Dead Things (22 page)

That was unexpected. “Fair enough,” I say.

“Look, you can’t change what happened, but you can maybe move forward. So come with me and see Alex. I think you have some things to fix.” She gives me a funny look that I can’t quite read. “I think I do, too.”

“All right,” I say. “Let me get my stuff. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to this room again.” I pack up the one suitcase that wasn’t lost when I left the Caddy. Not much in there. Couple shirts, some slacks, socks and underwear.

I pick up the bottle of Stoli from Darius’ bar.

“Isn’t that what got you in this state?” Tabitha says.

“Huh?”

“Vodka? Hangover? Hello?”

“Oh, no. Just an impromptu spirit bottle. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to drink it. There’s a ghost inside.”

“What, really?” she says. “What happens if you drink it?”

“It tastes nasty,” I say, tossing it into the suitcase.

“I’ll take your word for it.” She rummages around in her purse. Starts scanning the floor. “You see my cell phone anywhere?”

“No. You drop it?”

“Must have just left it in the car. Wanted to call Alex, tell him we’re heading back.”

I’m not sure why I’m doing this, going to see Alex when I should be finding a car and skipping town. I toss my bag into the trunk and get into the car with Tabitha, anyway. We spend the ride in silence. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I do have some things to fix. Or maybe I’d like a do-over. I look at her. She’s thinking hard about something, though what I can’t tell. Me, maybe? Or is that just too much to hope for?

When we get to the club I’m ready to get out of the car. My headache has gotten worse. I want to get this over with. Find out what Alex wants and, I don’t know, take off? Stay?

The bar is almost empty. A far cry from the loud mash of people from the night before, with even fewer people than the day I first showed up. Max, the bouncer, glares at me as I walk in, but waves me to the back. Tabitha starts to follow me, but he stands in front of her and transfers his glare to her. She looks at me, surprised and, I don’t know, a little scared?

I shrug, try my best to look unconcerned, but I’m not sure what Alex is up to. “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

I knock on Alex’s door, turn the handle to a muffled “Come in.” He’s sitting at his desk like last time, but there’s a tension in him that he didn’t even have last night.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” I say, and slide into the chair in front of his desk. “But I’m here. What do you want?”

“You look a little hungover.”

“Only a little? That’s an improvement.”

“How was Tabitha when she picked you up? She seem off at all?”

“I don’t really know what off looks like with her. Why?”

Instead of answering me he slides a cell phone in front of me. It’s small and pink with rhinestones lining the back. It’s flipped open and a phone number ready to be called is displayed on the screen.

“The hell is this?”

“Call the number. I think it might be enlightening.”

I pick up the phone. I don’t know whose phone this is, but I can guess and I don’t like it. “The fuck is going on?”

“Just make the call.”

The phone rings a few times, somebody picks up. “Tabitha?” says a voice.

“No shit,” I say.

“Who is this?”

“Mornin’ Benny. I can call you Benny now, right? Or do we have to stick with Mr. Griffin?”

“Carter? How’d you get this number? How’d you get this phone?”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll get it back to you later. Along with your girlfriend.” I close the phone to distant protests from the speaker.

“I got suspicious,” Alex says. “Had Max snag her phone and did some checking.”

I don’t say anything for a long time. Keep thinking back to my conversation with her in the hotel. We all make bad choices.

“Hey,” Alex says. “You with me?”

“Huh? Yeah. Max stole her phone? I can’t imagine he’d be all that sneaky.”

“You’d be surprised. Anyway, I think you know where this is going.”

“Yeah,” I say.

Alex punches the buzzer on the intercom. “Send her in,” he says when Max answers.

A minute later the door opens and Tabitha pokes her head in. “Hey,” she says. “What’s going on?”

“Found your phone,” I say. “And I just talked to Griffin on it.”

Her eyes go wide, bouncing between Alex and I. “Oh,” she says.

“You want to tell us what the hell is going on?” Alex says.

“I didn’t know all this was going to happen,” she says. “I didn’t even know the guy before a couple days ago.”

“Before I showed up here?” I ask.

“Yeah. Day before. He told me you’d be coming here. He offered me five thousand dollars if I could tell him when you showed up. Where you’d be staying. That sort of thing. I didn’t know he was the one that did that to you. Or that anything would happen at the warehouse. I didn’t know any of that until this morning.”

“You told him we were there?”

“Vivian called yesterday morning when you guys were leaving. I told Alex and then I called him.”

“You almost got him killed,” Alex says, anger in his voice. “You almost got Vivian killed.”

“I didn’t know that would happen,” she says. Her eyes are pleading.

“Can you give us a minute?” I ask Alex.

He looks dubious. “Okay,” he says. Tabitha shrinks back from his glare. He slams the door behind him.

She stands against the door, not looking at me, not saying anything. I don’t know what to say myself. We stay that way a good minute.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asks, her voice quiet.

“What?” The question throws me. A second later I realize it shouldn’t surprise me. “No,” I say. “God, no. I’m not going to kill you.”

“What are you going to do?”

That’s a good question. I’ve been thinking about that since Alex handed me the phone. Her words from this morning come back to me. “We all make bad choices, sometimes.” We sure do. But it doesn’t mean we have to keep making them.

Finally, I find my voice. “It’s been a long week,” I say. “And you’ve been a bright spot in it. Thank you for that.”

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m furious. But not at you. You didn’t know who the hell I was. Guy shows up with five K cash to tell him about somebody you’ve never met? No. I’m not mad at you. I’m pissed off at myself. For a lot of things.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea this would happen.”

“I know.” A thought has been nagging at me this whole conversation and I don’t want to ask the question, but I have to know, even if the answer is one I don’t want to hear.

“The other night, when you drove me back to the hotel—”

“I wanted to do that,” she says. A hint of a smile plays across her face. “I think you’re cute.”

I laugh. “You really need to raise your standards, then.” My face looks like it’s been used as a punching bag, I’m missing a tooth, my hand’s been barbequed and I reek of tequila. Yeah, I’m a hottie, all right.

“When I said I had some things to fix this morning, this was what I was talking about,” she says. “I was going to call Griffin and tell him it was off. Or, I don’t know. Lie to him, maybe. Tell him you’d left town.”

“I am leaving town,” I say.

“Oh.”

“It’s not a good idea for me to be here.”

“The fuck?” Alex says, opening the door and looking in. “What? It’s my goddamn bar, I can listen at the door if I want. What do you mean you’re leaving?”

“Look, I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole,” I say. “My being here isn’t doing anybody any favors. Things have been going to shit ever since I got here.”

“What, that’s it? You’re just packing it in?”

“Boudreau killed Lucy to get to me. Came pretty fucking close, too. I can’t bring her back, I can’t change a goddamn thing. So what the hell am I getting out of this? The fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Kill Boudreau. For real this time. Jesus, Eric. Pull your head out of your ass. You think he’s gonna stop just because you left town this time?” He looks at Tabitha for support. She shrugs.

“Got any brilliant insights on how?” I show him my bandaged hand. Point to the bruises on my face. “I’ve been getting my ass handed to me since I got back in town. I’m pretty fucking tired of it.”

“Can’t win if you don’t play,” Alex says.

“Can’t lose, either. You know what happens if I leave? Griffin’s screwed. He’s hiding behind my ass hoping Boudreau’ll come after me instead of him. Well, fuck him. Best thing I can do is leave.”

“No,” Tabitha says. “You can’t keep running. Not forever. I mean, I get it. If you have to go, go. But Alex is right. This isn’t going to stop just because you’re not here.”

Alex’s phone interrupts him before he can say anything else. He looks at it, glares at me, flips it open.

“Hey,” he says, listens for a bit. “Okay. Yeah, he’s right here. You want to talk— Oh. Okay.” Listens some more. “I’ll see if he wants to. Yeah, he’s being kind of an asshole. See you in a bit.” He hangs up.

“I’ll take a wild guess and say that’s Vivian and Ellis has woken up.”

“Yes on one. No on two. He’s still out. She’s been there all night. Wants me to pick her up. Asked if you’d come along.”

He sees my hesitation. Rolls his eyes. “Fine, at least say good-bye to her this time. Then, hell, I’ll drop you at the fucking airport, or something.”

Say good-bye. I owe her that much. Kind of missed that the last time. Another thing I owe Griffin. I hope when Boudreau eats him he makes it hurt.

“Okay.”

“Are you coming back?” Tabitha says.

Half an hour ago I’d have said no, but now. “I don’t know.”

“Fair enough,” she says. She steps over from the door, kisses me on the cheek. “I hope I see you again some time.”

“Me too,” I say. “Thanks. I mean for the other night, not, you know.”

“Selling you out?”

“Yeah, that. You might want to make yourself scarce for a bit. I doubt Griffin’s going to try anything with you. There’s no profit in it, but still.”

“I have his money and I gave him what he wanted. I think I’ll be fine.”

I nod. She gets it better than most people would. I turn to Alex. “You’re gonna have to drive. My car’s stuck in the afterlife.”

Chapter 21

“You gonna fire her?” I ask.

Alex shakes his head. “No. She didn’t know who you were. She didn’t know anything about this. How about you?”

“I’m not her boss.”

“You know what I mean. What are you going to do about her?”

I don’t know. No, I know and I just don’t want to say it. I need to leave. They can call me a coward but I’m a target and anyone standing around me is in the blast radius. If Boudreau doesn’t kill me, Griffin’s sure as hell going to try.

“Nothing,” I say. “She didn’t do anything wrong. This is all Griffin.”

Griffin. There’s something about him that’s been bugging me since last night, but I can’t put my finger on it. What was it that he said in the ambulance? Something isn’t clicking. He’d said, “Now that Boudreau knows you’re in town.” There’s something there, but my mind slides off it as we hit a pothole and my head throbs some more.

I manage to pull myself more or less together by the time we get to Harbor-UCLA. The headache’s dulled to a low throb. A couple pieces of gum and my mouth doesn’t taste like a possum took a shit in it.

I’m still hungover, but not so hungover to not notice that shit is really, really wrong when we step into the hospital.

“What?” Alex says, as I freeze at the doorway. I put up a hand to shut him up, close my eyes. Extend my senses.

“There’s nobody dead,” I say.

“They’re having a good day?”

“My kind of dead, smartass. There aren’t any anywhere in or around the hospital. This place should be crawling with them.”

“The fuck would scare ghosts away?”

I can think of a couple things, but only one of them makes any sense. “Boudreau. He’s got to be somewhere in the building, but I can’t sense him.” A thought hits me. “Where’s Vivian?”

“Fourth floor. ICU.”

We run to the elevators, almost knocking over a security guard as we pass. Get there as the lights go off. Emergency lighting kicks in, flickers, dies.

“Stairs?” Alex sees them first, grabs my sleeve, yanks me down a short hallway. Get to the fourth floor and my chest is in agony. I don’t recommend running up stairs with fucked up ribs. Hit the door, step into chaos.

The ICU looks like it’s been hit with a tornado. Equipment is toppled, gurneys on their sides. Through the glass walls of the rooms I can see doctors and nurses doing CPR on flatlining patients.

An orderly runs by with a defibrillator that suddenly starts emitting an electronic shriek. I yank Alex back into the stairwell and slam the door just as the defibrillator explodes. It goes off like a flash-bang, a loud pop. Then screaming.

The orderly’s thrashing around with pieces of plastic embedded in his face and chest, blood running into his scrubs. I push past him looking for Vivian.

“Did she say what room?”

Alex is leaning by the orderly looking like he doesn’t know what to do. Pull out chunks of glass and plastic? Apply pressure? Where? I grab Alex, haul him up. “What room?”

“But the guy—”

“Screw the guy. What room?”

“Uh, 412. Around the corner.”

I head down the hall, dodging gurneys, nurses, exploding fluorescent tubes raining glass from the ceiling. Turn the corner.

Room 412 is worse than the rest of the floor. The entire glass wall facing the hallway is gone. Pieces of tempered glass cover the floor like gravel. Somebody threw a nurse through it.

“Vivian?”

“Here,” she says next to me, sliding into view as she drops the spell hiding her.

“What happened?”

She doesn’t have to answer. Ellis steps out of the room, IV and catheter lines trailing behind him. Wild eyed, unfocused. There’s a pulse of light that I’m not sure anyone else can see and then there they are. Swirling around him are all the hospitals ghosts I should have been sensing since I walked in. And at the center of it I see Boudreau’s face flickering over Ellis’. Back and forth and back again.