Henry’s tone softened. “But he doesn’t. Tell him.”
I knew what she was going to say, and I didn’t want to hear it.
“A bag. He moved like one of those things. Too fast. Aggressive.”
“It’s not just that you share some of their physical traits, Abe. Remember the attack back at the house? That queen worm was in a frenzy, attacking Leon with everything it had. Until you touched it. It went docile, just like that. Instantly. Instinctively. It let you unwrap it from around Leon, and then just hung there in your hands until Anne killed it.”
“So you’re saying that I’m one of them? That it recognized someone from its own team? Those things are mindless, it doesn’t know anything.”
Henry shrugged. “I’m just saying that ever since you emerged from that pit, you’ve shared some of their traits, body and mind. You need to recognize that fact so that you can fight it. And it starts with you not killing those men.”
“I’m not one of them. If I were, I would have just taken the pieces to Piotr, right? I wouldn’t have killed two of them at your house.”
Henry put one of his perfect hands on my arm. “I know. You have free will. Maybe not as free you once were, but still free. All that means is that you have to fight harder to be the man you used to be. If you act like you’re not affected, it’s just going to lead you down a hole. Once you start believing that these decisions are all yours, you’ll defend them. You’ll believe whatever reasons you come up with, you’ll have to, and sooner or later, you and this influence will be in total agreement.”
“Are you a psychologist now, Professor?”
He shrugged. “I’m just an old man. But I know what I know. Justifying an action isn’t the same thing as judging that action. You need to decide who wants to kill those men. Is it really you?”
I sat down and closed my eyes. He was wrong. If someone declares that they’re going to murder me or mine, I have no problem killing them. That’s always been true for me. Maybe in the past I needed more provocation than just threatening it, so maybe I was a little more hair-trigger, but the basic behavior was the same.
But Henry was right about one thing. My temper was much worse. That guy ogling Anne in the hotel should have just annoyed me. Instead I lost my temper and hurt him. I didn’t decide to, I just did it. For that moment, I wasn’t in control.
I also lied about attacking Dominic. It wasn’t all part of my grand plan. I just barely stopped myself from breaking his neck. As long as I stayed by myself on the farm, I didn’t have to deal with it, but now back in the world, I could see how bad it had gotten. Henry was wrong about the symptom, but right about the disease.
“Okay. No killing. But these goons have to be dealt with. I have to know where Dominic is going.”
“That’s fine.”
“You realize that if I don’t kill them, Dominic is going to hear that I made them talk. Somebody is going to come for you eventually.”
“I’ll take that chance. Maybe if you catch up with him before that happens, you can talk him out of it.”
“You think so?”
“I have faith in you.”
20
Few things are as lonely as an empty hospital hallway. I don’t know if it’s the smell, the cold fluorescent lighting, or even the constant faint noises that point to activity and life just around some distant corner, but the end result always depressed me. I’d spent a long time in corridors like this at the end of Maggie’s life, and it was exactly the same. I might be there now, the intervening miles and years suddenly meaningless.
I had left Anne behind in the room. This wasn’t going to be pretty, and I figured that she’d been through enough at Georgia’s house. Despite Henry’s willingness to take his chances, there was no way I was letting these pieces of shit kill my friends. If it worked out that they got to keep breathing after I got what I wanted, fine. But I wasn’t going to go out of my way to coddle them.
I listened at the stairwell door. In order to be sure that we couldn’t leave the floor, they would have to watch the stairwells and the elevators here. Once we got off of this floor, it would be impossible to watch all of the possible exits from the hospital without a small army. Therefore, there must be someone watching the stairs on this floor. It was quiet behind the door, so I pushed it open and stepped inside.
As I suspected, my target was standing in the corner away from the door at the top of the stairs. He was about twenty-five or so, and wearing a red and white Nike jogging suit with the top unzipped, showing a wife beater T-shirt underneath. His hair was slicked back and he was wearing gold around his neck and on both wrists.
Actually seeing one of the men sent to kill us somehow made it more real to me, rubbed my face in it. Fire licked up from my belly and I tried to keep it from becoming more.
He recognized me as soon as I came through the door and went for his gun, hidden in the small of his back. He didn’t make it.
I hit him in the solar plexus hard enough to bounce him off the wall and he dropped to his knees on the concrete landing. I took his gun out of his waistband and tucked it behind my back. It was a Glock, so I didn’t have to worry about checking the safety.
He surprised me and came up off of his knees hard, powering an uppercut to my groin. Sharp, nauseating pain hammered into me. The restraint that I was fighting to maintain vanished in that instant, along with any plans I had to extract information from him. I was no longer thinking in human terms of strategy and manipulation. I could feel my lips split into a savage grimace.
I lifted him off the floor by his shoulders and threw him down the stairs.
Before he hit the ground I leapt after him, slamming into the concrete on the landing below a split second after he did. His face was bloody and his arm had too many joints in it.
His next words came out shrill. “You fucked up, man. Me and my boys are gonna kill you for this. Kill you, your bitch, and your nigger friends, too.”
He started to say something else, but I have no idea what. I yanked him off the floor with a snarl and threw him bodily back up the stairs. It felt good.
He sailed in a graceful arc up the stairwell until his trajectory was interrupted by the concrete wall at the landing where we started. He hit with a nice meaty slap and dropped like a rock.
I raced up the stairs and pounced on his prone form. My fingers dug into his flesh, desperate to crush and tear. My face was inches from his, my eyes drinking in his terror. Blood began to well up under my hands.
The urge to hook my fingers through his ribcage and tear him in half faltered. Begging and sobbing registered in my consciousness and I became aware of the acrid smell of urine and the tight muscles in my face and jaw.
I let go of him and stepped back. Tried to focus on what he was saying.
“Elevator. By the elevator.”
Information. I wanted information. I took his wallet and cell phone.
“How many? Of you?” I focused. “How many of you are there?”
“Three. Just three. One by the elevator and one in a car in the parking lot.” His eyes searched my face in terror. This was obviously not the first time he’d volunteered this information in the last few seconds.
“The guy who hired you. Dominic. Where can I find him?” The words came easier now.
“Downtown Boulder, in Colorado. Dom has a front there, a real estate office. It’s called Coyote Realty. He’ll go back there, I promise. He will.”
“Don’t make any sounds. Don’t leave the stairwell.”
He shook his head violently up and down. Looking at him I could see that he was badly injured. One arm and one leg were clearly broken, and from the sound of his breathing I had probably damaged his ribs.
He wasn’t leaving under his own power any time soon. Remorse touched me. I hoped that the staff found him before too long.
I wiped my hands clean on his clothes, then took the stairs down to the next floor and exited into another, identical hospital hallway. Getting close to the guy in the car would be difficult, so I decided to handle the one at the elevator first.
