The truck’s engine roared as he skidded over concrete and swung around turns. David prayed that no one would pull in front of him. The siren was off; he didn’t want his prey to know he was coming.
He slowed as he approached the bar, then pulled in along the side street. He drew his pistol as he came to the edge of the alley. He peeked into it. Nothing, just blackness, and he tried to summon in his memory what he had seen here in the light of day, a mental map of the void.
David exhaled and stepped into the darkness. One small step at a time, keeping his left foot forward, the gun raised in perfect position. Another step.
He pivoted slightly as he went. Left to right, then swinging back the other way, scanning the shadows around him. Nothing. Another step.
And then, all at once, he saw it. A shadow that moved, some twenty feet ahead. Then it was still again. Invisible. As if waiting. Some kind of anglerfish poised to devour him. Another step.
“Freeze,” David barked, stopping five yards short of the shape in the shadows. Close enough that he wouldn’t miss. Far enough to keep well clear of the blade he knew was just out of sight.
The silhouette of a man stood, clinging to the shadows so that nothing was visible beyond the form of him, a hood pulled low over the face. David squinted. Was it Chambers?
“Why did you come here? It wasn’t enough to kill him? You had to celebrate it? Dumb fucking mistake,” David hissed.
Every fiber of him yelled to just pull the trigger. To be done with it. His hand tightened around the pistol.
And yet, he couldn’t. Because if he did that, it would mean he was something other than the man he’d always thought himself to be. He would be as bad as the man standing in the shadows.
He took another step forward.
“Step out. Drop the blade. Then turn around and put your hands on top of your head. Any fast movements and I shoot.”
The form in the shadows said nothing. Did nothing.
“Now!” David yelled.
Faster than he could react, the form ducked down, disappearing back into the shadow at the edge of the alley.
David reached down with his left hand, grasping for the flashlight in his belt. He pulled it free, and his eyes glanced away from the shadow just for a second as he lifted the light.
As he clicked it on, the form was already running. Bolting out of the shadow and down the alley, and the light only illuminated the back of him, dark pants and a dark hooded jacket, a blur of movement that was gone, banking right out of view.
“Hell,” David spat as he charged after the form.
He came out of the alley just in time to see the man dart down a side street, heading north. He didn’t have a clean shot, not that he would’ve taken it if he did. His training kicked in as he ran ahead. You didn’t shoot a fleeing suspect in the back.
The road led to the old railroad tracks, abandoned now. Ahead, the massive forms of grain elevators rose like monoliths. The man sprinted between two of the massive metal silos.
David followed at a controlled run. Between the silos was pitch black. As he flashed his light into the space, it showed emptiness.
He moved forward with careful steps. Ears tuned to any noise, sweeping the area in front of him with the flashlight.
A pile of rusted gears and cogs. A drift of rotten corn.
David came through the space between the structures. Nothing. Just empty tracks and an old grain truck that had sat, unused, in this spot for years.
A scratch. Faint but undeniable.
He stepped forward, training the light on the truck. Moving around the back of it. Another step.
The chain swung down out of the truck, metal clanking as it rushed at him.
David reacted just fast enough to raise his arms in front of his face.
The thick metal links smashed into his forearms and grazed against his head, knocking him backward off of his feet. The flashlight and gun clattered away as he fell onto the cement.
David was on his side, groaning, his mind still racing to process what had just happened. The chain had landed on top of him, and he struggled against the weight of it.
In front of him, the man hopped down from the back of the truck, where he’d been hiding. For a moment, he stood there. Only feet away from David, helpless on the ground.
And then he turned and ran.
As David pushed the chain off, he noted that his forearms weren’t broken, though they ached like hell. He grabbed his gun and stood, pointing it out into the night. But there was no one else there. Once again, the killer had slipped away.
He’d expected Priest, but it was Conover who came, and Sunny with him. She was scared, her movements slow and tense as she took her handheld microscope and looked over his hands and arms and face.
“He never touched me,” David said.
The encounter replayed once more. The chain swinging down, the killer just standing there. For a second time, he could’ve killed David. For a second time, he hadn’t.
Conover looked at Sunny.
“Finish the scan,” he said.
She did as asked, whispering an apology when David winced as her hand grazed his forearm. She finished, and Conover stepped within inches of David, his doughy face twisting in anger.
“You had him. And you fucking lost him.”
“I . . .”
“Shut up. You lost him because you are not John-fucking-Rambo or whoever the fuck you think you are. If you’d called me, we’d be done with this shit already. The killer would be in a bag, and we’d all wash our hands of all of this shit.”
“I was close. I didn’t think there was time,” David protested.
Conover put a hand on David’s shoulder and gripped, hard. He pulled David away from Sunny, into the shadow of one of the metal silos. Around them, David saw a ring of Humvees, soldiers standing on guard. More vehicles cruising along the streets, searching. None of it made him feel any more secure.
“I told you it was a dead end with Private Chambers,” Conover said, his voice quieter but his expression no softer. “But you’re still poking at it, aren’t you?”
The wall in his office. They were watching it. Watching him.
“You all brought me in to work the case. I was thinking through possibilities. That’s all.”
Conover studied him.
“That possibility is cut off. Do you understand?”
If only Erickson was there. He would’ve backed David up. But Erickson was gone, and David was all out of allies.
“Yeah. Sure. I understand.”
Conover paced away. Major Geiger stood nearby, and the two of them huddled, talking in a heated conversation that was just too quiet to make out. Behind them, the outline of the giant was just visible cutting across the darkened sky.
Sunny came over to David.
“You’re okay? Really?”
He nodded.
“Just beating myself up for letting him get away. Again.”
“You weren’t hurt. That’s all that matters,” she said.
“Only because he held back.”
“What?”
“He had me. I was on the ground. I dropped my gun. He could’ve come at me. But he didn’t.”
She took his hand, and the suddenness of it surprised him. She didn’t care who saw them together, that strange confidence she held that mystified him.
“Can I come over?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he answered. “I’d like that.”
They made love with an intensity that startled David. He wondered if she felt it as much as he did, the desperate need to escape from the reality around them. And for a while, they did escape.
With her lying there beside him, breathing softly, the warmth of her skin radiating against his own, he slipped blessedly to sleep.
In his dreams, he was deep in some ocean, with no light, the current pushing him this way and that. He could not tell up from down, and though he thrashed about, there was nothing. Nothing except water.
And there was something else. Unseen but looming. Some great being that surged through the depths, something coming toward him, ever closer. A leviathan, its mouth gaping, ready to consume.