Falling Awake(79)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

First things first, he thought, moving past an old bumper car platform. Amelia had probably set a guard, either Scargill or another one of her behavior modification program success stories. Whoever he was, he would be somewhere near the entrance to the park.

yolland heard the footsteps on the pavement behind the ticket booth. A jolt of alarm went through him. Automatically, he reached for the nearest fuse. Then he realized that whoever he was, the guy was approaching openly from the interior of the park.

Scargill. The doc had sent her doped-up pal to check on him. Rage replaced alarm. Didn’t she know he was a professional? He didn’t need anyone checking up on him, especially not some dope fiend.

He leaned out of the booth.

“Tell the doc I said for you to take care of your job and I’ll take care of mine—” He stopped when he realized he could not see Scargill in the heavy fog. “Where are you?”

He thought he heard a slight sound behind him but by the time it registered it was too late.

There was searing pain at the back of his head and then he plummeted into a bottomless pit of night.

ellis left the guard bound and gagged inside the ticket booth. He had twenty minutes left. He wondered if Amelia would call again. If she did, he would not be able to risk answering the phone because she or Scargill might be close enough to hear him talking and realize he was inside the park.

He made his way along the back of a row of empty arcade and concession booths, listening intently for the telltale murmur of voices. He knew Isabel. If they hadn’t gagged her, she would be handing out plenty of free advice to Scargill or Amelia.

But he did not hear her as he moved among the rows of shuttered arcades and stands. That silence scared him more than anything else that had happened so far.

He turned a corner at the end of a line of food stalls and stopped suddenly when he realized the rear door of one of the booths was partially open, sagging on its hinges. He watched for a moment and thought he saw a shifting in the shadows inside.

Someone was in the booth.

He had fifteen minutes left when he switched on the phone in the pocket of his windbreaker and kicked open the sagging door at the back of the stand.

“Freeze, Scargill.”

Scargill had his back to him, keeping watch at the front of the stand. He jerked at the sound of Ellis’s voice and then went very still.

Ellis stepped into the booth and took in the interior in one quick glance. Despair knifed through him. His worst nightmare had just come true. Scargill was alone. There was no sign of Isabel.

“So you managed to pull off one of your tricks after all,” Scargill said in a dull, flat tone. “Why am I not surprised? But it doesn’t matter. You lose, pal.”

“Put the gun down and move away from it.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Scargill obeyed.

When the gun clattered loudly on the counter Ellis realized that Scargill was shaking badly.

“Where is she?” Ellis asked. He was in a place that was so cold and so impossibly bleak nothing else mattered. He knew he could kill without any hesitation at all from this realm. He wanted to kill.

Something of what he was feeling must have showed on his face because Scargill looked both ill and scared. He had to try twice before he could speak.

“Hey, hey, take it easy, Cutler.”

Ellis raised the pistol two inches. “Where is she?”

“Right here,” Amelia said.

She appeared outside the booth, standing on the other side of the counter. Ellis realized she must have been hiding in the stand across the way. She had Isabel. Amelia gripped her forearm in one hand. With the other she pointed a pistol at Isabel’s head.

“I don’t know how you did it, Cutler. According to the data from the GPS indicator, you’re still ten miles away. But when I couldn’t raise Yolland a few minutes ago, I realized you were probably inside the park. You always were unpredictable.”

Ellis allowed himself to breathe again. Isabel was still alive. Her hands were bound behind her back but she looked amazingly calm and composed and she was still alive.

“Hello, Ellis,” she said quietly. “I knew you’d get here in time.”

“Shut up,” Amelia ordered. She kept the pistol aimed at Isabel’s temple while she smiled ferociously at Ellis. “Drop the gun.”

“Better do as she says,” Scargill said. With a trembling hand, he picked up the pistol he had placed on the counter and pointed it at Ellis.

Ellis looked at Amelia. “You’re going to kill Isabel anyway, aren’t you?” He shrugged. “I might as well take you out at the same time.”

Amelia looked baffled by that logic. “Vincent will shoot you dead before you can make a move.”

“No he won’t,” Isabel said quietly, simply, her eyes never leaving Ellis’s face.

Amelia laughed. “Of course he will. He understands that he needs me, don’t you, Vincent? I’m the only one who can give you the right dose of the CZ-149.”

“Scargill is fast,” Ellis said. “He can probably take me out. But you will be dead before that happens so it won’t make much difference to you. Your only hope is to put down the gun.”

Scargill gave a raw, weary, utterly humorless laugh. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a three-way standoff.”

“Looks like,” Ellis agreed. He raised his voice slightly. “This would be a very good time.”

“No.” Amelia took a step back. Her face worked with fury as she struggled to come up with a way to get out of the impasse. She yanked Isabel with her. “No, you’re not going to do this to me, Cutler. I’m not going to let you win, not after all I’ve gone through to get this far. I’m leaving now and I’m taking Isabel with me. Don’t move. Do you hear me? Don’t move or she dies.”

Amelia-Maureen was fraying fast around the edges, Ellis thought.

Clank, clank, clank.

The muffled rumble of a heavy, rusty chain lift shuddered across the park. Simultaneously a spiraling maze of small yellow and white lights lit up the foggy twilight. The majority of the bulbs that festooned the old roller coaster had broken or burned out long ago but there were enough left to illuminate the carcass of the old thrill ride in a strange, ghostly glow.

“What?” Amelia’s voice was shrill with rage and bewilderment. Clearly unnerved, she jerked her head around to stare over her shoulder at the strange apparition that had appeared. For an instant she seemed confused and distracted by the clanking noise and the otherworldly light.