Water that had touched the dead man.
He felt a surge of sickness and swam hard, only to realize he was angling in the wrong direction, toward the steep walls that offered no way to climb out. He panicked and spun, finally getting his eyes on some low rocks. The world echoed with more thunder as he put his head down and swam. The first time he tried to pull himself out, his arms failed, and he fell back into the water hard enough that his head went under.
Come on, Jace! Get out, get out, you’ve got to get out…
On the second try he made it, flopped up on his stomach. The quarry water was pouring off him and it was in his mouth again, dripping from his lips, and for the second time he thought of the way it had flowed through that gaping tear in the man’s throat. He gagged and vomited onto the rock, throat and nose burning, and then crawled weakly away from the pool as if the water might reach up for him, grab one leg, and pull him back in.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. His voice trembled and his entire body shook. When he thought he could trust his legs, he stood up uncertainly. The storm-front winds chilled the cold water on his skin and his soaking boxer shorts and he hugged his arms around himself and thought stupidly, I forgot to bring a towel. It was only then that he realized he’d also come out of the water on the wrong side of the quarry. His clothes were piled on the ledge across from him.
You have to be kidding me, he thought, looking around at the steep walls that bordered this side of the pool. It wasn’t easy climbing. In fact, he wasn’t sure that it was possible climbing. Nothing but vertical smooth stone above him. Farther down, below the pool, there was a drop-off that led to an area littered with brush and thorns. Going in that direction would be slow and painful with no shoes or pants. The fastest option was simple: get back in the water and swim across.
He stared at the pile of clothes, close enough he could throw rocks onto them easily. The cell phone was in the pocket of his jeans.
Need to get help, he thought, need to get someone out here, fast.
But he didn’t move. The idea of going back into that water…he stared into the murky green pool, darker than it had ever looked before, then suddenly lit bright by a flash of lightning, the storm sweeping in fast.
“He’s not going to hurt you,” he said, edging toward the water. “Not going to come back to life and grab you.”
Saying that made him realize something he hadn’t processed yet in his desperate attempt to get away-the man wasn’t going to come back to life, no, but the man also wasn’t far removed from life. His hair, his eyes, the lip curled back against his teeth…even the skin around the wound in the throat hadn’t begun to decompose yet. Jace wasn’t sure how long something like that took, but it seemed like it would go pretty fast.
Hasn’t been there long…
This time the thunder made him jump. He was staring around the quarry, eyeing the top ridges of the stone walls, looking for a watcher.
Empty.
Get the hell out of here, he instructed himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to swim for it. Couldn’t imagine being immersed in that water again, swimming right above the man with the dumbbell tied to his ankles and the lopsided head and gashed throat. Instead, he walked down toward the drop-off. There a ledge connected one side to the other: the pool he’d just been in, on the right side, and another one to the left. The drop to the left was the thirty-foot monster he’d intended to use as his practice for Rooftop. For some reason, the narrow ledge was home to plants, but only mean ones. Anything that grew in stone seemed to have thorns. He narrowly missed a broken bottle as he entered the weeds. With his first steps, the thorns began to rake his flesh, and he grimaced but pushed ahead slowly, warm blood mingling with cool water on his legs. The first drops of rain started to fall and the thunder boomed overhead and then echoed back through the quarry as if the earth wanted to respond.
“Ouch! Damn it!” He’d managed to step right on a thorn, and the sticker remained in the bottom of his foot, so his next step drove it in farther. He was standing on one leg and had just pulled the thorn out of his foot, blood rushing to fill the hole, when he heard the car motor.
His first thought was that it might be a security guard or something. That would be nice. That would be wonderful, because whatever hell he was going to catch for being in the quarry was worth it to get back out. For a long moment he stayed just like he was, balanced up on one leg, holding his bleeding foot in his hand, and listened. The engine came on and on, someone driving up the gravel road that was blocked by a locked gate.
Killer coming back, he thought, and now the frozen indecision turned to wild terror. He was standing in the middle of the ledge in the most visible spot in the entire quarry.
He turned and started to return to the place from which he’d come, then stopped. There was no cover there. The rock face was sheer; there wasn’t even anything to duck behind. He spun and headed in the other direction again, trying to plow through the weeds, indifferent to the thorns that raked him and left ribbons of blood along his chest, arms, and legs.
The engine was very close now.
He wasn’t going to make the other side. Not fast enough.
Jace Wilson gave one look at the water below, one quick attempt at picking a safe landing zone even though the water was too dark to show what waited beneath, and then he jumped. Talk about doubling-down on your fear-he was scared of heights, but of whoever was coming? That wasn’t fear. That was terror.
This time, the drop felt real, felt long, as if he’d started from a truly high place. He was thinking of rocks and pieces of twisted metal, all the junk that was left behind in these quarry pools, all the things his dad had warned him about, when he struck the water and tunneled down. He tried to stop himself early, but his velocity had been high and he sank even as he tried to rise, plunging all the way down. The pool wasn’t nearly as deep as he’d expected. The landing jarred him, his feet striking stone and sending a sparkler of pain up his spine. He pushed back off and let himself rise slowly. He didn’t want to break the surface with much noise this time.
His head cleared the water just as the sound of the engine cut out. The car had come to a stop. He swam toward a slab of limestone that jutted up at an angle, offering a narrow crevice that he was sure he could slip into. He’d just reached it when he chanced a look up and saw a man walking toward the water. Tall and broad-shouldered, with long, pale blond hair. His head was down, following the path, and he hadn’t seen Jace yet. The quarry had grown very dark as the thunderheads moved over, but in the next strobe of lightning, Jace saw the glistening of a badge and realized the man was in uniform.
Police. Someone had already called them, or somehow they already knew. Whatever had happened to get them here didn’t matter to Jace. They were here. Help had arrived. He let a long breath out and was filling his lungs to shout for help when he saw the others.
There was another police officer, also blond, his hair cut shorter, like he was in the military. He had a gun on his belt, and he was shoving forward a man in handcuffs. There was a black hood over his head.
Jace stifled his shout and went still, clinging to the rock with his feet and one hand. Trying not to move. Not to breathe.
The first cop waited until the other men reached him. He was standing with his arms folded over his chest, impatient, as he watched the man blinded by the hood stumble forward. The man in the hood was trying to talk and couldn’t. Just a series of strange, high noises.
Something’s over his mouth, Jace realized. He might not have been able to make out the words, but he got the meaning clear enough: The man was begging. He was scared, and he was begging. It came in whines and whimpers, like a puppy. When the first cop swung his foot out and upended the man in the hood, dropping him hard to the ground, blind and unprepared for the fall, Jace almost cried out, had to bite his lip to keep silent. The second cop, the one who’d brought the man down from the car, knelt and put a knee in his spine and jerked his head up by the hood. He leaned down and spoke to him, but it was soft, whispered. Jace could not hear the words. The cop was still talking to the man in the hood when he put out his hand and curled the fingers impatiently, waiting for something, and the first cop offered a knife. Not a pocketknife or a kitchen knife, but something like soldiers used. A fighting knife. A real knife.