Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

“Well?” Pavlo asked.

“A list of names,” Nate said.

A sigh of pleasure came through the receiver, almost a hiss.

“I’ll bring it to you. I’ll leave right now.” Nate gestured furiously for Janie to finish loading the Jeep, but she didn’t move. She just stood there, the weight of the duffel tugging at her arm.

“No,” Pavlo said. “Tell me names.”

Any name Nate gave carried with it a death sentence. A drop of sweat ran from his hairline, stinging his eye. Casper whimpered at his side and shifted paw to paw.

“Now,” Pavlo said.

“Patrice McKenna,” Nate blurted. The schoolteacher Danny Urban had already murdered. The one safe name to give-they couldn’t kill someone who was already dead.

A pulse of excitement beneath Pavlo’s words. “Yes. Now others.”

Nate’s last thought remained, banging about his head like a bird stuck in a room. You can’t kill the dead -his personal theme since he’d come in from the ledge, the source of his fearlessness in the face of bullets, ice blocks, rescue saws, but there was something else, something-

“Aiden O’Doherty,” he blurted. The last death notification he had served, the teenage boy who’d died in the car crash.

He heard Pavlo breathing through his nose, nothing more.

Nate cast his memory back to the previous six death notifications he’d served, naming the names of the dead.

Paula Jenkins, overdose.

Martin Padilla, drive-by.

Shin Sun-won, knife in the stomach.

Wally Case, suicide dive in front of a bus.

Clarissa and Frederick Frigerio, shot in a convenience-store robbery.

When Nate had finished, Pavlo said, “Fine. Now bring list to me. I want to see with my own eyes.”

Nate hung up, and Janie sprang back into motion, hauling the bag to the Jeep. Nate took the steps up three at a time, Casper at his feet, calling Cielle’s name as he charged down the hall. She was in her room, clutching an armload of photo albums, phone pressed to her ear.

“No, Jason.” She tugged at a maroon streak in her hair. “I told you. Do not come over right now.”

Nate grabbed her arm. “We gotta go.”

“He’s almost here, Dad, and-”

Casper’s head jerked toward the door, his tags jangling. The patch of hair rose at the base of his ridge. His ears lifted, squaring off at the tops, then flattened back against his skull. He took several slow, stalking steps toward the hall.

Cielle still hadn’t moved, but the cell phone bobbed beneath her thumb, giving a barely audible click as it turned off. Nate raised a finger to his lips and flattened a hand: Stay here.

He crept down the stairs, Casper a half step ahead, slinking like a great cat. The door to the garage was closed, and he could not hear Janie beyond. He started for her, but Casper moved swiftly across the kitchen and growled at the sliding glass door. Nate followed, flipped the lock, and had barely tugged the door open when Casper skimmed through. The dog stopped ten feet away at the near edge of the lawn, snarling down at something.

Nate moved out into the night air, took a few steps across the brief patio, and stared down.

Two oversize footprints crushing the grass, facing the house.

With mounting dread, Nate turned slowly and looked over his shoulder.

Yuri finished slipping inside and stood in the kitchen, staring out at Nate through the narrow gap in the door.

No gloating. No anger. Just an empty, gray-eyed stare.

A shushing noise as he tugged the sliding glass door closed.

The glass threw back only a reflection of the yard, the porch light a scorch mark in the corner of the pane. Before Nate could move, Yuri’s chalky hand ghosted into sight behind the double panes and flipped the lock.

Casper sprang before Nate did, swiping at the glass, barking furiously. Nate unlocked his legs and charged, crashing into the sliding door with his shoulder and bouncing back, landing on his ass. In the pane, he saw only a few feet of reflected patio, the uniform black sky, and his own expression of abject terror. Rising, he shoved his face to the glass to see inside, his breath clouding the view at quick intervals.

Indistinct in his massive dark coat, Yuri reached the door to the garage just as Janie passed into the house again, gun in hand, nearly colliding with him. Her expression clicked instantly from worry to horror, and then Yuri’s massive hand palmed her face like a basketball and shoved her out into the garage, the gun spinning from her grip. She tripped, striking the still-opening door, tumbling off the step and out of sight. The door banged wall and wobbled back, slamming shut. Calmly, Yuri reached over and threw the dead bolt.

Crouching to retrieve the fallen gun, he turned and looked across the kitchen, fixing his glinting possum eyes on Nate.

Then he rose and headed up the stairs.

Nate’s skin caught fire, every nerve ending, every cell.

Casper’s barks elongated into rumbling howls as he jabbed at the sliding door with his front paws, gouging up curls of wood from the frame. Nate spun, grabbing the nearest thing he could lay hands on-a wrought-iron patio chair. He hurled it with all his strength. It struck the pane, rippling the reflection, sending out a warbling sonar cry and bouncing back, narrowly missing his head. A thumbnail-size chip marred the perfect pane. Nothing more.

In a fury Nate swatted aside another chair, then kicked over a table, at last laying eyes on the cast-stone umbrella base waiting patiently for springtime. Squatting, he hoisted it, his compromised left hand useful only as a grappling hook. His back straining, he lifted the base above a shoulder and barreled at the sliding glass door, rotating to let the cast stone hit first.

The sound was limp, a muted cracking as the safety glass webbed. He punched through, sprawling onto his back, the umbrella base rocketing dangerously to bite up a chunk of kitchen tile.

From upstairs he heard Cielle’s scream, “Dad, help me!”

Her voice, the terrified plea, the word at last- Dad -had him back on his feet as if he’d been yanked up by the collar. Trapped in the garage, Janie slapped and pounded on the door. Hurtling past to the foyer, he leaped at the stairs. In full gallop, trying to make the turn behind him, Casper skidded out, nails scrabbling helplessly across the floorboards. Nate seemed to fall up the stairs, four, five at a time, and then Cielle’s door rocked into view, funhouse-tilting back and forth as his legs pounded the carpet. “Dad! Daaad!” He crashed through, catching one frenzied glimpse of Cielle recoiled against her window before Yuri’s fist swung into view from nowhere, firmed around the handle of Nate’s own gun, reverse brass knuckles flying at his forehead with dizzying speed.

A blip of blackness.

Then Cielle’s ceiling staring down, a blank screen. Somewhere a fuzzy voice. Blood in his eyes. He tried to lift a hand to wipe it away, but his muscles did not respond. Blinking away the blood seemed to be the only movement he could muster. On the far side of the closed door, Casper was at the wood like a vampire, fangs and nails. The unique agony of face pain and the stunned moment of laid-out paralysis transported Nate to that dune, his mouth pressed to the sand, his eardrums thrumming, the heat of the helo explosion roiling across his back.

But no. This was worse.

Even over the snarls, Nate could make out the voice now, across the room, addressing Cielle: “I am bigger. I hold the power. This is way of the world. You will learn.”

His head felt filled with concrete, the weight pulling at him. He let it fall to the side. The stepstool carved with his daughter’s name had been kicked over, the letter puzzle pieces crowding his field of vision. Across the room Cielle was sobbing, black eyeliner streaking. Her round face lit with disbelief and shock.