Her heart throbbed in her chest, and her fingers tightened on the railing. I am pale blue light.
Tom said, “Yeah, well, you don’t know my mother.”
She looked left, toward the theater. A bored college kid behind the ticket counter, posters for indie films, a bench with an old lady sitting on it. If things started to go bad, they could make for that. Motion caught her eye, a level down, the cop strolling past a display window. There was a stairwell to the right, where the guy in the Cubs jersey had gone.
Tom said, “We’re not leaving the mall. No way.”
Pop music still played from overhead, inane and insistent, that stupid boy band song that went “Bye-bye, baby, bye-bye.” She could smell stale popcorn.
Tom said, “Okay.” He hung up. “He wants to meet on the ground floor, in front of the salon. He said to not take the elevator.”He glanced over his shoulder, then passed his phone to her. “You’ll have to page Andre. I can’t and still hold the bag.”
“I’ll-”
“Jack would never believe I’d have you carry it.”
She bit her lip, knew he was right. Slipped the phone into her pocket and her hand in after it, one finger on the Send button. I am pale blue light. “We should go.”
They started down, Tom slightly ahead. The fourth floor slowly gave way to the third. Her eyes scanned fast, looking for Jack, for Andre, for any of them. Overhead, the boy band’s singer said that he didn’t want to be a player in a game for two, and Anna wondered what the hell that meant. Three floors to go. There was no sign of Jack, but there were a whole lot of people around: a cluster of teenagers at the elevator, women fingering clothing in the Express, a clerk on break reading a book. Two and a half floors to go. She found herself thinking of that mother with the stroller. Wondering if she knew how lucky she was. Wondering if anyone did, until they didn’t. Life could fall apart so fast.
Which was what she was thinking at the exact moment Jack Witkowski stepped out of the stairwell door in front of them.
TO JACK, the pair of them looked ragged, stretched thin with panic. Something in Anna seemed particularly off, her hands in her pockets and her eyes wild. Perfect.
He smiled, gestured to the gym bag in Tom’s hand. “That for me?”
Tom’s eyes darted like a rabbit looking for cover. He took a step back. “I thought you wanted-”
“Never mind what you thought, dipshit,” Jack said. “Open the bag.”
Tom Reed stood still.
“Tom,” Jack said, and unzipped his jumpsuit so that the holster was visible. “Open the bag.”
“You’re not going to use that. We’re in a public place.” The guy said it like it was a contract, like a kid on the playground whining about the rules.
Jack laughed. “Are you kidding?” He shook his head. “You’ve passed a dozen people in the last few minutes. Can you tell me what any of them looked like?” He cocked his head, smiled. “What makes you think any of them saw what I look like?”
TOM FELT LIKE his face had grown apart from him, like it was a separate entity. He could feel the blood banging in his forehead, could feel the heat in his cheeks. “We had a deal.”
Jack shrugged, the motion rippling the blue jumpsuit and revealing more of the big pistol. “We still do. It starts with you opening that bag and showing me what’s mine.”
“You just said you were going to kill us.” Trying to keep conversation going. Praying that Anna had been able to page Andre.
“Actually, Tom, I said that I could kill you.” Jack was smug, obviously enjoying himself. “If I do decide to kill you, I probably won’t tell you about it in advance. Now open the goddamn bag.”
“No,” Tom said, as steadily as he could. He had to hold out.
Another few seconds, a minute. His life, their lives, it came down to a minute. Sixty endless seconds. Where the hell was Andre? “Not until you tell me, straight up, that once you have this money you’ll leave us alone.”
Jack smiled. “My word.”
Something went cold inside Tom, and he realized that one way or another, today or tomorrow, Jack meant to kill them. Had simply decided that it would happen.
Then, over Jack’s shoulder, he saw someone coming up the escalator that bisected the mall. A bulky guy with a boxer’s moves. Wet lips and white teeth. Andre was walking, his jacket open. Anna had done it.
“All right.” Tom took a deep breath, trying to draw things out, feeling a rush of adrenaline and a surge of wild hope. He rolled his shoulder and then set the bag on the ground.
Behind Jack, two white guys came around the corner to fall into step with Andre, the three of them moving steady and easy. One wore a maroon tracksuit and a gold ID bracelet. The other had on a broad-cut suit. The one in the suit slid his hand into the pocket and pulled out something plastic. A blue spark arced along it. A stun gun.
Tom squatted beside the bag, put his hand on the zipper. Timing would be everything. He hesitated, said, “Remember, you promised.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Quit stalling.”
No way around it. If he went any further, he risked Jack looking around, things going south. He had to pray that the money on top would fool Jack, or at least hold his attention long enough for Malachi’s people. Twenty feet now.
He drew the zipper down as slowly as he dared, then reached for the sides of the bag, planning to open it just enough to flash Jack. Ten feet.
The cop stepped from a store that sold games and toys, coming out behind Andre and his soldiers. His hand was at his belt, and he was moving fast. Did he know something? Had Halden somehow figured out where they were and called him? As Tom watched, kneeling beside the bag, the cop drew his gun. Jesus. He was going to stop it from happening.
Except the officer didn’t say, “Police, freeze!” He didn’t say, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
What he said was “Jack, get down.”
And then fire blasted from his pistol, and the head of the man holding the stun gun exploded.
WHEN JACK HEARD Marshall’s voice telling him to get down, his first urge was to look back. But he’d long ago learned that in the moment, you trusted your partners or things went south, so instead he got the hell to one knee.
Even braced for it, the roar of the first shot hit like a thousand volts, kicking every cell into life, adrenaline pounding fast and hard. People didn’t realize how loud the things were, like God clapping his hands. There was a bare half heartbeat of silence, and then more explosions. Jack reached into the jumpsuit and jerked his pistol, thumbing the safety as he crab-spun, his other hand on the floor.
Marshall stood thirty feet back in his fake cop uniform. Between him and Jack, a shuffling horror staggered forward on momentumalone, his head a mass of gore. Beside him, a chubby guy in a tracksuit was fumbling to draw an enormous pistol. A third man, black and built, was charging Marshall, body low and arms pumping.
Jack didn’t take time to think. He just raised the Colt, centered it on the back of that hideous tracksuit, lined up the bars, and squeezed the trigger. The.45 kicked in his hand, and he took the time to aim again before firing a second time, the second bullet punching in right next to the first, ninety calibers’ worth of violence that blew the man’s chest out.
The screaming began. Jack tried to ignore it, to filter out the shrieks and the gunfire and the rain of sparkling glass from the front windows of a store. To find his calm in the center of the hurricane. Everything was messed up again, just like the night they’d taken the cash from the Star. It wasn’t the way he liked to work. But just like that night, he had to get control of the situation. The world belonged to people who bent it to their will.
He swept his arm sideways, trying to line up on the black guy. The angle was no good, Marshall just beyond him. Too risky. Marshall was a big boy. Focus on priorities. He turned back.