Excerpt: Awake

Josh sat down on one of the beds with the shirt still in his hands.  People worked there and abandoned the place.  People lived there and abandoned the place.  How he, Kim, and Shahid got inside in the first place was baffling enough.  From the bed, he saw a white phone hanging on the beige wall in a gap in the bunk beds, so he scooted over on the mattress toward the wall and picked it up.  From what Kim said about the offices, about the phones being dead, he knew he shouldn't expect to hear a dial tone when he pressed the receiver to his ear, but when he didn't heard it, he slammed the receiver back down and put his head in his hands. 

The room was silent after that.  He didn't know if the other two were still in the room somewhere or not.  He didn't care.  He threw the shirt on the floor and kept his hands pressed over his eyes.  If the building wasn't in business any more and yet he was inside after having collapsed at a show, brought in by a woman he didn't know, accompanied by another woman he didn't know.  Where Shahid fit into the whole thing, he couldn't begin to imagine.  The only thing that made sense was that he'd been kidnapped.  Someone hid the exits.  It seemed like an awfully elaborate setup, and nothing he thought of satisfied him.  The only thing he knew was that if they had all been kidnapped, someone would eventually come looking for them, and the police would show up.

But then, if the occupants of the building left in such a hurry that they didn't clean out the museum -- just left the valuable exhibits where they were, left the lights on, left bits of food here and there -- just what had they run from?  Was it something he needed to be afraid of?