Chapter 36
NORA
The empty bumper car completes another slow circle while the stalker waits for me to climb into the blue one.
Its vinyl seat has split down the middle. Rust surrounds the steering column. Above it, the metal grid spits a brief spray of sparks that vanish before reaching the floor.
I ask whether he restored this one.
He says the motor was never the problem. The owners stopped maintaining the ceiling.
He presses one of the black buttons on the remote clipped beside his gun. The blue car lurches into the rail.
I grip the blanket at my throat. "Very reassuring."
He assures me it will behave differently once my weight changes the contact.
He says this as if every concern I could have should disappear beneath his superior understanding of ruined amusement rides.
The control station remains behind him near the carousel. From here, I can see the upper halves of three monitors over the plywood wall. The main road feed is almost entirely white. Another shows a dark corridor crossed by red points that brighten every few seconds.
The distance between him and the switch box is twenty feet.
It might as well be two.
I tell him I need water first.
He smiles, pleased that I have asked him for something and then reminds me about the glass on the table.
"You poured it before I saw the bottle. After the smoke, I can't risk making my stomach worse inside a moving car."
His smile fades.
I make my mouth soften before the refusal becomes accusation. "I spent half the night coughing. If my stomach turns while I'm in there, neither of us will enjoy what you planned."
He insists he did not put anything in it.
"Then an unopened bottle should be easy."
He studies me while the empty car passes. Each faulty wheel bearing rises, catches, then drops away.
"There are bottles in the office," he says.
"Good. We can get one later." I say later to delay him without promising that I will ever agree.
He looks toward the dark hallway past the control station and returns his attention to me before taking a step toward it.
"After the ride," he decides.
"Tell me what the real date was supposed to be."
His attention returns at once. The question makes my skin crawl, but I let curiosity live on my face.
He planned drinks, dinner, and a drive home. He remembers the gimlet I mentioned in my profile.
"I made those for Grandma."
Her bound figure pushes behind my eyes. I force myself to ask how he intended to drive me home when I never gave him my address.
"I knew it," he says.
His admission that he knew my address tightens the nausea under my ribs.
He researched the woman chosen to make his surveillance table look innocent, then treated everything he learned as intimacy.
When I ask about the false photograph, he says he changed only the face.
The rest was close enough. He would have offered his real name after I trusted him.
"So never."
"You trusted Konstantin in four days. He took what should have been mine."
"I was never an appointment you could lose."
His thumb shifts toward the red button. I redirect his attention to the park before disagreement becomes ignition.
"This place was wasted on people who never understood it," he says, lifting the remote. "I know how it all works."
He knows how to enter and make dead machinery move. He has confused both talents with the ability to make the place his.
The carousel music restarts. Five notes climb through the speakers before the sixth collapses.
Somewhere behind the concrete operator station, metal touches metal once.
The sound is too small to compete with the ride. The stalker does not turn.
My eyes continue across him to the blue car as though nothing happened.
The yellow service door stands behind the operator station. I noticed it when the pavilion lights came on. Its lower edge is hidden by shadow, though the latch now points down instead of sideways, one altered angle in a room where I have been memorizing everything.
Someone is on the other side.
The building could be shifting under snow. One of his men could be returning. Konstantin could be thirty-eight miles away.
I have no proof.
I also have no reason to waste a possibility.
The sound does not repeat.
An old building rarely grants one clean noise. It groans, sheds dust, lets pipes knock until the source becomes obvious. This was a latch settling with care.
I watch the stalker's face for any sign that he expected it. His attention remains on me. No radio speaks beneath his coat. No footsteps answer from the corridor.
If one of his people waits behind the door, I can't improve my position by standing beside the gate. If security waits there, blocking their view with my body could cost the only opening they have.
The operator station offers the nearest hard cover. The stalker offers one reliable weakness.
He loves being asked to explain himself.
"Show me how it works," I say.
He gestures to the blue car. "Get in."
"That one looks like a shoe."
"It's the safest."
"Then you ride it."
I step through the gate before he can argue. The floor vibrates under my boots. A live car passes several feet away, moving in a stiff curve with no driver.
He reaches for my arm.
I turn far enough that his hand closes on the edge of the blanket instead. "You wanted a date. Try asking."
His fingers remain in the wool while the empty car completes half a turn.
"Choose a car," he says.
The red one sits near the center of the floor beside a painted divider. It has a wider seat, though the rubber bumper has peeled away from one side.
I choose the red car.
"Its contact sticks."
"You said you restored four, so show me."
Pride accomplishes what force has not. He releases the blanket, steps through the gate, then crosses the open floor toward the red car.
Every yard carries him farther from the switch box.
I move along the rail in the same direction, keeping the operator station between the yellow door and his line of sight. My steps remain slow. A woman indulging a strange performance does not run.
His remote activates another car. It jerks from the corner, clipping the red one before he reaches it.
He swears at the machine.
A disobedient bumper car could almost be funny if the red button beside his thumb did not lead to fuel.
"It seems to have opinions," I tell him.
"The steering rod is misaligned."
"Of course it is."
He bends over the red car. The remote goes into his coat pocket so he can wrench the wheel with both hands.
Behind the operator station, the service door opens the width of a finger.
Darkness fills the gap. A gloved hand appears low against the frame and then disappears.
My pulse strikes high in my throat.
Someone has entered.
I keep my gaze on the stalker. Three steps separate me from the operator station, whose concrete wall reaches above my waist. The fallen metal door can offer nothing. The service passage behind it may hold whoever opened the latch.
The stalker straightens. "Try it now."
"You can go first."
"Why are you making this difficult?"
His voice carries a change that leaves no room for another joke.
"I'm not getting into a broken car while you're holding the controls." I let some of my fear show. Hiding all of it would look stranger. "You brought me here against my will. You know I don't trust you."
"You trusted the profile."
"The profile didn't have a gun."
His hand moves toward his coat.
The service door opens another inch.
I can't see a face. I can't know whether the person behind it has a safe shot. The stalker stands in the open beside the red car, and I remain too close to his reach.
I need him occupied for one more minute. "You said Konstantin stole me," I tell him. "Explain how."
His hand stops. He begins rebuilding the same case from my profile answers, the green dress he asked me to wear, and the compassionate message I sent after a shooting. Each fact pleases him more than my presence does.
I cough and take one step toward the concrete station while he speaks. "And after you drove me home?"
"I would have walked you inside."
"Even if I said no?"
His hesitation tells me he would have entered the room even if I refused.
The yellow door shifts wider behind me. A shape moves through low shadow.
One chance is all I have.
I want to hear a familiar voice tell me where to move, but nobody speaks and the stalker's gun remains raised.
Waiting carries its own decision. The stalker is close enough to seize me if the door opens. My body could block whoever is entering. The concrete wall is three steps away.
Three steps.
Three steps can place concrete between my body and his gun. They can also expose me before whoever waits behind the door is ready.
I put a hand against the operator station as if dizziness has caught me, letting my knees soften while every muscle above them prepares to run. "I need to sit down."
The claim pulls him away from the red car.
"Come here. The floor isn't moving."
"Then stop the cars if you're so sure."
He looks at the remote. Black buttons, red button, pistol under his jacket. Too many tools have trained him to believe every moment will wait for his selection.
His thumb presses black.
The moving cars slow while the waltz continues.
A floorboard cracks somewhere beyond the service door.
His head turns.
I move.
My left shoulder strikes the corner of the operator station as I get behind it. Pain travels down my arm, though I keep going until concrete fills the space between us.
I flatten myself near the floor. A hand-wide service gap beneath the station gives me a narrow strip of the room, enough to see boots, coat hems, and the weapons carried low in human hands. At his height, the concrete blocks every part of me.
"Nora." He crosses the floor at a run.
The yellow door swings inward. A man in dark winter gear enters low, gun raised away from the fuel line. Another follows.
The stalker reaches the rail. Through the gap, I see his left hand close on empty air where my blanket had been. His right dives inside his jacket.
He can come after me.
He can aim at the men entering.
He can press the red button.
For half a second, he tries to do all three.
The remote catches in his coat. His pistol clears first. He turns toward the service door, leaving me hidden behind the concrete wall.
His pistol rises toward the men entering. Through the gap, I see only his profile and the gun.