James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

Shada?

“Call the police!” Jack shouted to the cabdriver, and then he ran inside.

Shada was on the floor. A blow from Habib had put her there, but she was okay. Vince was a different story.

“You didn’t have to stab him!”

“Shut up!” the Dark shouted back at her.

Vince lay on the floor next to her, bleeding badly, and Shada went to him. The knife had entered somewhere beneath his rib cage. Possibly a punctured lung. Blood from his left side had soaked through the shirt, and a dark crimson pool was gathering beside him. Shada removed her coat and used it to apply pressure to the wound.

“He needs an ambulance,” said Shada.

“Why do you pretend to care?”

“You can’t let him die. I warned you about the tracking chip. I brought you the money myself. I did everything you wanted.”

Shada heard a whimper from across the room. The girl-the one Habib called McKenna-was in the corner, her knees drawn up to her chest. She seemed to know better than Vince or Shada that the Dark had never intended to simply take the money and run.

The Dark stepped closer to Shada. “Tell him, Shada. Tell Paulo the truth.”

Vince lifted his head at the sound of his name. Shada took it as a good sign that he was not only conscious but listening.

“This man needs a doctor,” said Shada.

The Dark tightened his stare, his exclusive focus on Shada. “You’ve known it was me for a long time. Haven’t you?”

Shada didn’t answer. She suddenly wished Vince weren’t able to listen.

“You definitely knew yesterday,” he said, “when we were having sex. When you looked in the mirror and saw what I had written on your back with red lipstick. The letters were backward in the mirror, but I saw it register on your face. Tell Paulo what it said, Shada.”

She kept pressing on Vince’s wound, but her hands were shaking. The Dark aimed his pistol straight at her head. He was just five feet away from her.

“Tell him!”

Shada swallowed hard, then said it slowly, each letter filled with hatred: “F-M-L-T-W-I-A.”

Vince let out a noisy breath, one that was wet with blood. The sound gave Shada chills, and her feelings of shame and disgust for the things she’d done with the Dark forced an image into her head-that of Vince kneeling on the floor beside McKenna three years ago as the life drained from the stab wounds in her body. A thousand times over, she would have taken McKenna’s place. Now she wished it were her own life on the line, not Vince’s.

“Please don’t die, Vince.”

“Tell him why,” said the Dark. “Tell him why McKenna said Jamal did it.”

“I don’t know why!”

“You do know! Tell him what you told me.”

She knew exactly what he meant, but she tried to keep the focus on saving Vince. The Dark would have none of it. He stepped closer and pressed the gun right against her head.

“Tell him!”

The outburst from beyond the closed door-“Tell him!”-stopped Jack in his tracks.

Rushing inside the old hotel had been an instinctive reaction to the scream, and he’d raced up three flights of stairs hoping that the Dark had already fled with the money and left his hostages behind. Clearly, that was not the case, and as Jack stood frozen in the dark hallway, not sure what to do, he wished he was packing that gun Reza had offered him. He didn’t even have a cell phone, but hopefully the police were on the way. Surely Chuck had called them. Or the cabdriver. He inched closer to the door, stepping carefully on floorboards stripped of carpeting, and listened.

“Shada, do it now!”

He stopped and put his ear to the wall, trying to hear other voices inside the room. What he really wanted to hear were police sirens wailing on Brick Lane. If they didn’t come soon, Jack would be forced to make a move-either bust down the door or run for help. A wrong decision could be disastrous, and he was deep in an anxious state of disbelief over the fact that he was in London tracking down a psychopath when his week from hell-everything from Jamal’s murder and the loss of his friend Neil to the lack of sleep and Jamal’s uncle in the hospital-suddenly caught up with him, propelling him to do something.

“Do not harm the hostages,” he shouted. “I have a gun!”

The crack of gunfire was the response-a bullet exploding through the wall just inches from Jack’s nose. Jack dove to the floor.

Brilliant bluff, Swyteck.

The door swung open, but no one came out. The dim lighting from inside the room spilled a faint glow into the hallway, and Jack crouched low in the shadows. The rain continued to beat down on the roof of the hotel, and his only hope was that nature’s hiss would drown out the sound of his own panicked breathing.

“Toss your gun into the room,” the Dark said, calling out into the hallway. “Then step into the doorway where I can see you.”

Jack bit his lip, not quite believing that his bluff was going this badly. It was almost comical-until Shada screamed in pain.

“Do as I said, or the next scream is her last.”

Where the hell are the cops?

“He’s serious,” said Shada. “He already stabbed Vince!”

The fear in her voice was palpable, and the thought of Vince down and perhaps dying raised the stakes yet again-if that was possible. But he stayed put.

“One,” said the Dark, counting down.

“Jack, please!”

“Two.”

It was a split-second decision, but all Jack could do was buy time. “I’m stepping toward the doorway,” he shouted from the hallway, “and I don’t have a weapon.”

The Dark stopped counting, and for the next few seconds, there was only the sound of falling rain on the roof.

“Hands up where I can see them!” the Dark shouted.

Jack took a deep breath. This was definitely not the plan. Jack moved into the doorway with hands up over his head. The sole source of light in the room was a battery-powered lantern on the table, but it was sufficient, and the sight took Jack’s breath away-especially the blood on the floor beside Vince. Shada was on her knees at his side. The Dark stood behind her with his gun pressed against the back of her head.

“I swear I don’t have a gun,” Jack said.

“It wouldn’t help you anyway,” the Dark said. “Come out, McKenna.”

Jack did a double take at the name “McKenna,” but when the girl from the fish market stepped out from the shadows in the corner of the room, he knew it was just more of the Dark’s sickness.

“Everyone is going to do exactly as I say,” the Dark said. “Show them, McKenna.”

The girl opened her coat to reveal what she was wearing underneath. Even in the dim lighting of a boarded-up hotel room, it didn’t take an expert to see that she was wired for explosives. Her earlier exchange with Jack-when she told Jack that the Dark didn’t have to find her in order to kill her-hadn’t been paranoia. Now it made sense.

The Dark showed Jack the cell phone in his free hand. “Remote detonator,” he said. “Something I learned from Jamal’s father. Life’s funny, isn’t it?”

“Nobody else has to die,” said Jack. “Just take the money and go.”

“I’ll go,” he said, shoving Shada’s head forward with his pistol, “but I’m taking this slut with me.”

“You don’t need Shada,” said Jack.

“Don’t tell me what I need,” he said, his anger rising. “We’re talking real Internet porn-star potential-right, Shada? Let’s give your friends a little sneak preview. Tell them who made you into such a slut.”

She didn’t answer. The Dark only berated her further. His voice turned into that same abusive rant that Jack had heard on those unwatchable P2P videos.