I couldn’t speak any lower than I was speaking. “The basement, Mike. Billy told me there’s a basement.”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“I’m going to the basement. Come get me there,” I said. “Find me. Find out where it lets out at the end and meet me there.”
“Don’t go down, kid!” Mike screamed at me. “Cell phones don’t work in there, because of the old iron foundation of the hospital building. Stay where I can hear you. Stay where I can talk you through this.”
I wanted to listen to Mike. I wanted him to know how much I needed him to get to me.
But the time for talking me through this escape was over, and I pressed the button that ended our conversation.
Josie Breed had stopped pounding on the door through which Lucy and Billy had fled to the safety—I hoped—of the security office. She must have realized that the adjacent door—not even knowing I had used it to exit—was possibly an alternate route that would get her there.
There was silence around me for almost a minute. Then I heard a couple of steps, and the sound of the heavy metal door creaking open above me.
My tracker entered the stairwell and stood still at the landing on the top, as though listening for anything that revealed the presence of another human.
I stopped breathing. I didn’t move a muscle.
I looked down and saw that the bare lightbulb overhead had cast my shadow onto the dull gray paint of the hospital floor.
Josie Breed must have seen it, too. When she put her foot on the first step of the tall staircase, I heard the sound of the release of a round into the chamber of her handgun. I knew I was alone in what seemed like the most isolated place in New York City, in the company of a stone-cold assassin, who had me clearly in her sights.