The Hollow City Read Online Free PDF Page B

other points on the list?” He ticks off his fingers one by one. “You stopped coming to our sessions, you stopped going to work, you eventually stopped doing everything—the cops found you living under an overpass. You haven’t shaved in months, you haven’t bathed in weeks, and the police report suggests that you’d been pissing in your pants for days.”
    “I was being chased,” I say, gritting my teeth. “We were trying to get out of town, and sometimes … sometimes hiding from the bad guys requires sacrifices. What else was I supposed to do?”
    “How can you be sure you were hiding?” he asks. “Do you even remember where you were? Or why you went there?”
    I look at him silently, trying desperately to remember anything about the last two weeks, but all I get are quick snatches—meaningless bits of sight and sound and smell that I can’t piece together into anything coherent. It’s like trying to look at the world through a dirty glass, smeared and warped and blurry.
    He sighs. “You had no money and no ID; the only thing you did have, in fact, was the water faucet.”
    “I remember the faucet!” I say suddenly, shocked at my own outburst. Excitement wells up inside of me—the first memory to return from the two missing weeks. “I can’t remember much—I think something happened to my head—but I remember the faucet handle. I was defending myself.”
    “You’re lucky you didn’t hit a cop with it, or you’d be in even more trouble than you are now.”
    “Not like that,” I say. “It was to keep the hot water turned off. The Faceless Men had tracked me down, but they couldn’t get to me through the wires like they usually did, so they filled the water heater with cyanide instead. I took the faucets off to make sure it couldn’t get out.”
    Vanek is watching me, stubby fingers folded across his round chest. “You removed your father’s faucet handles? No wonder they found you living on the street.”
    “I…” I stop. He’s right—my father would never have allowed it. He was not a patient man. “I wasn’t living there. Did I get kicked out?”
    “When did you leave your father’s house?”
    “Two weeks ago, I think. I … I remember I tried to take the TV outside, to make the house safe. I think he threw a fit.”
    “That sounds like him. And you.” Vanek pulls off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “If your father cared half as much about his son as he does about his television, some of this behavior might have been reported early enough to make a difference.”
    “I got away from home,” I say, not really paying attention. “They had no reason to poison me unless I’d escaped from the web of electronic surveillance—and they were trying to poison me, which means I’d done it. I’d found a place without any wires.” I laugh. “I think it scared them.” So little of the past few days made sense to me, but this did. The Faceless Men were on my trail, and I’d almost gotten away. It was just a chance encounter with the police that got me back on their radar—which means that if I can get away again, and avoid the police this time, I can escape completely.
    Except I can’t leave without Lucy. Are they holding her hostage to keep me from running? Where is she?
    “Listen to yourself, Michael,” says Vanek, leaning forward. “Inconsistency is one of the best ways to spot a delusion, so let’s consider: first the Faceless Men are tracking you, and then when they lose track of you they decide to kill you in the most obtuse, convoluted way possible. How did they know which water heater to spike with cyanide if they didn’t know where you were? And if they did know where you were, why not just plant more listening devices and continue observing you? And the biggest question of all: if they wanted you dead, why not just kill you outright? Why bother with such a roundabout plan?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “If I knew all the pieces of the Plan, do you think