Deep Sky

oversized tub, if . . . you know . . .”

He left the sentence unfinished.

Travis didn’t respond. He waited until Garret was looking him in the eyes again, and then darted his own gaze just past the man’s shoulder and flinched hard.

It never failed. Few people could help but react to the sudden, primal belief that something dangerous was right behind them. Garret pivoted, and in the same instant Travis scooped one of the mugs from the coffee table and swung it as hard as he could into the back of the man’s head. It would’ve been bad enough for Garret even if the mug had broken, but it didn’t. All of the force of the impact went into his skull instead. He made a grunting sound—“Uhnn!”—and crumpled and then sprawled. Travis dropped onto him and arced the mug down on his head three more times, putting all his weight into each swing, then scrambled backward away from him. He held the mug ready and watched the man.

Garret didn’t move.

After a moment Travis heard him breathing, slow and ragged. Travis stood and circled wide around him. He went to the closet by the entry door and found a roll of duct tape, came back and used a third of it binding Garret’s limbs and covering his mouth.

It was 10:30. Monument Street lay in pools of sodium light and the apartment was pitch black away from the windows. Travis had stood watch for over four hours. Realistically it would be hours more before Ward would likely appear, but there was no reason to look away. Garret had stirred and moaned a few times in the darkness, but had mostly remained unconscious. In the minutes after binding him, Travis had made a quick survey of the apartment. Mainly he’d hoped to find a pair of binoculars. No luck. He found a stack of photos showing Garret rock climbing with a woman, presumably his girlfriend. She was taller than Garret and built like a pretty serious weight lifter. Travis thought a psychologist could make a whole career out of the guy’s libido.

He also found a loaded snub .38 in the nightstand drawer. He left it there. Couldn’t imagine having a use for it in the coming hours.

Foot traffic on Monument north of Johns Hopkins had dropped to practically nothing at nightfall. No one was coming or going from the academic buildings on the north side of the street, and only a few left or entered the hospital—at least from these four exits.

Binoculars would’ve helped with the more distant pair of doors. They were between seven and eight hundred feet away, about the limit of Travis’s ability to tell bald from blond. He hoped Ward’s posture and movement would simply make it obvious. Hoped he’d see him and have not the slightest doubt who it was. The nightmare possibility—clawing at Travis all these dark hours like some animal inside his chest—was someone emerging beyond the construction zone who only might be Ruben Ward. Anyone bald and stooped would fit the bill, and there had to be all kinds of men like that inside the place. If one stepped out, there’d be no time at all to make a decision. Travis would just have to run. Half a mile around the block, as fast as he could move. And if he got there and found some arthritic sixty-year-old, he’d have to make the same sprint right back here, hoping like hell he hadn’t missed Ward in all the lost minutes.

He tried not to think about it.

He watched the street.

He waited.

Ruben Ward stepped out of the nearest of the four exits at seven minutes past midnight. So close Travis could see the black notebook under his arm. Travis watched the man just long enough—maybe three seconds—to be alarmed at how quickly he was moving. Ward staggered, but not slowly. More like a drunk perpetually chasing his balance. He made three lurching steps along the sidewalk, braced a hand against the building, then withdrew it and lurched forward again. Fast. Way the hell too fast. Between lurches and pauses he probably matched the speed of a healthy person walking.

Travis turned and sprinted for the apartment’s entry, vaulting over Garret as he went.

He was almost to the door when he heard a key plunge into the lock from the other side.

Chapter Seventeen

It didn’t happen like it would’ve in a movie. There was no drawn-out moment in which the lock disengaged and the knob made a hellishly slow turn.

It happened in half a second, start to finish: click-turn-shove.

Travis checked his momentum just in time to keep from catching the door with his nose, and just like that he was face to face with the woman from the pictures. The rock climber. Taller and stronger than Garret.

She startled and fell back a step, dropping a bag of groceries she’d been holding. Something shattered. Something rolled.

The woman was wearing a uniform of some sort. In the split-second he had to think about it, Travis guessed she was a stewardess. Or a car rental clerk. Or one of a thousand other things.

Her panic disappeared in the next second—probably the time it took to realize she was staring at a ten- year-old—and anger took its place. She came forward, kicking aside the fallen groceries, and swatted the light switch upward.

Travis squinted, not quite blinded but sure as hell stung by the sudden brightness.

“What the fuck is this?” the woman said. Her volume suggested she wasn’t just talking to Travis. She wanted an answer from Garret, wherever he was.

Travis drew back from her advance, realizing even as he did so that he was clearing the way for her to see Garret.

She saw.

For the second time in as many breaths she flinched and recoiled. Her eyes registered the purest bafflement, and then regardless of the conclusion she’d drawn—if any—she simply reacted. She lunged at Travis, shoving the door fully aside as she came on.

There was no chance of getting past her and onto the landing. Even if he did, he wouldn’t get away. She’d be faster than him. Much faster.

Travis staggered back and hit the coffee table with his calves. He lost his balance and went down hard in front of the couch, the woman already descending on him, getting a fistful of his shirt. Half of Travis’s attention was on her, and the other half, like a mental split screen, was on Ruben Ward. Lurching and bracing. Lurching and bracing. Probably halfway to the intersection by now. Once he reached it, there was no telling which direction he’d go, but in any direction there were places he could duck into within the next hundred feet. Which he might well do, out of fear that hospital staffers were right behind him—he’d have no way to know they weren’t.

Ward could reach concealment in the next thirty or forty seconds. Could be gone in the next thirty or forty seconds.

Travis became aware of the woman screaming at him. Asking who he was. Grabbing for both of his arms and trying to pin them. She got one. Went for the other. Travis yanked it away and did the only thing he could think of: put his index and middle finger together into a fused, rigid spike, and stabbed her in the eye with it.

She cried out and let go of his other arm, both of her hands flying to her face to feel for damage.

Travis twisted beneath her, got hold of one of the couch’s legs and pulled himself free. He heard her cursing and shouting and felt a rush of air as her hand just missed his back.

Then he was on his feet, bounding over the coffee table and toward the doorway.

The bedroom doorway.

Behind him he heard the woman’s tone change from anger to fear. Maybe she understood what he had in mind. The table clattered as she shoved it away and came after him.

The doorway was just ahead now. He hooked the frame with one hand as he went through, swinging his body like a sideways pendulum toward the nightstand. He got his free hand on the drawer pull just as the woman crashed into him from behind.

The drawer came fully free of its seat. Its contents flew. Reading glasses. A little box of tissue. The snub .38. Travis’s hand closed around its grip as he went down, and then he tumbled, knees and elbows hitting the floor in random sequence.