at me. He hoped I was watching. Maybe he knew I was watching.
He mouthed words. “We don’t know quite what he’s saying…” The reporter’s voice was sheer astonishment. But he was wrong. I knew exactly what he was saying. And I didn’t even have to be that good at reading lips to figure it out; just had to have heard the repetitive taunting from him, with that same sadistic look, the one that I knew contained not one ounce of insincerity.
“Little doll…come out and play.”
Twenty-two
Wolfe bolted into the mall at the approach of another half dozen cop cars; probably not because he couldn’t take them all out and then some, but because he had other things on his agenda. The news reported later that he’d cut his way through the patrons of the stores, leaving another thirty or so dead, a few others wounded before he bolted out an exit and disappeared.
At this point I was ill enough that I flipped off the TV. Watching wasn’t helping. A reminder that I’d had a hand in the deaths of another sixty or more people, people who had families, parents, kids – that didn’t help me at all. It didn’t help me want to keep my promise to Zack, anyway.
I stared at the stainless steel walls for the next hour. I resolved not the smash the TV to pieces, no matter how much I wanted to vent my frustration. I went to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower, but not as long as I wanted because I kept thinking about all the people dead right now that wouldn’t ever again get to experience the simple pleasure of something as basic as a hot shower on a cold day. Or shopping malls. Or theaters…or anything that Zack had listed off. Ever again.
Or a hug from someone who loved them.
I had been ready to turn off the water and get out when I started shaking with emotion at that thought. I heard someone say once that it wasn’t possible to miss what you never had. But if that was true, why did I want someone to love me, to hold me, just once?
It took me almost twenty minutes to compose myself, and when I stepped out my dinner was waiting for me, along with an unpleasant surprise.
“I brought your food,” Kurt Hannegan said with a sneer. “No one else wanted anything to do with you.” He had been almost to the door to leave and had turned back just to toss the shot at me.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I guess it’s hard to work up an appetite when all you do is sit by while people die because of you.” He paused at the door for a beat, then turned to knock on it so the guard would let him out.
“Wait,” I called to him. My voice must have sounded as lifeless to him as it did to me, because he listened.
“What?” The air of impatience surrounded him as if, insult now delivered, he couldn’t wait to get away from me.
“I don’t want anybody to die,” I said in a voice that sounded smaller to me than I could have imagined when I formed the words.
“It’s a little late for that now,” he snarled. “Hell, it was too late the day after you goaded Old Man Winter into sending us back to your house.”
“I need your help,” I said to him.
He laughed. “You’ve had my help before and all it got was a bunch of my buddies dead—”
“I want to go to Wolfe. Myself.” He raised a stunned eyebrow. “I don’t want anybody else to die. I need to get out of here so I can go to Wolfe; so I can end this.” I held up my hands at my sides. “So I can give him what he wants.”
Hannegan hesitated, regarding me with suspicion. “You playing games with me?”
“No,” I said, returning to the lifeless voice. “I just want this to be over.”
“Yeah,” he said, suddenly incensed, “and get my ass fired for helping you commit suicide.” His eyes narrowed. “But I tell you what…your guard changes at seven A.M. If someone was to try and escape an hour before that, at six, especially if they were super strong, they could sweep through the guards – without hurting anybody seriously,” he said with emphasis, “and there might be a few minutes when the cameras were off. If you went west, past the cafeteria and across the field toward the woods, there’s a road