The Unseen (32 page)

He was sure he was alone, but it was best to take a moment to listen anyway. While he was in his semi-catatonic state, he hadn't been aware of his surroundings; he'd been drawn completely inside himself.

Satisfied no one was in the building with him at the moment, he started to move toward the main doors, his mind already chewing on possible sites for the meeting.

But something stopped him. Just a few hours ago in this church, he'd stepped up to the Blackboard and prayed for some kind of deliverance. Well, perhaps not exactly prayed, but he had stopped for a moment of silence, had let his fear and frustration and fury come rolling out of him in one long moment. Had uncaged everything fearsome inside him, letting it all out into the light for the first time.

And then, when he'd opened his eyes, he had seen a shaft of light and a bird, breaking away from the confines of this space. Something had happened in that moment, something he didn't quite understand. And yet, he didn't need to understand it to be part of it.

Perhaps. Perhaps he should spend another moment in silence. Focus his thoughts.

If there was ever a day he needed focus, it was today.

Lucas moved to the front of the church, flicked on the lights to illuminate the giant Blackboard, and dropped to the floor, closing his eyes. He centered his thoughts, breathed deeply a few times, opened his eyes.

Immediately, he felt as if he'd been slammed in the stomach with a sledgehammer; if he hadn't been kneeling, the sight on the Blackboard would have brought him to his knees.

He gasped a few times, trying to get his breath, and felt himself starting to tremble. This was a new fear, something he'd not felt before, and it had been awakened in him in a fraction of a second.

The Blackboard had been changed sometime within the last several hours. The photos of the roughly two dozen Creeps were still on the board, attached to nails. And the strings that attached the Creeps to their current projects were still there. But now, all those strings had been rearranged, and all of them were attached to a single nail, holding a single photo.

A photo of Sarea, his one and only friend from the Blue Bell Café. The new project of every person in the Creep Club.

04:15:36 REMAINING

Lucas scrambled to find the TracFone in his backpack and paused to remember the number Sarea had given him; in a few seconds, he saw the numbers flashing in his mind, and he dialed them. No answer, her phone flipping to voice mail after just a few rings.

At the beep, he spoke. “Sarea, this is Lucas,” he said. “I need you to call me as soon as you get this. It's an emergency. The phone number should be on your caller ID right now.”

After hanging up, he retrieved the number for the Blue Bell Café from memory and dialed it. After five rings, a voice he didn't recognize answered. He asked if Sarea was working and was told it was her day off.

He hung up, unsure whether to feel relieved or concerned that Sarea wasn't working. That meant he would have to go to her apartment. He'd been there before, without Sarea's knowledge; the selfadmission caused his cheeks to burn as he thought of it, but at least he knew where to go. He hadn't been inside, of course; that was back in the days so long ago when he had his strict code of ethics that said he didn't break into people's homes. Since then he'd been in at least three private homes. So much for ethics.

He sprinted out the front door of the church, momentarily blinded by the bright sun—already hot—in the morning sky. And here he was, still wearing a stocking cap.

Yes, today was going to be a hot day. Unbearably hot. He scratched at the bandage attached to his cheek, as if there really were a wound underneath, itching and healing.

He started walking toward the Metro stop, then broke into a run after just a few steps. He had to hurry, had to get to Sarea. This was— what day? His brain was scrambled, misfiring, making his body feel foreign as he tried to run in it. Putting himself in danger, well, that was something he could handle. But to go after Sarea, the one and only person who had befriended him . . . that awakened a rage inside he was already having a hard time controlling.

At the station, he raced past a newspaper box displaying today's edition, and the large headline slowed him for a few seconds: FUGITIVE SOUGHT. Another story on him, no doubt. He wanted to buy a copy of the paper and read the story, but he didn't have time. All the same, he looked around suspiciously, scanning the people swirling around him for signs of recognition. No one seemed to be paying attention.

At least he had that going for him: everyone looked, but no one saw.

Lucas stripped off his jacket, going down to just a T-shirt, and put the jacket in his backpack.

He continued down the block, then into the construction zone blocking a portion of the street. He grabbed a hard hat off the folding table at the fence perimeter, put it on his head, and moved inside the fence as if he knew exactly where he was going.

And he did; he'd scouted this construction site previously, and it offered a good back door to the nearby Metro tunnels.

He made his way to the giant hole in the street and climbed down the rungs on one of the ladders; at the bottom, he nodded a greeting to a man hefting a jackhammer as he disappeared into the darkness at the back of the underground compartment.

Five minutes later, he was inside the security walkway for the tunnel, knowing overhead cams were picking up his images but betting his construction hard hat would hide his face and identify him as someone at work.

He made his way down the catwalk, opened the AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY door, and went directly to the restroom inside the station to lose the hard hat.

After that, he stood on the platform with about a dozen other people, waiting. He looked at the schedule; he'd have to take the Green Line down south several stops, and the next train was still about five minutes away.

He pulled out the TracFone again, dialed Sarea's number. He hung up once the message started to play, then waited patiently, keeping his head down and looking at the ground directly at his feet.

Yes, he'd been by Sarea's apartment. Never inside it, of course, but he'd dreamed of it, hadn't he? He'd imagined the interior of her place, pictured himself under her bed, just a few feet away from where she slept, listening to the sound of her breathing as if it were a metronome.

Even now, that thought excited him as much as it shamed him. He wasn't one of the Creep Club, not in name. But was he any different?

It's a drug
, he heard Donavan's voice say.
Once it's in your veins, you
need more.

At last the train pulled to the platform, pushing away his dark thoughts in its wake. He waited for the doors to open and walked on with several other passengers after a few people exited.

The doors closed behind him; the train began to move away from the station. Ten stops to Anacostia, the stop nearest Sarea's apartment complex in southeast DC. How long would that take? Fortyfive minutes? Maybe longer?

Too long. Far too long.

He needed to take a cab. He should have tried that first, but his brain still felt thick and gelatinous, in shock after seeing Sarea's photo on the Blackboard. The Metro was home to him, and the place his feet automatically carried him when he wasn't thinking.

At the next stop, he slid out the doors and sprinted for the stairs. At street level, he went directly to the curb and hailed a cab.

The driver looked at him without interest, but nodded when he gave an address.

“How fast can you get there?” Lucas asked.

“How fast you wanna get there?” the cabbie asked.

“Fast as Benjamin Franklin can go,” he said, pulling out the last hundred-dollar bill he had on him. He'd probably die later today anyway, and he couldn't take the money with him.

The driver smiled and put the pedal to the metal.

In the backseat, Lucas tried to make himself relax, but it felt as if more than his mind was betraying him. His muscles were shaky and overworked, and his eyes felt as if they'd been dipped in alcohol. What was wrong?

He closed his eyes, concentrated, began forcing his body to go into its deep relaxation state. He needed to be as alert as possible now. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Block out all outside stimuli, concentrate on nothing but the Dark Vibration inside.

After a few minutes, when his heart rate matched the thrumming of the Dark Vibration, he let the outside world begin to filter back in. But now, his senses were heightened. First, touch. He felt the seat beneath him, fabric flaking off, worn padding deep inside. He felt the cold plastic of the armrest on the door, the minute crack in the handle. Next, smells filtered into his consciousness: old leather, oil from the overworked cab engine, spicy food lingering in the car's interior.

He turned up the sound, listening as cars and traffic whirled around them, as the cab's radio squawked something about a stop by police officers, as the brakes of the cab squeaked, as the cabbie said, “This'll just be a minute.”

Finally, Lucas opened his eyes, knowing even before he opened them that the cab had slowed and was pulling to the side of the road. Colors were richer now, details brighter. His body was completely relaxed, his heart rate only thirty beats per minute, as he casually turned his head and saw the police cruiser, siren flashing, just off their back bumper.

He knew, without having to think about it, what was happening. Someone had seen him. Perhaps on the train, perhaps getting into the cab. Perhaps the cabbie himself had made a call to authorities.

Who said publicity didn't work?

He watched the faces of the officers as the cab slowed to a stop, and in his heightened state, Lucas knew he must act immediately, before the cab and the police cruiser stopped. Once they were parked, the police would be out of the car, guns drawn, holding back nothing in their effort to apprehend a suspect wanted for the murders of several people. No matter which side of the cab he chose to make his escape at that point, he would be trapped.

He slid across the seat to his right, pulled the knob to disengage the door lock, and yanked the lever to open the door. As he did this, he folded his body into a ball, rolling as he hit the pavement.

Coming out of the roll, he rose and ran on the balls of his feet, moving quickly across the sidewalk as shocked faces stopped to look at the man who had just jumped from a cab and was now running full speed.

But that world was in slow motion, and Lucas, in his heightened state, was moving at double time. Even before he'd leaned out of the cab door, even before he'd tucked into his roll, he'd picked his first target: an alley half a block away. He moved quickly, changing direction as he bobbed through the crowd of pedestrians.

Behind him, he heard one of the police officers command him to stop, but he was ahead, so far ahead of them, darting down the alley.

He could slip into one of the Dumpsters here in the alley, yes, but that would be expected, wouldn't it? Instead, he found a back door to some kind of restaurant—an Italian restaurant working on today's lunch specials, his heightened sense of smell told him before he'd even reached the door—and he slipped through it.

The officers would have backup on the way now, perhaps even on the scene, and they would expect him to go through the restaurant, find his way to the street at the front.

And so he did.

He ran through the restaurant, screamed a hasty “Where's the front door?” at one of the surprised workers, kept going without waiting for an answer. He found his way to the front door, stopped, turned down the small hallway on his right, and ducked into the men's restroom.

Because it was still morning, and the restaurant was a few hours away from opening, he had the restroom to himself. He scanned the area, looking for the room's weaknesses. An exposed industrial ceiling, with a giant pipe for the air return running the whole length of the room. No tile to hide above.

He looked at the sink. A small vanity, but probably too small even for him. There were two stalls, of course, but those would be the first things inspected.

He looked at the giant overhead pipe again. Maybe it could work. He probably had two minutes or so before the cops figured out he hadn't slipped out the front of the building, and then another couple until they searched the bathroom.

Lucas went into one of the stalls, checked the distances. After a few moments of calculating, he stepped onto the toilet and launched himself at the wall behind it, at the same time bending to catch the top of the stall's iron divider. Now his body formed a crude triangle, with his feet wedged on the back wall and his hands grasping the divider. Slowly, he walked his feet up the wall until he'd reached the height of the divider, then he brought his bottom leg to the top of the divider while his top leg still held his weight. Quickly, he took his foot off the wall and transferred his weight; he tottered dangerously for a few seconds, but then he had the foot on the stall under him, and he was able to regain his balance and stand on the divider like a tightrope walker. He edged to the front of the stall.

He couldn't quite reach the pipe, but he was able to grasp one of its ceiling brackets with both hands. Stepping off the door of the bathroom stall, he swung his body up and onto the pipe like a high jumper going over a bar belly first. When he landed on the pipe, he felt the ceiling brackets shift a bit, but they held. Dust from the top of the air return filtered down to the floor, but after a few seconds, the air was clear again.

Lucas hugged the top of the pipe, waiting. Finally, he heard someone come in the front door of the restaurant, yelling something at the workers. The voice moved closer until he was able to make out the last few words: “. . . sure he went out that way?”

One of the officers, he knew, coming to check the bathroom. Lucas turned himself to his side, putting his hand against the ceiling above and wedging himself on top of the pipe. The pipe's width would hide his form, unless the police officer moved far to either side of the pipe and examined the ceiling. He hoped that wouldn't happen.