A high chirping sound cut through the silence. Her cell!
Slater spun, glaring. She acted quickly, before he could respond. She snatched it from her pocket and flipped it open.
“Hello?”
“Sam, listen to me. I know this may sound impossible to you, but you’re one of Kevin’s personalities. Both you and Slater, do you hear me? That’s why you can see them both. You—we—have to save Kevin. Tell me where you are, please, Sam.”
Her mind rocked crazily. What had Jennifer said? She was one of Kevin’s . . .
“What . . . what do you think you’re doing?” Slater demanded.
“Please, Sam, you have to believe me!”
“You saw me in the car at the bus explosion,” Sam said. “You waved.”
“The bus? I saw Kevin. I waved to Kevin. You . . . you’d already left for the airport. Listen to me . . .”
Sam didn’t hear any more. Slater had recovered from his shock and bounded for her.
“Below the screw,” Sam said.
Slater’s hand crashed against the side of her head. The cell phone dug into her ear and clattered to the concrete. She instinctively reached for it, but Slater was too quick. He slapped her arm away, scooped up the cell phone, and threw it across the room. It skipped off the floor and shattered against the wall.
He faced her and shoved a pistol under her chin. “Below the screw? What does that mean, you filthy little traitor?”
Sam’s mind hurt. You are one of his personalities,isn’t that what Jennifer had said? I am one of Kevin’s personalities? That’s impossible!
“Tell me!” Slater yelled. “Tell me or I swear I’ll put the hole in your head myself.”
“And forgo the pleasure of seeing Kevin do it?” Sam asked.
Slater looked at her for a moment, eyes working over her face. He jerked the pistol back and grinned. “You’re right. Doesn’t matter anyway; they’re out of time.”
“It was her?” Dr. Francis asked.
“Sam. Call was terminated. Sure didn’t sound like Kevin to me. She said she saw me at the bus, but I never saw her.” Jennifer swallowed. “I hope we didn’t just put a bullet in Sam’s head.”
Dr. Francis sat slowly.
“She told me they were below the screw,” Jennifer said.
“The screw?”
Jennifer whirled to him. “The screw that held Kevin’s window closed. Below the window, below the house. There’s . . .” Could it be so close, right under their noses? “There’s a stairwell in the house, clogged with piles of newsprint now, but it leads to a basement.”
“Below the house.”
“Kevin has Balinda in the basement of their house! There has to be another way in!” Jennifer ran for the door. “Come on!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you! You know him better than anyone else.”
He grabbed his coat and ran after her. “Even if we find them, what can we do?”
“I don’t know, but I’m done waiting. You said he can’t do this without help. God, give us help.”
“How much time?”
“Nine minutes.”
“My car! I’ll drive,” the professor said and veered for the Porsche in the driveway.
Samantha had never felt more distracted from the mission at hand than now. What was the mission at hand? Saving Kevin from Slater.
She thought back to her years in college, to her law enforcement training, to New York. It was all fuzzy. Broad sweeps of reality without detail. Not the kind of detail that immediately surfaced when her mind wandered to the past, as a child, sneaking around with Kevin. Not the specifics that flooded her mind when she considered these past four days. Even her investigation of the Riddle Killer now seemed distant, like something she had read, not actually engaged in.
If Jennifer was right, she was really Kevin. But that was impossible because Kevin sat on the floor ten feet away, rocking, deeply withdrawn, holding a red foot, bleeding from his left ear.
Bleeding from his ear. She took a step around for a better view of Kevin’s ear. Her cell phone lay in several pieces twenty feet away on the concrete where Slater had hurled it. That was real enough. Was it possible that Kevin had made her up? She looked at her hands—they seemed real, but she also knew how the mind worked. She also knew that Kevin was a prime candidate for multiple personalities. Balinda had taught him how to dissociate from the beginning. If Kevin was Slater, as Jennifer insisted, then why couldn’t shebe as well? And Sam could see Slater because she was there, in Kevin’s mind where Slater lived. But Balinda was real . . .
Sam walked up to Balinda. If Jennifer was right, there were only two bodies here—Kevin’s and Balinda’s. She and Slater were only personalities in Kevin’s imagination.
“What’s with you?” Slater snapped. “Back off!”
Sam turned to face the man. He had the barrel of his weapon trained on her knee. Did he really have the gun if he was just in her mind? Or was that Kevin, and he only looked like Slater to her?
Slater grinned wickedly. Sweat wet his face. He glanced at the clock behind her. “Four minutes, Samantha. You have four minutes to live. If Kevin chooses to kill his mother instead of you, then I’m going to waste you myself. I just decided that, and it feels pretty good. How does it feel for you?”
“Why is Kevin bleeding from the ear, Slater? You hit me in the ear, but did you hit him in his ear?”
Slater’s eyes shifted to Kevin and then back. “I love it. This is the part where the clever agent begins to play mind tricks in a last-ditch effort to confuse the nasty assailant. I really do love it. Back away from the bait, precious.”
Sam ignored him. Instead she reached out and pinched Balinda on the cheek. The woman clenched her eyes and made a squeak. Thunder crashed through the chamber; white-hot pain seared through Sam’s thigh. Slater had shot her.
Sam gasped and grabbed her thigh. Blood spread through her black capris. Her head swam. The pain was real enough. If she and Slater weren’t real, then who was shooting whom?
Kevin jumped to his feet. “Sam!”
“Stay!” Slater said.
Sam’s mind climbed from the pain. Kevin was shooting himself? Any normal person viewing this would see that he’d just shot himself in the thigh.
The details began to fall into order, like dominoes slowly toppling in a long line. So then if Kevin shot Sam in the head, he’d really kill whom? Himself? He was going to kill either Balinda or himself! And even if Slater killed Sam, he would really be pulling the trigger on Kevin, because all three of them occupied the same body. No matter who shot whom, Kevin’s body would receive the bullet!
Sam felt a swarm of panic. Tell Kevin, Jennifer had said.
“When I say back off, I mean back off—not pinch her, not lick her, not spit on her,” Slater said. “Back off really does mean back off. So . . . back off!”
Sam took a side step away from Balinda. Hurry, Jennifer, please hurry! Beneath the screw. That means the basement; you know about the basement, don’t you? Dear God, help them.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Slater’s eyes danced around. “Don’t worry, a bullet to the head does wonders for the odd surface wound. Pow!Works every time.”
“He’s bleeding in the ear because you hit mein the ear,” Sam said. “He’s bleeding in the leg too, isn’t he?” She followed Slater’s glance. Kevin stood, weaving on his feet, stricken with empathy. Blood soaked both his shoe and his right pant leg. He didn’t feel the pain because in his mind it hadn’t happened to him. Their personalities were completely fragmented. And what about Slater? She dropped her eyes to his thigh—a red spot was spreading on his tan slacks. Slater had shot Sam, but the wound appeared on both Kevin and Slater. She looked at Slater’s ear. Then at his shoe. Blood there too.