Authors: Blake Crouch Jordan Crouch
A stabbing pain thrummed through his inner ear in time with his pulse.
Fighting the disorientation, he tried to tune back into the rage that had brought him here.
He grabbed the salt lamp and tightened his grip on the knife.
A dust ruffle skirted the bed, an inch of blackness between the hem and the floor.
Grant stumbled toward it and dropped to his hands and knees, the fog in his head thickening fast, thoughts and intentions flattening under the pressure.
He put the side of his head on the floor and reached for the dust ruffle.
Some remote part of his brain screaming at him to stand up, turn around, get out, but its voice was growing quieter every second.
Under the bed.
He was staring under the bed.
He’d walked into his sister’s house thirty hours ago, and since then he’d been fighting this moment. Why had he resisted?
The light in his hand spilled into the darkness.
Dusty hardwood floor.
A pile of blankets.
Grant pushed the light forward, dragging himself behind it.
As his head passed beneath the bed frame, he registered a peculiar smell.
Vinegar and electrical burn.
The blankets shifted.
Grant reached out, took hold, pulled them aside.
The light eked onto two sacs of spider eggs—rust colored clusters that resembled the overripe drupelets of blackberries.
As Grant stared at them, a translucent membrane slid over one, and then the other, and retracted simultaneously.
The pressure in his head vanished. He dropped the knife.
Not spider eggs. Eyes. He was staring into a pair of eyes.
From behind the blankets, a long, slender arm shot out, and fingers encircled his neck.
• • •
It is dark and he is not alone.
There is nothing before, nothing after.
It is all and only now.
The floor beneath him rushes away. His stomach lifts. He’s gripped with the sensation of falling at an inconceivable speed, hurtling through darkness at what has been pulling him toward this room since he first set foot in the house.
He crashes into a terrible intellect.
For the first time in his life, he is aware—truly aware—of his mind. Its weakness and vulnerability. His skull is a pitiful firewall. The invasion effortless. Everything he loves and hates and fears is unhoused, his private circuitry torn out and laid bare.
Before Grant can even wonder what it wants, it is unrolling his mind like a parchment.
He feels the synaptic structure of his brain changing, being rebuilt, reprogrammed.
The tingle of neuron fire.
Thoughts he’s never had materialize as if they’ve always been.
A sequence of directions take shape.
Right turns and left turns.
Street names.
All at once, his mind cauterizes shut, and he is left with the absolute knowledge of what he must do next.
The eyes blink again.
The floor returns.
He is no longer under the bed but standing beside it and cradling something in a tangle of blankets.
Chapter 36
At three o’clock in the morning, Mercer was empty enough for Sophie to burn through red lights at full speed.
She hit the I-5 and screamed north to 520.
Dialed Art halfway across Lake Washington and stuck him on speaker so she could keep two hands on the wheel while she did ninety-five over wet concrete, the windshield wipers frantically whipping across the glass.
Art answered with, “Hey, Sophie.”
“Where are you?”
“Still on the four-oh-five, couple miles south of Kirkland.”
“They may be going to the Evergreen Psychiatric Hospital.”
“How do you know that?”
“Long story, but I’m on my way, about five minutes behind you.”
“Why are they going to this hospital?”
“No idea, but Grant’s father lives there. Seymour had drawn a weird picture of him on a receipt. Didn’t connect the dots until a few minutes ago.”
“And you think they’re going after him?”
“Possibly. I’m calling the hospital right now and putting them on notice so they can scramble security.”
“I’ll call for backup.”
Sophie depressed the brake pedal as she veered onto an exit ramp, nearly lost control of the TrailBlazer at the end as she whipped it around, tires skidding on the wet road, the SUV tipping up on two wheels for a terrifying instant.
She managed to right the car and stomp the gas, now accelerating north up Lake Washington Boulevard.
The city just a foggy glow across the water.
“Art,” she said. “I have no idea what these men are all about.”
“You and me both.”
“So do me a favor, huh?”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t get yourself shot.”
Chapter 37
Grant opened the door and walked out into the corridor.
Paige stood several feet away, tears streaming down her face.
“I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I thought something had—”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
She looked down at the blanket in Grant’s arms.
“Is that what I think it is?”
He nodded.
She brought her hand to her mouth.
When she reached toward the blanket, Grant took a step back.
“I just want to see,” she said.
She took hold of the end of the blanket.
Raised it.
“Oh my God.”
Chapter 38
The Evergreen Psychiatric Hospital on the outskirts of Kirkland was a four-story brick monstrosity that stretched across twenty acres of conifer-studded lawns.
Sophie’s TrailBlazer raced up the narrow drive.
The buildings appeared in the distance.
Through the rain-streaked windshield, she could see a smattering of glowing windows, but most of the facade stood dark.
She whipped into the circle drive at the front entrance, killed the engine.
3:13 a.m.
She pulled her Glock, checked the load.
Out into the cold and pouring rain.
She jogged over to Art’s Dodge Diplomat—a pimped-out relic from the old days. The driver’s side door was open, the interior dome light on, but the car empty.
Just prior to the roundabout, the driveway had branched into a vast parking lot, and on the far side, under the dripping branches of a Douglas-fir, she spotted the black van.
She ran toward it. The rain had escalated from a drizzle to a downpour since she’d left the house, gusting sideways across the desolate parking lot, the light poles swaying.
She moved along the edge where the eastern perimeter of Douglas-firs offered cover from the streetlights.
Twenty feet away, she came out of the trees.
The van wasn’t running.
The front seats were empty, but from the side, with its deeply-tinted windows, she couldn’t see anything in the back.
She approached it head on, Glock aimed through the windshield.
No lights on inside.
No movement.
She tried the driver side door, but it was locked.
By the time Sophie had returned to the main entrance, she was soaked. She climbed the stone steps and pushed through the front doors and, finally, out of the rain.
In the vestibule, she stopped, jacket dripping on the linoleum, and took out her phone.
Tried Art for the third time in the last five minutes.
Same result.
It rang four times and dumped her into voice mail.
Sophie pushed through the inner doors into a large reception area bathed in the punishing glow of high-wattage fluorescent lights. Moved quickly toward the front desk where a nurse in blue scrubs was scribbling on a patient chart.
The smell of the place was insidious—notes of Clorox, Lysol, stewed green vegetables, desperation.
Sophie had her shield out by the time the woman looked up.
Mid-thirties, attractive despite the total absence of makeup, and surprisingly clear-eyed for the late hour.
“Detective Benington, Seattle PD. Did another detective come through here? Fifties, little overweight, balding—”
The nurse was already shaking her head.
“Nobody but you has walked through those front doors since I came on shift at midnight.”
“His car’s out front.”
“Well, he didn’t come this way.”
“You didn’t hear him pull up?”
“Kind of been busy.” She held up a folder. “Thirty-five patient charts to complete before eight a.m.”
“I spoke to your head of security about five minutes ago, told him there was a possible threat to one of your patients. Jim Moreton.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I’m sorry, but without a signed release I can’t discuss any patients or even confirm that the person you just mentioned is actually a patient here.”
Sophie leaned in. “Is there another entrance to this facility?”
“On the north side, but it’s only open and staffed during visiting hours.”
“I need you to take me to Jim Moreton right now.”
“Ma’am, HIPAA is pretty clear on the protection of patient privacy.”
“How about the protection of their physical safety?”
“Ma’am, I—”
“Do you understand what I’m telling you? Men may have come here to kill Mr. Moreton.”
The woman stonewalled.
“Tell me you understand what I just said,” Sophie pushed.
“I understand.”
“And you’re refusing to take me to him so I can check on his welfare? You believe the intent of HIPAA is to prevent a law enforcement officer from checking on the welfare of a psychiatric patient who may be in grave and immediate danger?”
Two gunshots erupted, muffled and distant.
The nurse’s eyes grew big.
Sophie pulled her Glock. “Where is he?”
“Acute unit.”
Another gunshot, different caliber.
“Tell me how to get there.”
The nurse rose from behind the desk and came around to Sophie.
“I’ll have to take you. It’s like a maze, and doors don’t open without an ID badge.”
Sophie followed her out of reception and down a long corridor.
“Are more police coming?” the nurse asked.
“Yes, on their way. What’s your name?”
“Angela.”
“I’m Sophie.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t—”
“Forget it.”
They picked up the pace, now moving through a series of intersecting short corridors that Sophie would have never been able to navigate on her own.
Straight ahead, the way was blocked by a pair of double doors, each with a square of glass inset at eye level.
Angela unclipped her ID from her scrubs and reached for the card-swipe.
“Hold that thought,” Sophie said, waving her off.
She leaned into the glass window and stared through. The hallway on the other side ran perpendicular to this corridor, and her field of vision only extended for several feet each way beyond the doors.
Sophie strained to listen—nothing but Angela’s elevated respirations and the ever-present hum of the lights overhead.
“All right,” Sophie said. “Go ahead and swipe it, but I want you to hang back until I give the all clear.”
The internal locking mechanism buzzed.
Deadbolts retracted.
Sophie pulled open one of the doors, stepped over the threshold.
She poked her head out into the corridor and glanced both ways.
Nothing but miles of empty linoleum.
Sophie whispered over her shoulder, “All right, come on.”
Angela led her down a corridor that shot between two larger buildings.
The windows on either side were barred, rainwater streaming down the glass.
“What’s going on exactly?” the nurse asked.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure. Have you worked with Mr. Moreton?”
“Yes.”
“Is he locked in his room each night?”
“And medicated. He’s a threat to himself and others.”
The corridor banked into a building, and they arrived at another pair of doors, these windowless and steel-reinforced.
“What’s on the other side?” Sophie asked.
“Acute.”
Sophie put her ear against the door. Over the clamor of her own heart, she thought she heard voices, though she couldn’t be sure.
“Angela, give me your ID.” The nurse handed it over without hesitation. “Now I want you to run back down the corridor as far as you can. Find a room without windows and lock yourself inside. Go now.”
The nurse turned and hurried off down the hall, the soles of her Keds sliding across the linoleum as she turned a hard corner and disappeared.
Sophie waited until the echo of her retreating footsteps had almost faded away. Then she turned the card over, lined up the magnetic strip, swiped it through.
The sudden buzz of the locks retracting unleashed a new belt of adrenaline.
She shoved the card into the inner pocket of her jacket, tugged open one of the doors, and got a solid two-handed grip on her Glock as a quiet voice in the back of her mind whispered,
You’ve never even drawn your weapon in the field, much less shot it. ‘Lil bit different than the range.
Straight ahead, a nurses’ station.
Two corridors branched off behind it on either side.
She heard that noise again—what she’d thought were voices from the other side of the doors.
Crying.
Someone whispering,
Shut up
.
The stifled, high-pitched hyperventilation of a person in hysterics fighting to hold it back.
It was all coming from behind the nurses’ station.
Sophie sited it down the barrel of her G22 and announced herself, “Seattle PD. Who’s behind the desk?”
A deep, male voice said, “It’s three of us. We work in this unit.”
“I need you to stand up for me. One at a time, very slowly. Keeping your hands interlocked behind your head.”
“We can’t.”
“Why?”
“They tied us up.”
“Who did?”
“Four men.”
“Are they still on this wing?”