Fisher came over to see. “The hell we are.”
“We can get down to the next level.”
“Yeah—or straight to the parking lot, fast.”
I stuck my head out and shouted. There were a couple of people walking along the street at the end of the lot. Neither of them even glanced up. We were too high up, the lot too deep, couldn’t compete against traffic sounds.
I vaulted onto the sill. Reached out and grabbed the sloping ironwork of the escape. Gave it a push. It moved ponderously. Hanging on to the window frame with my left hand, I lowered my right foot onto the level patch of the metalwork. Gradually moved my weight onto the foot on the platform. It made an unreassuring sound. I lifted my other foot off the sill, then slowly lowered that, too.
“We may not have a lot of time on this,” I said. “Be ready to move fast.”
I went down the stairs, watching the wall brackets. All were rusty. A couple were missing. I disturbed a large bird as I reached the platform below. It took off, and I felt the whole structure move. The window on the next level down was boarded up from the inside.
The floor below was boarded, too, however, and the supports looked even worse down there. So I stayed where I was. The panes in this window were mainly broken, jagged remains of glass studded into the wood frames. I smacked my elbow against the point where the cross-joins met, then again.
The join in the window splintered. I tore off the pieces of frame around it until there was a big enough hole. Went back a couple of steps up the ladder, then swung my foot and kicked. The first impact told me the board was damp and wouldn’t hold for long. A grinding sound said the escape brackets wouldn’t either.
“Get ready!” I shouted. The area of board directly in front of my boot split, breaking inward. I moved down a step, started kicking again. The fire escape above me gave out a loud, grinding sound, and for an instant I felt weightless.
Fisher’s head jerked out of the window above. His face was white. I was now very aware of how far I was above the ground. “Jack…”
“Wait until I get in,” I said. “This isn’t going to take both of us at once.”
I shoved the broken board with my hand, holding the frame to minimize the stress on the brackets. The board started to push away from the wall, and a chunk bent inward, wide enough for me to get my head and an arm in. I knocked away the bigger pieces of glass left around the sill and levered the upper half of my body through.
Couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t get to the flashlight, stuck in my pocket. So I kept shoving against the plywood, pulling myself over the sill until I toppled forward to the floor inside, making ringing contact with an iron radiator under the sill.
I got up quickly and stuck my head back out the hole, yanking more of the board away. “Come on. Now.”
Fisher’s feet emerged from the window above. The escape made a grinding noise again, and this time it was longer, like an old door opening. There was a thunk, too, and a small fragment of metal dropped past my face.
“Shit,” Fisher said. “One of the supports just—”
He took the last three steps in one. I grabbed his hands and started pulling, but he’d given himself a good push with both legs and came through fast enough to knock me over onto my back.
“If we can’t get out of this room, I’m going to kill you,” Fisher said, wiping the blood off his palms.
The flashlight showed a room cluttered with upturned furniture, boxes, and inky shadows, filled up almost to the door. We made our way across quickly, shuffling our feet against obstructions on the floor.
We got to the door and threw our shoulders against it together. Banged them hard and fast and with something approaching panic. In the end I pushed Fisher to one side and forced myself to go at it the right way, ducking low and hitting it where it would make the lock casement splinter fastest. When it started to go, I switched to kicking.
Fisher joined me again, and finally the door blew open and we crashed out onto the landing. We ran down to the second floor, around the landing there.
I was heading straight for the stairs to get down to the next but Fisher grabbed my arm.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
I heard something, too. A sound from below.
I went to the top of the stairs. From there I could make out hard breathing, someone moaning softly.
We had no other way to go. I kept my back to the wall. Fisher followed two steps behind. When I hit the half landing, I shone the light directly below.
There was a man lying on the floor. A dark pool around him said he was bleeding to death. He slowly wrenched his head up as we came down to reach him.
It was Todd Crane.
chapter
FORTY
It was too dark to see, but the stifling air and heavy smells of brick and earth were all too familiar. Madison knew she’d been here before, in dreams and nightmares. Though the man inside kept her plunging forward into the dark, if felt like he was pulling her backward. The darkness didn’t bother Marcus. He knew he had nothing to fear from it. Madison did not want to have him in her head anymore, but it didn’t feel as if she had any choice; if anything, it felt like it was she who was being shoved out. He was increasingly out of control now, too—or she was less able to stop him from doing the kind of thing he’d always wanted. She hadn’t known he was going to stab Rachel’s father—she’d just found herself doing it, before she could do anything to try to stop it. He’d been angry that the woman he wanted to see wasn’t here after all, that this was supposed to be a trap, though Madison believed he’d known this was a possibility all along, that his anger was partly a pose, and this was all just part of the endless game he played with whoever was available.
There were huge amounts of blood all over Madison’s hands and coat, and now she could remember shoving the nice woman in the Scatter Creek restroom, tripping her so she fell and smashed her head against the side of the toilet bowl. Tears were running down her face. She was unaware of them. She was pulled ever forward, as if someone had tied ropes to her arms and legs and was tugging her deeper into the cloud.
Marcus wasn’t interested in the upper part of the building, it seemed. He’d brought her straight down into the basement, opening the door with the second key on the ring from the envelope Madison had carried since Portland. He was muttering things to himself, things she hated to hear in her own voice…horrible, sick things, tasting his own memories on his tongue. Rarely did he use the lighter he’d taken from Rachel, holding it up to get his bearings, before plunging onward into the blackness.
After a couple of minutes, the echoes were different, and Madison realized they’d come into a bigger space. Marcus dragged her onward, not caring if she crashed into things or fell or cut herself.
She stepped on something crackly on the floor, and he paused, her face splitting with his grin, but there was something far more important in this place, something he was desperate to see again and for which this man felt the closest he was ever going to feel to love.
He scrabbled on over piles of chairs and boxes. He flicked the lighter once again, and Madison saw they were in a long, low room now, like a bunker. At the far end was another doorway, blackness beyond. There was a shape to one side of it. It was slumped in a chair.
When Marcus saw this, he caught his/her breath, holding the lighter up above her head until it got so hot that Madison cried out. Then he let it go out and started toward the corner again, like someone going home.