Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

Another scream from the huge man, the sound piercing.

She was unfazed. ‘Are you listening? We’ll be all right. Breathe slowly.’

The biker’s red, bearded face leaned toward hers. Close. He gripped her neck. He was looking past her and for a moment it seemed as if he’d snap bones.

‘Breathe,’ she said. ‘Slow.’

And he started to.

‘You’re all right. Everybody’s all right. Nothing’s happened to us. We’re fine. There’re sprinklers. The fire department’s on its way.’

This calmed the biker and four or five of the passengers, but among the others panic was growing.

‘Where the fuck are they?’

‘Jesus, Jesus. We’re going to die!’

‘No no no!’

‘I feel the heat, the flames. You feel that?’

‘It’s underneath us. It’s getting hotter!’

‘No, please! Somebody.’

‘Hey!’ the biker shouted, in a booming voice. ‘Just, everybody chill!’

Some people did. But others were still in the grip of panic. They began pounding on the walls, screaming, ripping the hair and clothes of their fellows to get to the door. One woman, in her forties, knocked the biker aside, jammed her nails into the seam between the sliding doors and tried to force them open, just as he had attempted. ‘Relax, relax,’ the big man said. And pulled her away.

A man screamed into the intercom, ‘Why aren’t you answering? Why aren’t they answering? Nobody’s answering.’

Sobbing, cries.

Someone defecated.

The orderly realized he’d bitten his tongue. He tasted blood.

‘The walls! They’re hot. And the smoke.’

‘We’re going burn to death!’

The orderly looked at the doctor. He was unconscious. A heart attack? Had he fainted?

‘Can’t you hear us? We’re stuck.’

‘No, no!’

More screams.

‘It’s not that hot!’ the biker called. ‘I don’t think the fire’s that close. We’re going to be okay.’

The nurse said, ‘Listen to him! We’ll be all right.’

And, slowly, the panicked passengers began to calm.

Which had no effect on the orderly. He couldn’t take the confinement for a moment longer. Suddenly he was consumed by a wholly new level of panic. He turned his back to the people in the car and whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’ To his wife and son.

His last words before panic became something else. A snake winding through his mouth and into his gut.

Frenzy...

Sobbing, he tore the pocket from his scrubs, wadded it into a ball and stuffed it down his own throat. Inhaling the cloth into his windpipe.

Die, please let me die... Please let this horror be over.

The suffocation was terrible, but nothing compared to the claustrophobia.

Please let me... let me...

His vision went black.

‘Listen to me!’ Kathryn Dance shouted. ‘Listen!’

‘I’ve got my orders.’

She was on the east wing third floor of the hospital, speaking to one of the maintenance men.

‘We need that door open now.’

‘Lady, Officer, sorry. We gotta wait for the elevator repair people. These things are dangerous. It’s not gonna fall. There’s no fire. I mean, there was a little one but it’s out now and—’

‘You don’t understand. The people inside, they’re going to hurt themselves. They don’t know there’s no fire.’

She was in front of the doors to elevator number two. From inside she could hear screams and thuds.

‘Well, I’m not authorized.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’ Dance stepped past him and grabbed a screwdriver from his tool kit, a long one.’

‘Hey, you can’t—’

‘Let her, Harry,’ another worker said. ‘It don’t sound too good in there.’

The screams were louder now.

‘Fuck,’ Harry muttered. ‘I’ll do it.’

He took the screwdriver and set it down, then extracted a separate tool from the bag, an elevator door key. He slipped it into the hole and a moment later was muscling aside the doors.

Dance dropped to her belly, hit by the disgusting smell wafting out of the car, vomit, sweat, feces, urine. She squinted. Security lights, mounted on the CCTV camera inside the elevator, were glaring into her face. The ceiling of the car was about eighteen inches above the hospital’s linoleum floor. To Dance’s surprise, the passengers were fairly calm, their attention on two of their fellows: a pregnant woman, the source of the screaming. And a man passed out, though standing; his face an eerie blue. He was dressed in the uniform of a hospital orderly.

‘The fire’s out! You’re safe!’ This was the best way to convince them to calm, she’d decided. Telling them it was a prank, much less an intentional attack, didn’t seem advisable.

Somebody was trying to give the orderly the Heimlich maneuver but could get no leverage.

‘He’s dying!’ somebody called, nodding at the orderly. One of the male passengers suddenly snapped and lunged forward, stepped on a fellow occupant, a petite woman, and boosted himself up. ‘I need out, I need out! Now!’ He grabbed Dance’s collar, trying to pull himself out. Still, he tugged fiercely. Dance screamed as her head was jammed into the gap, the metal ceiling of the car cutting into her cheek.

‘No, listen!’

But he wasn’t listening.

‘Stop!’

She felt the growing strains of panic grip her. She began pounding the man’s hand. Useless. Her head, sideways, was partly inside now, wedged completely still. She was feeling dizzy from the fumes and the dismal air. And that unbearable feeling of being unable to move. She tasted blood, dripping from the gash into her mouth.

Jesus...

No choice.

Sorry.

Dance reared her head back, clamped her teeth around the man’s thumb and, tasting blood and tobacco, bit down hard with her molars.

He screamed and released her.

‘That man!’ she shouted, pointing to the orderly. ‘Get him over here.’

Several of the passengers grabbed the man’s collar and waist and pulled him off the floor. Then, together, they all handed him overhead, mosh-pit style. Dance gestured for two medics from Emergency to help and together they boosted the man up to the gap and got him out.

One ER worker said, ‘We’ll get him downstairs.’ They placed him on a gurney and sprinted away.

Michael O’Neil came running up. ‘Fire’s out in the basement. You all right?’ He frowned, looking at her face.

‘Fine.’

Dance peered back into the car. Brother. She shouted over her shoulder, ‘How long till we can raise the car?’

‘Fifteen, twenty minutes, I’d guess,’ the maintenance man said.

‘Okay, then we need an ob-gyn here. Now.’

‘I’ll get one,’ a male nurse behind her called.

Dance added, ‘And make it the skinniest one you’ve got on staff.’

Dance said, ‘I should’ve thought more clearly. This unsub... he’s too fucking smart.’

A word that rarely escaped her lips.

They were in the lobby of the hospital, waiting for the Monterey County Crime Scene Unit officers to report what they’d found in the elevator motor room, the car itself and the pit in the basement.

After the Honda had started to burn in earnest and the officers had raced into the inn, Dance had checked two exit doors, found them unencumbered — and paused. She looked over the establishment.

‘No,’ she’d muttered. The inn was one story and, though built into a hill, the incline was minimal. To escape, all you had to do was pitch a chair through a window and step outside, safe as long as you minded the broken glass.

Then she’d noted the smoke wafting into the woods and had seen, behind them, the hospital.

She’d said to O’Neil, ‘I don’t think it’s the inn that’s his target.’