So Cold the River (2010) (23 page)

When they entered the long, wide, and brightly lit dining room, the smell of the food was strong and immediate, and Eric had
to hold his breath for a second to ward off the surge of nausea the odor brought. They followed the hostess to a table out
in the middle of the room, and he wished she’d put them somewhere else, a corner maybe, or at least close to the wall. When
she took their drink orders, he barked out, “Water’s fine, thanks,” just because he wanted her to go away, wanted everybody
in the damn room to go away until he’d had a chance to get himself together. But Kellen was already heading toward the serving
areas, so he followed.

The china plate felt heavy in his hands, and he grabbed at food without giving it much thought. He had a plate full of fruit
and vegetables when he turned and found himself staring at the carving station, watching a heavyset man in a white apron work
a massive knife through a roast. The knife bit into the meat and then the man leaned on it, using his weight to drive it through,
and when he did, juice flowed from the meat and formed a pink pool on the cutting board and Eric’s knees went unsteady and
a hum filled his ears.

He turned fast, too fast, almost spilling the plate, and started for the table, which seemed miles away. His breath was coming
in jagged hisses, and then the hum picked up in pitch and almost took his stomach with it. He got to the table, thinking that
he just needed the chair, just needed to get off his feet for a moment.

For a few seconds, he thought that might actually do the trick. He leaned on the table with his forearms and concentrated
on slowing his breathing, and he was just starting to feel a touch better when Kellen returned and sat before him with a steaming
plate of food. Then the hum returned and his stomach went into the spin cycle.

Kellen was oblivious, chattering away while he set to work with a knife and fork, and Eric couldn’t even speak, knowing only
that he needed to get out of the room
fast
.

He lurched to his feet and bumped into his own chair but shoved past it, eyes on the exit and the hallway beyond, which seemed
to be undulating, all the harsh white light in the room slipping into motion now as the hum in his ears turned to a roar.
A warming sensation enveloped him and spread through his limbs and tingled along his skin as he passed the cashier’s stand
and kept moving toward the hallway, thinking,
I’m going to make it,
just before the warmth exploded into a scorching heat and the dancing lights went gray and then black and he fell to his
knees and the room vanished around him.

A soft, sweet strings melody lifted him and guided him through the tunnel that led to consciousness. It was a beautiful sound,
so soothing, and when it began to fade, he was racked with sorrow, hated to let it go.

He opened his eyes and stared directly into a glittering light fixture. Then a face floated down and blocked it, Kellen Cage’s
face, eyes grave. He was saying Eric’s name, and Eric knew that he should answer but didn’t want to yet, didn’t want anyone
to speak, because maybe if it was completely silent, he’d be able to hear that violin again.

The first coherent thought he had was of the cold. Where before the blackout his flesh had tingled with warmth there was now
a deep cold, but it felt good. The warmth had been ominous, a harbinger of physical disaster, and the cold seemed to be his
body’s reassurance that it could handle the ailment on its own—
Don’t worry, buddy, we got those boilers turned down for you.

“Eric,” Kellen said again.

“Yeah.” Eric licked his lips and said it again. “Yeah.”

“We got an ambulance on the way.”

There were other faces over Kellen’s shoulder, a security guard talking into a radio and then a cluster of curious onlookers.
Eric closed his eyes, feeling the embarrassment of this now, realizing that he’d just fainted.

“No ambulance,” he said with his eyes closed, and took a deep breath.

“You need to go to the hospital,” said someone with a deep and unfamiliar voice.

“No.” Eric opened his eyes again, then rose slowly, until he was sitting upright with his arms hooked around his knees for
balance. “I just need some sugar, that’s all. Hypoglycemic.”

The security guard nodded, but Kellen’s face said
bullshit
. A woman nearby murmured that her sister was hypoglycemic and then left to get him a cookie.

He was on his feet by the time she got back, and though the idea of food was sickening, he had to stick to the lie now, so
he took the cookie and a glass of orange juice and got both of them down.

“You
sure
you don’t want to go to the hospital?” the security guard said.

“I’m sure.”

They called off the ambulance then, and Eric thanked the woman and the guard and made some lame joke to the rest of the onlookers
about being happy to provide dinner theater. Then he told Kellen he wanted to head back to the hotel.

They went out and walked down the sidewalk in silence and crossed to the parking lot. When they were halfway out to the Porsche,
Kellen said, “Hypoglycemic?”

“Sure. Didn’t I mention that?”

“Um, no. Left that out.”

They walked to the car and Eric stood with his hand on the passenger door handle for a few seconds before Kellen finally unlocked
the doors. Once they were inside, Kellen turned to him.

“You really should be going to a hospital right now.”

“I just need some rest.”

“Just need some
rest?
Man, you don’t even know what went on in there. One minute you were sitting at the table, next you were passed out in the
hallway. Something like that happens, you don’t rest, you talk to a doctor.”

“Maybe I’ll call somebody in the morning. Right now, I just want to lie down.”

“So you can swallow your tongue or some shit in the middle of the night, die up in that room?”

“That’s unlikely.”

“Look, I’m just saying—”

“I
get it,
” Eric said, and the force of his words brought Kellen up short. He studied Eric for a few seconds, then gave him a shrug
and turned away.

“I appreciate the concern,” Eric said, softer. “I really do. But I don’t want to go to a hospital and tell them I’m having
blackouts from Pluto Water, okay?”

“You think that was from the water?”

Eric nodded. “The headache came back and was getting worse. By the time we left Anne’s, I was feeling bad. Thought maybe it
would help if I just got some food.”

“Didn’t help.”

“No. Sorry about your dinner, by the way. You were starving.”

Kellen laughed. “Not a big deal, man. I can always eat. What you got going on, though… that’s something needs to be figured
out.”

“Withdrawal symptoms,” Eric said.

“You think?”

“Yeah. Definitely. The physical problems go away when I have more of the water and get worse the longer I go without it. Anne
McKinney’s right—I’ve got to figure out what’s in that bottle.”

“And until then?”

Eric was quiet.

“This is why I suggested a hospital,” Kellen said. “I believe you—it’s probably withdrawal from whatever is in that water.
But if it’s getting worse, you could be in real trouble. That act you pulled back there was scary, man.”

“I could just take more of the water, if that’ll relax you.” It was supposed to be a joke, but Kellen tilted his head sideways,
thoughtful.

“Wow, you’d be good in AA,” Eric said. “That’s not one of the ideas you’re supposed to support.”

“No, I was just thinking, what if you tried different water?”

“I drank about ten glasses of water today, trying to flush this out. Hasn’t helped.”

“Not regular water. Regular
Pluto
water.” Kellen nodded at the bottle Anne McKinney had given him. “It’s a thought, at least. Things get worse tonight, try
her bottle before you go back to yours.”

Kellen dropped Eric off at his hotel, and the look he had when Eric got out of the car was that of a parent watching a child
wander toward traffic.

Eric’s headache was whispering to him again by the time he got off the elevator, and the sense of defeat he had at that realization
was heavy. He’d hoped that the episode during dinner had been punishment enough, that he’d earned a few hours of reprieve.
Evidently not.

The message light on the room phone was dark and his cell
showed no missed calls. He felt a vague sense of apprehension over that, having expected Gavin Murray to try and make contact
again, to put some other offer—or threat—on the table. He called Alyssa Bradford again and got voice mail. Annoyed, he waited
ten minutes and called back, still with no success. This time he left a message. Call immediately, he said. There is a serious
problem to discuss.

Serious problem
seemed almost too light a phrase. Where was Gavin Murray now? The blue minivan hadn’t been in sight when Kellen brought him
back, but it seemed unlikely that Murray was driving back to Chicago already. Eric got his laptop out and logged onto the
Internet, ran some searches under both Murray’s name and the name of his company, Corporate Crisis Solutions. Didn’t find
much on Murray—his name on some roll of military personnel attending a reunion at Fort Bragg was the most noteworthy result.
Bragg was home to the Special Ops boys.

Corporate Crisis Solutions didn’t have much of a Web profile either. There was a company site, but it seemed intentionally
vague. A few pages for private investigators offered links with CCS contact information. Hell, he should call Paul Porter,
ask him what he knew. Paul had done twenty years as a criminal defense attorney before selling his first book and giving up
the practice to write a series of best-selling novels about an intrepid crime-solving lawyer, no doubt some sort of pathetic
wish fulfillment. Still, he was connected to the Chicago police and legal worlds both through his writing and his background,
and he’d probably heard of the firm, and maybe even Gavin Murray.

“I won’t give him the satisfaction,” Eric muttered. That was just what Paul would want, wayward son-in-law calling for help.
Son of a bitch had actually suggested once that he and Eric work together to shop the film rights for Paul’s novels, which
he’d been hanging on to all these years despite offers.
I could write, and you
could direct,
Paul had said. Yeah, that would’ve been a hell of a pairing.

Eric had actually liked the guy all right at first. They’d gotten along just fine back when they were separated by a few thousand
miles and Eric’s career was on an upward trajectory. Paul hadn’t displayed any less ego over his little series of detective
novels back then, but it hadn’t rankled Eric as much either. Probably because things were going well on his end. Gave him
a layer of protection. It wasn’t until they’d moved back to Chicago and Paul was underfoot at all times that it got really
bad. All those damn suggestions of his, the ideas, story proposals—shit, they had never stopped.

He closed the laptop, beginning to suspect that staring at the screen was goosing his headache. He turned the lights off and
put the TV on, tried again to distract himself from the pain. Over on the desk, Alyssa Bradford’s bottle glittered and sweated,
and Anne McKinney’s stood beside it, dark and dry.

Let them sit,
he told himself.
Let them sit there untouched. I know what’s coming for me, and I can take it. I won’t drink the water again, though.

J
OSIAH WAS BACK IN
the gray city again, that colorless empire, and the wind blew through the alleys and whistled around the old-fashioned cars
that lined the empty streets. A huffing noise filled his ears and he knew before he turned to look that it was the train coming
on and thought,
I’ve had this dream before
.

But at least the train was coming back for him. Dream or no dream, he’d lost it last time, run after it and couldn’t catch
up and then found himself in that field walking hard against the dark. Yes, if the train came back around this time, he surely
ought to take it.

He stood to the side and watched as it thundered toward him, stone dust rising from beneath its wheels, a funnel of black
smoke pouring from the stack. All just as it had been. Good. Must be the same train.

It slowed as it passed, and again he could see the white car with the splash of red across its doors, the colors standing
out so
stark against all that gray. He walked toward it, eager now, as the locomotive whistle shrilled and the train lost momentum.
This one was headed home. The man in the bowler hat had promised him that.

And there was the man, visible in the open boxcar door as he had been before. He wasn’t leaning out of it this time but sitting
with his arms resting on raised knees and his back pressed against the door frame. He lifted his head as Josiah approached,
used one finger to push the hat up on his forehead.

“’Spect you want a ride,” he said when they were close enough for words, and the smile was gone, the charm not present in
his eyes this time.

Josiah said he’d be more than happy for a ride, provided they were still homeward bound. The man paused at that, considered
Josiah through those dark eyes. Josiah could hear a gentle splashing from inside the car, saw drops of water coming out over
the rim of the door frame and falling to the sidewalk below.

“Told you we was homeward bound last time through,” the man said. “Told you there was a need to hurry should you want a ride.”

The man seemed displeased, and that made Josiah’s stomach tremble and his skin prickle as if from the touch of something cold.
He told the man that he had desired a ride, indeed, and that he’d run in pursuit of the train, run as best as his legs could
do, and still not caught up.

The man listened to that, then tilted his head and spit a plume of tobacco juice toward Josiah’s feet.

“I was to tell you it’s time to get aboard now, you’d take heed?” he said.

Josiah assured him that was a fact.