Death Night

by Ritter, Todd

It emitted a loud, drawn-out crack—like a tree just before it topples. Then the roof caved in, crashing into what remained of the third floor of the hotel before continuing on to the second. The fall continued as the combined weight of the roof and the third floor smashed through the inn’s second level and then the first.

  The whole thing—level after level of burning building—came to a stop in the basement. The impact sent up a wave of flames that burst outward, hurtling toward them. The rush of hot air that followed shoved them forward, almost lifting them off their feet. Kat hit the ground again, no longer able to see, no longer hearing her screams.

  She rolled onto her back, squinting against the orange brightness of the blaze, seeing that with the roof and floors gone, there was nothing left to support the exterior walls. The one closest to them leaned forward, set loose from the rest of the hotel. Flames danced along its surface.

  The wall tilted even more, creaking and crackling. Then it fell forward.

  “Kat! Look out!”

  It was Nick. Just behind her. Shoving her forward. Kat rolled along the ground, feeling the sidewalk beneath her. Then she hit the curb, bouncing into the gravel-dusted street.

  She came to a stop facing the fire at a sideways view. The ground was now vertical. The falling wall horizontal. Disoriented and confused, she saw that Nick had also pushed Tony, who was rolling the same way she had.

  Now it was only him, caught in the shadow of the fiery wall. He looked her way, wide-eyed and frightened. His expression changed, just for a second, when he saw that she was out of harm’s way. It was, Kat realized, a look of relief passing across Nick Donnelly’s face.

  Then the wall crashed down on top of him and Kat could no longer see him at all.

  1 P.M.

  Kat forced herself to stop crying long enough to make a phone call, although there were plenty of tears left to be shed. She felt them pressing at the corners of her eyes, waiting to be released. But she had to be composed. Just for a few minutes. Sitting on a bench outside the hospital, she sniffed once and wiped her cheeks. Then she dialed her phone.

  Lucy Meade answered a few rings later, her voice friendly and unsuspecting.

  “Hey, Kat,” she said. “I was just about to call you. I’ve got big news. My friend took a look at the femur. He agrees it had been in a fire. Even more, he got an age. According to him, the owner of those bones died more than three hundred years ago.”

  Kat stayed silent, not quite sure what she should say and how she should sound. Lucy noticed the lack of response and said, “Kat? You still there?”

  “Lucy.” Her voice was a tremulous croak. “I’m calling about Nick. Something terrible has happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She tried to explain everything as best she could. Nick’s surprise arrival in Perry Hollow. Him helping with the case. The fire at the bed-and-breakfast. But when it came time to break the really bad news, she found she couldn’t. The words just wouldn’t come.

  “Kat,” Lucy said, “what happened to Nick?”

  “The wall—” Kat tried and failed to choke back a sob. “It collapsed on top of him.”

  Lucy’s shock was palpable, even over the phone. Kat heard a sharp intake of air, followed by a worried “Is he okay? Tell me he’ll be okay.”

  He’ll be okay. Those were the words Kat so desperately wanted to say. But it would have been a lie. She had no idea if Nick would be okay. That could only be answered by the doctors currently trying to save his life.

  “He’s in surgery now,” she said. “He’s hurt really bad.”

  Kat didn’t know with certainty all the things that were wrong. She was only aware of what the paramedics had uttered on the way to the hospital. Broken bones. Trauma to the head. Second-degree burns. Internal bleeding. Sitting numb and motionless in the back of the ambulance, she realized that the paramedics were surprised Nick was still alive.

  “Is he going to survive?” Lucy asked. “Be straight with me, Kat.”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

  Lucy said she’d be there as fast as she could. Kat told her she’d call immediately if anything changed. Then the call was over, and not a moment too soon. Just as Kat was saying good-bye, the tears started to flow again.

  This time, she knew, there would be no stopping them.

  Weeping openly, she returned to the hospital’s emergency room and took a seat next to Henry Goll. There were bandages on his fingers—the gutter he hung from had cut them badly—and a mean-looking scrape on his chin. Kat could only imagine what they looked like to the others in the waiting room. Probably like a pair of chimney sweeps—faces blackened with ash, holes the size of dimes burned into their clothes. The stench of smoke rising off them was so strong that no one even tried to sit near them. They had a whole corner to themselves. Perfect, Kat thought, for inconsolable crying.

  “Sorry for being such a wreck,” she told Henry. “In the past year, Nick and I have grown very close.”

  Henry gave her a surprised glance. “You two aren’t—”

  Kat stopped him before he could go any further. “God, no. That would be like sleeping with my brother. If I had a brother.”

  Sitting in the sterile waiting room, tears forming clean streaks down her soot-smeared cheeks, Kat realized that Nick was the closest she’d get to having a sibling. That made the thought of losing him all the more terrifying.

  “I just don’t know what I’ll do without him.”

  Henry put an arm over her shoulder, a gesture Kat found as surprising as she did comforting.

  “Nick will be okay,” he said. “If I remember correctly, he’s as stubborn as they come.”

  He was right about that. Kat had never known the true meaning of the word determination until she met Nick Donnelly. He was fueled by an inner fire most people didn’t possess. It’s what had driven him to become a cop and, when that abruptly ended, a private detective. It’s why he had come to Perry Hollow, even though the death of Constance Bishop had nothing to do with him. And it’s what had allowed him to save Kat’s life, not once but twice.

  “Yes,” she said, trying to sound convinced. “He’s definitely going to pull through.”

  Yet when she saw a doctor enter the waiting room and look in their direction, she braced for the worst. She gripped Henry’s hand as he approached, knowing the first words out of his mouth were going to be that Nick hadn’t made it. She stared at the floor, not wanting to see the pained regret in his eyes as he came to a stop in front of her.

  “Chief Campbell?”

  Kat refused to respond, forcing Henry to do it.

  “How can we help you?”

  He sounded so strong. So calm. Even after his own brush with death that afternoon. Kat was grateful for his presence, and wondered what kind of wreck she’d be if Henry hadn’t been there.

  “We’ve just got Lieutenant Vasquez situated in his room,” the doctor said. “He’d like to talk with the chief.”

  Not a word about Nick. Considering the circumstances, Kat took that to be a positive sign and loosened her white-knuckled grip on Henry.

  “I guess I’ll go talk to him,” she said.

  Her legs felt rubbery as she moved out of the emergency wing and into the general hospital. Part of it was nerves—her whole body felt numb and jittery at the same time. The rest was exhaustion, both physical and mental. She felt so tired that she was surprised she could even walk at all.

  But walk she did, down hallway after hallway painted the starkest shade of white Kat had ever seen. Not for the first time, she wondered why hospital décor was so mind-numbing. People needed something to look at during their dark hours there. Something to focus on other than their pain. Instead, she had more white walls sliding past on her way to the reception desk.

  The nurse stationed there gave her directions to a room on the second floor where Tony Vasquez would be spending the night. Although he’d managed to avoid the collapsing wall, Tony still hadn’t escaped
unscathed. The rubble had caught up to him as he was trying to tumble away. The result was a few broken bones and even more bruises. Still, he was lucky. He had been a few seconds away from being in the same condition as Nick.

  Entering his room, Kat found him in bed, propped up by a stack of pillows. His left leg was in a cast. His right arm was in a sling. A bandage on his forehead slowly seeped red.

  “Any word on Nick yet?” he asked.

  Kat shook her head. “Still waiting. How are you?”

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “I guess you’re going to be here a while.”

  “At least a day or two,” Tony said. “Which is why I just called Gloria.”

  He was referring to Gloria Ambrose, who ran the state police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation. That made her Tony’s boss. And Nick’s, once upon a time.

  “Is she coming to Perry Hollow?”

  “Sort of,” Tony said. “She’s in Hawaii right now.”

  “Hawaii?”

  “Even state police bigwigs need to go on vacation. She’s going to try to catch the next flight out here. Even then, she still won’t arrive until tomorrow morning.”

  Kat began to get dizzy from confusion. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because,” Tony said, “it’s pretty obvious that I can’t do much work from a hospital bed. And until Gloria gets here, we need someone to lead the investigation.”

  “And that would be me?”

  Tony paused to sit up higher, wincing the entire time. Kat saw a paper cup on the table next to his bed. Sitting within it, like a pair of robin’s eggs at the bottom of a nest, were two blue pills. Painkillers that he refused to take for fear it would slow his thoughts.

  “Gloria thinks you’ll manage just fine,” he said. “I do, too.”

  Honestly, Kat had forgotten all about the investigation during the chaos of the fire. It was jarring how quickly priorities could change. One minute she was concerned about a homicidal arsonist on the loose. The next, she was praying that her best friend would survive the hour. Now Tony wanted her to once again focus on catching a killer.

  But she couldn’t. Not with Nick’s life hanging in the balance. She needed to be at the hospital when he was out of surgery. She needed to see him and hold his hand and tell him that everything would be okay.

  “I’ll give you the names of the key people,” Tony said. “They’re close to finishing the inventory of the museum. I have another—”

  “Tony, stop.” Kat stood by his bed with her arms crossed. She shook her head like a stubborn child, refusing to hear any more. “I can’t just take over your investigation. There’s got to be someone from the state police who can do it.”

  “Not one who knows the town inside and out like you do,” Tony said.

  “They can manage without me for one day.”

  “And that might be one day too late.”

  Kat felt the frustration building up inside her. It caused her shoulders to tighten. A slight twinge of pain flared at her lower back.

  “You don’t get it, do you? The investigation is no longer my main priority. Nick is. And I need to be here for him.”

  Tony narrowed his eyes and thrust his jaw forward. He could look mean when he wanted to, and he did that afternoon, even stuck in a hospital bed and gasping with pain. “You know the fire at that hotel was not a coincidence. Someone set it on purpose. Just like at the museum. And he’s probably picking the next place to torch this very minute. So if you want to be here for Nick, then get out there and catch whoever the hell is doing this. He would want you to.”

  Kat had no doubt about that. And if the roles were reversed and she was the one clinging to life, she knew Nick wouldn’t stop looking for the person who had caused it.

  “But what if Nick …”

  She let her voice trail off, unable to say the word blaring like a siren in her brain. Dies. What if Nick dies and she misses being able to say her final good-byes?

  “He won’t,” Tony said, also preferring that the word remained unspoken. “So put that thought out of your head right now.”

  Through the open door, she heard footsteps bouncing through the hallway. Someone was running. Right to Tony’s room, from the sound of it. Kat’s entire body clenched up, once again preparing for bad news. Turning to the door, she saw Henry skid into view.

  “Nick’s out of surgery,” he announced. “The doctor wants to talk to Kat.”

  It was freezing in the hospital’s intensive care unit—the kind of artificial chill that seemed to seep directly into your veins. Standing in the middle of it, talking to Nick’s doctor, Kat had to hug herself to keep warm. What the doctor was telling her didn’t help matters. Hearing it alone would have made her blood turn cold.

  “Your friend is in very bad shape. He sustained multiple injuries, most of them life-threatening.”

  “What kind of injuries?”

  Kat knew the doctor slightly. His name was Samil Patel and his son was a classmate of James. Yet knowing him didn’t make hearing the news any easier. There was little emotion in Dr. Patel’s voice, no attempt to soften the blow.

  “The worst of them is a cerebral contusion. Mr. Donnelly managed to avoid a skull fracture, which is good. But the contusion could result in brain hemorrhaging, so we have to monitor it very closely.”

  He went on, listing all the ways in which Nick had been hurt. Fractured ribs. A broken collarbone. Damaged organs. (“Internal bleeding is still a possibility,” Dr. Patel added.) Kat pretended to listen patiently, when in reality she tried not to hear a single word. She didn’t want to know how much Nick was suffering. That only made the situation worse.

  “Doc,” she said, “just tell me if you think he’s going to survive.”

  Dr. Patel shrugged, an uncertain rise and fall of the shoulders that offered Kat little hope.

  “I’d put his chances of survival at fifty percent,” he said. “The next twenty-four hours are going to be crucial. I’m most concerned about the head trauma. Mr. Donnelly is in a coma at the moment.”

  Kat’s legs buckled. For a brief moment, she was sure she was going to pass out. But she recovered, planting both feet on the floor and saying, “How long do you think it will last?”

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Patel replied. “Maybe a few hours. Maybe a few days. Maybe forever.”

  Forever. The word immediately lodged in her brain, refusing to budge.

  “We’re monitoring his brain functions,” the doctor said. “The fact that there’s anything to monitor at all is a good sign. It means he’ll probably make it. But if parts of his brain stop working properly in the next few hours—which could happen—then your friend’s condition will only get worse.”

  From her vantage point in the ICU hallway, Kat could see the inside of Nick’s room. If she craned her neck a bit, she could even make out the foot of the bed. Nick himself, however, remained frustratingly out of view. She pictured him as a vegetable, growing old in a hospital bed. Never moving. His skin wrinkling and turning yellow with age. A Rip Van Winkle beard sprouting on his chin, growing whiter and longer with each passing year.

  “Can I see him?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not. It’s usually customary to wait at least two hours after surgery until a visitor can see a patient. Even then, the visitor should be a family member.”

  Kat looked up at Dr. Samil Patel, eyes brimming with tears. Their sons knew each other. They played together at recess. She hoped this bond, however inconsequential, would make him take pity on her.

  “Please,” she said. “I’m the only family he’s got.”

  The doctor must have seen something in her eyes beyond mere tears. Determination, maybe. Or pure fear that she’d never see Nick again. Whatever it was, he relented.

  “It’ll have to be quick,” he said. “No more than a minute or two.”

  Dr. Patel led her to a nearby sink and made Kat wash her hands. Then he ushered her to Nick’s door. Apprehension made her
pause at the threshold. She was fully aware that it might be the last time she ever saw him. A minute or two to say good-bye just didn’t seem right.

  Steeling herself with a deep breath, Kat stepped inside.

  Nick lay unconscious in the room’s only bed, a blanket pulled up to his waist. He looked so small, so fragile. His entire head was covered by a helmet of bandages, wisps of hair peeking out from under it. His hands had been placed on his stomach, one on top of the other. Kat didn’t like the position. It made him resemble a corpse just waiting for the coffin.

  Although the room he had been placed in was quite large, the sheer amount of hospital equipment crammed into it made it look much smaller. Nick was attached to all of it. Kat noticed a heart rate monitor, its beeping green line spiking across the screen. On the other side of the bed was an EEG machine, monitoring his brain activity in dozens of thin white lines that undulated against a black background. A breathing tube had been inserted into his nose. Another tube ran from the crook of his right arm to an IV stand next to the bed.

  “Nick.” Kat didn’t know if he could hear her. Even if he couldn’t, she continued talking anyway. Some things needed to be spoken. “I hope this isn’t the last time I see you. But if it is, I want to thank you for saving my life again today. I know you’d shrug it off like you always do, but I still wouldn’t be on this earth if it wasn’t for you. So I thank you. James thanks you.”

  Her thoughts drifted briefly to her son, playing at home with Lou, hopefully oblivious to the drama going on in the rest of the town. James adored Nick, and Kat knew he’d be worried when he found out something bad had happened. She also knew he’d insist on coming to the hospital for a visit. And she vowed to make sure it happened eventually.

  But first, she needed to fulfill a promise to Nick. One she said aloud among the beeps and pulses that filled his hospital room.

  “I’m going to find the person responsible for this. I swear I will, Nick. And when I do, I’m going to make him pay.”

  Standing in the open doorway, Dr. Patel cleared his throat. “I’m afraid time’s up,” he said.

  Kat quickly reached out and clasped Nick’s hand. Just like the rest of the ICU, his skin was ice-cold. She held on to his hand for a few seconds, trying to will some of her warmth into it. Then she let go and allowed herself to be led from the room.