“You’ve been there?”
“I was looking for you guys,” he said. “Look, you may have decided that now is a good time for a romantic romp somewhere, but there is some bad shit going on and I can’t get a hold of anyone.”
“I’ll explain later,” she said.
“Wait a second, Kate, I…”
“Quinn’s hurt,” she said. “He’s unconscious and I don’t know…”
She broke off. This was simply too much.
Janus’ voice changed.
“Just tell me where to meet you,” he said.
“I’m taking him to Bluemont Hospital,” she said.
“Bluemont?” he said. “In West Virginia?”
“Look, I’ll explain later. But I need help here.”
“I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
Kate pulled into the emergency entrance and thought a minute before leaving Quinn in the car.
What if the Horseman came back? Or what if Lord Halloween somehow knew where she was? She felt trapped. And very alone. She hadn’t realized how grateful she was to share everything with Quinn until he was no longer there.
She ran into the hospital.
“My friend,” she told the nurse. “He’s in the car. He fell three stories. He’s hurt.”
The nurse stared at her in total disbelief.
“You moved him?” she asked.
“Yes, but that’s done,” Kate said. “Please. I need help.”
The nurse summoned three others and they went to the car to retrieve Quinn.
Janus showed up a little more than an hour later, having driven as fast as he could push his Jeep. Kate stood outside the room where Quinn was being examined. She couldn’t tell what was going on. The doctors had tried to attach Quinn to monitors earlier, but the machines had appeared on the fritz.
“What happened?” Janus asked, looking in.
“Quinn fell,” she said. “We were being chased in our hotel room and he fell off the balcony.”
Kate sat down.
“Chased by who?” Janus asked. “What the hell is going on?”
Kate started to explain. They had been stalked by Lord Halloween, they had fled. And then someone had followed them to the hotel room and attacked. She didn’t know how to bring up the dream or the very real ghost of a horse that destroyed the hotel room door, or any of it.
“So Lord Halloween found you there and just attacked full on?” Janus asked. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I don’t think it was him,” she said.
“Who else would it be?”
“Quinn said that you and he found something weird out by the Phillips farm?” Kate asked.
“What about it?” Janus asked. “Some nut carved a strange word into a tree.”
“The same person who did that attacked us tonight,” Kate said.
“I don’t get this,” Janus replied. “How do you know it’s the same guy? How do you know it’s not Lord Halloween?”
“I don’t understand it all, Janus,” she said. “There is some strange stuff going on. I can’t explain it all.”
Janus looked in the window. “Is he going to be okay?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said and stood up to look back at the doctor examining Quinn. The light above the bed was flickering and the doctor appeared to be calling for a nurse to help. “He fell a long way and landed on his back.”
“Jesus,” Janus said and sat down. “Why didn’t you guys tell me what was going on?”
“It was my fault,” Kate said. “I was so paranoid, I didn’t want Quinn to tell anyone.”
“You didn’t think you could trust me,” Janus said and looked at her coldly. “So what has changed now?”
Kate wasn’t sure herself. But Janus was the first one she had thought of for help. It was who Quinn would have called. And her view of Janus was different too. Before, she had seen him as slightly obnoxious, but now she knew things about him. About Christina, his long-term girlfriend who had left him abruptly two years ago. She knew he had been devastated, that Quinn had to talk him off of the roof of his apartment building. The only person who could have known this was Quinn and he had never said anything. But whatever happened in the hotel room must have connected their memories somehow. Quinn trusted Janus, so now so did she.
She shook her head. This was insane.
“Quinn trusts you,” Kate said. “He told me we could count on you. And I need help now.”
“Look, I’ll help, but you have to understand, it was crazy yesterday,” Janus said. “They found another body. I talked to one of Quinn’s police sources. He said the police think the guy was killed around the same time as Fanton.”
“Was there a note?” Kate asked.
“Definitely,” Janus said. “But I don’t know what it said. Neither did the source.”
“What does Kyle think?”
“That’s another thing, Kate,” Janus said. “Laurence’s been going nuts. It may be the weekend, but he couldn’t reach any of his star reporters. Kyle didn’t answer his cell or his home number. And I couldn’t get either you or Quinn. I was beginning to wonder…”
“Has someone been to Kyle’s house?” Kate asked.
Janus shook his head.
“Not that I know of, yet,” he said. “I went over to Quinn’s and that’s when I found the place a mess. The police were already there. They said there had been some incident at the hotel and they needed to speak to both of you.”
“We left in a hurry,” she said.
“So I gathered.”
“Is it odd for Kyle to go this long without checking in? It is the weekend…”
“Kate, this is the biggest story in Loudoun’s history,” Janus said. “He wouldn’t just drop off the face of the earth. Laurence is fucking beside himself. He checked in with all the reporters after I couldn’t get in touch with either Quinn or Kyle.”
“The rest are okay?”
“I think so,” Janus said.
The doctor came out then.
“Are you the person who brought him in?” the doctor asked Kate. She nodded.
“How is he?” Kate asked.
“I wish I could say for sure,” the doctor said. “You said he fell, is that right? Did he fall on any electric power lines, or was electricity involved in some way?”
“No, why?”
“Because I can’t get a machine to work within 15 feet of him,” the doctor replied. “The lights above him are going crazy too. I just thought, sometimes electrocution or a lightning strike can do funny things…”
“He just fell off a balcony,” Kate said. “Is he going to be okay?”
“I don’t know,” the doctor said. “He’s in better shape than I would have thought if he really fell three floors. He must have been very, very lucky in how he landed.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m getting him in for x-rays, but he appears to have movement,” the doctor said. “He also appears to be dreaming some and has been moving in his sleep. All that is a good sign.”
“What’s the bad sign?”
“We can’t wake him up,” the doctor said.
“So what happens next?” Kate asked.
“I’m not sure,” the doctor said. “We are going to run a few more tests. I don’t know why we are seeing all
