I could hear McGeary chuckle. “You mean the ISOPREP for facial recognition?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“What am I looking at?” McGeary asked.
“That’s the thing,” said Lamont. “You can’t look at them, not even a glance. At least, not yet.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Just trust me on this, okay?”
The line was silent for a few seconds. “Yeah, sure,” McGeary said finally. “Whatever.”
“Thanks, partner,” said Lamont. “I’ll see you shortly.”
He hung up, turning to us in the backseat. Owen’s fingers were already hovering over his phone, ready to type in McGeary’s e-mail address. Lamont gave it to him.
“I need to send the files one at a time,” said Owen. “They’re too big as a group.”
“Whatever it takes,” said Lamont. “As you could tell, I’m not the most tech-savvy guy in the world. All I know is that prepping files on that damn machine takes a while. This way, we’ve got a head start.”
“Is he really not going to watch them?” I asked, incredulous. “That was like putting a biscuit on a dog’s nose.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Lamont.
“Are you trying to protect him?”
“I’m trying to give him the option. I’ll explain it to him at the precinct, and he’ll make the decision. That way, he owns it,” Lamont said. “You can’t unwatch what you just showed me.”
“Done,” said Owen, looking up from his phone. “All three sent.”
“Good, thanks,” said Lamont as the light turned green.
He turned left onto Tenth Avenue, heading the only way you can, which is north. The traffic was one-way.
Apparently, though, someone didn’t get the memo.
“Jesus, look at this asshole,” said Lamont, pointing up ahead.
Amid all the taillights was a pair of headlights, right smack in the middle of the street and coming right toward us. Fast. The guy was either drunk or a tourist or both.
Lamont flashed his high beams as drivers began leaning on their horns left and right. A taxi fifty feet ahead of us missed getting hit by inches as the oncoming car swerved around it at the last possible moment.
Whoever it was wasn’t stopping. If anything, he was picking up speed.
“Get over!” I yelled at Lamont.
But to his credit, he wasn’t thinking only about us. Every car around us was in danger.
Lamont jammed the brakes and reached down by the shotgun seat, grabbing a cherry top. There was no time to throw it up on the roof of his car. He quickly plunked it on the dash, flipping it on.
I shielded my eyes as best I could to the blinding flashes of red and blue filling Lamont’s car. Even more blinding was the white of the two headlights getting closer and closer. The car was right in our lane and there was nothing between us.
What the hell is happening?
“Hold on!” said Lamont.
CHAPTER 52
I BRACED for the collision. My arms outstretched, the palms of my hands pressed hard against the back of the front seat. Owen was doing the same.
Lamont, white-knuckled, had the steering wheel gripped at ten and two. He was bound to get the worst of it. Is this LeSabre so old it doesn’t even have airbags?
I could already hear the crash in my head, the horrible crunch of metal against metal, of glass shattering, of Newton’s First Law being proven at 120 decibels.
But those sounds never came. It was an entirely different one we heard, albeit just as loud.
At the last possible second, the oncoming car came to a halt mere inches from our front grille, the tires screeching as if they were being ripped from their rims. I couldn’t just smell the burnt rubber; I could taste it.
“Son of a bitch!” shouted Lamont.
Whatever relief came from not being hit was quickly overtaken by his anger. He couldn’t unbuckle his seat belt fast enough to get out of the car and tear this driver a new one.
With the cherry still spinning on the dash, he was barely more than a silhouette as he opened the door and swung his legs out all in one move. The moment his heels reached the asphalt, I could hear a door opening on the other car. Someone was getting out, another silhouette.
But I still recognized him. So did Lamont.
Just not fast enough.
Before Lamont could even reach for his gun, the sound of shots split the air. There were four of them right in a row. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
Instinctively, I ducked, but not before seeing Lamont drop to the ground, his hands clutching his chest. He was gasping, wheezing, trying to catch his breath. It was the sound of a man dying.
All at once, I wanted to puke, to mourn him, to click my heels three times and wake up safe in my bed next to Claire. But all I could see was Owen right beside me, completely frozen. He couldn’t have been more exposed if he’d had a neon target on his face.
“Get down!” I screamed, grabbing his shoulders.
As I pulled him flat against the backseat, the second wave came, as I’d known it would. There were so many shots I couldn’t keep count, one after another riddling the windshield. I’d expected the sound of shattering glass, but not like this. Not with bullets flying over us.
Damn, my kingdom for my duffel …
I’d left the bag back at the hotel, not wanting to bring what amounted to a small arsenal into Lamont’s precinct. Call me crazy.
But I wasn’t that crazy.
I reached down, grabbing the Glock strapped to my right shin. With that and two extra clips, I had just enough for one plan.
“Get ready,” I said.
“For what?” asked Owen.
I flipped the safety. “We’re getting out of here.”
CHAPTER 53
ALL I knew was that my ears would have to be my eyes.
That flashing cherry meant I couldn’t see out of the car, but it also meant he couldn’t see in—he being Gordon’s partner. It was him, all right. The gamble was whether it was only him.
That was what I was hearing, though. Shots from only one gun. One gun, which he was currently reloading. The slide and click were unmistakable.
I could almost hear his thoughts, too. He knew I had a weapon. His buddy, Gordon, had a hole in his foot that proved it. Sitting this one out, Gordo?
I sure as hell hoped so.
There was no time for any countdown or a moment to steel my nerve. My window was now, and it looked a lot like the space between the front and back seats. The car was in park and idling, but not for long….
GO!
I popped up like a deranged, gun-toting Whac-A-Mole, firing blindly through the windshield and into the other car. As I unloaded half my clip, the only thing I was aiming for was to send Gordon’s partner scrambling for cover.
GO!
I lunged over the seat, shifting into reverse with my gun hand while punching the gas with the other. Steering wasn’t exactly a high priority as we took off backward with Owen sneaking peeks out the back window.
“Clear!” he shouted, while I remained on the floor of the front seat.
All the surrounding traffic had backed the hell away as soon as they heard the gunfire, more of which was now spraying through what remained of the windshield. Suffice it to say, Gordon’s partner didn’t particularly like this latest development. Meanwhile …
“Thirty feet!” shouted Owen with the update, the distance before we’d hit another car. Or anything else, for that matter.
By now it had stopped raining shards of glass over my head. We were out of range. Time to get a better view.
I pulled myself up by the steering wheel, immediately spinning us into a one-eighty that nearly flipped us over and had Owen practically doing a somersault across the backseat.
“Jesus!” he yelled.
“Sorry!” I yelled back.
The second we were on all four tires again, I grabbed the rearview mirror, twisting it into my eye line to see
what Gordon’s partner was doing behind us. Instead, I should’ve been looking straight ahead.
“Car!” said Owen. “Car!”
I looked just in time to see a white BMW swerving up on the curb to avoid us. So did the taxi behind it. Now we were the asshole who didn’t get the memo. We were going the wrong way.
The chorus of horns kicked in, but the only car that really mattered was still behind us. Glancing into the rearview mirror again, I could just make out Gordon’s partner getting back behind the wheel. For the first time, I could see what he was driving. A Jeep Wrangler.
I killed the cherry and made the first turn possible, onto Twenty-First Street. We were finally going the right way, but it was clear we were about to have company.
Just how fast can a Buick LeSabre from the early eighties go?
CHAPTER 54
MY RIGHT foot was like a cinder block on the gas, while my head was like a bobble doll, bouncing all around as I tried to see through the shot-up windshield. There were so many cracks and jagged edges, I might as well have been looking through a prism.
I blew through one red light and then another without a scratch, a double dose of lucky on our way to the West Side Highway. More lanes, less traffic, better chance of losing him. Or so I was thinking.
“He’s gaining,” said Owen, looking out the back while I frantically weaved in and out of the cars around us.
“How many behind?” I asked.
“Five cars,” he said. “Shit, make that four.”
We were a block away from the highway, but suddenly that idea wasn’t looking so good. I couldn’t shake him. Four cars back would become three and then two and then one, and he’d be right on my tail, shooting out my tires.
I glanced back at Owen. “Time for plan B,” I said.
“I didn’t know we had a plan A.”
“Good, then you won’t fight me on this.”
He fought me anyway.
“Hell, no,” he said after I told him what I wanted him to do. “It’s two against one.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got only one gun,” I said. “That makes it one against one.”
“Then I’ll be the decoy,” he said. “I’ll distract him.”
“Yeah, right before he puts four bullets in your chest.”
It wasn’t just what I said, it was the way I said it. Angry. Pissed.
Guilty.
All I could see was Lamont falling to the ground. It was playing in my head over and over, a vicious loop.
And as Owen went silent, it was as if he knew exactly how I felt. He’d felt the same thing with Claire.
I need you to run with this story, kid. Literally …
“Okay,” he said, relenting. “But you better know what you’re doing.”
“I do,” I assured him. And with any luck, that wouldn’t be a lie.
Flipping the cherry back on, I looked up ahead to the end of the block about fifty yards away. I was straddling both lanes as parked cars dotted each side of the street like Morse code. What I needed was two cars lined up opposite each other like gateposts. Because I was about to close the gate.
The sound of my jamming the brakes was immediately drowned out by everyone else’s brakes behind me. Not only was I stopping on a dime, I was stopping on an angle to block both lanes. Instant chaos.
No one was going anywhere … except Owen.
“Now!” I told him.
He hesitated for a split second, but that was it. He burst out of the backseat, dashing around the corner and out of sight as fast—and as low—as he could.
Now it was my turn.
Only, I was heading in the opposite direction. Suddenly, my life had become an existential fortune cookie.
Man chased too long must find new path.
CHAPTER 55
WITH THE cherry still flashing on the dash, there came an eerie silence as I all but crawled out of the front seat on my hands and knees to avoid being seen.
New York drivers have a well-earned rep for impatience, but even they know when to lay off their horns. You honk at a cop and you’re likely to see some real impatience, and that old Buick LeSabre blocking traffic was an unmarked police car, as far as everyone could tell.
Everyone, that is, except the guy at the wheel four cars back who wanted me dead.
Quickly, I made my way behind a Prius parked along the curb. The angle was wrong, though. I couldn’t see well enough up the street.
So much for the gift of silence, too. The line of cars now stretched all the way down the block, well beyond sight of the flashing red and blue. Any driver bringing up the rear had no idea why he was stopped. The horns began kicking in, one louder than the last.
Fine by me. I was banking on the confusion.
As fast as I got to the curb was how slowly I began moving alongside the parked cars, peering over the hoods until I had a clean line. But it wasn’t happening. The headrest of a seat, a side-view mirror—something was always in the way.
I should’ve been able to spot him by now.
Finally, there came a good angle. I was maybe twenty feet away, sidled up next to the back tire of a MINI Cooper. Looking through the glass of the rear hatch, I had the perfect view.
Of nothing.
I could see the Jeep, but the driver’s seat was empty. The engine was running, and I couldn’t suppress the immediate thought that maybe I should’ve been, too.
Gripping my pistol with both hands, I was whipping it around like a pointer. Where are you? Over here? Over there?
I didn’t know whether to move or stay put. People were starting to get out of their cars. Some were yelling, others walking ahead for a closer look. No one knew what was happening. Including me.
Then, with one glance to the left, I saw him.
He poked his head out from behind the Prius back where I’d started. I’d gone to him; he’d come to me. We’d missed each other. He had no intention of letting that happen again.
Like a bull out of the gate he came at me, running with his arm raised. His first shot caromed off the sidewalk mere inches to my left, the sound setting off screams up and down the block. People were scattering everywhere as I bolted around the next car at the curb, just barely eluding the second shot. Had the MINI Cooper been any less mini, I would’ve been nailed in the back for sure.
Three-point-eight billion years of evolution tucked away in your DNA …
Immediately, I spun around with my arms locked, the inside of my index finger flush against the trigger. Once again, I had the perfect view.
And once again, it was of nothing.
The sidewalk was empty. He wasn’t there.
But he was far from gone.
CHAPTER 56
I’VE NEVER cracked the cover of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. It’s never even made the to-read pile next to my bed. But I had to believe that somewhere buried in the book was a rule that said if the enemy knows where you are but you don’t know where the enemy is … move.
As fast and low as I could, I zigzagged across the street, stopping only when I saw some bald guy in a suit halfway out of his shiny red Cadillac. He was crouched, looking through the window with his entire head exposed as if he’d somehow missed that physics class in high school explaining the effect of a speeding bullet on a piece of glass. This just in, pal, the bullet wins….
“Hey,” I tried whispering, which was pretty much a lost cause given the cacophony of horns still blaring. The entire street had become a parking lot, an exceedingly angry one at that.
“Hey!” I tried again, louder.
Finally, he turned around and I motioned with both hands for him to get down. That immediately got me a look suggesting I should mind my own effin’ business. Then he saw the gun in my right hand. That did the trick. He ducked back into his seat so fast he literally banged his bald head on the top of the car.
Any other time, any other place, that would’ve been funny.
I wasn’t laughing.
All I could do was keep l
ooking left and right as I approached the other sidewalk, my head on a swivel. Forget my trigger finger, the slightest movement anywhere in front of me had my entire body twitching. Throw in some self-doubt, and I was close to drowning in my own sweat. Did I really need to go after a trained CIA field agent head-on?
Too late.
It was like lightning before the thunder. I first saw a flash in the corner of my eye. I turned quickly to look, squinting for focus, and heard a booming voice right behind it.
The voice was saying something. He was saying something. But he was too far away; I couldn’t make out the words.
The voice, though … I knew the voice. It was familiar.
It was Owen.
He was sprinting toward me on the sidewalk, his cell phone lit up with one of those flashlight apps. Damn, those things are bright. He was close enough now, the words beginning to come together.
“You!” he was screaming. “Find you!”
Find me? No.
Behind me!
I spun around, hands out front, my eyes blowing up wide with panic as I looked out over the barrel of my pistol to see another gun already lined up with my chest. Somehow he’d gotten behind me.
Now he was right in front of me, dead center. All Gordon’s partner had to do was pull the trigger. But he suddenly had a problem …
He couldn’t see me.
The light from Owen’s phone hit his face so fast I could practically see his pupils snap shut. He raised his arm to shield his eyes, but it was the other arm I was watching. The one with the gun. He was swinging it right at Owen.
There was no thought, no planning, no decision. Just instinct. And maybe a little trace memory thrown in for good measure in case he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
In other words, I aimed a little bit higher.
I got off two shots. I couldn’t tell if the first one hit him, but there was no doubt about the second. Let’s just say it was going to be a closed-casket funeral, and leave it at that.
“C’mon,” said Owen. “Let’s go.”
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