‘Slide the guns down the hall! Now! They got ten seconds… Ten. Nine. Eight.’ He wondered what the hell he would do if they called his bluff.
A gun slid along the tile, stopped in front of him.
‘Both of them!’
Another gun joined the first.
Hope they only had the two, Miles thought. He stuck his head out again; two guards stood in the dimmed hallway, murder in their eyes. Miles stepped out, collected the guns, flicked on the safeties, crowded them into the back of his pants.
‘Come on, Nathan,’ he said quietly. He kept his gun leveled at the guards. Nathan stepped out into the hallway. In his hands he held the police baton Miles had stolen.
‘You’re not going to get out, dumb-shit,’ one guard said. ‘We’re in lockdown.’
‘Then you’re going to come with me and unlockdown it,’ Miles said.
‘I can’t.’
‘You’ll damn well figure it out.’ Miles grabbed the guard’s arm, pushed him along.
‘Mister, please, I got kids,’ the guard said.
‘Shut up.’
Nathan stepped past them and cracked the baton into the second guard’s stomach. He bent double, vomited, moaned.
‘They hurt me,’ Nathan said in a distant whisper. ‘Hurt me, hurt me…’
‘We didn’t,’ the first guard said. ‘Groote did. Not us. Okay? Not us.’
Miles could hear patients yelling and hitting fists against their doors, roused by the ruckus, screaming questions. Miles handed Nathan the passkey and Nathan bolted ahead, opening the stairwell door.
Miles hurried the guard past the doors and down the stairs at a run. ‘Are the other patients in immediate danger?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Nathan dashed ahead of him, leaping five stairs at a time.
‘Get behind me,’ Miles yelled, but the younger man paid him no heed, recklessly barreling down the four flights of stairs, Miles half sliding down the metal railings to keep up. The haze from Hurley’s dope burned away; his fear fueled him but he didn’t know how long the energy would last.
They hit the parking-lot exit door at the bottom of the stairwell. The passkey no longer worked. Locked. Trapped. Miles thought his heart would burst through his skin.
Sorenson shook off the pain and the dizziness and stepped out in the hallway. He saw the guard, still retching from the blow to his stomach.
He tightened his grip on his gun. He could kill the guard, kill Groote, but he didn’t want to waste a moment or a bullet.
‘Which way?’ he asked the guard.
The hurt guard stopped heaving his guts long enough to point at the stairwell. Then he handed Sorenson an electronic key. ‘It’ll… override… locks.’
Sorenson grabbed the passkey and ran.
‘How do we open the doors?’ Miles yelled into the guard’s face.
‘Control panel – lobby.’
Miles shoved the guard through the hallway exit from the stairwell, all of them running, and as they rounded a corner into another hallway leading to the lobby, he glanced back and saw the stairwell door opening, then Sorenson in the dim light. Miles shoved Nathan and the guard forward and a bullet screamed from the doorway, hot as a devil’s finger as it rocketed past the nape of his neck. He dived for the cover of the corner as a second bullet pocked the wall an inch above where his head had been.
The guard broke into a run for the lobby door. Nathan launched himself into the guard with all the grace of a zombie, a screaming, raving fury. They fell to the ground and Miles pulled Nathan off the man, shoved them both toward the door, keeping the gun trained on the corner.
‘You unlock the doors!’ Nathan screeched at the man, waggled his tongue and his fingers as though all sanity had abandoned him. ‘Or I will kill kill kill you!’
The guard’s face paled.
They ran into the lobby; Nathan shoved the guard to the computer. He, with trembling hands, entered in a key.
Miles heard the locks click.
Miles shoved the guard to the floor, told him to lie flat and be still. The guard obeyed. Please, Jesus, let us out, be open. His fear was like a fire on his skin. They hit the doors, stumbled into the brisk cool of the dark night, ran hard toward the parking lot.
Sorenson advanced carefully to the lobby, listened, heard only the rattle of breathing of the frightened guard. He stepped into the lobby.
‘Front door,’ the guard said. ‘They went through the front door. There ought to be another gun in this drawer…’
Sorenson ran past the man, tested the door, decided they wouldn’t be waiting on the other side to ambush him and ran after them. He saw them fleeing in the low gleam of the lights and ran as silently as he could, his pistol stiff-armed in front of him, keeping Nathan Ruiz’s head in his sights.
‘This way.’ Miles pointed to the rear of the parking lot, and they weaved along, hunkering low.
Behind them an alarm shattered the quiet. ‘You got a car?’
‘Yes. We’ve got to be gone before the cops get here…’
‘They won’t call the cops,’ Nathan said. ‘Trust me…’
A bullet’s whine pierced the air and Nathan fell, frantic, a scream choked in his throat. Miles whirled and saw Sorenson two rows of cars away, aim pivoting toward him. Miles fired in answer and Sorenson dropped.
But not like he was hit.
The parking lot was a maze of cars, some slots filled, others empty. Miles grabbed Nathan, who probed at his hair, at his scalp, for evidence of a hit, and shoved him below the line of car windows.
‘I’m okay,’ Nathan mumbled.
‘Stay low.’
They worked their way through the cars, Miles panicking that Sorenson could simply step out into the row at the same time that they did and pick them both off. If Sorenson was close enough he’d hear them run into the parking aisle’s open space, kill them with two rapid-fire shots.
And if Celeste saw them coming, if she stood next to the car… Sorenson could gun her down.
He put a hand over Nathan’s mouth. Listened to the silence. The night’s quiet fell on them. He fought back the surge of fear.
I can’t let Sorenson just kill this kid. He forced himself to wait, to listen past the drumming of his own heart.
Eleven seconds later, he heard a scrabble of stone against a shoe, two cars to his right.
Miles dropped to the pavement, fired under the cars into the blackness. He heard a yell of fury, a body leaping onto a car in retreat.
Miles shoved Nathan and they ran. Miles turned and fired; he saw Sorenson drop off the trunk of a car, either hit or diving for cover. Miles stumbled but Nathan caught him, pulled him up to his feet.
Miles spotted Blaine’s car.
In the low dazzle of the lot’s lights, the car stood empty. Celeste was gone.
‘Celeste!’ he screamed. ‘Celeste?’
The trunk opened. She peered out at him.
‘What the hell?’ he yelled.
‘It’s nicer in here,’ she whispered.
‘Out, now, now, now, we got to go.’ And the crack of a bullet broke above him, demolishing a window in the car parked next to them. He whirled, saw dark figures – Sorenson and two guards – approaching. A blaze of fire from the barrel of two guns, bullets pocketing the trunk of the car next to him.
Shooting to kill, Miles dropped to a knee, trying to remember to breathe, aimed, his hand shaking, blinking past Andy’s face and pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times, laying down a round of fire. He heard himself
