Eerie (22 page)

“I don’t know.”

“What did they want?”

“They asked where Jim Moreton was. They took my ID card and my key ring.”

Sophie moved forward toward the nurses’ station.

When she reached it, she rose up on the balls of her feet and peeked over the edge of the desk. Two orderlies and a nurse lay on their stomachs on the floor, wrists and ankles bound with Zip Ties.

The smell of gunpowder was strong. It competed with the sweet bite of urine. The nurse was lying in a pool of it, her scrubs around her crotch darkened.

“Anyone injured?”

Headshakes.

“I heard gunshots. Were they armed?”

The nurse’s mascara had run all to hell, her black-rimmed eyes swollen with fear.

She nodded. “Yes, two of them.”

“Where did they go?”

“Jim Moreton’s room.”

Sophie kept scoping each corridor and glancing back at the double doors she’d come through moments ago. Tactically, this was a dangerous spot—centrally located and vulnerable to multiple points of attack.

She said, “Did another police officer come through here?”

“I think so.”

She yelled, “Art!”

There was no response.

The nurse continued, “I didn’t see him—we were already tied up—but I heard him yell ‘police’ and then the shooting started.”

“What room is Jim Moreton in?”

“Seven-sixteen. Down the hall to the right.”

Sophie started toward the corridor.

“You’re just leaving us here?” the nurse cried.

“Backup’s on the way. Stay quiet.”

“Please!” she begged. “Don’t leave us!”

“Shut up!”

A door slammed somewhere on the wing.

Sophie exploded down the corridor, the heels of her boots pummeling the tile.

Room 701 blurred past.

Full sprint now.

702.

Heart thudding through the slats of her ribcage.

706.

707.

Her elbow clipped a rolling IV stand that toppled hard and went skating across the floor.

713.

714.

715.

She slowed to a stop a few feet away from Moreton’s room. The door was cracked, but no light escaped.

Her lungs burned.

Somewhere on the wing, a patient banged against the inside of their door and warbled incoherently.

Sophie leaned back on the wooden handrail that ran the length of the hallway and inched forward. The smell of gunpowder was strongest here, and under the fluorescent glare, something glinted on the floor—a .40 cal shell casing.

One of Art’s.

Deep breaths.

716.

A small pane of reinforced glass looked into the room.

She peered through the bottom corner of the window.

A little light bled through a curtain on the far side of the room, but it only brightened several tiles on the floor. Everything else lay in shadow.

She eased the door open.

It swung on its hinges without a sound.

Light from the hallway spilled across the floor.

Reaching in, she palmed the wall, running her hand along the smooth concrete until it grazed a light switch.

She hesitated.

Glanced up and down the corridor.

Nothing moved.

That nurse was crying again and the patient beating his door even harder, but she relegated these superfluous distractions to background noise.

She hit the switch—two fluorescent panels flickering to life—and then dug her shoulder into the door and charged.

The door crashed hard into the rubber stop on the wall and bounced back, but she was already past and swinging into the bleak little room.

There was a single bed lined with metal railing and occupied by Jim Moreton.

The man lay on his side under a white blanket, his back to her.

She cleared the far side of the bed and then opened a door beside a dresser, groping for the light switch.

A small bathroom appeared.

She stepped in, swept back the shower curtain.

Cleared the toilet alcove.

She was breathing so hard her vision had begun to populate with throbbing motes of blackness.

She went to the closet, opened the sliding doors.

Ten pairs of identical khaki slacks. Ten long-sleeved button-down shirts—all variations of blue. Three pairs of Velcro shoes.

Otherwise, empty.

She turned her attention to the bed. The wrist she could see wore a padded restraint that was attached to the railing by a leather loop.

“Mr. Moreton?”

As she moved toward the bed, the face on Seymour’s receipt flashed through her mind.

Sunken cheeks. Frown lines like canyons in his forehead. Wild, stringy hair.

The hairline on the back of this man’s head was cropped, and it ran back to a patchy area at the top of his scalp where it had begun to thin.

She knew that bald spot.

Sat behind it every day at the precinct.

Sophie rolled Art Dobbs onto his back.

The left side of his face resembled an eggplant, swollen and shiny. His eye had disappeared into it and the other was turned up into its socket like a cue ball.

“Art.”

She shook him.

Then ripped back the covers.

No blood.

“Art, can you hear me?”

A gurgling noise issued from his nose as air struggled through the grotesque new angle of his nasal cavity.

He was out cold, but at least he was breathing, and he wasn’t shot.

She dialed 911, held her phone between her shoulder and ear as she headed out of the room.

“Nine-one-one, where is your emergency?”

“Evergreen Psychiatric Hospital in Kirkland. This is Detective Benington with the Seattle PD.” Sophie edged out into the corridor. “Shots fired, officer down. Art Dobbs is in room seven-sixteen in the acute unit.” Started moving at a jog. “Four suspects. Armed. Driving a black GMC Savana. They may have kidnapped Jim Moreton, a patient here.” She was approaching an intersection, the floor up ahead smeared with what appeared to be blood.

“What are his injuries?”

“I have to go now—”

“Ma’am, please—”

Sophie ended the call, slid the phone back into her jacket.

The blood smear wasn’t isolated. Footprints—the tread of a dress shoe—continued on.

She swung around the corner and sited down the corridor.

The prints trailed off after a few steps, but the blood trail didn’t.

There was a man sitting against the wall under an exit sign that burned red at the far end—didn’t look like Moreton, but she couldn’t be sure from this distance.

Sophie called out, “Seattle Police! Get on your stomach and spread out your hands!”

The man was fifty feet away.

He turned his head and stared at her but failed to move.

“Did you not hear me, sir? Do you want to get shot?”

He said, “I’m already shot.”

As Sophie moved forward, she saw that he wasn’t lying. The man held his right leg with both hands and he sat in a small, dark pool that reflected the fluorescents redly.

Good for you, Art.

At thirty feet, she recognized him.

Seymour.

He said, “I need a doctor.”

“Do you have a gun?”

He shook his head.

She stopped in front of him.

“Where’d your buddies go?”

“I don’t know.” He was grunting through the pain and blood was still trickling through his fingers. Sophie unsnapped her handcuffs, knelt down, and popped a bracelet around Seymour’s left wrist. The other cuff, she locked to the handrail.

He groaned. “You have to help me.”

“Help’s coming. Keep pressure on that wound. You’ll be fine.”

Sophie grabbed Angela’s ID badge from her pocket and swiped it through the card reader.

The door buzzed and she shouldered her way through into the blinding illumination of a floodlight.

Started jogging along a walkway between the dark buildings.

She was disoriented—no idea of her location relative to the main entrance—and she couldn’t hear a thing over the sound of rain beating down on the grass, the pavement, her head.

She accelerated.

In the distance, she spotted a row of streetlights.

The parking lot.

She was sprinting now, the rain driving into her face, boots streaking through pools of standing water that had collected in the grass.

She broke out from the buildings, crossed a sidewalk, and blitzed into the parking lot. She was panting, years since she’d run this hard.

Wiping rainwater out of her eyes, she spotted the van in the distance. A trio of dark shapes jogged toward it, carrying something wrapped in white.

Sophie reached a gray Honda Accord and took shelter behind it, rain pouring off her face, lungs burning as she gasped for breath.

Where is my backup?

She glanced through the windows.

The van was fifty feet away.

Three men struggled to carry what appeared to be another man over their heads. They looked like errant pallbearers moving across the barren parking lot.

She got to her feet, and over the roof of the Accord, sited down the men and the van.

Water streamed off the slide, the Glock’s polymer frame beaded with rain.

It was harder than she had imagined—much harder—summoning her voice.

“Stop! Seattle Police!”

The men didn’t flinch, didn’t react.

She yelled it again at the top of her voice.

They were almost to the van. In unison, they dropped to their knees and set the man in white on the wet pavement. One of their number rushed forward to the sliding door, fumbling with a set of keys.

His partners turned.

“Get on the ground!” Sophie yelled.

Never saw them draw.

A pair of muzzleflashes bloomed and the windows exploded.

She squeezed off six shots—no precision aiming, just panicked, general direction, not-wanting-to-die chaos fire—and then ducked behind the front passenger door.

The cold, wet pavement soaking through her pants.

Four gunshots echoed off the buildings, the rounds chinking into the metal of the Honda. Her ears still ringing, she peeked over the jagged range of glass sticking up out of the bottom of the door.

Grazer and Vincent had returned to the van where they were helping Talbert lift Moreton off the ground and stow him inside. She drew a bead on one of them, but she didn’t trust her aim with Moreton in the mix.

Two of the men disappeared with Moreton into the van and the last one—Grazer?—turned and fired three shots at the Accord. Sophie took cover behind the door again as air rushed out of the front tire on the other side, the car sagging forward and away from her.

She heard the van’s sliding passenger door ram shut.

Popped up, double-tapped at Grazer as he rushed around the hood of the van and piled in behind the wheel.

The engine started, and as Sophie ran out from behind the car, the tires spun on pavement for a split second, caught, and then launched the van across the parking lot.

Planting her feet shoulder-width apart, she aimed at the right, rear tire.

It was the only moment since rolling onto the hospital grounds that she’d possessed a shred of self-awareness. She made herself breathe. She saw that micron of space beyond the night sights that she knew was the tire. Saw the white puff of air as the bullet pierced the tread. Saw the van spin out of control. The cavalry arrive. Jim Moreton saved, his kidnappers in cuffs on the ground.

She fired.

She fired again.

And again.

And again and again and again.

The next time she squeezed the trigger, the slide locked back, smoke coiling off the exposed barrel of the Glock.

The van turned hard out of the parking lot, tires fully intact and squealing across the wet road. It straightened and accelerated, the engine winding up, RPMs maxed.

She’d missed.

Seven times.

And now Jim Moreton, father of the man she might possibly love, was going to die.

She stood in the rain, stunned by her failure.

Here came the sirens.

She started running toward her car.

Chapter 39

Grant started down the stairs, the blanket jostling in his arms. He could feel the creature wrapped inside vibrating like a tuning fork. It put out so much body heat that the blanket could have just come out of a dryer.

“What’s happening?” Paige asked, a few steps behind him.

“It’s ready to leave.”

“It told you that?”

He reached the bottom of the stairs and made his way across the foyer to the front door.

“Grant.”

He stopped.

“What?”

“Talk to me.”

“I have to take it somewhere.”

“Where?” she asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

He turned and stepped into his boots. With his free hand, he grabbed the North Face jacket off the coat rack and draped it over his shoulder.

Paige arrived at the bottom of the staircase. She clutched the banister, panic and a profound sadness in her eyes.

“It’s in your head now,” she said. “You’re like the others.”

Grant shifted the weight from one arm to the other and looked back at her.

The blankets moved in his arms.

A translucent appendage emerged.

Paige recoiled, placed a foot on the step behind her as Grant covered it back with a loose fold.

“I don’t understand it all, but I’m still Grant,” he said, though he only half-believed.

“You went upstairs to kill that thing.”

“I have to go.”

“This is insane. You don’t even know what it’s telling you to do.”

“You’re right. But it won’t be in your house anymore. It’ll be out of your life.”

He saw the early shimmer of tears in her eyes.

“What happened in there?” Paige asked.

He looked at her. What could he possibly say? That even though he’d never been a father, he felt like he was holding his child in his arms? That with every passing second, that feeling was growing stronger? On the verge of eclipsing the protective instinct he’d felt toward his own sister when she was five years old and all he had in the world?

“It’s not something I can explain,” he said. “I just don’t have the words.”