Page 92 of Saint of the Shadows

The elevator arrived on the third floor, opening to a wall of metal that reinforced the car. Fists thundered against it. Her eardrums shattered.

Ruthven found her, and she couldn’t avoid him for ten more floors. Marisol hopped up the elevatorwalls. She popped open the light on the car with her elbow and crawled through it, carefully placing it back.

Clomp. Clomp. Footsteps below. Then silence. Marisol held her breath.

The ceiling light burst up like an explosion. Marisol crawled over the side and squeezed into the crack between the car and the wall. Something clambered after her. Her back to the wall and legs pressing against the car, she lowered herself and gripped the thin brackets at the underside of the car. The stripped skin of her fingers stung as she dangled over the darkness. Her Hell would always be an elevator shaft.

A low grunt echoed after her. Its source disappeared back into the car. The car ascended to the next floor, arriving with a Ding! Stopping suddenly wrenched her biceps. Nine more floors to go. The footsteps faded down the floor above. She exhaled. “I’m hanging off the elevator car. Please tell me you’re close.”

“He’s in the stairwell. I’ll give you a boost. Hold on tight.”

She squeezed her abs, lifted her legs, and dug her toes into something to relieve the pressure on her hands. The elevator moved up at a clip, gaining speed with each floor. Six bells.

The elevator gradually slowed with a splintering squeal. The car stopped. She shimmied back between the car and the wall. One hand and foot pressed against the car and the other againstthe wall. Her limbs trembled from exhaustion, but she scaled up the wall and crawled into an open mouth lined in steel.

The hidden thirteenth floor.

“Follow that tunnel to the ladder. I’ll meet you on the roof.”

Ahead, a faint sheet of light blemished the dark. That must be the ladder to the roof.

Metal crunched and thundered behind her. She jumped with a start.

“He found me,” Marisol whispered.

“According to my tracking, he’s looking for you on the twelfth floor. Climb to the roof.”

Marisol touched the cylinder in her front pocket and ran to the light. She looked up to follow the light source. It ended in a tiny dot above, the way to the roof. By stairs, the distance would be nothing, but straight up in darkness with her jelly-like limbs? Even she felt the sick throb of vertigo.

She grasped the ribbed rung of the ladder. Plunk! Plunk! Her feet reverberated off the bars.

Halfway there, her lungs felt blistered. She pressed her forehead to the cool metal. While breathing through her nose and out of her mouth, she craned her neck to see the ever-approaching circle of light.

Dark tunnel. Meager light. Her brain hit a scratch in the record again. Her memory replayed her leg snapping from the fall. The phantom pain of it hooked into her gut, causing her “bad” leg to giveout like it just happened. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said.

“I see the roof. Stay where you are.”

Her sneakers screeched against the walls while she kicked to find her footing. Helicopter blades thundered above her but farther away, as if she was underwater. Her fingers slipped, and the ribbed metal sliced into her palms.

A small and soft hand grabbed her ankle and placed it on a rung. With her footing regained, Marisol hugged herself to the rung and shook her sore hands out. The hand at her ankle? Where did it come from?

“Annie?” Marisol asked into the darkness below.

A shadow entered the circle of light. It had to be Vincent. Marisol touched the vial and scalpel rolling in her pocket and charged farther up the tunnel. The sun hit her eyes. Something lifted her out of the tunnel by her left arm onto the roof. She blinked away the blocks of darkness to find thin lips and gritted teeth.

“You have something of mine,” Ruthven said.

“And you took her from me.” Marisol reached into her pocket.

“The doctor?”

“Say her name, you son of a bitch!” She plunged the scalpel below his ribs.

He dropped her. Marisol fell to her knees and scrambled behind the mammoth-sized metal tubesof the duct system that snaked across the roof. She patted her pocket for the cylinder.

Nothing.

She peered over the duct to see the cylinder rolling where Ruthven writhed.Badum! Badum!Her heart rose to her ears. She dove for it.Badum! Badum!Ruthven pulled the scalpel from his side. Badum! Badum! She pinched the cylinder between her fingers.Badum! Badum!He dragged her toward him, raising the bloody scalpel…

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