Natural Causes (52 page)

He kicked open another door, shined his light into the room, and snapped Sarah’s head around, making her look inside. “Here’s the little suite where my late virologist lived while he was putting together our product,” he went on. “Home, home in the hospital, and no one ever knew he was here. Now isn’t that just something?”

“Where’s Matt?”

“All in good time.”

“Attention, attention please. This building will be demolished by explosion in seventy-five minutes. No one should be inside the structure or within the blue protective barriers. Repeat …”

“Right on time,” Blankenship said. “That asshole Paris runs a tight ship.”

In spite of herself, Sarah began to cry.

“You bastard. You crazy bastard,” she whimpered.

“Now just shut up,” he rasped, his voice reverberating down the corridor. “If you don’t have the decency to listen and appreciate what I’ve been able to accomplish, then just keep your mouth shut. I’ve already helped half a million people lose weight, live longer, and feel better about themselves, and I’ve banked almost twenty-one million dollars in just eight months. If you’re not impressed, then you’re not listening.”

“Where’s Matt?”

“Oh, I am just sick and tired of you,” he said. “I expected more from a woman of your breadth and worldliness.” He dragged her a few more feet down the corridor. “I give you your knight in shining armor,” he announced. “Unfortunately, he is at this moment a tad the worse for wear.”

He cast his light down at Matt, who was seated on the floor, a broad adhesive tape gag across his mouth. His hands were secured behind him to a vertical sewage pipe,
and his face showed the ravages of a fearsome beating. But he was alive.

“He’s been waiting here patiently just in case my clean-up campaign hit any last-minute snags. But except for your unfortunate recovery from your suicide attempt the other night, there really haven’t been any.”

Blankenship loosened his hold on her. Sarah rushed to Matt and gently peeled off the tape. He breathed in the stale, dusty air hungrily. She stroked his face and kissed the dark swelling about his eyes.

“Matt, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry” was all she could say.

“I love you,” he managed. “I was praying he wouldn’t hurt you any more.”

“They’ll find us, Eli,” Sarah said angrily. “They’ll dig this place out, they’ll find us, and they’ll get you. You’re really not as smart as you think. There are too many loose ends.”

“There are none,” he said. “At least none that I can’t deal with, especially with Peter Ettinger around to absorb the blame for absolutely anything. The dupe from heaven, that’s what I call him. In jail and absolutely clueless. Now, if you’ll be so kind as to put your hands together behind your back, I have just enough wire left over.”

Sarah stayed where she was, her arms around Matt’s shoulders. Blankenship was reaching again for her when Matt lashed his feet out. In one motion, he knocked the light free and continued upward until he made solid contact with Blankenship’s chin.

“Run, Sarah!” he shouted as Blankenship reeled several steps backward. “Run!”

Matt cried out as Blankenship hit him. But Sarah was already through the doorway. The subbasement corridor was pitch-black. She slammed into the wall, stumbled momentarily, and then dragged her hand along it, moving as fast as she could in the direction away from the tunnel and the locked security gates. The windows and doors from the first floor on up were boarded over.
If she could somehow get to one of those and kick the boards out, there was a chance. Behind her, she heard Blankenship laugh.

“What a flashlight,” he said. “First chance I get, I’m writing a letter of endorsement to the manufacturer. Sarah, give it up!”

Sarah continued working her way along the wall as the powerful flashlight beam began sweeping the corridor, searching her out. At the moment it found her, she glimpsed the stairs, just a few feet ahead and to her left. She raced upward as fast as she could, hitting the wall at the landing, bouncing off it, and then sprinting upward to the basement level. Behind her she could see the bobbing light and hear Blankenship’s heavy footsteps. The debris was a problem now. Huge pieces of concrete and planking tripped her once, and then again, as she picked her way up to the first floor.

“Give it up, Sarah,” Blankenship called out once more.

If she could only put some distance between them, Sarah thought—just find a place to hide until he
had
to leave the building—she had a chance. Every story meant more possibilities Blankenship had to consider before he could confidently move on. Every turn that presented her with new options presented him with new problems. She fell again but scrambled up and, as quietly as she could manage, worked her way to the second floor. This was where she would stop, she decided. This was where she would hide.

She dragged her hand along the wall as she made her way over the rubble and through the oppressive darkness, searching for a room of some sort. Up ahead, through what she felt must be a boarded window, she saw the faintest sliver of light. Behind her, Blankenship’s footsteps and labored breathing were getting closer. Suddenly the floor beneath her left foot vanished. At almost the same instant her left hand slipped from the wall into nothingness. She felt herself falling. Reflexively
she pushed off her right foot and dove forward. She fell heavily to the floor, pieces of concrete gashing her chin and knee. Then, helplessly, she toppled off into what she realized at that instant was the elevator shaft. She was beginning to free-fall when first her right hand, then her left, found the edge of something metal. Her fingers closed on it. Her arms snapped to full extension, but her grips held. And suddenly she was dangling over a black abyss.

Desperately she tried to comprehend her situation. She was clinging to the metal frame that had once held the elevator doors. The concrete had broken away from the frame, leaving a gap several inches wide between it and the remaining floor. Through the darkness, she could hear Blankenship leave the first floor, following the sound of her fall to the second. The metal was cutting into her fingers. She had only seconds to make a decision. She either had to try and haul herself up … or drop. Three stories to the subbasement, she figured. Twenty-five feet, maybe. Would she have any chance at all dropping through the impenetrable blackness to a concrete floor? The answer was clear.

Planting the sole of her sneaker against the wall of the shaft and pulling with strength she would never have believed she possessed, she kicked one foot up to the doorway and over the metal frame. The gap beyond the frame was quite wide, actually—eight or nine inches. With her heel set in the space, she had just enough purchase to haul herself up.

“Attention. Attention, please. This building will be demolished by explosion in sixty minutes …”

Shielded by the noise of the loudspeaker’s warning, Sarah scrambled on her hands and knees across the corridor. She was cowering against the wall, in a small alcove opposite the shaft, when Blankenship’s light knifed through the darkness from the stairway landing.

“Come on, Sarah,” he called, inching his way along. “We’ll talk.… Maybe work out a deal.… I’m not
leaving until there’s only a minute or two left.… You don’t have a prayer without me. Neither does Daniels. He’s hurt, you know.… Hurt pretty bad. You can help him.…”

There was one chance, Sarah realized as he approached. Only one. She braced herself against the wall. If he spotted her before he reached the open shaft, it was over for her. But if not.…

Ten feet away … five … still the beam had not found her. Three.…
One more step
, she urged.
Just one, and
—

At the moment the light hit her, she sprang forward, hurling her body against Blankenship’s chest with all her strength. It was as if she had leapt against a slab of granite. Before she even realized how totally she had failed, the man’s arms were around her, crushing her.

“Not a chance,” he said, laughing out loud and intensifying his grip. “Not a—”

Sarah felt his bulk suddenly shift and his hold on her lessen. He had taken a single step backward. She knew that. But then something had happened. He was off balance, falling backward and to his left … falling into the shaft. Still clutching Sarah too tightly for her to break away, Blankenship began to scream.

“My leg! … Jesus, my leg! …”

He howled, again and again, bellowing as he toppled backward in what seemed to Sarah to be slow motion. She was frantically trying to sort out what was going on, what action she might take, when Blankenship’s two lower leg bones snapped. The moment she heard the crunch and his hideous wail, Sarah understood. He had stepped into the space between the metal frame and the concrete floor. What little force she had provided against his chest was just enough to keep him from recovering his balance. He swung backward rapidly now, his leg bending at a newly created joint several inches above his ankle.

Still conscious and screeching in agony, he hung upside
down in the pitch-black shaft, clinging to Sarah’s right wrist, dangling her beneath him. Then, wailing piteously, he let her go.

•  •  •

Sarah had the briefest warning before Blankenship’s grasp on her wrist released. In that second, countless thoughts and bits of advice on how to fall and land flashed through her mind.
Roll … relax … land on your feet … land on your butt … land on your side … push off when you hit … flatten out …
So desperate was she to do something to keep from dying that she was completely unprepared for the actual impact, which came after a free fall that lasted only moments, and covered less than six feet. She landed heavily on the steep slope of a mountain of rubble that extended upward into the shaft almost two stories from the subbasement.

Clawing at the chunks of concrete and other debris, she stopped herself from tumbling downward. For half a minute she lay there, gasping for breath. She hurt badly in spots, but none of the injuries seemed incapacitating. Above her, enveloped in the intense darkness, Blankenship continued to moan. He had not passed out, she realized, because he was suspended upside down. There was no reflex blood vessel dilation, no drop in blood flow to his head. No merciful lapse into unconsciousness.

She peered through the gloom. Her vision now adjusted to the circumstance, she could see the slight changes in the shaft above and below her at what must have been the doorways at the first floor and basement. She was inching her way downward when she suddenly remembered the keys. Blankenship had slipped them into his clinic coat. Of that she was almost certain. Without them she had no option but to find a window and try to break through the boards.

Fifty minutes to go. Perhaps less now
. With Blankenship
suspended the way he was, could she possibly reach his pocket? She turned and began picking her way back up the slope of shattered concrete. She would work on obtaining the key until there was half an hour to go, she decided. And then she would try the first-story windows.

“Eli,” she called out. “Eli, listen to me. I’m just below you. I need the keys. Can you work your clinic coat off and let it drop?”

The soft, whining moan from above continued. Sarah pushed herself up the rubble another foot. She was opposite the very top of the first-floor opening now. But the slope had ended. She was as high as she could go. Blankenship was close. Just a few feet above her at the most. She tried to picture his down-stretched arms and imagine how his clinic coat might be hanging. If she leapt up and out, could she reach it? Could she hang on to it enough to pull it free? What if the keys had already fallen out? She stood at the very top of the slope, her back pressed against the rear wall of the shaft. Blankenship’s heavy breathing seemed almost within arm’s reach. Still, she could see nothing.

One try. One try and that would be it
.

Expecting to connect with nothing but air, she braced her foot against the wall behind her and threw herself up and out. Blankenship screamed as her outstretched arms, flailing for his coat, collided with him. She hurtled on through the blackness, landing heavily on the unyielding slope and tumbling over and over toward the basement doorway. At the bottom of the slope she dropped out of the shaft, falling several feet from the rubble onto the basement floor. Air exploded from her lungs at the impact. She lay there, battered and sobbing, struggling to catch her breath, to regain her composure, to will herself to move. Suddenly she realized that she was clutching Blankenship’s clinic coat.

The key ring was in the right-hand pocket.

Painfully she limped to the stairway and then made
her way down to the subbasement. She called out Matt’s name, and followed his voice to the room that had so nearly become their tomb. The darkness was suffocating.

“It’s over,” she whispered, touching his face with her fingertips. “I’ve got Blankenship’s keys. Now we’ve got to get you out of here, and I’ve got to get to Annalee.”

She kissed him, and then reached behind to where he was bound to the pipe.

“It’s wire of some sort,” he said. “It’s cutting my wrists to shreds. I’m not sure you can do anything back there in this dark without pliers.”

“Let me try.”

“Sarah, Blankenship’s a demon. He had Rosa and Warren Fezler killed. He wired explosives to the ignition on Colin Smith’s boat, and then arranged for Ettinger to be arrested for it. He’s engineered everything—
everything
.… Singh is dead, too. Blankenship shot him and set it up to look like Ettinger did that one as well. He was just about home free. You were the last loose end and—ouch! Careful, that really hurts.”

“Sorry. Matt, I can’t do this. The wire’s too tight.…”

“Well, we’ve got forty minutes or so. Get hold of Paris. Have him stop the countdown and get some people down here. Is Blankenship dead?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Listen, there’s a phone just outside the outer gate in the tunnel. I’ll be right back.”

“You’d better be,” he said. “I don’t like it here too much. I think it’s a very unlucky spot.”

She kissed his forehead, then moved as quickly as she could down the corridor and through the two security gates. Until she picked up the receiver, she hadn’t considered that the house phone outside the second gate might be disconnected. The dial tone was a hymn.