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It was empty.

He turned on the nightstand lamp. He blinked at the sudden light. On the floor below the TV, Jeff’s AC/DC s.h.i.+rt and his jeans: gone.

Cooper quietly stood, walked to the closed bathroom door.

“Jeff,” he said in a whisper. “There’s some s.h.i.+t going down in the hall.”

No answer.

Cooper opened the door — the bathroom was empty.

Where the h.e.l.l was Jeff?

He quietly walked to the room’s main door, careful not to make any noise. He leaned into the peephole and looked out.

There was a teenager lying there, bleeding from a gash in his forehead. The kid moved weakly, unfocused eyes staring up at nothing.

Cooper automatically reached for the door handle, but stopped when he saw a flicker of motion. Through the peephole’s fisheye lens, another teenager stepped into view. Then another.

One grabbed the fallen one’s feet, the other reached under his shoulders. They lifted.

Cooper again started to open the door, to see if he could help, but one of the teenagers turned his head sharply.

Wild eyes stared right at Cooper.

He felt a blast of fear, something that rooted him to the spot — he dare not move, not even to step away from the peephole.

Was the teenager looking at him? No … no one could see through a peephole, not from that far away. Maybe Cooper had made a noise.

Not knowing why the teenager scared him so bad, Cooper stayed perfectly still. He didn’t even breathe.

The boy said something to his friend. They carried the fallen one down the hall, out of sight.

Cooper ran to the hotel phone. He stabbed the b.u.t.ton marked “front desk.” The phone on the other end rang ten times before a woman answered.

“h.e.l.lo, this is Carmella.”

“I need security,” Cooper said. “No, just call the cops. There was a hurt kid up here. Maybe there was a fight. They took him.”

“And I give a s.h.i.+t, why?”

Cooper blinked. “Uh … didn’t you hear me? I think that kid was hurt. He had a head wound.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” the woman said. “f.u.c.k you very much.”

She hung up.

Cooper stared at the handset for a moment, then felt stupid for doing so and put it back in the cradle.

He looked at his cell, dialed 9, then 1, then paused: those cops in the street, shooting people. Were more cops like that? Maybe all of them? Maybe calling 911 wasn’t such a good idea.

He heard sirens coming up from the street. He walked to the window and pulled back the heavy curtains. For the second time in a handful of seconds, what he saw stunned him.

Chicago burned.

He saw flames rising high from the windows of two skysc.r.a.pers. Down on the street, people scrambled in all directions. There were four fire engines, but only one had a crew that was trying to fight the fires. The other three trucks seemed to be abandoned. And no, people weren’t scrambling down there, they were … chasing … they were fighting.