Dying Light (11 page)

I can wish all day long that she would
take more time to consider her options before acting, but such a
hope would be fruitless. I try to calm myself with reminders that
we’ve been lucky so far, that now more than ever, Jesse has power.
She can fight Caldwell, if she has to.

These little assurances aren’t calming
me. A voice in the back of my mind nags, reminding me that Caldwell
rarely fights fire with fire. He fights with deception and
confusion and illusion. He will break Jesse’s mind first, before
ever trying to fight her power with his.

In that way, I fear Jesse isn’t as
strong as Caldwell. Honestly, I don’t think any of us
are.

“
Scratch that.” Nikki’s
voice drags me from my thoughts. “I’ve got something.”

I lean down over Nikki’s shoulder and
peer into the computer screen. My eyes settle on the opposite chair
for a heartbeat, noting again Gloria’s absence. She’s been gone for
nearly an hour, saying she needed to “get a few things.” I wonder
if it’s a true excuse or if she has a trick up her
sleeve.

“
See here?” Nikki punches
a few keys on the keyboard and the image gets larger. Caldwell is
on a boat in a port somewhere. I can’t tell more from the black and
white video streaming into Nikki’s laptop. The wooden dock
stretching out to the ship is clear though, as well as the men
loading the ship by hand and forklift.

“
Where is this?” I
ask.

“
Finland,” she says,
punching a few more keys. A chat box pops up in the top right
corner of the screen. Parish looks the same as he did the last time
I saw him at Jeremiah’s base in Nashville: plump, hairy, and half a
burger in his mouth. He waves at the camera. “Parish says
hi.”

I wave back at the man in the little
box. “Hey.”

“
This ship is headed to
the North Pole.”

“
Why?” I can’t suppress a
surprised snort. “Is Caldwell planning to visit Santa?”

“
I don’t know.” Nikki
opens and collapses windows broadcasting video feeds. “I don’t see
Jesse, so either he dropped her somewhere or she could be on the
ship. Parish is canvassing the pier and surrounding
area.”

“
Or she’s somewhere else?”
My heart lurches again. I’m not sure why the idea of Jesse not with
Caldwell frightens me more. I should be thrilled that he’s in
Finland, possibly thousands of miles from her. Yet, I think seeing
her on a pier in Finland would calm some part of me that’s
imagining much worse.

Nikki takes my hand and gives it a
squeeze. “I think this is good.”

“
How?”

She takes both my hands in
hers. “If they’d had some giant firefight, we’d have seen it. You
can’t hide something like that. The fact that he’s back to business
an hour after taking her is good. He’s not trying to kill her,
right? So he hasn’t tried to kill her, and he isn’t doing it now.
That’s
good
. We
still have time.”

I squeeze her hands back and place a
kiss on her knuckles. “I hope you’re right.”

“
Of course I am.” She
grins and pulls on my hands until I’m forced to sink into her lap,
her face close to mine. She kisses my cheek, then the corner of my
lips.

“
God, I hope she’s okay. I
don’t know what I’ll do if—”

“
Shhhh.” She covers my
mouth with a kiss. “Think positive.”

I wrap my arms around her neck and she
presses her palms against my back.

She kisses my cheek. “If he’d taken
you, I’d be crazy right now.”

Heat blooms in my face. “I don’t
expect you to be as worried about Jesse as I am.”

She flicks her eyes up to
meet mine. “I’m
saying
that I understand why you’re so worried. I would be
too.”

I wrap my arms around her neck. “I’m
worried about Winston too.”

“
We’ll get them both
back.”

Three gunshots go off in the hallway
and Nikki jumps up, dumping me onto my feet.

“
Is that—” I ask,
straightening beside her.

The door opens and Gloria bursts in
with her gun drawn.

“
Jason,” she says and
slams the door closed. “We need to go.”

Nikki slams her laptop shut and shoves
everything into her bag. I do a quick turn around the room,
gathering up the few things that I removed from my bags. Gloria
locks the front door and shoves the kitchen table in front of it.
Nikki helps her pile the chairs on top without question.

“
What’s our exit?” My
pounding heart makes it hard to speak.

Gloria points at the door beside the
bathroom. “The closet.”

“
Closet?”

She isn’t kidding. Just as someone
begins slamming against the front door and rattling the table and
chairs, Gloria throws open the broom closet.

“
Gloria—” I begin,
unsure.

She pushes aside several coats and
grabs a crowbar off the top shelf. Wedging the crowbar into the
corner of the closet, she pries away a piece of wood paneling to
reveal a dark mouth of a tunnel.

“
What in the
world?”

“
Go,” Gloria says over the
sound of the table rattling again.

Nikki steps into the dark first,
pulling a pen light out of her pocket and shining it ahead. “It
drops off.”

Gloria tosses a bag into the darkness.
“Just wait on the landing.”

Nikki pulls me in after her and clicks
off the pen light.

“
I can’t see anything.”
This isn’t entirely true. I can see Gloria in the closet and the
open door revealing the apartment’s hallway.

Gloria lifts her hand.
“Wait.”

Gloria pulls the closet door shut and
Nikki clicks on the pen light, illuminating the tight space. Gloria
arranges the clothes to their original position, and begins to
slide the paneling back into place.

“
Turn off the light,” she
commands, and Nikki does without hesitating. I can feel her hands
on my back, a warm assurance in the void.

The paneling snaps into place as a
loud crash echoes in the apartment. The sound of tables and chairs
tumbling to the floor is muffled by the big door. There aren’t many
places to search. It’s only one room, the bathroom, and this
storage closet.

The closet opens, the doorknob
bouncing off the wall. Nikki’s hand tenses on my back. No one moves
or breathes for fear he can hear us through the panel.

The sound of hangers scraping along
the metal pole makes me jump and goosebumps rise on my arm at the
screeching.

“
Goddammit,” Jason yells,
followed by the sound of a fist connecting with plaster. He doesn’t
hit the panel though, and I say a prayer of thanks for small
mercies.

Another crash and then an
echoing silence. No one moves or speaks in the cramped space until
Gloria clicks on her own flashlight and points it
past us.
“Follow me.”
She speaks directly into my ear before she heads deeper into the
passage. Her small, bobbing beam creates a lighted
walkway.

Nikki stays close on my heels until we
come to a stop. Gloria flashes the light at a small metal
ladder.

Gloria climbs onto it first and begins
to descend into the shaft. The first rung is cold in my grip and I
only have a moment to situate myself before the light disappears.
There is a moment of uncertainty and fear as I hang from the ladder
in open space, unable to see anything.

The metal ladder bumps against my hip
bone and a sharp pain cramps my side. I cling to the rungs harder,
feeling one of the cold rungs pressed to my cheek.

Nikki clicks on her own penlight again
and shines it on the ladder. “You okay?”

I nod.

“
Just do it by touch.” Her
voice is gentle and calm. She doesn’t let the urgency of the
situation make her impatient, the way Jesse would.

Jesse. Please be
okay.

Holding onto the bars, I stretch my
right leg down until I feel it graze the top of the next rung.
Sinking my weight into it, I do this again and again.

“
There you go,” Nikki says
and the light shifts as she climbs onto the ladder above
me.

I descend, my heart pounding. I can’t
see anything, not even my hand inches in front of my face. Nikki’s
penlight is too weak to offer any support. I can see Gloria’s light
farther down, bobbing in time with her movements, but it’s too far
away to be of any use to me.

I try to focus on the task
at hand, the simplicity of it.
Step. Sink.
Grab.

Again. Again.

But I’m plagued by the idea that at
any moment I’m going to slip, fall into the unending blackness and
be swallowed whole.

Nikki’s foot comes down on my hand and
I rip it out from under her shoe.

“
Sorry, sorry.”

“
It’s okay.” I swallow
down the panic. “I should be going faster.”

“
Take your
time.”

I begin again, seeking a rung with my
foot, finding it, lowering myself down. It feels like we are in the
black shaft forever. Gloria’s light stops moving and settles at the
bottom, and my heart leaps with joy.

It grows brighter and brighter, until
once again, my feet are on solid ground.

“
Let’s take the elevator
next time, shall we?” My breath billows white in front of my
face.

Nikki jumps down and lands beside us.
“That was fun.”

Gloria goes to the far wall and pulls
on a handle. Looking both ways, she holds up a hand, motioning for
us to wait. After a few heartbeats, she lowers her hand.
“Clear.”

We file out of the narrow shaft into
what resembles a storage room of some kind. Cinder-block walls,
pallets with trash and recycle bins, and some unused equipment
clutter the cold space.

Gloria leads us out of this room into
the parking garage, her gold Cadillac in the first space by the
room labeled “Recycle/Trash”.

Gloria unlocks the door with her fob,
and I climb into the passenger seat while Nikki jumps in the
back.

“
I have a feeling I know
why it took you so long to find an apartment,” Nikki says from the
backseat. She’s already opening her pack and inspecting the items
she brought with her. She slips a communication device into her
ear.

“
I inspected the building
schematics for all the possible apartments in the city until I
found one with a secondary exit,” Gloria confirms.

“
You’re amazing,” I tell
Gloria. “No wonder Brinkley had so much faith in you.”

I regret the words as soon as they
leave my mouth. Gloria’s face pinches and her nostrils flare. “Yes,
and look where it got him.”

“
Gloria—” I could say a
million things:
It wasn’t your fault. You
did your best
. Gloria doesn’t give me the
chance. She drowns out my voice with a rev of the engine and she
throws the car into reverse and backs out of the spot.

“
Do you think Jason knows
Jesse isn’t with us?” Nikki asks, as she adjusts herself in the
seat.

“
No.” Gloria meets her
eyes in the rearview.

I pull my coat tighter around me. “Or
he’s attacking us, hoping it will draw her out.”

I’m not sure it matters why Jason
attacked us. And I’m not sure how it affects my plan to get Jesse
and Winston back, except of course, it creates another obstacle. It
shouldn’t matter if there are a thousand obstacles, I remind
myself. I just have to stay focused on getting them
back.

“
Step 1,” I say, burrowing
into my coat and punching the buttons on Gloria’s dash for the
heater. “Find Jesse.”

“
I know where she is.”
Gloria pulls out of the parking garage and onto a dark Chicago
street.

Jesse

A
thick, wet tongue licks up the side of my face: once, twice,
and on the third swipe, the tongue slides right up my
nose.

I jolt upright screaming. “Ugh, oh my
god. What—?”

Forty pounds of pug slams into my
chest, jumping and leaping trying to get at my face again. Snuffly
snorts—pug’s unique language—bring reality into sharp
focus.

“
Winston,” I say. A wave
of relief washes over me. “Winston, thank
god
. Come here, let me see
you.”

I roll the pug over onto his belly and
run my fingers over the soft fur there. He squirms, desperately
trying to flip himself over, reminding me of a turtle trapped on
his back.

I flip him over. “Christ.
At least
you’re
okay.”

I stand up to inspect my new prison.
No doubt, Caldwell dumped me here while he’s considering how he
wants to off my sorry ass. One turn around the room and I must
admit that this is the strangest prison I’ve ever been
in.