CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
The climb was difficult because she’d opted not to switch her flashlight o.
The last thing she wanted was to giver herself away.
So she had to reach blindly for each rung as she ascended into the darkness.
Climbing this way, she came to the end of the ladder without warning, the last rung giving way to a flat section of passage floor.
Rachel pulled herself up and over the edge, her back scraping hard against the wall behind her as she found her footing.
In the back of her mind, she realized that she had to be close to the ninth floor by now.
She'd lost count of the floors somewhere around six, her attention split between the climb and the sound of Pruitt moving ahead of her, the rhythm of his footsteps and breathing carrying down to her through the shaft even as the distance between them seemed to hold steady.
The claustrophobia hadn't let up. If anything, it had gotten worse the higher she climbed as the passage narrowed further at this height.
Now on another platform, the ceiling pressing down close enough that she had to keep her head bowed even while crouched.
Her shoulder ached from the climb and her shirt clung to her back with sweat.
She took small, shallow breaths as she forced air into her lungs and reminded herself that the tightness in her chest was fear and not the walls themselves closing in.
Maybe it was because she was distracted by her own breathing that she never saw or heard him coming.
There was a shift in the air just before the blow landed in the darkness—just a faint displacement she registered half a second too late. She twisted instinctively, raising her arm and cutting on the flashlight.
The pipe caught her shoulder instead of her skull because of the motion of her arm.
It was a glancing blow but it still sent pain shooting down through her arm and knocked her sideways into the wall.
The flashlight fell from her hand and struck the floor of the narrow passage.
It was more than enough for her to make out Pruitt’s face.
He was in front of her, filling the narrow space almost entirely, his eyes wide and unfocused in the beam of her dropped flashlight.
He was shaking, the pipe clutched in both hands, his knuckles pale around it.
Rachel drew her gun, bringing her weapon up despite the throb in her shoulder. "Put it down. Now."
He didn't seem to hear her. He kept his grip on the pipe and she realized he’s not been able to swing; the narrow space of the passage didn’t allow for it.
Instead, he’d had to attack her with the pipe as if it were an axe, raising it over his head and bringing it down.
She figured that was why there hadn’t been a tone of power in the blow.
There simply wasn’t enough room in these passages to do much of anything.
"You don't understand what they're doing to this place," he said, his voice cracking and uneven.
"Letting themselves rot in here. Letting it happen right inside these walls.
I know every inch of this building. I know it better than anybody who's ever lived here, and I am not going to let them turn it into a waiting room for the dead. "
"Dale. Put the pipe down and we'll talk about this."
"There's nothing to talk about." His breath came fast and shallow, his whole body trembling now, the pipe twitching in his grip.
"Nobody understands what it takes to keep something like this alive.
I do. I'm the only one who's ever understood it.” He stepped closer to her, backing her nearer to the ladder she’s just come up.
“I crawl through these walls every night and I hold this whole building together with my own two hands, and they just want to lie down and rot in front of everyone like it doesn't matter what that does to this place. "
"I hear you," Rachel said, keeping her voice level even as her pulse hammered against her ribs. "I do. And I'm not going to hurt you if you put that down. We can talk this through somewhere else."
"It's too late for that," he said. And with those words, something in his face shifted. The wildness in his eyes sharpened into something closer to resolve.
He came at her again instead, swinging the pipe overhead in the cramped space with a wild, desperate motion that had nowhere near enough room to build real force.
Rachel ducked under it easily, the metal scraping along the wall above her head and showering both of them with a fine rain of dust and debris that was knocked loose from the joists.
She grabbed his wrist as he overextended, trying to pin the pipe against the wood, her boots fighting for purchase on the uneven floorboards beneath them.
And with every slight move, either a knee, elbow or the side of her head grazed against the walls of the passage.
There was no space to fight properly. Every movement scraped against wood or pressed into iron, every attempt to get clear ground met instead with a stud or a beam or the unforgiving press of Pruitt's own body in a space built for one person at a time, not two locked in a struggle.
He was stronger than she expected, his panic giving him a kind of reckless strength that had no use for technique.
Two different times, she nearly lost her footing on the uneven floorboards beneath them.
She kept her weapon up with one hand even as she fought to control his arm with the other, trying to find an angle to bring him down without firing, without turning this passage into something neither of them could walk away from.
He wrenched his arm free and the pipe caught her across the ribs, not a full swing but enough to drive the breath from her lungs in a single sharp gasp.
She staggered back against the wall, her weapon hand dropping for half a second as her body fought to pull air back in, her vision swimming at the edges from the impact.
He raised the pipe again, his arm cocked back as far as the cramped space would allow. She heard and saw the pipe strike the ceiling, not allowing him to pull back all the way.
Rachel knew she didn’t have much of a choice. She gritted her teeth and fired, aiming low for his left knee.
The shot was deafening in the enclosed space—a flat, cracking roar that seemed to fill the entire passage at once and ring on long after the sound should have faded.
Pruitt screamed and buckled, his leg giving out beneath him as the round caught him in the knee.
He staggered backward, off balance, his arms flailing for something to grab onto.
He found nothing but air where the ladder shaft opened up behind him.
He went over the edge.
Wit her ears still ringing, Rachel lunged forward in time to see him catch a rung a few feet down.
His head had already struck the wall of the vertical passage, knocking a hole in the wood; a small stream of light from the apartment beyond it radiated out.
His body slammed hard against the iron, one hand gripping desperately while his wounded leg dangled useless beneath him.
For a second it looked like he might hold on, his fingers white around the rung, his whole body swaying against the shaft wall.
Then his grip slipped and he fell the rest of the way.
His eyes locked with Rachel in the gloom, his body striking the rungs twice more on the way down before dropping out of the reach of her light entirely.
She heard the impact below her, a heavy, final sound that carried up through the shaft. It seemed to vibrate through the iron under her hands. Then there was nothing. n. No cry, no scrape of movement, just the building's low, constant hum settling back into the silence he'd left behind.
Rachel knelt at the edge of the opening, gasping, her ribs aching with every breath.
Her shoulder throbbed where the first blow had caught her.
She forced herself to focus, pulling her flashlight back up from where it had fallen and angled the beam straight down into the shaft as her hand trembled slightly around it.
It took a moment for the light to find him, the beam swallowed by darkness for several feet before it caught the pale shape of his body at the bottom.
He'd landed wrong, his legs twisted at an angle that made her stomach turn even from this distance, his head was bent against the passage floor in a way that no conscious person's would ever rest. She couldn't tell if it was the fifth floor or the sixth from up here; the shaft was too dark and the angle too steep to be certain.
All she knew for sure was that he wasn't moving.
Rachel stayed where she was for a moment, her hand braced against the iron rung beside her. She had no doubt that Novak (and so many others) had heard the gunshot. She took out her phone and texted him so he wouldn’t worry.
Pruitt down. I’m okay. See you in a bit.
She sent it as her breath came hard and uneven in the close, dusty air. She looked down once ore into the beam of her flashlight, still fixed on the still shape far below.