Broken Prey

across the plastic sheet; he dropped to his hands and knees in the blood, gasping for breath. Looked up at her: she hardly looked human, except for her untouched face. He’d shredded her.
    He tried calling to her again, but she was no longer home. Finally, in disgust, he’d cut her throat with a carpet knife. Not a straight razor, but a carpet knife from a Hardware Hank store, stood there and watched the blood pumping out of her throat until her heart stopped, and her blood with it.
     
    THEN RICE. That had been different; and Peterson . . .
    In the room next door, Millie reached a climax and cried out, and Grant cried out with her.
    He lay on the bed for a moment: everything was coming down on him now. Everything. He’d never make it to Miami. They’d pull him down, lock him down the hall with Biggie and Taylor and Chase.
    Grant staggered away from his bed, sweating, his heart still pounding. Into the bathroom: he felt weird, looked at himself in the mirror. His face was bright pink: his blood pressure must be out of sight, he thought. Had to calm down . . . he splashed a double handful of water into his face, patted his face dry with a towel. Looked at his watch. What? He’d been on the bed for forty minutes. It had seemed like only a moment . . .
    What to do, what to do . . . He paced his apartment, gnawing on a knuckle until it was raw. They were coming, and he was getting nowhere.
    He went into his bedroom again, opened the closet door, pushed away some shoes. Three guns there. Two from O’Donnell, one of his own. One 9mm, one .40, and a .45.
    He picked up the guns, looked at them for a moment, then went back to the living room and got his briefcase. The first briefcase of his life. All done now. He poured out the papers inside and threw in the guns. And the razor. Back to the bedroom, he got the straight razor he’d used on Peterson and slipped it into his pocket. He and Biggie and Chase had figured out how to get them inside—as long as he was coming in on a weekday, and on the second shift . . .
    Which was where they were now.
    And Justus Smith had to be in the control booth. Smith always worked the second shift, on weekdays; but what if he was sick? Or if he’d taken a vacation day? If they were actually going to execute the Armageddon, they’d always talked of it, Lighter, Chase, Taylor, and himself, as being carefully planned ahead of time, with proper options that would allow them to wait until conditions were perfect.
    Now it was all ad hoc. Nothing was perfect . . .
     
    GRANT LOOKED AT his watch. The first shift had just ended. He went to the phone, dialed in to the hospital, and asked for Smith.
    A moment later, “Cage—this is Smith.”
    Grant hung up. “All right,” he said to himself. Justus was in the cage, and God in his heaven. He looked around the apartment. He didn’t have to pack: fuck all this stuff. He picked up the briefcase, focused now, ready to make his run. Ready to go down with the Gods Down the Hall.
    And then it would all be done. No more misery; no more loneliness; no more acid rolling around in his brains, to make him cry at night.
    He carried the briefcase down to his car and threw it in, jingled his keys, got into the driver’s seat, and thought: Shit. The coin.
    He went back upstairs, into the bedroom, and opened the top drawer in his chest of drawers, dug around some socks, and came up with the plastic box. Inside was a gold 1866S double eagle. The coin cost him $1,432, but the same coin, in better condition, might be worth as much as $25,000 to $30,000.
    Justus Smith was a coin nut.
     
    HE WAS TURNING TO GO when he heard a thump on the wall. Then faintly, a woman’s voice. He looked at the door and then at the stethoscope on the bed. There was no time for this, no time. He went over to the stethoscope on the bed and plugged it into his ears.
    Millie Lincoln was doing it again. The rush came, as it always did, but this time there was more than lust. This time there was anger and anxiety and Armageddon coming; he’d never even seen her, not for sure, because he had too much to lose.
    Now, there was nothing to lose. Millie Lincoln was just getting started when Grant unplugged himself from the stethoscope and ran out the door, letting it bang open behind him.
    He didn’t know Millie, but he knew where her door was.
     
    MIHOVIL HAD JUST gotten up to go to the bathroom to rinse off when Millie heard what sounded like an explosion; the noise