Free Sanctuary by Joshua Ingle

“They’re here,” he said. “They’re all here.”
    A fantastic wind suddenly gathered outside, whipping through the trees both in front of the entrance hall and by the pool out behind the lobby.
    Virgil pounced at the inner doors and held one open. “Upstairs, now. Go, go, go, go, go!”
    After one last glance back toward Heather, Crystal followed Cole back inside. “Oh no,” Virgil said behind her as she fled. She turned to see him staring at a service door on the far side of the lobby: an open service door.
    “Run! Go!”
    Virgil ran up to Crystal and pushed her toward the hallway, spurring her to rush even faster. She and Cole sprinted past Brandon’s unconscious form and toward the elevator beyond. Cole’s hand clutched Crystal’s the entire way. When she glanced back, Virgil was facing the open service door and planting his feet, bracing himself. Then he suddenly winced in pain and crumpled to the floor in apparent agony. From two hundred feet down the hallway, she could hear his scream.
    •
    In the elevator, Crystal and Cole caught their breaths as they rode back to the tenth floor. Crystal hadn’t noticed until now, but Cole seemed flustered too. He’s just as scared as I am.
    “Are you okay?” he asked.
    “I guess. What do we do?”
    “I don’t know. Where’d Heather go?”
    Crystal shook her head. “I don’t know. Can you call nine-one-one already?”
    “Yeah.” Cole dialed on his cell as the elevator opened onto the living room of Cole’s condo unit.
    Crystal paced toward a window to find out what she could see on the ground. “We’ve gotta get to your car. We’ve gotta leave.”
    “There’s no reception in the garage,” Cole said. “Let me call the cops first, then we’ll head down. Yeah, hello?” Speaking to the 9-1-1 operator, Cole quickly related their location, their names, the night’s events.
    Crystal scanned the roads below and raised a hand to her mouth when she saw… “Oh, God.”
    “What?” Cole stepped up next to her.
    “There she is. Heather. She’s floating face down in the fountain.”
    “Is she moving?”
    “Doesn’t look like it.”
    The screens enclosing the balcony shuddered as a heavy wind picked up outside. The windows in the kitchen creaked with the force of the gust.
    And then, very faintly, came another ominous sound: the whirring of elevator gears. Two, three, four. The floor numbers above the elevator door counted upward.
    Cole spoke hurriedly into his phone. “Hey, that psycho guard I told you about is coming up the elevator.” Five, six, seven. “Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta go.” He hung up and pocketed the phone as the wind raged outside.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Protecting you.” Eight, nine… ten.
    Cole stepped in front of Crystal. The gesture was nice, but Crystal dug through her purse to find her knife anyway. Then she remembered she’d dropped it downstairs. So she threw her purse aside in case she needed to defend herself.
    DING. The elevator doors whisked open. “Virgil, we don’t want any trouble,” Cole said in a fake macho voice that sounded weird coming from him.
    Crystal grimaced in dismay, then whispered in Cole’s ear. “It’s Brandon.”

8
    For a few moments, Brandon just stared at Cole and the little slut cowering behind him. He’d been in such a hurry that he’d forgotten his golf club downstairs, but that didn’t matter. These two sheep would be easy to deal with. Cole would understand, eventually, once he’d wiped Crystal’s stink off himself. With no one but Brandon to lean on, passive little Cole would never give him up to the authorities. At least Brandon hoped he wouldn’t. Even if he did, there were other ways of escape.
    Brandon rubbed his forehead on his shirt sleeve, smearing blood on it, then approached Cole, ready for a fight.
    “Heather’s dead,” Cole said.
    Brandon halted. He tried to process the startling information. Heather was dead? That didn’t make any sense. He’d just