Chapter Seventeen
The voice was faint, but present. Roland listened, his heart beating faster with each cadence.
Marissa sat slumped against the wall, her hands and feet bound.
He’d had to do it. She’d threatened to run again.
She was out of her mind, not thinking straight.
He had to get her to focus. He wanted to hear her acknowledge her love for him before they faded into death.
Death. The thought didn’t carry fear for Roland, but rather, relief.
He’d spent his life looking for Marissa.
He was exhausted by the hiding and the things he’d been forced to do.
He’d hoped to be reunited with their real mother once he’d found Marissa, but she’d been placed in an institution years earlier.
He knew his mother would be proud. He’d never let Marissa go again.
He lumbered toward the darkened entrance, wound his way through the hall, toward the voice.
Had he sealed the fenced entrance? He couldn’t remember.
Everything was jumbled in his mind. The voice grew louder, more discernable.
Definitely male, and singing. Roland couldn’t decipher the words, but the tune was familiar.
The pungent smell of marijuana filtered through the air.
Roland slowed, scratched his hands, and listened carefully.
The tune pulled at his memory, falling like puzzle pieces into the map of his past.
Roland froze. Full Moon Fever was released the year Marissa was taken away.
How could they have found him? What kind of sick ploy was this, singing that song to draw him out?
Anger coursed through his veins. He peered around the hallway, into the area that led to the hidden entrance he’d found.
The guy sat in a football jersey and jeans, a black bong in his hand, eyes at half-mast. Roland had seen that creep before, one evening in particular came to mind.
He’d been watching Marissa walk to work.
The guy had been talking to her, harassing her, and she had run away.
Roland had wanted to squeeze the life out of the guy then, but had known better than to risk his plan.
This was a sign. Life was full of signs.
You just had to look for them. Roland looked. He saw every sign.
The guy bent over the bong, placing his lips against the thick plastic edge, and inhaled.
Roland shifted his eyes from side to side and reached into his pocket.
Confident that he was alone, he slipped behind the guy and grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head up and back.
Smoke seeped from between his lips. His bloodshot eyes stared wildly into Roland’s cold gaze.
In one quick swipe, Roland slit his throat, tossing the gagging stoner on his side as his body convulsed, his arms grasping at his neck.
Roland had a plan, and this was not part of it.
He hadn’t planned on killing this man—or the other one.
He’d do whatever it took to remain with Marissa, and this was just another obstacle removed.
He had to get rid of the body. Roland grabbed hold of his feet and dragged him through the dark arteries of the plant, leaving him in a heap while he went to gather supplies.
Roland wound his way back to the room with the dead generators and old sheet metal, collected what he needed to patch and cover the broken window his victim had come in through, and then returned to the empty room. He went to work securing the entrance.
Sharp pains seared through his stomach. His vision began to blur.
He’d known this would happen. He’d expected the symptoms, though they’d hit him faster than they’d hit that whore.
Sweat poured from his head. He wiped it with the crook of his elbow, then doubled over as a sharp pain shot through his abdomen.
He clenched his teeth as the wave of pain engulfed him.
He wrapped his hand around the bottle of alcohol in his pocket.
He could drink it, make the pain go away.
No, he had to die with Marissa. That was the plan.
As quickly as it had come, the pain passed through his gut. His vision slowly cleared.
His body sagged with fatigue as the pain subsided, but he had to push on.
He heaved the slats of wood up to the broken window, positioning them until they held firmly in place within the window frame.
Satisfied that the entrance was secure, he went back and stood over the immobile body.
Thick, dark blood pooled from the gaping hole in the man’s neck.
Roland slung the body over his shoulder with a grunt, blood splattering his back and arms. He began the trek toward the crusher room.
Roland hesitated at the top of the stairs, where the old plant connected to the new.
Between the dead weight on his shoulder and the pain in his stomach, the climb had exhausted him.
He lowered the body to the ground and pushed through his fatigue.
He walked brazenly toward the stairway that led to the second floor control room.
He had to dispose of this body, but first, he had to take care of the body of the arrogant cameraman.
Voices filtered from the office, moving toward the hall.
Roland opened the door to the control room and slipped inside.
The monitors were still black. Squares of yellow, green, and red blinked on the control panel.
Two large fans whirred in the ceiling panels, giving the room a pulse of its own.
Outside the door, voices moved closer. On the opposite wall was another door with an Exit sign.
Roland pulled at the handle. Locked. He turned, searching for a key, ripping open the drawers and cabinets as he listened to the voices in the hallway.
He pulled open the drawer in front of the body, exhaling at the sight of a large chrome key ring with three thick gold keys on it.
He tried the first, then the second. No luck.
His thick fingers fumbled with the third, pushing it into the lock and feeling the click of the gears against his palm.
He twisted the doorknob. Success. Roland grabbed the body, dragged it to the door, and pushed it outside, onto the roof of the building.
He closed the door behind him. The voices were just outside the room.
Roland squinted, the morning sunlight too bright for his eyes. He pulled the body over his shoulder and moved toward the enormous silver ductwork to his right. He had to hide the body and somehow find his way back before Marissa awoke.
He placed his hand on the ductwork, quickly pulling back from its warmth. The ductwork stemmed from a metal bunker, climbing at a steep incline from the second roof, where Roland now stood, to the next level, twenty feet above. Ten feet wide and at least six feet high, the ductwork was his answer.
Confined Space, read the battered white sign just beside the thick, metal door on the side of the giant duct; it reminded Roland of the dumbwaiter in Lowrey’s Home For Children.
The sight tugged at something buried deep inside Roland’s memory.
He cocked his head, dropping the body with a thud at his feet.
The dumbwaiter. He touched the rusted metal flakes.
Jeffrey. The boy’s terrified eyes came rushing back at him.
“No, please! Help!” the boy had screamed as Roland yanked him out of bed.
He’d had to tape his mouth closed before carrying him to the dumbwaiter on the abandoned third floor, fighting his wriggling and panicked movements.
Lowrey had compared everything Roland did to everything Jeffrey did, and Roland never measured up.
Getting rid of Jeffrey should have allowed Roland to be golden, but that was not to be.
He’d had to get rid of Michael, too. A pain shot through Roland’s side, from the antifreeze or the memory, he couldn’t be sure.
A breath of steam poured from the giant stack of the plant high above the roof where Roland stood, startling Roland out of his memory and back to the present.
He pulled at the metal lip of the door, trying to slide it up and open.
The damn thing was rusted shut. Piles of coal ash lay upon the ledge of the door.
He ran his hands along the upper edge. His fingers caught on a latch.
He pushed, leaning his full weight into the heavy locking mechanism.
Roland grunted, his feet sliding on the gravel.
The latch gave with a clank. Roland’s body heaved forward with a loud exhalation.
The bottom of the metal door sprung up an inch.
Roland worked his ash-drenched fingers under the lip and pulled with all his might.
It inched up slowly, refusing to open past the halfway point.
Roland picked the body up from under its armpits and dragged it to the opening.
It hung from his straining hands like lead.
The asshole would never bother Marissa again.
Just thinking about his snide smile and Marissa’s fearful look when she tore away from him confirmed in Roland’s mind that killing the creep had been the right thing to do.
He had to protect Marissa at all costs. He crouched over the body.
The face was not that of the pot smoker.
Roland wiped the sweat from his brow with the crook of his elbow.
What the hell was happening to his mind?
He’d confused the security cameraman with the pot smoking jerk.
Roland clasped his lips tightly together, swallowing the panic that began to spread through his limbs in sharp, tingling sensations.
He lifted the body from its waist, resting the hands and arms inside the hot duct.
Steam burned his already tortured hands.
He dropped the body, the upper half in the steam within the duct, the waist and legs hanging out.
The smell of burning hair brought bile to Roland’s throat.
He swallowed it back as he lifted the body at the legs and pushed it through the opening.
The man’s belt caught on the lip of the opening.
Roland pushed forward with a grunt, to no avail.
He wrapped one arm around the man’s waist, and reached around to unhook the buckle from the lip.
Clank! It fell free. He pushed the body into the hole.
It fell with a thud against the inside of the ductwork, folded over at the waist, then toppled to the side.
Roland stared at the singed skin of the man’s face, slowly searing away from the pulp beneath.
Roland pushed the metal door down. It caught.
The acrid stench of burning flesh filtered through the darkened opening.