The Dirty Secrets Club (41 page)

They stared at the monkey, petrified. Slowly Jo looked over her shoulder.

Pray was standing on the sidewalk fifty feet behind them.

J
o pushed Sophie behind her and began backing up. Pray stared at

them.

She knew it was Pray even though he was little more than a darkened form on the sidewalk ahead. The height, the gaunt figure, the slack angle of his shoulders. How had he found her? He had to have been riding with Skunk. They had followed her from her house. He must have gotten out of the Cadillac before Skunk sideswiped her. He'd been trailing them, silently and on foot, ever since.

He walked toward them.

Behind her, the voice synthesizer screeched. It sounded like Mr. Peebles was contacting some egregious monkey mother ship. Jo walked backward.

She whispered, "We have to get out of sight. Have to hide. Lose him."

Sophie walked raggedly. Jo had the feeling that if she let go, the little girl might just drop to the concrete. She estimated their chances.

If she let go of Sophie and ran out into the street, would Pray follow her? Or would he go after Sophie instead?

They backed past the corner of a Victorian building. She saw a pathway, running between it and the construction site. It dimmed into a collapsing darkness only five feet from her.

She whispered, "Fast."

Shoving Sophie ahead of her, she darted into the pathway. It was narrow and overgrown with weeds. Her hip and knee were throb-

bing. Sophie ran, bless her heart, what a kid. Jo pummeled behind her, hands out, feeling blind. She heard feet running behind her. She looked back and saw a shadow on the street.

She heard a scuffle, and the monkey squealing.

She kept running.

Sophie said, in a terrified little whisper, "We can hide in there. Please."

Barely able to see, Jo said, "Where?"

Without explaining, Sophie ducked through a break in the chain-link fence that guarded the construction site.

"Come on, hide. Jo, we should hide. Come in here."

"Sophie, no—"

The girl disappeared into the dark.

Pray appeared at the head of the path. There was the slightest edge of light behind him, blue-gray rather than black, and she could see him silhouetted. He was feeling his way, hands outstretched, searching for them.

For a moment Jo watched him come. He was about fifty yards away. She didn't think he had seen Sophie duck through the fence. She didn't think he could have seen it, that he even suspected it, or that he would be able to spot her in the tar darkness beyond the chain link.

Jo could duck in as well, but at this point even if Pray didn't see her do it, he would hear her, and he'd follow. She could turn and keep running down the weed-strewn path to the street at the far end. But doing that would mean leaving Sophie alone in a hazardous area. Dammit. Damn everything to hell.

Her breath was coming faster and faster.

She could draw Pray away from the little girl. And maybe she could stop him. But if he caught her, Sophie would be completely on her own. She didn't know where the police station was. The streets were dangerous. The building site was dangerous.

She felt like she couldn't breathe.

Pray kept coming.

She couldn't duck through the fence without him seeing it. And she couldn't let him know that's where Sophie was. She tried to fold herself into the shadows as she backed toward the far end of the path.

She saw him come past the opening in the fence.

He was waiting for her to run out the far end of the path onto the street. He couldn't see her right now. But if she stayed where she was, he would run right the hell into her.

There was a clatter from the other side of the fence, inside the construction site. Metal rods crashing, wood splintering, a whole cascade of noise. It sounded as though something had collapsed. It sounded like an avalanche.

And mixed up in the noise was a little girl crying out.

Her heart seized. Pray spun toward the noise. He was between her and the hole in the fence.

Shadowy movement was all she could see on the path in front of her. From the construction site, someplace deep in the half-torn building, she heard a fearful moaning.

The electronic voice spoke. "Give me the information and I'll let you go find her."

He'd grabbed the voice synthesizer back from Mr. Peebles. Could he see her? Was he only guessing that she was still on the path?

"The names. Give them to me. If you don't, I'll take them from you, kill you, and leave her to die."

She didn't move.

"Fine."

He ran at her.

Jo went up.

She grabbed the fence and climbed. Six feet off the ground, she spun and grabbed the rain gutter of the apartment building on the other side of the skinny sidewalk. Please God, let it hold.

The gutter was cold and covered with rusting paint. She stuck to it like tape and inched up it. Her leg hurt like hell.

Pray stopped beneath her, breathing heavily. Jo climbed another three feet, feeling the gutter creak on old brackets. She looked over the top of the fence.
Dynamic,
she told herself.

With a huge breath, she pushed off and sailed over the top of the fence into the construction site.

She landed hard on the dirt, crashing to all fours. The pain in her leg fired off like a Roman candle, so sharp she almost heard it hiss into the sky. Spots flashed in her eyes. She grit her teeth and clambered to her feet.

The building loomed in front of her like an empty skull, windows dark, doorway a gaping mouth. Inside it, the front hall was a throat. Her skin constricted. She couldn't see a thing inside it.

But she could hear Sophie crying. The sound was coming from deep in the building.

Outside the chain-link fence, Pray's mechanical voice rang out.
"Bitch."

Jo ran up the front steps and through the door of the building. The darkness was like a velvet curtain. There was sawdust and debris beneath her feet. She kicked something, a nail or bolt, and it bounced into the wall with a bright
ting.

Outside she heard the fence rattle. Pray was coming.

The names, the names . .
. He and Skunk were fixated on the idea that she'd obtained the names of the people he was hunting. They thought she now had them.

The bridge. Skunk with his hand out—

The suicide note.

Was that what they wanted? Did they think Southern's note contained Pray's hit list?

She felt her way along the wall. She had the smothering feeling that Pray thought she was the final target in their hunt.

Sophie's crying was closer now. Jo knew she had to feel trapped, completely cut off—and she couldn't call out to her without drawing Pray's attention. Her jaw ached from clenching.

Her hands were sweating. She wiped them on her jeans. With every heartbeat, her vision spiked. In the dark, it created the optical illusion that the hallway was throbbing. That it was undulating, getting ready to swallow her. She looked up. The ceiling was solid. But this building was half torn down, and the scaffolding along the side had collapsed in the quake.

Sophie, what have you done?

She reached a doorway and ran her hand along the edge. The crying was stronger on the other side of the wall. She slipped around the corner and slid her feet along the baseboards. Saw shadows, faint moonlight from a dust-ridden window.

The crying was coming from below her.

She inched herself forward in the dark. Her foot found a broken floorboard.

Sophie was in a cellar. Jo saw that the floor was just gone. There was a hole in the room—had the girl fallen through it?

She heard footsteps in the front hallway. Pray was in the building. She stepped back against the wall, heard him pass by on the other side.

Her vision continued pulsing. It made the building seem to breathe. And a breathing thing could swallow you.

She clenched her hands. No, don't do this, Beckett. Not now.

She dropped to her knees and inched forward to the edge of the hole.

"Sophie," she whispered. "Don't say anything. I'm here."

There was a sharp break in the crying. Please, don't shout my name. Don't give me away. . . .

"Don't talk," Jo said. "You can keep crying. Don't let him know I'm here." She wiped sweat from her eyes. "I'm going to get you out."

She stared down into empty space with no idea how she was going to do that.

She focused her eyes, tried to focus her mind on the darkness below, and could see only a maw, ready to swallow her. She was not going to find a ladder. She wasn't going to levitate Sophie out of the depths. If Sopie was in a basement, that meant there were stairs. If she went down, she should be able to get back up.

She hoped.

Slowly, as silently as she could, she lay flat, scooted parallel to the hole in the floor and edged herself over. She swung her legs down into open space, then hung from her hands. She couldn't tell how far down the floor was, or whether anything was down there that she might land on.

"Sophie," she hissed, "can you see me? Just cry."

Sophie cried.

"Can I drop okay?"

Sophie cried.

Jo figured three to five feet—she hoped. This was the leap of faith. She let go.

The fall carried her down, and she hit the floor. She crumpled and rolled. Held still for a second, trying to restore silence. Her leg was screaming. Slowly she got to her feet.

"Sophie?"

She followed the sounds of crying, crouching low, hands out. She found a doorway with boards nailed over it in an X. The crying was coming from the other side. She crawled under and found herself in a stone-floored room that felt cold and smelled damp.

"Jo...."

Jo felt her way forward. She heard snuffling and saw a faint shadow. She found her. Sophie buried her head in Jo's chest, grabbed her shirt, and gulped a loud, hard sob.

Jo held on, put her mouth close to Sophie's ear, and whispered, "You're very brave. You're doing great."

In tiny jerking bursts, Sophie whispered, "I fell down a slide. I didn't mean to come in. I know a building like this is dangerous."

Yeah, Jo bet Gabe would have lectured his kid on safety. But a slide? She looked around the inky room. The light, what few tendrils there were, was coming from above her, high on the wall.

This was a coal hold. It was an old Victorian building. Sophie had fallen down the coal chute.

"I went around the building to hide, and there was all this stuff, a big board, and I wanted to stay close to the wall, and I walked on the board and it wasn't where it was supposed to be and I fell down the slide and ..."

"Bad luck. I'm not mad. Your dad won't be mad."

She felt Sophie hold on for a second longer, and exhale, shoulders softening.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" Jo said.

"I got cut. It really really hurts."

"Where?"

"My arm."

Jo felt Sophie's sleeve. The fabric was torn, but it had been torn when they made her costume. However, it was wet, and it hadn't been wet before. When Jo touched it, Sophie recoiled.

Feeling as gently as she could, Jo parsed out the dimensions of the cut. It was about five inches long, a ragged slice in Sophie's arm. It was bleeding profusely. It could have been sliced open by a shard of metal or a rusty nail.

She kept her breathing even. She needed to see it. She was going to have to take a chance.

The phone system was locked in a spasm, but her cell wasn't useless. She could use the display as a light. It might alert Pray to their location as well, but so would fumbling blindly around the basement. And with the light, she could see what they might use for weapons, or tools. And she could see how badly Sophie was cut.

She got the phone and lit the display.

She saw Sophie huddled on the floor in a pile of debris, covered in dust, biting her lip, looking very pale. Her eyes were liquid in the blue light of the display.

She looked at Sophie's arm and didn't like what she saw. The cut was long, deep, and dirty. Behind Sophie she saw a broken two-by-four with a bloody nail protruding from it.

Cupping her hand to control the glow from the display, she swung the phone around the room. They were in a coal cellar, all right, one that had seen a lot of construction debris come down the coal chute just like Sophie did. She shut off the light.

She pulled off her shirt, bit into the hem, and tore a strip off. As quietly as she could, she made a pressure bandage. She had no idea whether it was all Sophie needed, or just a patch on a threatening injury.

Holding still, she listened. She couldn't hear Pray, but she didn't think he had left the building. She listened harder. She heard creaking upstairs.

"Be right back."