Chapter Twenty-Five
So here he is, in this tiny storage room with the gray metal shelving and brown walls and thirty-gallon-drum Tic Tacs, and the sound of Lamonte’s men in the area beyond the door.
He’s patting Brittany on the shoulder—this girl whose missing baby teeth are in a small box in Nomi’s refrigerator—and telling the most appalling lies about how there’s no need to worry, that he has a plan, when the reality is that there’s no plan, and he and Brittany are both most probably going to die in painful, creatively horrible ways thought up by losers like Gino Hart and Claude Ameche, and there’s very little they can do about it . . .
I am a fraud. I am a fraud and a serial murderer, and I lie to children.
Simon rubs at his temple like he can rub guilt away, rub his headache away, make his vision focus and stop wobbling.
Around them, the storm beats against the brick of the warehouse.
Brittany is looking up at him, her big eyes wide, short braids trembling, her small hands clutched in the fabric of his coat.
“Have you got a gun?” Brittany whispers.
“No.”
“Have you got a knife?”
“No.”
“I think you should beat those guys up that beat you.”
“I don’t have any weapons,” Simon confesses quietly.
Her lips make a little pursed line. “Well, what have you got? You’re not small like me, you can fight ’em.”
Simon squeezes his head with one hand: He’s locked in a warehouse storage room with a bloodthirsty seven-year-old. Unfortunately, she’s got a point. There’s no way they’re getting out of here without violence.
And what exactly has he got? Simon moves to the desk and goes through his pockets.
Cash, no. Sunglasses, no. Cigarettes and lighter, possible—or, at the very least, he can have a cigarette and make himself feel better.
A squishy bundle of paper—he’s still carrying around the ground beef and steak for Sofia Rosa.
Wonderful, eminently practical. He can’t find his keys, which would’ve at least had sharp points.
His inside coat pockets hold lint, and . . .
Yes—the box cutter he used to open the package at Nomi’s apartment yesterday.
He snicks out the blade. “Here’s a start.”
“Aw yeah,” Brittany hisses.
But then Simon thinks about it. He’s one guy with a box cutter against four mafia men who are all probably armed.
With limited resources, he has to be smart about this.
Overwhelming force, he is not, and even if he tries attacking with the white barrels or throwing the desk, the space in here is cramped, with limited maneuverability.
Brittany could get hurt, and Lamonte’s men will fall on top of him.
What can he do with what he’s got?
Ohmigod, if his head wasn’t pounding like this, he could think better . . . Concentrate.
His biggest vulnerability is actually Brittany. If Ameche or any of the others get hold of her, she’ll be the ultimate leverage—Simon will be forced to back down immediately. What can he do to remove her from play?
There’s nowhere in here she can truly hide, and he’s sure she’s tried it. What’s the best thing to do if fight, flight, and hide are all out of the question?
“Play dead,” Simon whispers.
Brittany is looking at him worriedly. “What?”
“Okay, I have an idea,” he says, crouching to her level. “But you’ll need to help me with it.”
“I can do that.” She looks so optimistic, it almost kills him.
“Good. Because if I’m going to fight, I have to know that you’re safe or it won’t work.
” He stands, head pulsing, and looks around again.
Rain lashes the roof in waves, and they may not have much time.
“All right, maybe in this corner? This is what we’re going to do.
You’re going to sit here, flopped over with your head down. I’m going to make you look dead.”
She grimaces. “That’s not gonna work—”
“It will, because I’m a good actor and we have a disguise. Only thing is, it’ll be kind of gross.” He shows her the paper-wrapped parcel he’d intended to give his landlady.
Brittany gets it straight away, makes a face. “Oh yuck.”
“Yeah. But it’s fresh, and a little yuck won’t hurt you.”
He gives instructions, and she cooperates pretty fast. He likes this kid, which will only make things worse if this all goes belly up. Put that thinking away.
Once Brittany’s slumped against the wall in the corner, by the door, he quickly gets to work on the set dressing.
Ground beef clumped on her Care Bear tee, yellow staining to red from her throat to her stomach .
. . Beef juices dripped to create gore .
. . Chunks and strips of steak, judiciously placed .
. . Floor dirt to darken everything . . .
It’s not quite enough.
“Okay, we need some authenticity,” he mutters, and rolls up his left sleeve.
“What’re you doing?” Brittany whispers, peering from beneath her front braids with her head flopped as instructed.
“We need some real blood—this is going to be kind of unpleasant, maybe look away.”
Simon removes the Band-Aid; the wound on his left forearm from Tuesday is nearly scabbed over. He grits his teeth and snicks the box cutter—doesn’t think too much, just slices through the already-tender skin.
“Ew,” Brittany says.
Blood wells up. At least the box cutter isn’t too blunt.
Simon hisses all the same. “Hold still.”
The blood runs down his forearm in two thick runnels, falling for the side or coursing into his palm.
A high-pitched whine kicks off in his brain at the sight of all that red.
He ignores it, distributes as much blood as he can over Brittany’s disguise—spatters on her face, her jeans, the front of her shirt, her resting arms, her upturned open hands.
“That looks better,” he mutters.
“This is like, the nastiest Halloween costume,” she whispers. “There wasn’t this much blood when my teeth fell out.”
Simon pauses. “Your teeth fell out?”
“Yeah. They’d been loose, then they fell out both at once. The man in the coat took ’em. I didn’t get money from the Tooth Fairy or anything.”
She seems put out about it. Simon doesn’t want to tell her how relieved her explanation makes him; he’d been worried about much nastier scenarios.
“Okay,” he says. “I think we’re done.”
He does an assessment: It’s not as good as the makeup in Hellraiser, but it’s not the worst camouflage.
Convincing in the short term is all they need.
Brittany’s going to have to put on a performance.
Is she capable of it? Simon’s not sure. But she’s highly invested and reasonably bright.
If it doesn’t work, at least they gave it a shot.
“Brittany, listen,” Simon says quietly, as he puts the leftover paper in his pocket, pinches the wound on his arm. He makes sure the girl meets his eyes. “I’m going to have to say a lot of crazy stuff to convince them that you’re dead. Whatever you hear, just remember I don’t mean it.”
“Okay.”
“And if this all goes badly, I’ll try to keep the door open to this room, so if you get a chance, you should run.”
“What about you?”
Another gut punch. But he keeps his voice low and firm. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. You just get out, you understand?”
“Okay.”
He wants to tell her she’s a good kid, the best kid, but he can’t afford for either of them to lose focus. “So, go over it for me—what are you going to do?”
“Play dead,” she whispers. “Run if I get a chance.”
“You got it. You ready?”
“Yeah.”
He stands up, blinking against the rush in his head, and faces the door.
Out in the warehouse, the sounds of individual voices getting closer: Simon takes some deep breaths, because this was how it was always going to be.
His arm is stinging, and his headache is ratcheting inside his skull.
A sharp, serrated pain stabs behind his left eye, but he can’t think about that now.
He tries to let go, like the doctor suggested, tries to release the tension from his muscles, but his body feels stiff, his hearing has a tinnitus whine, his blood is crystallizing into ice . . .
“Good luck,” Brittany whispers.
“You too,” he mutters back. They’re as ready as they’re going to be.
Bring on the storm.