Page 40 of Her Last Doubt

"Rachel, no." Novak pushed off the wall, swaying slightly before catching himself, one hand braced flat against the wallpaper. "You're not going back in there alone. Not after what just happened to me."

"He's in there. He's moving through those walls right now and if I wait, we lose him."

"You don't know where he is. You don't know what he's got in there with him, or what he used on me."

"I know enough." She looked at him steadily, though she knew he was right. But if Pruitt was still inside the walls and she could cut him off, he was essentially trapped. It was an opportunity she didn’t want to let breeze by. "You can barely stand,” she added. “I'm not waiting around for backup to clear this building floor by floor while he finds another way out."

He held her gaze for a long moment, his jaw tight, and she could see him weighing whether to keep arguing or not. He didn't look happy about it, but he didn't try again.

"Call Purcell," Rachel said. "And local PD. I need the back exit covered…every way out of this building that isn't the front door. If he comes out anywhere down there, I don't want him getting past us."

Novak nodded, already reaching for his phone with the hand that wasn't holding the paper towel to his head. "Got it."

"You stay right here until they get here. Don't go anywhere."

"Yeah, that’ll be easy." He gave her a short nod, his eyes still slightly unfocused but steady enough now that she trusted him to make the call. "Go on, then."

Rachel turned and went back through the apartment door, moving quickly to the closet and pulling the panel open again. She climbed through into the passage, the stale air closing in around her once more. Dust still hung thick from her first pass through as she pulled the panel shut behind her. It fit in easily and stayed, resolute thanks to the tight fit of tongue and groove design.

She stood still for a moment, listening, her back pressed against the inside of the closet panel and her breathing held as quiet as she could manage.

At first there was nothing, just the low building hum she'd heard all afternoon. Then, faintly, she caught it: a footfall, careful and deliberate, somewhere above her. Pruitt was moving upward, away from the floor she was on. This struck her as strange given how late in the day it was and how exposed he should have known he was after this morning. She was sure he would have started working his way down in order to get away from them.

Unless he thought Novak was alone, she thought.

She found the nearest ladder a short distance from the closet panel, the iron rungs cold under her hand. With her heart thudding hard in her chest, she started up, keeping her movements slow and quiet, testing each rung before putting her weight on it. As she climbed, she could hear Pruitt more clearly now, his breathing audible somewhere ahead and above her.

Rachel kept climbing, her eyes fixed on the dark above her, and moved toward the sound.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

The climb was difficult because she’d opted not to switch her flashlight o. The last thing she wanted was to giver herself away. So she had to reach blindly for each rung as she ascended into the darkness. Climbing this way, she came to the end of the ladder without warning, the last rung giving way to a flat section of passage floor. Rachel pulled herself up and over the edge, her back scraping hard against the wall behind her as she found her footing. In the back of her mind, she realized that she had to be close to the ninth floor by now. She'd lost count of the floors somewhere around six, her attention split between the climb and the sound of Pruitt moving ahead of her, the rhythm of his footsteps and breathing carrying down to her through the shaft even as the distance between them seemed to hold steady.

The claustrophobia hadn't let up. If anything, it had gotten worse the higher she climbed as the passage narrowed further at this height. Now on another platform, the ceiling pressing down close enough that she had to keep her head bowed even while crouched. Her shoulder ached from the climb and her shirt clung to her back with sweat. She took small, shallow breaths as she forced air into her lungs and reminded herself that the tightness in her chest was fear and not the walls themselves closing in.

Maybe it was because she was distracted by her own breathing that she never saw or heard him coming.

There was a shift in the air just before the blow landed in the darkness—just a faint displacement she registered half a second too late. She twisted instinctively, raising her arm and cutting on the flashlight.

The pipe caught her shoulder instead of her skull because of the motion of her arm. It was a glancing blow but it still sent pain shooting down through her arm and knocked her sideways into the wall. The flashlight fell from her hand and struck the floor of the narrow passage. It was more than enough for her to make out Pruitt’s face. He was in front of her, filling the narrow space almost entirely, his eyes wide and unfocused in the beam of her dropped flashlight. He was shaking, the pipe clutched in both hands, his knuckles pale around it.

Rachel drew her gun, bringing her weapon up despite the throb in her shoulder. "Put it down. Now."

He didn't seem to hear her. He kept his grip on the pipe and she realized he’s not been able to swing; the narrow space of the passage didn’t allow for it. Instead, he’d had to attack her with the pipe as if it were an axe, raising it over his head and bringing it down. She figured that was why there hadn’t been a tone of power in the blow. There simply wasn’t enough room in these passages to do much of anything.

"You don't understand what they're doing to this place," he said, his voice cracking and uneven. "Letting themselves rot in here. Letting it happen right inside these walls. I know every inch of this building. I know it better than anybody who's ever lived here, and I am not going to let them turn it into a waiting room for the dead."

"Dale. Put the pipe down and we'll talk about this."

"There's nothing to talk about." His breath came fast and shallow, his whole body trembling now, the pipe twitching in his grip. "Nobody understands what it takes to keep something like this alive. I do. I'm the only one who's ever understood it.” He stepped closer to her, backing her nearer to the ladder she’s just come up. “I crawl through these walls every night and I hold this whole building together with my own two hands, and they just want to lie down and rot in front of everyone like it doesn't matter what that does to this place."

"I hear you," Rachel said, keeping her voice level even as her pulse hammered against her ribs. "I do. And I'm not going to hurt you if you put that down. We can talk this through somewhere else."

"It's too late for that," he said. And with those words, something in his face shifted. The wildness in his eyes sharpened into something closer to resolve.

He came at her again instead, swinging the pipe overhead in the cramped space with a wild, desperate motion that had nowhere near enough room to build real force. Rachel ducked under it easily, the metal scraping along the wall above her head and showering both of them with a fine rain of dust and debris that was knocked loose from the joists. She grabbed his wrist as he overextended, trying to pin the pipe against the wood, her boots fighting for purchase on the uneven floorboards beneath them. And with every slight move, either a knee, elbow or the side of her head grazed against the walls of the passage.

There was no space to fight properly. Every movement scraped against wood or pressed into iron, every attempt to get clear ground met instead with a stud or a beam or the unforgiving press of Pruitt's own body in a space built for one person at a time, not two locked in a struggle. He was stronger than she expected, his panic giving him a kind of reckless strength that had no use for technique. Two different times, she nearly lost her footing on the uneven floorboards beneath them.