Find You First

by Linwood Barclay

  Your call is important to us.

  The longer you waited, the less you were convinced of that. But you were afraid to disconnect, fearing that any second they’d get to your call. You might be next in line. She kept thinking Miles had to be close to his destination. But then the limo would keep on going, and going.

  And then the red warning light had appeared in her gauge cluster, telling her she would soon be out of gas.

  She was driving down Park when reality began to kick in.

  Miles would never listen to her.

  Miles would never see her side of things.

  Miles would laugh in her face.

  This entire drive into the city had been a colossal waste of time.

  She hated it to have been for nothing.

  The rage began to simmer. The world seemed to be turning red, as though her eyes were misting over with blood.

  All of this was Miles’s fault. His greed, his ungrateful attitude, his disrespect for his brother.

  No, no, his disrespect for her.

  When the limo made that turn at Seventieth, when the headlights of Caroline’s SUV caught Miles’s profile in that back window, she floored it.

  She didn’t make a conscious decision to do it. Something just snapped.

  And a second later, there was a bone-jarring jolt, the explosion of an airbag, the thundering sound of metal hitting metal, and the shattering of glass.

  Screams.

  From inside her car and beyond.

  And then everything went black.

  Sixty-Five

  New York, NY

  Chloe forced herself to look away from the bloodied carpet and the red drops coming from Nicky’s closed hand. She didn’t want Rhys and Broderick following her gaze. She wasn’t sure Nicky was aware the glass shard in her palm had broken the skin.

  “Can we just go and sign the papers and be done with this?” Chloe asked. “I really want to go home.” And, continuing with the act, she asked, “Can you give us a hint how much money we’re going to get?”

  Rhys smiled. “I’ll tell you this. You’ll probably never be able to spend it all. We got the car parked around back so let’s—”

  “What the hell?” said Broderick.

  “What?” Rhys asked.

  “I got blood or something on my foot.”

  They all looked down at the splotches atop his right shoe. His shoes were black, so the redness of the splotches didn’t stand out. But the drops on the pale gray rug right next to his shoe certainly did.

  Nicky’s eyes went wide. She looked at her own hand and saw the blood.

  “Oh, shit,” she said.

  “How’d that happen?” Broderick asked.

  Everything from that moment on happened very quickly.

  “Probably like this,” Chloe said. Taking half a step back, holding her piece of glass firmly in her hand, she raised her arm and swung it sideways across Rhys’s face.

  The edge of the glass sliced diagonally across his cheek half an inch below his left eye. The cut was a good inch and a half long, and blood started spurting from it immediately. He screamed, “Fuck!”

  His left hand went instinctively to his cheek. Blood was already streaming down the side of his face and seeped through his fingers as he tried to stanch the flow.

  When Broderick turned to see what had happened to his partner, Nicky took her own piece of glass, already bloodied from the small cut in her palm, and drove it into the side of the man’s neck.

  “Bitch!” he screamed, turning, raising an arm defensively.

  Nicky kept a tight grip on the shard and managed to cut him again, on the side of his throat, just below the jawline. Broderick slapped his hand over the wound and started to make gagging noises.

  Even with one hand on his cheek, Rhys tried to grab Chloe with his free hand. He gripped her left arm, but he would have done better getting hold of her right, since it was the one wielding the glass.

  Chloe struck him again, aiming high.

  She didn’t slash this time. She used a pointed end, much as Nicky had with her first strike against Broderick. But Chloe did not get Rhys in the neck.

  Chloe got him in the left eye.

  The man’s scream was primal. He released his grip on Chloe and now had both hands on his face, one over his cheek and the other over his left eye.

  Broderick continued to make choking noises as blood flooded his windpipe.

  Chloe and Nicky, glancing briefly at each other, understood that this was it.

  Do or die.

  This was their only chance. But they still had to get out of the room. The men’s anguished screams were sure to bring someone to that door. Chloe, forcing herself to keep a clear head in the face of epic chaos, positioned herself by it and waited.

  She did not have to wait long.

  The door began to open. A woman yelled, “What’s going—”

  Roberta.

  When she was halfway into the room, Chloe rushed the door, arms out straight, palms flat and up. She hit the door with everything she had, catching Roberta’s left leg in midstride. Roberta screamed as the door crushed her upper thigh. She went down.

  Once Chloe had disabled Roberta—she dropped to the floor like the sack of shit she was, Chloe thought—she pulled the door open again, turned to Nicky, and shouted, “Come on!”

  Chloe held the door until Nicky reached it. They stepped over Roberta, who’d been clutching her wounded leg but made one futile attempt to grab Nicky’s ankle as she ran past.

  They sprinted down the hallway as far as the stairway landing, where it was just one flight down to the front door. As expected, Boris, the security guard, was stationed at the top of the stairs that led down. He’d heard all the commotion, especially Roberta’s cries of pain, and when he saw Chloe and Nicky running in his direction, he broadened his stance, getting ready to block their path.

  He even grinned. The very idea that these two girls thought they could get past him.

  But they had no intention of trying to get past him.

  When they reached the landing, they quickly pivoted away from the guard and headed for the ascending staircase.

  They were going up.

  Sixty-Six

  New York, NY

  After the explosive crash, the silence was deafening.

  The left side of the limo was seriously mangled. Several side airbags had deployed, but no one in the car had escaped unscathed.

  Some were worse off than others.

  The car itself had been knocked several feet to one side, and the SUV that had hit them had bounced back from the impact, its front end a crumpled mess, the hood buckled, the windshield spiderwebbed. A bloodied, deflated airbag was visible beyond the glass.

  There hadn’t been time for anyone in the car to scream. No one had seen it coming. They were talking, waiting to turn onto Seventieth, and then there was the incredible crash, the disorientation.

  And then, briefly, the quiet.

  It was Charise who spoke first. “Is everybody okay?”

  Clearly, she was not. Blood was streaming down the left side of her face. Her door had caved in about six inches, and when she looked down at her leg, covered in crystallized glass, she saw blood.

  Gold said nothing.

  Miles had heard Charise call out, but her voice had sounded like it was coming from underwater.

  Dorian said, “Miles, Miles, talk to me.”

  Miles looked down at himself and was surprised not to see blood. But his left shoulder was aching, his head hurt, and he wondered whether he’d suffered a concussion. He turned to check on the doctor, whose head was sitting close to sideways on his shoulder.

  “Gold,” Miles said, his voice echoing in his own head. “He’s not moving. I think he broke his neck.”

  Charise said, “My leg.”

  Dorian opened the front passenger door—easily done since the car had not been hit on that side—and staggered out to the street. She needed a moment to get her balance. She
opened the rear door. Gold rolled out with it, his body half in the vehicle, half out. Dorian reached around him to undo his seat belt.

  “Shit,” Dorian said. “I think he’s dead, Miles.”

  Dorian, summoning a strength she did not know she had, gently dragged Gold from the car and placed him carefully onto the pavement.

  There was a smell of gas.

  Miles’s door was too damaged to open, but as he went to slide across the seat toward the other side he found he couldn’t move.

  “Miles,” Dorian said, “come on.”

  He felt paralyzed. He didn’t think he’d been injured, but his body wasn’t getting the message he was sending it, which was: Get out!

  Dorian went headfirst into the car, got her arms under Miles’s shoulders, and started to drag him out.

  “Anybody else smelling that?” said Charise, trying without success to open her door.

  Dorian had Miles halfway out when he said, “I’m okay, I can move.”

  The messages were getting through. The moment he was on the street he looked down and saw gas flowing across the ground.

  “Charise, get out,” he said.

  “Door won’t open.”

  “Scooch over!” Dorian said.

  “My leg,” she said again. She tried to shift across the seat but was moving slowly.

  Dorian reached in and grabbed Charise’s right arm with both hands, pulling hard enough to almost take it out of the socket. When Charise reached the door, she had to put an arm around Dorian’s shoulder so that she could stand. Her left pant leg, below the knee, was torn and bloody.

  A crowd had formed. People were rushing about. Someone was on a cell phone, calling for help. Another was taking video, something they could sell to the local newscasts.

  Sirens.

  Miles, wobbling some because of some soreness in his left knee, got around the other side of Charise to help Dorian get her away from the car. He yelled at the rubberneckers, “Get back!”

  Charise said, “I never saw … came out of nowhere …”

  When they were about twenty feet away from the limo, Miles asked Dorian, “You got this?”

  “Yeah.”

  Miles let go of Charise and went to check on the car that had hit them.

  “I know that car,” he said under his breath.

  He limped along until he was at the driver’s door. The window had shattered, and he could see the woman behind the wheel.

  The airbag, having exploded and collapsed, looked like an enormous, melted marshmallow dribbled with strawberry syrup.

  “Caroline,” he said.

  She did not hear him. Her head sat at an odd angle on her neck. Her eyes were closed. Miles reached out tentatively, touched her below the jaw.

  “Caroline,” he said again.

  It wasn’t up to him to make the call, but he had little doubt she was dead. He stood and looked at her for another moment, believing it and not believing it, and then limped his way back to the limo.

  An ambulance was already pulling up to the scene. Seconds later, another one. There were more sirens in the distance.

  A paramedic ran over to Miles. She said, “Sir, are you hurt?”

  Miles looked down Seventieth Street. They’d almost made it.

  He said. “Look after the others.”

  As the limo started to erupt in flames, Miles hobbled his way to Jeremy Pritkin’s brownstone.

  Sixty-Seven

  New York, NY

  Chloe and Nicky successfully faked out the security guard. He was ready to block their way down the stairs, but as they hightailed it up the steps to the third floor, they were leaving him in their dust.

  They hoped a few seconds’ head start would be all they needed.

  They sprinted, side by side, to the closed doors that led down the wide hallway to Jeremy’s office. Nicky quickly entered the four-digit password into the keypad and pushed the door open. They flew past the erotic art on one wall and the windows on the other one. When they opened the second set of doors at the end of the hall, Nicky was relieved not to find the man of the house there. That would have been a complication.

  Nicky ran straight to Jeremy’s desk and slid open the drawer she had seen him take the gun from the night she’d been discovered in the Winnebago. “It was here,” she said breathlessly.

  She found the gun immediately, but set it aside on the desk.

  “Don’t we want that?” Chloe asked.

  “He doesn’t keep it loaded,” Nicky said.

  They could hear someone running down the hall.

  “Where is it?” Nicky said. She was tossing everything from the drawer onto the desk. Pens, small Moleskine notebooks, computer sticks, reading glasses—

  “Yes!” she said, taking out a key ring with a two-inch silver W attached to it. There was only one key on the ring.

  She came running around the desk and headed for the Winnebago’s side door. She swung it open for Chloe, who jumped in first. Nicky followed, and slammed the door shut behind her at the same moment the security guard came storming into the study.

  “Lock it!” Chloe screamed.

  Nicky reached for the deadbolt above the knob and turned it. The guard ran across the room and tried the outside handle. Finding it locked, he banged on the door with his fist.

  “Open up!” he demanded.

  “Fuck you!” Nicky said.

  Jeremy could be seen beyond the study doors, running down the corridor.

  “He’s coming,” Nicky said.

  Chloe got behind the wheel of the Winnebago and placed her palm on the center of the steering wheel and applied pressure.

  The vehicle’s horn began to blare.

  This had been the plan. It was simple enough. Grab the keys to the RV, get in and lock the door, then lay on that horn until help arrived. And as simple as the idea was, Nicky wasn’t sure she could pull it off alone. She might need Chloe to stall while she looked for the key. Plus, she’d had to admit to Chloe that she didn’t actually know where the horn would be. On the steering wheel, sure, but would it be a little button on the spokes? Would it be in the center?

  Chloe had thought the idea was worth trying.

  Someone would hear it. Someone had to hear it. If they couldn’t start a fire and set off the smoke alarms, this was the next best thing. As thick as the window glass was, the noise would carry down to the street. Even in a place like New York, where the strangest things could happen and people didn’t bat an eye, the sound of a horn blaring from within a brownstone had to turn some heads, didn’t it?

  Jeremy was at the door. He tried to open it and slapped it twice with the flat of his hand.

  “Nicky,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the noise of the horn, “stop this nonsense. Unlock the door.”

  “No,” she shouted.

  Jeremy looked at the security guard and pointed to his desk. “Key,” he snapped. “Top drawer.”

  But that was when Jeremy noticed several items from that drawer, including the gun, were on the desk. The guard peered into the drawer, then looked at Jeremy and shook his head.

  “This is not funny,” Jeremy shouted. “Nicky, Chloe, get out.”

  Chloe had been holding the horn down for a full minute now. She was starting to wonder whether this plan was so brilliant after all. If Jeremy could get that door open before any help arrived, well, there was no doubt about it. They’d be fucked.

  Jeremy was shouting something else to the guard. He picked up the gun, walked it across the room, and gave it to Jeremy. Then he ran back to the desk, opened a lower drawer, and started dropping into his hand what appeared to be bullets.

  “Oh, shit,” Nicky said.

  Jeremy shouted, “Nicky, I’ll shoot this door open if I have to!”

  “Fuck you!” she yelled.

  “You don’t leave me much choice!” There was a brief pause, and then: “Chloe! Chloe! It’s you I want to talk to!”

  Chloe let up pressure on the horn.
“What?”

  “You know, don’t you? You know what you are to me.”

  Chloe said nothing, but she felt her insides turning, as though a virus had entered her system.

  She’d been thinking this from the moment she’d left Jeremy’s office. That it had to be him. But she hadn’t wanted to verbalize the question. Didn’t want to ask him, didn’t want to ask Roberta.

  Didn’t want to know.

  “You knew when I put my hand on your head,” Jeremy said. “I think … I think that you’re the one. Of all of them, you’re the one with potential. You’re the only worthy one.”

  “Nicky,” Chloe whispered. “Give me the key.”

  “Why?” Nicky whispered back. “You don’t need it for the horn.”

  “Chloe,” Jeremy said, “if you’re willing to put this behind us, we can have a future together. We can. You’re my daugh—”

  “Don’t say it!” Chloe screamed.

  “But’s it’s the truth. Now that we’ve met, that I’ve touched you, it’s different.”

  “The key,” Chloe whispered to Nicky.

  Nicky tossed the key to Chloe, who snatched it out of the air. She inserted it into the ignition. Nicky had told her the RV had only been installed recently.

  Maybe, just maybe, there was still a trace of gas in it. Maybe in the fuel line, if not the tank. If she could start it, she could run it straight into the window. Send a shitload of glass raining down onto the sidewalk.

  That would get some attention.

  The guard dropped the bullets into Jeremy’s hand and he began to load them.

  “Chloe, one day, everything I have would be yours. I’d see to it.”

  All these rich dudes, wanting to give me their money.

  Chloe, through gritted teeth, whispered, “Burn in fuckin’ hell.”

  She turned the key.

  The engine rumbled to life.

  Jeremy screamed: “NO!”

  He ran around to the front of the Winnebago, standing between them and the floor-to-ceiling window. He pointed the gun at the windshield.

  Chloe put her foot on the brake, and shifted the Winnebago into Drive.

  She thought back to that trip she’d done with her mom. She’d driven a rig like this before. How hard could it be, once you ignored the part about there being no road, and that they were on the third floor of a building.