“No, he never comes out of his domain. Most of them don’t. He’s like a spider in there. But he has plenty of goons to do his complaining for him.”
Thinking of Bernie Kinley, I had to agree. That man definitely qualified for classification as a “goon.” I craned my neck out the passenger window and stared up at the towers. They formed two oblong shapes, thrusting upward side by side, looking like a giant tuning fork aimed at the sky. At night, the building was more attractive. I liked the way the walls ran with green lights.
McKesson parked his car, and we crossed the asphalt toward the eastern tower. I thought about the location of other recent rips. I could see a pattern.
“They’re chasing me, aren’t they?” I asked.
“The Gray Men? Maybe.”
“No, not maybe. I was at Holly’s place yesterday. About a dozen hours after I left, they kicked in her door. Now they are popping up at the towers, where I spent most of today. They are one step behind me.”
He turned his head to look at me. “You think a rip is going to open in Mrs. Townsend’s room again?”
I nodded. “A strong possibility. Only Jenna’s not there—I moved her, fortunately. She should be safe.”
McKesson began to trot. “If we get there first, they won’t be able to come through,” he said.
I ran after him, and we raced to the elevators. McKesson paused to call their security. Two unsmiling men showed up and handed the detective a keycard pass without comment. They followed us up to the eighteenth floor, but stayed in the elevator lobby. I could tell they were annoyed. I recalled Bernie telling me that they preferred to handle security issues on their own, but they clearly had their orders to cooperate with McKesson.
We entered Jenna’s old room just as the space inside began to warp. I saw right away there was going to be a problem: the warping had begun in the region of the sliding glass door. The slider and the curtains were rippling. I heard the glass rattle and shiver, as if there were a storm outside.
McKesson gave a nasty laugh when he saw it. “If they don’t pay attention and come through into that, this is going to be great.”
It wasn’t great. A figure stepped through, wearing normal clothing. A hood covered his face. His hands were covered by black leather gloves with the fingers cut away. Those fingers weren’t gray, I realized with a shock.
The moment the figure was firmly in the room, the sheet of glass that formed the sliding door exploded in a gush of blood. Stricken, the man staggered and pitched onto the table where Jenna and I had consumed a bottle of century-old wine the night before. He quivered and died, his body winged by blades of glass and shreds of fabric from the curtains.
“You missed, buddy,” McKesson said to the corpse. He nudged the body until it slipped off the table onto the carpet. “What the hell is this? A frat boy?”
I inspected the dead man, grimacing. We were clearly not dealing with a Gray Man. He was quite human. He had a growth of black beard, cut short and bristling. His hazel eyes stared up at the ceiling above us. There were strange tattoos on his neck that looked like tentacles trying to crawl up out of his shirt.
“Damned amateurs,” McKesson grumbled. “How the hell did he step out to wherever he was and then get back here again?”
I peered into the smoky space that filled the balcony. I couldn’t see much. It was dark on both sides of the opening. The darkness, plus a lack of caution, had killed our suspect.
“I’m going through,” I said.
“Are you crazy?”
“Yeah, but I have to take a look. Someone is sending rips through wherever I’ve just been. Holly might have been taken by this guy—or his friends.”
“You are stepping out again for a stripper?” he asked. “On a maybe?”
“No one else is coming through to our side. Maybe there is no one else over there. Or maybe there is and I’ll find out who’s trying to kill me. Clearly, it’s not just the Gray Men who are involved in all this.”
“Whatever happened to following my lead?”
“Look, they’re going to keep trying for me. Are you coming or not?”
McKesson shook his head. “Hell no,” he said. “But you go ahead. When they tear you up and toss you back, I’ll put a bullet in your brain out of compassion.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said, and I stepped out.