“Breaking news: Thomas Blanc has been reported missing from Mercy General.” I instantly become so dizzy the rest of the report blurs before my eyes and only some of the words reachme—a buzz in the air like electricity. Escaped, manhunt, armed and dangerous.
I have to rest my hands on my knees as I lose my breath. A desk clerk rushes out to steady me and tries to help me to sit down, but the world is spinning all around me as sparks of light detonate across my vision.
I have tried to avoid hearing that name. I have gone out of my waynotto loop all the horror in my mind and let it erode my psyche and sink into my bones. But now it’s in front of me. They say he escaped yesterday. He could be anywhere. My phone rings; it’s Regan. A text buzzes. Andi. Everyone is trying to warn me, but it’s too late.
“He’s free,” I whisper to myself as the desk clerk fans me and a woman who was sitting in the waiting room gets me a paper cup of water.
“Are you okay, ma’am? Should I call a medic?” the woman asks.
Suddenly, there is a pop, the hiss of electronics shutting down, the shock of the power halting suddenly, and then the building is dark. There are gasps and murmurs around her. Footsteps, shouts, a couple staff trying to find a flashlight. Shouts of “What happened?” and “Oh, my God” whirl around me, and I know. I fall to my knees, I try to breathe, but I know what’s happening.
He’s here.
There’s no panic right away because nobody else knows what is really happening. They still live in a safe world where a benign power outage can happen anytime. It’s true that brownouts aren’t uncommon, but I know what’s coming. First, I start to run for the front door, because I don’t want tobe trapped inside. But then I immediately think,Raffy. Tom’s not here to kill me. He wants Raff. I push through the double doors and start to run down the corridor leading to the staircase up to Raff’s room.
I hear mumbles about the generator not kicking in. Of course it hasn’t. Tom’s a master criminal. He would have thought about disabling the generator. It’s not the first time he’s skillfully planned a murder in a short amount of time. How could he have even found out which hospital Raff was at? He’s so seasoned at this, I imagine there are ways—as complex as hacking a system or as easy as calling and asking to talk to Rafael Carro and having some college student working the front desk give out too much info. Somehow, he’s done it. All these thoughts spin in my head as I run—my mind’s attempt at making sense of how this could be.
I imagine him flying here under one of his fake names, researching the hospital, looking at the layout on Google Earth, accessing the blueprints, which are public record—all the things he could have done to get his ultimate revenge, he would do. He would sink to any level and he has the expertise.
Then something stops me cold. I hear a pop. A gunshot. A scream. That’s when the chaos starts. Residents who were hovering in their door frames, looking to see what was happening with the power, are now panicked, rushing for the stairs, falling over each other with fear. Active shooter. Common, everyday words in this country. I’m sure they can imagine themselves on the news tonight. Another mass shooting we will forget about in a couple weeks. No power, no generator. Gunshots.
The shouting is deafening. When I reach the second floor, I’m almost trampled by the crowd of residents rushing me.Nurses are screaming evacuation instructions, but nobody is listening. It’s sheer desperation to get out, to run. There is one security guard who seems to have been swallowed up in the confusion. Could it have been him? Did he shoot an intruder?
No. Thomas Blanc is a man with nothing to lose. He knows he’s going to prison for the rest of his life no matter what, and he will take as many people down with him as he can.
It happens so fast that I can’t be sure what occurred in which order, but a staff member was shouting for people to stay in their rooms and lock their doors and get on the floor, and when I finally reached the top of the staircase, I see Tom, right there—just his profile—and I can see he’s pointing a gun and standing perfectly still. Raff is just outside the open door to his room. He has his hands up and fear in his eyes, but there is something stopping Tom from killing him. The security guard is there—on the opposite side of the hall in front of a nurse’s office. He’s a scrawny, sandy-haired man—a kid, really, scared to death. His hands visibly shaking, but he holds his gun with both hands and shouts orders at Tom.
There’s a woman on the ground. The one I heard shouting orders. She must have gotten in Tom’s way. Was that the shot I heard? Is she the only victim so far? She’s groaning in pain, but she’s alive. The three men stand in a triangle—a standoff. But the second I saw Tom is the exact moment he registered me, and it all somehow feels like slow motion and like a flash all at the same time. In one swift movement, he grabs me by the hair—before I can even absorb what I’ve just encountered and turn to run. He pulls me into him, and before I can scream, he has me in a chokehold with the gun pointed at my head.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Sasha,” he says, and all of ithits at once—the hopelessness of what is happening. My legs go weak and the adrenaline surges through me, making my whole body tremble. I could never get out of his grip twice. I beg him. Reason with him.
“You can run. You’re free. Why are you doing this when you could still escape? You could be in Mexico by now!” I say, because those are the first questions that come to mind. Truly, why wouldn’t he disappear now that he’s somehow gotten himself free? How could revenge and hatred burn this hot in someone?
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I can do both,” he says, and a chill runs through me. I look at Raff and see he’s gone white as a ghost. His eyes flit from the guard to me, filled with panic, and I can tell he’s desperate to do something, to save me. But there is nothing he can do.
“We’re moving. We’re going this way,” Tom says, using me as a shield as he inches us both closer to the stairs. “Don’t try to be a hero and do something stupid,” he tells the guard. “You want everyone out alive, just stay right the fuck there,” he says, and I suddenly feel a new panic surfacing. Maybe he didn’t come for Raffy. Maybe he came to take me with him. Oh, Jesus. No.
“Please, Tom. You can run right now. Just let me go and nobody will...” Before I can finish, I hear sirens howling in the distance. Helicopters overhead.
“Fuck,” Tom says.
I would be relieved, but if there was a chance, moments ago, that he thought he could get out of here with me or kill Raff and run, or likely both, now he really has nothing to lose. If he’ll be caught anyway, we’re all fucked.
“Fuck!” he screams again with a guttural sound, spit flying from the sides of his mouth and his face reddening. Then in a sudden and shocking move, he points the gun at the security guard and shoots. The guard is hit in the thigh and falls to the ground in an agonizing cry. I use the brief second of chaos and bite down as hard as I can on Tom’s wrist; his grip around my neck loosens, just barely, as he lets down his guard. I bite so hard I feel like I break a tendon. I taste blood. He screams and drops the gun involuntarily, his hand seizing up.
I drop to my knees and scramble to pick it up before he even registers what’s happened. He’s paralyzed in pain for a moment, and I use that fraction of a second to move, to grab the gun and run. Raff runs, too. He follows me, and we fly down the concrete stairs two at a time. I know Tom will grab the guard’s gun and be only steps behind us. Tears are streaming down my face as I pray we can make it to the front doors. The police are coming. I don’t know if we will be shot in the back before we get that far. The fear and panic has me shaking so violently, and my knees feel so weak that I miss the last step and fall hard on the polished concrete floor. The gun skids down the empty hall. Everyone has fled. I hear it echo as it ricochets off the wall and I hear Tom’s footfalls on the steps above us.
Raff pulls me up, and I feel blood seeping from where I must have cracked my chin open. I think about it again—trying to get outside means running down this long hallway to the doors, and I can almost feel the bullet to my back if we try that. I know Raff knows it, too.
“This way,” he says, and he pushes open the door to the kitchen and locks it behind us. It’s just a flimsy doorknob twist lock, but it feels like a moment of safety. The kitchen is a big,industrial room with stainless-steel countertops and walk-in coolers, pots and pans hanging from racks on the ceiling.
“There’s a delivery door,” he says. “We can get out!” He takes my hand, but before we can run the length of the kitchen to the side delivery entrance, Tom kicks in the kitchen door and the plywood easily cracks and flings open, the lock broken. We both instinctively hide. I duck, but Raff doesn’t. He tries to slip inside the door of the pantry, but he never had a chance. Tom sees him.
“Well, well. Shit. It’s my lucky day,” Tom says. “It’s almost like you’ve gift-wrapped yourself.” I watch him glance behind him, looking for me or maybe making sure there are no other armed guards around. He closes the broken kitchen door and pushes a crate of potatoes in front of it with his foot, clearing the space visually. He might think I made it to the delivery door and out to safety, but he has to find me. He won’t leave here without me; we all know that by now. I’m lying on the floor behind the washing station, blocked by metal and racks of dishes. I hold perfectly still.
“You can come out or I can enjoy blowing you to bits through the door,” he says, but he won’t do that. He has no idea if I’m in there, too. Does Raff know that? Does Raff know he should stay inside? Pile shit in front of the door? Wait for police rescue? At least that’s possible. It’s something. But no. Raff walks out with his hands up.
“Please just leave Sasha alone. Please. You have me now. You win.”
