At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(96)

That, and the presence of nimble-footed rats who liked high places.

Not to mention the dead pigeons they’d walked by. She’d counted twenty on their way here from Raven’s hideout, all of them broken bundles of feathers, as if they’d flown into the walls in their panic.

Patrick gave the stairs a shake. The metal reverberated, sending metallic shock waves up the stairwell. He shook his head, but when he turned to face Addie, she sensed in him a willingness for her to call the shots. She was primary. He would follow her.

And beneath that, plainly visible on his face, was his worry that she would insist on climbing the stairs. Which meant, Patrick being Patrick, that he would insist on going with her. She felt a pang of empathy. If this place was giving her the creeps, she could imagine what it was doing to her superstitious partner.

She shone her flashlight up the stairwell as it rose into the gloom far beyond the reach of her light. The black metal stairs were eaten through in places; the landings—from what she could see—were entirely gone. Despite that, Addie believed it possible that Raven had managed to flee up the steps to higher floors, where he would think himself safe from all pursuit.

They could, she supposed, wait him out, a siege army camped outside his castle.

But the presence of the driver’s license was weighing on her. That and the barely audible creaking that came from far, far above.

Just the wind rattling around something loose up there, she told herself.

Her thoughts returned to the driver’s license. Raven might have left it behind out of carelessness. Or if he’d been in a hurry. Perhaps he’d even left it as a way of marking his territory, and someone had knocked it to the floor.

But where her brain kept getting hung up was on the idea that maybe he hadn’t left it at all. Someone else had.

Still turning things over in her mind, she went to Patrick, who had retreated a few yards from the staircase, as if putting distance between him and it would serve as a permanent separation. Her flashlight swept the walls to either side of him and caught on a single word.

SESSRúMNIR.

Next to the word was an arrow, pointing up the stairs.

SESSRúMNIR.

By now, thanks to Evan, she at least had a feel for Scandinavian words. This certainly looked like one. She pulled out her phone but found she couldn’t get a strong enough signal to either call out or use the internet.

She shone her light on the word and asked the others to try accessing the internet on their phones. But other than Patrick and the lieutenant, none of the men carried phones. And Patrick and Criver had no better luck than she did.

Trujillo gestured toward the wall. “You want to know if that word means something? I can try sending your question over the radio. Not that I’m getting a good signal, either.”

But Addie shook her head. She needed fresh air. She was starting to feel as if she were trapped in the catacombs, and if she didn’t take a break, she’d start imagining bones and skulls slithering from the walls and roiling up from the floor.

Plus, she had a theory she needed to explore. Taking a page from Evan’s book, she’d been reading up on grain elevators while she and Patrick had been outside, waiting on SWAT.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Patrick zipped up his coat. “I’ll go with you.”

Criver waved them on; he was still trying to get a signal on his phone. The SWAT teams had finished searching the silos and now stood at the ready for whatever came next. Their posture was loose—maybe they’d been told to stand down. Every single one of them looked as if they’d be quite comfortable waiting down here through the second coming and beyond.

Addie heard the wind before she and Patrick reached the exit. She scrambled up the rock pile with relief, not caring that the gale had become the howl of a beast. Dusk had rolled in from the west, and clouds raced by overhead like horses trying to outrun the lash. A delicate crescent of moon gleamed briefly to the east, caught like a jewel in a cloudy gap that closed almost as soon as she glimpsed it.

She turned right, taking the gravel path to the end of the silo, where she turned right again and followed the beam of her flashlight toward the river. She made her way to the aging pier that ran along the shoreline.

“Careful there, partner,” Patrick called as he hurried to catch up. “That wharf’s gotta be as rickety as the rest of this place.”

She slowed and shone her light along the weathered boards. “It looks all right.” But she tested her weight on it before venturing farther out along the waterfront.

Patrick followed. The wood creaked and shifted but held. “You’re cooking up something.”

“I’m trying. I’ll know more in a minute.”

She continued to shine her light down the wharf. The water surged and slapped the boards to her left. On her right, the Damen Silos rose like ancient cliffs, blotting out the sky.

While Patrick stood next to her, his scarf furling and unfurling in the wind and his head tipped back as if he were surveying the heavens, Addie pulled out her phone again and typed in the word SESSRúMNIR. She clicked on one of the articles suggested by Google and scanned its length. She nodded to herself, lowered her phone, and stared out over the water.

Across the river, downtown Chicago glittered like a fantastical city perched on a faraway world. In the near distance, the just-visible figure of a patrol officer stood watch over one of the possible access points. The other police, she knew, had fanned out across the site.