ETHAN HAD TOLD PALOMAR LABORATORIES to analyze his blood for traces of illicit chemicals, in case he’d been drugged without his knowledge. During the events at Reynerd’s apartment house, he had almost seemed to be in an altered state of consciousness.
Now, leaving the steamy bathroom, he felt no less disoriented than when, after being gut shot, he had found himself behind the wheel of the Expedition once more, unharmed.
Whatever had happened—or had only seemed to happen—at the mirror, he no longer entirely trusted his senses. As a consequence, he proceeded with greater caution than before, assuming that yet again things might not be as they appeared to be.
He passed through rooms he’d already searched and then into new territory, arriving at last in the kitchen. Shattered glass sparkled on the breakfast table and littered the floor.
Also on the floor lay the silver picture frame missing from the desk in the study. The photo of Hannah had been stripped out of it.
Whoever had taken the picture had been in too great a hurry to release the four fasteners on the back of the frame, and had instead smashed the glass.
[109] The rear door of the apartment stood open.
Beyond lay a wide hall that served the back of both penthouse units. At the nearer end, an exit sign marked a stairwell. Toward the farther end was a freight elevator big enough to carry refrigerators and large pieces of furniture.
If someone had taken the freight route down, he had already completed his descent. No sound issued from the elevator machinery.
Ethan hurried to the stairs. Opened the fire door. Paused on the threshold, listening.
Groan or moan, or melancholy sigh, or clank of chains: Even a ghost ought to make a sound, but only a cold hollow silence rose out of the stairwell.
He went down quickly, ten flights to the ground floor, then another two flights to the garage. He encountered neither a flesh-and-blood resident nor a spirit.
The scent of sickness and fever sweats, first detected in the elevator, didn’t linger here. Instead, he smelled a faint soapy odor, as if someone fresh from a bath had passed this way. And a trace of spicy aftershave.
Pushing open the steel fire door, stepping into the garage, he heard an engine, smelled exhaust fumes. Of the forty parking stalls, many were empty at this hour on a work day.
Toward the front of the garage, a car backed out of a stall. Ethan recognized Dunny’s midnight-blue Mercedes sedan.
Triggered by remote control, the garage gate was already rising with a steely clack and clatter.
Pistol still in hand, Ethan ran toward the car as it pulled away from him. The gate rose slowly, and the Mercedes had to stop for it. Through the rear window, he could see the silhouette of a man behind the steering wheel, but not clearly enough to make an identification.
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