Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense (36 page)

“
Tell me where she is.
”

“Do you realize this is the end of the suffering? That everything Preacherman and his whore did to me, it all ends here?”

“Yes, I understand,” Jonas lied. He understood nothing. “Now please just tell me.”

The room grew suddenly quiet. Through the silence, Rudiger sucked in a long, deep breath.

“This is salvation, and you are part of it. God loves you for it.” He licked his lips. Tongue like a serpent. “
I
love you for it. Your soul will be saved.”

Jonas looked at him, and in the light and through the sweat and the blood, Jonas had never in his life seen a man so in belief of what he was saying. Rudiger was a homicidal sociopath, but Jonas knew he truly believed in what he was saying.

Jonas spoke.

“Let me tell you something, Rudiger. If Anne dies, I’m going to come back and light your body on fire. Hopefully you’ll still be alive so you can feel the pain of that. But even if you’re not, you won’t get what you want, and you’ll have died for nothing. You’ll be a goddamned chunk of lifeless, smoldering cinder. Now tell me where the fuck she is.”

RUDIGER WATCHES
the man who watches him. Eye contact is brief, and then Jonas turns and runs from the hanger. When the door opens, bright sunlight floods in like water, and Rudiger wonders what heaven looks like.

He has told Jonas where to find Anne. He no longer has use for him, knowing Jonas would never have come back to complete the ritual of the burial once Rudiger is dead. No matter. There is no need for a cave burial, Rudiger knows, not with him. He may be on the cross for hours or for days, but on the third day the inevitable will happen, no matter where his body is.

The room is silent like a womb. Sidams and Stages are done, ain’t no confusion about that. They didn’t last long, but shock will do that. Rudiger doesn’t feel shock, but he does feel the pain. Pain like never before. Pain like glory.

He shifts his feet and sucks in a breath. Feet struggle to stay balanced on the small ledge. When they buckle, he will fall. When he falls, his arms will tear and his chest will threaten to rip open. He won’t be able to breathe, and then that’ll be that. He’s alive as long as his legs can hold.

He’s been near death before. So many times. But never where he had time to contemplate it. Before he had a chance to live. Now he only has the chance to die.

His arms are on fire. The slightest movement sears them further. But the sweat on his face, running down and stinging his eyes, somehow that’s worse than anything else. Feels like a thousand flies crawling on his forehead.

Rudiger bows his head, looks at the floor. Sees the blood, spread out like a canyon river on the floor. Sees the hole where the base of the cross disappears.

“I thirst,” Rudiger says. This is true, but it’s not the reason he says it.

The silence grows louder.

He waits. Waits for something that he should feel. Something he should hear. Something. Anything. Minutes pass, but they could be days. His body shakes, just a quiver. Rudiger is getting cold.

His legs grow weak. Shifts his weight again. He can feel his muscles starting to cramp. Could spasm at any moment.

A small doubt pierces him. It’s tiny at first. A single bacteria, barely noticeable. But it starts to multiply. And again. Larger it grows. The doubt starts to take root.

He knows the source. Preacherman is the source, because Preacherman is the root of every dirty thing that has ever touched Rudiger. And now he’s back.

Rudiger hears him laugh now.

He sees his yellow, rotting teeth. Smells his breath. Smells like a dead animal, left in the sun.

Can’t believe you really did it. Didn’t think you were so goddamn stupid.

Rudiger shuts his eyes, but in the dark is where Preacherman shines the brightest. He opens his eyes and Preacherman fades, but only a little.

Rudiger speaks. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” They are the final words. The words will save him. He feels his left leg buckling.

Boy, you are a fucking idiot. You let me do it, didn’t ya? You killed me, and now you let me kill you. Pretty damn impressive, me being able to kill you from the grave. But here you are. Time to jump, boy. Jump and feel the pain.

More laughter. Rudiger tries to fill his ears with something, anything. But nothing drowns out the laughing. It won’t stop.

“You didn’t kill me,” he says, knowing these are not the words to be said on the cross. But he has to say them. He has to convince Preacherman he is wrong.

The laughing stops. Rudiger feels hot breath in his ear.

Go on, boy. Keep quoting scripture. Keep thinking you’re the fucking Messiah. Let yourself go. Let’s see if the ground splits open and the earth shakes when you die. Go ahead.

“I’m the One,” Rudiger says. His left leg bends and his right arm tears. Pain pulses though him like electricity.

Ain’t no One, boy. Never was and never will be. Hell, I’m a preacher and even I don’t believe in that shit. You just hopin’ for hope, and look what it’s done for you. You just minutes from nothingness, boy. Minutes from eternal nothingness. And in that nothingness, I get to fuck you all over again.

“It’s not true,” Rudiger says. He says it and no one hears.
True and you know it. You’re just a monster like me, boy. You don’t kill for a reason. You kill because it’s just what you do. It’s your nature. You are the scorpion on the back of the frog. You just

can’t help yourself, but you sure try to justify it, don’t you?

“No. No. I was told to do what I did. I was commanded.”

Commanded by who? Me and Jesus? Boy, if you weren’t so fuckin’ crazy you might just step back and see how crazy you are.

It’s not true, Rudiger thinks. It’s not true. I have a purpose. A reason to be here, on this cross.
I am the One. I am the resurrection
.

Sweat drips like rain.

His legs cramp. He can’t hold much longer.

You killed me boy. And now you die. I’ve been waiting years for this. Welcome to hell.

Rudiger disappears inside himself. When he returns, he opens his eyes and stares out at the hanger walls. The light over the fat man’s cross illuminates the articles he’s put up. He sees the interview with his daddy, the one that triggered his memory. He tries to recall it. That time on the beach. In the water. But now it doesn’t feel like the way it did. Did it even happen at all? He looks at the words in the titles, the words in large bold print. He tries to rearrange the letters in his mind, but nothing happens. The words are meaningless. Gibberish.

The doubt explodes in his mind.

Preacherman laughs but says nothing more. The laughing continues and Rudiger suspects it probably will until he is dead.

Rudiger finds strength in his legs and pushes himself upright.

He looks up at his left wrist and to the spike coming from within it. He steels himself and takes a deep breath. He pushes his arm outward, so the bone in his wrist pushes against the spike.

He nearly faints from the pain. But the spike moves. Just a bit.

JONAS DROVE
as fast as the U-Haul van and the laws of physics allowed. The van had been parked outside the hanger, keys still in the ignition. Jonas had no idea where the hell he was, but he could see the mountains in the distance, and that meant west.

The van tore down the dirt road, kicking up a cloud of dust and flying rocks in its wake. Jonas frantically searched for a radio, anything to call to anyone, but there was nothing. It was up to him. He had to get back to the hotel.

Rudiger had said Anne was in the cargo area of an identical U-Haul on the fourth level of the hotel parking garage.

Jonas’s hands were covered in Rudiger’s blood. He tried to erase the image of what he’d just done to the man from his mind, but he knew that image would be part of him forever, tattooed on his brain.

There. Downtown Denver. The buildings rose in the distance. That was where he had to go.

Jonas finally reached an asphalt road, and when his tires made contact he pressed down on the gas pedal. The van lurched and screamed st1o1ight ahead.

TWO COP
cars—sirens blaring, lights flashing—tailed Jonas as he sped to the hotel. They weren’t escorting him. They were chasing him.

Jonas tried to remain calm. Think this through, he told himself. Don’t get killed trying to save Anne. You’re driving the same van Rudiger had, and you’re driving it full speed toward the hotel. For all you know, they think you’re him, going to back to blow up the building. The back of the van could be loaded with a fertilizer bomb.

Stop short of the Hyatt. There will be cops waiting at the hotel. If you try to drive down into the parking garage, they will start shooting. Guaranteed.

Jonas wove around two cars on the one-way street in downtown Denver. He had spent at least fifteen minutes getting here from the airplane hangar, but it had felt like years. And as frantic as he’d been, he had to pay attention to where he’d come from. Sidams could still be alive, and he would have to lead a medical team back to the hangar. As soon as Anne was freed.

Please God let her still be alive.

Jonas saw the hotel ahead. There was a swarm of emergency vehicles out front, their lights dancing all together.

Jonas swerved the van to the side, narrowly missing smashing into a Lexus. Horns blared around him. Jonas pulled up onto the sidewalk and pedestrians leapt out of the way.

Jonas stopped the van and got out.

Someone screamed from behind him. Cursing.

The police cars skidded to a stop and the first cop to get out immediately drew his gun. The man was huge.

Jonas raised his hands.

“Get on the ground! Now!”

“There’s a woman in the hotel! She’s dying!”

“Get on the fucking ground!
Now!
”

Jonas went to his knees and laced his fingers around the back of his head. He saw the cop from the second car get out and flank Jonas, gun aimed at his chest, unwavering, the whole time.

“Please! Listen to me. You have to radio Agent Difranco with the FBI. I’m Jonas Osbourne, and I’m with her. There’s a woman in a van just like this one on the fourth—”

The knee hit him on the back and Jonas collapsed face first onto the ground. He felt his arms being yanked down and the cold metal of handcuffs biting against his wrists.

TEN MINUTES
.

The longest ten minutes of his life.

Sitting in the back of the squad car, the handcuffs still on. No one to talk to.

Jonas had told any officer who would listen who he was and to call Difranco, but there was so much noise and so much movement he had no idea if anyone bothered to listen. Burly Cop—the one who had cuffed and shoved him into the back of the squad car—stood in a small group of fellow officers and conferred while Jonas waited.

The rock-hard backseat smelled like hot plastic with a faint tinge of vomit. Droplets of sweat ran down Jonas’s face, tormenting him, but he could not wipe them away.

He thought of Anne.

Dying.

But was she really? Was she really running out of air?

He thought back to the brief night-vision video he’d seen of her on Rudiger’s phone. She was in the dark, and the shot was so close it suggested she was in a tight, confined space. Rudiger said she was in the back of a van, but she must be in some kind of container in the van. A chamber? And how much air did she have?

Rage swelled within Jonas. The minutes he was spending in the back of the squad car may be the exact same minutes Anne had left of air. The cops were doing their job—keeping the suspect away from the hotel and the delegates. But they weren’t listening. Goddamnit,
they weren’t listening
.

He shouted through the glass. Burly Cop turned his head, just enough to say,
Yeah, bitch, I heard ya. I’m just not going to do anything about it.
Then he turned away.

Jonas stared at the car window. The thought of smashing his head into it suddenly seemed like a brilliant idea. He wouldn’t break the window, and even if he did, he’d end up hurting himself. But it would force them to pay attention. They would come over.

More than anything else in the world, Jonas, right now, needed someone to pay attention to him.

Anne was dying, and no one would listen.

Electricity seemed to surge through his body as he leaned away from the door. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. He was going to use momentum from his body and then use the side of his head as the primary impact point. He hoped he would only have to do it a couple of times, but he would do it as long as it took for them to come over. He only hoped that he wouldn’t knock himself unconscious in the process.

He steadied himself. For a moment, he thought of himself standing in the Beltway, watching the car about to smash into him. Then he thought of his father, who wanted nothing more than to preserve his own mind, and here Jonas was about to self-inflict a concussion.