Jeff Abbott - Fear

Sorenson glanced at the other guard, who’d raised his gun. ‘Your clip’s empty. So’s mine.’ He grabbed the broken-nose guard by the throat. ‘He’s a big boy but I can break the neck with a strong twist before you take two steps. So drop the gun, and I drive away, and then you go get your friend a doctor.’

The second guard looked into Sorenson’s eyes. He slowly set the gun down, kicked it away without being told.

Sorenson kept his grip on the guard’s throat until he reached his car, then he shoved the man to the asphalt in contempt. Groote knew he was an enemy now. And Nathan remained a threat, and he was with Miles Kendrick who, despite being mentally ill, had the skills and apparent guts to fight back.

Sorenson wheeled out hard into the night. Kendrick’s car was gone.

He had to find Kendrick and Ruiz. Now. Or failing that, set a trap for them. One that they wouldn’t see coming.

Nathan drove the car behind the adobe wall at Blaine the Pain’s house. His hands gripped the wheel as though fused to the plastic.

‘Nathan, be cool…’ Miles started.

Nathan pulled trembling hands free from the wheel. Suddenly he seized the rearview mirror, tried to wrench it free from the ceiling.

Miles leaned forward and grabbed his arms. ‘What the hell? Calm down!’

‘Can we go inside now? Please?’ Celeste shivered as though she’d fallen into snow.

Nathan aimed the mirror away from his face. Miles helped Celeste out, hurried her under the shelter of the porch. Nathan followed them. Miles opened the front door and held his breath, tried to imagine the explanation he would give if Blaine was back from Texas.

‘Mr. Blaine? It’s Michael, from the gallery,’ Miles called. No answer. Blaine was still out of town.

Miles flicked on a kitchen light, leaving the other lamps doused. If the neighbors knew Blaine was out of town, he didn’t want to increase suspicion.

Celeste collapsed on the couch, pulled her knees close to her chest. Nathan scanned the room as if he were stepping on enemy territory.

Miles shut the front door behind him. ‘We can stay here, at least for tonight.’

‘Is it safe?’ Nathan ran from room to room, as though he expected a shambling horror to lurch out from a dark corner.

Miles followed him. ‘We’re fine, I promise.’

‘Is this your house? How many doors? How many windows?’ Nathan went into the hallway bathroom and a few seconds later Miles heard a sudden, sharp crack.

He pushed past Nathan. ‘What the hell?’

The mirror stood broken, a vicious crater in its center, cracks radiating outward. Nathan dropped a heavy soap dish to the floor.

‘I hate mirrors.’ Nathan retreated from the shattered glass.

‘Why?’ Miles took him by the shoulders, kept his voice calm. ‘You can tell me.’

His jaw trembled; his eyes held a haunting fear. ‘They – they look at me. From the mirrors. My friends.’

‘Your friends that died in Iraq.’

‘How do you know?’ Nathan lurched away from him, running down the hall. ‘I don’t want them to see that I’m here…’

Miles caught him at the bedroom entrance, staring at a mirror atop a bureau. ‘They can’t see you. They can’t.’

‘But I see them. They went away for a while. But they’re coming back, they live in the mirror and it’s not my fault, it wasn’t my fault…’

Miles steered him away from the mirror. ‘We’ll cover the mirrors, okay? Celeste, help me.’ Miles took Nathan into the messy kitchen. Dirty dishes piled the sink, a sour odor rising from the trash. Nathan sank to the floor.

‘Find towels, or blankets… cover every mirror you can find, please,’ Miles said to Celeste. She seemed much steadier with four walls around her, and she nodded and left the room.

‘Nathan. Pull it together, man, you’ve come so far tonight, you can’t lose it. Stay steady.’

‘It’s like – withdrawal. I was better, now I’m worse.’ Nathan startled with a jerk as a car rumbled in the street.

Frost. They’d been feeding him Frost, and probably he’d gotten his last dose on Tuesday. Maybe the drug’s effects started fading without a daily dose.

Nathan shrugged Miles’s hands off his shoulders, closed his eyes, steadied his breathing. Celeste ran back into the kitchen. ‘I covered all the mirrors.’ She knelt by them. ‘You’re bleeding. Your legs.’ And Miles saw spatters of blood, dried and fresh, on the scrubs he wore.

Nathan ignored her. He reached a finger out toward her face and she flinched back. ‘You were on Castaway. Holy smoke.’

She nodded.

‘So you killed Hurley. He was a bad guy – bad doctor, bad breath, bad hair.’ Nathan laughed, a broken giggle. ‘You did a good deed, ma’am. Now if someone would kill Groote for me… if I don’t get to do it myself.’

‘No one’s killing anybody,’ Miles said.

Celeste reached for Nathan’s face.

‘No.’ Nathan backed away from her. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘Just let me check.’ Celeste spoke in a soft voice, quiet and reassuring.

He stopped his retreat across the kitchen. Nathan tensed while Celeste touched his jawline, inspected his face. A swollen lip, a slight cut on the cheek with a bruise rising underneath it. ‘They punched you.’

‘Just once or twice.’ His voice shook. ‘Then hoses on my back.’

‘Let me see.’ Celeste eased up the back of Nathan’s shirt: a quilt of vicious bruises covered his spine.

‘Groote stuck a screwdriver against my bones. It hurt.’ Tears came into his eyes and he shuddered. He shoved up his sleeves, pulled bandages off his arm, and showed them the constellation of welts; deep bloodied punctures. ‘Cut down to the bone, jam the screwdriver against the bone. Then… turn. They did it on my legs too. Patch me up, then do it again.’ He gritted his teeth.

‘Oh, my God,’ Celeste said. ‘I’ll see if there’s a first-aid kit.’ She ran from the kitchen.

‘I can’t go crazy again,’ Nathan said in a hoarse whisper. ‘I can’t.’

‘I won’t let that happen,’ Miles said, and Nathan laughed, a short broken giggle.

‘You got spare sanity in your pocket?’ Nathan asked.

‘I know what you survived, Nathan,’ Miles said in a low voice.

‘You don’t know anything, man, not a thing about me… you don’t want to.’

Celeste ran back into the room, carrying gauze and Band-Aids and an antiseptic gel. ‘Get the scrubs off.’

Miles helped Nathan stand. Grimacing from the pain, Nathan shucked the scrubs down to his knees. Purple dominated the back of his legs where Groote had whipped the hoses. Four brutal gouges marred his leg. Celeste medicated and bandaged the wounds. ‘These wounds are deep. He needs a doctor.’

‘No,’ Nathan said.

‘You’re risking infection,’ Celeste said.

‘No,’ Nathan said again. ‘No doctors. We can’t let Groote find us.’

Miles rummaged in the cabinet, found aspirin, poured a palmful into Nathan’s hand, got him a glass of water. Nathan ate the aspirin like candy, a few at a time. He wiped the white dust from the tablets onto his shirt, finished the water. ‘Thank you.’ His eyes went glassy with exhaustion.

‘When was the last time you ate?’ Miles asked him.

‘Tuesday.’

Miles rummaged in Blaine’s nearly bare refrigerator, found a fancy-seeded bread and jam, cracked open a new jar of peanut butter, and made them all sandwiches. Nathan devoured his dinner in seconds, shivering with hunger.

Miles sat on the floor across from Nathan. ‘You know what Frost is.’

‘Yes. Allison told me it’s medicine to cure your trauma. She told me when she got me the passkey, said I had to run.’ Nathan wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘At first I thought Frost was the code name for the virtual-reality treatments they give us.’ He explained how the VR treatments worked – confirming what Miles had seen in the tech room.