Ben’s torso was already through the opening, and his good hand was extended toward me. I released my grip on the seats and took hold of the offered appendage. With a smooth pull, he slid me out the opening and up to my feet. As I stepped forward I turned, but he was already tucked back inside in the process of extracting Felicity in the same manner.
“Is everyone okay here?” A voice met my ears, and I looked back around to find a uniformed city police officer staring back at me, detached concern in his eyes.
Over his shoulder, I could see two patrol cars parked in the near westbound lanes on the opposite side of the concrete barrier. The emergency lights on the vehicles were flickering madly, and passersby were already slowing to gawk.
“The driver is hurt,” I declared in answer. “She’s unconscious.”
The officer nodded as he looked over my shoulder at Ben and Felicity. I noticed that his arm moved almost instantly, and his hand rested on his firearm. I glanced back and saw that my friend’s jacket was pushed back, revealing the grip of his Beretta peeking out of its snug home in his shoulder holster.
“I’m a cop,” Ben told him, taking immediate notice of his posture. “Detective Storm. My shield’s on my belt.”
Ben moved his left hand slowly across and pushed back his jacket to reveal his badge. The uniformed officer relaxed noticeably and shifted his hand away from his weapon. As soon as the immediate tension faded, Felicity stepped forward and took hold of my arm.
“The driver of this vehicle is injured, and she is an FBI agent,” Ben added, shifting without hesitation into his professional mode.
The uniformed officer immediately keyed up his radio and began speaking. “Dispatch, Unit Twenty-seven,”
“Twenty-seven, go ahead,” came the static-plagued response.
“Dispatch, Unit Twenty-seven, ten seventy-two multiple vehicle accident with injuries on Interstate Forty-Four just west of Exit Two Eighty-eight. I have a federal officer down, over.”
The speaker hissed again. “Twenty-seven, repeat officer down, over.”
“Dispatch, Twenty-seven. Driver of involved vehicle is unconscious. Has been identified as FBI. One passenger identified as Detective Storm with homicide. He’s injured but conscious and lucid, over.”
“Twenty-seven, dispatch, rolling paramedics your location, over.”
“Ten-four, dispatch.”
I was rattled. It took a moment for me to realize that I was just standing there staring at the scene around me. I counted a total of five cars resting askew across the eastbound lanes of the highway. Mandalay’s vehicle sat at the center of a small cluster of three that comprised the crux of the accident. The other two were spread out like billiard balls, one canted against the center median, the other was farther back and pointing into the oncoming traffic.
To my left, another officer was igniting flares and tossing them to the pavement at various intervals to create a cordoned area. I glanced around and saw that the occupants of the other vehicles seemed to be in far better shape than us.
“Rowan?” Felicity’s voice called to me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, honey, yeah, I’m fine.”
“You’re staring off into space, then,” she pressed. “Did you hit your head?”
“No, really, I’m okay,” I said as I brushed her hair back from her face and gently touched her forehead. “How about you? You’ve got a pretty nasty cut over your eye. Looks like you’re the one who hit her head.”
“Aye, I’m okay. I’m worried about Constance though.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
I heard an electronic peal dance through the air, growing louder with each note and noticed Ben struggling to pull his cell phone from his belt with his left hand. By the time the device started into its next chorus, he had managed to snatch it up and thumb it on.
“Yeah, Storm here,” he said, then waited a moment. “Yeah, well excuse me for not hearin’ it. Uh-huh… Well that would be because somebody decided to hit us. Yeah… Uh-huh… Yeah, as in car wreck. Yeah, fuckin’ totaled. Yeah, I’m busted up and Mandalay’s hurt pretty bad but they’re okay. A little rattled but okay. Yeah… Uh-huh…”
I was just turning to watch the officer who was checking on Constance when I heard my friend bellow, “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me! Awww, Jeezus! There’s no way in hell I can get him there that fast!”
CHAPTER 32:
“Hell yes I know it’s only four miles,” Ben barked into the cell phone. “If the fuckin’ highway was open… Yeah, exactly. Uh-huh… There’s a pileup at Jefferson too. Yeah, we’re at Grand and Forty-Four, just west of the exit ramp. Yeah, can’t miss it, there’s a big friggin’ pile of cars and enough flares down to decorate my birthday cake… Yeah, we’ll be waitin’. Bye.”
“What’s going on?” I asked him as he made a few clumsy attempts to hook the phone back onto his belt then aborted the task and shoved it into the first available pocket he could find on his jacket.
“You were right, white man,” he confessed. “Porter went off the deep end.”
My stomach fell. I had almost forgotten why I was even out here in this mess to start with.
Felicity tensed against me and muttered, “Oh no…”
“He didn’t?” I asked, leaving the subject of the question a solid implication rather than a spoken reality.
“No. He hasn’t done anything yet that they know of, but he’s making the threats.” He spilled the details. “They thought they had him under control after they cut the line, but he escalated all of a sudden, and they haven’t been able to talk ‘im back down.”
Car horns were randomly sounding from the growing sea of impatient drivers, adding punctuation to the blend of noises issuing from running engines and passing vehicles. Police radios scratched out communications in bursts of intermingled words and semi-cryptic ten-codes to keep the officers updated on the ETA of the paramedics, fire/rescue, and countless other things.
Looking past Ben and back down the highway, I could see flickering red lights in the distance. Far off sirens warbled and provided a high-pitched background for the occasional burp of an air horn.
“I hate to say…” I started.
“…I told you so, yeah, I know.” He nodded his head vigorously as he finished the sentence for me. “Better just keep that observation to yourself, Row.”
“Yeah, I will,” I agreed. “So what are they doing?”
He continued his explanation. “They haven’t gone in because they still don’t know where he’s holed up in there. But he’s keepin’ tabs on them somehow ‘cause he knows what’s goin’ on every time they make a move, no matter which side of the building they go for. They’re thinkin’ he’s gotta have a police band radio or a portable scanner. Something like that.”
To my back, there was a droning hum that continued to grow louder by the second, throwing itself into the chaotic fray of sounds against an underscore of echoing thumps. It was the familiar sound of a helicopter. In the back of my mind, I wondered whose it was. It seemed too soon for an air ambulance, and I wasn’t sure the media would even bother responding to the pileup considering the drama that was playing out on the riverfront.
“Great,” I muttered with heavy sarcasm.
“Tell me about it.” He nodded as he raised his voice against the growing din. “Anyway, about fifteen minutes ago he started demanding that they bring you to the scene. Since you were already on the way, they had no problem consenting even though it was going to be on their terms.”
“Aye, that’s about when Constance got that call,” Felicity interjected.
“Yeah, exactly,” Ben said. “And right when we got nailed.”
“So can’t they just tell him that I’m still on the way?”
He shook his head. “They’ve played that out. It’s not workin’ anymore. He finally hit ‘em with an ultimatum. Says if he doesn’t see you in front of the building in ten minutes, he’s killing Sullivan, and that…” He paused and glanced
at his watch. “…Was about three minutes ago.”
A heavy rush of icy wind whipped around us, lifting a cloud of loose snow and causing me to squint as my eyes watered.
“Ten… Seven minutes?!” I yelped, forcing my voice upward to compete with the sound of the helicopter overhead. “There’s no way…”
“Can you fly?” Ben shouted.
“Ben!” I returned. “This is no time for joking around. You know damn well that whole thing about Witches is just a myth!”
“No! I mean do you have any problems with flying?” He bellowed over the roar as he took hold of my shoulder and urged me to turn. “Cause right there’s your fuckin’ broom!”
The machine-fabricated vortex bit into my face as I twisted around, forcing me to cock my head down and to the side. My ears were filled with an inescapable roar as I watched a Bell JetRanger hurriedly touching down on the pavement a little better than thirty yards away.
“We’ve got five minutes,” Ben yelled into my ear. “They’ll have us there in two!”
“What about Constance?!” I screamed back at him.
“The paramedics will be here any minute!” he returned.
“Aye,” Felicity’s voice rose in my other ear. “I’ll stay with Constance, then. You go!”
I snapped my head around to look at her. “Are you sure?!”
She nodded with a quick flourish, eyes glistening and her hair whipping about in fiery tangles. “Aye, but damn you, Rowan Linden Gant, you come back to me!”
I felt like I was stuck in the middle of the year’s biggest box-office thriller. The script was moving forward at a frenzied pace, and we had now arrived at the ultimate stage of climactic melodrama. The point where, just before he rides off to save the world, the hero bares his soul to the gorgeous actress who is playing the part of the love interest.
Had I not been in the middle of it, I think I would have been forced to laugh at just how contrived it all seemed. Instead, I threw my arms around her and squeezed, burying my face against her neck beneath a cloud of spiraling auburn. I didn’t know for sure what was ahead of me, but I knew that something still felt very wrong. I didn’t really want to make a promise that I might very well be about to break.
I suddenly found myself hating the Lord and Lady for putting me in this position, despising them for what had been heaped upon me so unceremoniously in the past two plus years. I knew that I was rushing headlong toward a choice that no one should ever be forced to make. Moreover, with knowing that an innocent life was inexorably linked to my actions, there was no escape for me.
I had no idea what I had done to bring about this amount of horror as a payback, but I was rapidly approaching a crisis of faith.
I choked back a lump in my throat and spoke directly into my wife’s ear, mimicking her penchant for using my full name whenever she wanted to drive her point home. “Remember that I love you more than anything, Felicity Caitlin O’Brien.”
“Come on, Rowan!” Ben was screaming at me. “We gotta go now!”
I barely managed to kiss her as my friend manhandled me away, pushing me toward the waiting helicopter. “I’ll bring him back, Felicity!” he screamed to her as we started to jog. “Promise!”
The frigid gale slapped us about, plastering any bit of loose clothing directly to skin and forcing its way through. We broke into a half run as we hunched over, our bodies almost involuntarily seeking escape from the driving force that beat down upon us as we entered the circular envelope of the spinning blades.
“What about your hand?!” I screamed at Ben as we ran.
“WHAT?!” came his response.
“YOUR HAND!” I shouted again, gesturing to my own then pointing to his. “WHAT ABOUT YOUR HAND?!”
He shook his head impatiently. “FUCK THAT!”
I canted to the left to avoid a chunk of vehicular debris then made a slight misstep on the slushy pavement and slipped to the side. The muscles in my thigh strained as I fought to stay upright, sending a sharp lance of pain through my groin and down my leg. Ben quickly clamped a large hand onto my upper arm and yanked me into balance, driving me back onto course toward the aircraft. I glanced up to get my bearings as I limped and saw the logo of a local television station emblazoned across the side of the helicopter.
“THIS IS A NEWS HELICOPTER!” I shouted.
“I KNOW!” Ben yelled. “THEY WERE ALREADY IN THE AIR! THEY’RE DOIN’ US A FAVOR FOR A CHANGE!”
We both slid to a halt against the metal and Plexiglas skin of the vehicle. My friend immediately levered the front door open and gave me a push as I started to climb aboard. Once I was seated, he slammed the door and wrenched the rear entryway open.
The pilot was pointing and gesturing, and I realized that he was instructing me with hand signals to fasten my seat belt. I twisted wildly about and found the webbed nylon strap on either side of the seat then fumbled to marry the two ends together.
I felt the rear door, as much as heard it, when it slammed shut behind me. I shot a quick glance over my shoulder and saw Ben planting himself into a seat and frantically trying to secure his own harness one-handed. Another figure slipped into view and began helping him.
I felt someone poking me in the shoulder and looked over to see the pilot foisting a set of headphones upon me. I took them and pulled the semicircle over my head, only to have the earmuff-like shells slip down onto my jaw line. I reached up, slid the springy, crescent-shaped headband downward to tighten them and then readjusted the padded cups over my ears. An armature ending in a microphone jutted out from one side to hang in front of my face.
The sound of the engine was muffled but still present as a thick hiss of background static filled my ears. I looked forward through the Plexiglas bubble and saw Felicity in the distance, standing exactly where I had left her. She had her arms wrapped about herself, hugging her coat tightly to her body. Her hair continued to whip about on the man-made wind, slapping across her face and back over her shoulder, but her gaze never wavered as she stared directly at me.
“Welcome aboard SkyCam Two, Mister Gant,” the pilot’s voice crackled in my ears.
“Yeah,” I answered him absently, still gazing out at my wife. “Thanks.”
“Are we okay back there?” his voice popped through again.
A new voice answered; feminine and familiar. “All good, let’s go.”
Even through the barrier of the headset, I heard the high whistle of the spinning rotor as the pilot adjusted the collective to increase the pitch of the blades. My stomach jumped as the aircraft lifted easily from the ground and floated a few inches above the pavement with a slight rocking motion. The scream of the rotors shot through several octaves as we continued to rise on the cushion of air. I watched Felicity as she turned her face slowly upward, following the progress of the aircraft.
The red emergency lights of a life support vehicle bathed the area below us as paramedics arrived on the scene. With a smooth tilt, the helicopter spun in a quick semi-circle, pivoting on its axis as it nosed forward and shot into the night sky.
“We have about two minutes before we arrive on the scene Mister Gant.” The female voice filtered into my ears over the background static.
It was the next sentence out of her mouth that told me why she sounded so familiar. “Do you think you could answer a few questions for our viewers?”
CHAPTER 33:
Brandee Street waited patiently for me to respond. At least, I assumed she was being patient. I couldn’t actually see her face, and the only thing I could hear was an even hiss of the background static. Getting my story had long ago become a personal mission to her. It had started right from the first time I had ever helped the police with a murder investigation, in fact.
Ever since, and including our first encounter, I’d given her nothing more than a handful of “no comments.”
“I really don’t think that this is the right time for an interview, Miz Street,” I replied.
I turned my head and loo
ked out through the window at the night, trying to ignore her. Below, the building lights tossed harsh luminance into the blue-black shadows of the snowy landscape. A soft halo of light seemed to rise above the concrete and steel structures, forming a fuzzy dome of cyan and white, streaked here and there with pale yellow. From this height, it made Saint Louis appear almost as a garish pockmark on the land.
We were cruising in what felt like a straight line, floating over the inner crescent of midtown, thirty seconds away from downtown proper. Up here we were autonomous, shrouded by a sea of darkness. There was still a heavy cloud blanket even though the snow had tapered off to nothing more than flurries hours ago. Above us, there were no stars and no moon, only the dark grey underbelly of the low stratum, illuminated by the reflected light of the city beneath.
The gauges on the instrument panels were rimmed yellow-orange, bringing a tepid illumination to the inside of the helicopter. Out the window to my right, I could see the lights of the vehicular traffic on Interstates Forty-Four and Fifty-Five-red taillights snaking along toward the east and south, yellow-white headlamps streaking north and west.
“Just a couple of questions, Mister Gant.” She tried again.
“Really, Miz Street…” I began.
“Look, Mister Gant, my day started at three a.m. filling in as co-anchor. I haven’t even been home yet.”
“Join the club.”
“What I’m trying to say is that I wouldn’t be right here, right now, if I didn’t think this story was important. Can’t you just answer a few questions?”
“Lay off, Brandee.” I heard Ben’s voice in the headset.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Storm.” Her voice switched from an appeal to a seething rebuff.
“Maybe not, but I’m telling ya’ to back off,” he snarled. “Just friggin’ do something good for a change without expectin’ a payback!”
“Damn you, Storm, I…”
“HEY!” I snapped into the microphone. “Both of you calm down.”
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