I closed the door, counted to thirty, and opened it again.
“All that ammo you left in your crib in the tunnel, Mr. Blunt? That’s gone. Thanks to Smitty, former mayor of the moles. Cleaned you right out.”
I wanted Mike or Mercer or Scully-anyone who knew Zoya and I were on the loose-to spot me and send cops to make us safe, but the last thing I wanted was for Nik Blunt to catch us. I placed my shoulder against the heavy door and looked again but saw nothing and no one. Mike wasn’t talking to Blunt about Yolanda’s death. I’m sure he didn’t want to give the murderer the satisfaction of knowing how everyone guarding the terminal felt about the killing of a police officer.
I was getting as depressed as I was anxious. Maintaining a stiff upper lip in front of Zoya Blunt was becoming more difficult by the minute.
Why hadn’t any of the cops reached our position yet? Had Blunt intercepted and killed more of them, or was it just the steep and circuitous route they had to take to get to us?
I thought Mike would have raced up the many flights of stairs himself, but it was more like him to stay on the loudspeaker, letting me hear his steady voice talking directly to me, communicating his presence and support. He would have dispatched other cops to come find Zoya and me.
I knew there were sharpshooters set up all over the terminal by this point. I hated the idea of sticking my head out into the open space at the very top of the catwalk.
“Attention, team!” Chapman’s voice again. “Meeting unavoidably delayed. I know where you are, team. Check the Edisons. Check the Edisons. Waiting for power, team. Waiting for four thousand bare bulbs to go on.”
I was fast becoming too exhausted to play Mike’s word game. Edison and bulbs suggested lighting. We knew the power was out. And four thousand bulbs was another count that figured in the structure of the terminal. Architects wanted to show off the new technology of the day: electricity. Every bulb that ringed the circumference of the ceiling of Grand Central-thousands of them-was absolutely bare.
Mike was broadcasting something to me that I needed to know. It had to do with the innumerable bulbs that were just overhead outside the landing.
“What does he mean?” Zoya asked.
I put my finger to my lips. “Be absolutely still, okay?”
“Are they nearby?”
I figured Nik Blunt was closer to us than the cops.
“On the way.”
I put my hand on the knob, bracing my arm against the door so it opened only slightly. I focused my eyes, which was hard to do going from total darkness to the combination of searching floodlights and bolts of lightning. Nothing.
I closed it and waited ten seconds. Zoya took another cigarette from the pack in her pocket and asked me for the lighter.
“You can’t do that right now.”
“It helps my nerves.”
“You’ll give us away when I open the door.” I didn’t want to tell her that snipers must have been setting up everywhere. “Just wait.”
“You said that before. I’ve been waiting, okay?”
I shushed her again and cracked the door. This time, the spotlights all seemed to be aimed in the same general position. They were crisscrossing the giant molding that formed a channel from the catwalk on the east side-from which Blunt had thrown Yolanda-to the one next to us, on the building’s west side.
I stood on tiptoe, so close to the ceiling of the terminal that my vertigo almost overwhelmed me.
In the man-sized gully-which appeared to be an architectural design element from the concourse below-where workmen stood twice a year to change thousands of lightbulbs, I could see Nik Blunt. He had crawled onto the deep space through one of the long glass windows-clearly fearless of heights, unlike me-and was creeping across the entire length of the terminal in our direction.
Spotlights from the floor tried to follow his movement, but most of Blunt’s head and body were below the rim of the channel.
I had no idea whether he had spotted me when I saw him throw Yolanda off the catwalk, or whether she’d had a chance, before he slit her throat, to give up the fact that his sister was in the terminal, helping the police find him.
Someone from below yelled the word “fire.”
A hail of bullets flew in the direction of Nik Blunt, who flattened himself against his sky-high gully and laid perfectly still. They struck the marble walls and burst scores of lightbulbs.
I pulled the door shut before someone mistook my shadow for the killer.
FORTY-SIX
I had my back to the wall, next to the door.
“What do you have in your apron pocket beside the lighter?” I asked Zoya.
She had heard the volley of shots and was ten steps ahead of me, backtracking in the corridor.
“Nothing. Just a Swiss Army knife and a bottle opener.”
A waitress, of course. “Let me have them, please.”
She fished in her apron and handed me the multitooled gadget first. I pocketed that, then held out my hand for the corkscrew. I pushed in the lock on the door-there was no bolt-then asked her to come back and hold the lighter so I could see well enough to jam the keyhole with the wine opener.
“Let’s go. That should buy us a few minutes.”
“But the gunshots?”
“It’s the cops. They think they see your brother up here.”
“Near us? Coming toward us?”
“I don’t know, Zoya.”
She started to run in the dark, holding the lighter out in front of her. “He’ll kill me,” she said. “Why aren’t the cops here?”
He’ll kill anyone he encounters, I thought to myself. “Where are you going, Zoya? You’re heading back the same way we came.”
Nik could just as easily crawl back to the catwalk he’d started from as come out to the one we’d been standing near. I wanted to find a place to hide.
The young woman kept running ahead of me.
“Zoya, how well do you know this area? There must be supply closets up here, aren’t there? Somewhere we can be out of sight.”
“I’m getting out.” She was frantic now, and I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t thinking any more clearly, although there didn’t seem a way to escape from the top of the building that had countless entrances and exits on the street level.
“We’ve got to stay together, Zoya.”
“I don’t have to do anything you tell me. You’ll get me killed. You’ll get us both killed.”
Halfway down the corridor, she took a right turn, which was the way back to the situation room that we’d exited with Yolanda Figueroa.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
I caught up with her as she pulled on the door. It wouldn’t open. She stepped aside to let me try, but I couldn’t move it.
“Don’t you have a key? Don’t you have anything to help us?” Zoya had lost it, emotionally. She was unable to talk to me now. Everything she said was a scream or a high-pitched rant.
“I don’t have keys. I never did.” This hadn’t been the plan for the evening.
Zoya swept past me and continued down the narrow hallway. I looked back before I followed her. Blunt didn’t appear to be coming yet, if he was still alive. There was no noise from the direction of the landing, where I’d blocked the keyhole-at least temporarily.
Ten seconds later, Zoya let out a shriek. I ran toward her in the dark space, farther away from the corridor that led to the two catwalks, and to the stairwells that eventually could take us down to the concourse.
There was a body on the floor, directly in front of the door to the operations command center. A man in some kind of military camouflage who’d been shot in the chest. He was African American, so I knew that it wasn’t Nik Blunt.
Zoya was out of control. She began banging on the door of the operations center.