Fear

THIRTY-ONE

Miles drove past a set of quiet homes, past empty lots, past the Sangre de Cristo Hospital, to Canyon Road’s dead end: an Audubon Society complex. He U-turned at the Audubon gate and headed back down the road toward the hospital. He went past the clinic, giving it a curious scouting, wondering if eyes in the building were watching him. There was no security that suggested this facility housed anyone dangerous – no wire, only a high adobe-wall enclosure, no guard posted.

‘Waiting for that next chess move,’ Andy said. ‘Show me the brilliance.’

He wanted to tell Andy to shut up, but he didn’t want Celeste to hear him. He U-turned again, wheeled Blaine’s car into the hospital’s parking lot, parked near the back.

‘How will you find him inside?’ she asked.

‘Nathan mentioned the top floor when I saw him at Allison’s,’ he said. ‘So I’m going straight to the top. Can you drive?’

‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘Driving’s easy compared with shooting.’

‘If you’re approached – security guards, anyone – run. Go straight to the police, or a friend’s house. Don’t wait for me.’

‘Miles,’ she said, ‘if Allison’s giving me Frost, I think it works. I should be in a fetal position right now. I killed a man. I left the house. But I’m coping.’ Nevertheless her voice shook and she swallowed, struggling to steady it. ‘Maybe it’s Frost. Hurley acted surprised when I told him she’d given me new pills.’

‘Or you’re just strong,’ he said. She blinked at him. ‘I’ll be back as quickly as I can. Can you bear to sit in the front, keep the engine running?’

She nodded. She climbed over the seat, squirmed low in the passenger seat.

‘I should get out more often,’ she said. Trying to joke. She shivered.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said. ‘Run if you have to.’

She nodded.

‘Celeste?’

She raised her eyes to his.

‘Thank you. You saved us both.’

She swallowed. ‘Go. Leave me your cell phone. If I have to drive off… call me, I’ll come back for you.’

He shut the door, waited for her to click the locks, and headed toward the hospital’s rear parking-lot entrance.

Every step made him want to run in the opposite direction. A mental hospital. The place he’d feared the most as his mind started to play tricks on him, as Andy began to chime into his days and nights. The place he was afraid Allison would send him. He kept walking toward the building.

If he could drive, he told himself, he could do this. Just walls, just floors, just people, it wasn’t a horror.

‘Introduce me to the guard,’ Andy said. ‘That’ll get you in real fast.’

The main building was large, with an adobe exterior, four stories tall. Two smaller buildings stood behind it, a gravel trail of roads snaking between them and the main house. It had the air of an exclusive club more than the clinical lines of a psych hospital.

He guessed there were cameras on him right now; surely they showed who came and went in the parking lot. He ducked his head down. Most of the main building’s windows were darkened; lights gleamed in the windows on the first floor.

He held the electronic passkey up to the reader on the door; the panel light flicked from red to green and the door unbolted with a click. He stepped inside.

At the end of this short hallway was a door with a conventional lock, and he tried the three keys on Hurley’s ring. The last one worked.

He expected to see a guard with a gun aimed at him when he opened the door.

Miles cracked the lock, went through the door, and closed it behind him. The hallway was empty, the lights dimmed. He took three deep breaths, trying to clear his head of Hurley’s junk.

Late night in the hospital. His heart hammered in his chest. He pulled out his gun, stiff-armed it in front of him, watched the steady red light of a mounted camera eyeing him down the hallway. Despite the Sangre de Cristo’s elegant architecture and immaculate grounds, he wondered if every asylum wasn’t designed by the same cracked architect, immured behind bars deep inside one of his own creations. Locks at the end of every hallway, bends and twists to confuse anyone who might risk a run, light that had never been born of the sun – hard and white and ugly.

He turned a corner and a guard was waiting for him, ready, a baton swinging hard at Miles’s neck. Miles jumped back – the baton smacked with bone-crushing force into the wall. The backswing caught his shoulder and agony burst up from the well of nerves at the joint. Miles fell to the floor and the guard – young, with heavy features – rammed the baton hard against his throat.

Miles closed hands around the baton’s ends, tried to push back. The guard grinned and gritted teeth and shoved the baton, bolstered by his own weight, against Miles’s windpipe.

Darkness danced on the edge of Miles’s vision. But then Miles thought of staying inside this place, the doors closing and locking behind him, faceless men strapping him to a bed, confinement as sure as a coffin. Here. Forever. Locked up.

Fear surged in his muscles and Miles shoved back, using the floor as leverage for his shoulders and arms. The baton popped hard into the guard’s mouth, then Miles hit him again in the nose. The guard reeled away from Miles. Gasping, Miles fought him for the baton. The guard wouldn’t let go, made a choking yell for Jimmy and Dwayne past the blood coursing from his mouth and nose. Miles powered the guard’s head into the wall, bit the fingers holding the baton. The guard let go; Miles dropped him with a blow on the back of the head. The guard collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

Miles glanced up and down the hallway. Deserted. He guessed these were offices and administration; no patients or caretakers here. A crackle and a buzz cut through the sudden silence, a voice calling for Robert. He leaned over the guard. An earpiece gleamed in the young guard’s ear, cabled to a walkie-talkie clipped to the shirt pocket. Miles removed the earpiece and walkie-talkie and clipped them on himself.

‘Robert? You got him?’

Miles thumbed the button and spoke in a whispery rush that might camouflage his voice. ‘No, he broke free from me. Headed to the elevator.’ He found the elevator, its doors open, pressed four – the top floor. Nothing. Four must be a secured floor. He waved the electronic passkey over a panel above the buttons and a green light lit. He tried again, pressing four, and this time the button glowed in answer. Then he stepped out of the elevator. The doors slid shut and the elevator started its climb.

‘Robert?’ the other guard’s voice repeated through the earpiece.

‘I think he’s headed to four on the elevator.’ The diversion might leave the fourth floor stairwell clear for him.

He headed for an EXIT sign, found the stairwell. Stairs were good, elevators were bad. The well was dimly lit. He headed up the stairs, expecting to see Groote on the landing or a guard who hadn’t bought his story… but there was no one. Radio silence from the guards.

Sweat slid down his cheek, coursed down his back. He forced himself to take each step.

Andy stood at each turn of the stairs, smirking.

Miles’s breath tightened in his chest. He reached the top floor.

Tried the door. Locked. He slid a key home, worked the lock. The door opened.

‘Hello, Nathan,’ Sorenson said.

Nathan opened his eyes. Tried to focus. ‘Who…’

‘My name is Sorenson. I’m a colleague of Doctor Vance. We met, oh, so very briefly, at Doctor Vance’s house.’

Nathan said nothing.

‘You hit me. It’s okay. I don’t think you realized I was there to help you. I’d like to talk to you for a minute.’

Sorenson took a step into the room. Groote followed him, a step behind.

‘Are you better, Nathan, than you were when you first came to Sangriaville?’

Nathan nodded, glancing at Groote.

‘That’s wonderful to know,’ Sorenson said, and in one brutal move he grabbed Groote’s arm, wrenched it up while slamming Groote into the steel door. Groote yelled and Sorenson deftly twisted his arm. Groote screamed. Sorenson pounded his elbow twice into Groote’s face, breaking the nose, hammering the back of his head into the steel door.

Groote collapsed to the floor. Sorenson kicked him once in the ribs, then in the jaw. Groote went still. Sorenson leaned down, seized Groote’s gun, and raised it at Nathan. ‘What have you told them?’

‘I don’t know what you mean… I don’t know anything!’

‘Ten seconds to rethink,’ Sorenson said. ‘What names did you give them?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, please don’t!’ Nathan yelled.

The soft buzz nearly made Miles jump out of his skin. Then he realized the stairwell door was set to give off a ping when opened. He closed the door quickly, aware he was without cover. But no one stood in the darkened hallway. No guards at the elevator, awaiting him. The lift had already arrived and the doors closed again and he saw on the digital indicator the elevator had returned to the first floor. Probably set to do so automatically. Maybe the guards on the floor had seen the empty elevator and ridden down to help the battered Robert.

He moved from the door, close against the wall, crouching low. He inched down the hallway, glancing through the wire-reinforced glass in the doors. Beds, with men asleep in them, mostly younger guys but a scattering of men in their fifties and sixties. None was Nathan Ruiz. Miles tested the doors; all locked in for the night. Or perhaps to keep the patients out of the line of fire when the guards stepped out and mowed him down. Two rooms held women, also asleep. An office with a computer and a set of cameras, empty, the screens showing more deserted rooms.

He heard a soft, choked cry from behind a metal door. It read VIRTUAL REALITY TREATMENT on the plate. He pushed the door. Locked. He tried Hurley’s passkey and the door clicked open.

He started to push and a technician was at the door, reaching for the knob, the other hand pulling a headset off his ears, eyes widening in surprise as he saw Miles. Miles hit him a solid punch in the jaw, then another; the guy folded. Miles eased him to the floor, his hand stinging, glancing over his shoulder, sure someone had heard. He shut the door.

He stepped into a darkened control room, with a heavy pane of tinted glass. Beyond the glass a man floated, suspended in midair on white cables, jerking slightly, his eyes covered by a heavy, awkward visor, his ears hidden under sleek silver headphones.

On the screen a computer game played out – with sharp angles, with television-false colors, with a muted soundtrack of soldiers moving through narrow alleys and broad, dusty streets. He peered at the picture: men moving at night into an abandoned building, fake stars in a vault of sky above them, lights dimmed. Then bursts of light, the world gone in flame and dust, soldiers running and fighting, the blasts of rocket-propelled grenades painting the sky.

The man jerked on his tethers, a frown setting on his face, a cry erupting from his throat. The man wasn’t Nathan: too short, too blocky.

War, Miles thought, but not a game. What the hell was this place?

He stepped backward and the cord closed over his neck.

The pressure was sudden and strong. Miles tried to work his fingers under the cable to give himself breath and couldn’t. The technician twisted the cable tighter, using his weight to force Miles to stumble.

Black dots shimmered in the air before him; Miles drove his foot hard on the technician’s instep and heard a howl of pain. He tried to lurch free of the cable’s grip, kicked at the desk, hit a keyboard and a mouse as he struggled, trying to wrench the choking cord from the technician’s hands. His injured shoulder throbbed as he fought for leverage.

The blank monitors above him blinked to life. Paused computer-generated tragedies began to play, similar to the war scene playing on the main monitor. A crashing car cartwheeling across an interstate, slamming into a big rig. A plane flying into the World Trade Center. A school bus erupting into flame.

Miles spun and jerked hard to one side, pulled the technician off balance. The technician lost his grip; Miles felt sweaty hands abandon the cord and grab at his neck. Miles kicked back hard, slammed the technician into the wall of screens. Miles threw back his head in a vicious ram, connecting with the technician’s face. Glass shattered and the tech cried out in pain. The gripping hands around his throat eased and he jerked free. He dropped to his knees, grabbed the police baton he’d dropped when he’d tried to free himself from the cord. He swung the baton up and buried it into the tech’s stomach. The technician collapsed and Miles carefully dealt him an extra blow on the back of the head. He steadied his breath, stepped away from the monitors and their looping horrors, bile climbing into his throat, a chill kissing his skin.

He tucked the walkie-talkie’s earpiece back into place and heard the guards talking, searching the first floor, finding the unconscious Robert in a hallway. They’d be back here in a minute. He had to find Nathan Ruiz and get out, or they’d have him locked in here forever, hooked up to that machine, reliving his private hells. Horrible.

Miles stepped back into the hall, closed the door, then heard the brief, brutal sounds of a fight. The clang of a body striking metal. Then a scream: ‘Please don’t!’

He ran, the door was partly open and in the thin shaft of light he saw a man sprawled on the floor, another man standing, his back to Miles.

Miles opened the door.

Sorenson. With a gun. He started to pivot to fire and Miles tackled him, piledriving them both into the wall. Miles grabbed Sorenson’s arm, slammed it hard once, twice, three times against the wall, trying to break Sorenson’s grip on the gun.

He saw Nathan Ruiz with one arm handcuffed to a bed, trying to move out of the aim of the wavering gun. Miles fought street-dirty: he drove a knee into Sorenson’s groin, leaned down, and bit hard on the bridge of Sorenson’s nose. Sorenson screamed again and clubbed Miles with the gun.

They toppled onto the bed. Nathan pounded Sorenson’s head with his unbound fist; Miles wrenched the gun free from Sorenson’s grip.

‘Kill him!’ Nathan yelled.

Miles put the gun on Sorenson’s forehead. ‘Who are you?’

Sorenson didn’t speak.

‘Who. Are. You.’

‘I’ve read all about you, Miles,’ Sorenson said. ‘And I don’t think you can shoot in cold blood. Not again.’

He knew his real name. Miles dragged Sorenson off the mattress and cracked Sorenson’s head once against the tile floor. ‘How do you know my name? Who the hell are you?’

‘Your only hope of staying alive,’ Sorenson said.

‘Bullshit. You killed Allison. You put the bomb in her office. I saw you.’

‘I didn’t kill her. I can explain. But not here. This is Quantrill’s turf.’

‘I know what I saw.’

‘You see a lot of things, Miles. You see Andy.’ Sorenson grinned past the blood in his teeth. ‘You don’t need to fight this war, not alone. Let me help you.’

Andy. He knew about Andy. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he screamed.

Sorenson jerked a thumb at Nathan. ‘Ask Mr. Explosives about who really planted the bomb.’

Nathan shook his head in horror. ‘No… he’s lying. I never hurt her…’ He fell to the floor, still handcuffed by one arm, and closed his free hand around Sorenson’s throat, tightened the grip. ‘You’re lying!’

Miles heard running in the hallway. He ran to the door, saw two guards approaching. He fired, high, and the bullet creased the ceiling, shattered a light, and the guards fell back to the elevator.

He heard the gasps of strangulation behind him; Nathan and Sorenson gripped each other’s throat, Sorenson gaining leverage and Nathan’s face purpling. Miles yanked Sorenson free from Nathan but kept his throat in a grip.

‘Move and I’ll shoot you.’ Sorenson went still.

‘Pull the cuff tight,’ Miles ordered Nathan.

Nathan obeyed and Miles aimed the gun on the narrow length of chain, fired. The link shattered and Nathan ran for the door. He started kicking the unconscious Groote.

Miles hauled Sorenson to his feet, pushed him against the wall. ‘Last chance,’ Miles said. ‘Who do you work for?’

‘I can give you everything you want, Miles, everything you need. I’m not your enemy. Come with me and I can prove it.’

‘Kill him,’ Andy purred in his ear.

‘I don’t believe you.’ Miles smashed the gun across Sorenson’s face, threw him into the wall. The man collapsed, eyes rolling into whites.

Miles grabbed Nathan. ‘Did you hurt Allison?’

Nathan shook his head. ‘I didn’t. I swear, I didn’t. If I had I would have killed you when you stepped into her house. Who you gonna believe?’

Miles chose. ‘I believe you.’

He heard the sliding hiss of the elevator doors. The guards. Trying again. The adrenaline surge was still high, warring with the pain the guard and the tech had dealt him, with the sedative Hurley had dumped into him. He fought down panic. ‘How many guards?’

‘Two or three. Most of the staff isn’t allowed on this floor.’

Of course; the fewer eyes to see, the easier to illegally test drugs. And if there were only three, he’d already downed one. But two were still too many.

He risked a glance down the hall, barely putting his head into a possible line of fire, easing the gun out with him. A guard stood, five feet away, pistol out, leveled at Miles’s head.

Miles ducked back as the bullet hammered into the door frame.

‘Throw your guns down!’ Miles yelled. ‘Or I kill Groote and Sorenson!’

Silence for a moment.

‘Slide the guns down the hall! Now! They got ten seconds… Ten. Nine. Eight.’ He wondered what the hell he would do if they called his bluff.

A gun slid along the tile, stopped in front of him.

‘Both of them!’

Another gun joined the first.

Hope they only had the two, Miles thought. He stuck his head out again; two guards stood in the dimmed hallway, murder in their eyes. Miles stepped out, collected the guns, flicked on the safeties, crowded them into the back of his pants.

‘Come on, Nathan,’ he said quietly. He kept his gun leveled at the guards. Nathan stepped out into the hallway. In his hands he held the police baton Miles had stolen.

‘You’re not going to get out, dumb-shit,’ one guard said. ‘We’re in lockdown.’

‘Then you’re going to come with me and unlockdown it,’ Miles said.

‘I can’t.’

‘You’ll damn well figure it out.’ Miles grabbed the guard’s arm, pushed him along.

‘Mister, please, I got kids,’ the guard said.

‘Shut up.’

Nathan stepped past them and cracked the baton into the second guard’s stomach. He bent double, vomited, moaned.

‘They hurt me,’ Nathan said in a distant whisper. ‘Hurt me, hurt me…’

‘We didn’t,’ the first guard said. ‘Groote did. Not us. Okay? Not us.’

Miles could hear patients yelling and hitting fists against their doors, roused by the ruckus, screaming questions. Miles handed Nathan the passkey and Nathan bolted ahead, opening the stairwell door.

Miles hurried the guard past the doors and down the stairs at a run. ‘Are the other patients in immediate danger?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Nathan dashed ahead of him, leaping five stairs at a time.

‘Get behind me,’ Miles yelled, but the younger man paid him no heed, recklessly barreling down the four flights of stairs, Miles half sliding down the metal railings to keep up. The haze from Hurley’s dope burned away; his fear fueled him but he didn’t know how long the energy would last.

They hit the parking-lot exit door at the bottom of the stairwell. The passkey no longer worked. Locked. Trapped. Miles thought his heart would burst through his skin.

Sorenson shook off the pain and the dizziness and stepped out in the hallway. He saw the guard, still retching from the blow to his stomach.

He tightened his grip on his gun. He could kill the guard, kill Groote, but he didn’t want to waste a moment or a bullet.

‘Which way?’ he asked the guard.

The hurt guard stopped heaving his guts long enough to point at the stairwell. Then he handed Sorenson an electronic key. ‘It’ll… override… locks.’

Sorenson grabbed the passkey and ran.

‘How do we open the doors?’ Miles yelled into the guard’s face.

‘Control panel – lobby.’

Miles shoved the guard through the hallway exit from the stairwell, all of them running, and as they rounded a corner into another hallway leading to the lobby, he glanced back and saw the stairwell door opening, then Sorenson in the dim light. Miles shoved Nathan and the guard forward and a bullet screamed from the doorway, hot as a devil’s finger as it rocketed past the nape of his neck. He dived for the cover of the corner as a second bullet pocked the wall an inch above where his head had been.

The guard broke into a run for the lobby door. Nathan launched himself into the guard with all the grace of a zombie, a screaming, raving fury. They fell to the ground and Miles pulled Nathan off the man, shoved them both toward the door, keeping the gun trained on the corner.

‘You unlock the doors!’ Nathan screeched at the man, waggled his tongue and his fingers as though all sanity had abandoned him. ‘Or I will kill kill kill you!’

The guard’s face paled.

They ran into the lobby; Nathan shoved the guard to the computer. He, with trembling hands, entered in a key.

Miles heard the locks click.

Miles shoved the guard to the floor, told him to lie flat and be still. The guard obeyed. Please, Jesus, let us out, be open. His fear was like a fire on his skin. They hit the doors, stumbled into the brisk cool of the dark night, ran hard toward the parking lot.

Sorenson advanced carefully to the lobby, listened, heard only the rattle of breathing of the frightened guard. He stepped into the lobby.

‘Front door,’ the guard said. ‘They went through the front door. There ought to be another gun in this drawer…’

Sorenson ran past the man, tested the door, decided they wouldn’t be waiting on the other side to ambush him and ran after them. He saw them fleeing in the low gleam of the lights and ran as silently as he could, his pistol stiff-armed in front of him, keeping Nathan Ruiz’s head in his sights.

‘This way.’ Miles pointed to the rear of the parking lot, and they weaved along, hunkering low.

Behind them an alarm shattered the quiet. ‘You got a car?’

‘Yes. We’ve got to be gone before the cops get here…’

‘They won’t call the cops,’ Nathan said. ‘Trust me…’

A bullet’s whine pierced the air and Nathan fell, frantic, a scream choked in his throat. Miles whirled and saw Sorenson two rows of cars away, aim pivoting toward him. Miles fired in answer and Sorenson dropped.

But not like he was hit.

The parking lot was a maze of cars, some slots filled, others empty. Miles grabbed Nathan, who probed at his hair, at his scalp, for evidence of a hit, and shoved him below the line of car windows.

‘I’m okay,’ Nathan mumbled.

‘Stay low.’

They worked their way through the cars, Miles panicking that Sorenson could simply step out into the row at the same time that they did and pick them both off. If Sorenson was close enough he’d hear them run into the parking aisle’s open space, kill them with two rapid-fire shots.

And if Celeste saw them coming, if she stood next to the car… Sorenson could gun her down.

He put a hand over Nathan’s mouth. Listened to the silence. The night’s quiet fell on them. He fought back the surge of fear.

I can’t let Sorenson just kill this kid. He forced himself to wait, to listen past the drumming of his own heart.

Eleven seconds later, he heard a scrabble of stone against a shoe, two cars to his right.

Miles dropped to the pavement, fired under the cars into the blackness. He heard a yell of fury, a body leaping onto a car in retreat.

Miles shoved Nathan and they ran. Miles turned and fired; he saw Sorenson drop off the trunk of a car, either hit or diving for cover. Miles stumbled but Nathan caught him, pulled him up to his feet.

Miles spotted Blaine’s car.

In the low dazzle of the lot’s lights, the car stood empty. Celeste was gone.

‘Celeste!’ he screamed. ‘Celeste?’

The trunk opened. She peered out at him.

‘What the hell?’ he yelled.

‘It’s nicer in here,’ she whispered.

‘Out, now, now, now, we got to go.’ And the crack of a bullet broke above him, demolishing a window in the car parked next to them. He whirled, saw dark figures – Sorenson and two guards – approaching. A blaze of fire from the barrel of two guns, bullets pocketing the trunk of the car next to him.

Shooting to kill, Miles dropped to a knee, trying to remember to breathe, aimed, his hand shaking, blinking past Andy’s face and pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times, laying down a round of fire. He heard himself screaming, a crazy man.

Behind him Blaine’s old car roared into life. Miles flinched. But no bomb. Nathan was behind the wheel, Celeste ducking into the backseat.

Miles kept his wavering gun aimed at the darkness. He saw one guard running toward them. Miles shot out the window of the car closest to the man and the guard ducked and stayed down.

Miles followed Celeste into the backseat.

Nathan powered the car out of the slot; Miles fired at their pursuers until the clip emptied. They roared past Sorenson and the guards, through a sputtering hail of bullets, ricochets flying off the car roof. Miles covered Celeste with his body, protecting her. Nathan swung the car out fast and hard onto the narrow winding trail of Canyon Road. He hit sixty in ten seconds, crouched low next to the wheel. ‘Who are you, man?’

‘Miles Kendrick.’ His old name didn’t seem to fit him right anymore, like a shirt worn once, ill fitting and ugly, not to be worn again. He sat up, pulling up Celeste, looking behind him. No pursuit. Not yet.

‘Your driver’s license said your name was Michael.’

‘It needs updating. My name’s Miles. But I really am a patient of Doctor Vance’s. So is this woman. Her name is Celeste.’

Nathan’s gaze flickered to Celeste in the rearview. ‘Why’d you come get me?’

‘I need you. I want to know the truth about why Allison died.’

‘I’ll drop you off but the car stays with me. I got to get far away from them.’

‘Wrong. We should stay together,’ Miles said.

‘I don’t like Nathan,’ Andy said from the other side of Celeste. ‘I like him even less than I like you. Go ahead and shoot him before he hurts you. You think you can trust this guy? You better find out what the hell Sorenson meant by Mr. Explosives.’

Nathan veered onto Cerro Gordo – the road that led past Allison’s house – and Miles expected to hear the scream of police sirens. But nothing, and the road behind them was black and empty. The night lay quiet, closing its dark fist around the car.

‘Stay together,’ Nathan said. ‘Why?’

‘We can fight better together.’

‘I don’t want to fight…’ he started, then stopped. ‘But I don’t want to hide the rest of my life either.’

‘I have a place we can hide. Where we can decide how to stop these people.’

‘Stop them from what?’

‘Killing us.’

Nathan shook his head. ‘I can’t go to the police. My folks – they’ll just send me to another loony bin. I don’t need it anymore.’

‘Neither do we. I don’t know how Groote and Sorenson connect, but they’ll be after us. We know what Allison stole from the hospital, and I think we know how to find it before Groote and Sorenson do. We do that, they can’t hurt us.’

‘There’s another guy… Doctor Hurley.’

‘We know. He tried to kill me. Celeste… stopped him.’

‘Permanent stop?’

‘Permanent.’

Nathan gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Honey, I could kiss you.’

She shuddered.

‘But don’t worry,’ Nathan said, ‘I won’t.’ His grin, ecstatic at his freedom, went wide and manic. ‘So where do we go, dude? We’re free birds, free free free-’

Miles wondered, in helping Nathan, what dangerous genie he’d let out of the bottle.