The old man tilted his head and looked off to one side, as though there were a hundred possible answers to that question and he didn’t know which one to choose.
“To help you,” he settled on. “You are suffering right now. But I have access to the best medicines and doctors that money can provide. If you come with me, I will make sure you have everything you need. The life you think is beyond you will be within your grasp again. That is what I want. I want to give you the choice to have the future you always should have.”
You don’t deserve anything.
Chris stood up slowly. It felt like his body was aching everywhere, and he rubbed his bruised, emaciated arms. But as weak as he was, he knew he could easily push the old man aside if he wanted to. Step over him. Go back to the life he deserved.
But as he stared at the old man, he recognized the kindness in his face. There was no sense of threat to him. He seemed to be willing Chris to go with him but also resigned to the fact he might choose otherwise. And while none of what was happening here made any sense, Chris found himself believing the man—or at least wanting to.
After a moment, the man nodded in acknowledgment of the unspoken decision that had been made. Then he turned and began clambering awkwardly back the way he’d come, over the rubble toward the entrance. Chris followed him out into the cold, gray morning light. He looked to the right. An expensive car was waiting in the nearby alleyway, its windows tinted black and its engine idling.
Chris hugged himself against the cold. His teeth were chattering.
“Who are you?” he said.
The old man looked at him. Once again, he seemed to be considering the question carefully.
And then he smiled gently.
“Call me Alan,” he said.
Thirty-five
Katie picked up the bottle of vodka and poured herself a second shot. Then she sipped the liquid, relishing the burn in her throat. There was something grounding about the sensation, and she needed that right now. Her thoughts seemed to be whirling high above her.
“So this man,” she said. “Alan Hobbes. You’re telling me he turned up on the street one day, out of the blue. He rescued Chris and paid for him to go through rehab? All like some kind of…”
She trailed off. The phrase that came most naturally to her felt wrong but what other would do?
“Guardian angel?”
Alderson nodded.
“Yes. Except the way Chris told it, it didn’t seem to be out of the blue. He couldn’t really explain it, but he said it was like Hobbes had known where he would be that day, and that he was going to need help.”
“Like this Hobbes guy knew the future?”
She tried to inflect some sarcasm into her voice, but Alderson didn’t seem to notice.
“Yes.”
“And then what happened?”
“After Chris stopped using, Hobbes gave him a job at his estate. Nothing shady. Shopping. Cleaning. Looking after him. The whole thing seemed more like an excuse for Hobbes to have him around than anything else. Most of the time, the old man just wanted to talk. He was old, and he was dying. I think he just wanted company.”
“What did they talk about?”
Alderson considered that.
“Lots of things. I mean, Chris didn’t always tell me. But he liked Hobbes, especially once he got to know him better. Said he was a good guy. And he was generous too. On top of the salary, there was the apartment. Hobbes owned that, and we were living there rent-free.”
That was certainly very generous, which made Katie wonder exactly what had been in it for Hobbes. As a business relationship, it didn’t make much sense to her.
“Until the other day, you mean,” she said. “Until the two of you went on the run.”
“I suppose.”
“Because someone was watching the apartment.”
“Yes.”
“Who did Chris think that was?”
“He didn’t know. There were just times when he thought he was being followed. Well—times when he was sure of it. And it wasn’t just his imagination either, because I felt it too. And I saw things. There was a car that kept turning up on the street.”
“A red car?” Katie asked quickly.
Alderson shook his head.
She leaned forward. “Was it Michael Hyde he was scared of?”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, I know why you asked about a red car. But the one I saw was big and black. Expensive. That’s why I noticed it in the first place, because it seemed so out of place in the neighborhood.”
She leaned back. Once again, she remembered there hadn’t been any photographs of Chris pinned to the wall in Hyde’s house. It seemed to have been her family Hyde was stalking. But if that was the case, who had been hunting Chris and James Alderson?
Someone who enjoyed doing really bad things to people.
She shivered a little.
“Seems extreme to have gone on the run,” she said.
“It was Hobbes who told him to,” Alderson said. “Chris mentioned it to him when they were talking, and he said the old man went white. Then Hobbes got angry with himself, as if he’d forgotten something important. He told Chris the two of us had to get out of our apartment. We packed up and have been sleeping at my studio for the last few nights.”
Katie sipped the vodka, trying to process what Alderson was telling her. If Hobbes had told Chris to run, perhaps it was something he was mixed up in and nothing to do with her brother at all. But that still left the question of Hobbes’s motivation for helping Chris in the first place. And also what had happened to her brother now.
“What about the book?” she said.
Alderson took a deep breath and then poured himself another drink. Katie waited for him to take a swallow before he continued.
“Right,” he said. “Jesus. So Hobbes had what you might call a collection.”
“Of what?”
“That’s the weird thing. Chris told me Hobbes was a nice guy. Gentle, kind, interesting. He’d been a philosophy professor once, and he had a library full of old books. But there was also something else. Hobbes had collected a lot of stuff connected to this horrible guy. This killer.”
“Jack Lock?”
“Right. I read up on him, and there’s too much to get into there. Let’s just say that Lock was an absolutely awful human being. He claimed God had shown him the future, and then he killed a bunch of kids because it was God’s will. A proper nutcase. Hobbes had a lot of Lock’s writing, along with other things that had belonged to him. Some of it was worth real money, but apparently the most valuable thing of all was a notebook.”
It’s supposed to tell the future.
“And this was what Chris was trying to sell?” Katie said.
“Yeah.”
“He stole it from Hobbes?”
“No.” Alderson shook his head quickly. “Hobbes told him to take it. This was a few days ago. Hobbes said he was dying and wouldn’t be able to employ Chris anymore. He gave Chris instructions on what he needed to do on his last day. He was to come in at a certain time, take the book, disconnect a camera in the room. Then leave and never look back. And that’s exactly what Chris did. He felt like he owed it to him after everything he’d done for him.”