Chapel knew a lucky break when he saw one. The cops were distracted. He dashed for the water tower. His living arm felt weak and near useless, but he’d learned to trust his artificial arm in situations like this. He jumped and hauled himself up onto the tower, then over the fence.
All before the cops even thought to start shooting.
On the streets of Queens nobody noticed one dazed-looking man in a tattered army uniform. They were too busy watching the parade of fire trucks and ambulances and police cars that tore down every street, converging on the train yard. Chapel kept his head down and kept moving, knowing he had a little breathing room — but not much — before the local authorities started looking for him. The cops back at the trailer had gotten a good look at him and his description would go out to every unit in the borough before long. Without Wilkes to vouch for him, they would have no reason not to pick him up. And once they had him he would be stuck in jail for a while. Normally, Angel would have been able to spring him — but right now she was switched off. He couldn’t rely on his government credentials, either, since he’d been officially relieved from duty.
No, if he was caught now, he would be on his own. And the cops would have lots and lots of questions, questions he couldn’t answer.
He needed to get as far away as he could, as fast as he could, but that presented a problem. He had no idea where exactly he was or how to get back to the subway station. Queens had a weird street grid with avenues, roads, streets, and places all identified by number, and the numbers tended to run into each other so you could easily find yourself on Thirtieth Place, which ran parallel to Thirtieth Street to where it met Thirtieth Avenue. Added to that, all the street addresses were given as a pair of numbers that roughly corresponded to the nearest Avenue (usually), so an address could be 30–29 Thirtieth Avenue on the corner of Thirtieth Street. Even Chapel’s smartphone was going to have trouble with that.
First things first, though — he needed to get cleaned up. Eventually someone was going to notice that he looked like he’d just survived a bomb blast, and they would call the cops just to be helpful. Chapel ducked into a coffee shop off one of the avenues, intending to buy a bottle of water so he could use the restroom. He didn’t need to bother. All the employees of the place were standing by the plateglass windows, looking out at the street.
“Hey,” one of them called out to him as he headed for the back of the shop and the restroom.
Chapel froze. “Yeah?”
“You see anything?” she asked. She was a young woman with freckles wearing a stained apron. She didn’t even give Chapel’s ruined clothes a glance. “There’s nothing on the news, and Twitter just says there was an explosion.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna close up in a minute and go look for it.”
This was New York City. A city still haunted by September eleventh, but also a city where people ran toward explosions and attacks and horror so they could get a good video of it on their phones.
“Just need the bathroom,” Chapel said, and before the young woman could respond he pushed through the door of the men’s room and locked it behind him.
The silence in there was enough to make his ears ring again. But he could breathe.
He studied his face in the mirror, looking for any sign he’d been cut or bruised in the blast. He’d been lucky. As close as he’d been to the explosion he seemed to have escaped any serious injury. The main damage was to the silicone wrist of his artificial arm. It looked like someone had cut into it with a butcher knife. He prodded the wound with his good fingers, seeing how deep the gash went. It wouldn’t damage his prosthesis, but it did make him look like an android that had unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by slashing its wrist.
That made him think of the bomb squad robot, and the hijacked Predator. Robots turned into suicide bombers. There had to be a link there — whoever hijacked the drone must be the same person who blew up Angel’s trailer. But why? What were they trying to cover up? They’d already framed her — not that anyone would have listened to her if she did have secrets to share. She wasn’t even human.
Damn it. He was wasting time. He could do the detective work later. Right now he had to get out of New York.
He took off his tunic, carefully laying Angel’s hard drive on the edge of the sink. There he got a nasty surprise. The entire back of the tunic was shredded. Luckily the shirt underneath was intact.
He took off his tie as well. Nothing he could do about his uniform trousers with their distinctive gold stripe. He washed up as best he could, getting the grime off his face and teasing most of the gravel dust out of his hair. Then he turned and looked at the hard drive. He needed a way to conceal it.
He found a plastic bag in the trash. He wrapped the drive in what remained of his tunic and stuffed the resulting bundle inside the bag. He glanced at himself in the mirror. It looked like he was just some guy in an ugly shirt carrying a bag full of old rags. He wouldn’t stand out so much now. There were other ways to track him, though.
He took out his smartphone and stared at it for a while.
Anything he did with the device could be traced. The police were probably already getting a warrant to tap his phone. Maybe the hijacker would trace him as well — anyone who could frame Angel like that definitely had the capability. The phone was a liability. But it was so damnably useful.
Nothing for it. He started prying open the back of the case so he could get the SIM card out when it started to ring.
Chapel was still jumpy from surviving the explosion. He nearly dropped the phone in the toilet. He shook his head. Come on, keep it together, he thought. He flipped the phone over, knowing that whoever it was, he didn’t dare answer it. He was just going to power the phone down and then—
It was Julia.
Julia was calling him. Right now.
“Shit,” he said, under his breath. As if she might hear him.
Julia.
There had been a time, once, when he and Julia had spoken on the phone every day. Except when he was on missions, of course.
That had been the problem. He was always going off on missions. Disappearing without any warning. She could never know where he went, or when he was coming back. If he was coming back. If he had died on one of his missions, she wouldn’t even get to find out how. Chapel had always assumed that Hollingshead would let her know that he had died, but even that couldn’t be guaranteed. Chapel’s life revolved around secrets. Julia had been forced to pay the price for that.
He’d thought he could fix things. He’d thought he could give up his work, get a desk job.
Marry her.
It hadn’t worked out.
He hadn’t spoken with her on the phone, or seen her, in nearly a year. He’d moved out of her apartment. Moved out of New York. Tried to find some other reason to live than for her.
Julia. He had never loved a woman as much as he’d loved her. He doubted he ever would again. He knew she didn’t feel the same way.
Julia.
The phone was still ringing. He shouldn’t answer it. He couldn’t.
He used his index finger to swipe the screen, completing the connection. He pressed it to his ear and just waited, still not really believing it would be her voice on the other end.
“Jim?” she said. “Jim, are you there?”
This was a mistake. This had to be a mistake. Whatever she wanted—
“I’m here,” he said. Jesus. He could have said hello, or sure, or… or anything else. “Julia,” he went on. “It’s good to hear your voice.”