In the open door to Nate Schiller’s room, a series of orderlies rushed in and out, radios crackling. And nearby, a spot of dark in the sterile white of the hall, stood a man she’d never seen, his newsboy cap pulled low. He studied Delaney with open bemusement, fishing through the pockets of his surplus jacket.
“You’re a dead man, Price,” he sang. “You know that?”
Colton ignored him, hauling Delaney onto her feet. Behind them, the stranger pressed a phone to his ear.
“You’d better clear out of here. They’ve called the cops.”
“I don’t care,” Colton said, checking Delaney’s pupils. She wrenched her chin out of his grasp, sick, dizzy, afraid.The game is in play. The game is in play.She could still feel the voice inside her head. It fluttered through her like a moth, ensnared. Smashing against her bones.
The man in the hat sniffed, disgusted. “You and your goddamned hubris. You really think you can get away with anything? I’m giving you an out. Take it. Let me clean up after Schiller. Get your girlfriend and get the hell out of here.”
They’d circled the outskirts of Chicago twice, and Lane still hadn’t said a word. The driver coaxed the car into the right lane, blinker clicking. Outside the window, a neat line of row homes slipped past, all stacked together in finely terraced plots of red brick and iron trappings.
“Another left up here,” Colton said as they crept through Lincoln Park. He peered out the rearview window. A blond woman sat in the driver’s seat of the black Honda CRV behind them, singing along to the radio. He didn’tthinkthey were being followed, but he couldn’t be sure.
He glanced at his watch. The time was 12:23. The day had gone completely sideways. He needed space to think. He needed Lane to talk to him. To say something, even if all she did was shout.
He peered over at her, trying to be discreet. She sat with her head tipped into the headrest, her eyes closed. Her face was drained of color. Her hands were folded into her skirt, but Colton could see that she was shaking.
They passed through neighborhoods, through boroughs, in and out of districts. The cars behind them changed from trucks to coupes to SUVs, from four-door sedans to flashy exotics. None of them seemed to be tails. The next time he checked his watch, the hands read 12:35. Lane still hadn’t spoken.
“Look,” he said, beginning to feel a little bit desperate. He pointed out Lane’s window. “Up there on the corner. That’s the Englewood Post Office.”
She opened her eyes slowly, as if the action pained her. He pointed again, indicating a completely unremarkable-looking building composed of completely unremarkable-looking brick.
“Oh,” Lane mustered, unimpressed. “Wow.”
“I think it deserves a little bit more fascination than that,” Colton said as the car turned the corner. “This is the sight of several horrifically gruesome murders.”
Lane shut her eyes again. “Over postage?”
“No.” He wanted to keep her talking. He needed to keep her talking. “A man named H. H. Holmes built an elaborate hotel here in the late eighteen hundreds. Staircases leading nowhere, trapdoors, a laboratory in the basement. Supposedly he kept people in there. For experimentation.”
“Nothing left of it now.” The driver’s sunglasses flashed black in the rearview mirror. The building slipped out of sight, replaced by a row of dogwood trees, leaves gone the color of pansies in the cooling autumn air.
“Too bad it burned down,” Colton lamented. “I would have liked to see it.”
Quiet followed. The engine hummed. Homes whipped by the windows in blocks of industrial gray. Without opening her eyes, Lane said, “I’m sure you would have thrived there,” and he covered his smile with a fist.
The car slowed to a halt. They idled at a red light. It was, Colton felt, the longest red light in the continental United States. The pause made him infinitely restless. He checked the time. He bounced his knee. He checked the time again.
Behind them was an oversized Range Rover, every inch of it imposing. Colton’s entire body went on edge. The SUV turned away—heading left as they went right—and he relaxed back into his seat. The town car rumbled over the edge of a curb and turned neatly into a parking lot. Outside the window, the shingled portico of a hotel came into view. The driver put the car in park and went around to collect their bags.
“And that,” Colton said weakly, “concludes our tour of Chicago.”
He hated that he’d said it the moment the words left his lips, but he’d been grasping forsomethingto breach the quiet, and that was where he’d landed. In any case, it hadn’t been the right thing to say. The look Lane fired off in his direction was cold enough to make even the hardiest of men constrict. She grumbled something unintelligible, sliding out the door and into the chilly autumn afternoon.
Buffeted into the hotel lobby by a Chicagoan wind, they found the service counter overseen by a much-too-cheerful woman in a tailored jacket and high ponytail. She checked them in with chirpy small talk, sliding two sleek keycards across the counter in a crisp white envelope.
At the far end of the lobby, they piled into the elevator, packed inside the lift with a crowd of tourists. An elderly couple in matching fanny packs. A woman in neon jogging gear. A tired-looking set of parents and their three children, armed with enough rolling carts for a small army. Colton and Lane waited on opposite sides as the elevator slowly emptied out. The elderly couple was the last to get off, shuffling out on the fifth floor. The door trundled shut, and then they were alone again. Colton watched Lane. Lane watched the numbers climb in little yellow lights over the door.
“You were right,” she said, nearly too soft to hear. “There’s something inside of Nate.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“What do we do?”
“Nothing,” he said. “He’s in hospital custody, surrounded by trained professionals. What could you and I possibly do that they can’t?”
