We weren’t counting on two of them. Mikey’s still inside the police car, hunched over the laptop that’s mounted onto the dashboard.
“What do you got there, Jon?” the second cop calls out. “Party girl escaped from the yacht?”
I quickly stand and then pretend to lose my balance again, swaying on my feet. The second cop puts the coffees on the trunk of the car and walks toward me. As I throw in a bit of moaning for added effect, they discuss calling an ambulance.
I see Mikey pop up like a gopher inside the cop car, his eyes huge.
“Yeah. Call it in,” the second cop says. “I don’t want any blowback if she chokes on her own vomit. Hey, you famous or anything?”
“Me? No. I, uh . . .” I glance toward the cruiser. Now Mikey’s shaking his head frantically. I think he’s saying no ambulance.
But the cop is already reaching for the radio attached to his collar. I grab at it, like I’m flailing wildly.
“No, I’m okay! Really. I’m fine. I just need to get a cab or something.” The radio comes unclipped and swings loose behind his back. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
The second cop is now reaching for his radio. “I’ll call it.”
“No! Really! I can walk!”
My eyes zero in on the first cop’s utility belt—specifically the small canister next to his handcuffs. Pepper spray.
The first cop says, “Dispatch standby for a—”
“I am so sorry about this,” I say, right before I grab the pepper spray from his belt and blast him in the face. I try to spray the second cop too, but he ducks behind the trunk of the car before I can reach him. A second later, he steps back out in the open, gun drawn.
“Drop it,” he says.
“Okay. That was really dumb of me. I’m sorry,” I say, laying the pepper spray down on the street.
The first cop is really, really not happy with me, judging by the choice words he manages to choke out as he lies curled up on the ground, his hands pressed to his eyes.
And now the second cop notices Mikey inside the car. He moves the gun back and forth, alternately making me and Mikey his target. “You, out of the front seat! Hands on the top of the car! Now!”
But Mikey doesn’t have time to answer before a white van plows through the sawhorses blocking the street entrance. The same white van we saw near the dock, looking for my body.
It screeches up to us, blocking the police car in, and I have to drop to the pavement and roll toward the car not to get run over. The cop hardly has any time to react before the driver leans out the window and takes a shot at me.
He misses. The cop fires at him and the driver fires back, hitting the cop.
I recognize the guy holding the gun. That jawline and pockmarked skin—he was the limo driver who took Thomas and me to the party.
He points the gun at me again.
Suddenly Mikey appears, leaping off the roof of the police car and kicking the guy’s arm just as he fires.
The van slams into reverse and spins around. I run to the sidewalk as it peels away. The cop who got shot is lying on the ground, his hands across his chest. The other cop is still gagging from the pepper spray.
“Come on! Let’s get out of here!” Mikey shouts at me, opening the door to the cop car.
“We’re stealing a cop car? Are you insane?” Granted, I’ve done equally insane things—scaling construction cranes, for starters—but I thought the idea was not to attract the NYPD’s notice.
“You see another available getaway vehicle?”
“Fine!”
I’m about to get into the cruiser when something important occurs to me.
“We can’t just leave these guys here,” I say. “They’ll radio for backup and give our descriptions. Then every cop in the city will be after us.”
“You think we should waste them?”
“What? No! I mean we should take them with us!”
I lean over the cop who’s been shot. There’s a big hole in the front of the cop’s shirt, but no blood. Clearly he’s wearing a protective vest. Still, he’s doubled over in pain. Maybe the bullet broke a rib or something. Mikey joins me, swearing under his breath, and helps me hoist both cops into the car. He makes a point of collecting their guns and radios.
“What are we going to do with them?” he asks as we stuff the second cop into the backseat.
“We’ll figure that out once we’re out of here!”
Once both cops are in the back, Mikey jumps into the driver’s seat, and I slide in next to him. After tucking one gun in his waistband and handing the other to me, he turns the key in the ignition. I immediately shove the second gun into the glove compartment.
Mikey speeds away, nearly plowing into the back of a parked limo before veering into the center of the street. Once we’re past the overturned sawhorses, he experimentally flicks a few buttons till he manages to get the lights and siren going. The cars in front of us move to the side.
“Man, you didn’t skimp on that pepper spray, did you?” Mikey says. “My eyes are watering so bad, I can hardly see. Shut that slider window.”
He points behind us to the plastic wall that separates the front and back seats of the cruiser. There’s a small port window in the center.
I look into the backseat. The pepper spray fumes have both cops nearly incapacitated. The cop who got shot has his hands on his chest and he’s breathing in and out like he’s running a marathon. I find a bottle of water in my door’s cup holder and toss it into the lap of the cop I maced. He starts rinsing his eyes immediately.
Now I shut the port window all the way. “Thanks for stepping in back there,” I say to Mikey.
“No problem. I save your life once, I save your life again, maybe eventually if we keep hanging out long enough you’ll save mine. By the way, I couldn’t help but notice that once again, there were no Feds swooping in to rescue you.”
“Yeah, I noticed that too. And I’ve seen one of the guys in the van before,” I say. “The one who shot at me. He was Thomas’s driver when he picked me up to go to the party.”
“Seriously? That’s—weird.”
“Weird’s one way to put it.”
“Bad” is another word that comes to mind. It means the people who want me dead haven’t just been following me from a distance like Mikey has. At least one of them has been very, very close by.
“You think those guys are working with the ones who grabbed your boy?” Mikey asks.
“If they’re not, it’d be a pretty huge coincidence that he got kidnapped and I got targeted on the same day.”
That doesn’t explain what these people want with either of us. Or how they even knew we were connected. Only Virgil and Mrs. Fitzgerald knew about our relationship.
Which brings us back to Mrs. Fitzgerald.
“So what now?” Mikey asks.
“We find a quiet place to dump these guys,” I say. “Then once we’ve used the computer and ditched this car somewhere, we can call 9-1-1 and tell the NYPD where to find their officers.”
“Don’t be such a girl. They’ll be fine.”
“I am a girl, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Mikey drives another few blocks, running lights with obvious relish. Eventually he pulls over in front of an old brick building with a large metal gate lowered over what looks like a garage opening.
“Where are we?”
“No idea, but it looks like a nice, out-of-the-way place to leave a couple cops.”
He pops the trunk and jumps out. After a moment’s hesitation, I take the gun out of the glove compartment and follow him. He’s rooting around in the trunk now.
“No doubt they have bolt cutters in their bag of tricks back here. Ah, here we go. And zip ties too. It’s our lucky day.”
Mikey uses the bolt cutters to snap the padlock off the sliding gate. He raises the metal door, then turns back to the cruiser. Pointing his stolen gun at the cops in the backseat, he nods at me. “Open the door. We’ll tie them up inside.
”
I open the back door and say to the cops, “Can you walk?”
Both of them nod, though the cop who got pepper sprayed is still coughing and spitting, his eyes still shut tight.
The cop who took a slug in the vest—his name tag says “J. Reitman”—starts to speak. “Why don’t you—”
“No talking,” Mikey barks. “Just get out.”
Mikey grabs the guy by the arm, and I take the other one. We steer them into the garage. There are fence sections stacked against every wall and a bunch of blowtorches and welding masks lined up on one of the worktables.
Mikey looks around and says, “What the heck is this place?”
“Welding workshop, I guess.”
Just then, Officer Reitman elbows me hard in the chin. Not a direct hit or else my teeth would be clattering all over the floor right now. I stagger a little but keep my grip on him.
Mikey fires the gun into the floor next to the cop’s boot. His expression is cold and flat as sheet metal. “Next one goes in your head, you got it?”
The cop nods.
“Easy,” I hiss at Mikey. “Let’s just tie them up and get out of here.”
“Wait.” Mikey flicks the gun toward Reitman’s chest. “First . . . take your boots off. Your uniform. Everything.”
I shoot him a questioning look.
He leans toward me and whispers, “We need something to wear if we’re gonna ride around in a police car.”
“Oh, so now we’re going to impersonate cops? Great.”
“You can’t keep wearing that wet nightgown around the city,” Mikey says, meaning my ruined designer dress.
I let my shoulders drop. Which makes my dress straps fall. I hoist them back up, realizing he’s got a point.
The two cops strip down to their underwear. Mikey and I hurriedly dress. Both cops are way bigger than either of us, plus their outfits are meant to accommodate bulletproof vests. I’m swimming in Officer Reitman’s shirt, and even using the very last notch in his utility belt leaves his empty holster sitting so low on my hips, the whole thing could slide down any second and trip me like a lasso.
“No one is going to believe we’re really cops,” I say. “We’re gonna look like we’re dressing up for Halloween.”
Mikey snaps the cop’s hat in place, pulling the brim low, and loops his thumbs over his utility belt. “Then we’ll have to fill in the rest of the uniform with attitude.”
“You can wear all the attitude you want, but we leave the guns here,” I say, leveling a nonnegotiable stare at him.
“They weren’t going to listen to us unless they thought I meant business. I wouldn’t have really shot them.”
“Are you sure about that? You looked like you were capable of anything just then.”
He glances down at the cops and then back at me, as if he’s only just realized that guns can be dangerous. “I don’t . . . I don’t want to hurt anyone. Even a cop. I feel like . . . maybe that used to be who I am, but I don’t want to be that guy anymore.”
“Leave the guns here then. It’ll show these guys that we aren’t trying to hurt them or anybody else.”
He puts the safety on his gun and hands it to me, suddenly anxious to be rid of it. I pop the bullet cartridges out of both weapons and throw them into a bucket of water near one of the welding stations. The guns themselves find a new home on a high shelf, well out of the cops’ reach.
I take a quick inventory of my remaining accessories, all attached to the utility belt: pepper spray, handcuffs, a small silver whistle, and a mini flashlight. I’ve made do with less.
I make eye contact with Officer Reitman. His face is actually strangely calm—not afraid, not angry. Just puzzled.
“I’m really sorry about this,” I say.
I reposition his name tag over the bullet hole in his shirt, and we rush out the door.
Chapter 6
As we head for the cruiser, I pull the police hat on, trying to summon some kind of cop-like vibe that might make me look a little less ridiculous. Mikey gets to the car first and slides in on the passenger’s side. “Figured you can drive while I use the laptop.”
I start the car and pull out onto the street. The car lurches forward faster than I’m expecting. I slam on the brakes. Mikey has to brace himself against the dashboard.
“You do know how to drive, don’t you?”
The car jerks and comes to a hard stop as I test out the gas pedal and brakes, trying to get the feel of it. “Of course. I’m just not used to driving a car this big.”
He gives me a skeptical look and then pulls on his seat belt. Once I’m cruising along relatively steadily, he says, “Your boy. Thomas? What’s his last name?”
I tell him. He types it into the computer. We wait while the system processes the request. Thirty seconds pass. A minute. Finally, Mikey says, “No hits. You sure that’s his real name?”
A bolt of alarm goes through me. Is it possible Thomas lied to me about his name? Why would he do that?
No.
I don’t believe it.
I trust him.
“Try it again,” I say and spell the name out for him.
“That’s what I typed,” Mikey says. “I’m telling you, it’s not here.”
“So this felony we just committed was all for nothing then? There’s no other way to look him up?”
“Not unless you have the individual tag code.”
“The tag code?”
“Yeah. The serial number on his actual ankle monitor. Don’t suppose you know that?”
“NESE1798.”
“Okay, that’s a little weird.”
“He mentioned it earlier this evening.”
“You guys need to go see a movie once in a while and find something better to talk about.”
I can feel the fear and tension and chaos of the evening coursing through me. It’s like my adrenaline has turned to acid and it’s burning from the inside. The incomprehensible chatter on the police scanner isn’t helping me focus. I turn the volume all the way down, muting out the rapid-fire voices and confusing terms.
“Got it,” Mikey says.
“Where is he?”
“Upper East Side. Eighty-Eighth and Second Avenue.”
I exhale in relief.
Ahead, the traffic light changes to yellow and I slow down. Mikey shakes his head, leans forward, and flicks on the lights and sirens.
“No more traffic lights for us, sweetheart. Punch it.”
Fifteen minutes pass with Mikey giving me turn-by-turn directions. I’m wondering when the moment will be right for me to mention that I’ve actually only driven a car about five times, and none of those times were at night or at a speed above twenty-five miles an hour. Virgil thinks driving is an important life skill, but I don’t agree. When I was a kid, almost no one I knew had a car, and those who did seemed to spend their whole lives finding parking spots.
Thinking of my old life reminds me of those thoughts that spilled from my mind in the moments after I went into the river. I was half-remembering someone who’d been important to me, but who?
I don’t have time to dwell on it right now because I need every ounce of concentration to drive. Even though the lights and sirens are fraying my already white-hot nerves, I must admit they’re making it way easier to navigate city traffic. Everyone just moves out of the way so I don’t have to worry about running into other vehicles.
“We’re getting close. Two more blocks,” Mikey finally says, and I kill the lights and sirens so that we don’t tip off Thomas’s captors to our approach.
“Turn right up there,” Mikey says. “Sheesh, you drive like an old lady.”
“Where?”
“Right here, right here! You’re going past it!”
“Well, give me some more warning!”
I make a too-fast turn that throws him against his window. He looks down at the laptop screen. “Hold up! Stop!”
I slam on the brakes and everything in the car, mostly
a bunch of wrappers and empty coffee cups, slides forward.
“This is the place,” he says, pointing to the left side of the street.
“What is it?”
The whole building is cocooned in scaffolding, and there’s a construction sign in front. In the dark, that’s about as much as I can see.
“I think it’s a church.” As soon as he says it, I spot the very top of the steeple poking out from the metal webbing that surrounds it.
“What if they took the anklet off him and just chucked it in here?” I ask.
“If they’d done that, the database would show that the anklet had been tampered with, and the security company would put out an alert.”
“What security company?”
“The police don’t actually monitor these ankle transmitters—they contract out to a security company.”
“How do you know so much about these things?” A little tickle of worry about Mikey makes me wonder about who he really is—or was—and where he came from.
He points to the screen. “Because when I looked up the tag number in the police probation registry, that sent me to another site with all that information. What, you don’t believe me? See for yourself. The company sends the cops an alert if the ankle monitor has been cut or damaged because they assume that means the person is on the run.”
“Okay.” I tamp down on my suspicions and take a deep, hopeful breath.
“So it’s still on him. Which means he’s here.”
“Or else his body’s here. I suppose it’s also possible they cut his leg off and just left it here.”
“Thanks, that makes me feel better.”
That’s when I notice the white van parked at the end of the block.
I stiffen. “I don’t think they just left pieces of him here. I think they’re inside with him.” Mikey raises his eyebrows, confused. I point toward the van. “Does that look familiar?”
“Sure does.”
“Come on.”
Mikey and I get out of the cruiser and stare up at the dark church. Mikey says quietly, “So how do we get in?”
I scan the facade, looking for options. “Well, I think we should split up. Thomas could be anywhere in the building, and we can cover more ground separately. Plus, if one of us runs into trouble . . .”
Incognita Page 5