Aldiss was here. He had somehow gotten into the mansion; he’d killed Frank Marsden and now Keller was in danger. She felt defenseless standing there alone in the pulsing emptiness, the only thing in the corridor the empty, looping wire. Everything else was dark.
She took a step. Another. And where were the others? Why hadn’t Black or Christian Kane come to this wing to check on her, to save her? Why—
There was a sound then, a ticking noise inside the blackness.
Alex froze. It had come from the far end of the hall, beyond Keller’s room.
Fear welled up inside her, forcing her to move. One step, and then another—she had to get to the far end of the hall. She had to get off this floor and down. The closest exit was there, not twenty-five feet away, and she had to get there.
Another step. She was beside the window now where Frank had stood. There was blood stippled on the wall, and something else—heavy tracks on the corridor’s carpet. A black slither of blood sweeping away from her, as if Frank had been dragged away.
Alex forced her eyes away from the stain. Moved on.
She moved fast toward the steps, thinking, He could be downstairs right now. He could be on any floor of this house, waiting for me. She pictured Aldiss’s face, the grotesque smile greeting her in the darkness.
Downstairs now. She took the flight of steps in two leaps and then turned, torquing her body with the rail, and pulled herself—
Out. Out into the cold, where the wind sheared away her fear.
There were people on the front lawn, a group of them standing over something on the ground. A clump of something, human-shaped. A thought screamed through Alex’s mind: No. Not Keller. Not Keller.
Tentatively, she stepped forward into the crowd and looked down.
It was Frank. Someone was doing CPR on him. Others were shouting, pointing toward a bundle of dark trees a hundred yards from the dean’s house. She saw Black gesturing wildly, organizing something. The man’s eyes fell on her.
“Shipley,” he said. “What the hell happened up there?”
“I . . . I don’t . . .”
“We saw someone running,” Black went on. “Someone came out of the house and dropped Marsden, and then he took off toward campus.”
“Keller,” Alex said. He must have been going after Aldiss.
Black’s eyes flared in the half-dark. Then there was movement on the ground, and the paramedic who had been working on Marsden shouted, “I’ve got a pulse!”
The detective turned away. The others in the circle all looked down at the man, who was still coughing blood and reaching out. Alex saw Lucy Wiggins there, crouching beside the fallen man. “Tell me what happened, baby,” she was saying. “Please tell me.”
Black took a step toward the dying man. A wild thought burned in Alex’s mind: Go. Now.
Another step by Black and Alex took off on a dead sprint toward campus.
Toward Keller.