“Yes. Bath—Katie. Her name is Katie. She worked for him in San Francisco. She’s a painter, my sister. And Mobley said he would help her. E. L. Mobley. The billionaire. I know you know who I mean. My sister’s his prisoner. That’s why we were there. To rescue her.”
But Nancy doesn’t seem to care. “Give me your real name and I’ll make a few calls.”
Felix thinks about that. The things that would be triggered by his name.
“I don’t care what happens to me,” he says. “Do you understand? The only thing I care about is getting her out of there.”
“What about Story? Do you care about her? Or was that just an act to lure her in?”
“No. Of course I love her.”
“Then tell me where she is.”
Felix shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“But she was with you.”
Felix keeps his mouth shut. If they’re asking him about Story, it means she escaped.
“I want a lawyer,” he says.
“You need a lawyer. But if we do that now, any hope of a plea goes out the window.”
Felix sits back. “Could I get a glass of water?”
But Nancy just stares at him.
“Look,” he says, “I’m gonna tell you something. Give you something. Something big. But first I wanna talk to my sister. You get her on the phone, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
After the agents are gone, Felix tries to calm himself. He knows deep in his bones that he will spend the rest of his days in rooms this size or smaller. Rooms with bars. Rooms with thick plexiglass barriers. Rooms with beds and toilets. Cells. They are in some ways his birthright. A future gifted to him by a father so oppositional, so repulsed by authority that he raised his son to shoot on sight.
For Samson DeWitt, Planet Earth has shrunk down to four walls.
And they are closing in.
*
Randall Flagg wakes in an El Paso emergency room. He is handcuffed to a bed, tubes running out of his nose, IV line in his arm. The first word out of his mouth is “Fuck.”
“Fuckin’ what?” he mumbles, reaching for the tube in his nose, his hand stopped short by the cuffs. His brain feels muffled.
“Unh-unh,” warns a voice to his right. Randall looks over.
There is a Texas state trooper sitting in a chair by the window, sports pages open in front of him, toothpick between his teeth.
“Be a good sport,” he says. “Stay down.”
Flagg stops struggling. There is something wrong with his left eye. All he sees through it is black. His chest feels tight. Looking down he sees bandages wrapped around him, stained yellow from an antibacterial wash. Then he realizes what’s happened. He’s been shot. Probably more than once. In his mind he is fourteen again, trapped in a supply closet at school, hearing the shots, barely breathing. He thinks of his brother, out there somewhere. So many gunshots. So many screams. And then blood trickling under the door.
But he is not fourteen. He is a twenty-year-old man. And his brother is dead.
“Why’s the sky orange?” he asks, wondering if he’s in a dream.
A nurse enters. She is black, heavyset.
“Careful now,” she says. “Don’t move around too much. You’ll tear your stitches.”
Flagg lies back. He can feel it now, like a vise on his torso. His left eye burns.
“What did they hit me with?”
She comes over, checks his vitals. “You got shot,” she says.
“I know that. I’m saying large caliber, small caliber?”
“You lost half your liver. You were in surgery for nine hours. Does it matter?”
“What about the eye?”
“You had shards of rock in there. The surgeon cleaned them out, but you’ll never see outta that eye again.”
Flagg thinks about that. An eye patch, like a pirate.
“I’m hungry,” he says.
“We’re feeding you through your nose right now. Let your system get back on track.”
“How about a beer?”
“Very funny.”
She takes his temperature. Flagg turns his head, looks at the trooper.
“Hey, boss. Can I ask you something?”
“No.”
“It’s just—I gotta admit—I’m worried. I mean, when I make a run for it, how are you not having a heart attack chasing me down the hall?”
The trooper doesn’t look up. “Not gonna chase ya,” he says. “Just gonna shoot ya.”
The nurse glances at him. “No shooting in my hospital.”