End of Days (12 page)

In the momentary silence Jericho heard a splashing sound. It was coming from the bathroom. He glanced aside and the ground seemed to wobble.

His daughter was playing in her bubble bath.

“Amy?” Jericho mumbled, wanting it to be true, knowing it couldn't.

“Don't stay in too long or you'll turn into a prune.”
The familiar voice tinkled like wind chimes. It was his wife.

“Emily?”

Jericho's emotions churned like laundry in a washer as he watched his wife Emily walk out of the bedroom to the bathroom. Suddenly the apartment was fresh and clean. There was art on the walls, and presents beneath a lit Christmas tree. New furniture, glowing lamps, and flaming logs in the fireplace.

Just the way it looked ten years ago,
Jericho thought, fighting to regain control.
But it can't be. The past is gone. No matter how much I want it back.

“He'll be home soon,” Emily assured her daughter. “You'll see. He promised, didn't he?”

The man edged closer to Jericho. “Tell you what,” he said, his voice cool and reasonable. “I'll trade you. Your wife and daughter for you-know-who. C'mon…” the man urged, voice warm and paternal. “She's nobody to you. You are in the middle of something you don't understand. You think you're saving Christine from me?”

The man cocked his head as if awaiting an answer. “She
wants
to be with me,” he confided. “And you
know
that. You think I would harm her? She'll be treated like a queen.”

Jericho continued to stare at his wife and daughter, at the love he'd lost.

“You still want them?” the man whispered. “Here's your chance.”

It was an agonizing choice, but Jericho had to let it go. Let Emily and Amy go … forever.
He's conning me,
Jericho told himself.
He's far from all-powerful or he wouldn't be here.

“Yeah, you're pretty good,” Jericho admitted. “You can do all this.” He turned and met the man's gaze with a steely smile. “But you can't read my mind, can you, you son of a bitch?”

The man shrugged. “I can't see through walls either. I'm not a lounge act.” He clasped his hands briskly. “So—we've established that I need you. Terrific. You need me, too.” His voice lowered. “You once said you'd give anything to have them back.”

You haven't been listening. I said it at least a thousand times,
Jericho thought, staring at his daughter.

“Here they are,” the man whispered. “Your family … back.”

Jericho couldn't take his eyes off Amy. “They're not real.”

“Does it matter?”

He dangled the question like the keys to paradise.

Jericho turned. “Yes.”

“Maybe you need to be reminded how painful reality is,” the man said with a flicker of annoyance.

Without warning the front door crashed open.

Jericho opened fire as men rushed inside. The bullets had no effect on the intruders, but a lamp shattered behind them. Jericho hurled himself at the attackers, but his feet seemed to be mired in molasses.

The intruders rushed past him with accelerated speed. Jericho felt as if he were underwater, watching them from the inside of a bowl. He flailed helplessly as the attackers grabbed Emily and Amy and dragged them screaming into the bedroom.

Suddenly Jericho broke through. The room was filled with the cries of his wife and child. Every cry punctured his heart like a sword.

Moving swiftly now, he lunged across the room and kicked open the bedroom door. It was horrible. The ballerina music box lay broken on the floor, sticky with blood. His wife … his baby girl … mutilated …

Again, it broke him. Jericho felt his soul drain away like sand in an hourglass. He was empty, worthless.

“It wasn't your fault,” the man said soothingly.

“I wasn't there.”

“No … you were just doing your job.”

“I wasn't fucking there!” Jericho rasped angrily. “I should have been there!”

The man shook his head. “Look at you, so torn apart by guilt.” He smiled and pointed at the ceiling. “He
invented
guilt. You were just out there doing your job. You didn't do anything wrong.”

Jericho turned away from the bloody carnage in the bedroom. The man's voice followed him: calm, logical, and deeply sympathetic. “You were an honest cop. You didn't take money. You were doing what you thought was right … and you got fucked.”

Jericho paused in front of a mirror and studied his reflection. The hollow shadows around his deep-set eyes gave his sculpted features a skull-like cast.

“Where was God?” the man demanded indignantly. “He could have stopped it. No—He fucked you. And then…” He lowered his voice.… He made you feel guilty.”

Jericho closed his eyes. When he opened them again he could see the gathering fury in his knotted jaw, in the bulging veins in his temples. It kept building as the man kept talking.

“Me? I don't do guilt,” the man said amiably. “I embrace everybody. I didn't cause what happened here. He did. You think about that … and tell me who's really your friend.”

My Glock is my only friend,
Jericho raged. Suddenly all his pent-up frustration, loss, hunger, confusion, and righteous fury thundered to the surface. He lashed out at his own frenzied image.

His fist smashed the mirror and came away bloody.

At the same moment the image in the broken glass shifted. Abruptly the dingy clutter of his present existence snapped back like a psychotic sitcom. He was back in his littered apartment, alone and unloved.

Jericho felt a hot slash of pain and saw the bloody bits of glass in his knuckles. As he picked at them, the man clucked sympathetically.

“I can make it so it never happened,” he reminded. “All for the price of a stranger's address.”

Jericho intently cleared the sharp glass from his bloody hand.

“No!”

“You see, now you are going to get me upset,” the man warned, his voice barbed with menace. He stared at Jericho like a green-eyed cobra. “I don't think you want to see me upset.”

Now you are pissing me off,
Jericho thought, flexing his bloody fist. His cobalt eyes burned like blue lasers. “You want to fuck with me? You think you know bad? You're a fucking choirboy compared to me.”

“You're in touch with your anger,” the man congratulated. “I like that. I don't know about you … I could use a drink.”

The man turned his back and strolled to the kitchen counter. He rummaged through the clutter and found the bourbon bottle. “Actually we're a lot alike,” he reflected, wiping a glass.

“We're nothing alike,” Jericho said slowly.

“Are you kidding?” The man poured himself a drink. “Look at this … look at who you are now. You've walked away from the light … just like me.” He held out a glass. “You want one?”

Jericho's features seemed cut from stone. “You need to go now,” he growled, eyes burning with fury.

The man ignored him. “Oh come on,” he urged genially. “You know what's in your heart. We're on the same side.”

“I'm not on your side.”

The man seemed shocked. “You're not? You're on His side?” He rolled his eyes skyward. “He's the one who took your family away. He's the greatest underachiever of them all,” the man confided, jabbing his finger at the ceiling. “He just has a great publicist.”

The man began to pace. “Every
good
thing that happens … it's his will. “Every
bad
thing that happens … well, He works in mysterious ways,” the man ranted. “It's His cosmic excuse for fucking the common man. You take that overblown press kit they call the Bible and look for the answers,” he challenged, moving closer to Jericho. “And basically it tells you …
shit happens.
”

The man put his hands to his forehead as if exhausted. “He treated you like garbage. And you turned your back on Him. I'm not the bad guy here.”

Then his patience snapped. With incredible strength he grabbed Jericho's neck and forced his head around so he was looking through the window.

“See those insignificant little dots on the street?” the man hissed. “That's all you are to me. Now give me the girl.”

Jericho felt a sense of release as he turned around. “Not today,” he spat.

Enraged, the man smashed him against the window. Jericho felt the glass crack behind him and grabbed the man's shoulders. But the man had superhuman strength. Again he slammed Jericho against the glass, breaking it. A chill breeze whipped Jericho's face and he saw the street twenty stories below. He bounced off the cracked window and charged, but the man lifted him off the floor.

With a final surge of power, the man hurled Jericho through the window, shattering it completely.

The sickening drop pulled the blood from his groin. His hands clawed wildly and one palm smacked the window frame. His fingers hooked and held, despite the broken glass gouging his palms and the sudden wrench of his weight.

As Jericho strained to pull himself up, a boot crushed his bloody hand.

The man leaned out the window. “Look down,” he said calmly.

Eyes squeezed tight with pain, Jericho glanced down at the dizzying drop. He was dangling by a thread and it was about to snap.

“Now look into your heart,” the man said.

Jericho's tortured muscles screamed with agony as he struggled to pull himself up.

Slowly the man reached down through the window. “Take my hand—and I'll give you everything He took away.”

Jaw knotted with effort, Jericho slowly lifted his hand for help. “Here,” he groaned.

The man extended his hand, but Jericho couldn't quite reach it, bloody fingers desperately raking the air. The man leaned out the window and reached further.

Roaring with pain, Jericho heaved himself up with one hand, grabbed the man's extended arm—and yanked him out the window.

The man's green eyes bulged in disbelief before he plummeted, howling crazily as he hurtled faster and faster and slammed into a parked car at a hundred miles an hour. The impact collapsed the steel roof, forming a twisted crib for the man's crumpled form.

Jericho wasn't watching. He clung to the windowsill with one torn, bloody hand and grabbed with the other. The broken glass cut like razor wire as he heaved his battered, weary body over the sill, slashing his chest, leg, and forearm, as well as his hands.

For a moment he slumped on the floor, exhausted. Then he pushed himself to his knees and looked down.

The man lay in the hollow of the demolished roof, his legs splayed. A crowd had started to gather around the car. One or two people were pointing up at Jericho's building.

“Nice of you to drop by,” Jericho muttered.

He slowly got to his feet, staggered into the kitchen, and washed the blood and glass from his hands. He splashed cold water on his face, then wrapped his wounded fists with dish towels.

He avoided his reflection in the mirror, knowing it wouldn't be good.

A loud pounding broke through his numbed senses. Somebody was knocking at his door.

Reflexively, Jericho went into battle alert. He retrieved his Glock and edged to the door. Weapon ready, he checked the peephole.

Raw shock swatted his bruised brain.

It was Chicago.

C
HAPTER ELEVEN

Torn between disbelief and paranoia, Jericho unlocked the door and opened it a crack. His old friend stood there, dirty, disheveled, and weaving slightly as if recovering from a hangover.

Chicago tried to push past him, but the chain was on. “Open the door, man,” he said impatiently.

Jericho lifted his gun. “I thought you were dead.”

“Another second and I would've been. All I remember is diving out of the car and waking up in the gutter.”

Jericho's mind raced back to the illusions the man had conjured.
This could easily be another con job,
he thought, keeping the gun steady.

“What are you doing here? What do you want?”

Chicago gave him an exasperated look. “Come on, man, I've been trying to find you all night. What the fuck happened to you?”

Shit,
Jericho thought, shutting the door. He unzipped the chain, reopened the door, and pulled Chicago inside, pressing the gun to his head.

“I can't trust you,” he said regretfully.

“What are you gonna do? Kill me?”

He gave Jericho an idea. Shoving Chicago back, Jericho aimed his gun. “I just need to know.”

For the first time Chicago seemed alarmed. “Need to know what?”

“I need to know you're you.”

“Of course I'm me … what the hell are you talking about?”

Jericho stared at Chicago with manic intensity. “You took his body, didn't you?”

“Fuck, man,” Chicago moaned, rolling his eyes. “You're ill. You need help.”

Jericho pulled the trigger. The blast filled the room with smoke. When it cleared, Chicago was holding his arm. A raw, red wound streaked his skin, where Jericho's bullet had grazed it.

“You're bleeding,” Jericho said with relief.

Chicago glared at him. “Of course I'm fucking bleeding.
You shot me!
You are crazy.”

“I had to be sure.”

“Sure of what?” Chicago demanded. “Goddammit, Jericho.”

Jericho holstered his gun. “Don't be such a pussy.”

“Pussy?” Chicago bellowed, still irate. “That's a fucking
flesh wound,
man!”

It occurred to Jericho that Chicago couldn't imagine what he'd just been through. He moved closer to his partner and examined his arm.

“Just a scratch,” he said with professional detachment. “Does it hurt?”