Fear

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘I told you in Allison’s office that I’d end your pain,’ Sorenson said. ‘I keep my promises.’

  Sorenson moved past Miles, put the aim of his gun on Groote.

  Groote tried to crawl and Sorenson shot him again in the leg. He brought his gun up; Sorenson shot him in the hand.

  He screamed.

  ‘Miles,’ Sorenson said. ‘Who else knows about today?’

  ‘No one. Leave him alone.’

  ‘Where’s the rest of the nut squad?’

  ‘After Yosemite… they all hid. I went with Groote.’

  ‘You mean that piece of shit I sent after you all actually succeeded in frightening you? Wow. I’ll have to send flowers to his grave.’

  Miles shouted, ‘You knew I was a witness. You wanted my death as camouflage for killing Allison. I was supposed to die when she did. WITSEC, everyone else, would blame it on me, especially when the police found my file on Allison’s computer. You tricked me and Allison

  …’

  ‘You have to seize your opportunities when you can, Miles.’

  Groote looked up at Sorenson, fighting for consciousness, blood trickling from his mouth, his nose, from his hand. ‘Amanda. Amanda. God, please, help my girl. Where is… she? Never hurt you. Please.’

  Sorenson walked toward Groote.

  Miles saw himself lying on a floor, the smell of blood and concrete grit heavy as smoke in his nose and Andy lay on the concrete, bleeding.

  Footsteps walking past Miles, toward Andy.

  Andy, calling for Miles, calling for his mama… but Miles had shot him in the throat.

  No. He couldn’t have. Not how it happened.

  Miles blinked.

  Sorenson leaned over Groote. Groote moaned, spoke pleading words.

  But Miles couldn’t hear Groote; he only heard Andy calling, Miles, don’t let them hurt me, please. I’m sorry. Andy clutching his shoulder where Miles had shot him.

  Sorenson smiled at Miles. Aimed the gun at Groote.

  The fed glanced at Miles. Aimed the gun at Andy.

  Not again.

  ‘Amanda-’ Groote called to his absent child, to the empty air.

  ‘ Miles, help me,’ Andy screamed, ‘- please! ’

  Miles heaved to his feet, stumbled toward the two men, the blood pouring from his leg, ignoring the agony.

  Not again. No.

  Sorenson fired two bullets into Groote. The hair puffed on Groote’s head; he kicked once and lay still.

  The fed fired twice into Andy’s throat.

  Miles screamed.

  The fed looked at Miles. Tried to smile. Lowered the gun. ‘He tried to kill us all. Your fault, Miles, you said the wrong thing and set him off. Your goddamned fault. You should have shut up.’

  Miles fell to the floor.

  Sorenson aimed the gun at Miles. ‘Miles, you’re going to talk…’

  His voice was calm again, as though they were back, sitting in the plush leather chairs in Allison’s office. ‘I don’t have to kill you. But I need to know what you know. I’ll make sure you get Frost. I’ll trade you treatment for you telling me everything I need to know about who’s coming after us. I can set it up, no problem. I couldn’t let a fuck like Groote live. But you, we can make a deal.’

  ‘Please… I’ll tell you.’ He drew his knee to his chin, groped for the small gun above his ankle, putting a wince on his face as if pain were overwhelming him. He’d forgotten about it in the shock of being shot, of running, of Groote dying, of memory returning with the force of a bullet. ‘I’ll tell you…’

  He tucked his hurt leg close to him, gripped under the cuff of his pants as though grimacing against the pain. Closed his hand around the small pistol.

  Sorenson leaned forward and Miles sprang the gun up, firing, painting a neat hole in Sorenson’s eye.

  Sorenson fell dead.

  ‘Uhhh,’ Miles said. He started to crawl back across the concrete, slowly, painfully, aware of the blood oozing out of his leg and arm, toward Groote.

  He checked Groote’s throat. No pulse. He dug in his pockets, checking for a cell phone to call for help.

  He flipped the phone open, tried to make his thumb work the pad.

  He heard footsteps approaching him. Sorenson had help, backup, Miles was dead now, nothing to be done. This was death; this would be peace. He crawled, waiting for the inevitable bullet to break his spine, drill into his head.

  A weight slammed into his head, once, then again, and he knew no more.

  SIXTY

  Stone was cold and damp against his skin. Slowly he opened his eyes and sat up. Dried blood covered his face. He wore only his T-shirt and underwear. Rough bandages, fashioned from his shirt, covered the wound in his arm and in his leg. Pain pulsed under the wrappings, as though fingers had dug around in his wounds, and patched him up without care. The room was narrow, the air tasted dense and coppery in his mouth, as though fear lived and grew in the dark corners and its essence had seeped, over many years, into the stone.

  The abandoned madhouse. He was still inside.

  He tried to speak. ‘Hello?’ His voice sounded broken. He cleared his throat. ‘Hello?’

  Several seconds passed. He heard the clicking of locks – more than one – and the door to the room opened. A person stepped inside the dim light of the room from the bright light of the hallway. Miles blinked and his voice died in his throat.

  ‘Hello, Miles.’ Allison Vance wore a suit; her hair was lighter, styled neatly, as it had been in the pictures at Edward Wallace’s house. She stayed ten paces back.

  At first he thought, My mind’s still gone, snapped, and it shouldn’t be, he knew he had not killed Andy. No. But then she said, ‘Hello, Miles,’ again and her quiet voice echoed, ever so slightly, against the stone. Instead of echoing in his head. Then she raised a gun – the gun Groote had given him, that he’d killed Sorenson with – and leveled it at him.

  ‘Allison?’ he managed to say. ‘Allison.’

  ‘My name is Renee Wallace,’ she said.

  ‘Your… name is Allison Vance. You’re… dead.’

  ‘No. You’re dead. Unless you do exactly as I tell you.’

  ‘You – you asked me for help, you set me up.’

  ‘Miles.’ She cocked her head, offered the gentle smile she’d always used greeting him in her office as they prepared to sit and talk and she would try to pierce his past of secrets. But there was no understanding, no kindness, in her face; the concern was only a false expression painted on a mask. ‘I’m not the problem. You are.’

  ‘Sorenson said in Santa Fe… he didn’t kill you. I thought he was lying.’ He coughed. ‘The auction-’

  ‘Miles. There is no auction. Not now. I have a buyer already.’

  She’d set him up again. ‘Singhal.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll make you a deal, Miles. You tell me what I need to know and I’ll make sure you have Frost. I’ll cure you. You’re a killer, and it’s a better offer than anyone else will make you.’

  ‘I’m not a killer. I remember it now. I didn’t kill Andy.’

  ‘Yes, you did. I’ve seen your government file, Miles, two federal officers swear you shot him…’

  ‘No… FBI did… they even told me the tape was botched… blamed it on me…’

  She shook her head. ‘You killed him. You killed Groote, you killed Sorenson. You killed Hurley. I’ll bet you even killed DeShawn Pitts.’

  ‘That’s a lie. You – you asked me for help…’

  ‘Miles. All I have to say is that I told you about the Frost program, that you wanted in, Hurley said no. After all, it’s designed to help the innocent victims of violence. People like Celeste. Like Nathan. But not you – you coldbloodedly murdered your best friend.’

  Miles shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘So you snapped. You’ve killed everyone who got in your way. That’s how the authorities will see it, Miles. A mentally broken man, denied his wish for help.’

  ‘No.’

&nbs
p; ‘You went after Frost yourself. First you wanted to get rid of me. I’ll bet the bomb fragments they find at my office will be very similar in composition and design to bombs the Barrada family used in the past. You might know how to make one of those, Miles. It won’t be coincidence.’

  ‘You can’t explain away… vanishing… after the explosion.’

  ‘I was on a business trip, Miles. I didn’t hear about the blast and you know I forgot my cell phone back in Santa Fe. The woman who died was looking at office space, I imagine. I can step back into being Allison Vance long enough for the story to be over with, then I just leave town again and no one cares.’

  He remembered the woman’s voice then, before he picked the lock into Allison’s office: a woman from Denver asking about office space. Yesterday’s paper mentioned a missing tourist in Santa Fe. Jesus.

  ‘I just need to know what you know.’ She held up a white pill, perfect as a pearl. ‘The answer to your prayers. The cure for your pathetic madness. All you have to do is tell me who else knows about me and Frost, and tell me where I can find them.’

  Celeste and Nathan. She wanted them. So Singhal’s company could silence them. No one else could gut her; no one else was still alive who could hurt her.

  ‘I – I can’t.’

  The awful false smile disappeared; in its place was a fury of cold resolve. ‘I won’t kill you, Miles. I’ll shatter you. Singhal’s company will buy Sangriaville from Quantrill’s estate – I’ll hook you up to one of Hurley’s machines, play every horrible nightmare and trauma into your head. I’ll break your mind so bad it can never be fixed. I’ll keep you locked up in a hospital forever. No one will ever look for you. The feds will give you up for lost or dead. You and Groote’s brat, I’ll just use your heads as my research playground. Unless you help me. Help me and we’re friends again, I’ll cure you.’

  Groote’s daughter must be here as well, locked elsewhere in the decaying madhouse. ‘No. I didn’t kill Andy. I didn’t… I don’t need what you’re selling.’

  ‘You’re not a hero, Miles, you’re a useless punk of a head case. You’ll never be fixed without this’ – and she showed him Frost again, a white oval, pure as snow. ‘Celeste. Nathan. Tell me where they are. Now.’

  ‘You won’t hurt them?’ He clutched at the bandage on his leg as though twisted in doubt and agony.

  ‘They want Frost too. They want to be healthy and whole. I’m sure I can reach the same deal with them as I’m offering you.’

  She would have them, and Victor, too, all killed, he knew. She’d kill him as soon as they were confirmed dead; his usefulness was over, and she was gambling on his desperation, believing that he couldn’t think cogently.

  ‘I understand you a lot better than you think,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said that to me before… I believed you died. It’s true. It works both ways. I want help. Don’t want to be this way no more.’

  ‘So tell me.’ She lowered her voice.

  ‘Celeste… had a total breakdown. After the shooting in Yosemite. She and Nathan both. Her TV agent wired her money, they rented a house there in Fish Camp for a week. She and Nathan are still there. Far as I know.’ He leaned against the stone wall. ‘Hard for us… to be out in the real world. Couldn’t cope. Couldn’t.’ Let her think he and the others were nothing, useless, help her put her guard down.

  ‘Address.’

  He hesitated. She knew the streets in Fish Camp; he didn’t. He could hardly invent an address. Through the haze of pain he knew his only hope was that, Fish Camp being remote, whoever she sent to eliminate Celeste and Nathan would take hours to reach Yosemite, and he would be dead or free by then. ‘I don’t know… street address. There were a cluster of rental properties… behind a grocery. They’re staying at one.’

  She flipped open her phone, spoke softly into it, repeating what Miles had said. Giving him a property name to call. She closed the phone.

  ‘You better not be lying. I’ve got someone calling the rental office to check.’

  Mistake. He hadn’t thought past the pain; their presence could be disproved with a couple of phone calls.

  He might have only a couple of minutes before she got a call back telling her he’d lied. No margin for error. ‘I’m not. They slowed me down.’ He loosened the bandage on his leg.

  ‘Leave that alone, you’ll bleed. I want you conscious.’

  ‘It hurts.’ He stripped the whole bandage loose and grimaced at the bullet hole in his leg as though it were a picture in a book, not a wound in his own flesh. Blood oozed out. He held the strip of cloth between his hands.

  ‘I said leave it alone.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have killed Groote.’ He had to play her along, get her to come close to him, get her thinking there was another threat to her that only he could help defuse. He collapsed on the floor, as though standing drained him of all energy.

  ‘I did the world a favor. Now. Who did Groote tell about Frost?’

  ‘FBI… old buddies of his,’ Miles lied. ‘Helped us find your buddy Singhal. Tracked him here.’

  Fear briefly shaded her face. ‘I need names.’

  He let his eyes go half closed, mumbled. Come close, he thought. Closer. I only get one chance.

  She took two steps. And stopped. She might not believe him. But he’d put an itch under her skin. ‘Miles? The names.’

  Just three steps closer. He tensed to jump at her.

  Then he heard a boom, rumbling, as if a tank had crashed hard into the front of the building. The madhouse shuddered.

  She turned and he leaped, grabbing at her gun. It fired, powering the bullet past his head, pinging off the stone wall. She kicked him hard on his wound, whirled and fled the room. Miles stumbled after her, agony screaming in his leg. She stopped at the top of the stairs; Miles saw they were on the top floor, no more stairs rising beyond this floor.

  She ran down the stairs.

  ‘Allison! Allison!’ he yelled.

  And then he heard an answer, over the clatter of her feet on the stairs: ‘Miles?’

  Nathan.

  ‘Nathan, get the hell out, call the police, Allison’s got a gun-’

  And then the awful, final crack of two bullets. Miles limped down the stairs, half falling, half running, the pain in his leg terrible, but frantic for Nathan.

  In the foyer the smashed front of a sedan lay among the remains of the front door, debris and dust crowning the h o o d and the starred windshield. The driver’s door was open; the car empty.

  Nathan was gone.

  Miles heard footsteps and spun. Allison ran back into the foyer, clutching the laptop from the office he and Groote had passed, the gun aimed at him.

  ‘Allison.’

  She stopped, steadied her aim, took a step back.

  ‘You can’t run. You can’t just keep… running. Doesn’t work.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Running is nothing.’ He could taste his own blood in his mouth. ‘You’ll never get out. Never escape. Never. Ever. If not me, Nathan will find you. Celeste. Any of our friends. Any of Dodd’s followers. It won’t end for you. Ever. You’ve thrown your life away. You’re the crazy one.’

  Rage and fear contorted her face. She fired at him and he dived through the open door of the wrecked car.

  She emptied his small gun as she charged at the car. He counted every shot. She rushed the door, aimed at him, and he kicked through the open window with his good leg, catching her in the chest as her finger clicked on an empty clip. She staggered back, lost her balance, cracked her head on crumbling masonry on the floor, and went limp as she hit the tiles.

  He heard his name yelled. ‘Miles! Miles!’

  Nathan.

  ‘Here!’ Miles stumbled to Allison, pulled the gun from her unconscious fingers.

  Nathan’s face appeared in the hole that had been the front door.

  ‘Nathan, holy God…’

  ‘I’m not a screw-up,’ Nathan said
. He steadied Miles against the car. ‘I – I followed you and Groote here from the hotel… I didn’t know what to do… so I waited… until I had enough nerve. When you didn’t come out… I couldn’t just drive away. So I rammed the rental car through the door, then I ran to get help.’ He gestured at the mess. ‘What the hell was I thinking…’

  ‘No, you did awesome, Nathan.’ He grabbed Nathan’s shoulder, embraced him, pounded his back.

  ‘I didn’t do it for you, Miles,’ Nathan said. His tone was cool. ‘You I’m still pissed at. I did it for my friends.’

  ‘I know. I’m just glad you did what you did. Thank you.’ He didn’t know what to say and the words came, drawn by his memory of Nathan’s nightmare: ‘You fixed it, man.’

  ‘I did.’ Nathan gave him a thin smile. The side mirror hung broken from its control cables and he carefully turned it to face the battered car. ‘Is Frost here?’

  ‘If it isn’t,’ Miles said, ‘she’ll tell us where it is. We won, Nathan.’

  ‘I ran when she shot at me… to a house down the street… they’re calling the police. The guy’s a vet. Like me.’

  ‘We need to call Victor and Celeste as soon as possible. Stay here. Don’t let Allison run.’

  Nathan sat on Allison’s back. She didn’t respond.

  Miles climbed the stairs, calling Amanda’s name. He heard a weak reply on the second floor.

  The door was bolted shut. He opened it, saw a girl cowering in a corner, dressed in hospital scrubs, pale.

  ‘Amanda?’

  ‘Who are you?’ She trembled at his bloodied face, the exposed wound in his leg.

  ‘A friend of your dad’s.’

  ‘I want to go home. The sounds. The voices. This place is full of ghosts.’

  ‘No,’ Miles said. ‘The ghosts are gone. It’s okay now. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  ‘Does it work?’ Miles asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Amanda said. She sat on the hospital’s porch, letting the wind kiss her face. ‘It does. The magic’s all in the super beta-blockers. They kick bad-memory ass. And the therapy.’

  ‘You think I should take the pill?’