“I just figured I’d ask, after seeing the photo you gave out back there,” Keene said. “A little girl, about the same age, I thought maybe you were having trouble getting your head around this one. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“That’s enough.” McDwyer kept his voice low and hard. “You don’t know the first thing about it. Get back there and buckle in.”
Keene looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded and returned to his seat. McDwyer glanced at the pilot, but the man stared straight out the windshield and made no sign that he had heard the exchange. It wasn’t likely. The sound of the rotor would drown out everything but a shout.
Does Keene have a point? McDwyer didn’t know what scared him worse, knowing what this little girl could do if she got away from them, or the possibility of having to line her head up in his sights and squeeze the trigger.
McDwyer had been the kill switch on this project for over a year now, but it wasn’t until last week that he’d started questioning why.
The helicopter banked across a field, low enough to cause a ripple in the brush. They were less than an hour and a half away now.
McDwyer wondered, for the hundredth time, what exactly would be waiting for him when they arrived.
—34—
“Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon. Your class get canceled? You forget something, maybe?” The guard’s greedy eyes lingered, staring at Jess Chambers’s nose, mouth, breasts, and she let him do it, let him hope that she had come back for him.
She flashed him the pass from her bag and smiled, a big, toothy grin. “Has Dr. Wasserman left yet?”
“Don’t know, but he might have, I had to use the facilities. You want me to radio up?”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll only be a minute. I just wanted to look for an earring.”
“You women are always losing stuff. Maybe when you get done, we can go get that drink….”
Now comes the hard part, Jess thought, and she parked behind the hospital again and hurried to the front doors, keeping her face down and turned away from the windows. She hadn’t wanted to wait for Patrick’s help. A lot of this depended on luck, but she didn’t want to waste another second, now that her mind was made up. God only knew what Wasserman might do to Sarah while they all sat around like career politicians trying to decide the best way to get her out.
She hoped Andre was busy elsewhere. She could only pray that her photograph hadn’t been handed out to everyone who worked in the building.
She clipped her pass to her jacket and walked fast down the empty hall, listening for voices. She heard them in the playroom; it was the right time, she had timed it perfectly.
She opened the doors and studied each corner of the room. There were six or seven children in here now, and two white-shirted women who might have been counselors. It did not take her long to find Dennis, in his baseball cap and sneakers. He was standing by the bookshelves, counting the books.
She waited just a moment to harden herself for what had to be done.
The two counselors looked up when she came in but didn’t say a word, and she didn’t see anything but mild interest in their eyes. That would change. She crossed the room quickly. Dennis saw her coming. He smiled. “Onetwothreefourfivesixseven. Seven books.”
“Yes, Dennis, that’s right. Seven books.” She leaned into him and whispered, “I’m sorry about this,” and then she put her hand on his forearm, let her hand rest firmly so he could feel it.
The reaction was immediate. Dennis jerked away from her like he had been burned. He shook his head. She steeled herself and reached for him again.
“Don’t touch Dennis, no touching, that’s the rules, Dennis doesn’t like to be touched…” His voice wound up like a siren. He backed into the bookcase, eyes rolling, and turned, not looking at anything now. He flailed out with both arms. Books fell to the floor with a loud double thump. He pushed at more books and they teetered and fell like dominoes, pages fluttering. “No touching, Nononono-nonono…”
The two counselors got up and came over fast. “You’re not supposed to do that,” one of them said over the shouting. “God. Nicki, get someone in here.” The other woman scurried out of the room. “Now, Dennis, calm down—oh, hell.”
Dennis had backed himself into the corner and looked like he wanted to go right on through. He was big, clumsy; it wouldn’t be easy to get him back in line. He had reached a fever pitch now, his head whipping back and forth, and his voice had begun to stir up the other children, one of them laughing, another starting to throw toys at the screen on the window. Bang-bang. The female counselor was trying to get him to stop flailing his arms without touching him again.
I’ll make this up to you, Dennis, Jess thought. I promise. She ducked out of the room and back down the hall. Wasserman’s office door was ajar, she could hear voices. Nobody came out after her. She hoped she had bought herself enough time.
The elevator was damnably slow, and she wished she had taken the fire stairs. Finally the doors opened onto the smell of disinfectant and stale air. It’s cold down here, too cold, and she resisted the urge to hug her arms to her chest.
The man behind the desk (not Andre, thank God) looked like he had left high school about a week ago. She didn’t recognize him. “There’s a problem in the play area,” she said, as he came around to meet her in his white hospital suit. “It’s Dennis. They need help calming him down.”
“I’m not supposed to leave—”
“Listen to me. Andre’s out for coffee and Evan asked me to come get you. We’re short staffed and Dennis is going to give them trouble. Go on now. I’ll watch the desk here until you get back.”
He swallowed hard. “I’ll be just a minute.”
She waited until the elevator doors closed. There was not much time. It wouldn’t be long before Wasserman and the others figured out what she had done, and why. She had to get Sarah out now.
But the keys proved impossible to find. Behind the desk was an intercom speaker, a series of cubbyholes labeled with patients’ names and doses of medication, heavy canvas gloves, and a can of mace. A little three-inch television flickered from the corner, the sound turned low.
The orderly would have the keys on him, she thought, of course he would. If they came back down before she got Sarah to the stairs, she would be trapped. Damn. How the hell are you going to get through that door?
Despair settled over her like dusty cobwebs. She had been driven by emotion, by need, not stopping long enough to think more than a few minutes ahead. Whatever she was searching for was close now, she could taste it like blood on her teeth. But she had backed herself into a corner, and now the walls were closing in on all sides as she imagined what might happen to her when she got caught down here.
It’s too late. Just get out while you still can.
That was the voice of a quitter, and she refused to listen.
It wasn’t until she turned away in frustration that she felt the answer, an unseen presence so vivid she brushed instinctively at her face and hair as if to push it away. Only then did she wonder how she had failed to notice it before. It was as if the air itself were alive.
Jess Chambers felt an odd transient moment of doubling, as if she were looking through two pair of eyes, one outside, one within. The hair on her neck and arms rose as if in warning. For another long moment she stood silent, immobile, and then pushed through into the corridor with a sense that she had stepped into a darker place.