When No One Is Watching(82)

“Nothing wrong with shooting your shot in the middle of a bloodbath. If not now, when?” she asks sardonically, but doesn’t reciprocate the sentiment.

We reach a bend in the hallway and turn right, slowly maneuvering the gurney and its horrific payload. We move through another set of double doors—automatic ones that haven’t closed all the way.

The hallway ahead is a little dimmer, the walls painted a dull gray and many of the light sconces bulbless. We’ve passed into a different wing.

It’s the smell that hits me first. Feces. Bodily odor.

Despair.

Large windows line the walls of the corridor up ahead—not glass, something less easy to break. Something good for keeping people confined. This looks like a lockup—it shouldn’t be in the basement of an old shut-down hospital.

There’s no sound except our labored breathing and the creak of the gurney wheels. The silence around us feels heavy, foreboding.

As we approach the first window, a hand slaps against it hard, and Sydney stops short and presses into me—William Bilford’s body slides off the gurney to the floor with a heavy thud.

“Mrs. Payne?” She rushes past the body on the floor and presses her hand to the window.

“No, no, no. This is too much. This is too—”

Her words break off, and she just shakes her head, staring into the room.

When I walk up behind her, an older woman with matted hair and cheeks caved in from missing teeth is staring at Sydney through the plexiglass. The whites of her eyes are yellow and swimming with tears. I stare at those eyes for a long moment.

I recognize them.

“She’s—I found a photo album a little after I moved here. In the garbage. She’s in a lot of the pictures.”

I’d wondered why someone had tossed away such precious memories like trash. This woman hadn’t thrown it out. Whoever stole her home had taken care of that.

The woman, no longer the young bright-eyed girl or always-laughing young woman whose photo I had looked at countless times, slaps the plexiglass where Sydney’s hand is, her hand pressing hard as if she might touch Sydney through it. I recognize the expression in her eyes—it’s the same way Kavaughn looked at me.

Desperation.

A cry for help.

She points at the tubes in her arms, starts making wild gestures I can’t understand.

“They said they were going to open a research center, and they have.” Sydney’s voice is quiet, but when she looks up at me her eyes are wide and terrified. “This is Doris Payne. The woman whose house you took.”





Chapter 23

Sydney

I LOOK UP AT THEO, THE HORROR I’M FEELING SO OVERWHELMING that I might black out. Doris is caged. Caged like an animal. She’s always been so prideful about her looks, and they have her in here looking like this.

“The day of the tour, your girlfriend was looking at the Payne house.” I’d registered it as I slammed my door in Theo’s face, but hadn’t remembered it and what it meant until now. “It’s like what Bill Bil said. They want a house, and they take it. Doesn’t matter if someone else lives there.”

“I had no idea about any of this.”

I’m starting to wonder how it’s possible for him not to know about any of this.

“Why did you even go on that tour?” I ask him, as my body shakes. I feel like every cell in my body wants to fly off in a different direction. “So Kim could play some fucked-up game? Eenie meenie miney mo, catch a brownstone by—by kidnapping and torturing?”

Doris looks at Theo, but she has no reaction to him. Not fear or anger or recognition. Her gaze drifts back to me, unfocused and awful and pleading.

She used to sell Avon products and had slipped me samples of Skin So Soft in the summer when the mosquitoes were biting. The gentle scent has always reminded me of her, but now the smell in this hallway makes it impossible to even recall.

Theo doesn’t touch me, but he moves closer. “Kim told me that her dad had bought us the tour tickets and that it would be a good way to check out the neighborhood, since we were looking to buy.”

I turn away from the window, away from Doris, and my gaze lands on the door beside her small room that contains only a cot and a bucket. The door has an electronic code reader on its heavy-duty lock. The chart on the wall next to the door says Test Subject 3 and nonviable is scrawled beneath it in Sharpie.

I try to collate all of these facts, make them make sense, but my brain can’t process this horror.

“Sydney.”

I ignore Theo and stalk down the hallway, weaving from one side to the other as I inspect each room and each chart.

Test Subject 1 is a dark-skinned man I don’t know who lies on his cot without moving.

Nonviable.

Test subject 2. Miss Wanda, dammit, Miss Wanda, frail and hunched over, scratching at her neck.

Nonviable.

“Sydney.” Theo’s harsh whisper is drowned out by the buzz in my mind.

Test Subjects 4 and 5 are strangers, a man and a woman. Maybe the woman is the one Amber mentioned, who supposedly got snatched down a subway grate. Or maybe that woman is already dead.

Number 6 is Abdul. His cell is a bit different—he’s on a gurney, hooked up to machines that monitor his vitals.

I run down the hall now, heart pounding in my ears, the unfamiliar and familiar faces blending together. Stranger, slapping at his own head. Jamel Jones, who I just saw a couple of days ago, knocked out and with an IV in his arm.