them run into the parking aisle’s open space, kill them with two rapid-fire shots.

  And if Celeste saw them coming, if she stood next to the car… Sorenson could gun her down.

  He put a hand over Nathan’s mouth. Listened to the silence. The night’s quiet fell on them. He fought back the surge of fear.

  I can’t let Sorenson just kill this kid. He forced himself to wait, to listen past the drumming of his own heart.

  Eleven seconds later, he heard a scrabble of stone against a shoe, two cars to his right.

  Miles dropped to the pavement, fired under the cars into the blackness. He heard a yell of fury, a body leaping onto a car in retreat.

  Miles shoved Nathan and they ran. Miles turned and fired; he saw Sorenson drop off the trunk of a car, either hit or diving for cover. Miles stumbled but Nathan caught him, pulled him up to his feet.

  Miles spotted Blaine’s car.

  In the low dazzle of the lot’s lights, the car stood empty. Celeste was gone.

  ‘Celeste!’ he screamed. ‘Celeste?’

  The trunk opened. She peered out at him.

  ‘What the hell?’ he yelled.

  ‘It’s nicer in here,’ she whispered.

  ‘Out, now, now, now, we got to go.’ And the crack of a bullet broke above him, demolishing a window in the car parked next to them. He whirled, saw dark figures – Sorenson and two guards – approaching. A blaze of fire from the barrel of two guns, bullets pocketing the trunk of the car next to him.

  Shooting to kill, Miles dropped to a knee, trying to remember to breathe, aimed, his hand shaking, blinking past Andy’s face and pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times, laying down a round of fire. He heard himself screaming, a crazy man.

  Behind him Blaine’s old car roared into life. Miles flinched. But no bomb. Nathan was behind the wheel, Celeste ducking into the backseat.

  Miles kept his wavering gun aimed at the darkness. He saw one guard running toward them. Miles shot out the window of the car closest to the man and the guard ducked and stayed down.

  Miles followed Celeste into the backseat.

  Nathan powered the car out of the slot; Miles fired at their pursuers until the clip emptied. They roared past Sorenson and the guards, through a sputtering hail of bullets, ricochets flying off the car roof. Miles covered Celeste with his body, protecting her. Nathan swung the car out fast and hard onto the narrow winding trail of Canyon Road. He hit sixty in ten seconds, crouched low next to the wheel. ‘Who are you, man?’

  ‘Miles Kendrick.’ His old name didn’t seem to fit him right anymore, like a shirt worn once, ill fitting and ugly, not to be worn again. He sat up, pulling up Celeste, looking behind him. No pursuit. Not yet.

  ‘Your driver’s license said your name was Michael.’

  ‘It needs updating. My name’s Miles. But I really am a patient of Doctor Vance’s. So is this woman. Her name is Celeste.’

  Nathan’s gaze flickered to Celeste in the rearview. ‘Why’d you come get me?’

  ‘I need you. I want to know the truth about why Allison died.’

  ‘I’ll drop you off but the car stays with me. I got to get far away from them.’

  ‘Wrong. We should stay together,’ Miles said.

  ‘I don’t like Nathan,’ Andy said from the other side of Celeste. ‘I like him even less than I like you. Go ahead and shoot him before he hurts you. You think you can trust this guy? You better find out what the hell Sorenson meant by Mr. Explosives.’

  Nathan veered onto Cerro Gordo – the road that led past Allison’s house – and Miles expected to hear the scream of police sirens. But nothing, and the road behind them was black and empty. The night lay quiet, closing its dark fist around the car.

  ‘Stay together,’ Nathan said. ‘Why?’

  ‘We can fight better together.’

  ‘I don’t want to fight…’ he started, then stopped. ‘But I don’t want to hide the rest of my life either.’

  ‘I have a place we can hide. Where we can decide how to stop these people.’

  ‘Stop them from what?’

  ‘Killing us.’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘I can’t go to the police. My folks – they’ll just send me to another loony bin. I don’t need it anymore.’

  ‘Neither do we. I don’t know how Groote and Sorenson connect, but they’ll be after us. We know what Allison stole from the hospital, and I think we know how to find it before Groote and Sorenson do. We do that, they can’t hurt us.’

  ‘There’s another guy… Doctor Hurley.’

  ‘We know. He tried to kill me. Celeste… stopped him.’

  ‘Permanent stop?’

  ‘Permanent.’

  Nathan gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Honey, I could kiss you.’

  She shuddered.

  ‘But don’t worry,’ Nathan said, ‘I won’t.’ His grin, ecstatic at his freedom, went wide and manic. ‘So where do we go, dude? We’re free birds, free free free-’

  Miles wondered, in helping Nathan, what dangero
us genie he’d let out of the bottle.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ‘You hit, sir?’ the guard asked.

  ‘He missed me,’ Sorenson said. ‘Barely.’ He imagined he could feel the heat where the bullet had just missed his ankle.

  ‘I think I hit one,’ the guard said, huffing for breath. He was the one who’d taken the blow to the guts. ‘The window, I got him, we should-’

  ‘You should have aimed for the tires.’ He’d emptied his own clip too soon and was furious with himself. ‘Is the alarm system keyed to the police?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ the guard said. ‘We’re under orders not to call the police. Ever. Mr. Quantrill doesn’t want them around.’

  Not calling the cops made sense. Sorenson had no desire to bring unwelcome, official attention to the hospital; it had served its purpose. He turned from the guards without another word and headed toward his car.

  ‘Hey! Mister, wait a goddamn second…’ One of the guards caught him by the arm and Sorenson swiftly stopped, levered his arm free, brought his elbow back into the guard’s face. The nose gave way with a sickening crack and the man collapsed with a howl.

  Sorenson glanced at the other guard, who’d raised his gun. ‘Your clip’s empty. So’s mine.’ He grabbed the broken-nose guard by the throat. ‘He’s a big boy but I can break the neck with a strong twist before you take two steps. So drop the gun, and I drive away, and then you go get your friend a doctor.’

  The second guard looked into Sorenson’s eyes. He slowly set the gun down, kicked it away without being told.

  Sorenson kept his grip on the guard’s throat until he reached his car, then he shoved the man to the asphalt in contempt. Groote knew he was an enemy now. And Nathan remained a threat, and he was with Miles Kendrick who, despite being mentally ill, had the skills and apparent guts to fight back.

  Sorenson wheeled out hard into the night. Kendrick’s car was gone.

  He had to find Kendrick and Ruiz. Now. Or failing that, set a trap for them. One that they wouldn’t see coming.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Nathan drove the car behind the adobe wall at Blaine the Pain’s house. His hands gripped the wheel as though fused to the plastic.

  ‘Nathan, be cool…’ Miles started.

  Nathan pulled trembling hands free from the wheel. Suddenly he seized the rearview mirror, tried to wrench it free from the ceiling.

  Miles leaned forward and grabbed his arms. ‘What the hell? Calm down!’

  ‘Can we go inside now? Please?’ Celeste shivered as though she’d fallen into snow.

  Nathan aimed the mirror away from his face. Miles helped Celeste out, hurried her under the shelter of the porch. Nathan followed them. Miles opened the front door and held his breath, tried to imagine the explanation he would give if Blaine was back from Texas.

  ‘Mr. Blaine? It’s Michael, from the gallery,’ Miles called. No answer. Blaine was still out of town.

  Miles flicked on a kitchen light, leaving the other lamps doused. If the neighbors knew Blaine was out of town, he didn’t want to increase suspicion.

  Celeste collapsed on the couch, pulled her knees close to her chest. Nathan scanned the room as if he were stepping on enemy territory.

  Miles shut the front door behind him. ‘We can stay here, at least for tonight.’

  ‘Is it safe?’ Nathan ran from room to room, as though he expected a shambling horror to lurch out from a dark corner.

  Miles followed him. ‘We’re fine, I promise.’

  ‘Is this your house? How many doors? How many windows?’ Nathan went into the hallway bathroom and a few seconds later Miles heard a sudden, sharp crack.

  He pushed past Nathan. ‘What the hell?’

  The mirror stood broken, a vicious crater in its center, cracks radiating outward. Nathan dropped a heavy soap dish to the floor.

  ‘I hate mirrors.’ Nathan retreated from the shattered glass.

  ‘Why?’ Miles took him by the shoulders, kept his voice calm. ‘You can tell me.’

  His jaw trembled; his eyes held a haunting fear. ‘They – they look at me. From the mirrors. My friends.’

  ‘Your friends that died in Iraq.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Nathan lurched away from him, running down the hall. ‘I don’t want them to see that I’m here…’

  Miles caught him at the bedroom entrance, staring at a mirror atop a bureau. ‘They can’t see you. They can’t.’

  ‘But I see them. They went away for a while. But they’re coming back, they live in the mirror and it’s not my fault, it wasn’t my fault…’

  Miles steered him away from the mirror. ‘We’ll cover the mirrors, okay? Celeste, help me.’ Miles took Nathan into the messy kitchen. Dirty dishes piled the sink, a sour odor rising from the trash. Nathan sank to the floor.

  ‘Find towels, or blankets… cover every mirror you can find, please,’ Miles said to Celeste. She seemed much steadier with four walls around her, and she nodded and left the room.

  ‘Nathan. Pull it together, man, you’ve come so far tonight, you can’t lose it. Stay steady.’

  ‘It’s like – withdrawal. I was better, now I’m worse.’ Nathan startled with a jerk as a car rumbled in the street.

  Frost. They’d been feeding him Frost, and probably he’d gotten his last dose on Tuesday. Maybe the drug’s effects started fading without a daily dose.

  Nathan shrugged Miles’s hands off his shoulders, closed his eyes, steadied his breathing. Celeste ran back into the kitchen. ‘I covered all the mirrors.’ She knelt by them. ‘You’re bleeding. Your legs.’ And Miles saw spatters of blood, dried and fresh, on the scrubs he wore.

  Nathan ignored her. He reached a finger out toward her face and she flinched back. ‘You were on Castaway. Holy smoke.’

  She nodded.

  ‘So you killed Hurley. He was a bad guy – bad doctor, bad breath, bad hair.’ Nathan laughed, a broken giggle. ‘You did a good deed, ma’am. Now if someone would kill Groote for me… if I don’t get to do it myself.’

  ‘No one’s killing anybody,’ Miles said.

  Celeste reached for Nathan’s face.

  ‘No.’ Nathan backed away from her. ‘Don’t touch me.’

  ‘Just let me check.’ Celeste spoke in a soft voice, quiet and reassuring.

  He stopped his retreat across the kitchen. Nathan tensed while Celeste touched his jawline, inspected his face. A swollen lip, a slight cut on the cheek with a bruise rising underneath it. ‘They punched you.’

  ‘Just once or twice.’ His voice shook. ‘Then hoses on my back.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Celeste eased up the back of Nathan’s shirt: a quilt of vicious bruises covered his spine.

  ‘Groote stuck a screwdriver against my bones. It hurt.’ Tears came into his eyes and he shuddered. He shoved up his sleeves, pulled bandages off his arm, and showed them the constellation of welts; deep bloodied punctures. ‘Cut down to the bone, jam the screwdriver against the bone. Then… turn. They did it on my legs too. Patch me up, then do it again.’ He gritted his teeth.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Celeste said. ‘I’ll see if there’s a first-aid kit.’ She ran from the kitchen.

  ‘I can’t go crazy again,’ Nathan said in a hoarse whisper. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I won’t let that happen,’ Miles said, and Nathan laughed, a short broken giggle.

  ‘You got spare sanity in your pocket?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘I know what you survived, Nathan,’ Miles said in a low voice.

  ‘You don’t know anything, man, not a thing about me… you don’t want to.’

  Celeste ran back into the room, carrying gauze and Band-Aids and an antiseptic gel. ‘Get the scrubs off.’

  Miles helped Nathan stand. Grimacing from the pain, Nathan shucked the scrubs down to his knees. Purple dominated the back of his legs where Groote had whipped the hoses. Four brutal gouges marred his leg. Celeste medicated and bandaged the wounds. ‘These wounds are deep. He needs a doctor.’

 
‘No,’ Nathan said.

  ‘You’re risking infection,’ Celeste said.

  ‘No,’ Nathan said again. ‘No doctors. We can’t let Groote find us.’

  Miles rummaged in the cabinet, found aspirin, poured a palmful into Nathan’s hand, got him a glass of water. Nathan ate the aspirin like candy, a few at a time. He wiped the white dust from the tablets onto his shirt, finished the water. ‘Thank you.’ His eyes went glassy with exhaustion.

  ‘When was the last time you ate?’ Miles asked him.

  ‘Tuesday.’

  Miles rummaged in Blaine’s nearly bare refrigerator, found a fancy-seeded bread and jam, cracked open a new jar of peanut butter, and made them all sandwiches. Nathan devoured his dinner in seconds, shivering with hunger.

  Miles sat on the floor across from Nathan. ‘You know what Frost is.’

  ‘Yes. Allison told me it’s medicine to cure your trauma. She told me when she got me the passkey, said I had to run.’ Nathan wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘At first I thought Frost was the code name for the virtual-reality treatments they give us.’ He explained how the VR treatments worked – confirming what Miles had seen in the tech room.

  ‘They made you relive the bombing,’ Miles said.

  ‘Bombing?’ Celeste asked.

  ‘I’m a war hero.’ Nathan sat up straighter. ‘Iraq. I volunteered after 9/11. I wanted to fight the good fight, protect the country I love.’

  ‘Brave of you,’ Celeste said softly.

  He ducked his head in embarrassment. ‘During the invasion, I was with a battery company, thirty miles out of Baghdad. We launched our missiles, right after midnight, on target for a palace of Saddam’s, but a U.S. jet pilot got confused, got bad info, he believed we were Republican Guard, he fired a heat-seeker’ – he paused, swallowed, kept his gaze on his feet – ‘killed four of my buddies. Nearly killed the rest of us.’

  ‘I’m sorry, man,’ Miles said.

  ‘Parts of my friends hit me. I got a broken nose from a leg flying into my face.’

  Miles and Celeste said nothing, because words had no power now.

  ‘I got hurt in the blast, just burns’ – he pointed to the peppering of scars on his cheek and nose – ‘but it messed me up inside. I couldn’t – I couldn’t do my duty anymore.’