by CJ Lyons
“Go, and remember,” he commanded, his voice stronger and more powerful than I’d ever heard it before. He shoved me away from him and onto the path of shimmering light. “Love, Angela. Fear is useless. Love is everything.”
His beauty shattered into a blinding cascade of music, color, perfume as he poured all that he was into holding back the void. He became life even as he faced death.
A wind, fierce yet gentle, caught me in its grip, carrying me away from him. Jacob’s light, painful to look at, it was so heart-achingly pure, flared, then died.
I was falling, plummeting out of control, blackness surrounding me, grabbing for me as I twisted and careened through the void. My hand hit cold metal.
I opened my eyes as a cacophony of alarms blared, an agony of defeat. I was awake, back in my body. How long? I wondered, blinking to clear my vision, my eyes scratchy and dry from not blinking. I touched my face, felt tears dried to salt.
It had felt as if I’d spent a lifetime in Jacob’s arms. But the clock said it had been only thirty-eight minutes.
A nurse ran in and silenced the alarms as she assessed Jacob. “I know he’s DNR, but—” Her question hung in the air.
I pushed to my feet, still wobbly. I hung on to the bed rail, unable to wrench my gaze away from Jacob’s face. He looked peaceful. More than peaceful. Radiant.
He’d chosen death in order to give me a chance at life. So typical of him, a grand gesture, impossible for me to reciprocate.
“No,” I told the nurse, my words shaky yet certain. “He’s gone.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
I couldn’t bear to watch the routine as they prepared Jacob’s corpse. He was gone; the flesh was truly empty. I asked the nurse to call his rabbi, more for Jacob’s father than for him, and I left the ICU.
Devon didn’t answer his phone, so I texted him, telling him the men he was after might have the key to the fatal insomnia outbreak. If he was down in the tunnels, there was no telling if he’d get the text any time soon.
Taking the stairs like I always did, I came out in the back hall of the ER, near the ambulance bay. It was empty of people but crowded with abandoned wheelchairs and gurneys. The narrow, tiled-walled hallway amplified the noise from the ER, so I wove my way through the gauntlet and stepped outside into the ambulance bay. As soon as the doors closed behind me, a gentle silence engulfed me. Past the overhang, the snow was falling, and yet the stars were visible, giving the street beyond a strange, otherworldly glow.
I tried Devon again. Still no answer. I stood, uncertain. I had no idea where Devon was. Or Ryder. Hoping I wasn’t disturbing anything, I called Ryder. It went straight to voice mail. Maybe he was on another call? I wasn’t sure what message to leave, so I settled for “Could you call me when you get this? Or text me and I’ll meet you at your place.”
There was no way I could explain about touching Jacob’s mind and the men who had used him to send me a message, not over the phone. And until I heard from Devon, I had no clue where to send Ryder to help him catch the man in black and his partners. All I knew was that they’d had nothing to do with Tymara’s death and that I was too exhausted to understand what they wanted from me.
As I turned to go back inside—the ER waiting room would be as safe a place to wait as anywhere—a sudden realization hit me. My apartment might have been where I lived, but it wasn’t home. And the bar below it, brimming over with music and laughter, that had always been Jacob’s domain, not mine. It was the music and the man I played with that had made me feel like I belonged there. Without Jacob, what was left?
I pivoted to look in the other direction, past the ER drive toward the river. The ER’s blood-red sign cast a shadow over the snow. Once, I would have called the ER and the Advocacy Center my home. It was the place I lived for, where I felt in control, had some sense of power. More than that. Pride.
No more. But there was one place where I’d felt content, whole, even…at peace.
Ryder’s house. I glanced around. No one watching, no one following me. Maybe I could take a cab to Ryder’s? No one would ever look for me there.
Childish glee crept over me at the thought of surprising him. A Christmas celebration—the first I’d looked forward to in decades, despite Jacob’s death and everything else. No. Not despite it. Because of it.
As I zipped my parka against the wind slicing off the river, my hand brushed Ryder’s pendant, resting between my breasts. A part of him, he’d said. Such a small thing to ask when all he’d really wanted was to give me so much more.
Was I selfish enough to accept his gift? Could I dare to give myself to him in return?
Yesterday I would have made excuses, said no, told myself it wasn’t fair to either of us. Tonight, after being with Jacob, I felt a craving for intimacy. I wanted to open my heart, no matter the risk. I didn’t know how much time I’d have. But I wanted Ryder to be the man who spent it with me.
A schoolgirl giggle escaped me as I spun around on the concrete drive, snow swirling around my feet. Maybe I was dying. No maybe about it. But weren’t we all?
Why the hell had I waited so long to start living?
Newly energized, I turned, deciding I should head back inside and wait for Ryder. He’d want me to stay here where I’d be safe.
“Dr. Rossi!” A man called my name. I spun around to see Tommaso, Louise’s neurofellow, sprinting toward me down the drive, clutching his lab coat around him. “Wait, Dr. Rossi!”
He grabbed my arm, leaning against me as if out of breath. “I’m so glad I caught you.”
Over his shoulder I saw a large black SUV approach and slow. I didn’t pay it much attention. We were just down from the exit from the hospital’s parking garage. But something about the way the driver intentionally steered close to the curb disturbed me.
“Where did you come from?” I asked Tommaso, trying to break free of his grasp, one hand slipping into my pocket for my phone. “Why were you outside?”
Tommaso jabbed a pistol into my spine with his free hand. “Get in,” he said, his tone low and serious. He took my phone and nudged me forward toward the SUV that had come to a stop. “Now.”
The passenger-window of the SUV slid down, and the driver leaned toward us, grinning. It was the man in black. “Did you get the answers you were looking for, Dr. Rossi?”
* * *
The closest tunnel exit to the abandoned warehouse that the Almanac Care people had hijacked was across the street, along the wharf.
Devon skirted the shadows of the other empty buildings—warehouses, storage facilities, light industrial, all now condemned. The warehouse he wanted was three-stories, with a worn-brick facade and faded letters painted between tall windows boarded up with graffiti-covered plywood. There were no streetlights down here and no lights from any of the buildings to allow him to read the ghostly white letters on red brick.
But the building’s name wasn’t what he was interested in. It was the lack of light. He glanced at his phone and the floor plans Flynn had sent, assessing his options. A loading dock around the back, a standpipe traveling from roof to basement—that would have been Flynn’s choice, he was sure. She fancied herself a cat burglar. And a side door leading to the basement utilities’ service area.
He didn’t like the look of the front. It was too casually abandoned, the lack of light leaking when he knew damn well there were men inside. Hell, a whole medical lab. Door number three it was.
The side door was easy to pick. Maybe too easy? There was no obvious sign of surveillance measures, but button cameras were easily concealed. Nothing he could do about it now. He sidled inside the building and listened. The basement housed what appeared to be a new HVAC system, the showroom label glowing in the light of his cell phone. The air handler roared with immense power.
Good cover. But that worked both ways. He crept through the space to the stairs. At the top was a solid metal door. Unlocked. He did not like that. Not at all. He debated calling in some of his former Royales.
But they were just kids, no training. They’d be cannon fodder for men like the Brotherhood. Wait for Flynn? No, he couldn’t risk leaving Rossi without protection. Okay, then. Go it alone. He’d done it before, even against the Russians. These fancy-ass Brothers were no threat compared to them. He swapped his phone for his gun before opening the door.
Beyond it was a well-lit, wide-open space punctuated by several standard office cubicles and large concrete pillars. In the corner, a flight of metal stairs went up. Beside them was an area with bunk beds, beside that a glass-walled office on the front wall of the building. But what captured his attention most were the freestanding, glass-walled rooms filled with laboratory equipment. They had airlock-like doors with hazmat space suits hanging outside each unit. Shades of The Andromeda Strain.
Along the wall nearest to him was a stainless-steel countertop filled with notebooks and three laptops below a wall lined with whiteboards. Interesting. He used his phone to grab video of everything in sight. Then he noticed a row of bottles lined up on a shelf on the far side. A bunch of drugs he didn’t recognize, PXA—that one he knew, all too well—and something with hand-printed labels: PXA-REV.
REV? For reversal? Could this be the cure the man in black had promised Angela?
He snagged a bottle, hoping she could analyze it.
“Like what you see?” a man asked from behind Devon. But that’s not what made him freeze and raise his hands in surrender.
No, it was the man who emerged from behind one of the cubicles in front of him holding a shotgun aimed right at Devon’s belly.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Ryder’s first call was to Rossi, to warn her about Gena Kravitz. No answer. Of course not. She and Price were in the ICU visiting Jacob. He left a voice mail and sent a text. His second was to the Major Case detective, Holden, letting him know about the potential threat to Rossi’s family and the evidence at Littleton’s apartment.
“No sign of Kravitz,” he finished as he ran down the steps to his car. “I’m headed to the bar Rossi’s family owns now.”
“We’ll meet you there. Let me get some backup rolling as well as a CSU team over to Littleton’s,” Holden replied. “Damn, nights like this, wish we had as many spare bodies as all those cop shows on TV. They never have to be in three places at once.”
“Yeah, but we get all the glamour and glory, right?” Ryder hung up, tried Rossi again—still no answer—and headed over to Jimmy’s Place. The bar wasn’t far, only eight blocks, but the snow was falling more heavily and the plows hadn’t been out yet—of course not, snowplow drivers got triple time for holidays, and at the end of the year like this, the city’s budget was already strained to breaking.
As he grew closer to the bar, he realized there was no hope of parking within a two-block radius. Every spot illegal, legal, or not even a real parking space was filled. When he drove past the building, he saw why—it was packed full, even more so than on football Sundays or nights when Rossi’s band played. The holiday wreath had been replaced with one with a black ribbon, and a banner by the door announced a tribute to Jacob Voorsanger: One of Our Own and Beloved.
He steered around the block and double-parked the Taurus in front of a loading dock. Then he cut through the alley to get to the bar. If Kravitz wanted revenge on Rossi for her brother’s death, tonight was the night. Talk about your target-rich environment. It could be a spectacle that would be talked about for decades. Women, children, entire families at risk.
He sped up to a jog. How would she do it? Not poison again, too unpredictable with a crowd this size. Pull an active-shooter scenario? No. Jacob had plenty of friends who were cops, which meant there would definitely be armed men and women inside the bar, ready to foil her plan.
He reached the back of the bar. The rear door was blocked by the dumpster. Instincts on alert, he pulled his weapon as he searched the darkness for any sign of Kravitz. She wasn’t lurking back here. He pushed his weight against the dumpster. Could barely shift it more than a few inches, it was so full. But enough to see the thick chain and padlock on the rear exit.
Fire. Of course. Her comfort zone.
He grabbed his phone as he sprinted down the alley and around to the front of the bar. “Dispatch, this is Detective Matthew Ryder. I’m at Jimmy’s Place on Broad and need backup as well as EMS and fire. I have a suspected arson in progress, and the place is jam-packed with civilians.”
“I’ll clear a channel,” she replied.
“Coordinate with Detective Holden. The suspected arsonist is also the suspect in his homicide case, Gena Kravitz. Put out a general alert to be on the lookout for her. Send that to off-duty police as well. I think there are officers present in the establishment at risk. I’m going in to evacuate the building.”
“Copy that.”
He hung up the phone to free his hands. A few people congregated on the sidewalk in front of the bar, glasses of beer in their hands.
“Gas leak. You all need to clear out,” he told them, showing them his shield. “Any of you see a tall blonde, tons of curly blond hair?”
They shook their heads, too drunk to comment on the illogic of his requests, and meandered away. He glanced around. The front door stood open, music and laughter pouring out. No signs of any incendiary devices on the outside. Kravitz must be inside, he decided, leaving this exit for her escape. Good, that meant he still had time.
He shoved his way in, sucking in his breath to edge through the throng. The band was playing, Jacob’s violin perched on an empty barstool in the place of honor at center stage, looking forlorn.
Damn, he’d never find Kravitz in this crowd. He pushed through to the bar where Jimmy and his sons were racing to keep up with demand.
“Jimmy!” he shouted.
The barkeep waved a hand in the universal Wait, I’m busy gesture.
Ryder didn’t wait. Instead, he grabbed Jimmy’s arm and hauled him closer. “I tracked an arsonist here. Sister of the man who died in Rossi’s apartment. She wants revenge. You need to clear the entire place.”
Jimmy frowned, Ryder’s words slowly sinking in. “But it’s Jacob’s tribute,” he protested.
“All the better. She wants Rossi to suffer. What better way than to kill everyone she loves? I don’t have time to argue. Just pull the fire alarm and clear the damn bar. Now!”
The barkeep nodded. He turned to the wall behind him where a fire alarm was situated above the light switch. Pulled it.
Nothing. Shit. They were going to have to do this the hard way. “Start getting people out,” Ryder said. “I’m going to try to find her.”
Most arsons he’d seen had started in the lower level of a building and burned up. All the liquor and other flammables Jimmy stored would make for a helluva fire starter. “What’s the fastest way to your basement?”
Jimmy pointed to the door to the private staircase leading up to Rossi’s apartment. “End of the hall,” he shouted.
Ryder shoved back through the crowd and made it to the basement staircase behind the one leading up to the second floor. Still no sign of Kravitz. He drew his pistol and opened the door. The basement lights were on. He looked down the steps. They were old with no risers, leaving no concealment from anyone below. Okay, if he couldn’t have stealth on his side, maybe speed and surprise would work. He sprinted down, planting himself at the bottom with his back to the outside wall.
Gena Kravitz smiled at him from where she perched on a stack of whiskey cases, legs crossed as if she were a torch singer sitting on top of a piano. She blew him a kiss. In her hand she held a remote car starter. Perfect trigger for an incendiary device.
Like the propane bottles wired together and ringing the base of the oil furnace.
“Welcome to the party, Detective Ryder,” she crooned. Her eyes were so wild the whites shown all around, and her hair stood on end as if she were channeling electricity. “I was just about to open my Christmas present. Or should I say Dr. Rossi’s Christmas present? This is going to be a holid
ay she’ll never forget.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Tommaso shoved me into the back of the SUV, then joined me. The driver pulled away from the curb with a squeal, jostling me against Tommaso. In the enclosed space of the SUV, I smelled a scent that was strangely familiar: the same mix of evergreen and citrus I’d smelled during my fugue when the man carried me away from Littleton’s body.
“It was you. You were in my apartment.”
Tommaso nodded. “We’ve been taking turns watching you.”
“We?”
“All in good time. You should be thanking me, cleaning up your amateurish attempts to use the gift we gave you.”
Amateurish? Gift? As if there was precedent for what I’d done, trying to invade Littleton’s mind? Then I remembered the weird sensation of something on my head. A cap. No… “You used a wireless EEG monitor.”
“Of course. Easiest way to see if you were able to achieve a complete bond. If we’d known sooner, we could have saved poor Jacob quite a lot of pain.”
We stopped in front of a hulking brick warehouse that stood dark against the falling snow. Tommaso got out and gestured with his gun for me to follow. I smelled the river. We were near the wharf. The wind cut through the narrow street as Tommaso and the man in black escorted me to a boarded-up entrance plastered with Condemned stickers.
As they moved the plywood aside on concealed hinges, I glanced over my shoulder and noticed another car slide to a stop up the street. Lights off, it blended totally into the night. Devon? I hoped.
They shoved me through a solid metal door, the plywood swinging back into place to hide it. There was a heavy click of a lock, but I knew that wouldn’t slow Devon down much.
