That’s good, that’s good. . . . Distract yourself. . . . Calm is better than panic. . . .
He wondered idly if Coral Lively might still be shadowing his moves. For the first time, that sounded like a very appealing thing. She would know where he was, and maybe even be able to get help, fish him out, save him at the last second.
The water splashed up around his face, and he could withstand it no longer. Nolan Gray, supposedly the world’s finest soldier, had reached his absolute limit.
He said good-bye to the world as he blacked out.
———
Light. It penetrated his eyelids, bright and soothing and warm. Its heat enveloped him.
Nolan slowly forced his eyes open. The light was blinding, and he knew that he was in heaven, in the awesome presence of God. He closed his eyes again, relishing the healing love of God’s beautiful light of Creation.
“Ilsa! I think he’s waking up!” called out a voice.
Who was Ilsa? Was that his guardian angel’s name? Was he about to be formally welcomed as he walked through the pearly gates?
“Come on, son,” said the voice, “open your eyes! You’re going to be all right.”
Nolan complied, and this time his eyes had adjusted to the daylight. He blinked hard, looking around the room. This wasn’t heaven at all; this was someone’s home.
He sat up sharply, but two leathery wrinkled hands on his shoulders pushed him back down onto the pillow.
“What—? Where—?” he tried to say, but his throat was severely parched and only raspy whispers emerged from his mouth.
A gray-haired gentleman in a cardigan sweater was at his side, tucking his bed sheets back in. “Take it easy now,” said the old man. “You’re alive, Mr. Gray.”
The man’s smiling wife appeared—Ilsa, he assumed—with a glass of water and a straw. The old man took it and put the straw up to Nolan’s lips. He took a few small sips of the water and let it wash away the sandpaper feel that coated his throat.
“Thank you,” he said, still gravelly but starting to find his voice. “Where am I? Who are you? What happened?”
“I am Rene, this is my wife, Ilsa,” said the man. “You are an honored guest here in our humble home. And we had hoped you could tell us what happened. What do you remember?”
Nolan searched his memory. “I was sealed inside a metal box and tossed into the river.”
“And you would have died there,” said Rene, “if we hadn’t seen those fireworks.”
Ilsa nodded. “Someone must have been celebrating the New Year early,” she said in a thick German accent.
Nolan put up a hand, hoping they might backtrack. “I don’t understand. You pulled me out of the river?”
“My husband is a fisherman,” explained Ilsa. “One of the best in the city. Owns his own fishing boat.”
“I was out with my crew, about to set sail, when those red fireworks lit up the water for just a second. That’s when I saw the green box. It was almost completely submerged, but we threw out a net and reeled it in. Took a few hours to get back to port and find something that could cut the thing open. Pretty shocking finding you inside, Mr. Gray.”
Nolan only then realized that he wasn’t wearing his graphene-woven fatigues or the hood attached to the flak jacket. “You know who I am, then.”
“Of course,” replied Ilsa. “Everyone does.”
“It was that man Vasko, wasn’t it?” asked Rene. “He did this to you.”
Nolan lay back on his pillow and nodded, still astounded at the knowledge that he was alive. Then something else occurred to him, and his eyes popped open.
“How long have I been here?”
“Three days,” replied Ilsa. “My husband brought you home after he found you, against the protests of his crew. They wanted to take you to the hospital, or the police. But Rene wouldn’t have it. He knew who you were.”
Nolan looked over at the old man. He wondered if Rene might be the same age that Branford had been . . . before . . .
“Thank you. Both of you,” he said sincerely.
“You need a few more days of rest,” said Ilsa. “It was quite a while before your skin—particularly your hands—got their color back. But you seem to be on the mend now.”
“I’d be dead at the bottom of the river if you hadn’t found me. . . .”
“It was the least we could do,” replied Rene. “Our daughter owes you her life. I know she’ll want to meet you. You saved her from the South Street Viaduct.”
71
The sun was no longer shining outside the large two-paned window to the left of Nolan’s bed. Morning had come, but the sun was hidden behind dark gray clouds that were dumping snow all over Manhattan.
“Mr. Gray,” said Rene, after gently knocking on the bedroom door and opening it by a crack. “How are you feeling this morning?”
Nolan felt numb. Maybe even in some physiological form of shock. In every conceivable way, he felt like he was dead. His ordeal in the metal box had destroyed him. The terror of dying from solitary confinement in that tiny little coffin. The freezing cold water that soaked his clothes and his body before he was pulled out of the river. The circulation being so brutally cut off to his hands. Watching his friend die in a gruesome fashion. Knowing that the general was dead because he had chosen to help Nolan. Just like Alice.
Nolan knew he should have died in the river, and he’d begun to wish that he had.
It started with the nightmares. After Rene and Ilsa had left him alone to sleep last night, he had passed out quickly but awoken screaming less than an hour later. His two hosts had rushed to his side as he cried some gibberish about not doing it again, and they later told him it took almost ten minutes for them to get him to snap out of it. He fell asleep again and was screaming again soon after. The cycle repeated again and again, all through the night.
After the sun rose and the clouds cleared inside his head, he realized that the nightmares had been about his captivity during the war. His experience in the river had brought back all the horrors he had worked years to suppress and get past. He was again that same broken, defeated, emaciated shell of a man that had escaped all those years ago.
He feared he might never sleep through the night again.
So when Rene entered his room, asking how he was doing this morning, his thoughts were lost deep within memories of that dark, terrible place—memories he hadn’t let himself dwell on in years. He felt like he was back there right now, surviving minute by minute without truly feeling alive.
“Better,” he lied, forcing himself to pull back from those memories, at least for a moment. “I think I’m better today.”
Rene smiled. “Good. Because I have a special surprise for you: a visitor.”
The old man obviously expected this to be good news, news that would lift Nolan’s spirits somehow. Really, he just wanted to be alone, but he nodded appreciatively, not wanting to be ungracious.
“Come in, dear,” he called out.
A woman much younger than Rene or his wife entered the room. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, diminutive in size, had dark brown hair that fell back behind her shoulders, and incessantly wrung her hands together.
Rene put his arms around the younger woman’s shoulders and smiled. “This is Elise, my daughter.”
Nolan didn’t react immediately, because he was so lost in thought. Then it hit him: Rene had mentioned last night that his daughter had been saved by The Hand in the South Street Viaduct.
Nolan couldn’t bring himself to smile. The grief and sorrow in his heart blocked out any other emotions just now. But he nodded as warmly as he could in her direction. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Elise smiled and returned the nod, her hands still writhing. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to thank you for saving my life,” she was saying. “That was . . . an amazing thing you did that day.”
Nolan barely heard her, but somehow good manners emerged from him on autopilot, and he mumble
d, “You’re very welcome.”
An awkward silence followed, which Rene quickly sensed and jumped in to fill. “Elise here has something she wishes to tell you in private. She’s so quiet, you know. It’s hard for her mother and I to read her sometimes. . . . I’m sorry, now I’ve embarrassed her. I’ll just stop talking and leave you two alone.”
He made a hasty exit and Elise shut the door behind him. There was a second smaller click, like a lock.
When she turned to face him, there were tears running down her face and she held a Colt Anaconda revolver tight with both of her quivering hands.
Nolan blinked. His reverie came to a crashing halt at the sight of this thin, mousy woman holding a big silver six-shooter, rounds in all six chambers.
He opened his mouth to say something, but she whispered, “Shut up,” as more tears streamed down her blotchy red cheeks. She let go of the revolver with one hand and produced a pair of handcuffs. She tossed them and they landed in his lap.
“Cuff yourself to the headboard,” she said softly. “Both hands.”
Nolan considered attempting to disarm her, but she was a good six feet away, well outside his grasp, and the way her hands were shaking, she could easily fire off a round accidentally any second, without him making it worse by startling her. So he picked up the handcuffs and did as he was told; when he was done, his hands were behind his head.
“What are you doing?” asked Nolan. “What is this?”
Elise swallowed as she gripped the gun again with both hands, tight enough that it might have been the very lifeline that was keeping her alive. When she spoke, her words were still unnervingly quiet. “That day. In the tunnel. You pulled me out of a burning pickup truck. It was white. Do you remember?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I do.”
“You pulled me out of it,” she said, her eyes growing wide and angry. “But you left Vincent to die.”
“Who’s—?”
“Vincent was my boyfriend!” she said, raising her volume a notch but still keeping quiet enough to not alert anyone outside the room. “He was my everything! My parents didn’t know about us, they wouldn’t have approved. . . . We were going to get married! We were going to have . . .” She tried to go on, but the words caught in her throat and she couldn’t hold back a bitter sob.
“I’m so sorry,” said Nolan, wishing he could comfort her somehow. He remembered her truck, and it was caved in on the passenger’s side where another vehicle had landed on top of it. He’d had no idea there was anyone else inside.
“Don’t pity me!” she said, suddenly raising the gun and strengthening her grip on it. “I don’t want your sympathy! I don’t want anything from you!”
Nolan looked around the room, trying to think of anything he could say or do. Anything at all. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked. He wasn’t frightened, or concerned for himself. A large part of him wished that she would do it.
She took a step forward and pointed the gun at his head. It shook violently from her rage and her grief. Finally it fell to her side and she dropped her head into one hand and let herself cry for a long moment.
“Why didn’t you go back for him?” she whispered.
Nolan had no answer that she wanted to hear. “I didn’t know,” he said.
Elise snapped and brought the silver revolver around to collide with Nolan’s face. He was already seeing stars when she hit him again.
“Why?” she screamed, no longer concerned about keeping her parents from hearing. With every word, she pounded him with the gun another time. “Why! Didn’t! You! Know!”
Nolan thought he heard shouting outside the bedroom and fists pounding against the door, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He was trying as best he could to shield his face from Elise’s blows, which hadn’t stopped just because she ran out of words. The gun kept knocking him back and forth, sweeping one way across his face and then the other. He saw blood stain the bedspread and realized, dazed, that he wasn’t feeling enough pain.
His vision went red.
He knew he was close to passing out when the big window to his left shattered and someone screamed, “Freeze!”
Nolan looked up through the fog and the blood and saw someone he knew. A woman. She seemed familiar. He recognized her. But what was her name? He couldn’t piece any thoughts together in the haze of the stinging pain all over his face.
“Don’t you move one muscle!” shouted the newcomer with righteous authority. She was pointing what he recognized as a black, federal-issue Sigma 9mm at Elise.
Elise was startled by the newcomer’s appearance and dropped the revolver on the ground. Immediately she burst into tears again, and Nolan saw her lost, bitter eyes move from him to the woman who’d just come to his aid.
“Uncuff him! Now! ” yelled his rescuer.
Coral! That was her name. Coral Lively! OCI agent and moonlighting vigilante. She grabbed something off of a chair near the bed and tucked it under her arm.
Nolan felt his hands being released from the cuffs, and then Coral’s arm was under one of his as she helped him up from the bed.
“Stay back!” Coral warned, and Elise withdrew, backing up to the bedroom door and making no attempt to interfere.
Coral led Nolan to the broken window, where a blast of arctic wind woke him up. With a bit of awkward help, she pushed him through it, where he landed flat on his back on what must have been at least eighteen inches of snow, because it cushioned his fall nicely. Coral jumped through the window and pulled him back up to his feet.
“Come on,” she said, still holding her gun with one hand and pointing it back at the window, “I’ve got you now.”
72
C oral supported his weight, taking Nolan to an SUV parallel-parked on the street. She helped him inside and grabbed a blanket out of the back seat; wadding it up, she gave it to him to wipe the blood from his face. Coral started the vehicle, and Nolan tossed the blanket around his shoulders and tried not to shiver.
She noticed this and wordlessly turned the heat up as she turned the SUV and roared down the snow-covered street. She was all business, her eyes darting around her mirrors to ensure they weren’t being watched or followed.
Nolan glanced out his window and saw that he was still in Chelsea, not terribly far from Vasko’s storehouse.
Fifteen minutes later, Coral parked the vehicle at a homeless shelter and told Nolan to put the blanket up around him to conceal his face. Carrying a large backpack, she spoke to the man at the back door and then led Nolan quickly inside, down a dingy hall, and into a small room with a bed, a nightstand, and a chair.
“Sorry about the accommodations,” she said, shutting the door behind him. “But they don’t ask a lot of questions here.”
Nolan sat down on the bed, but nothing more. He was tired of lying down.
Coral dropped her backpack and pulled out a small first aid kit. She seated herself in the chair facing him and motioned for him to lean in close enough that she could begin stitching up the numerous cuts from the revolver’s impact on his skull, forehead, nose, and cheeks.
Nolan didn’t want to think about what he must look like now. With the hideous scars Branford had given him already disfiguring his face, and now at least a dozen or so cuts slicing up his skin, he figured he probably resembled Frankenstein. He was glad there was no mirror in the tiny room.
He was so lost inside his own mind that he almost forgot he had company.
Pathetic! She saved your life, she’s helping you now, and she’s risking everything by doing it. Don’t you dare forget she’s here, Nolan Gray.
He sat up at attention and truly entered the room for the first time. He looked intently upon her.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Of course,” she replied, continuing to work at cleaning his cuts.
“No, really. I mean it,” he said, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to stop working for a moment. “Thank you.”
Coral looked into his eyes and for on
e moment, he saw more vulnerability in hers than he’d ever noticed before. But she snapped out of it and merely nodded.
“You followed me to the warehouse?”
She used a moist towelette to wipe the dried blood away from his wounds. “For all the good it did. Got there right as Vasko sprung his trap. He had so many men there. . . . I pulled back by a block or so and watched what happened through a sniper scope. Tried to call it in, but the police didn’t answer, and my director at the OCI said our team was in the middle of an operation and couldn’t be recalled. And he wasn’t happy that I went AWOL for a few hours.
“When I saw what they did to you . . . I just freaked. They watched you float away for a few minutes but then left, so I ran down to the riverside and tried to reach that box. The river was carrying you downstream pretty hard, and it was all I could do to keep up. I thought it was over when I spotted that fishing boat and shot off a flare to get their attention.”
Fireworks, thought Nolan. Rene said he saw fireworks right before he found me. It was Coral’s flare.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Coral said.
He appreciated that she didn’t speak of what had happened with the wet cement; he didn’t need to go down that memory lane right now.
“Who was he?” she asked.
“Colonel Aaron Branford,” said Nolan, looking far away. “My commanding officer during the war. When Thor and I were in the enemy prison, Branford was on the other end of the transmission I sent out that led to our rescue. He led the rescue mission himself.”
Coral didn’t respond to this. There was nothing to say anyway. She doubled her efforts and after ten minutes or so, declared him finished. She gave him a couple of painkillers and set her first aid kit aside, on the nightstand.
Also in her backpack was the item she’d carried under her arm from Rene’s house, and he saw it was his specialized black combat fatigues. “Vasko dumped your gear in the river. But you still have this.”
“Let me see that,” he said, and she tossed the flak jacket to him. He found a pocket knife in the medical kit and swung open the dull blade.
Vigilante Page 27
