Whether it was a trick of the shadows and the moonlight, or simply his imagination running wild, the cat seemed to be taking on the proportions of a panther, and moving with the same deliberation and lethal intent.
Taylor walked backward faster than before, and when he saw that emerald flash reappear in the animal’s eyes, he knew, in the coldest depths of his soul, that he was confronting something unimaginable. Something bullets weren’t going to deter. He turned around. The end of the alleyway, lit by a lamppost, was only fifty yards or so off. He started running, the pounding of the blood in his ears so loud he couldn’t even hear his own feet. He didn’t look back to see if he was being pursued — he didn’t need to. He could sense the creature’s presence. When he felt something snag the cuff of his trousers, he whipped the gun around and shot blindly. Once, twice. He couldn’t hear the pfft of the shots either, but he felt the gun jerk in his hand, and his trousers rip.
There was only another ten or twenty yards to go — he could see a laundry truck rumbling by on the street — and he prayed that once he got out in the open — into the light, onto the sidewalk — the chase would end. Already, he was getting winded, not from the distance, but from the sheer overload of panic and fear.
He staggered over some old refuse littering the ground, and as he straightened up for the final sprint, something landed on his back so hard it was as though a sack of cement had dropped from a roof. The gun flew from his grip as he sprawled headfirst on the hard dirt and loose gravel. The air was jarred from his lungs, his front teeth cracked in half, and the weight, instead of letting up, bore down even harder, grinding him into the earth. Hot breath scorched the back of his neck — it felt like the blast from a blowtorch — and claws digging deep into his skin pinned his shoulders flat. He was no more able to breathe than he was to flip over and see, with his own eyes, what was even then squeezing the last bits of life out of him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Lucas awoke to a ray of pale sunshine falling across his face. Reaching over Simone’s sleeping shoulder, he was able to snag his wristwatch from the bedside table, hold it up, and see that it was almost eight o’clock already.
From the kitchen downstairs, he could smell pancakes, coffee, and bacon frying in the pan.
He lay back, with Simone’s body, clad only in one of his flannel shirts, snug against him beneath the quilt. Her suitcases were stacked by the door. The events of the night before had left them both so shaken that as soon as they had crept into his room, hoping not to disturb Mrs. Caputo or Amy on their way upstairs, they had simply fallen into each other’s embrace. The narrow bed had creaked and groaned, but its very narrowness had served them well; they wanted not an inch of space between them. When Lucas kissed her good night, Simone’s arms wrapped around his shoulders and pressed him down, holding him there. Separating, his eye patch came loose, and as he fumbled to reposition it, Simone whispered, “Leave it.”
“No, it’s best if you don’t—”
“I know what’s best,” she said, “not you.”
She slipped one finger under the loop and drew the patch over his head, then dropped it on the quilt.
He was painfully aware of what she could now see — a glass eye of a murky brown, badly fitted, and staring sightlessly straight ahead.
“There,” she said.
“There what?”
“I’ve seen the worst of your secrets.”
She leaned her head up and tenderly kissed his brow.
“And lived to tell the tale,” she said.
For the first time in his life, he had been overwhelmed with the urge to share all of his secrets, to reveal himself to this woman in a way he had never revealed himself to anyone. In return, he wanted to know her, too. He wanted to comfort her, and cradle her, he wanted to protect her from the evils that he now knew, in a way he never had before, existed in this world. He doubted if even his famous neighbor across the street, whose thoughts had traveled farther than anyone’s since Newton, could have accounted for the catalogue of horrors he had witnessed since the arrival of the ancient ossuary. But Lucas knew, and Simone knew, and sharing that knowledge bound them together in a way that nothing else could have done. He wanted to ask her everything, and then listen to her voice, with its exotic lilt of English and Arabic, reply.
As she stirred awake now, he whispered in her ear, “So, what was it that you said to me in bed, back at the hotel?”
“What?”
“You know, before all hell broke loose?”
She blushed, but before she could answer, there was a thumping on the bedroom door, and Amy’s voice shouting, “Get up! Get up! It’s pancake time.”
Simone’s eyes went wide, and even as she pulled the quilt up to her chin, the door opened, and Amy poked her head inside. “Mom wants to know how many you want.”
That was when Amy’s eyes met Simone’s, and everything just sort of stopped.
“Amy, close the door now,” Lucas said. “I’ll be right down.”
But she didn’t move.
“This is my friend Simone. Now scat.”
Amy pulled the door closed again, and he could hear her feet scampering, as fast as they could take her, back down the stairs.
“I hope I haven’t broken the house rules,” Simone said.
“We’ll find out,” Lucas said, easing himself up and over her on his way to the bathroom. When he came back out again, tucking his shirt into his pants, Simone was still in the bed — where else was there to go in a room this size? — staring absently out the window. He feared she was reliving the horrific events at the hotel. “I’ll go down and get the lay of the land.”
She turned her head toward him. “Should I leave?”
“And go where?” he said, crouching down beside her. “I want you to stay with me.”
“So do I.”
“Is that what you said in Arabic?”
“It was close,” she said.
He waited for the rest.
“It’s just an old Bedouin saying.”
“Give me the rough translation.”
“I would not trade you for a thousand goats.”
Lucas laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.” Then he leaned forward, kissed her, and said, “Be advised — the hot water never lasts more than two minutes. Plan accordingly.”
On his way downstairs, he stopped at Taylor’s door on the second floor and listened for any noise within. There was none. And not much more in the kitchen, either. Amy was sitting at the Formica table, plowing her way through a plate of pancakes while her mom sat sipping her coffee over the morning newspaper.
“Morning.”
Mrs. Caputo got up, lips primly sealed, and fixed him a plate of pancakes and bacon. She set it down opposite Amy, who looked up long enough to push the syrup bottle toward him. “Who’s that girl?” she asked around a forkful of pancakes. “Is she going to live with us?”
“Amy,” her mother said, “why don’t you go upstairs and make your bed?”
“I already did.”
“Lucas and I have some grown-up things to talk about.”
This time Amy grudgingly took the cue, and when they were alone, Lucas said, “I can explain.”
Mrs. Caputo looked at him, not entirely unsympathetically, over the rim of her coffee cup. “I don’t want to sound like a prude, Lucas—”
“You don’t.”
“But you know how it is. I don’t want to set a bad example for Amy.”
“I get it,” he said, but before he could explain anything more, they were interrupted by the tromping of heavy feet on the front steps.
“Who can that be,” she said, “at this hour?”
When Mrs. Caputo had finished wiping her hands on her apron and opened the front door, Lucas saw a couple of cops, led by Police Chief Farrell, holding empty cardboard boxes. Farrell thrust an official paper at her and said, “We have orders to remove all private belongings from Mr. Raymond Taylor’s room.”