More blood squirts out, soaking Duncan’s shirt. Duncan jerks violently in his seat, his hands clawing at his neck, his safety belt keeping him in place.
The other cop shouts, “What the fuck?”
The cop on Duncan’s side leaves the knife where it is. He uses his free hand to unholster his sidearm, and uses the sidearm to shoot his partner in the face. He ducks back down to aim through the car window, but by that point I’ve already opened my door and dove out onto the sidewalk.
“Where is he, John?” the cop yells.
Others nearby have heard the shot. They’ve seen what the cop just did. One woman screams.
The cop fires off a few more rounds in the direction of where the woman is standing.
Glass shatters.
A car alarm goes off.
The woman screams again.
“I’ll keep killing more people until you tell me where he is.”
The cop starts around the car. I can see his shoes from where I am on the ground, trying to stay flat. It will only take him a few seconds before he reaches the sidewalk.
More people scream and shout, and the cop fires off two more rounds.
His partner lies dead only inches away from me. His sidearm is pointed at me, almost inviting. I grab it and tug but it doesn’t come at first. Then I realize it’s still snapped in its holster. I unsnap it and pull it free and aim it at the cop just as he circles the front of the car.
“What,” he says, “you have the balls to shoot me? Go ahead, shoot me.”
The gun leveled at the cop’s chest, I pull the trigger.
Nothing happens.
“Forgot the safety, asshole.” The cop levels his own gun at me. “Now I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is he?”
The Jaguar’s one headlight pops and shatters.
The cop pauses. He turns his head toward the street, then begins to turn his entire body, raising the gun, as a series of gunshots sounds out. The cop fires off only one round, but by that point the shooter on the other side of the street has met his target.
A bullet tears into the cop’s throat, then into his face.
I don’t wait to see what happens next.
The dead cop’s gun in my hand, I scramble to my feet and run.
thirty
“Can you tell me about her?”
Ashley stirred in the passenger seat, Eli’s sudden voice disrupting the calming silence.
“Who?” she asked, though a beat later she knew exactly whom he meant.
“Melissa. What was she like?”
Ashley wasn’t quite sure how to answer this. She had known Melissa for so long, she knew so many different things about her, though she didn’t know where to start.
“Did she ever talk about me?”
The parking garage was dimly lit, casting shadows everywhere, especially in the Crown Vic which had been waiting for them once they finished with their circuitous route of taxi after taxi after taxi, a few subway trains thrown into the mix. All the money from the wallet had been used for a good cause, helping them escape Manhattan and sneak into New Jersey (not to mention also picking up a pair of sneakers from a sidewalk vendor for Ashley). The thought of what might have happened to the wallet’s owner-despite herself she kept thinking of all those crumpled motionless bodies in the coffee shop-was a heavy burden on her mind.
Eli, sitting behind the wheel, tilted his face toward her. His eyes were almost completely drowned in shadows, though there was a slight twinkle, maybe tears.
Ashley considered lying to the man, but in the end decided to tell the truth.
“Not really. She did once, back in college. We had gone to a party and she had gotten drunk and some guy she liked blew her off. When we got back to our apartment, she kept drinking. And the more she drank, the angrier she got. Finally she mentioned you, which was something she had never done, so it made an impression. Something about how she had never really had a strong male role model in her life. How she almost never saw you, never talked to you. How occasionally she could actually get her mother on the phone, but never you. She said … well, she said you were a horrible father.”
For the longest time Eli made no reaction. Then his expression shifted and he smiled distantly.
“It’s true. I was a shitty father. Not just to Melissa, but to all the kids.”
“Why?”
He shrugged, scanning the parking garage again. “I had my reasons. Marta and I both did.”
“Who’s Marta?”
“Melissa’s mother.”
“No, it’s not. Melissa’s mother’s name is-”
“Janice,” Eli said with a nod. “Yes, that was the name she took, just as Frank was the name I took.”
“What is this all about?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere, does it?”
Eli almost laughed. “Good point. But I don’t know how much longer we can wait here. We have to acknowledge the fact John might not come.”
“How much longer can we wait?”
They had been waiting for nearly an hour already, which didn’t count the two hours it had taken them to leave the city.
“Not sure,” Eli said. “The only reason we’re still here is because Charlie and John didn’t know about me stashing the car. I only did it just in case.”
“Were Charlie and John those guys from the Tahoe?”
“Yes.”
“Who were they?”
“For better or worse, they were mercenaries.”
“That’s why they turned on you so quickly?”
Eli nodded again. “They work for the highest bidder, no matter the cause. And these people I’m up against, they have more money than God.”
Ashley went to ask something else when Eli suddenly went tense. His eyes narrowed. She followed his gaze and saw someone out in the parking garage, maybe one hundred yards away, a dark figure moving slowly past the cars.
“Do you think that’s him?”
Eli didn’t answer. Earlier, when they had come to the car, he had popped the trunk. Inside were two duffel bags. Out of one he had extracted a black handgun. He had been gripping the handgun the entire time they were waiting in the car. Now he briefly set it on his lap so he could use his hand to reach up and flick off the switch by the dome light. Gripping the gun again, he used his other hand to quietly unlatch the door and push it open.
Up ahead, the figure approached them. It was still too dark to be sure it was John, but Ashley had hope. She hoped it was John because that meant they could finally leave here. She hoped it was John so that all these questions could start to be answered.
Eli slowly stepped out of the car, keeping crouched behind the door. He kept the gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger.
When the figure was only fifty yards away, he said, “John.”
The figure stopped immediately. It turned toward them, and as it did, it reached into its jacket and brought out a gun.
“Shit.”
Eli dropped in the driver’s seat, slammed the door shut, and turned the key in the ignition. He shoved the car into drive, slammed on the gas.
The Crown Vic’s engine roared.
They jerked forward, speeding toward the approaching figure who was now raising the gun.
Eli turned on the headlights-and immediately slammed on the brakes.
The Crown Vic stopped just within a foot or two of John Smith.
Eli lowered his window. “Get in!”
John hurried to the passenger side back door. He slid into the seat and said, breathless, “What the fuck was that?”
“I thought you might be one of them.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
“Off a cop.”
Eli’s expression darkened.
“It’s okay,” John said. “The cop wasn’t using it. He was already dead.”
Both Eli and Ashley stared at him.