Pieces of Her

by Karin Slaughter

  Jane had her arms around him before his feet hit the floor.

  “Fuckers!” Paula started shooting at the FBI agents. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was open. She was yelling like a madwoman because of course she was mad. They were all deranged, and if they died here today that was exactly what they deserved.

  “Take my hand!” Andrew reached out to Nick, yanking him across the last few feet. They both fell back onto the floor.

  Jane stood at the window. She looked across at the shed. The stairs had been found. The snipers had stopped firing. There was an agent, an older man cut from Danberry and Barlow’s same cloth, standing directly across from her.

  He raised his gun and pointed it at Jane’s chest.

  “Idiot!” Paula pulled Jane down into a crouch just as the gun fired. She reached up with both hands to push the ladder off the edge of the windowsill.

  They heard the metal bang against the house, then clatter into the debris.

  “This way.” Andrew took the lead, crouching as he ran across the room. They were down the stairs, on the main floor, when they heard cars pull up in the street outside, which was fine, because leaving by the front door had never been the plan.

  Andrew felt along the wall with his fingers. He found another secret button, accessed another secret panel, and revealed the steps to the basement.

  This was why Nick had chosen the two-story shed after months of searching. He’d told the group that they needed a safe place to keep Alexandra Maplecroft, but they also needed a safe route of escape. There were very few basements in the Mission District, at least as far as the city knew. The water table was too high, the sand too swampy. The shallow basement under the Victorian was one of the city’s many remnants from the original Armory. Soldiers had hidden in the dungeons when the Mission was under siege. Nick knew about the passages from his homeless days. There was a tunnel connecting the house to a warehouse one street over.

  Nick clicked the panel closed behind them. Jane felt a chill as the temperature dropped. At the bottom of the stairs, Andrew was trying to push away the bookcase that covered the tunnel entrance.

  Nick had to help him. The bookcase slid across the concrete. Jane saw scrapes across the floor and prayed like hell the FBI would not see them until it was too late.

  Paula slapped a flashlight into Jane’s hand and pushed her into the tunnel. Nick helped Andrew tug on the rope that pulled the bookcase back into its spot. Quarter was supposed to pull the rope. He was the carpenter of the group, the one who had turned all of Nick’s sketches into actual working designs.

  And now he was dead.

  Jane switched on the flashlight before the bookcase sent them into complete darkness. Her job was to lead them through the tunnel. Nick had made her run through dozens of times, sometimes with a working flashlight, sometimes without. Jane had not been down here in three months, but she still remembered all the irregular rocks that could snag against a shoe or cause a bone-breaking fall.

  Like the one Alexandra Maplecroft had experienced.

  “Stop dawdling,” Paula hissed, shoving Jane hard in the back. “Move.”

  Jane tripped over a stone she knew was there. None of the practice runs mattered. Adrenaline could not be faked. The deeper they went underground, the more claustrophobic she felt. The dome of light was too narrow. The darkness was overpowering. She felt a scream bubbling into her throat. Water from Mission Creek seeped in from every crevice, splashed up under their shoes. The tunnel was forty-eight feet long. Jane put her hand on the wall to steady herself. Her heart was pushing into her throat. She felt the need to vomit again but dared not stop. Now that she was out of Nick’s embrace, away from his calming influence, the same question kept darting around inside of her head—

  What the hell were they doing?

  “Move it.” Paula pushed Jane again. “Hurry.”

  Jane picked up the pace. She reached out in front of her, because she knew that they had to be close. Finally, the flashlight picked out the wooden back of the second bookcase. Jane didn’t ask for help. She made an opening that was wide enough for them to squeeze through.

  They all blinked in the sudden light. There were windows high in the basement walls. Jane could see feet shuffling past. She ran up the stairs, some sort of internal autopilot clicking on. She took a right because she had trained to take a right. Thirty yards later, she took a left because she had trained to take a left. She pushed open a door, climbed through a break in the wall, and found the van parked in a cavernous bay that smelled of black pepper from the building’s previous life as a spice storage facility.

  Paula ran ahead of Jane, because the first person to reach the van was the person who got to drive. Jane was second, so she pulled back the side door. Nick was already heading toward the bay door. There was a combination lock.

  8-4-19.

  They all knew the combination.

  Andrew threw the metal box into the van. He tried to get in, but he started to fall backward. Jane grabbed at his arm, desperate to get him inside. Nick rolled up the bay door. He sprinted back to the van. Jane closed the sliding door behind him.

  Paula was already driving out of the warehouse. She had tied up her hair and stuck a brown hat on her head. A matching brown jacket covered the top of her shift dress. The sunlight razored through the windshield. Jane squeezed her eyes shut. Tears slid down the side of her face. She was on her back, lying between Nick and Andrew. They were on a futon mattress, but every bump and pothole in the road reverberated into her bones. She craned her neck, trying to see out the window. They were on Mission within seconds, then turning deeper into the city, when they heard the sirens whizzing past.

  “Keep cool,” Nick whispered. He was holding Jane’s hand. Jane was holding Andrew’s. She could not remember when this had happened, but she was so grateful to be safely between them, to be alive, that she could not stop weeping.

  They all lay there on their backs, clinging to each other, until Paula told them they had reached the 101.

  “Chicago is thirty hours away.” Paula had to shout to be heard over the road noise that echoed like a dentist’s drill inside the van. “We’ll stop in Idaho Falls to let them know we’re on the way to the safe house.”

  Safe house.

  A farm just outside of Chicago with a red barn and cows and horses and what did it matter because they were never going to be safe again?

  Paula said, “We’ll change drivers in Sacramento after we drop Nick at the airport. We’ll follow the speed limit. We’ll obey all traffic laws. We’ll make sure to not draw attention to ourselves.” She was mimicking Nick’s instructions. They were all mimicking Nick’s instructions because he claimed to always know what he was doing, even when everything was out of control.

  This was madness. It was absolute madness.

  “Je-sus Christ, that was close.” Nick sat up, stretching his arms into the air. He gave Jane one of his rakish grins. He had that internal switch, too—the one that Laura Juneau had when she murdered Martin, then herself. Jane could see it so clearly now. For Nick, everything that had happened in the shed was behind him.

  Jane could not look at him. She studied Andrew, still lying beside her. His face was ashen. Streaks of blood crisscrossed his cheeks. Jane could not begin to know the source. When she thought of the shed, she could only see death and carnage and bullets ricocheting around like mosquitos.

  Andrew coughed into the crook of his arm. Jane reached out to touch his face. His skin had the texture of cotton candy.

  Nick said, “Glad you practiced now, aren’t you, troops?” Like Andrew, his face was splattered with blood. His hair had fallen into his left eye. He had that familiar look of exhilaration, as if everything was perfect. “Imagine going over that ladder for the first time without having your training to—”

  Jane sat up. She should have gone to Nick, but she leaned her back against the hump over the tire. Could she call Jasper? Could she find a telephone, beg him for help, and wait for
her big brother to swoop in and save them all? How would she tell him that she had been responsible for helping to kill their father? How could she look him in the eye and say that everything they had done until this point was not the result of some form of collective derangement?

  A cult.

  “Jinx?” Nick asked.

  She shook her head, but not at Nick. Even Jasper could not save her now. And how would she reward him if he tried, by being part of a plot to send him to prison for healthcare fraud?

  Nick crawled on his knees to the locked box that Quarter had bolted to the floor. He dialed in the combination on the lock—

  6-12-32.

  They all knew the combination.

  Jane watched him push up the lid. He removed a blanket, a Thermos filled with water. All part of the escape plan. There were Slim Jims, a small cooler, various emergency supplies and, secreted beneath a false bottom, $250,000 in cash.

  Nick poured some water into the cup of the Thermos. He found the handkerchief in his back pocket and cleaned his face, then leaned over and wiped at Andrew’s cheeks until they turned ruddy.

  Jane watched her lover clean blood from her brother’s face.

  Maplecroft’s? Quarter’s?

  She said, “We don’t even know his real name.”

  They both looked at her.

  “Quarter,” she said. “We don’t know his name, where he lives, who his parents are, and he’s dead. We watched him die, and we don’t even know who to tell.”

  Nick said, “His name was Leonard Brandt. No children. Never married. He lived alone at 1239 Van Duff Street. He worked as a carpenter over in Marin. Of course I know who he is, Jinx. I know everyone who is involved in this because I am responsible for their lives. Because I will do whatever it takes to try to protect all of you.”

  Jane couldn’t tell whether or not he was lying. His features were blurred by the tears streaming from her eyes.

  Nick put the cup back on the Thermos, telling him, “You don’t look so good, old pal.”

  Andrew tried to muffle a cough. “I don’t feel so good.”

  Nick grabbed Andrew’s shoulders. Andrew grabbed Nick’s arms. They could’ve been in a football scrimmage.

  “Listen,” Nick said. “We’ve had a hard time, but we’re back on track. You’ll rest at the safe house, you and Jane. I’ll be back from New York as soon as I can, and we’ll watch the world fall down together. Yes?”

  Andrew nodded. “Yes.”

  Jesus.

  Nick patted Andrew’s cheek. He slid across the van toward Jane, because it was her turn for the rousing pep talk that pulled her back on side.

  “Darling.” His arm looped around her waist. His lips brushed her ear. “It’s okay, my love. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Jane’s tears came faster. “We could’ve died. All of us could’ve—”

  “Poor lamb.” Nick pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Can’t you believe me when I tell you that we’re all going to be okay?”

  Jane’s mouth opened. She tried to pull breath into her shaking lungs. She wanted so desperately to believe him. She told herself the only things that mattered right now in this moment: Nick was safe. Andrew was safe. The baby was safe. The ladder had saved them. The tunnel had saved them. The van had saved them.

  Nick had saved them.

  He’d made Jane keep up her training while she was in Berlin. So far away from everything, Jane had thought it was silly to go through the movements every morning, her hands whipping past each other, fists boxing out, as if she expected to go to war. The thing that had driven her most back in San Francisco was the pleasure of kicking Paula’s ass every time they sparred. With Paula gone, and in truth with Nick gone, Jane had found herself slipping—away from her resolve, away from the plan, away from Nick.

  What have you been up to, my darling? he would ask across the scratchy, international telephone line.

  Nothing, she would lie. I miss you too much to do more than sulk and mark the days off the calendar.

  Jane did miss him, but only a certain part of him. The part that was charming. That was loving. That was pleased with her. That didn’t willfully, almost hedonistically, push everything to the breaking point.

  What Jane had not realized until she was safely tucked away in Berlin was that for as long as she had been conscious of being alive, she had always had a ball of fear that slept inside of her stomach. For years, she had told herself that being neurotic was the bane of a solo artist’s success, but in truth, the thing that kept her walking carefully, self-censoring her words, conforming her emotions, was the heavy presence of the two men in her life. Sometimes Martin would wake her fear. Sometimes Nick. With their words. With their threats. With their hands. And sometimes, occasionally, with their fists.

  In Berlin, for the first time in her memory, Jane had experienced what it was to live a life without fear.

  She went to clubs. She danced with lanky, stoned German guys with tattoos on their hands. She attended concerts and art openings and underground political meetings. She sat in cafés arguing about Camus and smoking Gauloises and discussing the tragedy of the human condition. At a distance, Jane would sometimes catch a glimpse of what her life was supposed to be like. She was a world-class performer. She had worked for two decades to get to this place, this exalted position, and yet—

  She had never been a child. She had never been a teenager. She had never been a young woman in her twenties. She had never really been single. She had belonged to her father, then Pechenikov and then Nick.

  In Berlin, she had belonged to no one.

  “Hey.” Nick snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Come back to us, my darling.”

  Jane realized that they’d all been having a conversation without her.

  Nick said, “We were talking about when to release Jasper’s files. After Chicago? After New York?”

  Jane shook her head. “We can’t,” she told Nick. “Please. Enough people have been hurt.”

  “Jane,” Andrew said. “We’re not doing this on a whim. People have been hurt, have died, over this. We can’t back out because we’ve lost our nerve. Not when they took a bullet for us.”

  “Literally,” Nick said, as if Jane needed to be reminded. “Two people. Two bullets. Laura and Quarter really believed in what we’re doing. How can we let them down now?”

  “I can’t,” she told them both. There was nothing more to add. She just couldn’t anymore.

  “You’re exhausted, my love.” Nick tightened his arm around Jane’s waist, but he didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear: that they were going to stop now, that Jasper’s files would be destroyed, that they would find their way to Switzerland and try to atone for the damage they had done.

  He said, “We should take turns sleeping.” Then he raised his voice so that Paula could hear. “I’ll fly to New York from Chicago. It’s too hot for me to go out of Sacramento. Paula, you’ll stay with your team and make sure they’re set for Chicago. We’ll coordinate times when we get to the safe house.”

  Jane waited for Paula to chime in, but she was uncharacteristically silent.

  “Jinx?” Andrew asked. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, but he could tell that she was lying. “I’m okay,” she repeated, unable to keep her voice from wavering.

  Nick told Andrew, “Go sit with Penny. Keep her awake. Jane and I will sleep, then we’ll take the next shift.”

  Jane wanted to tell him no, that Andrew should go first, but she hadn’t the energy and besides, Andrew was already struggling to his knees.

  She watched her brother crawl to the front of the van. He sat beside Paula. Jane heard a groan come out of his mouth as he reached toward the radio. The news station was at a low murmur. They should’ve listened to it, but Andrew turned the knob until he found an oldies station.

  Jane turned to Nick. “He needs a doctor.”

  “We’ve got bigger problems than that.”

  Jane knew ins
tantly the problem he was talking about—not that things had gone sideways, but that Nick knew she was doubting him.

  He said, “I told you what happened to Maplecroft was an accident.” His voice was so low that only Jane could hear him. “I went crazy when I saw what she’d done to your beautiful face.”

  Jane touched her nose. The pain was instantaneous. So much had happened since that awful moment that she had forgotten about Maplecroft punching her.

  Nick said, “I know I should’ve just grabbed her, or—something else. I don’t know what happened to me, darling. I just felt so angry. But I wasn’t out of control. Not completely. I promised you that I would never let that happen again.”

  Again.

  Jane tried not to think about the baby growing inside of her.

  “Darling,” Nick said. “Tell me it’s okay. We’re okay. Tell me, please.”

  Jane reluctantly nodded. She lacked the energy to argue otherwise.

  “My love.”

  He kissed her on the mouth with a surprising passion. She found herself unable to summon any desire as their tongues touched. Still, she wrapped her arms around him because she desperately needed to feel normal. They hadn’t made love in Oslo, even after three months of separation. They’d both been too anxious, then the shooting had happened and they were terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing, then they were back in San Francisco and he had left her alone until this morning. Jane hadn’t wanted him then, either, but she remembered keenly craving the after. To be held in his arms. To press her ear to his chest and listen to the steady, content beat of his heart. To tell him about the baby. To see the happiness in his expression.

  He hadn’t been happy the first time.

  “Come on, love.” Nick gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  Jane let him pull her down to the futon mattress. His mouth went to her ear again, but only to brush his lips against her skin. He wrapped his body around hers. Legs intertwined, arms holding her close. He made a pillow for her head out of the crook of his elbow. Instead of feeling the usual sense of peace, Jane felt like she was trapped in place by an octopus.