Michael Prescott: In Dark Places

She reached for it again and only pushed it deeper into the pocket.

"Come on," she told herself. "Concentrate. Take it slow."

Good advice, but difficult to follow when her head was spinning with waves of dizziness and she had to fight off the desperate trembling of her muscles.

She dug into the pocket again, her fingertips brushing the key, now almost beyond reach. Carefully she snagged it between her fingers.

Breath held, she drew it out. Almost there amp;

It caught on a fold of the pocket.

Tomlinson moaned. She nearly panicked and let go, but somehow she held on. She jiggled the key back and forth to work it loose.

Another moan. The eyes blinking, not yet seeing her. He was still out, but coming around.

She resisted the impulse to tear the key free, aware that she might lose her hold on it altogether. There would be no time to recover it again.

Tomlinson shook his head slowly, as if shaking off a long sleep. The slight movement straightened the jacket a little, and the key popped free.

She had it.

Clutching her treasure, she retreated to the railing. She jabbed the key at the handcuff on her left wrist. Couldn't find the keyhole. The light from the landing wasn't strong, and the keyhole was small.

"Fuck."

That wasn't her. It was him. His groggy voice, thick with phlegm. She glanced at Tomlinson, and his gaze met hers for an instant, flickering with recognition, then fading to blankness again.

She grabbed a shallow breath and narrowed her focus to the single problem of fitting the key into the keyhole.

"Fuck me amp;"

Him again. This time she didn't look back. If he was alert, she would find out soon enough.

She found the keyhole. Slowly, tentatively, in a process that seemed to consume many minutes, she rotated the key against the hole until it slipped inside.

A jerk of her wrist, and the key turned. The handcuff clicked open.

Free.

She tore her arm out of the cuff and ran up the stairs toward the open door, hoping there was a lock on it so she could lock him in

And she fell sprawling on the metal staircase.

She thought she'd tripped. Tried to rise, couldn't.

Then she understood that he'd grabbed her by the leg, and he was holding on.

She spun onto her back. There he was, at the foot of the stairs, one hand clinging to her ankle while the other probed inside his jacket for the gun.

"You're dead," he told her in his raspy, croaking voice, white eyes staring. Meg launched a kick with her tree leg, booting him in the face. The impact punched him backward. He loosened his grip on her ankle. She tried to scramble up the stairs, but he was too quick. He already had her again.

She kicked a second time, missing him. He climbed on top of her legs to pin her down, and the gun was out, blue steel, shiny in the flashlight beam.

Click of the safety's release, the muzzle swinging toward her, and there was a gunshot, blood, Tomlinson dropping the gun as he slid backward onto the floor and lay unmoving amid a spreading maroon pool.

Meg didn't understand it. She lay on her back on the staircase trying to breathe, and then a tender hand was pressed into her own.

She looked up to see her mother kneeling beside her.

"Mom?"

"I'm here, Meg," Robin said. "It's okay now."

Robin tried to keep the shock out of her voice. Her daughter was alive, and that was everything that mattered.

But, God, just look at her.

Her school uniform was dirty and torn, hair frazzled, eyes wild. Blood from the shooting had sprayed her all over. She looked like she had crawled out of a grave.

"It's okay," Robin said again. She hugged her daughter.

She and Gray had found the bottling plant after a slow, watchful drive down Central. They hadn't been sure it was the right place until they'd discovered the open gate and the police car. Gray had led her deeper inside the factory, where sounds of a scuffle could be heard.

Distantly she knew she ought to be shocked at the killing that had taken place nearly before her eyes, but she couldn't find the appropriate emotion inside her. The gun was still in Tomlinson's hand. He'd been about to kill Meg. Another second, and it would have been too late.

By shooting the man, Gray had saved her daughter. That was all Robin cared about. It was all that mattered.

She stroked Meg's hair and looked into her eyes. "Stay with me now," she whispered.

"I'm not going anywhere," Meg said.

Robin knew she still hadn't seen Gray. How would she react when she recognized him? It would be another painful jolt to her system, already overloaded by stress.

But Meg could handle it. She was strong. Robin had never known just how strong until tonight.

"Let's get out of here," she said softly, "okay?"

Meg nodded. "Definitely."

Robin helped her to her feet. Together they climbed the stairs toward the glow of the flashlight that still rested on the landing. She remembered what she'd told herself as the fumes had started to overcome her: Go toward the light .

At the top of the staircase Meg raised her eyes, looking past the glow, and saw Justin Gray.

He stood there, watching the two of them with a cool, quizzical expression, the gun that had shot Tomlinson still held lightly in his right hand.

Meg drew back, making a startled, fearful noise. Robin tightened her grip to keep her from falling down the stairs.

"It's all right," she soothed, "he won't hurt us. He's with us now. He's one of the good guys."

The gun swung in their direction. Gray smiled. "You sure about that, Doc?"

Robin shook her head, irritated with him. "Justin, stop fooling around."

But the gun didn't waver, and neither did his smile. "No foolin'. Looks like I'm sitting in the catbird seat now, wouldn't you say?"

"Mom amp;" The word from Meg was a tremulous moan.

Robin stared at Gray, unable to process what was happening, unable to think.

"Still think you're gonna save the world?" Gray asked. "I got news for you. This old world is long past saving. And us leopards don't never change our spots."

After leaving Robin Cameron's office, Wolper stopped off at his mid-Wilshire apartment to pick up the packet of items he'd prepared long ago for just this eventuality. It was hidden in the bathroom wall, behind the mirror over the sink. He had to unscrew the mirror and take it down in order to remove the bulging envelope secreted in a cutaway section of drywall. Hidden alongside the package was a.22 pistol, untraceable.

He replaced the mirror and put away his tools before leaving with the package and the gun. Brand's home in Hollywood was only a short distance away. He made it there in under five minutes, spending the drive considering various ways to approach the situation.

He expected Brand to be homeprobably taking his house apart one wall at a time in search of the planted evidence. Trouble was, the evidence hadn't been planted yet. That was what the envelope was for.

He didn't think it would be overly difficult to kill Brand. The man wasn't smart. He was easily manipulated, easily distracted. He only had to turn his back for a second and bang, a bullet in the temple, fired by the untraceable gun. He would wipe off the prints, put the gun in Brand's hand, and fire it again, leaving powder marks on Brand's fingers. The second shot would go into the ceiling. The crime-scene people would say Brand's hand had slipped the first time he fired. It wasn't uncommon. People got a little nervous when they were about to kill themselves.

Suicide was what it had to look like. Cameron had been rightthe investigators would know that the fire in her office was arson. They wouldn't suspect Gray. Arson wasn't his style, and serial killers rarely varied their MO.