It was always at the back of his mind that there had to be others out there, still fighting, still surviving. Now he knew for sure. There were people in New York, California, and who knew where else across the United States. In the heartland. The mountains. The hills and valleys and small towns. Possibly in other countries. That made him feel better. It even chipped a bit at the self-recriminations running through his mind.
A bit, anyway.
Soon, the hallway became more hazardous, and he had to actively skirt around nails, stray strands of duct tape, and broken two-by-fours on the floor.
He turned a final corner and saw a plastic see-through sheet hanging across a doorway. On the other side was darkness, though he detected the small glow of a soft light somewhere in the back and a shadowy figure moving in front of it.
Berg.
Will changed his grip on the knife and hid it behind his back. He pushed quietly through the plastic covering, slipping into the dark room unnoticed.
The room was supposed to be some kind of office. There was only a bright night-light in the corner, creating a halo effect around a two-meter area. In the middle was Berg, crouched in front of boxes, rifling through their contents. He wore a gun belt, with a Glock in a hip holster.
Will walked into the room. He was quiet. He was always good at being quiet when he had to be. It helped that he had honed the skill while weighed down with weapons and heavy equipment, so keeping silent in his bare feet and boxers was almost no challenge.
Berg didn’t know he was coming until Will was just a meter away. When he finally sensed danger, Berg stood up and started to turn, right hand reaching for the Glock. Berg might have even managed to brush his fingers against the handgun’s grip before Will slapped his left hand over Berg’s mouth. At the same time, Will drove Berg back and into the unfinished wall and jammed the sharp point of the knife against his left eyeball.
Berg might have screamed against Will’s hand, or he might have just let out a low wheezing sound. Either way, nothing came out while his eyes darted to the cold, slightly dented steel pressing dangerously close to his eye. In the glow of the night-light, the sharp edge probably looked extra menacing.
“It’s going to hurt,” Will said, keeping his voice low, but not so low Berg couldn’t hear the venom dripping from every word. “Do you understand? It will hurt. A lot.”
Berg nodded. Or tried to. It was mostly a slight tremble.
“Stand very still,” Will said. “My hand’s been asleep for the last few hours. It could slip very easily.”
Will took his hand away from Berg’s mouth. Berg snapped his mouth shut willingly, perhaps afraid he would involuntarily make a sound. His eyeballs were focused on the knife, and he might not even have noticed when Will slipped the Glock out of the holster before taking a step back.
Berg let out a loud sigh of relief. “Please don’t kill me,” were the first words out of his mouth.
“That depends.”
“On what?” Berg seemed to regret the question as soon as it came out of his mouth.
“Zip ties. Where are they?”
“In one of my pouches.”
“Let’s see them.”
Berg took out a handful. “Here,” he said, and offered them to Will with a shaking hand.
Will tossed the knife away and saw Berg’s eyes, predictably, following its path. Will smashed the Glock into Berg’s temple as he was looking and the man crumpled to the floor in a heap. Will crouched and picked up the fallen zip ties and looped them around Berg’s feet and hands. He pulled them tight while Berg groaned on the floor. He wasn’t sure if Berg was too stunned to attempt anything or too scared to try. Not that it mattered.
Will grabbed a pair of silk panties and stuffed them into Berg’s mouth. Berg tried to spit them out but was unable to. There was already blood along his temple, dripping down to his cheek.
It took Will a few minutes to find a crate with his clothes. Or at least they looked like his clothes in the soft light. They could very well have been Danny’s since they were about the same size. Will pulled on cargo pants and a T-shirt, then socks, but had to hunt around for some boots that would fit. He slipped them on, then took a moment to re-orient himself with the hotel’s layout.
Will glanced down at his left hand, expecting to find his watch, but it wasn’t there. He spent another few minutes looking for it among the crates, but couldn’t find it anywhere. He gave up after about four minutes and headed for the back door instead.
Maybe Tom had a watch he could take off his dead body…
Will stepped out of the hotel and into the night with the Glock. He saw the Tower right away. It was hard to miss. LED floodlights below the third-floor windowsills lit the structure like the beacon it was supposed to be, even with the unfinished top. He had initially pegged the Tower at forty meters high, and now that he was closer, it looked more like forty-five, give or take.
The island itself was surprisingly bright, thanks to the strategically placed lampposts covering the hotel grounds. Karen was right when she said you could see the lights from the shores. There were more floodlights jutting out of the sides of the hotel, creating a halo effect around the structure.
Will stuck to the shadows. Eventually he was able to use the palm trees for cover. He slowed down, then stopped completely when he was ten meters from the Tower and sat on his haunches in the darkness next to some shrubbery. He couldn’t see any lights coming from the second floor of the building, but there were soft lights coming from one of the third-floor windows.
He counted to one hundred, then began jogging toward the Tower, keeping as low as possible, though he didn’t think it was necessary as long as Tom didn’t peer out the window at that exact moment. Even then, Tom would have to look down. Will was still thinking about those possibilities when he reached the structure and leaned against the fat, curving concrete base.
He was close enough to the door that he didn’t have to reach very far to touch the lever. He gripped it and spent a second wondering if Tom had alarms on the door, but he hadn’t even finished that thought before he cranked the lever down, pulled the door open, and slipped through, the Glock rising to chest level.
A split second later, he was inside the first floor of the Tower.
A soft yellow light above the door made the interior look claustrophobic, despite being the biggest section of the structure. It was the size of a small studio apartment, with shelves in one corner filled with books, trinkets, and what looked like a stack of board games. Tom hadn’t struck him as the board-game-playing type. A spiral cast-iron staircase along the wall led upward. Will spotted the door in the floor Josh had mentioned. It had a ring handle and a padlock.
He glanced up toward the second floor and stopped breathing for a few seconds and listened, but couldn’t hear anything moving around above him.
Will walked over to where the staircase started. The steps looked solid enough. He put one foot on the stairs and heard a slight creak, but it wasn’t loud enough to wake someone from sleep. At least, he hoped not. Will took a second step, then a third, and was halfway to the second floor a few seconds later.
He kept the gun aimed at the thick wooden door above and across the room from him. Because the stairs arced along the wall, he started at one side of the Tower and ended up on the other side by the time he was halfway up the stairs. He wouldn’t be directly below the door until he had gone another full revolution.
Halfway up, he stopped and listened again, but still couldn’t hear anything from above him. It was much darker up here, as the small lightbulb below didn’t reach this far. The door had no locks, which meant it opened upward and could only be locked from the other side.