Lying Beside You (Cyrus Haven #3)(105)

Doubled over, I lean forward, putting all my weight on my toes. I manage to stand with the chair bound to my back and to shuffle a few feet like a hobbled turtle. Lilah is trying to say something behind the tape. Her eyes go to the sports bag and back to me. I understand what she means.

Rennie appears and crosses the room to the large windows, where he braces his back against the wall and looks out through one of the broken panes, cursing what he sees. He runs back to the stairwell.

‘I know you’re there. Don’t come any closer or I’ll kill them,’ he yells.

After a few moments comes a reply. ‘You don’t want to do that.’

Rennie begins to barricade the door. He rolls a large drum into place and wedges wooden pallets and broken planks diagonally against the frame. He adds metal pipes and broken pieces of concrete and another drum, which sloshes as he drags it across the floor.

While he’s distracted, I shuffle towards the table, bent forward, trying to stop the chair legs dragging on the floor. I bend even lower and manoeuvre my head and neck beneath the edge of the table. Bracing myself, I push up. The table lifts. I push again. It topples, helped by the weight of the sports bag. Tiny glass vials spill onto the floor, bouncing and scattering, but not breaking.

‘What the fuck!’ says Rennie.

I begin stamping on the vials, shattering them beneath my heels. Some of them spin away. Others refuse to break.

Rennie drags me backwards, hurling me onto the floor, still attached to the chair. I fall with my arms trapped beneath my back, crushed under the weight of my body. The pain makes my vision blur. I’m still kicking with my feet, trying to shatter the vials, but they’re out of reach.

His boot swings into my stomach and air leaves my lungs. I fight to replace it, but I can’t breathe. Maybe he’s broken something inside me. Curled up on the floor, I suck in tiny gasps, drawing in dust, wanting to cough, unable to without air.

Rennie is scooping up the remaining vials. He continues filling the syringe, tossing away each empty ampoule. Satisfied, he turns and walks to Lilah, who knows what’s coming. She bucks her hips and rocks her head, pleading behind the tape. He pinches the skin of her right forearm, searching for a vein, before plunging the needle into her skin, pushing the plunger until it empties. He goes back to the vials and fills the syringe again.

I hear the makeshift barricade begin to move. Someone is on the other side of the fire door, pushing against the broken wood and empty drums, trying to break through.

The needle slides into Daniela’s arm and Rennie pushes the plunger, before tossing the empty syringe aside. He crouches between the two nurses.

‘Heparin is an anticoagulant that causes the blood to thin, but you know that already. Oliver suffered internal bleeding, but you might be luckier.’

From within the stairwell comes an angry roar and someone charges at the door. The barricade shakes and moves an inch. It happens again and again, and each time the door is forced open a little more. A hand reaches blindly around the frame, pulling at the wood wedged against it.

Rennie takes the knife from his belt. ‘Stay away, or I’ll kill them.’

‘No, you won’t,’ says a voice. I recognise it now. Elias.

‘Are you the police?’ asks Rennie.

‘No.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘I want Evie.’

Rennie looks at me. ‘What is she to you?’

‘She’s mine.’

Rennie picks up the chair with me still attached to it. He shows me the knife, before he slices the rope and pulls me against his chest.

‘I’m holding a knife against her stomach. Leave now, or I’ll gut her like a fish.’

Elias calls my name.

I can’t answer him.

Rennie rips the tape from my mouth. More pain.

‘He’s killing the others,’ I yell. ‘They’re dying.’

Elias has managed to get his arm and shoulder through the door. Next comes his head.

‘One more step and she’s dead,’ says Rennie.

Elias sees the knife and retreats into the stairwell. He sounds like he’s arguing with someone, but I can’t make out the second voice. I glance at Lilah and Daniela. Neither is conscious. ‘He injected them with a drug. They’re going to die,’ I yell, hoping Elias can hear me.

There’s no response.

‘Are you still there?’ shouts Rennie.

‘Yeah,’ says Elias. ‘I’m getting my breath back.’

‘You know I’ll kill her if you come through that door.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

Rennie seems to find this amusing. ‘Who are you?’

‘Nobody important.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Elias.’

‘Have you ever lost someone you love, Elias?’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Then you must know how it feels.’

‘No. I didn’t feel a thing.’

Rennie frowns, as though unsure he’s heard him correctly.

‘I watched them die,’ says Elias. ‘But I didn’t feel their pain or hear their screams.’

‘What are you – a psychopath?’

‘People have called me that.’

‘What people?’