St Louis, Missouri, Hilton St-Louis Frontenac Hotel, 2019
Noah stirred when he felt the bed dip beside him. He breathed in freshly laundered Egyptian cotton sheets and blinked in confusion.
Looking up, Chris' profile came into view. The doctor's attention was preoccupied with filling a needled syringe with substance from a small medical vile he tapped a few times with his middle finger.
"What are you doing?" Noah muttered, still struggling to wake up. He glanced down to find he was still in the same dirty clothes as before. But the room had definitely had a facelift. "Where are we?"
Chris frowned down at Noah with deep-set worry lines. "You don't remember?"
"Remember what?"
"Damian had us brought here last night. We had to sneak you up the service stairs."
Noah lifted up on his elbows to find they were in some kind of fancy hotel suite. The paneled walls and soft carpet were in tones of honey-brown. Two large cream shutter-like doors led out into a second room, where Noah could just make out a set of comfortable sofas.
Two of Damian's men sat there watching the television with the sound off; electronic light making colorful patterns on the walls.
Now that he thought about it, he did have a vague memory of a stairwell. But at the time he thought he was dreaming.
"What time is it?" Noah asked.
"Almost 10 a.m."
"What?" Noah exclaimed, getting angry. "How could you let me sleep for so long?"
"Noah," Chris placated, sounding every bit like the doctor he was. "You neededto sleep."
"Fuck sleep, Chris!" Noah almost yelled. "Luke spends the night in prison because of me while I'm…" he paused. "Where am I?"
"The Frontenac Hilton Hotel."
That set Noah off in a wave of near hysterical, yet humorless giggling, as he was reminded of his argument with Luke at the cabin.
"Well that's great!" he scoffed. "Just fucking great!"
"Noah, just relax, okay?" Chris softly soothed, placing the vile on the side table and turning with the intention of sticking Noah with the needle.
"What isthat?" Noah stopped laughing and his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
"It's a sedative."
Noah snorted with derision. "Chris, I've been sleeping for hours. Why the hell would you think I need a sedative?"
Chris tried to hide it, but he was unsuccessful. Darkness flashed across the doctor's face and, in that moment, Noah knew something was terribly wrong as sure as he began to feel it.
"Something's happened," he rasped.
"No." Chris was such a bad lier. "Everything's fine. This will just help you to relax. That's all."
But Noah battered away Chris' needle-wielding arm and sat up. "I don't want-"
He stopped short when he caught sight of Damian marching past the open bedroom door with his cell phone stuck to his ear. Damian's face was like thunder. But as their eyes met, the sadness residing on the tanned European features of the older man froze Noah's heart.
He scrambled out from under the luxurious covers of the hotel bed.
"Noah, don't…" But as he spoke Chris just shook his head. He didn't try to stop Noah's mission to exit the room. He must have known it was a lost cause.
On the large widescreen entertainment system, the CNN news cameras focused on a small empty podium situated outside an officious-looking brick building. The assembled press appeared to be waiting for something to happen.
The scene set like ominous dread.
Both of Damian's men watched Noah approach with a look of intense trepidation.
"Turn it up," Noah softly requested without taking his eyes off the screen.
The two men looked at each other unsure what to do.
"I said turn it up!"
That was more of a demand and the larger of Damian's men, a burly Mexican, reached for the remote from the expensively tiled coffee table and pressed the sound button. The room burst full with frantic mutterings and cameras clicking.
"We have some movement now I believe," a broadcaster announced. "Yes, it's FBI Agent Adrian Williams. He has been responsible for leading this case, since Snyder reportedly resurfaced a few days ago in Arlington, Texas. Hopefully, Agent Williams can shed some light on the report we've received this morning."
Noah's internal organs twisted at the somber expression on the agent's face. Part of him wanted to turn away, but he was mesmerized.
Yelling over each other, reporters fired questions at Williams, as he approached the bank of microphones. Frustratingly, Noah couldn't make out exactly what they were asking. Eventually, Williams reached the set of microphones and held out his palms for quiet.
A hush fell over the scene.
"Before I read this official statement..." he waved the paper he held in his hand, "...let me make one thing clear. This is is not a press conference. Once I've made the announcement, I will not take any questions regarding this case."
"Is it true?" Somebody impatiently shouted and Williams looked in that direction.
The agent waited a moment and then faced the camera. Williams' eyes sent Noah's blood running as cold as his heart.
A hushed buzz rippled through the crowd.
"Today at 08:35 a.m., Luke Snyder was found hanged in his cell. Despite considerable efforts to revive the prisoner, he did not survive. He was pronounced dead on the scene at 9 a.m. Thank you."
As Agent Williams stepped down from the podium, Noah lifted a shaky arm and pressed his palm flat against the cool plasma of the screen. He ran his hand sideways; back and forth; as though by doing so he could somehow erase what he'd just heard.
He dropped like a lead weight instantly into denial... because this... this was impossible to believe.
Already he could feel the seams of his soul coming apart.
He pressed his palms to his eyes to stem a sadness that could not be held back by his usual stoicism. It gushed out, regardless of his instinctive efforts in silent, breathless sobs.
As Noah collapsed to his knees, he did the only thing he could. It came naturally to him, like breathing. He escaped within his mind. He wasn't in Missouri anymore. He was running through the woods surrounding Snyder Farm. Ahead of him, a yellow blur like sunshine darted between the trees, just outside his reach. It laughed like Luke; big and full and beautifully.
He wanted to watch and listen but, instead, Noah tumbled off a cliff; and into the darkest most fathomless nothing he'd ever experienced. The blackness swallowed him whole, burning like fire.
His family; his entire life; was gone forever because of a decision he'd pressed upon them.
"Noah!"
A voice kept dragging at him, pulling him up out of his dream and back into a reality he couldn't face or accept.
"Noah?" Somebody shook him hard. "Noah!"
The voice echoed inside Noah's head, panicked and worried for him. But Noah was disorientated and mentally drained.
Broken.
So broken he knew he was finished.
"Oh, God!" he wailed.
The sorrow he tried so desperately to bottle bubbled up like a shaken soda can. It couldn't be contained and escaped from within his body in the form of an anguished scream, reverberating off the walls.
He shrugged off the hands that tried to ground him and pushed himself up off the floor.
Stumbling forward, he sought to escape the room that suddenly felt too small to breathe in. As well as the eyes of the other men, all helplessly watching him. He reached for the hotel door but Chris blocked his path, holding tightly to Noah's arms; pushing him back.
"Noah, where are you going?"
For a moment Noah wasn't sure. But then he was. "I need," he agonized, "I need to be with him…"
As that plan formulated Noah fought forward. But Chris kept struggling to hold him back.
"No!" Chris insisted.
"Please... I have to go!"
"Noah! You won't get anywhere near that prison! You hear me?"
Frustrated, Noah turned to stride back into the room, only to have nowhere to go.
He stood in the center of a blurring space that spun circles round him. His body had never shaken so much; like something huge and frightening wanted to burst right through him. Desperately he racked his brain for something stable to cling onto; anything to ground him.
But he had nothing.
A standing vase took the full brunt of Noah's pent-up anger and burning grief, as the brunette kicked it flying across the room. It narrowly missed the uncharacteristically quiet Damian, before shattering on the opposite wall.
"Noah!" he heard Chris say. "Take it easy, man!"
Noah whirled on Chris. "Take it easy?" His eyes widened in wild disbelieving fury. "Take it easy? Fuck you, Chris! Fuck all of you!" He flung his arms around; panic stealing his air. "Oh, my God, no!" Both hands lifted to his head that throbbed painfully. "Oh God... oh God, no…"
The gun was just sitting there on the sideboard like an open invitation. He lunged for it, craving the release it was sure to bring.
But Chris anticipated the move and got there first; snatching up the handle.
"Give it!" Noah begged.
Chris shook his head, "It's not the answer…"
"Then what is?" Noah pleaded. "What? You tell me… Please! Because it's Luke! It's Luke, Chris! I have nothing left…"
"Yes you do!" Chris insisted. "You have a son."
Noah took a shaky step back at that.
"Leo is still out there..." Chris continued, pointing at the windows, as though the boy could be seen right through them at that very moment. "...and he's waiting for his dad to come and get him. You're so close to finding out the truth!"
Noah dropped once more to his knees. "I can't do this without him. I can't… I can't…"
Chris knelt in front of his friend and placed a hand on Noah's shoulder. "Yes, you can. He'd want you too…"
Noah sorrowfully shook his head. "You told me this wouldn't happen."
"I know. I'm sorry. I didn't think Luke would..."
"He wouldn't!" Noah seethed. "He didn't! They got to him, Chris! Luke would never do this to me! Never! Not… not unless he had to."
Noah gasped at the thought of what Luke must have gone through. That thought grew, manifesting itself into fury. It polluted his insides like a sooty black cloud. Suddenly, Noah felt nothing but raw energy coursing through his veins.
Chris seemed to notice the scary change in him. "What are you thinking?" he asked, seemingly freaked out by what he was observing.
Noah looked forward for a long time, then back at the television where CNN was airing file footage from the original case. He turned to Chris with a renewed fiery determination. "I need to know where he's staying."
"Who?"
"Agent Williams." Noah turned to Damian. "Can you find out?"
Damian, himself shell-shocked by the news, nodded at his men and the smaller of the two pulled a cell phone from his pocket and left the room as he dialed.
"What are you planning, Noah?" Damian asked.
But Noah was too busy gathering himself for the fight; wiping the tears from his eyes.
"I need to shower." He was without emotion; the ice running startlingly cold through his blood, pounding in solid bursts likes drums.
"The… um… the bathroom's off the bedroom," Chris shakily told him. "There are folded fresh clothes for you on the linen basket."
Noah willed himself to stand. He took a moment to steady his legs and bury the pain into some deep place in his soul, where it couldn't interfere with what needed to be done.
Noah's father would have been proud.