There were no lights. It was pitch black. Nicky's eyes adjusted to the darkness, but it made the place feel even more disorienting. The air was filled with a cloying smell of something rancid. She couldn't help but think that whoever had been here before the fire had left in a hurry.
Her footsteps echoed down the stairs, and she could just make out the faint sounds of something moving around farther down, like something was in the boiler room.
Nicky's throat tightened.
Rosie's face flared up in her mind.
She remembered the way she looked before the man had caught her again.
Before Nicky had run off.
All this time, Rosie had been off somewhere--who knows where? Maybe she was dead, maybe he still had her alive. Either way, Nicky had been able to get away. Live a full life. Become an agent. Have a life. Maybe she didn't do enough with it.
Rosie had always wanted a boyfriend, Nicky remembered. But Nicky had never had one, not for real. In fact, if a man ever tried to get too close to her, she was more likely to kick them to the curb. Then she'd find herself lonely late at night, but still unable to open herself up to any real intimacy.
She knew that if Rosie had the chances that Nicky had, she wouldn't take them for granted.
Every day, Nicky felt more regret, more pain and anguish for leaving her sister behind and escaping. Who would Rosie have become? If Rosie had been saved too, would Nicky still be an agent? She felt like she was meant to be, in her blood, but she'd give everything up if it meant her sister could be free, having a safe life.
Nicky refocused herself as she walked, gun up and ready, on full alert.
This wasn't the same as all those years ago. Nicky wasn’t a child anymore. She was an agent.
This time, Nicky would win.
As she made her way through the boiler room, the air started hitting her more and more. It smelled less like mildew now, more like something else.
She came upon a large, red door with a sign above it: COALING AREA. She moved toward it, just as the thumping sound in the room became louder, whatever it was now coming toward her.
She raised her gun, ready to shoot. But just as she did, she dimly made out the shape of a person. The movement was familiar.
As she got closer, a sliver of moonlight slipped in through a hole in the burned ceiling. It took her mind a moment to process what she was seeing.
A man was holding a red-haired woman by her neck, and she was wearing a wedding dress.
But she was alive. Standing. Struggling against him.
Nicky couldn't bask in the relief, not yet.
"My poor, stupid bride," the man cried. "You were the one for me... the one..."
What the hell? Nicky didn’t know what she was seeing, but it was beyond bizarre. She’d never seen anything like this, not in her entire time of being a federal agent.
Nicky stepped forward, and her foot hit a rock.
The man's head snapped to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
His crazed eyes gleamed against the moonlight, pointed right at Nicky. She held her gun firm, directed right at his face.
"Don't you fucking move," she said.
He was vile. His hair was greasy and bone-white. His eyebrows bushy and black. His skin was gray, his clothes stinking. And he was covered in coal dust, which made him look even more disgusting.
The woman in the wedding dress looked at Nicky. Her eyes were still wide with fear.
But when Nicky locked eyes with her, she recognized her immediately.