Chapter 5 - The Midnight Search
The rain began to fall again, this time with a savage, driving fury that whipped through the narrow concrete corridors of Oakwood.
In the basement apartment at 14 Elm Alley, the darkness was nearly complete. The single floor lamp had flickered and died twenty minutes ago when the storm knocked out the remaining secondary transformer on the block. The only illumination came from a single stub of a paraffin candle resting in an old saucer on the floor between the twins' cot and Clara’s sofa.
The room was freezing.
Emma sat on the edge of the sofa, holding Clara’s cold hand between both of hers, blowing her warm breath onto the blue-tinted fingertips. Clara was no longer coughing. That was what frightened Emma the most. Her grandmother’s breathing had slowed to a horrifying, shallow gasp, her lips tinged with gray, her skin cold and clammy with the sweat of impending heart failure.
“Lily,” Emma whispered. “Get the coat. Put it over her feet.”
Lily dragged the heavy brown coat across the linoleum, her small face streaked with dirt and dried tears. “Emma, she won’t wake up. I called her three times. She didn't squeeze my hand.”
“She’s sleeping,” Emma lied, her voice cracking. “She’s just saving her air until the morning. In the morning, the rain will stop, and we’ll go back to the diner. The cook said he might have twenty soup cans behind the shed.”
Suddenly, the rotten wooden door at the top of the concrete steps rattled violently.
A heavy boot kicked the wood from the outside.
“Wilson!” a coarse voice barked through the gaps in the frame. “Open the damn door, Clara! I know you’re in there!”
Lily jumped, letting out a small shriek and scrambling to hide behind Emma.
It was Miller, the landlord.
“Clara!” the voice shouted again, followed by another hard kick that made the rusted latch jump in its housing. “The breaker blew because of your illegal space heater! I told you, no heat until the rent is paid! I’ve got a tenant willing to pay cash for this basement tonight. If you ain't out by eight tomorrow, I’m throwing your junk into the dumpster myself!”
Emma stood up. She walked toward the door, her tiny hands clenched into tight fists. She was five years old, but her heart burned with a fierce, ancient hatred. “Go away!” she screamed through the crack in the door. “Grandma is sick! Leave us alone!”
A cruel, wet laugh came from the other side. “Oh, the little brats are awake. Tell your grandma that dying don't excuse the rent, kid. Friday noon. Not a minute later.”
The heavy footsteps sloshed away up the concrete steps, vanishing into the roar of the rain.
Emma leaned her forehead against the damp wood of the door, her shoulders shaking. She looked down at her duct-taped sneakers. The green bottle was gone. The rich man hadn't come. Nobody was coming. The scrap clerk was right. Forty-three cents wasn't enough. The world was too big, too cold, and it didn't care about two little girls in pink jackets.
Across town, three black Cadillac Escalades and an armored Mercedes tactical van blew through red lights at seventy miles per hour, sirens hidden behind their front grilles wailing like banshees.
Inside the lead vehicle, Arthur Vance sat in the passenger seat, his eyes fixed on the GPS monitor mounted on the dashboard. He had torn off his tie; his collar was open, his coat soaked through from the rain outside Vance Tower. Beside him, Mark was shouting into a satellite phone.
“The address is 14 Elm Alley! It’s an off-grid residential pocket behind the old railroad tracks! Inform the dispatch team that Mr. Vance is on site personally! Have the St. Jude’s mobile trauma unit tail us by two minutes! If that woman dies before we get there, there will be no legal sanctuary in this state for anyone involved!”
Arthur stared through the windshield at the blur of wipers.
*Emma and Lily.*
Identical curls. Damp pink jackets. Sneakers patched with silver duct tape.
He remembered them now. God help him, he remembered.
Two weeks ago, while driving past the public library on Oak Street, he had seen two small girls standing by a green metal dumpster, pulling out plastic soda bottles. He had looked at them for three seconds through the tinted, soundproof glass of his limousine, felt a passing, sterile pang of pity, and then returned to reading an earnings report from his Tokyo office.
They had been standing right there. His own blood. Sarah’s children. And he had driven past them in a four-hundred-thousand-dollar automobile while they were hunting for copper and aluminum to keep their grandmother alive.
“Faster,” Arthur whispered, his voice dangerously low.
“Arthur, we’re doing seventy-five in a thirty-five zone—”
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“I said *drive faster!*” Arthur roared, slamming his fist into the dashboard with such violence that the plastic casing cracked beneath his palm.
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