So Cold the River by Michael Koryta

Author:Michael Koryta [Koryta, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, FIC000000
ISBN: 1444721933
Google: cEYw-PM9tIsC
Amazon: B0035IIBUA
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2010-06-09T05:00:00+00:00

36

THIS WAS TERROR, as true and as deep as he’d ever felt it.

He dropped to his knees, driven not by physical pain but by anguish.

“You bitches,” he said, speaking to the long-departed cleaning team that had removed the water. “Do you know what you did? Do you know?”

He knew. The withdrawal was going to return now in full glory, and this time there was nothing he could do to stop it, nothing he could take.

Call Kellen. Make him bring it back.

Yes, Kellen. That was the best chance he had. He got the phone out of his pocket, still on the floor, and dialed the number, held his breath while it rang.

And rang. And rang.

Then voice mail, and for several seconds he couldn’t even think of words to say, too awash in the sick sense of defeat. Eventually he mumbled out his name and asked for a call back. He had no way of knowing where Kellen was, though, or if he even still had the bottle. He could have passed it off to someone by now.

All he needed was a sip, damn it. Just a few swallows, enough to hold the monster at bay, but there was nowhere to find even that much because he’d given up both the Bradford bottle and Anne McKinney’s…

Anne McKinney. She was right up the road, with bottles and bottles of the water—old, unopened bottles.

All he had to do was make it there.

He stood again, shaky, dropping a palm to the bed to hold himself upright. He got in a few breaths, squinting against the pain and the nausea, and then went to the door and opened it and went out into the hall. He was alone in the elevator again, and that was good, because this time, holding the wall wasn’t enough—he had to kneel, one knee on the floor of the elevator, his shoulder and the side of his head leaned against the wall. It was a glass elevator, open on the back, looking down at the hotel atrium below, and he saw a young girl with braids spot him and tug her father’s sleeve and point. Then he was on the ground floor and the doors were open. He shoved upward, got out, and turned the corner and broke into a wavering jog. Speed was going to be key now. He could feel that.

He’d parked the Acura in the lower lot, closest to the hotel, and he ran for it now through the rain, which was coming down in gusting torrents, no trace of the sun remaining in the sky. Behind the hotel the trees shook and trembled.

He had his keys out by the time he got to the car, opened the door, and fell into the seat. The warmth inside the car made the nausea worse, so he put down the windows and let the rain pour in and soak the leather upholstery. He drove in a fog of pain, didn’t even realize the windshield wipers were off until he was out of the parking lot.

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