by Ellie Marney
Sweat stings in her eyes. The rope is taut at her shoulder. It slides twice, and she cries out from the burn of the coarse hemp. When she reaches some appropriate point, Ross says, “Stop,” and she forces herself to hold, and hold, and hold, while he ties the rope off.
“It’s done,” Ross says behind her. “You can let go.”
She collapses to the boards, utterly spent. Her hands are throbbing like she thrust them in a fire. When she rolls over, she sees everything laid out like a tableau. Kristin lies unconscious by the desk. Bell is tied up and shivering nearby. Ross stands by the barricade, smiling as he surveys his domain.
Simon is hanging upside down in his cell, swinging gently and laughing. Did she expect Simon to do something? To save them all? What was she thinking? Simon is deranged, and this is over.
She’s escaped one sociopath, only to be enslaved and murdered by another. She should have run.
And Emma knows in her heart that she is going to die here.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Ross walks over to the desk and begins unpacking his medical pouch. Emma sees latex tourniquet tubing, syringes, plastic-wrapped needles, a large-bladed scalpel.
“Oh, this is fun!” Simon exclaims. He opens his arms wide as he swings, suspended. “All the blood is rushing to my head. Emma, you should try this, it gives you a whole different perspective on things.”
Emma pushes herself up. “I want to check on Bell,” she rasps. “Mr. Ross—”
“Did he tell you his name is Ross?” Simon wriggles in the air to steady his swinging as he faces her. “Goodness, I thought we’d already dealt with introductions.”
Clive Ross, the Pennsylvania killer, the Berryville Butcher, Siegfried, Gordon Lord—she honestly doesn’t care about true names or aliases anymore. The man in the paramedic uniform has multiple identities, but they all mean the same thing.
“His name is Anthony Hoyt!” Upside down, Simon’s grin looks demonic. “I’d say Anthony Hoyt, MD, but I’m fairly sure he faked his medical credentials so Dr. Scott would employ him.”
“Be quiet now, Simon,” Ross says.
She remembers the name Anthony Hoyt. He was one of the technicians on the MT list. The list that Bell gave Martino, in a yesterday that feels like a million years ago. She wonders if Martino ever followed up on those names, and the thought reminds her that there’s still a SWAT team outside this building.
She has no idea how long they’ve already been here; time has become elastic. But if they can survive the Butcher for thirty minutes…
“Come over and check on your friend, Miss Lewis.” Ross, or Hoyt, or whatever he’s called, is feeling magnanimous. “I need you over here anyway.”
“Yes, go on over, Emma! I can keep chatting to you both from this position,” Simon declares.
It’s quite possible that Simon Gutmunsson would talk underwater. Emma clambers to her feet, trying not to use her hands. Her palms are red and swollen, and some of her fingers have small white blisters on them. The blisters pulse with the beat of her heart. She wipes her hands carefully against her T-shirt as she staggers closer to the desk.
Bell’s head is turned, his eyes closed. His left side, from armpit to waist, is dark crimson and his lips are almost white. Emma drops to her knees in front of him.
“Travis.” She shakes his shoulder. “Travis.”
“Hmm, he’s not looking very good, is he?” Simon, ever helpful.
When Bell doesn’t respond, she slaps him, which sets her fingers alight.
“Bell. Bell, wake up.”
His eyes blur open. “Emma.”
“I’m here.”
They can’t do anything more than stare at each other. There’s a lot she wants to say, but the Butcher is watching.
“Anthony Hoyt,” she whispers finally.
Bell blinks, then he stabilizes and it registers. “The list.”
“Miss Lewis,” Hoyt says, “untie Mr. Bell’s jacket sleeves and pull out his left arm. Tie his right arm back onto the desk. And then get the needle—”
“No,” Emma says. “I won’t take donations for you.”
Hoyt hits her with the gun. It knocks her sideways and onto Bell’s sprawled-out legs. The force of the blow explodes inside her head, hammers her skull as she pulls herself back up.
Bell’s sweating with the pain of the bullet wound, but now he’s about as far from passed out as he could possibly get. “Emma. Emma.”
“Well, that was uncalled for.” Simon, from his unique viewpoint in the cell.
“Do I need to repeat myself?” Hoyt asks.
“Emma, do it,” Bell says. “Just do what he says.”
“He’s going to bleed you,” Emma whispers. The red line now leaking down her cheek from her eyebrow feels like a tear.
“I don’t give a fuck. Untie me. Come on.”
She has to clamber closer to untie Bell. When his left arm comes loose, Bell makes a soft gasp. He keeps that arm tucked against his body as she secures his right arm. She leaves some wiggle room in the jacket, and she doesn’t think Hoyt notices.
Simon is talking again. “Why do you think he uses the blood, Emma? Do you know?”
“Simon, now isn’t the time.” Hoyt is starting to sound exasperated.
“But I feel so inspired! It’s because of his vanity, Emma. His fear of mortality and death. Everyone ages and everyone dies. Even me. Even our friend Mr. Hoyt. But he wants to slow the aging process.”
“Shut up now, Simon.”
“Oh, Anthony! Come on! It’s textbook Byron, the ‘mortal coldness of the soul’ from ‘Youth and Age.’ Can you really not see that? Or did you pull all those lovely quotes in your letters out of Reader’s Digest?”
Hoyt seems to find the whole turn of the conversation irritating, and it makes him aggressive. He reaches down and grabs Emma’s arm, hauls her up.
“I only brought three needles, so I suppose we’ll have to share.” He selects the scalpel, tests it on the hair on her forearm. The scalpel has dried blood on it. “You’re going to take blood from Mr. Bell, and I’m going to hold this scalpel to his throat. If you don’t behave nicely, I’ll slice his carotid. Now take this.”
He thrusts tubing and plastic packets into her hands.
“Kneel down—that’s right. Roll up his sleeve and tie the tourniquet above his elbow.”
“Yes, Emma.” Simon’s voice is sardonic. “Make sure you get a good sample.”
Bell watches her the whole time. He doesn’t seem to care about the sharp steel Hoyt has poised under his jaw. When Emma falters—opening the packet with the needle, fitting the needle to the syringe, inserting the syringe into his arm—he says, “Come on, Lewis,” and she recovers enough to keep going.
Bell’s blood has a viscosity, moving slowly into the syringe cylinder. Hoyt seems to find it fascinating.
“That’s good,” he mutters. “Yes.”
The cylinder goes up to ten milliliters, and Hoyt prods her, so that is how much she draws. When she’s done, Bell looks paler than before. He’s already lost a lot of blood.
“Now Miss Gutmunsson,” Hoyt says.
He lets her go over to Kristin alone. The plastic packets feel heavy in Emma’s hands. Kristin is lying on her left side, facing away from the desk, and Emma decides to leave her that way and just tug her arm carefully into position, so it’s stretched out on the floor.
She fumbles with the packets. Every second she delays, the FBI has more time to find the circuit breakers and unlock the doors—
“Miss Lewis,” Hoyt says. Light glints off the scalpel he has poised near Bell’s right eye. “Shall I blind him first?”
She wets her lips. “No.”
“Then don’t dawdle, Miss Lewis.”
She ties the tourniquet.
Simon is suspiciously quiet, but she can’t glance over her shoulder right now. She looks again at Hoyt. He’s set the scalpel down; with the gun in his right hand, he’s injecting himself with Bell’s blood. His gaze los
es focus for a moment, becomes narcotically glassy as he pushes the plunger in.
Emma wants to retch. She looks down at Kristin Gutmunsson’s arm.
Kristin is awake.
It seems she’s been awake for some time. Her eyes aren’t fluttering. They’re peeking behind her lids.
“Make sure you do a good job on my sister,” Simon calls. “Don’t leave her with a scar!”
There’s a subtle change of timbre there. Attenuated darkness. Emma suddenly knows in her gut that Simon has realized his twin is conscious.
Kristin does an outstanding job of pretending to be still passed out. Her body is lax as a dancer’s in repose, and there’s no giveaway flinching when Emma inserts the needle, begins to draw blood. Emma feels the presence of the foyer key—lying hidden in Kristin’s pocket—like a hot secret coal, glowing warm through the fabric. She snaps the tourniquet off.
“Bring the sample here,” Hoyt says.
As soon as he has Kristin’s syringe, Hoyt walks over to the cell. He puts the scalpel in his pocket and the gun in his waistband as he stands in front of Simon with his inner elbow exposed.
“I thought you’d like to watch while I inject your sister’s blood.” His expression is much less civilized now. He inserts the needle smoothly, presses the plunger. “Oh, yes. That’s nice—very nice.”
“I will kill you, you know,” Simon remarks conversationally.
Hoyt removes the needle, bunches his arm, and grins, a forty-something man taunting a boy less than half his age. Simon’s a psychopath, but the power differential is disturbing.
Hoyt turns. “Now you, Miss Lewis.”
“I wouldn’t bother taking any from Emma.” Simon is spinning and unspinning himself. He looks like a long white grub trying to emerge from his cocoon. “She hates you so much her blood would probably poison you.”
Emma winds the tourniquet around her own arm below the sleeve of her T-shirt. Heightened senses make everything more visceral: the grime on her skin, the smell of her sweat, the vein popping in her arm, the blood rushing there. The blood Hoyt’s so desperate for, the blood that is everything to him…
The blood that is everything.
There’s only one clean needle left, and suddenly Emma knows what to do with it. She’s going to take control of Hoyt’s ritual, sully it. She’s going to hit him where it hurts.
She unwraps the needle and slides it—without attaching the plastic barrel of the syringe cylinder—straight into her vein. The sting is mild. She takes a deep breath. Please let this work.
Then she turns around to face Hoyt and releases the tourniquet.
The effect is dramatic. Blood—her blood—gushes down her inner arm in a thick scarlet runnel that bifurcates halfway to her wrist. She watches it drip onto the floor. If nothing else, letting part of herself out like this feels like a release.
“Emma, no!” Bell cries.
“What are you—” Hoyt still has Kristin’s syringe in his hand as he rushes over. “Stop that! Don’t do that! For god’s sake, you’re wasting it!”
He’s so intent on stopping the flow of Emma’s blood he doesn’t realize when Kristin Gutmunsson pushes up off the floor and flies at him.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Kristin slams into Anthony Hoyt with an earsplitting scream, shoving his own right hand violently toward his face. The used syringe he’s holding buries itself deep into his cheek.
“TAKE MY BLOOD, YOU MISERABLE FUCKING SHIT!” Kristin’s face is twisted in a snarl, like she’s been possessed by her brother.
Hoyt makes a garbled cry.
In a single smooth motion, Kristin yanks the revolver out of Hoyt’s waistband and aims straight at him. Hoyt dives to the floor, and the gun goes off like a deafening crack of thunder inside the chapel room. The shot goes wide. Hoyt rolls, scuttles. Still screaming, Kristin fires once more. But her aim is wild, and a fourth bullet plows into a floorboard. It doesn’t look as if she’s handled a gun in her life.
“Kristin, give me the gun.” Emma jerks the needle out of her arm, snatches the weapon out of Kristin’s hands. “Untie Bell. We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
“Simon—”
“Kristin, NOW!”
In less than five seconds, they’re falling out the door of Simon’s room and into the great hall.
Cool air slaps Emma in the face and if she weren’t running, she’d be crying with relief. She’s holding Bell’s arm, Kristin is on his other side, they’re running, Bell’s stumbling, half bent over, Emma’s checking over her shoulder as they sprint for the barred gate.
“The key,” Emma pants. “If we can get to the foyer door—Bell, move!”
The great hall is an echo chamber of their thumping feet and struggling breaths. Bell’s sweating, it’s a cold sweat, Kristin looks green in the face. Emma hustles them past the steel bars, spins to check their path of retreat, holding the gun in a two-handed grip, muttering, “Come on, come on.”
Another sprint, and the dark wood of the foyer entrance is just up ahead. Emma slams into the door like she’s trying to break it down.
“The key,” she cries, makes a beckoning gesture.
Kristin looks baffled. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“Coat pocket,” Bell wheezes.
Emma gives up, grabs for Kristin’s pocket, the hard, thin object inside. She pulls it out, sound of metal scratching metal as she struggles to get it into the keyhole with her hands shaking like this and one hand holding the revolver.
“Gimme the gun,” Bell says. He takes the weapon and braces his back against the wooden wall, right arm out and aiming down the hall, all color stripped from his face.
Emma gets the door open, it swings wide, they tumble through, slam it shut.
Calm dark under the stairs of the foyer.
Emma locks the door. Bell staggers forward, drops to his knees, bent over, propping himself up with the muzzle of the gun, breathing like he’s about to pass out or die. Kristin holds the wall as she edges away to give herself space.
Emma closes her eyes for the briefest moment, opens them.
Kristin is clutching an arm about her ribs. “My brother is still back there in that room, and he’s back there with him, and he’s—”
“Kristin,” Emma says. “Kristin. We’ll get your brother.”
Emma sees to Bell first, tugs him up gently, turns him around. His hand, placing the gun flat on the floor, is palsied with tremors.
“You need to lie down.” Emma yanks his shirt free, tears it down the front, ties it hard around his midsection over his undershirt. “You need to lie down, and Kristin’s going to open the front entrance, and SWAT will come in—”
Kristin is vomiting in a corner. Emma sees to her next.
“Kristin, look at me.” The girl’s eyes are glassy, and one pupil is slightly larger than the other. “Kristin, you have to help Travis. You need to get the front door open—”
“Simon!” Kristin shrieks. She clutches Emma’s arm. “We can’t leave him there, tell me you’re not going to leave him—”
“Nobody’s leaving anyone,” Emma says, and she feels very old in years as she picks up the gun.
“No,” Bell gasps.
“Yes.” Emma tries to get her heartbeat to slow. “He helped us, Travis. He helped me. I don’t want to go back—look at me, okay? But I’m not leaving him there to get his throat slashed. And he could still get loose—Hoyt has the keys to the cell.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters, Travis. You know it matters.”
“Emma—” He just breathes for a second. Then he gives her his tie to wrap around her arm, which is still bleeding. “Listen to me. You’ve only got two bullets left. That’s it.”
“Got it.”
“Check your corners. Remember what we practiced.”
“I will.”
“Don’t go.”
“Have to.” She checks the chamber like he taught her, confirms the tw
o bullets. “I know what it feels like to be in a cage.”
Emma Lewis, fitting the key back into the lock, unlocking the door, peeking, slipping out.
Back into the ominous quiet of the great hall.
The first corners she checks are the ones nearest the door. Weaver stance adapted, double grip, watch ahead and watch the sight. Her breath has a burr from the recent sprint, but she’s in better condition than she’s ever been. She jogs in her soundless running shoes down to the barred gate, checks her firing line, head moving with the gun.
By the time she scoots behind a column to come up on the oak door at an angle, her knees are starting to shake. She’s not sure how to hold the gun while she’s moving—tucked between her breasts, okay. Her feet get slower as she approaches the door. The door is still wide open; she can see the edge of the desk.
The doorway, not the doorway, tactical suicide but she’s got to go through, Emma Lewis with her heart in her throat as she plunges forward, ducks inside Simon’s room.
Movement to her right—before she can swing, a sharp, hot feeling slicing her right shoulder blade—but Hoyt has mistimed his attack.
Emma spins and fires; all she can see is muzzle flash, but she hears a grunt, the pattering sound of footsteps. Her vision clears. She’s inside Simon’s room, the room is lit dimly, Hoyt is hiding.
Simon is still swinging gently in his cell, his cheeks ruddy from being upside down. “Hello again, Emma.”
She detaches a hand from the gun and presses a finger to her lips. Hoyt could be behind the side curtains. She only has one bullet left and she wants to make it count.
“It means a great deal to me, you know, that you came back.”
“Be quiet, Simon, I’m trying to hear.”
She edges forward. Too dark in here, too many shadows. So many miles to reach the cage, and she’s worried about hitting Simon with her next shot.
“And you got my sister out—that was marvelous, wasn’t she a banshee?”