Don’t breathe, she ordered herself. Once the AC is off, you can take a breath, but until then don’t breathe.
The outlet was within reach now. Slowly she extended her arm, the cell phone outthrust in her trembling hand, and jammed the phone’s antenna at the outlet.
She missed contact with the holes. Tried again. No good. A third try The antenna plunged into one of the holes, and the phone sizzled with an influx of voltage, strong enough to lift her off the floor and shock her backward. Her fingers splayed, the phone fell in a shower of sparks-and half the lights in the room went out.
She lay on her side, stunned by the jolt. Somewhere behind her, Myron Levine was still talking, and a varicolored play of light from the television bubbled over the walls and ceiling.
The TV was on a different circuit. But the air conditioner?
She listened.
There was no sound but her hoarse breathing and Levine’s drone.
The AC was off.
No more VX would enter the room. She’d accomplished that much.
All she could do now was wait and see if the symptoms passed…or worsened.
She lay still. Her hands were numb and boneless. Her legs were sprawled on the carpet in limp disarray. She was panting, straining for breath. The muscles sheathing her rib cage still worked, but for how long?
For a few minutes she was almost sure her symptoms were continuing to worsen, in which case she had been wrong, deluded, and there was no hope. God, it appeared, had rejected the terms of her offer.
Then her chest shuddered, heaved, and she pulled a stream of air down her throat.
She could breathe. Really breathe.
Evidently God had been open to a deal, after all.
Slowly she curled into a fetal pose and lay there, clutching her knees, wondering what to do next.
She couldn’t say. She knew only one thing with certainty. She had promised God that she would stop Mobius. And she intended to keep her end of the bargain.
34
Dodge came around slowly, conscious at first of the ache in his head, then of the awkward position of his arms, suspended above his shoulders. He thought of the suspect he’d once seen handcuffed to the bars of a holding cell, and for a confused minute he thought he’d been found out by his fellow officers. They’d gotten him for the leaks to the media, and this was his punishment-to be fucking crucified.
Then he remembered the footstep behind him in the carport, and he knew it was worse than that.
His eyes opened. He was in the bedroom of his house, lying in the bed with his arms tied-no, taped-to the bronze headboard. His mouth…there was something on his mouth-more tape, gluing his lips together.
Mobius.
This was his MO. McCallum had told him about it.
But Mobius killed women…
Not always. There was McCallum’s partner in Denver. And the kid in the chem lab.
Shit. He blinked, looking around.
The room was dark, the curtains shut, the glow of an outside spotlight trickling through. Dodge thought it must be around eight-thirty, maybe as late as nine. There was a chance that a call would come in for him. He and Bradley were still catching calls, and when he didn’t answer, Bradley or the watch commander would get worried and send a unit to check out his house. The patrol cops would see signs of a struggle in the carport, would come in with their guns drawn and blow this crazy asshole Mobius away.
Sure. It would happen just like that.
Dodge had heard enough bullshit from suspects and witnesses, not to mention from other cops, to know when he was slinging the bull himself. There wasn’t going to be any last-minute rescue. In the carport he’d had one shot at walking away from this situation with all his parts, and it had gone wrong and now he was fucked and it was over. Just that simple.
Movement in the dimness. The man who must be Mobius, pacing. He wore a dark windbreaker and latex gloves. His face was barely visible, a shadow among shadows.
'Sorry I hit you so hard,' the man said.
Dodge didn’t remember getting hit. The footstep he remembered. The sudden sense of danger. After that- nothing. Concussion, he figured. Amnesia. Common in head injuries. The least of his fucking problems.
'I knew you’d be armed,' Mobius went on in a quiet, conversational tone. 'So I had to subdue you immediately. It was the same with Paul Voorhees. Only he never woke up. He was lucky. Luckier than you.' Mobius took a step closer. 'Are you afraid? Afraid of dying?'
Dodge wouldn’t have answered even if he could. The answer was fucking obvious. Yeah, he was scared. He was propped up in bed, his pants wet, a sick feeling at the back of his throat, his heart working double time, his body quivering all over-and this cocksucker had the balls to ask if he was scared.
'You shouldn’t be. Dying is nothing. I died when I was eight years old. I’m dead now. So are you. We’re all dead, all of us, though we try to pretend we don’t know.'
Dodge worked his mouth under the tape, as if he could gnaw through it and then sink his chops into Mobius himself. This was great, just fucking great. Not only was he going to get offed by this piece of shit, but he would have to listen to a goddamn philosophy lecture first.
But Mobius seemed to have said his piece. He moved around the bed, and in the chancy ambient light Dodge saw the glint of a knife.
He cuts their throats. That’s how he does it.
Fear flashed through him like a punch of nausea, and he released it the only way he could, by shaking his arms wildly, tugging at the duct tape, and when it didn’t break, he thrashed his legs, kicking like a petulant kid, and distantly he felt his bowels loosen and he knew he had crapped himself.
God damn it, he didn’t want to die.
He exhausted his strength and lay quivering on the tangled sheets. Mobius just watched him from the shadows. The guy didn’t look very big. Tall, maybe, but not pumped up the way ex-cons usually were. One on one, Dodge could take him, no problem.
Come on, shithead, untape me and we’ll see which one of us is the alpha dog.
He tried to force out the challenge past the tape on his mouth, but all that emerged was a grunt, low and plaintive and humiliating.
It sounded like a plea. He hated that sound. He’d made many men plead, men he’d stomped and pounded, men whose fingers he’d broken and whose ribs he’d bruised, and although he enjoyed it when they begged for mercy, he was always secretly embarrassed for them, dismayed by their show of weakness.
Now he was the one being weak. He shouldn’t let things play out that way. He should be tough, go down in defiance, not give an inch.
Should, but couldn’t. He was forty-four. He wasn’t ready for this. It was too soon. He had plans. He had the money he was making on the side, his retirement money, and what he meant to use it for-the islands, every day spent beachcombing, every night a visit to a different island bar to bag a different island girl. Sun and sand and sex-decades of it-fuck, he was only forty-four.
'Are you ready, Detective? I don’t like to start until the subject is ready.'
Bite me, you faggot asshole.
'Usually I see a kind of resignation. It makes things easier.'
Dodge wouldn’t make it easy. He was not through living. He would not let this scumbag take his future away.
'Of course, some people simply lack the proper temperament.'
Eat shit. Dodge wished he could scream it at him.
He’d never really believed he would die. Never believed in a point of termination. Not for him. Other people died. He was forever. Other people left the world, but he…he was the world.
