The Select (45 page)

As Quinn straightened she noticed
three fist-sized multi-dose bottles of a clear liquid near her
right hand. She grabbed one and flung it at the big nurse. It
struck her in the shoulder, bounced off, and smashed. Quinn grabbed
another, spun, and winged it at the thin nurse who deflected it
with her hands. That too smashed. Quinn turned again and threw the
last at the heavy nurse who ducked. It sailed over her head and
shattered against the far wall. Before the nurse could straighten,
Quinn was past her and again sprinting down the hall.

This time she made it to the
stairwell. She grabbed her coat as she passed, pulled it on and
fumbled her pass card from the pocket as she bounded down the
steps. She ignored her drying boots as she burst from the stairwell
onto the first floor. She jammed the card into the emergency door
slot and ran out into the icy air.

At first she ran through the snow
without a destination— down the hill toward the campus buildings,
anywhere as long as she was putting distance between herself and
Science. Then she heard the exit alarm sound from the Science
building—someone had come through without using a card. She turned
and saw the long trail she'd left in the snow and the big blond guy
from security running down the hill, following it. She might be
able to outrun him, but she'd never lose him, not in this
snow.

She heard a whimper of fear and
realized it had come from her.

Ahead lay the faculty office building.
One of the windows was lit. Dr. Emerson's?

"Oh, God, please, God!" she said
softly, pushing her speed to the red line.

She skidded into the entry door,
yanked on the handle—it opened. She ran inside, locked it behind
her, then kicked off her sneakers. Wet footprints were as easy to
follow as a trail in the snow. She padded down the hall in her
socks toward Dr. Emerson's door. She burst into his office without
knocking and slammed the door behind her.

Dr. Emerson jumped in his seat and
looked up at her.

"Oh, Dr. Emerson, thank God you're
here!"

"Quinn!" he said, pulling off his
glasses. "What on earth's wrong?"

"You've got to hide me! Security's
after me! You've got to call the Sheriff's Department!"

"What are you talking
about?"

"Tim Brown! He didn't run off to
Vegas. He's still here, in Ward C!"

"Preposterous! Who told you such a
thing?"

"I
saw
him, Dr. Emerson. I just came
from Ward C and Tim Brown is
there!
"

Shock and confusion warred across Dr.
Emerson's features.

"But why—?"

"I don't understand why.
None of this makes any sense. I just know he's there and Dr.
Alston's using your compound to keep him there and we've got to get
him out." She was starting to cry. She didn't want to, but she was
so afraid and the sobs seemed to have a will of their own. "So
please,
please
call the sheriff!"

Dr. Emerson closed his eyes and shook
his head, as if trying to shut out something he didn't want to
hear.

"This is terrible," he muttered. "This
is awful." He looked heartbroken.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. This just confirms my worst
fears." He rubbed a hand over his eyes, then straightened in his
chair. "Very well. Hide in that closet over there if you wish. I
still can't believe this, but I'll make the call. But I won't tell
the authorities a thing. I'll try to get someone from the sheriff's
office here and you can tell him yourself. Is that fair
enough?"

"Yes! Oh, yes! Thank you!"

Quinn hurried over to the closet,
stepped inside, and closed the door behind her. On the far side of
the door she heard Dr. Emerson pick up the phone and dial. She
listened as he spoke.

"Sheriff's office? Yes, this is Dr.
Emerson at The Ingraham. I have a very frightened young woman in my
office who feels she is in some danger. Could you send a car over
immediately? Yes, I'm in room 107 in the faculty building. Thank
you." He hung up and said, "They'll be here shortly."

Quinn breathed a deep sigh of relief
and slid to a sitting position on the floor of the closet. She
hadn't been sure she could trust anyone connected with The
Ingraham, including Dr. Emerson. Now she chided herself for
doubting him, even for an instant.

It's almost
over.

All she had to do now was sit tight
here until the sheriff or a deputy came, then lead them up to Ward
C and show them the missing Timothy Brown. And then heads would
roll.

Maybe she'd learn what this nightmare
was all about. Because that was exactly what this was like—bizarre,
scary as hell, surreal, and it made no sense at all.

Outside in the office, a door
opened.

"Where is she?" a voice
said.

Dr. Emerson, sounding very old and
very tired, replied: "In the closet."

Quinn was rising to a standing
position when the closet door was flung open. She screamed when she
saw the blond security guard standing there, smiling at
her.

No! It can't be! Can't
BE!

She tried to dart past him but he
grabbed her arm and squeezed her biceps. Quinn winced with the
pain.

"Don't hurt her," Dr. Emerson
said.

"Are you kidding?" the guard said.
"After all the shit she's put me through tonight. Thought I busted
my arm up there on Five Science. All because of her."

As she was dragged past his desk
toward the hall, Quinn stared at Dr. Emerson in shock and
disbelief.

"You? You too?"

He wouldn't meet her gaze. He stared
instead at his desk top. His betrayal was a knife through her
heart. Her terror receded and the hurt poured out of
her.

"How could you? I thought
you were a decent man, a
great
man! I thought you were my
friend!
"

Finally he looked up at her. His face
was stricken, filled with grief. There were tears in his
eyes.

"So did I. But there are some
processes that cannot be stopped once they are set in
motion."

Quinn's hurt suddenly turned to fury.
It flared up, fueled by the growing fear for her life, and suddenly
she was shoving the security man, wrenching her arm from his grasp
with a sudden burst of strength that took her as much by surprise
as it did him.

She was free, and she was running
again, but with nowhere to go.

Quinn glanced over her shoulder and
saw the guard racing after her, arms and legs pumping, teeth bared,
face a mask of rage. She screamed and stretched her legs to their
limit but her socks gave her little traction on the polished floor.
He gained quickly this time and tackled her just as she was banking
into a turn in the hall.

His weight slammed her to the floor,
knocking the air out of her as they slid into a wall. He lurched to
his knees and hovered over her, panting, murder ablaze in his eyes
as she struggled to breath.

He grabbed the front of her hair.
"I've had enough shit from you for one night!" he said.

Quinn felt her scalp burn as he yanked
her head up. Before she could reach up to grab his arms, he slammed
her head down against the floor. Jagged bolts of white light arced
from the back of her skull along both sides of her brain and met in
the space behind her eyes, then plunged into darkness, dragging
Quinn with them.

TWENTY-THREE

Finally!

Matt felt the crushing fatigue begin
to lift as he turned off the road and up the drive toward The
Ingraham's gates. It had stopped snowing, and there were only six
inches or so on the ground here. The going became much faster and
easier once he'd crossed into Maryland and pushed south of
Emmitsburg. The roads from there on had been plowed sporadically,
but at least none of them was blocked by four-foot drifts like a
few up in Pennsylvania.

The guard in the gatehouse looked at
him suspiciously as he pulled up to the brightly lit entrance. He
seemed reluctant to open the window to his heated
cocoon.

"Help you?"

"Yeah. I'm here to visit a first-year
student named Cleary."

"They've all gone home for Christmas
break."

"She's still here. She's expecting
me."

"I wouldn't know about that. I'm
afraid I can't let you on campus at this hour."

"I've come all the way from
Connecticut. I would've been here hours ago if I hadn't got stuck
in the storm. Please give her room a call.
Two-fifty-two."

The guard shrugged, slid his window
closed, and dialed his phone. And waited. And waited. Finally he
shook his head and hung up. He opened the window again.

"No answer. Like I told you: They've
all gone home for the break. Won't be back till after the first of
the year."

An uneasy feeling began to worm
through Matt. Even through the static Quinn had sounded frightened.
And why not? The things she'd been saying...

Matt had spent the hours since their
abortive phone call trying to piece together the fragments he'd
heard. The more he'd thought about them, the more unsettling they
became.

It's Tim! I think he's
here!...I don't think he ever went away...I think they're hiding
him here...

They were enough to shake up
anybody.

"I know she's here. I spoke to her a
couple of hours ago. Call her again."

He shook his head. "I already let it
ring a dozen times. If she was in that room, she would've picked
up."

"Then maybe something's happened to
her. Maybe—"

"The only thing that's happened to her
is she's gone home for a couple of weeks."

"But she could be hurt. Let me go up
and check on her."

The guard shook his head with
deliberate slowness. "Nobody goes wandering around this campus
without an escort, and there's nobody to spare for an escort at
this hour. You come back after eight when the day shift's on and
they can help you out. Right now, I suggest you turn around and
take the road two miles further west to the Quality Inn and spend
what's left of the night there."

"But—"

The guard shut his window.

Matt stared at him, then glanced at
the red-and-white striped gate a few feet ahead. He was tempted to
slam the Cherokee into gear and drive right through that slim,
brittle-looking two-by-four. But what would that do? He'd get
kicked off the campus before he learned anything, and probably be
banned from ever entering again. He did not need that.

Maybe the Quality Inn was a good idea.
But before he headed down the road again, there was one more thing
he had to do.

Hoping the local cellular transmitter
was working, he picked up the car phone and dialed Quinn's number.
He counted a dozen rings, then let it go on ringing after that.
Finally, when he couldn't stand the sound any longer, he hung up.
But her words from hours ago echoed and reechoed through the
canyons of his brain.

It's Tim! I think he's
here!...I don't think he ever went away...I think they're hiding
him here...

Either Quinn had gone paranoid, and
that seemed unlikely— about as unlikely as Tim dropping out and
flying to Las Vegas—or there was something nasty going on at The
Ingraham.

Matt rubbed his eyes.

God, I'm tired.

He was too exhausted to think straight
right now. Maybe it would all make sense in the morning. It sure as
hell didn't now. But he'd be back at eight on the dot to find Quinn
and straighten out this whole mess.

He was shifting into reverse when he
heard the vibrato thrum of a helicopter. He looked up and saw the
lights descending toward the helipad behind the medical center.
When he'd been here last year he'd seen ex-senator Whitney land in
one. Matt doubted he'd be coming to The Ingraham at this hour.
Probably a MedEvac shipping in an emergency case.

Great things, helicopters. Snow-choked
roads didn't slow them down a bit.

Matt turned the Cherokee around and
went in search of the Quality Inn.

*

Tim lay on his right side in an agony
of suspense. He'd seen Quinn leave the ward flanked by the two
nurses, flash past the hall window with a nurse in pursuit, run
back the other way chased by the blond bastard who'd punched him in
the face that night ages ago when he was strapped in the chair
talking to Dr. Alston.

Nothing had happened for a few
minutes. He'd heard heavy banging vibrating through the walls, then
the faint sound of glass breaking, then he'd seen Quinn run by the
window again. Soon after, but not too close behind, the blond
security goon had followed.

That was the last he'd seen of
Quinn.

She got away.

Tim had been repeating that over and
over, making a litany of it. She had to have got away. She couldn't
have expended all that courage, braved all those risks, just to be
caught and dragged downstairs to face Alston in Verran's little
hidey hole. That would be too cruel, too unfair.