The Heavens Rise Read Online Free Page B

to each other inside the house when he lifted the Explorer’s cargo door by about two feet and set the grocery sack in between two Louis Vuitton satchels and a crate of Beaujolais. Then he took his car key and made three quick cuts in the side of the bag, each one large enough for the inhabitant to work its way through when it decided it was time to emerge.
    By the time he was back to the BMW, he heard the back door to the Delongpre residence close with force, followed by the family’s excited laughter. Nikki was recounting some childhood story about how her father had once screwed up his fishing line and hooked a lump of her hair in the process.
    Marshall slid behind the driver’s seat of his father’s BMW and waited. He waited until the Ford Explorer pulled out of the driveway and headed down Prytania Street. He waited until the red taillights turned the corner, leaving him alone with a steady, rasping sound. At first he thought it was coming from the grocery bag next to him—he had spent most of the day with the thing—but then he remembered that his gift had been delivered, that it had been tucked inside the SUV that had just driven past him into the night, leaving him with the desperate rattle of his own strained breaths.

5
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    ATLANTA
    MAY 2013
    A rthelle was at the drink machine when she heard the screaming.
    She’d know as soon as she rounded the corner up ahead if the commotion was coming from Ferriot’s new room. Please, God. Let it be anything else. A rat or a mouse loose on the hall. Anything. Just let it be alive!
    Things had been quiet for a week now, probably because Emily had steered clear of the boy, and there’d been no more strange animal deaths outside the center either. The only one to raise the subject of Ferriot at all had been Tammy Keene, and only to Arthelle. Tammy had two kids she had to support on her own, which meant no time to fill her head with stupid books about UFOs and doomsday prophecies; in other words, she was as eager to keep Emily in check as Arthelle was.
    Emily was the one screaming, all right. She was standing outside the open door to Ferriot’s room, bent at the waist, hands to her mouth as she wailed. Other nurses had come running too. They also stumbledin their tracks when they saw the bloody footprints Emily had made around the doorway.
    Ferriot was in his wheelchair, just like he was every morning, staring into space with the same slack-jawed expression that made him look like he’d been trying to remember someone’s phone number for years.
    Tammy Keene was on the floor, curled into a fetal position, back to the doorway, the blood flowing from her chest forming a dark curtain across the linoleum. Arthelle hit the floor on both knees, rolled the woman onto her back and saw her wide, staring eyes, radiating nothing but shock over the fact that the box cutter she always carried on her hip when she was doing gift distribution was embedded in her chest. The other nurses started pouring into the room, but not Emily. She was still screaming.
    “ I told her not to! But she didn’t believe me. I told her not to look into his eyes!”
    Once she pulled Tammy’s bloodstained shirt up over her bloody chest and saw the extent of her wound, Arthelle started cursing under her breath, bloody fingers trembling as she traced a gash that started just above Tammy’s navel and made a straight, gurgling line right up to where the box cutter’s blade had caught on the underside of her rib cage. The blood was everywhere. Tammy’s lips moved, but nothing came out except weak, hissing breaths. Everyone around them was sliding into action, and that was good, because Arthelle was paralyzed, stunned, trying to put it all together.
    No blood on Emily’s hands or face. None at all. But the only screams she’d heard had come from Emily, not the gutted colleague the other nurses were now rushing to save. And the window was closed and Ferriot was right in front of it, so how could someone