Whiskey and Wry (Sinners, #2) by Rhys Ford
Prologue
SOMEONE was trying to kill him.
If the fire at Skywood wasn’t evidence enough, the bullets flying past his head were a pretty good clue.
When the fire alarms went off, he’d finally seen his chance to get loose of the honey-brick prison he’d been trapped in. The place was like tar. If he struggled too hard or fast, it closed in, sucking him down into its oily depths. When he moved slowly and carefully—pretending to be some guy named Stephen Thompson—Skywood relaxed its hold on him. He’d been in the main entertainment room when black smoke billowed out of the air vents.
When the first fire alarm went off, he and his current bald Sasquatch attendant, Jerome, ignored it. The staff was forever losing control over one guest or another, and oftentimes, the sight of a red lever set behind glass was too much temptation for many of Skywood’s clients. Hardly a fortnight went by without at least one false alarm going off in its halls.
The smoke was only the beginning. The panic really began when the facility-wide intercom system kicked in with a call to evacuate the clients to the outermost grounds.
Damien choked on the ash swirling around the corridors, stumbling when he hit furniture obscured by the smoke. The rising black clouds made it hard to see, and running through the greasy ash made his lungs ache. The zipper scar down his chest ached and pulled, hooking its claws into his muscles with a sadistic twist, forcing him to hunch over to ease its ache.
Stopping wasn’t an option. Jerome kept shoving at his back, hurrying him forward to safety, but they soon got turned around in the cavernous building’s labyrinth of halls. The fire moved quickly, seemingly eating through the plaster walls with an almost demonic appetite, and Damien finally lost his patience, grabbed one of the heavy chairs next to a nurses’ alcove, and flung it at a nearby window.
The thick wooden chair bounced off the reinforced glass and hit him in the leg, and all Damien had to show for his efforts was a tearing streak of pain along his shoulders and a thick lump on his thigh.
“Get a fucking move on, Thompson,” Jerome muttered into his ear, reinforcing his order with a hard shove between Damien’s shoulder blades.
“Quit shoving me, fucking asshole.” There were times when the fake Stephen couldn’t hold back the Damien inside. Choking to death from smoke filling his strained lungs seemed to be one of those times. Damien pushed back, shoving Jerome back a step. Not bad, he thought as another wave of spasms wiped him out, especially since Jerome was built like a Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robot.
His satisfaction seemed as fleeting as his breath when Jerome’s meaty fingers wrapped around the loose material of Damien’s cotton shirt and yanked him back with a flex of his arm.
Somehow, through the smoke and Damien’s coughing, Jerome located one of the outer doors. Keeping a tight hold on Damien with one hand, he fumbled with the key card he had hanging from a Skywood lanyard around his neck. After three tries, the display went green, and the door unlocked with a loud click. “When we get outside, you stick right next to me. Got it, you fucking nutjob?”
Jerome let go, and Damien stumbled forward, shoved off with a push from the attendant’s hand. Damien hit the door hard, and it swung open slowly, its pneumatic regulator refusing to go any faster. Cutting the man a look over his shoulder, Damien shook off the wrinkles in the back of his shirt, pretending Jerome’s words didn’t hit home. Truth was, he had no fucking idea if he was crazy or if everything they’d told him since he’d woken up was a lie. Somewhere in the back of Damie’s brain, a lingering doubt whispered hot maybes into his thoughts.
Suppose I am really fucking crazy? the mocking voice hissed. That I’m really Stephen Thompson and I just don’t want to be?
The cold air cut through the thin cotton shirt and elastic-band scrub pants he’d been given to wear. It chewed up the length of the thick purple-pink scar running from his chest to his belly button, a souvenir of a brutal heart surgery he wasn’t conscious for. The zippered mass of slick skin wasn’t the only sign he’d been battered about. His hair had been taken down to the skin and was just beginning to grow out to a length where the staple keloids were hidden under a dull black brush. It was still a surprise to see his short hair in the mirror, and his hands always seem to jerk out when he ran them over his skull, missing the foot-long shocking-pink-streaked mane he remembered sporting to an awards show.