Midnight

Shaddack squealed like a boy again. He ducked back against the wall, away from the open center of the well, where he could not be seen.

Sam didn't know whether he'd scored a hit or not. Maybe. What he did know was that Shaddack wasn't mortally wounded; he was still coming, easing up step by step, staying against the outer wall. And when that geek reached the lower landing, he would take the turn suddenly, firing the shotgun repeatedly at whoever waited above.

Silently Sam retreated from the upper landing, into the hall once more. The scarlet light of the STAIRS sign fell on Chrissie's and Tessa's faces … an illusion of blood.

25

A clink. A scraping sound.

Clink-scrape. Clink-scrape.

Harry knew what he was hearing. Clothes hangers sliding on a metal rod.

How could they have known? Hell, maybe they had smelled him up here. He was sweating like a horse, after all. Maybe the conversion improved their senses.

The clinking and scraping stopped.

A moment later he heard them lifting the closet rod out of its braces so they could lower the trap.

26

The fading flashlight kept winking out, and Tessa had to shake it, jarring the batteries together, to get a few more seconds of weak and fluttery light from it.

They had stepped out of the hall, into what proved to be a chemistry lab with black marble lab tables and steel sinks and high wooden stools. Nowhere to hide.

They checked the windows, hoping there might be a roof just under them. No. A two-story drop to a concrete walk.

At the end of the chemistry lab was a door, through which they passed into a ten-foot-square storage room full of chemicals in sealed tins and bottles, some labeled with skulls and crossbones, some with DANGER in bright red letters. She supposed there were ways to use the contents of that closet as a weapon, but they didn't have time to inventory the contents, looking for interesting substances to mix together. Besides, she'd never been a great science student, recalled nothing whatsoever of her chemistry classes, and would probably blow herself up with the first bottle she opened. From the expression on Sam's face, she knew that he saw no more hope there than she did.

A rear door in the storage closet opened into a second lab that seemed to double as a biology classroom. Anatomy charts hung on one wall. The room offered no better place to hide than had the previous lab.

Holding Chrissie close against her side, Tessa looked at Sam and whispered, 'Now what? Wait here and hope he can't find us … or keep moving?'

'I think it's safer to keep moving,' Sam said. 'Easier to be cornered if we sit still.'

She nodded agreement.

He eased past her and Chrissie, leading the way between the lab benches, toward the door to the hall.

From behind them, either in the dark chemical-storage room or in the unlighted chemistry lab beyond it, came a soft but distinct clink.

Sam halted, motioned Tessa and Chrissie ahead of him, and turned to cover the exit from the storage room.

With Chrissie at her side, Tessa stepped to the hall door, turned the knob slowly, quietly, and eased the door outward.

Shaddack came from the darkness in the corridor, into the pale and inconstant pulse of light from her flash, and rammed the barrel of his shotgun into her stomach. 'You're gonna be sorry now,' he said excitedly.

27

They pulled the trapdoor down. A shaft of light from the closet shot up to the rafters, but it didn't illuminate the far corner in which Harry sat with his useless legs splayed out in front of him.

His bad hand was curled in his lap, while his good hand fiercely clasped the pistol.

His heart was hammering harder and faster than it had in twenty years, since the battlefields of Southeast Asia. His stomach was churning. His throat was so tight he could barely breathe. He was dizzy with fear. But, God in heaven, he sure felt alive.

With a squeak and clatter, they unfolded the ladder.

28

Tommy Shaddack shoved the muzzle into her belly and almost blew her guts out, almost wasted her, before he realized how pretty she was, and then he didn't want to kill her any more, at least not right away, not until he'd made her do some things with him, do some things to him. She'd have to do whatever he wanted, anything, whatever he told her to do, or he could just smear her across the wall, yeah, she was his, and she better realize that, or she'd be sorry, he'd make her sorry.

Then he saw the girl beside her, a pretty little girl, only ten or twelve, and she excited him even more. He could have her first, and then the older one, have them any which way he wanted them, make them do things, all sorts of things, and then hurt them, that was his right, they couldn't deny him, not him, because all the power was in his hands now, he had seen the moonhawk three times.

He pushed through the open door, into the room, keeping the gun in the woman's belly, and she backed up to accommodate him, pulling the girl with her. Booker was behind them, a startled expression on his face. Tommy Shaddack said, 'Drop your gun and back away from it, or I'll make raspberry jelly out of this bitch, I swear I will, you can't move fast enough to stop me.'

Booker hesitated.

'Drop it!' Tommy Shaddack insisted.

The agent let go of the revolver and sidestepped away from it.

Keeping the muzzle of the Remington hard against the woman's belly, he made her edge around until she could reach the light switch and click on the fluorescents. The room leaped out of shadows.

'Okay, now, all of you,' Tommy Shaddack said, 'sit down on those three stools, by that lab bench, yeah, there, and don't do anything funny.'

He stepped back from the woman and covered them all with the shotgun. They looked scared, and that made him laugh.

Tommy was getting excited now, really excited, because he had decided he would kill Booker in front of the woman and the girl, not swift and clean but slowly, the first shot in the legs, let him lie on the floor and wriggle a while, the second shot in the gut but not from such a close range that it finished him instantly, make him hurt, make the woman and the girl watch, show them what a customer they had in Tommy Shaddack, what a damned tough customer, make them grateful for being spared, so grateful they'd get on their knees and let him do things to them, do all the things he had wanted to do for thirty years but which he had