Broken (27 page)

And Lex knows there is only one way to exorcise the demons of yesterday, the devils of doubt.

It’s to confront them head-on. Just like he’s doing now.

Lex tightens his fist and feels a bit of pain rip through him.

He knows he’s no longer that scared boy who can’t do a thing.

He’s no longer that terrified teen who is sitting, waiting and watching and worrying.

He’s no longer going to have to face the fact that he stood there without doing anything. He knows now that whatever happens,
he tried.

Whatever happens, Lex won’t be letting her down. Not this time.

•   •   •

The streets and the buildings in New Orleans all feel compressed and tight and claustrophobic. The city breathes slowly, dark
faces leering out of doorways asking and begging for Laila to come in. She keeps walking toward St. Marie.

Laila no longer questions whether this is logical. She no longer asks herself if this makes sense. Logic tells her she should
already be dead. Sense says she should still be locked inside that trunk.

There is something at this hotel that has been waiting for her for a long time. She doesn’t know what she will find, but she
doesn’t care. The point is that she will find it.

She sees the hotel on the corner and heads across the street toward the entryway.

•   •   •

Lex and Connor reach the room. The brass U-shaped dead bolt sticks out between the slightly open door and the door frame.
The sliver of opening only shows darkness.

For a moment Lex looks at the number and feels something rub
against his heart. He knows he should remember, but fear coats over everything else. He thinks he’s been here before or at
least pictured this before. But perhaps that’s just because he’s afraid of what’s behind it.

Lex glances at Connor who is standing a few steps away from him.

“Knock.”

So Lex does. He tries three different times, but nobody comes. Then he gently pushes the door in.

“Go ahead.”

Lex glances at Connor who has a gun out. He steps inside the darkened room and holds his breath and tries to hear something,
anything. His fingers search the wall and eventually find a switch for the light.

As he turns it on, his mind pictures the bed drenched with blood and Laila torn in two and the man who did it hovering over
it waiting to do the same to him.

But instead he finds an empty room. There is antique furniture and two made beds with stools at each base. The door to the
balcony is open.

Connor is standing in the doorway, his gun pointing right at Lex. “Go check the bathroom.”

Lex doesn’t see anything in this room—no clothes or bags or signs of life.

He feels trapped and thinks for a minute about diving toward the balcony and getting away, but he still knows that Laila is
somewhere. If not in here, somewhere in this hotel perhaps.

He turns on the light in the bathroom and sighs as he finds nothing inside it.

A quick glance in the mirror shows a guy he doesn’t recognize, with the smirk he’s always been known for left back in Texas
and eyes that show pain and fear and sadness.

Lex thinks of his family.

Then he shuts off the light and steps out of the bathroom.

And as he does, Connor gives him a curious glance. “Nothing?”

Before Lex can say anything, he sees a hulking figure at the doorway and then the large handgun with the silencer aimed at
the back of Connor’s head. As Lex opens his mouth, it seems as though Connor knows but it’s too late. Two shots go off, and
the back wall of the room is sprayed with Connor’s blood and muscle and brain.

Lex puts his hands up on his face. He shouts out and falls to his knees and closes his eyes.

The world turns bright and he’s falling and he knows he made a big mistake.

He breathes quickly with his eyes still shut, waiting for the shroud of death to close in, waiting for the same fate that
blasted Connor’s life in a second to take him.

•   •   •

James looks at his watch.

It’s a quarter to two in the morning.

Hopefully by sunrise they’ll be on the way to Texas.

They’ll get the money and leave all this behind. Go somewhere far south or far north, somewhere far away.

Part of him wonders the same thing he’s always wondered. Whether or not he can try and change Connor.

He thinks of this because he knows deep down he can’t leave his brother. He knows because he’s tried.

Connor is all the family he has left.

He wonders where they’re at. It’s been fifteen minutes since Connor and Lex went across the street.

He finishes another beer and steps out for a moment, watching and waiting to see anything. But there’s nothing to see.

He goes back inside, orders another drink, and waits.

•   •   •

Laila has been standing in the lobby for at least ten minutes.

The woman behind the desk has asked her twice if she needed
to be helped, and she told her she’s waiting for someone. She said it in a way that also said she didn’t want to discuss
anything with the woman.

The silence is getting to her. The silence and the still and the night.

She knows she shouldn’t be down here.

She needs to go upstairs.

She knows what room.

For some reason she is reminded of the toilet stall she got stuck in when she was with Kyle.

She thinks of the writing on the wall.

GO TO 212

It makes no sense, and it makes perfect sense.

Someone is trying to tell her something.

Her head spins. Do the numbers have significance? Does this hotel mean something? Does the name Marie signify anything?

Does the fact that she’s losing her mind, or lost it six months ago after Connor, mean anything? Because Connor didn’t die.
Connor is still alive, and perhaps he’s in this lobby and nobody is here and she really is losing it.

It’s time to find out.

It’s time to know where this all goes.

She goes to the elevator and takes it up to the second floor.

And slowly and carefully, she walks down a silent hallway to the room.

She’s here at the St. Marie hotel.

She’ll soon arrive at room 212.

Laila wants this to be over.

She believes somebody else does too.

•   •   •

James tries to call Connor on his cell phone and gets his voice mail. He tries again and gets the same thing. Cursing, he
rips open the
door and leaves the music behind as he goes over to the hotel. He feels the handle of the revolver against his gut. He shouldn’t
have to be carrying this thing, much less using it.

He finds the elevator, pressing the button repeatedly to try to get it to open.

•   •   •

The door is shut.

Laila tries the handle, but it’s locked.

She looks down the hallway both ways. It’s narrow and dim and feels old.

She knows hallways like this well.

This is it.

212

What’s supposed to happen?

She’s about to knock when she hears a muffled voice coming from inside.

It sounds like someone saying “no.”

She’s been here before.

This has happened before.

“Lex!” She knocks on the door, hearing his voice again.

“Don’t! Don’t come in here. Get out. Get out of here!”

She’s not going to leave her brother here, regardless of who might be with him. Laila feels something against her feet. She
glances down and sees the blue cap. The blue cap with the red, white, and blue logo of the Houston Texans on it.

She knows it wasn’t there ten seconds ago.

She bends down to pick it up.

Just as she does, the plywood of the door above her explodes, spreading chunks over her back.

Laila scurries over the carpeted floor to get out of the doorway, a blinding jangle ringing through her head.

As she’s crawling and clawing to get out of there, the door bursts open and a man steps out and sees her.

“What the hell…,” he says.

His gun with the silencer on it remains in his grip. The big guy is shaking his head.

“No. No way.”

Just as he’s about to walk toward her, a lamp comes crashing out of the room, cracking over his head.

The big guy falls to the floor and drops the gun. But it seems like the blow merely bothers him. He curses and holds one hand
to protect his head from any more blows. As he starts to search for the handgun, James emerges at the end of the hallway.

He takes in the scene for only a moment before he fires off several shots that go nowhere but send the big man rolling on
the carpet and picking up his gun and then aiming it at James.

He fires off one shot before pressing the trigger with nothing happening.

James takes off for where he came from, and the big guy opens the door across from them and darts inside.

“Are you okay?” Lex asks her as he jerks her up.

She nods, looking toward the doorway where the gunman went. She feels Lex grab her and pull her into the opposite room, closing
the partially shredded door behind him and locking it even though that won’t keep anyone out.

It takes a few seconds before she sees the carnage on the wall and Connor’s body on the floor.

This time Laila knows without a doubt that he’s dead.

He’s missing half his head.

“Don’t,” Lex says, grabbing her arm and pulling her away from the body. “Go on the balcony. Hurry.”

Laila does as she’s told. “Lex.”

“I’m fine.”

Lex picks up Connor’s gun and holds it awkwardly.

“Be careful.”

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks her.

She doesn’t know how to answer.

•   •   •

Amos feels something wet and warm mixing with his hair on the back of his head. He knows the lamp made more of an impression
than he thought it did. He wipes his hand on his pants and then proceeds to unpack the automatic rifle with hands that know
how to do it. He puts the silencer on the end of the MP9.

The woman and her story will soon be over. Amos knows this. He knows he made a mistake leaving her in the back of the trunk.
Somehow she got out. This is what happens when you let trash stay out on the curb after the garbage has already been picked
up.

Amos slides a handgun in his pants and then proceeds across the hallway.

This has become a little too busy for his liking. A little too messy. Now he knows time is not on his side, and he needs to
make sure the garbage is dealt with before going to find James.

Amos opens the door with ease and finds the woman standing in the doorway of the balcony.

He then sees the surprised look on the man who looks strikingly similar to the woman.

Amos smiles, then unleashes a stream of bullets that strip the room.

The man crumbles to the floor as the woman screams.

The chipping carnage of the bullets and the way the woman dives for something in the room makes Amos step away from the door.

For a moment he thinks of dealing with her, of making sure she doesn’t end up coming after him.

His gun is still in that room.

But when Amos hears her ragged, horrific screams in the room, he realizes she’s done.

He’s taken something from her, and she’s no longer part of this.

She’s a different kind of dead but dead nonetheless.

Amos tears down the hallway knowing that police have surely been called and his main objective might be getting away.

•   •   •

Hell has wrapped its hands around her for good.

Laila shakes as she holds the handgun. She crawls to Lex and sees blood on his face and sees the blood on his shirt leaking
out all over him.

She can’t breathe.

She can’t think.

She chokes on her tears as she holds Lex in her arms.

He feels heavy and gone.

The world spins and gets dark.

Her instinct tells her to run.

Just like she always has.

Just like she always will.

She stands up and leaves the death behind her.

•   •   •

For a minute in the stairwell James contemplates going back. He checks his gun and then his cell phone. Nothing. His heart
beats, and he sucks in air as he thinks for a few moments. Then he keeps heading down the stairs, rushing toward the exit
and the night air.

Connor’s face comes to mind, but he shrugs it off.

His brother is gone. His brother is gone, and he has to admit it. If James discovers that Connor is indeed alive—and a part
of him believes Connor actually has nine lives—then so be it. Connor can meet up with him somewhere else. Otherwise it will
have to be in the
afterlife, which might happen sooner than later if he doesn’t get out of here.

He exits the back and hears a fountain as he walks past the swimming pool. He soon realizes he’s fenced in back here with
trees and the pool and the hotel. Sizing up the fence, James realizes there’s no way of scaling it without breaking his neck.

There are a couple of doors leading into the hotel, but they’re locked.

James holds the revolver in his hand. He listens, then keeps walking around the pool.

It’s peaceful out here, and he wishes he could be sitting listening to the trickle of water, having a smoke, and not worrying
about anything.

That’s what everybody wants in this life. A chance to get away and sit and relax and not have to think about the ghosts and
the devils that are right outside their door.

But they’re always knocking.

They’re always coming to get you.

He waits. Ready for the devil that’s coming.

•   •   •

Amos holds the Brügger and Thomet MP9 submachine gun with the shoulder stock extended and the thick muzzle of the silencer
facing the doorway. His Smith and Wesson 500 is in his pants, the Walther PPK in his ankle strap. He opens the door exiting
to the swimming pool where he saw James.

James is walking around the pool and stops.

Amos opens fire on him, chipping away at the trees and the garden and the stone around the pool. The silencer squelches the
firing and makes the blasts sound more like short thuds. Amos unloads an entire magazine and sees James scampering away like
an animal behind a tree.