Sanctuary (8 page)

“Heather?”

“What’s she doing?” Cole asked.

Heather blinked a few times, then looked to the side and reached out her hand as if to touch something next to her. Then she shivered again, her arms went limp, and her whole posture slumped.

“Heather?”

Her eyes took on a strange look then: darkness, emptiness. Virgil, apparently disturbed by what he was seeing, looked away.

“Heather, what’s wrong?”

Seemingly unaware she was being spoken to, Heather calmly and curiously stared around in all directions, as if observing a scenic view.

Then she turned and walked away, toward the road in the distance.

“Heather! Cole, what the fuck is she doing?”

“I can’t see, Crystal. I don’t know.”

“Heather!”

As Heather strode away at a leisurely pace, Crystal continued calling to her, then backed away when Virgil stepped up to the glass. He gazed out the doors, his head darting in several directions. “They’re here,” he said. “They’re all here.”

A fantastic wind suddenly gathered outside, whipping through the trees both in front of the entrance hall and by the pool out behind the lobby.

Virgil pounced at the inner doors and held one open. “Upstairs, now. Go, go, go, go, go!”

After one last glance back toward Heather, Crystal followed Cole back inside. “Oh no,” Virgil said behind her as she fled. She turned to see him staring at a service door on the far side of the lobby: an open service door.

“Run! Go!”

Virgil ran up to Crystal and
pushed
her toward the hallway, spurring her to rush even faster. She and Cole sprinted past Brandon’s unconscious form and toward the elevator beyond. Cole’s hand clutched Crystal’s the entire way. When she glanced back, Virgil was facing the open service door and planting his feet, bracing himself. Then he suddenly winced in pain and crumpled to the floor in apparent agony. From two hundred feet down the hallway, she could hear his scream.

In the elevator, Crystal and Cole caught their breaths as they rode back to the tenth floor. Crystal hadn’t noticed until now, but Cole seemed flustered too.
He’s just as scared as I am.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I guess. What do we do?”

“I don’t know. Where’d Heather go?”

Crystal shook her head. “I don’t know. Can you call nine-one-one already?”

“Yeah.” Cole dialed on his cell as the elevator opened onto the living room of Cole’s condo unit.

Crystal paced toward a window to find out what she could see on the ground. “We’ve gotta get to your car. We’ve gotta leave.”

“There’s no reception in the garage,” Cole said. “Let me call the cops first, then we’ll head down. Yeah, hello?” Speaking to the 9-1-1 operator, Cole quickly related their location, their names, the night’s events.

Crystal scanned the roads below and raised a hand to her mouth when she saw… “Oh, God.”

“What?” Cole stepped up next to her.

“There she is. Heather. She’s floating face down in the fountain.”

“Is she moving?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

The screens enclosing the balcony shuddered as a heavy wind picked up outside. The windows in the kitchen creaked with the force of the gust.

And then, very faintly, came another ominous sound: the whirring of elevator gears. Two, three, four. The floor numbers above the elevator door counted upward.

Cole spoke hurriedly into his phone. “Hey, that psycho guard I told you about is coming up the elevator.” Five, six, seven. “Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta go.” He hung up and pocketed the phone as the wind raged outside.

“What are you doing?”

“Protecting you.” Eight, nine… ten.

Cole stepped in front of Crystal. The gesture was nice, but Crystal dug through her purse to find her knife anyway. Then she remembered she’d dropped it downstairs. So she threw her purse aside in case she needed to defend herself.

DING. The elevator doors whisked open. “Virgil, we don’t want any trouble,” Cole said in a fake macho voice that sounded weird coming from him.

Crystal grimaced in dismay, then whispered in Cole’s ear. “It’s Brandon.”

For a few moments, Brandon just stared at Cole and the little slut cowering behind him. He’d been in such a hurry that he’d forgotten his golf club downstairs, but that didn’t matter. These two sheep would be easy to deal with. Cole would understand, eventually, once he’d wiped Crystal’s stink off himself. With no one but Brandon to lean on, passive little Cole would never give him up to the authorities. At least Brandon hoped he wouldn’t. Even if he did, there were other ways of escape.

Brandon rubbed his forehead on his shirt sleeve, smearing blood on it, then approached Cole, ready for a fight.

“Heather’s dead,” Cole said.

Brandon halted. He tried to process the startling information. Heather was dead? That didn’t make any sense. He’d just had a conversation with her ten minutes ago, in this very room. She’d just gone downstairs to get her car.
Cole must be playing some kind of coward’s trick to get me to back down.

“She drowned in the fountain out front. Go look for yourself.”

What?
Brandon shuffled over to the window, keeping his eyes on Crystal in case she tried anything. Then he peeked outside. Indeed, far out front, beside the gates to the main road, Heather’s body drifted in the fountain pool.

Brandon heard a latch click behind him, and turned to find the door to the service hallway opening. Tattered and bleeding, Virgil entered. Small cuts adorned his face, and his clothes were torn in odd places. Brandon hadn’t done that to him—had Heather? Virgil looked like he’d just been in some kind of intense physical confrontation. And he was soaking wet…

Brandon stalked toward him. “What the fuck did you do to Heather?” He landed a punch on Virgil’s forehead. The guard fell, and Brandon kicked him in the gut as hard as he could. “Hey, help me with him!” Brandon called to Cole.

“Calm down. He didn’t do it.”

Yeah, right.
Brandon continued to batter the murderous guard relentlessly until Virgil caught his foot and pulled it out from under him. Brandon landed on his back with a thud, and Virgil stood easily, as if the beating had never occurred—just like he had downstairs.

Does this guy feel pain?
He had to be tweaked on something heavy. Of all the nights for the dude to wig out, couldn’t he have picked a night less inconvenient for Brandon?

Virgil hurried around the room, examining the walls, the ceiling, and especially the windows. Yep, he was definitely wired up. He talked as fast as a jackhammer. “If we’re done with that, I need you to seal all entrances. I cleared out the downstairs area and managed to close that door to the pool, but they’ll be looking for other ways in. Are there any entrances up here besides the elevator and the service hallway?” Virgil squinted as if trying to remember the condo’s layout, then answered his own question. “Right, the stairwell, but I closed its lobby door earlier. Good. Any windows that open?”

“Just the balcony doors,” Cole answered.

Behind Cole, his whore locked eyes with Brandon. Brandon returned Crystal’s gaze with malice, then wiped off some more blood and struggled to his feet.

Virgil finished his inspection and turned back to Cole. “Okay, we’re safe in here. For now. You can’t go outside, okay?”

Brandon shook his head in disbelief. “The fuck are you doing, man?”

Virgil ignored him and spoke to Cole. “Do you have a gun?”

Cole kept his mouth shut, so Virgil turned to Brandon.

“Do any of you have a gun?”

“None of your business, asswipe.”

“Disassemble it. I’m serious about that. You need to do it immediately. A gun won’t hurt them at all, but they could use it to hurt you. Throw it away.”

“We called the police and they’re on their way,” Cole said. Brandon couldn’t tell if the threat was aimed at Virgil or at himself.

Shit.
Crystal was still hunkered behind Cole like he was a human shield. Brandon couldn’t harm her now, not when the police were on their way, but he couldn’t let her rat him out either.

Nothing matters
, his inner voice repeated to comfort him.
I am indifferent.

Virgil appeared to be even more distraught than Brandon at the news that the police were coming. “You did what? Oh, no. No, now even if we call back and tell them we’re okay, they’ll still send a patrol to check it out.” He rubbed his temples. “Uh, okay, I think—I think I’ll have to leave you, and go save them when they get here.”

Brandon had half a mind to ask him where he got his drugs. On a better night, he would have indulged himself.

“Save them?” Crystal asked.

Virgil raised his head at the question, and a thin smile formed on his lips. He reached out his hand and addressed Crystal as if meeting a celebrity. “Crystal. Hi.” Crystal reluctantly shook his hand, then Virgil turned to greet Lover Boy. “Cole. A pleasure to meet you. And Brandon.” Virgil crossed the distance to Brandon, but Brandon just stared icily and refused the proffered handshake, so Virgil backed away to address the whole group.

“I’m sorry for my… my entrance. I am—I’m here to save you. I apologize for not getting to Heather or Virgil in time, but three of you are still here, and alive, and I will find a way to save all of you. That’s a promise.”

“You need a fucking straightjacket,” Brandon said as he moved toward the kitchen sink to clean off his face.

Again Virgil ignored him. “I need you all to tell me a little more about yourselves. What sorts of things have been on your minds tonight? Have you recently made any significant, um, choices?”

Scratch
.

All heads turned toward the windows, where the noise had originated. It sounded like a shoe dragging on the sidewalk, but muffled by the windows. Probably the patio furniture falling over in the wind. The gusts were strong tonight, sending the balcony screens quivering.

Scratch
.

The second noise came from the far kitchen windows, beyond which lay… empty air.
Huh?
A third and a fourth noise grated outside, and then a steady cacophony joined in, from all directions except the screened-in balcony. Crystal and Cole looked horrified, but Brandon was just sick of whatever game Virgil was playing.

“They’re trying to dig through the walls,” Virgil said. “Don’t worry though. They couldn’t even break a window. We’re safe.”

The chorus of scrapes shifted, leaving the immediate area and moving toward the walls outside the study and the master bedroom. Virgil gingerly walked to the oak doors of the study and peeked inside.

Brandon left the kitchen, followed him, then spoke as if to a child, mocking him. “Virgil, is there something dangerous outside? Maybe we could all escape if you jump out a window to distract it.”

Virgil paused at the study entrance, then entered the room to examine it. “No, don’t worry. The windows and the balcony door in here are closed.”

Apparently the man was deaf to sarcasm. Brandon slammed the doors on him, sequestering him in the study.

“Cole, you got a rope or something?” Brandon called across the room. Wrapping a rope around the lever-style door handles would effectively lock Virgil inside the area encompassing the study, the master bedroom, and the balcony. Virgil pulled hard against the doors from the opposite side, and Brandon barely held firm.

“Uh…” Cole abandoned his protection of Crystal to help Brandon out.
Good man.
He paced to the curtains and unstrung the tie that held them open.

“Hey! Let me out!” Virgil yanked against the doors again as Cole arrived with the thick curtain lace.

“Will this do?” Cole asked.

Brandon snatched the tie. “Yeah. Get the door to the bedroom.”

Cole grabbed a second tie from another curtain and started tying. “The balcony door out here is locked too. He’s stuck in there.”

This is working out great.
If Cole saw Virgil as a greater threat than Brandon, getting to Crystal would be much easier. Assuming Brandon could find a way around the cops, that is. The fact that Cole was still loyal to Brandon in spite of Cole’s earlier threats began to renew Brandon’s confidence in their friendship, and in their future.

Crystal paced through the short hallway to the service elevator, texting her mom.

Hey I’m at the condo 4 a modeling gig. Need a ride. Pick me up?

In all the hubbub, Crystal was pretty sure she’d slipped away without being noticed, but she suddenly realized that in her eagerness to leave, she’d left her purse back in the living room.
Dammit. Too late to go back for it now.
She could get it back from Cole sometime when Brandon wasn’t around.

Her mom responded right away.

Can u pay for gas? Is it boy prblms?

Mom always assumed Crystal’s life revolved around boys, so it annoyed Crystal that her mom’s assumptions were actually right this time.

No Im fine. Not a guy. I can pay 4 gas.

Crystal walked past the hallway’s window and pushed the “down” button on the service elevator. As the machine whirred to life, her phone beeped again.

Sorry. In a seance all night. Don’t want to interupt it. Luv u tho.

Perfect. Just perfect.
If Crystal had chosen an emergency as a cover story, her mom would have freaked out and demanded that Crystal move back in with her. On the other hand, apparently an average cover story made Crystal’s predicament less important than silly ghost stuff.
Nice to know I can only count on Mom’s help if she knows I’m in imminent danger.

But Crystal had a Plan B. She remembered that Heather’s purse had been slung over her shoulder when she’d walked off, her eyes glazed. If Crystal could stomach a journey to Heather’s body at the fountain, she could grab Heather’s keys and take her car to safety. Between that option and the police on the way, safety might still be within reach, even without her mom’s aid.