Jeff Abbott - Fear

The spring breeze rustled in the cottonwoods. Ten steps. She moaned. He kept his eyes fixed on the street, expecting a car to speed toward them and screech to a stop, carrying Groote, carrying death.

‘You’re doing great,’ he said.

‘Don’t talk to me… like I’m a toddler… learning how to ride a freaking bike.’ She started breathing in panicked hitches and he steadied his arm across her shoulders.

Twenty steps. The wind danced across her face and she flinched.

‘You’ve done this before,’ he tried, as a joke, not knowing what the hell else to say. Celeste kept her eyes clenched shut. ‘Been outside.’

‘I used to love the outdoors. Brian and I…’ and she swayed on her feet.

‘I’ve got you.’

She took another step. And another. Celeste made a low moan in her throat and walked faster, stumbling, her eyes clenched shut, and Miles guided her to Blaine’s car. He had left it unlocked and she stretched out on the backseat. She folded her arms over her eyes.

He gritted his teeth and slid the key into the car’s ignition. If she could get out of the house, he could drive the car again. At least the sedative shot made him less panicky; he just hoped he didn’t drive the car into the ditch.

He started the car. No boom. He steered out onto the mud road.

‘Where will you take me?’ she asked.

‘A friend’s house… well, he doesn’t know I’m hiding there. He’s out of town for a couple of days.’

‘Go to the hospital,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait in the car. Now. For Allison’s sake.’

He floored the accelerator, testing his reaction. The haze from the drug seemed to fade, overwhelmed by fear and adrenaline. He wheeled left onto the first street he passed, heading back toward the hilly rise leading to the hospital, praying that Groote was hunting him in the night, far away from Sangriaville.

Miles drove past a set of quiet homes, past empty lots, past the Sangre de Cristo Hospital, to Canyon Road’s dead end: an Audubon Society complex. He U-turned at the Audubon gate and headed back down the road toward the hospital. He went past the clinic, giving it a curious scouting, wondering if eyes in the building were watching him. There was no security that suggested this facility housed anyone dangerous – no wire, only a high adobe-wall enclosure, no guard posted.

‘Waiting for that next chess move,’ Andy said. ‘Show me the brilliance.’

He wanted to tell Andy to shut up, but he didn’t want Celeste to hear him. He U-turned again, wheeled Blaine’s car into the hospital’s parking lot, parked near the back.

‘How will you find him inside?’ she asked.

‘Nathan mentioned the top floor when I saw him at Allison’s,’ he said. ‘So I’m going straight to the top. Can you drive?’

‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘Driving’s easy compared with shooting.’

‘If you’re approached – security guards, anyone – run. Go straight to the police, or a friend’s house. Don’t wait for me.’

‘Miles,’ she said, ‘if Allison’s giving me Frost, I think it works. I should be in a fetal position right now. I killed a man. I left the house. But I’m coping.’ Nevertheless her voice shook and she swallowed, struggling to steady it. ‘Maybe it’s Frost. Hurley acted surprised when I told him she’d given me new pills.’

‘Or you’re just strong,’ he said. She blinked at him. ‘I’ll be back as quickly as I can. Can you bear to sit in the front, keep the engine running?’

She nodded. She climbed over the seat, squirmed low in the passenger seat.

‘I should get out more often,’ she said. Trying to joke. She shivered.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said. ‘Run if you have to.’

She nodded.

‘Celeste?’

She raised her eyes to his.

‘Thank you. You saved us both.’

She swallowed. ‘Go. Leave me your cell phone. If I have to drive off… call me, I’ll come back for you.’

He shut the door, waited for her to click the locks, and headed toward the hospital’s rear parking-lot entrance.

Every step made him want to run in the opposite direction. A mental hospital. The place he’d feared the most as his mind started to play tricks on him, as Andy began to chime into his days and nights. The place he was afraid Allison would send him. He kept walking toward the building.

If he could drive, he told himself, he could do this. Just walls, just floors, just people, it wasn’t a horror.

‘Introduce me to the guard,’ Andy said. ‘That’ll get you in real fast.’

The main building was large, with an adobe exterior, four stories tall. Two smaller buildings stood behind it, a gravel trail of roads snaking between them and the main house. It had the air of an exclusive club more than the clinical lines of a psych hospital.

He guessed there were cameras on him right now; surely they showed who came and went in the parking lot. He ducked his head down. Most of the main building’s windows were darkened; lights gleamed in the windows on the first floor.

He held the electronic passkey up to the reader on the door; the panel light flicked from red to green and the door unbolted with a click. He stepped inside.

At the end of this short hallway was a door with a conventional lock, and he tried the three keys on Hurley’s ring. The last one worked.

He expected to see a guard with a gun aimed at him when he opened the door.

Miles cracked the lock, went through the door, and closed it behind him. The hallway was empty, the lights dimmed. He took three deep breaths, trying to clear his head of Hurley’s junk.

Late night in the hospital. His heart hammered in his chest. He pulled out his gun, stiff-armed it in front of him, watched the steady red light of a mounted camera eyeing him down the hallway. Despite the Sangre de Cristo’s elegant architecture and immaculate grounds, he wondered if every asylum wasn’t designed by the same cracked architect, immured behind bars deep inside one of his own creations. Locks at the end of every hallway, bends and twists to confuse anyone who might risk a run, light that had never been born of the sun – hard and white and ugly.

He turned a corner and a guard was waiting for him, ready, a baton swinging hard at Miles’s neck. Miles jumped back – the baton smacked with bone-crushing force into the wall. The backswing caught his shoulder and agony burst up from the well of nerves at the joint. Miles fell to the floor and the guard – young, with heavy features – rammed the baton hard against his throat.

Miles closed hands around the baton’s ends, tried to push back. The guard grinned and gritted teeth and shoved the baton, bolstered by his own weight, against Miles’s windpipe.

Darkness danced on the edge of Miles’s vision. But then Miles thought of staying inside this place, the doors closing and locking behind him, faceless men strapping him to a bed, confinement as sure as a coffin. Here. Forever. Locked up.

Fear surged in his muscles and Miles shoved back, using the floor as leverage for his shoulders and arms. The baton popped hard into the guard’s mouth, then Miles hit him again in the nose. The guard reeled away from Miles. Gasping, Miles fought him for the baton. The guard wouldn’t let go, made a choking yell for Jimmy and Dwayne past the blood coursing from his mouth and nose. Miles powered the guard’s head into the wall, bit the fingers holding the baton. The guard let go; Miles dropped him with a blow on the back of the head. The guard collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

Miles glanced up and down the hallway. Deserted. He guessed these were offices and administration; no patients or caretakers here. A crackle and a buzz cut through the sudden silence, a voice calling for Robert. He leaned over the guard. An earpiece gleamed in the young guard’s ear, cabled to a walkie-talkie clipped to the shirt pocket. Miles removed the earpiece and walkie-talkie and clipped them on himself.