Joy stirred beside him, opened her eyes, and looked at him staring intently out the window. She followed his gaze to the man across the street.
“Who’s that?” Joy said, her voice hesitant, as if not really wanting the answer.
Jack didn’t break his stare, the moment dragging on to almost the point of forgetting the question. His voice was low and steady as he answered her, although his tone was filled with vengeance. “That’s the man who killed me.”
Frank stepped into the elevator with far more questions than answers. Whatever Mia had stumbled upon was worse than he had imagined. The effort mobilized to recover the case was being overseen by Tierney personally, and the assistant director only took on-site charge of an investigation when the matter had far-reaching implications.
The elevator ride back up into the world seemed to take forever, which suited Frank fine. His mind was churning with scenarios, thoughts, and ideas. He had no intention of leaving the Tombs without the case, no matter how many feds were down there.
As the doors to the lobby opened, Frank pulled out his cell phone, quickly dialing as he continued out into the rear hallway to get cell service.
In the car, Jack sat glaring at the man who shot him at point-blank range, who helped send him hurtling off Rider’s Bridge. Rage clouded Jack’s mind; thoughts of unquenchable revenge were all he could think of. He wanted to leap from the car and kill the man with his bare hands. But his thoughts were interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. He saw Frank’s number and quickly answered it.
“Got it?”
“No,” Frank said, pain in his voice.
“What?”
“It’s a nightmare down there. Seems the whole world is looking for your box. The feds took the place over.”
“Dammit.” Jack slowly exhaled, trying to balance his nerves and focus as his only link to Mia slipped away. “We need that case-”
Jack stopped talking as the rumble of the street momentarily distracted him, but this time it wasn’t the subway. He glanced in the rearview mirror to see a sanitation truck make its way down the road, two workers clinging to the white garbage truck’s side, leaping off, grabbing and dumping waste cans that had been left for pickup. There was a line of cars behind the slow-moving vehicle, windows down, drivers cursing, laying on horns, which, as anyone who lived in a city knew, only made the truck move slower.
Jack turned his attention back to the man across the street.
“Jack?” Frank’s tone was filled with concern.
“Jack,” Joy echoed Frank. She could see the look on her boss’s face and knew it all too well.
But Jack was lost in thought, staring at the blond man who now leaned on the Crown Victoria until he finally tilted the phone toward his mouth. “I’ve got to go-”
“Go?” Frank’s voice grew loud with anger. “Go where?”
“There’s someone I need to talk to-”
“Don’t you dare get out of that car-”
Jack slammed the phone shut, stuck it back into his pocket, and watched the sanitation truck crawl up the street toward him. It finally came to a stop in the middle of the road, clogging traffic while obscuring his view of the Crown Victoria and the man who stood beside it.
“Jack,” Joy said, “don’t even think about it-”
Suddenly, on instinct and against reason, Jack leaped out of the car. Using the large white sanitation truck as cover, he stayed low and circled back around the Crown Victoria.
Just as Jack rounded the back of the truck, coming out behind the blue car, the blond man noticed his approach. The man’s eyes grew wide with shock. He reached for his cell phone, quickly dialing, but before he could lift the phone to his ear, Jack was upon him, knocking the phone away, thrusting him against the car.
“Where’s my wife?” Jack said through gritted teeth, his body like a coiled spring ready to release.
“I watched you die…” the man said in disbelief. He reached for his gun, but Jack snatched it from him, tucking it into the small of his back.
“Where is she?” Jack wrapped his hands around the man’s throat. “I’ll snap your neck.”
While the element of surprise gave Jack the advantage, it was only temporary. The man quickly recovered his wits and, with lightning motion, swept his arms up, freeing himself from the stranglehold. His hand clenched into a fist and in a continuous arc struck Jack in the side of the jaw, stunning and knocking him backward.
The man took off, racing up the street. Without breaking stride, he grabbed his phone from where it lay in the gutter and kept running, dialing on the fly. Jack quickly recovered, regained his footing, and took off in pursuit. He couldn’t afford the world knowing he was alive, not yet. He ran for everything he was worth, knowing that if the call went through, Mia’s already meager life expectancy could drop down to minutes. He pressed on, pushing his legs to the limit.
The man cut across Center Street, up Chambers, and hung a right onto Broadway. He was fast, but Jack was faster, quickly gaining on him. They bobbed and weaved through oncoming traffic, as cars locked up their brakes and tires screeched, trying to avoid the two crazed men who ran through the streets of New York. The blond man leaped a fraction of a second before the front end of a yellow cab plowed into him, his butt sliding across the hood of the car, then practically landing in stride on the street as he fled. Jack didn’t miss a beat as he leaped onto the hood of the cab, jumping to the roof of the next vehicle and back to the sidewalk, landing inches from his prey.
Jack reached out, a hair’s breadth from grabbing him, when the man cut left and raced down a flight of subway entrance stairs, taking five at a time, stumbling but quickly gaining his footing. The man jumped the turnstile and charged along a darkened platform.
Jack never lost distance, hurdling the turnstile, never breaking stride. A moment of panic filled him as he watched the man charge the closing doors of a departing subway car but was quickly relieved as the doors sealed up and the car left the station.
Alone on the vacant platform of the subway, the man jumped onto the tracks and never stopped, the sound of his racing feet echoing through the shadowy, cavernous tunnel as he disappeared into the darkness.
Without hesitation, Jack also jumped to the tracks, the stench of urine and filth filling his lungs as he sprinted and gasped for breath, struggling to keep up with the man ahead of him. The footing grew precarious, the gravel fill intermittent and scattered and the gauged rail ties uneven with his stride.
They were both swallowed by the dark, the only light coming from the green and red subway lights affixed to the walls, their unnatural glow casting staccato shadows.
Jack’s heart pounded in his ears. He had been sprinting for three minutes full-out, farther and faster than he had ever pushed himself.
But the rhythmic thrum was soon obscured. The heavy roar of an approaching train grew by the second, shaking the ground on which they ran and making it even more treacherous.
And then it was there, up ahead, rounding the corner to bear down on them, the wail of the train’s horn shredding their ears as its harsh light blinded them. The subway brakes locked up, sparks flew, and the seized metal wheels let out a screaming cry. There would be no stopping the train in time.
But the blond man never stopped. His silhouette, ten feet ahead, seemed to accelerate as if playing chicken with the thirty-ton train. And then, suddenly, he cut left through an opening in the wall as if he knew it was there all along. The train bore down on Jack, only feet away, milliseconds from crushing him.
He dove through a hole in the wall just as the train roared past, a mix of shrill brakes and rumbling motors. He could feel the heat of the lead car as it barely missed clipping his back.