But there he was, lying on the floor with his eyes closed, his heart going 10 zillion miles an hour. Then it occurred to him: now what? He’d forgotten that part when he’d fallen to the floor.
Except not all of him had forgotten. His right hand, which was nearly covered by his body, gripped a credit card and something else. His fingertips felt something hard and narrow and plastic. He worked his fingers to scoot the object higher and touched metal.
Scissors. He’d pulled a credit card and a pair of scissors from the drawer. Which meant he could either bribe or stab his adversary. Or he could go into a frenzy and cut up Jill’s credit card. That would confuse ’em.
“Rice. In here.” Deep voice, sounding cruelly satisfied, from about five feet above him. Since the Fed probably wasn’t placing a to-go order, that meant there were two of them, one coming in from the back door.
That made Nate move, because there was no way he could get past two of them. He rolled to his left, his right arm coming up fast and hard.
The scene registered clearly the moment he opened his eyes. Above him stood the man he’d seen in the doorway, gun still in his hand. At that precise second, the man was not looking at him but straight ahead at the approach of the second Fed, whom Nate could sense but not see.
It was only for a brief second that the man was looking away. As soon as he saw Nate move in his peripheral vision he looked back down, but by then Nate’s hand was already on its course and the scissors connected with flesh.
The man jumped back just as the tip of the scissors connected. It was unfortunate timing—or fortunate, depending on whose side you were on. Nate had swung the scissors hard, and their tips were sharp. They dug through pant material into flesh. When the man jumped back at that same instant, his own movement added a tearing effect. Nate felt, imagined he could almost hear, the ripping open of the man’s leg in a long gash.
It was repulsive, actually. Damn gross. The man screamed, short and furious. But Nate was already rolling away, toward the front door, then scrambling to his feet. He felt a hand grab his shirt—whether it was the wounded man’s hand or his backup’s Nate never knew.
His shirt tore, a real ripping sound this time; then he was free and heading out the door. Behind him he heard the Fed shout, in a voice dark and furious, “Don’t shoot! Grab him, you ass!”
Nate ran. It was surreal to be chased down residential streets in the middle of the day. He could hardly even take it seriously, it was so cinematic. Still, his feet moved faster than they ever had in his life. He glanced behind him once and saw that they were both chasing him—two guys in suits, one with blood streaming down his pant leg. It never even slowed the guy. His face was hard, set like sculpture. Nate was seriously screwed.
He tried to dodge around, getting things between himself and his pursuers whenever possible. He was afraid they’d shoot him. They might or might not want him dead, but a bullet in the leg would put on the brakes quite nicely.
The thought gave him another surge of adrenaline and he poured on the speed.
Calder Farris was chasing the little pissant, running as if his leg weren’t practically spurting arterial blood. He did not feel pain; he was too focused to feel pain. He did not even consider using the gun he’d shoved back into its holster when he’d started to run. There was only one thing on his mind, and that was wrapping his hands around that faggy bastard’s throat and screaming, Where is she?
Rice was fast; he was keeping up. The boy was fast, too, the little cocksucker. Calder motioned for Rice to move around to the side, try to outflank him. Rice took off up a short, steep hill toward an alley.
Then it was Calder and the boy. They had settled into a rhythmic sprint, because you had to when a chase went on this long. Calder’s arms, bent at the elbows, pumped at his side. His gun holster was tight to his chest and side, but it still jolted as he ran. He was in excellent shape and he was starting to gain: thirty yards, twenty-five, twenty. He knew approximately where Rice would come out, from off to the right up ahead. He could picture the capture clearly in his mind—the grab, the spin, the tackle, the crunch of the kid’s body hitting the ground. The demon inside him was licking its chops. He was looking forward to it enormously.
Then, still twenty yards from the boy, Calder got faint.
The ground began swimming in front of him. Sweat popped out on his upper lip, his ears rang, and his skin went clammy. He hazarded a glance down at his leg and saw that he was leaving great bloody puddles with every step. The sight of it, red on asphalt, and the knowledge of how far he’d already run gushing like that had an immediate psychological impact. He became aware of the pain and of a trembling weakness that wanted badly to come over him.
He tried to fight it. He got pissed at himself and tried to run faster. But even so, the figure in front of him was receding—twenty-five yards, twenty-eight, thirty.
In a last desperate effort he pulled his gun from his holster, stopped, and propped it on his arm, prepared to shoot, take his quarry down. But the lucky shit was partially blocked by a tree. Calder hesitated for an instant and the boy dodged around a house, out of sight.
Rice finally showed up, around a house on the other side of the street and down some steps, moving fast, still not winded. Calder, holding his leg, shouted directions, pointed to where Andros had disappeared. Rice went after him.
But Calder knew it was over. The boy was gone, and it was Calder’s fault. First for falling for that asinine fainting trick like some green kid and second for underestimating the kid’s speed and his own injury. He’d wanted to believe the sight of him alone could drop the kid into a dead faint. Hadn’t it made him feel great? The big man, the lethal bastard. It had been vanity.
But Calder would not make the same mistake twice. He would find the kid, he promised himself—it was the only way to assuage the demon inside him. He would find the little bastard and Talcott. And next time he’d see them dead before he let them escape again.
13.2. Jill Talcott
There were footsteps on the stairway. Jill ran to the apartment door and opened it. It was Nate. She was swamped with relief.
“God, what took you so long? I thought something had happened!”
He gave her a dry look. “Gee. What could have happened?”
He pushed past her, arms full. He had a backpack containing his own gear and a garbage bag full of hers. She and Rabbi Handalman, with surprisingly little bickering, had worked out every detail of their plan while Nate was gone and they began implementing it at once—loading her clothes into a suitcase the rabbi had emptied for that purpose.
Jill was talking a mile a minute. “I was about to panic! We only have half an hour to get to Lake Union. I chartered a seaplane. It’ll take us up to Vancouver and we can fly out of there. We figured Sea-Tac might be dangerous. Maybe that’s paranoid, but better safe than sorry.”
“Not paranoid,” Rabbi Handalman grunted. “The Mossad came to the hospital, they wouldn’t be at the airport?”
Jill looked up for Nate’s reaction, but he stood there watching her with an odd, appraising expression. His hands were casually in his pockets as though they had all the time in the world.
“You got my passport, right?” she asked, frowning.
He took a hand from one of the pockets, flashed the passport at her, put it back.
“And yours?”