Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

came from their own sheath on his leg.

 

He pointed them at her, scaring the wits out of her for a brief moment. Her mind flooded with horror movie scenes and she momentarily considered fleeing, back through the woods she didn’t know, chased by a madman with his scissors and an uncanny awareness of the wilderness.

 

“Your sleeve’s wet.”

 

She jerked her arm back. “You going to cut it off?”

 

“I should, but I suspect you like that jacket.” He pulled one long tube sock, emblazoned with the letter P, and snipped the toe end off. He unceremoniously yanked her sleeve up, allowing her to feel for the first time the frigid water that had seeped in even though she had been certain she had pushed it far enough back. Yanking the dry sleeve of her turtleneck down, he pulled his glove off in one smooth motion with his teeth, and ran his hand over her arm in a reverent and nearly sexual way. She wanted her skin back. She wanted the crazy guy with the scissors and tranq gun to step beck. But she didn’t quite have it in her to look him in the eyes and say so.

 

He pulled the sock over her arm, over her sleeve, and began wrapping the tape around and around. Allowing only the letter P to peek out near her elbow. “What is this? Some kind of scarlet letter?” As soon as the words were out she regretted the reference, wondering if two men who’d spent their lives ‘rassling ‘gators’ would have heard of Hester Prynne.

 

“No,” He cocked a look that was almost a smile. “This is a P, not an A. Your arm is now waterproof and will not freeze from where you dipped your sleeve in the pond. And maybe your jacket will dry out.” He pulled the sleeve down over the tape, where it could no longer chill her wrist, nor soak into any of her other clothing.

 

She turned her hand over, thinking it looked a bit odd, but was fairly ingenious.

 

“Thank you.” It was the least she could say to a man she had considered a possible serial killer just a few moments before.

 

Without a word, he slipped the items back into their various sheaths and pockets, and pulled his pack on even as he started walking away. Becky followed, flexing her hand to re-warm the muscles, grateful that the sleeve wasn’t wet against her wrist. Cataloging everything she saw, she wished that she had Melanie’s memory, and wished Mel could be here now to see these things.

 

It was then that she noticed Leon and Jess looking at each other and making faces even as she felt the odd odor trickle past her senses. She knew it was familiar, but not like this. Consciously keeping her voice low she asked without slowing her pace, “What is that?”

 

“Blood.” Both men replied simultaneously.

 

Wanting to ask more, but knowing that they were headed straight for the smell, Becky held her tongue. It took fifteen more minutes to get there. In that time she felt the smell change from weak to pungent with a mild overlay of rotting flesh, a smell she hadn’t detected ten minutes further back on the trail.

 

They made their way off the paths, finally coming to a clearing, silent as mice, until Becky gasped. A whole herd of moose lay dead, the river rushing by them as though nothing were wrong, even though a member of the heard had fallen in and gotten tangled in a fallen tree. Water rushed around it on all sides, the animal bobbing like a swollen cork. The bulk of the herd lay along the shores, feet curled under them like they were asleep.

 

But they weren’t asleep. Wolves and cougars, even some Canada Lynx chewed greedily on the haunches of the fallen animals. The closest ones looked up and growled in response to the gasp that had escaped Becky’s mouth. Cubs and pups were there as well, there was no infighting over pieces. There was enough moose for all.

 

The stench assailed her now that she had a visual to go with it. Bloody muzzles came up and chewed before burying themselves deep in the torn open sides of the larger hooved animals. Juveniles tugged at loose flesh, trying to rip pieces free, unconcerned about their human visitors.

 

It was Jess who spoke first. “Damnedest thing. Usually they won’t eat something that dies of its own accord.”

 

Becky nodded. “What do they know that we don’t?”

 

The water bubbled around her, the chlorine churning into a smell that was certainly unpleasant, but her brain ignored it in order to appreciate the joys of the foaming water and heat. She had a coke with a big red straw sitting on the edge of the tub.

 

The season being what it was, they were the only ones out here. A few of the prison officers had been in the casino, gambling at blackjack or playing nickel slots. Something pretty much all of them had sworn at one time or another they never did.

 

“You look sad.”

 

David’s voice broke through the shell she had locked herself in since Jordan’s call. His cousin had joined her daughter in a coma, and his father had complained of a stomach ache. Jordan was staying with his Dad at the house, as his father’s exposure to the reversals had come at the factory where he worked, which had since been shut down by the CDC. And that had prompted the news crews to come out. Jordan had explained how they’d held a small press conference and stalled, stating that they didn’t know what it was yet. Which was true.

 

“I am sad.” She just took a sip of the coke, enjoying it, even though she knew it was full of caffeine and would act in conjunction with the hot tub to dehydrate her even faster than the desert air could. But she figured dehydration was the least of her worries.

 

David pulled his arms out of the water, stretching them across the tiles and leaning his head back like she did. Her own arms felt cool from the contact with the tile, in the dark it had finally lost much of the heat it had retained from the day. The night sky was big and black and disappointingly empty. There were no stars visible above her; they were all blocked out by the pinprick of blinding light that was the state line.

 

“Do you miss him? Abellard?”

 

“Yeah.” She said it with a force she didn’t know she felt, the words falling out of her mouth.

 

“None of these people will talk to me like they talk to him. They’re getting worse by the day, and there’s nothing medical to do. I may have something, but it isn’t statistically significant yet.”

 

“What do you think you have?” David was leaning forward, carefully holding his brown longneck bottle out of the water.

 

“The glycosylated hemoglobin spikes ever so slightly before a person goes under. And I wouldn’t have found it if I didn’t have a whole pond of sitting ducks and nothing better to do than run blood draws on everyone all day long.”

 

David nodded and so the words kept falling out of her mouth in useless rivers. “I swear I had a patient take a step back when I came to him. He looked like he had a heroin problem, we’d taken his blood so many times.”

 

She sighed, more to herself than to him, more out of exasperation than weariness.

 

Her bones were rubber, and her coke was gone, and suddenly she was tired. Dead tired.

 

Jillian bent her elbows and, flattening her hands against the tiles, lifted herself out of the tub, dripping water across the ceramic squares, and she made a brief note to watch where she stepped. She could see the headlines: CDC doctor kills herself in deadly cola/hot tub/water-slick incident. She’d already warned David about the alcohol he was drinking, but he was a big boy and he could call his own shots.

 

He followed her up, sitting for a moment on the edge of the rim, rubbing his hand up and down his face.

 

“Wow. That beer does affect you more in the hot tub.”

 

David didn’t say much more, just followed her silent bare feet down the hall with his less than silent large ones. He waited while she got her door open, standing back and not crowding her, but being gentlemanly.

 

“Need any help getting ready for bed?”

 

She mentally rescinded the gentlemanly idea. “No thanks.” With a small smile meant to say goodnight and nothing more, she stepped past and into the frigid room.

 

She had hoped it would be warm, or at least not sub-artic. Given the time she had been here and her high IQ she had thought she would have figured out what to leave the AC set at so that the room would be the right temperature when she returned. But, no.

 

Inside of five minutes she was ready for bed, having swallowed eight giant pills for the third time today. She dreaded the short walk to the king sized bed; it had gotten just a little larger since Jordan had left. And with a deep breath she walked over and pushed herself beneath the covers, flicking off the last bedside lamp letting darkness infest the room.

 

Feeling her eyelids pull closed, Jillian waited for sleep to overtake her, but her fear held it at bay. She’d been hopeful that she would climb into the bed and smell him on the sheets. But the maids had changed the sheets and it had all been destroyed with one easy stroke of efficiency.

 

Eventually she got bored with lying in bed and not sleeping, so she threw back the covers and began turning on lights. The room was boring in its simplicity, too neat, too dull, and she decided to make use of her time by checking out the charts in the other room; she could at least update the hemoglobin numbers she was getting.

 

As she pulled the conjoining door open to total darkness, her brows knit together. The light behind her didn’t penetrate, and a deep unease walked through her. She tucked her hand around the wall feeling for the switch, to no avail. She tested with her foot, sneaking it across as it was almost swallowed by the darkness, but no floor rose up to meet her toes. Flailing wildly, her hands grasped at the door frame, stopping her just in time from plunging into the abyss beyond the door.

 

The darkness breathed.

 

The deep space at the door pulsed in a slow even rhythm. Jillian considered reaching out to catch the doorknob so she could close off the menace, but even as she leaned out over the yawning gap beneath her, into the darkness, hanging only by her left hand firmly grasped on the frame, she heard something.

Something familiar.

 

So she pulled back, clung to the door frame, and waited.

 

She wasn’t sure how long it was before the sound came again.

 

“Jilly?” This time it came from behind her. Whirling into the sound of him, she knew everything would be all right.

 

“Jordan!”

 

But he didn’t hug her. She didn’t even see his face, just his strong hands coming up to plant across her collarbone and shove her backwards until she fell into the endless space beyond the doorway.

 

With a deep gasp, Jillian jerked herself from the clutches of the black, coming awake and gulping air in the hotel room. She lay alone, twisted in the covers, in the middle of her own bed.

 

Yesterday Jillian had finally given him the keys to the car. He had needed it and she hadn’t. And David simply hadn’t handed them back over. He figured the car practically went from the hotel to the prison and back by itself at this point.

 

This morning Jillian didn’t even make a motion for the driver side door, just slipped limply into the passenger seat and buckled up without a word.

 

“Is everything all right?” He wasn’t normally one to pry but the girl looked like someone had showed up last