Jack returned his attention to the cement building, brow furrowing. A curious redness seeped beneath the door, dripped down into the grass.
He stared. That hadn’t been there before.
For one terrible moment, he was convinced it was blood. That someone inside had been shot, and he would be next.
But as he stood frozen, nothing happened. No shots rang out. No one fled through the single metal door.
The longer he stared at the stain on the ground, the more convinced he became that it wasn’t blood at all; just some strange, reddish liquid. Rust, perhaps?
No, the color was too dark. Jack frowned and stepped closer. Definitely not rust. But not blood, surely. Buildings didn’t bleed. Even if someone had been shot, it wouldn’t matter. Blood couldn’t leak under a reinforced steel door like that.
Could it?
Jack shuddered. Emboldened by curiosity, he approached the door and yanked hard on the handle.
It didn’t budge.
Of course not. Why would anything be so simple?
Jack scowled down at the lock.
A metallic screech. Something on the other side of the door crashed to the floor. Then silence.
Frozen and horrified, Jack waited, half-expecting the door to creak open, for some strange specter to beckon him inside. He thought of the translucent flash he’d seen in the hallway last night, and his stomach clenched. The muffin threatened a reappearance. He forced himself to stay calm.
Nothing happened. A gust of wind blew his hair away from his face, threatened to send his hat flying.
Jack all but ran from the quay.
CHAPTER
TEN
Every single day,the cement building bled. As reliable as Boris’s wake up call, blood oozed from beneath the door, staining the grass.
For three days now, Jack made a point of observing it. At two p.m. sharp, a crash sounded and blood appeared. For that was surely what it was. Jack had observed it on the tip of his finger, red as wine, slightly viscous. He dared not taste it (though that would confirm everything) but determined that it had a slightly metallic scent.
Ithadto be blood. He even climbed onto the roof for further investigation and decided that there was no way it was rusty water. The color was all wrong.
On the third afternoon, he paused at the far end of the quay, where business operations had long ceased. Derelict buildings surrounded him. Most of the windows were barred or boarded. Others were left open, glass shattered, cargo still strewn about.
Should he sneak inside? That would be trespassing, but what did it matter? Not a single day’s consequences had carried over, so far as Jack could tell.
But he was terrified of conflict and police, and of being trapped in jail for even a few hours.
There wouldn’t be lasting consequences. But he’d struggle to get over the trauma of an arrest. The restraints, the shouting, themanhandling, the confinement—first in a squad car, then in a cell.
Maybe the police wouldn’t come. Maybe he could sneak in and out, and no one would know.
But he already stood out in his ill-fitting suit and his scuffed shoes, satchel at his hip. Here, there were only massive ships and rotting docks; construction, factory, and warehouse workers; forklifts, whirring machinery, and an endless sea of boxes.Nobodywore a suit.Everybodywould notice if the stranger in the suit suddenly started crawling through broken windows.
Maybe he could lie, tell them he was here for an inspection. Convince them that he was just a low-level idiot sent to do some corporation’s dirty work. They’d laugh, and he’d go along with it if it meant he could gain access.
Because there was something going on here. Had to be.
He’d scoured the town, searching for some kind of explanation. What might trap someone here in this endless loop? What did October seventeenth mean to Hidden Cove?
October seventeenth meant ten percent off at the drug store. Meant that it was Tuesday, so the diner was having a special. Across the street, so was the Bar is in Hell, the little pub whose neon sign flashed red and orange. And on the corner, Bernie’s Kitchen had an extra dollar off drinks, a deal that attracted flocks of men in suits, who didn’t seem to care that the apartments overhead looked dilapidated enough to collapse in on the entire restaurant.
