CHAPTER THIRTY
Laura drew her gun and began to move, heading in the direction of the scream. Someone over there needed her. Needed help.
And she knew in her gut that it had to be connected to the janitor. Those gloves…
She’d missed all of the signs, misread them, misunderstood them. She’d imagined that she had found the scene of her vision and that was enough, as though she’d forgotten completely how her own visions worked. When she saw something, it wasn’t a scene that could be repeated a different way or in a different time or place. It was exact.
The killer hiding among the mannequins in the darkness.
It still hadn’t happened yet.
The thought made her heart pound wildly as she left the warehouse storage area and moved cautiously through the door, pausing to point her gun in the general direction of the desk and then sweeping across, checking the whole space for signs of anyone else there. She saw a man slumped on the floor but checked one more time before she was confident enough to run over to his side, believing now that they were alone. How long for, she didn’t know. The janitor was nowhere in sight.
“Hey,” she whispered urgently, then a little louder when he didn’t respond. It was the security guard, she realized, recognizing the back of his uniform. He was face down, not moving. “Hey. Are you alright?”
Maybe it was a stupid question. He was on the floor. He obviously wasn’t okay.
Laura checked his pulse and found it beating. “Alright,” she said, her voice low. “Alright, I’m going to get you some help. Don’t worry. Just focus on staying with me, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.” She could see blood pooling on the floor near his head, dark as tar in the dimness, illuminated only by the moonlight streaming in through the open door to the outside.
The door the killer must have gone out through.
Laura stepped back, her heart pounding. She had to do three things. Call for backup and an ambulance. Keep the security guard alive.
Find out where the killer was.
A movement and a sound outside made her draw back into the shadows behind the desk. She slipped downwards into a crouching position and then moved back as soundlessly as she could, out of sight. She could see the security guard on the floor but nothing else. She found her cell phone in her pocket and turned on the screen by feel alone, a move she’d practiced, to make sure she could always call for backup in an emergency without giving herself away by the light.
Someone stepped into the pale sliver of light around the security guard.
Laura worked hard to not audibly let her breath catch, trying to calm her racing heartbeat so she wouldn’t give herself away. In her pocket, she found the bottom corner of her phone case and then navigated up about the length of the first joint of her index finger, then tapped. If she’d got it right, she’d opened her quick dial options from the widget.
He was standing over the security guard, standing and looking around as if he was straining to see or hear something. Looking for her, maybe, Laura realized. He had to have known that the scream could have brought someone over. He was trying to see if his cover had been blown.
She tapped her finger on the same spot again, without moving it. The spot where she had saved Nate’s icon in the menu. Without wasting a single second she transferred her grip to press down hard and long on the volume control at the side of the phone, reducing it all the way to silent –
But not quickly enough to stop that first dial tone still being audible, even if so quietly it was almost totally muffled by her pocket.
But still, the janitor’s head whipped in her direction, his eyes searching as if to sniff her out of the darkness.
Laura’s heart was in her mouth as he leaned his weight forward, about to take a step in her direction –
And the security guard made a strained noise from the floor, a heartbreaking noise, a garbled cry that sounded like it came from a brain that no longer had enough capacity to understand where the pain was coming from.
The janitor looked down at him as if remembering he was there. He was holding something in his hand, something large and club-like. It took Laura a second, but then she placed it. A mannequin part – an arm, disjointed from the rest of the body. From the way he wielded it, it was also weighted – maybe supposed to be part of a display for jewelry or gloves.
And he raised it over his head, ready to bring it down on the security guard one more time and finish him.
No, she thought. She couldn’t let this happen. Not even to guarantee her own safety. And it wasn’t guaranteed, because he would come after her next as soon as the deed was done.
Laura shot upright behind the counter, lifting her gun as she did so and raising it to arm’s length, aiming at his head. “Freeze!” she shouted, the one single word she knew to be the most effective in any situation, the way her training had told her to those years ago.
And he froze.
It was just a moment, the two of them staring at each other, for such a short time that she wasn’t even sure their eyes had really connected in the darkness. She couldn’t make out his face properly, only the vague impression of something – just like the expressionless mannequins. He was shaking just slightly and then it stopped; he stilled, as if he was one of the things he obviously felt such a deep connection to.
But then the spell broke, and the janitor turned and ran. Laura fired her gun, recoil bouncing up her arm and rattling her, but she knew even before she saw him fly through the open doorway that she’d missed. She hadn’t had time to aim when he moved.
Laura snatched the cell out of her pocket, only glancing at the screen long enough to see that it was connected with Nate’s number, not turning up the volume to hear him because it would take far too long. “I’m at the warehouse!” she shouted, the only thing she could do at the same time as starting to run after the janitor. “Man down, ambulance required! The killer is here – the janitor! It was the janitor!”