pressure on the back of his head and a curtain of darkness fell before his eyes.
chapter thirty-eight
Jed could hear them coming for him, hear their clumsy steps on the metal stairs he had just descended. So he crouched in the darkness and waited. He’d left his flashlight up above, not that he could use it. His eyes had adjusted to the new level of blackness and he felt comfortable in the cold air. Light did, unbelievably, travel down here and the eye found it after a few moments of adjustment.
He sighed and his voice echoed throughout the cavernous space, a maze of walkways below electric mains and who knew what else. A giant mess of veins hung suspended from the ceiling, stories of ledges and narrow walkways connected by ladders. He had gone as far as he could go before he realized that there was no other exit. Now he hid at the uppermost level of the final chamber connecting to the stairway. There was a ten-story drop below him. He was trapped, but he was in the catbird seat. He’d see them before they saw him and he had three bullets left.
He was disappointed in Lydia Strong. He never imagined her to be such a foul-mouthed bitch. When he’d looked into her eyes he’d seen only hatred and anger, not the connection he’d imagined them to have all these years. His plan had been thwarted, but it might not have worked anyway. He’d wanted her to see him kill her love and her only friend. He’d hoped that in her grief, she’d turn to him. But he had the sense now that she might still have rejected him even if she’d had nothing left. There was that defiance to her. It was not an attractive quality in a woman.
He was uncomfortable and shifted. In doing so, he knocked some unseen piece of debris and it fell loudly, bouncing off metal, clanging, and then hitting the floor. A silence followed and Jed McIntyre held his breath.
The three of them stopped in their tracks on the stairway at the sound. The flashlight Lydia held in her hand flickered dramatically and recovered, though the light was dimmer still.
Lydia opened her mouth to talk, but Rain put a silencing hand on her shoulder. He motioned for them to follow; they tried to be as quiet as possible moving toward the sound. After a moment, he took the flashlight from Lydia and turned it off, laying it on the stairs beside them. They were plunged into blackness and it took a few minutes for their eyes to adjust.
Following Rain, they turned off the stairwell into a cavernous chamber, a maze of walkways crisscrossing across the height of it, some ten stories tall or more. Lydia’s eyes scanned the catwalks.
“I can hear you breathing,” said Rain suddenly, loudly, and his voice echoed off the concrete. They were answered by silence. Rain moved in close to Jeffrey and whispered, “I’m going to draw his fire. When he shoots, you’ll be able to see where he is.” Jeffrey nodded and Rain moved toward one of the ladders and started to climb. He moved quickly with grace and strength.
“You better stay where you are,” came a voice from high above them. But Rain kept moving; he was already at the third level.
A shot rang out and the blast from the gun revealed Jed’s position, high and in the far corner of the room. He was trapped like a rat, and from the tone in his voice, he was starting to realize it. He was not getting out of this room a free man.
“You’re trapped, McIntyre,” said Lydia. “And you only have two rounds left.”
Lydia surmised that Rain was still out of Jed’s range, but he wouldn’t be for long. Jeffrey and Lydia started up after him. When Rain was on the fourth level, Jeffrey opened fire in the direction from which Jed’s shot had come. He let three rounds go. Judging by the sparks and the sharp sound of the ricochet, it sounded like two of the bullets hit concrete or metal. But the third shot… she couldn’t be sure. The darkness around them seemed to hold its breath, and all three of them crouched low in their positions waiting for return fire. But none came. For a brief second hope bloomed in Lydia’s heart that Jed McIntyre was dead. It was an ugly feeling and she was ashamed of it; but she felt it nonetheless. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, a low groan came from above them.
“Hold your fire,” McIntyre said. “I’m hit. I give up.”
Lydia and Jeffrey exchanged a skeptical look.
“Throw down the gun, McIntyre,” said Jeffrey. “Then we’ll talk.”
“I can’t move,” he said, his voice rasping and just a little too pathetic.
Rain had reached the top level and was approaching the prostrate form they could now see above them, as they, too, drew closer.
“Be careful, Rain,” said Jeffrey.
His words were drowned out by the firing of the Smith and Wesson. Lydia and Jeffrey watched, helpless, as Rain staggered back toward the railing before falling over the side and landing with a sickening thud on the next level.
“Oh, God,” Lydia screamed, feeling a wash of helplessness as Jeffrey opened fire on Jed McIntyre. The darkness came alive with the explosion of gunshots and Lydia wished she could cover her ears as she raced up the ladder and across the landing to Rain, Jeffrey right behind her. In the flashes of light that came each time Jeffrey fired, she could see Rain’s milky, desperate eyes, McIntyre running on the landing above them, Jeffrey’s gaze intent on his target, and finally, McIntyre’s body jerk hard as it absorbed one of Jeffrey’s bullets. Then there was silence and darkness again.
They could hear as he gasped above them. It was a sound they both recognized, something known as the death rattle, the sound of breath passing through mucus in the moments before death. They heard the gun drop from his hand as it clattered down, hitting metal and then landing in the dirt below them.
Lydia climbed up the final ladder, shaking off Jeffrey’s grasp on her arm. She wanted to see him die. She wanted to see life pass from his body.
He stood still, leaning against the railing, his hand at the wound on his chest, his mouth agape, his eyes shocked. He looked ghostly and weak, and as she approached he turned his eyes on her. They were cold and soulless, revealing nothing even in the final moments of his life. She searched her heart for compassion for this twisted man; she searched herself for one human emotion. And the only one she could come up with was stone- cold hatred. There was no forgiveness in her heart for Jed McIntyre, there was nothing inside her that was right or good or evolved in this moment. In this moment, she was everything he had made her. No better than him.
He seemed to teeter against the railing and she thought he might fall, but she didn’t reach out to grab him. She just watched as his life seemed to drain from the wound in his chest, the ground around him slick with his blood. He whispered something then, a wet sound. And she leaned in to hear him. When she did, he grabbed her wrist, held it hard. She struggled to pull it back, but he wouldn’t let go of her. Panic welled within her as a wide smile bloomed on his face and a wicked look glittered in his eyes. She braced herself against his pull, but her feet couldn’t find purchase on the bloody metal beneath her feet and they slipped as he pulled her closer, whispering something to her that she couldn’t hear.
She felt hypnotized, pulled in by his powerful gaze. He drew her closer and she fought the irrational fear that he could take her into hell with him just by holding her eyes as he died. They were locked like that for she didn’t know how long.
Then Jeffrey’s arm snaked around her from behind, pulling at her waist. She saw the Glock come around and Jeffrey emptied it into Jed McIntyre. The hand that had grabbed her wrist flew open and the force of the blast pushed him over the railing. They watched as he sailed down ten stories and landed in a heap on the ground below, his arms and legs spread apart as if he were trying to make an angel in the snow.
part three
