by Holly Hart
“Think there’s plenty of blame to go around, don’t you?” A series of quick jabs keeps him on the defensive. I keep coming, driving him back. “Look, nobody else has to die. You got your jet. There’s still time to get out. No one’s after you yet.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“So, what? You want to double down? Make it worse?”
He ducks my next punch and plows headfirst into my gut. I stagger, breathless, fumbling for his hair. Slippery fucker almost wriggles free, but I trap him against my belt. My knee flies once, twice, and on the third blow I let him go. Magnus weaves, but doesn’t crumple. I watch in disbelief as he drops to one knee, struggles upright, and shambles toward me.
“Just...stay down. It’s over!”
Magnus bellows, a wet, gurgling sound, rough with fury. I step to one side to avoid his clumsy charge, and Stella fucking kneecaps him. He doubles over, clutching his leg. Still standing.
I grab Stella’s arm instinctively, pulling her behind me. “When’d you—”
“Let’s go!” She’s tugging at me, putting her weight into it.
I sweep her into my arms and bolt for the stairwell. Metal scrapes on concrete: Katrina’s got the gun. She’s a quick shot—accurate, too. At least, she was in her active days. Don’t want to bet on her having lost the knack. I pivot to one side, fling open the door, and barrel through. The darkness opens up to welcome us. Safe, finally; I—
There’s a deafening report, a tinkle of glass, a hot streak across my hip. I lose my footing and gain it again, plunging into the black. No time to tread carefully. I hurl myself over the edge, sailing over the stairs, straight to the landing. I buttonhook around, and jump again. Stella muffles a cry against my shirt.
“Sorry—got to get out of here. That hurt?”
I feel her shake her head. “Just...don’t trip.”
“I won’t.” I hope. My left leg’s going kind of numb, and that’s definitely blood pooling in my crotch. Gross.
The door slams open, up above. An unsteady light seeks us out. I dodge it, redoubling my headlong flight. It’s starting to hurt, now, a pulling, tearing sensation, wet and meaty. Like before, with the bayonet, only...no. No. This time, it’s a flesh wound. A few stitches, a nasty scar—that’ll be that.
“There’s nowhere to hide!” Magnus—doesn’t he ever give up?
Stella curls tight against my chest, making herself as small as possible. I hold on tighter. Got to be halfway down now. I bite my lip to stay alert, trying to visualize the garage, the street outside. We need a plan—a plan for a clean getaway. Can’t have them chasing us through the city, putting innocent lives at risk.
Another shot rings out. It ricochets off the walls, missing by a mile. Katrina’s got to be firing blind. Or aiming for a reaction—a scream, a gasp, to pinpoint our location. Stella has the sense to stay quiet.
Five floors from the exit, we’re pulling ahead. Magnus is dragging, favoring one leg. Stella might not have broken his knee, but she’s done some damage. Katrina’s in heels—I can hear her clacking and skidding, trying to run. By the time they make it to the bottom, we’ll be out of sight.
“Hold on. Nearly there.”
I’m not sure, but I think I feel Stella smile against my chest.
Chapter Fifty-One
Stella
Of course—of course it can’t be that simple.
“Hide.” Jack sets me down as gently as he can. I get a trashcan between me and whoever that is in the dark. Don’t suppose it’ll provide much cover, but there’s nothing else in range.
“Fuck you doing with my car?” Jack strides out, making a target of himself. The stranger pulls a switchblade.
I cower, not wanting to see what happens next. The sounds are more than enough. There’s a shout, and the ugly sound of...of meat being pounded—someone taking a mallet to a fat bone-in steak, crunching and squidging—disgusting. I want to cover my ears, but being blind and deaf in a combat zone seems like a terrible idea.
Harsh grunts and whuffs echo off the walls. Feet skid. Flesh connects with metal. Somebody’s panting; somebody’s retching. I whimper, hoping it’s not Jack. He can’t lose—he can’t. We’re so close....
Something whistles through the air, landing in front of me with a leathery slap: a brown loafer. I shrink away from it, startled.
“All clear!”
I raise my head cautiously. Jack’s standing over a body—a still, lumpen shape in the glare of a fallen flashlight. I stare, transfixed, holding my breath till I catch a sign of life: one finger, lifting and dropping, like he’s trying to tap out.
There are voices in the stairwell, and the stomp and click of feet.
“Quick—over here!”
Torchlight hits the window, illuminating Magnus’s hulking silhouette on the stairs. That gets me moving. I half-crawl, half-stumble into the open. Jack meets me halfway, nearly dragging me to the car. He’s already pulling out as I fall into the passenger seat, hauling the door shut behind me. His highbeams come up, and we take the ramp far too fast. I can see the glow of a streetlight ahead... Almost there.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Jack brakes hard and swerves, barely avoiding a limo nosed up to the exit. “Hold on!”
I don’t know what to hold onto, so I shrink in on myself as the limo lurches forward. For one awful moment, I’m positive it’s going to broadside us, smash through my door and me with it, but Jack pounds the gas, and we squirt out onto the street. There’s the slightest of jolts, and I hear a taillight smash—but we’re on our way.
“Magnus... Did he hurt you?”
“No.” Jack glances my way. “You?”
My thigh’s throbbing where Katrina’s boot connected with my old bruise, but apart from that.... “No.”
“I should never have left you.” Jack brakes, cursing, to let a van go by.
“Where are we going?”
“Should be a cop shop over the bridge. They won’t follow us there.”
A bloom of light in the side mirror catches my eye. Headlights, coming fast. So much for our head start. “Sure about that?”
“Hope so.”
Jack floors it. The engine roars, and we rocket down the street. Windows light up all the way to the corner. Come morning, we’ll be the stars of every traffic cam in the city. I grip my seat tight as Jack runs a yellow light, then a red one, narrowly avoiding a collision. Tires squeal behind us: I twist in my seat, just in time to see Katrina swerve around a furiously honking Prius. Shit...shit....
“We can’t take the bridge.” My mind’s eye dances with visions of water crashing over the windshield, bits of guardrail splashing down around us, as we plunge to our deaths. “They’ll force us over—we’ll drown.”
“Can’t go off the Queensboro Bridge.” He reaches out briefly, squeezes my knee. “Don’t worry. I got this.”
I look over at him. He’s blood-streaked and focused, white-knuckling the wheel. Not sure all that blood belongs to Magnus, especially the glistening wash slicking his pant leg to his knee. There’s too much of it, still spreading, still damp.
“Watch the road. Call out if you see anyone coming from the side streets.”
Not sure if he’s trying to distract me from the blood or get a second set of eyes on the traffic situation. Either way, I’m not doing either of us any good staring. I scan ahead, but the streets are quiet. There’s a cab idling outside a hotel, a cyclist waiting at the light, a red Saab trying to parallel park, none of which are in our way.
Meanwhile, I can’t tell if we’re pulling ahead or falling behind. The headlights glare and dim behind us, flashing across the mirror with every rise and dip in the road. Ahead, the lights of the bridge rise into the sky. We’ve passed the last intersection: nowhere to go but up.
“Don’t get us killed.”
“Never.” Jack accelerates into the slope. We’re flying, lights blurring to either side of us as we arrow across the water. Katrina’s accelerating as well, d
efinitely gaining, headlights filling the mirror.
“Faster—she’s...faster!”
“I’ve got a plan.”
“What? To get us rammed?”
“Hold on....” Jack slows down, coming up on the exit ramp. They’re nearly on top of us—so close I can pick out their faces in the mirror—and still, Jack’s braking. I want to close my eyes, blot out my oncoming death, but I can’t...can’t look away. I can see the inspection sticker on their windshield; any closer, I’ll be able to pick out the date.
“Go, go; she’s right behind us!”
“In case I’ve never mentioned it, I adore you.”
“What?” Is he saying goodbye? Is this it?
The ramp opens onto darkness. We coast blind, down, down, and Jack floors it at the bottom. We cut across the street at a wild angle, screaming around the corner as Katrina barrels down the ramp. My breath catches in my throat as she comes up on the intersection.
“She’s not going to make it!”
Katrina catches air coming off the ramp, sailing over one barrier to slam full-speed into the next. The car flips end over end, crashing through a store window. A shower of glass glitters in the taillights. I watch in horror as the car crunches down on its roof, compressing visibly.
Jack pulls over and fumbles out his phone.
“Did you... Did you know that was going to happen?”
He shakes his head. “Knew that ramp was dangerous—there’ve been a few accidents. Thought she’d wing the guardrail, slow down a bit.”
“She must’ve been doing sixty, seventy....” No one’s moving in the front seat. I step out and crane my neck—nothing.
“Don’t go over there—yeah, hello? One sec....”
I leave Jack to his phone call and go over anyway. Anyone left alive in there’ll be all out of fight. “Hello?”
No answer. I stop when my shoes crunch on glass. Apart from Jack talking in the background, and the faint, steady drip of...brake fluid? Blood?—it’s quiet. No fast, panicked breathing; no calls for help. Nobody struggling with a seat belt. I should climb down and check on them... But I don’t want to see.
“Come back to the car.”
“Shouldn’t we, I don’t know....”
Jack frowns. “Not sure there’s anything we can do—we shouldn’t move them.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me away. “Smells like the gas tank’s leaking. We should get out of range.”
“Is someone coming?”
He sits me down on the curb, in the shelter of our car. “Police, ambulance, fire... Told ‘em to send everyone.”
Feels like we ought to be running—like this is way more, way worse...not at all what we planned. History repeating itself. If we hadn’t tried to save ourselves—if we’d run to the police right away.... “This is our fault. Trying to wiggle out, cover our tracks—we did this.”
Jack straightens his jacket over my shoulders. “You could say that about a lot of things: those two didn’t need to kidnap you, either. Didn’t need to chase us over the bridge, kill Nagler—hell, get back to their old tricks in the first place. Any of that would’ve stopped this.”
“What happened to Erik?”
“Hm?”
“Magnus said....” Shouldn’t pick at this. Don’t want to know, any more than I wanted to peek into that crumpled car. “He seemed to think he was dead.”
“Starkey shot him.”
“In self-defense?”
“Not really, no.”
More blood on our hands.
“Listen, if you want to tell the truth, everything you know, I get it.” Jack leans out so he can look me in the face. “You can say I made you do that blog post. Put it all at my door. It won’t come back on you.”
I’m not doing that. “This is bad enough. Making it all meaningless... How’s that going to help?”
“Stick to the truth as much as you can.”
They’re on their way already, sirens loud and close. The world’s closing in. No time to get our story straight.
This was always going to be messy.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Jack
Don’t think they’re going to be interrogating me any time soon. I wait for the paramedics to unload Stella before I pull my jacket off my lap.
“Shit, man, that your blood?”
I don’t need to look where he’s looking to know the seat’s swimming in it. I can feel it running down my leg. Filling my boot. “Mm.” My tongue’s heavy and thick in my mouth. Can’t quite find my words. Or my balance. Either the ambulance is tilting, or I am.
“This one’s actually hurt!” The paramedic’s leaning over me. “Hey! Hey, man! What’d you do? You guys crash, too?”
“Shot....”
“Christ! Why didn’t you say so?”
Thought she only grazed me. Thought I had more time. But I can feel it now: a deep, agonizing burn, like a hot knife in the back. Hard to tell where the ache starts and stops, but there’s blood trickling down my back, just below my left kidney. I’ve sprung another leak in the hollow of my hip: must’ve gone straight through, nicking God knows what along the way.
I close my throat on a yell as I’m lifted and transferred to a gurney. Stella can’t see this. She’s been through enough for one night. With any luck, the cops’ll keep her busy till I’m out of surgery, one way or the other. I don’t want her waiting, desperate.
When I turn my head, I can’t see her. Can’t see much of anything. Someone’s in my face, in my way, clapping a mask over my mouth. My head spins as I suck oxygen. Got to hold on, hold on, in case....
“—who shot you?”
Hm? Someone’s looming over me—a cop, wanting....
He’s gone. Did I pass out, or did someone shoo him away?
Someone else is shouting about gunshot wounds. I’m grabbing at her sleeve, begging her to keep it down, for fuck’s sake, don’t broadcast it—but my hands aren’t moving, and I seem to have lost my voice.
“Just relax. Going to get you patched up.”
Right, but be quiet about it....
The ceiling’s zipping by, so fast I...can’t...the holes are all....
Stella....
Chapter Fifty-Three
Stella
“And how’d you say you got from this Nagler guy having an affair to a cabal of militia agitating on foreign soil?”
I...I didn’t, did I?
It’s been hours. A delirious part of me wants to ask that detective for a pair of toothpicks to prop my eyes open.
Think.
“I...I didn’t. Jack was the one—I was trying to talk to Nagler’s wife, and Jack found out, and....” Keep it vague. No outright lies. Our stories have to match. “Well, then he died—Nagler, I mean—and Jack, he.... I mean, he knew there had to be something going on, more than just an affair, more than a hostile takeover from ten years ago. He must’ve—I don’t know.... There’d be records, or....”
“So, what was the timeline on that? From when Nagler was shot—that was about twenty-four hours to your blog post, and in that time... Walk me through it again.”
“I don’t know. We weren’t together the whole time. He said we had to hide, and then.... I don’t know. He was off somewhere, and someone took a shot at me, and.... And then he came back—I don’t know!” I’m supposed to be playing helpless, confused, but this feels too real.
“And what did he say he was doing, during the time he was, uh...’off somewhere’?”
“He didn’t. He just told me... He said a lot of stuff that didn’t make sense when they took over—stuff he put down to human error, sloppiness—he said it’s happening again.” I sip my water, buying time. “There must’ve been... Someone must’ve gotten to them, to Erik and Magnus. Someone from before. Got them involved. And when Jack confronted them....”
“Which was when?”
It would’ve had to be some time after the shootings and before Jack found me in my apartment. This is where it could all fall apart.
I have no idea where any of them were. “Uh, I...some time between midnight and...morning, I guess?” I grind the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Sorry. I’ve had, like...two hours’ sleep since Nagler died. It’s all running together in my head.”
“So Mr. Brightman confronted his partners that morning, and instead of coming to us, the two of you decided to...blog about it?”
“We were....” It all made perfect sense at the time. I grope after it, whatever thread of logic brought me to this point. “I’m pregnant. He wanted... Jack wanted them arrested and off the streets before we risked showing our faces.”
“You were undercover as his...rent-a-wife? Is that it?—and now you’re pregnant, and the two of you are running around playing detective, getting kidnapped and shot, driving like maniacs through the city, and...last night, you were playing it safe?”
I nod miserably. Put like that, it sounds stupid. At best.
There’s a knock at the door. Left alone, I bury my head in my arms. All I want is sleep. Hours and hours of blessed sleep, followed by a long shower, and eggs and toast. In my own apartment. With Jack.
If I get through this, I can get to that. Just got to swallow my pride a little longer, keep playing the fool. Whatever Jack’s doing, he must be holding up all right. If he’d fucked up, if we’d tripped each other up, it’d be over by now. Unless they’re letting it play out, watching us dig ourselves deeper and deeper. I can’t even remember what I’ve said, if I’ve contradicted myself, if....
“Good news.”
I jerk upright. Sleeping—I was sleeping.
“Mr. Gunnarsson’s been stabilized. He’s conscious.”
Is that good news?
“He’s saying Brightman was in on it the whole time. That the whole thing was his idea.”
“He...what?” I blink. I’m tired, but... This sounds fishy. Cops can lie to get a confession. Everyone knows that. Not so sure they can interrogate someone who was hanging upside-down and unconscious in a crumpled car not five hours ago—who’d still be concussed, best-case scenario.
