She opened the door, stood there a moment with her eyes closed, and stepped out into the room.
A woman was in the bed. Her closed eyes were turned toward the window, and a beeping monitor echoed in the small space. Samantha walked to the bed. The woman’s face was wrinkled and gray.
Samantha wasn’t sure how long she stood there, but eventually, she sat down in a chair against the wall. The woman’s hair was thin and missing in spots. She seemed so weak and fragile that death couldn’t have been far off. Tears swirled in Samantha’s eyes, but she didn’t wipe them away. Instead, she put her hand over the woman’s and sat quietly, listening to the rhythmic beep of the machine and the deep, grainy breaths that the woman pulled into her thin body.
Finally, Sam rose and walked out into the corridor. She shut the door softly, then glanced down both directions before walking to the front desk. She wasn’t going to run anymore. She didn’t see a point to running. If he was like Greyjoy, he would catch up with her.
She quickly jumped on the elevator and went down to her floor.
When she got off, the floor was empty and quiet. She went into Jane’s room, and there, standing next to the canopy, was the shooter. His weapon hung at his side between relaxed fingers.
“I knew you’d come here,” he said.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to die.”
She shivered and averted her eyes, turning them to Jane. “What about her?”
“Make it easy, and she lives.”
Samantha nodded. Ian raised his weapon, aiming for her heart.
46
He didn’t have much sensation at first, just a general numbness and anxiety. As Howie Burke took his daughter in his arms, he grasped that he shouldn’t be holding her and withdrew. The jeep was upright but severely damaged. He sat up, ignoring the pain in his back and arms, and he thought about trying to start the vehicle but decided against it.
The fire was rising over the seat at a steady but slow pace. He pulled Jessica away from the vehicle.
He heard tires in dirt and the shouting of men. Headlights swarming them, he impotently watched the terror in his daughter’s eyes. He had no words of comfort for her or explanations. Instead, he turned away from her and saw Mike a little behind them. His head had been crushed so thoroughly that it was only a slick in the dark, a black puddle in front of a fully-grown male body.
“Who are they?” Jessica asked.
Howie watched the jeeps. Five of them roared to a stop near them, and men in uniforms jumped out, pointing terrifying black weapons at them. They shouted orders, but Howie couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t hear anything but a soft buzzing sound, and he wondered if Jessica had really spoken or if he’d imagined it.
The men were closing in around them, their lips moving, their faces contorted with rage and fear. One of them was young, maybe eighteen. He was trembling and sweating, and in the headlights of the jeep, Howie saw that his fingers were turning white from gripping his rifle too hard.
Other men were next to Howie, closer than the boy. But Howie saw only him. They were on the same frequency somehow. The two of them knew what was about to happen; this incident was between them, and everyone else was just there to witness it.
Neither of them averted their eyes as they stared into each other. The soldier’s eyes were wide, and he didn’t blink, despite the droplets of sweat rolling into them.
And in an instant, both their lives changed.
“Run, Jessica!”
Howie sprinted. The first soldier was only a couple feet away, and Howie grabbed his rifle and kicked the soldier in the chest, sending him to the dirt. The other soldier swung at him, but Howie tackled him before the butt of the rifle impacted his face. He slammed his fist into the soldier’s jaw, but the soldier barely seemed to notice.
The young soldier, horror written on his face, aimed the rifle. His hands trembling worse than before, he fired a single shot, and Howie was suddenly staring up at the sky without any memory of the motion that had put him there.
He lay helplessly on his back as two soldiers slapped handcuffs on Jessica. He screamed for her but couldn’t hear the words that came out of his mouth.
47
Carrie Mendelsohn had been feeling unwell for over twenty-four hours. A slight fever, alternating with cold sweats and shivering, had been burning away in her, and her skin was sensitive to almost everything. Even wearing clothing made her itch until she had scratched her skin raw. Her throat hurt, and her stomach felt as if it were about to shoot vomit out of her any second.
She sat by the outdoor pool at the Monte Carlo Hotel, thinking that maybe cooling off in the water would help. She rose and went to the pool. Her swimsuit was rolled up too far on her thighs, revealing the bottoms of her buttocks. As she went into the water, she pulled her suit down to cover herself, though she hardly cared, considering that some of the people there were almost topless. She floated around, kicked a few times, and then lay back and closed her eyes. The water was warmer than she’d thought it would be, and she dipped beneath the surface, then came up, slicking her hair back with both hands. The water in front of her was discolored.
Her nose was bleeding. At least a hundred people were in the pool, and she was so embarrassed, she quickly jumped out and ran to her pool chair, where she toweled off before going inside.
Her sorority had booked a room on the sixth floor, overlooking the strip. She swiped her card and went inside. Her clothes were all over the room, interlaced with the clothing of three other girls, and she ruffled through a few piles before finding shorts, a tank top, and Calvin Klein sandals, which she took into the bathroom and laid on the back of the toilet. Her nose still hadn’t stopped bleeding, so she shoved toilet paper up both nostrils. She jumped into the shower, lathered herself, and rinsed. Then she did it again because she couldn’t remember if she’d done it already.
As she got out of the shower and reached for the towel, she happened to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Blood was running from both nostrils, soaking the toilet paper red, and going down over her mouth and breasts before dripping onto the floor in small uneven circles. She placed the towel over her nose and leaned back to slow the bleeding, but she was bleeding so much that she felt as if she were drinking the stuff. She leaned forward again. Pressure couldn’t slow the blood anymore. A dam had broken, and she could do nothing but wait until all the liquid flowed out. She reached up to scratch her itchy ears, and her fingers came away wet with a reddish-black, syrupy fluid.
Carrie started to get dressed so she could go to the hospital when an intense pressure grew inside her stomach. The muscles convulsed violently, and before she could get a drink of water, hoping that would calm it, vomit erupted out of her mouth as though it had come from a fire hose. Because she kept her mouth closed, it sprayed through her teeth and came out her nose, choking her. It had the texture of oatmeal-a thick, black oatmeal, mostly liquid with mushy patches made of something she couldn’t identify.
And the pain-it swept through her like an electric current. Every cell in her body had caught fire at the same time. But her head and her stomach were the worst. Her stomach was churning and growling, and every time she vomited, she felt as if the convulsions had torn a new hole in her stomach lining. And her head was pounding from a migraine that made her see stars. The light above her seemed harsh, and she flicked it off, then collapsed onto the bathroom floor in the dark.
Michelle Billings finished up at the pool and went to the bar set up outside to have one more shot of tequila. A cute guy she’d been flirting with all day had gotten her room number, and they were going to meet up later for some time out on the strip.