Chapter Fifty-four

Detective Tomlinson was groaning again.

For a long time he'd lain silent, and Meg had been convinced he was in a coma or maybe dead. He had stopped moving, might have even stopped breathing. She hadn't been sure whether or not she should be glad he was so far gone. She didn't want him to be dead, but she sure didn't want him waking up, either.

Now he was stirring. The dose of heroin hadn't been enough to kill him, not when he weighed twice what she did. It hadn't even been enough to keep him out for the whole night.

When he was fully awake, he would take care of her. And it wouldn't be quick or easynot after what she'd done to him, nearly killed him.

She tugged at the handcuffs still chaining her to the railing. All she accomplished was to chafe her wrist even worse than before. A warm ooze of blood trickled down her arm. Maybe if she pulled hard enough, she could slice her wrist down to the vein and then she would bleed to death. It was a better way to die than what he would do to her, that was for sure.

But maybe she could fight. She still had the hypodermic, empty now, but a weapon even so. She patted the pocket of her blouse, where she had stowed the thing after giving up on it as a locksmith tool. Just let him come close and with a little luck she could amp; she could amp;

She could do nothing. She knew that. He would be expecting a second attack. He would deflect it easily, take the syringe, and use it on her.

Tomlinson issued a grunt and started to rise.

She watched him in paralyzed horror. He thrust out both arms and pressed his palms to the floor, pushing himself up off the concrete. His eyes remained closed, his face blank. Somehow those details made it worse, as if she really had killed him and now he was a zombie rousing himself from the grave.

He was on his knees now. He swayed a little. His eyes opened. His head turned and he stared at her. His pupils were pinpoints of ink. The whites of his eyes were huge, horrible.

He lunged at her, and she screamed

He fell on his side. The egg-white eyes were still open. He was breathing noisily, each rise of his chest accompanied by a wet suction sound. But he wasn't staring at her anymore. He was unconscious or semiconscious or something. In a stupor, anyway.

And he was close to her. Not lying on his stomach anymore. She could search the inside pockets of his jacket, maybe find a handcuff key.

She willed herself to squat next to him. Her heart was drumming in her ears. If he came to, she would be easily within his reach. But if he came to, she was dead no matter what, so it made no difference.

She touched the flap of his jacket, expecting him to rise at any second, as if the brush of her hand would be all the stimulus he needed. There was no reaction. She wished his eyes had closed. They unnerved her, open wide and gazing into the glow of the flashlight at the top of the stairs. She didn't like the way those round, almost pupilless whites caught the light.

With an effort, she peeled back the flap of his jacket and groped in the pocket. It was empty.

There was still the other pocket. That one was harder to reach. He had fallen on that side, the jacket bunched up under him.

She snaked her hand under the flap and felt around for the pocket. Her hand moved over his shirt, filmy with sweat. She could feel the low tremors of his heartbeat.

She couldn't find the pocket, but it had to be there. She ran her hand over the outside of the jacket, and down low near his ribs she felt the shape of a gun, holstered to his side, a handgun with a long barrel. She thought about retrieving it, using it to hold him off, but it was mashed under his body, unobtainable.

The key was still her best chance. She risked pulling at the jacket, knowing that any movement might rouse him. She dug deeper into the folded fabric and finally found a slit, a cavity. Inside amp; something small and hard and metallic.

A key, the key she needed.

It was tucked at the bottom of the pocket, inside creases and folds in a narrow space too small for her hand. She tried closing two fingers over the key and easing it out. It slipped away. A second try, a second failure.

She reached for it again and only pushed it deeper into the pocket.

"Come on," she told herself. "Concentrate. Take it slow."

Good advice, but difficult to follow when her head was spinning with waves of dizziness and she had to fight off the desperate trembling of her muscles.

She dug into the pocket again, her fingertips brushing the key, now almost beyond reach. Carefully she snagged it between her fingers.

Breath held, she drew it out. Almost there amp;

It caught on a fold of the pocket.

Tomlinson moaned. She nearly panicked and let go, but somehow she held on. She jiggled the key back and forth to work it loose.

Another moan. The eyes blinking, not yet seeing her. He was still out, but coming around.

She resisted the impulse to tear the key free, aware that she might lose her hold on it altogether. There would be no time to recover it again.

Tomlinson shook his head slowly, as if shaking off a long sleep. The slight movement straightened the jacket a little, and the key popped free.

She had it.

Clutching her treasure, she retreated to the railing. She jabbed the key at the handcuff on her left wrist. Couldn't find the keyhole. The light from the landing wasn't strong, and the keyhole was small.

"Fuck."

That wasn't her. It was him. His groggy voice, thick with phlegm. She glanced at Tomlinson, and his gaze met hers for an instant, flickering with recognition, then fading to blankness again.

She grabbed a shallow breath and narrowed her focus to the single problem of fitting the key into the keyhole.

"Fuck me amp;"

Him again. This time she didn't look back. If he was alert, she would find out soon enough.

She found the keyhole. Slowly, tentatively, in a process that seemed to consume many minutes, she rotated the key against the hole until it slipped inside.

A jerk of her wrist, and the key turned. The handcuff clicked open.

Free.

She tore her arm out of the cuff and ran up the stairs toward the open door, hoping there was a lock on it so she could lock him in

And she fell sprawling on the metal staircase.

She thought she'd tripped. Tried to rise, couldn't.

Then she understood that he'd grabbed her by the leg, and he was holding on.

She spun onto her back. There he was, at the foot of the stairs, one hand clinging to her ankle while the other probed inside his jacket for the gun.

"You're dead," he told her in his raspy, croaking voice, white eyes staring. Meg launched a kick with her tree leg, booting him in the face. The impact punched him backward. He loosened his grip on her ankle. She tried to scramble up the stairs, but he was too quick. He already had her again.

She kicked a second time, missing him. He climbed on top of her legs to pin her down, and the gun was out, blue steel, shiny in the flashlight beam.

Click of the safety's release, the muzzle swinging toward her, and there was a gunshot, blood, Tomlinson dropping the gun as he slid backward onto the floor and lay unmoving amid a spreading maroon pool.

Meg didn't understand it. She lay on her back on the staircase trying to breathe, and then a tender hand was pressed into her own.

She looked up to see her mother kneeling beside her.

"Mom?"

"I'm here, Meg," Robin said. "It's okay now."