The Chair (37 page)

“Fine, I’ll tell you.”

“See that wasn’t so hard.” Tesser stepped away from Nicole.

“It’s in my vault. In the store.”

“Please, Corin.” Tesser rolled his eyes. “We’ve been there, remember?”

“It’s the locked room in my basement.” Corin dropped his eyes. “In my house.”

“Oh, dear Corin. We’ve been there too. Just the other day. Did I forget to tell you?” He stepped back to Nicole and placed the knife against her neck and drew it a quarter-inch to the right. A sliver of blood appeared and Nicole gasped.

“No!” Corin yanked on the cords constraining his wrists so hard it felt like he’d dislocated his shoulders. This couldn’t be happening.

Tesser whirled toward him. “Come, come. Why all the drama. It’s a shallow cut. It will take ages for Nicole to bleed to death with a nick like that. But you were lying to me and it’s getting tiresome.” The old professor turned back to Nicole, leaned down, and said to her in a mock whisper, “As soon as he tells me where the chair is, we’ll get some antiseptic on that and bandage it up. The scar will hardly be noticeable.”

He brought the knife back up to Nicole’s throat.

A trickle of blood continued to snake down Nicole’s neck and Corin tried to gauge how deep the cut was.

Tesser placed the blade against the other side of Nicole’s throat and looked toward Corin. “Deeper this time, friend.”

“Don’t, Tesser. If you ever cared for me—don’t.”

“I do care for you; that’s why I’m giving you one more chance. But this will be the last. Just tell me.”

Corin’s mind spun. He had to wake up! But it wasn’t a dream. One of his oldest friends had gone insane. Think. There had to be something that would snap the old man out of his madness. But maybe giving in was the only way to stop it. “All right.”

Tesser pulled the blade away from Nicole’s neck and beckoned with his fingers. “Where?”

“Get away from her.” Corin drilled his eyes into Tesser’s.

“Fine.” Tesser took a half step to the left. “Now speak.”

“Give me your word you’ll let her go.”

“My word.” Tesser gave a mock bow.

“In my warehouse twenty miles east of town. There’s a basement full of old worthless antiques ready for restoration. In the far south corner buried under two feet of old blankets and a pile of worthless old lamps is a trapdoor. It’s in there.”

“Not so difficult, was that?”

“Now let her go.” Corin stared at Tesser and willed him to back off. His breath came in short gasps.

“Have you spoken truth about the location of the chair?”

“All I want is Nicole. Take the chair.”

Tesser pulled a cell phone out of his breast pocket and pressed a button. “It’s in Corin’s warehouse east of town, south corner basement, trapdoor.” He ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket.

“Let her go,” Corin growled.

Tesser paced back and forth in front of Nicole three times before speaking again. “At this point we come to the most difficult part of our transaction.” He stopped pacing and kicked at the floor with the toe of his slipper. “I don’t like this part at all, but . . .” He glanced up, a sad, resolved look in his eyes. “I can’t avoid it.”

Tesser stepped around to the back of the chair, placed the blade against Nicole’s neck again, and with a swift motion slit her throat. The thin line of blood that appeared grew in seconds to a stream that flowed down her neck, soaking her blouse with crimson.

“No!” Corin lurched forward in his chair almost tipping over. “Why? You got what you wanted!”

“Let’s call it insurance. I’m absolutely positive you told me the truth about the location of the chair, but just in case you lied, I wanted to make sure you understand how serious I am about obtaining the truth. And how when I tell you I’ll hunt down and kill everyone close to you if you
did
lie, you will believe me.”

As Corin strained against the cords around his wrists he thought for a moment he would break them. Just as he would break Tesser’s neck if he could reach the old man. Murderer. Manufactured from the same sick gene cesspool Hitler had been created in. Insane. Devoid of any shred of morality. A being whose evil had just shattered his world.

Tesser doffed his ratty baseball hat and bowed to Nicole. “Since I won’t see you again, my lady, I bid you safe travels in the afterlife. And Corin, should I not see you again, which I won’t unless you’ve lied to me, I bid you fair sailing as long as you continue to grace this earth with your presence.”

The professor shuffled toward the door, then stopped and motioned to his thugs.

“My friends here will keep an eye on you until I can get to the warehouse—examine the chair—and make sure you weren’t the ultimate sneaky fellow and made more than one duplicate.”

Before Tesser reached the door to the hallway the windows surrounding the top of the room shattered and shards of glass pelted down onto the floor of the study in a wide circle.

“Don’t move!”

A voice above and to Corin’s left boomed down on them, its echo filling the room.

Tesser fell back and whirled like a merry-go-round toward the first voice, then the second, then toward the other six silhouettes hovering over them.

One of Tesser’s thugs reached inside his coat. A bullet screeched past him and sent splinters into the air as it tore into the hardwood floor.

“Hands high!” The voice above them ripped through the air again.

Tesser and his thugs complied.

An instant later four men sprinted through the door into the study and leveled rifles at Tesser and his men.

After surrounding them the lead man shouted, “Clear!” to the men in the windows above, then glanced at Tesser and each of his men one at a time.

“Slowly. Like molasses in January. Guns out of coats and tossed to the center of the room. I would hate to see one of you maggots die.” In perfect unison the men cocked their rifles.

Tesser sank to the floor, head in his hands. He sat and rocked back and forth, and in that instant his old professor went from ninety-two to four years old, a little boy caught doing something he shouldn’t and feeling bad because he’d been found out, not because of what he’d done.

Thirty seconds later Tesser and his men were handcuffed and muscled out of the room.

“Help her,” Corin shouted and jerked his head in Nicole’s direction.

As one of the men sliced the twine that bound Corin to his chair, another cut Nicole loose and held a thick piece of gauze up to her throat.

The lead man of the rescue team pulled a cell phone from his vest and said, “We need an ambulance here now.”

The moment Corin was free he lurched over to Nicole and took her hands in his.“An ambulance is coming; they’ll get you to the hospital. You’ll be okay.”

“I won’t,” she rasped. “This is my time. The way it is supposed to be.”

Corin rubbed her fingers and stared into her fading eyes. “No, I need you to live. To teach me, show me—”

“Listen, I only have moments left.” Nicole coughed up blood. “Continue to protect the chair as you have done. Know that God is for you, who can be against you?”

“Don’t leave.”

“You were strong.” Nicole gasped for air and her eyes closed. “You didn’t tell him the true location of the chair.”

Corin shook his head.

“Good, good. I knew you wouldn’t.” Her head settled to the side and the brightness in her blue eyes dimmed.

He blinked back tears. “Don’t die.”

She smiled. “I am going to the arms of the One who will never let me go, Corin.” She pulled in another raspy breath. “Stay true to the path He has shown you.” Her grasp on his fingers went limp.

“Stay with me, Nicole.” Corin leaned in.

As her eyes fluttered open, she said, “Forgiveness. For both.”

“Both who?”

“Remember, the chair is only a conduit for His healing power. Healing comes from inside you and from the Maker of the chair. Both. Give it to both.” Nicole’s head settled to the side, her eyes closed and she didn’t open them again.

He kissed her on the head, then slumped to the floor. His body heaved as sobs of sorrow tore their way to the surface from the deepest part of him. Ages later as his tears slowed, Corin stared at Tesser’s endless bookshelves and wished he could torch them all with superpowered heat vision, as if that could subdue the pain of the old man’s brutal betrayal.

FOR ANOTHER AGE Corin sat at the base of the chair he had made, the chair Nicole had died in. The sorrow and anger faded and all he felt was emptiness.

“Excuse me.”

He looked up through his tear-blurred eyes. The lead man of the rescue team stood over him, hands on his hips.

“I know this is a brutal moment for you, but I want to let you know I just called the police and they’ll be here in five to ten minutes.”

“You’re not going to stay?”

“I’ll be watching from a safe distance to make sure nothing happens between now and the time they arrive, but no, we’re going to stay out of having to give the police any reports.” The man winked. “Or an explanation of who we are.”

“But they’ll want me to give them a full explanation.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

Corin nodded, grasped the chair, and hauled himself to his feet.

“Who are you?”

“Friends.” The man wiped his forehead with the back of his black gloved hand.

“But who sent you? How did you know we were here?”

“That will be explained to you.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“By who?”

“The man who hired us.”

“Who hired you?”

The man smiled. “Don’t worry; he’ll be in touch.”

“Tonight?”

“Like I said, soon.”

TWO HOURS LATER Corin drove away from Tesser’s house feeling like his body had been shot full of a local anesthetic. His arms, legs, and especially his mind were numb.

Where did he go from here?

He drove to Woodmoor Lake and sat for three hours, not thinking, not crying, not fearing anything, just feeling the chill of the afternoon seep into his heart.

On his way home an image of the chair shot into his mind. What had Nicole said? The chair would bring joy and great sorrow. No kidding. But the scales were severely out of balance. Ninety-nine percent sorrow, one percent joy. A. C., his brother, Nicole . . . the good news was there wasn’t anyone else he cared about that the chair could destroy.

As he pulled into his driveway he spotted Tori’s car and her standing next to it. He puffed out a disgusted laugh. The laugh made his ribs ache. They weren’t broken but they would be tender for a while.

Okay, not everyone had been devastated. But something told him the circle was about to be completed.

T
ori stood tapping her fingers on the roof of her car, a somber look on her face.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to call you,” Corin said as he got out of his car.

She nodded but said nothing.

Corin stared at her. She didn’t move around her car toward him. She stood with her car between them, her face pale and she blinked as if she was in a storm cloud of dust.

“Are you all right, Tori?”

“I’m great, and you?”

She wasn’t great, wasn’t even good based on the look in her eyes. Something was wrong. Wonderful. Probably another weight to add to his backpack full of grief.

“How am I? Life has been better.” Corin slammed his car door shut. “Nicole is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Dead.”

Tori circled around to the passenger side of her car and leaned against the door. “I figured she was the one they were talking about on the radio. When I heard Tesser was arrested I assumed the worst. I’m so sorry, Corin. You’d become close to her, hadn’t you?”

Corin nodded and folded his arms.

She looked down on the frost-hardened ground. “I know my timing isn’t great, but I need to talk to you about something.”

A lump of granite instantly formed in Corin’s stomach.
Here it comes.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s what isn’t going to be going on anymore.”

“And what won’t be going on anymore?”

“We’re done.” Tori wiped her nose. “I wanted to tell you to your face.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen it all my life. You’re turning into a Jesus Freak.”

Corin coughed out a bitter laugh. “You’re wrong. After today I’m so done with the chair and anything and everything to do with God. Both have brought me nothing but pain. I’m going to get rid of the thing.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Call me when it’s gone.” Tori shoved her hands into her blue and black North Face jacket and shook her head. “No, that’s not fair to you. Don’t call me.”

“I just told you—”

“No. It’s not you, Corin. It’s the whole thing. Too much of my past. Too much has been stirred up and thrown in my face.”

“I told you, I’m done with the chair. It’s over for me.”

“And it’s over for us.”

CORIN SPENT THE rest of the day numbing his mind watching Tobey Maguire spin his way through Sam Raimi’s three
Spider-Man
movies. If only it were as easy to heal his world as Spidey healed his. The flicks did little to dull the pain seeping into every crevice of his soul. Toward midnight as the credits rolled on the third movie, he told himself to look at the bright side.