Page 100 of Nightmare Rising

The masculine growl in that affirmative meant I had to suppress a smirk. It was true. For Chester to leave his apartment, he’d have to break out of Fort Knox.

Everything was gray and sepia—ceiling, floor, walls. 3D gloom. Stains ran down the hallway in dark stripes, as if some monster had idly scraped its claws across the paint and left the walls bleeding.

Val leaned against the grimy gray wall. “He has a whole building, and he picks the one down with the rats?”

“He liked this one. Apparently, his apartment has a basement.” I’d never actually seen it—we were the kind of close friends who used the wordspacein the same sentence.

The speaker clicked on with an ear-piercing noise.

“Zara! I’m disappointed. You know I don’t like loose guns in my house. Zara, why so many guns? Hmmm? Put them in the slot to the left, please. Him too. Everything.”

I knew what? This was new since the last visit.

Next to the door, a metal tray hinged out and down, there was sawdust on the floor, as if the tray had recently been installed. I should visit him more often; Chester’s paranoia was growing.

Shrugging, I disarmed and slid the Ruger into the tray and closed it. A clunk sounded from the other side as the gun dropped into some kind of bucket.

The knife? I couldn’t part with that. “I’ve got a knife too, Chester. Can I keep it?”

“Show me. Hold it up.”

After I did as I was told, holding it up to some invisible camera, he replied. “Okay, but keep it in that sheath, where I can see it. Now get your boyfriend to do the same. Two guns andhisknife go in the drawer.”

Val didn’t ask how Chester knew what he was armed with. An ankle holster yielded the second, smaller pistol. His obedience surprised me, but then I was sure his training had prepared for unarmed situations.

Situations?

This was a friendly.

Chester’s paranoia seemed infectious.

Once pushed back into the wall, the tray swallowed the weapons. My old school libraries had these, I recalled, for returning books out of hours.

“We’ll get them back,” I said.

“Never planned on otherwise. Either he’s giving them, or I’m taking them.” Val stared at the door as it opened.

The lock had been triggered remotely, and there was no one on the other side. They walked in, cautiously.

Down a short hallway, then left, and the room opened out into a large space big enough to swing a lion. The lighting was dim until several overhead fluorescents flickered on. An entire bank of four computer screens curved around a metal desk covered in papers, keyboards, coffee cups, and take-out wrappers and boxes. A fridge stood to the right along with a kitchen counter, a microwave, and a sink. A row of narrow windows nestled below the high ceiling and a pigeon strutted across on the other side of the glass, cooing.

The sound was so incongruous.

“You keep real sane company,” Val muttered.

“Pot. Kettle.”

Val shrugged.

“He’s a good guy. We went to the same high school. He’s one of the few people I’m still friends with. So play nice,” I hissed, just as Chester walked in from a doorway to the right.

His private sanctum was through there, and he locked the door before turning to us. The glow from a keypad illuminated the side of his face. His dark brown hair had grown longer, and he’d bunched it at the back into a scruffy ponytail. His chin was stubbled, though far less than Val’s that’d grown a whole inch. There wasn’t much time for shaving on the run.

Chester approached, arms out. His grin was as welcoming as ever. The automatic tucked into his waistband, less so.

“Hey,” I said, smiling as I went to greet him.

“Zara! Good to see you. Who’s your friend again?”

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