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That was it. His stomach was already roiling from the concussion, and the sight of that disgusting little meal slammed into him like a fist right into his gut.
He twisted to the side and vomited everything inside him, then hung over the foul mess he’d made, weeping for shame at his own weakness and for the pounding, crashing pain in his head.
Pat-pat, this time on his shoulder. Sveti shoved a handful of wet paper napkins into his hand and the bottle of filtered water into the other. She pushed at him, nudging until he understood that he was supposed to scoot closer to Carrie. Then she started cleaning up the vomit, like she was used to it.
He wiped his eyes, his mouth with the napkin. “Please don’t,” he forced out, through shaking lips. “I’ll…I’ll do it.”
She shot him a sidelong look. He could read it. You can’t even walk without falling on your face, and if I don’t, who will?
So you wake up in a completely white room. How do you feel?
He almost laughed at the random thought, but he stopped himself. It would hurt too much. How did he feel? He felt like he was already dead. So was Carrie, and Sveti, and the rest of these poor kids. All that was left was the actual, bloody separation from his body.
He let her clean up his stinking mess, trying hard not to cry.
This was not possible. It had to be some kind of bizarre joke.
But Nick didn’t joke at the best of times. He could not possibly be joking now. Becca’s mouth worked, stuttering out words that made no sense. “But I—but you—Nick, what on earth? T-t-take these off me, for God’s sake! We don’t have time for this!”
“You have time for it now.” He had that hateful cool tone that had been bothering her since he’d gotten back to the hotel that day. “You’ve got all the time in the world for the next couple of days.”
“But why are you doing this? Carrie and Josh are—”
“Figments of your imagination,” he said. “And as such, I’m not inclined to worry about them.”
She gaped at him until she found her voice again. “But that’s nuts! You know they exist! You talked to my brother on the phone!”
“Yeah, that call from Josh really had me going. For a long time. But we’ve reached the end of the line.”
“Why?” she demanded, frantically. “When? What happened?”
“It happened today,” he said. “At 1:16, when you got out of a taxi and went into Zhoglo’s town house.”
She floundered for a moment, bewildered. “Zhoglo’s—what? But I didn’t…oh, Nick. My God.” She clutched his arm with her free hand. “You mean, the Gavin Street house? That’s where I went to see Josh! Now it makes sense! Josh said Nadia was here on a student visa, but that place was way too nice to be foreign student housing. Iknewthere was something off. That’s how Zhoglo entrapped Josh! With Nadia! And Carrie was in that house the whole time!”
She could no longer make out his eyes, it was so dark, but she could actually feel the cold emanating from him. “Nice recovery,” he said. “But you really think I’m that stupid? Why should I believe you now when you lied to me before? You didn’t say anything about visiting a Gavin Street town house to see your brother. You lied, Becca. Why?”
“No.” She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, “I, ah, I thought that stop to see Josh was no big deal—”
“No big deal? Really. Your thought processes fascinate me.”
His grating, ironic tone was chilling. “OK, I thought you would be angry,” she blurted. “It just came up. He called me, and you’d been so intense about safety, and so I just—”
“I am angry,” he said. “You cannot imagine how angry I am.”
She rattled her cuffed hand against the scaffolding. “This is a pretty emphatic message,” she said tartly. “Nick, get real. Wake up. You can’t leave me here. You are wrong about me. I’m not with Zhoglo.”
“What’s this, then?” He retrieved her purse, which had fallen to the floor and rummaged inside, pulling out an envelope. “Explain this to me, sweetheart.”
She stared at it, utterly perplexed. “My new purse—I bought a replacement. But that? Never seen that before in my life. What is it?”
He opened the envelope and pulled out a fantastically thick wad of bills. “Fifteen thousand bucks,” he said. “For services rendered.”
She stared at it, shaking her head. She felt hemmed in, on every side, like the walls of a box were closing in on her. “No,” she whispered.
“You must have shown Zhoglo one hell of a good time for that kind of money. Were you as passionate with him as you are with me?”
“No. Never. They must have planted it while I was talking to Josh,” she said, but she could feel the wall that blocked her words from him. They bounced back, sounding even to her own ears like the meaningless babble of a liar, caught out.
