But it’s useless. My mind won’t stay focussed and all I can hear is a voice asking Why? Why did all those people have to die?
I look around automatically for the boy, as though he might be able to explain it to me. Then I remember he’s gone. He left without telling me his name, but I remember it. I heard him spelling it out for the cop that booked him – Jaime. Jamie Moreno. I jig up and down on the balls of my feet. It’s OK, I tell myself over and over, until I’m almost humming it. It’s going to be OK. My dad is on his way back. And they’ve probably caught the guy by now. Or maybe he’s shot himself. Isn’t that what they always do? Turn the gun on themselves once the killing rampage is over?
Just then a car speeds towards me and pulls up to the kerb. The windows are wound down and a woman leans her head out. She’s about thirty-five, pretty, with dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.
‘Olivia?’ she asks.
A headrush of relief. I nod.
She smiles at me and jumps out of the car. She’s wearing a dark grey suit, a starched white shirt beneath. She flashes a badge at me but flips it shut before I can get a really good look at it. I do notice the worn leather gun holster under her arm though as she shoves the badge back into her pocket. Through the open door I glimpse the driver – a black guy in his late thirties who stares straight ahead at the street, his face half hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.
‘I’m Agent Kassel,’ the woman says. ‘This is Agent Parker.’ She indicates the driver, who still doesn’t look my way. ‘Your father called us and asked us to come get you. We heard what happened at the police station. Come on, get in the car, let’s get you somewhere safe.’
The urgency in her voice doesn’t pass me by. Her hand is already gripping my elbow and she’s steering me towards the car. The driver leans over his seat and throws open the back door and now the woman’s hand is on the small of my back. I glance into the car, noticing the lack of door handles, and a warning signal flares in my body that I instinctively try to quell. She’s a woman, I tell myself. My father sent them. I’m safe now, just like she said. But if that’s the case then why are the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end? Why is every nerve ending in my body currently feeling electrified?
I hesitate. I hear Felix in my head, telling me always to listen to my instincts, always to trust them because, unlike people, instincts never lie.
The woman senses my indecision and her hand presses more firmly on my back. She’s trying to force me into the car.
‘Olivia,’ she says, her tone more strained now, ‘please, get in the car.’
I twist so I’m facing her and, as I do, I realise what it is that’s bothering me. She called herself an agent. Yet my father runs a task force made up of police, with a few civilian experts. There’s no FBI or other government agency involved in it. ‘Where are you taking me?’ I ask her.
She pauses and her eyes flick over my shoulder. Something doesn’t feel right, is not adding up. After everything that’s happened today trusting anyone, let alone someone who claims to work in law enforcement, feels like madness. I take a small step backwards and Agent Kassel’s hand moves instantly for her gun. Before I can make a move, the barrel is pressed to my stomach. Through my sweater I feel the blunt roundness of the muzzle like the snout of an animal trying to bore its way under my skin.
‘Just get in,’ Kassel hisses, jerking her head at the open door.
I stare down at the gun. My pulse skips erratically and then starts to race. I don’t have any option but to get in the car. But just then the sound of tyres tearing up asphalt makes us both whip around.
A car is speeding towards us down the narrow street, its engine whining. I catch sight of a flash of blue behind the wheel and my gut lurches. Agent Kassel yells something and out the corner of my eye I see Agent Parker throwing open his door and drawing his weapon.
He and Agent Kassel both start firing at the car heading towards us. Bullets bounce off metal, thud into concrete, spit off the sidewalk. The car coming towards us swerves and there’s a lethal squeal of brakes . . . and that’s when I take off. I push past Agent Kassel, ignoring her yells and I just run.
I reach the end of the street and dive sideways straight into traffic, narrowly avoiding a yellow taxi that has to slam on its brakes to avoid me. A torrent of abuse is hurled through the open window and I hold up my hands in apology and then turn and keep sprinting, the sound of bullets flying and cars honking pushing me forwards.
I make it a block, then turn down a side street that’s barely more than an alleyway, my pace never slowing, my arms piston pumping . . . And I’m ten feet from the end when a car slides right in front of me, blocking my path, its wheels spinning. I thrust out my hands to break my speed and they slam down on to the hood, my knees banging against the fender. My head jerks up and I stare at the driver, breathing hard. It’s him. I blink. It’s the guy in the cop uniform.
Time seems to slow as though it’s slipped into freeze-frame mode. Half the windshield is a blizzard of broken glass but through the spiderweb cracks I watch as his hand moves to the door handle, and I’m dimly aware that there’s someone beside him in the car, in the passenger seat, and that they’re reaching for their door handle too, and the voice in my head is screaming at me to run but my legs are paralysed – they may as well be encased in concrete. All I can do is stare at the man, at the semi-automatic in his hand – a Colt with a varnished wooden handle – and it’s amazing that I can notice the detail of the gun and the bloodstains on his shirt front but that I can’t make my legs move.
The doors fly open and a tightness grips my chest. Somewhere off to the side someone screams. And next thing I know I’m in the air. The car is buckling and crumpling beneath my hand, lifting off the ground, taking me with it. The shriek of metal grinding metal rips the air around me and I’m suddenly on the ground, splinters of glass showering down over me, and I watch in dumb shock as the car slams headlong into a lamppost, bending it like it’s chicken wire.
Another car has rammed into the cop’s car from behind and, as I scramble to my feet, I realise that it’s the car Agent Kassel was in, the same black saloon, but I don’t stand around to find out what the hell is going on. My body has caught up with my brain finally and the adrenaline is shooting through my veins like wildfire. I elbow my way through the handful of people who’ve gathered on the sidewalk to stare at the carnage and start sprinting, my legs at first wobbly and unsure but then certain and strong as I get into my stride.
Up ahead I see a subway entrance and my heart leaps. If I can make it to the subway, I can disappear. I can jump the turnstile. I can find a tunnel. I can – I don’t know what. But right now the subway feels like my only shot at salvation. I skid to a slower pace to try to blend in with the sparse crowd, just in case they’re following. Sweat trickles down my back, I’m panting, sucking in air as though I’m drowning. People veer out of my way, shooting me strange looks.
The subway sign is getting closer. I increase my pace, weaving around a woman pushing a pram, then hopping out of the way of a man who is jogging along bare-chested, pulling two giant poodles behind him on a leash. I register the fact he’s coated in sweat and that he’s singing along to his iPod without a care in the world.
But then, from behind me comes shouting and another gunshot that seems to fracture the air like it’s made of glass. I glance over my shoulder and see him – the cop in the blue shirt. He’s striding down the centre of the sidewalk and people are diving out of his way. His gun is in his hand and as he strides he brings it up to shoulder level and points it straight at me. My feet trip over a loose paving slab and I let out a cry and stumble but manage to keep my balance. The subway seems to be getting further away, not nearer.
Someone starts screaming hysterically behind me, and I start running again, dodging around a woman who’s standing frozen to the sidewalk, eyes wrenched wide in terror as she stares at the cop stalking towards her, as if he’s coming for her. But I know s
omething she doesn’t. He’s not coming for her. That’s what I know with a certainty that makes my blood turn to ice in my veins.
He’s coming for me.
And then suddenly my legs go out from under me. The woman with the pram has rammed me from behind in her panic and my knees smack the sidewalk and I roll, landing heavily on my shoulder as she goes screaming past.
When I blink away the tears stinging my eyes, I see the shooter striding even more purposefully towards me. His eyes are locked on mine, cold and unreadable. But his lips are turned upwards in a smile.
I scrabble backwards on my hands, my feet kicking out in front of me, pathetic and useless. And now he’s so close I can see the embossed letters on the silver shield pinned to his shirt, the empty glacier-blue of his eyes. I open my mouth but nothing comes out. This can’t be happening, I think in stunned amazement. And then—
‘Olivia!’
I look over my shoulder.
A car has pulled up on to the sidewalk right behind me, the engine roaring. ‘Get in!’ Jaime yells, throwing open the door.
I grab the door handle and haul myself to my knees, diving into the passenger seat and slamming the door just as the shooter reaches me. His hand snatches for the handle. His fist pounds the window, threatening to punch right through it, but Jaime puts his foot to the floor and swerves us out into oncoming traffic. He roars through a red stoplight, spinning one-eighty in front of a school bus that has to stamp on its brakes, and then he cuts down a side street, almost mowing down the jogger with the two poodles who is still singing along to his iPod oblivious to the chaos around him.
Jaime keeps driving with his foot to the floor, while I cower in my seat, cradling my shoulder, words playing on a loop in my head, pounding with unceasing rhythm against my skull.
He’s coming for me.
9
Gradually I become aware of other things besides my hammering heart and the fact that I’m still alive. My cheek is stinging and I raise a hand to my face and wince as a needle of pain inserts itself behind my eye. My shoulder throbs like a bass drum. Then I notice my legs are scratched and bleeding – the blood jumps out bright as day against my skin, as though I’m wearing 3D glasses. My vision blurs and I force myself to look away. I focus on Jaime instead, on his hands gripping the wheel, manoeuvring the car fluid and fast through traffic as though he’s playing a video game. I wish it was a video game, I think to myself. Or a nightmare. Something that I could unplug myself from, or wake up from.
Jaime looks over at me quickly. He’s pale beneath the tan of his skin and I can see his pulse firing rapidly in his neck.
‘Why were you there?’ I ask him.
‘I just had a feeling,’ he says, his eyes back on the road. ‘I doubled back and parked up. Wanted to make sure you were OK.’ This last bit he mumbles.
I take that in slowly and with an element of wonder – the knowledge that right now I could be dead – would in fact be dead for certain, if not for him.
‘Thank you,’ I say, though two words never felt so insubstantial. I want to say his name but it stalls on my lips.
He looks my way briefly before slipping across traffic and taking the exit just before the bridge. I wonder where he is going, but don’t ask. I don’t care, so long as we keep moving . . . It feels like we’re trying to outrun an avalanche. I keep checking back over my shoulder to see if we’re being followed.
‘I owed you,’ he says under his breath.
I sink back into my seat and study him out the corner of my eye, feeling a rush of gratitude spill through me. How did we get mixed up in this together? I wonder.
He is quiet, studying the cross streets. I catch glimpses of brown – the sludgy East River – and snatches of towering, glittering skyline rising up between clumps of greying buildings and concrete expressway. Without warning we make a sudden right turn, Jaime spinning the wheel hard and fast. We jolt over uneven ground into some kind of abandoned lot beneath the expressway. There are no other cars in sight. No people. Though the cardboard boxes and tarpaulin stretched between concrete pillars suggest that the place isn’t completely abandoned. The roar of traffic from the expressway overhead can be heard even through the closed windows. Jaime pulls the car into the shadows of a pillar and yanks on the handbrake. He places his hands on the wheel and takes a deep breath. I note the strips of muscle running the length of his arms and the fact that they are trembling ever so slightly. But then again, I’m shaking too. I’m having to stop my teeth from chattering.
‘Where did you learn to drive like that?’ I ask. It’s a stupid question and I’m not really asking because I want to know the answer. I’m asking because I don’t want to talk about what just happened. I’m trying to convince myself that if don’t say out loud what the voice in my head is trying to force me to acknowledge, then maybe it won’t be real.
The faint trace of a smile ghosts across Jaime’s lips before fading completely. ‘That’s what I was being booked for back at the police station,’ he says, glancing sideways at me. ‘Grand Theft Auto.’
‘Oh,’ I say, staring at him in shock. He’s a car thief? Well, that figures. I stare at him slightly dumbfounded though. I mean, what are the chances that the guy I escape from a police station with happens to be a car thief who also happens to know how to drive like one of the guys from The Fast and the Furious? I reassess him in the light of this information. Grand Theft Auto. So, not a murderer then. I guess that’s a positive.
A flare of defiance lights Jaime’s eyes as he watches my reaction. They burn green, challenging me. He raises his eyebrow in a gesture I’m coming to recognise as defiance. ‘What? You thought I had killed someone?’ he asks with a smirk that pulls up the corner of his mouth.
I shrug. ‘You were in the homicide department. What else was I supposed to think?’
‘I was in the Major Crime Unit. It works out of the same room as Homicide.’
‘Oh, Major Crimes, well that’s so much better,’ I throw back, rolling my eyes.
He looks like he’s about to say something else, but then he’s distracted by the blood on my legs. His eyes widen as he stares at my thighs. Now my body is winding down, everything has started to sting or burn. In fact, it feels like I’ve been lashed with nettles and fallen down several flights of uncarpeted stairs. Jaime unbuckles his seatbelt and leans across me, and for a second I wonder what the hell he’s doing and am about to shove him backwards into his seat, but he’s only going for a box of tissues in the side of the door. He dabs at my leg ineffectually with one a few times before looking up at me. His cheeks flare briefly and he hands me the tissue. ‘You better do it,’ he mumbles.
I take the tissues and try wiping up the blood. The tops of my thighs are strafed with tiny cuts from the broken windshield and my knees are still scratched up from when I crawled through the glass back at the police station – I hadn’t even noticed until now . . . I frown at the dark stains blotting my knees. So much blood. Where did it all come from? And then, with a sickening feeling, I remember.
I spit on the tissue and start rubbing frantically at my knees, ignoring the sharp wincing pain as slivers of glass which must have buried themselves beneath the skin are driven deeper.
‘What are you doing?’ Jaime says, grabbing for my wrist and pulling my hand away from my knees.
‘It’s not mine,’ I say, trying to wrench my arm free. ‘The blood. It’s not mine. I want to get it off.’
Jaime opens his mouth then shuts it. He lets go of my arm and just stares as I keep scrubbing, handing me tissue after tissue in silence. It’s not my blood. It’s the cop’s. Images sear themselves on to the back of my eyelids like the lightning bursts of a camera flash. I thought my brain had switched off, had stopped computing back at the police station when I slid the handcuff key from that dead cop’s pocket, but it obviously did no such thing. It was merely storing the images, archiving them, and now it’s decided to play them back to me.
I grind my teeth together
and rub harder, sucking in a breath as an invisible fragment of glass buries itself deeper, so deep it scrapes the bone.
I bite my lip to stop from crying out and he takes my hand then, wrestles the tissue free from my clenched fingers and forces me to look up at him. ‘Stop,’ he says. Then again in a firmer, yet quieter voice, ‘Stop.’
I let my hand drop and very slowly, his eyes not leaving my face, he starts dabbing a clean tissue just by my eye. His other hand is still gripping mine. Or is it me? Am I gripping him? I can’t work it out. I stare at him, aware of the silence building in the car like flood water behind a dam. His lips are half parted as he wipes up whatever’s on my cheek and there’s a faint frown line between his eyes.
Someone just tried to kill me. More than once. And we’re studiously avoiding talking about it, though the elephant in the car is stomping its feet demanding to be acknowledged. I snatch the tissue suddenly from Jaime’s hand and fall back into my seat, staring at the bright droplets of blood staining it, like something out of a fairy tale. A wave of exhaustion so thick hits me that I think about sliding down into the seat well and falling to sleep for a hundred years.
‘What just happened?’ Jaime asks me.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. When I open them I find him staring at me. ‘I thought someone from your dad’s team was coming to get you?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought too.’
‘Was that the woman I saw get out the car?’
I frown at him before remembering he was watching me from down the block. ‘Yeah,’ I say, picturing Agent Kassel with her swept-back hair, crisp white shirt and shiny badge.
Out of Control Page 4
