He takes a second to process then he just nods once and leaves the room without another word and I let out a long breath. I’m not sure what scares me more right now, them coming through the door, or Jay walking out of it.
16
Thirty seconds later I am standing in the kitchen, which looks like a homemade bomb exploded in the middle of it. Jay is standing with his back to me, orchestrating some kind of clean-up, or possibly he’s just rummaging through the debris seeing what further damage he can do.
‘Wow,’ I say, staring at the ripped-open packets and gaping cupboard doors spilling their contents happily to the floor. ‘Make yourself at home.’
‘Here,’ he says, turning around and handing me a bowl piled high with pasta. ‘I made you this.’
‘You just made this?’ I say, staring at the mountain of spaghetti.
‘Yeah,’ he says gruffly, grabbing his own plate off the side.
I open my mouth to tell him that we don’t have time to stop for a sit-down meal and that we should just pack whatever we can stuff in a backpack and get the hell out of this place, but then my stomach overrides my brain cells. The smell of carbonara sauce hits my nostrils and I almost suffocate by sticking my face straight into the bowl and inhaling the contents.
Jay heads past me to the living room at the end of the hallway. We drop on to the leather sofa opposite the floor-length windows offering a view all the way to Central Park.
‘Who needs a flat screen when you have a view like this?’ Jay asks, gesturing with his fork.
I can’t answer because I’m too busy forking spaghetti into my mouth.
‘Is this the penthouse floor?’ he asks.
I nod, swallow, and then glance down suspiciously at the contents of the bowl. ‘Is there cream in this?’
Jay pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth. ‘Are you serious?’ he asks. ‘You’re worried about cholesterol? Never mind the fact you have a psycho killer chasing after you, you’re worried about having a heart attack?’ He shakes his head at me in disappointment. ‘Priorities, man.’
I feel my cheeks burning.
He stuffs his mouth full of spaghetti. ‘You don’t drink coffee, don’t take sugar, don’t eat cream. What are you,’ he asks through his mouthful, ‘anorexic?’
My back teeth gnash together. ‘No. I just . . . I have to watch what I eat,’ I say to the spaghetti strangling my fork.
‘Why?’ he asks. ‘You got a—’ he breaks off, clears his throat, ‘you got no worries there. You should see my cousin Maria. She’s one Krispy Kreme away from having her own zip code.’
I fork another mouthful of the pasta into my mouth. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m starving and my body is literally screaming at me like a drill sergeant to fill it with calories, but this pasta is very possibly the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter,’ I say, forking up another mouthful. ‘See, I’m eating it. It’s good.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, eyeing me suspiciously until I swallow. ‘My mom taught me to cook.’
His mum. My hand flies to my mouth as I remember the piece of paper Jay passed to me in the police station with her number on it. ‘You never called her!’ I say. In the next instant I’m remembering his fingers pressing against mine – that instant surge, like a connection being made, that made all my thoughts scramble, overrode my judgement and made me agree to help him.
‘No,’ he mumbles. ‘Not yet.’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Yeah,’ he answers, stabbing at his food. ‘Let’s get out of here first.’
We eat like it’s our last meal, not stopping to savour but only to refuel. Then we’re both on our feet. My head and limbs feel unnaturally heavy, as though my blood has been replaced with liquid lead, and I remember that’s why I normally avoid eating carbs and cream. It makes me feel sluggish. As well as the fact that when you’re standing in front of a mirror in a leotard every day you become hyperaware of the smallest ounce of fat going somewhere it shouldn’t. I freaking hate the body Nazism that goes hand in hand with a career as a dancer.
‘I’ll get some stuff together while you shower,’ I say, trying to shake off the fog of tiredness that’s descending.
‘We got time?’ Jay asks, though his face has brightened immeasurably at the thought.
It only seems fair, seeing how I had a shower, so I just shrug. ‘I can get you a T-shirt to wear if you want to get rid of that one.’
‘OK,’ Jay says, following after me. ‘Though I don’t think we’re the same size.’
Even though he’s behind me I can feel his eyes scrolling down my body checking me out. I walk into my dad’s bedroom.
‘You can borrow something from my dad,’ I say. I throw open the door to my dad’s en-suite bathroom and Jay makes a beeline straight for it, while I head over to my dad’s closet.
My dad only wears discreet designer clothes, all serving to make him blend in and project the image of him as professional and serious; exactly the kind of guy you’d want co-ordinating your rescue if Somalian pirates happened to kidnap you in the Gulf of Aden. His T-shirts are stacked in a neat pile in a drawer. I shake one out. My dad’s a big guy. He’s ex-military and still stays in shape, but it’ll have to do. Jay’s not exactly small either. With the T-shirt in hand I scan the closet. There are two dozen suits hanging on a rail, shoes polished to a high sheen lined up beneath them, and there on the shelf above the suits is the thing I am looking for. It’s just a small black backpack, but when I grab hold of it, and feel the weight of it on my shoulder, I feel instantly better.
I head to the bathroom to give Jay the T-shirt. It’s not until I’m standing in the doorway that I realise the shower is running and it’s too late to turn away before I catch a glimpse of Jay stepping naked into the shower stall. He turns around and I have to fight to keep my eyes from flying to his chest and, well . . . lower. Really fight. I shut my eyes, toss the T-shirt in his direction and blindly stumble out of the room making some kind of mumbling apology as I go. The image of his ass is now scored on to my retina with a laser gun.
I smile to myself for the first time since all this started.
The keypad on the safe stares blandly back at me as though it’s telling me not to waste my time. I stare it out. I’m on my knees next to my dad’s desk, where the safe is hidden behind a panel in the wall.
My dad’s codes might be uncrackable to strangers, but I know him. He doesn’t go for the obvious – birthdays, telephone numbers, anniversary dates – he uses seemingly random sequences. Except, they’re not random. One time he was opening his safe and he quoted, out of the blue, a line from Henry VI, Part 2 – The first thing we do, let’s kill the lawyers. (This was just after my parents divorced.)
It took me ages to figure it out – that he was using the scene, act and line number as the combination. But once I had a theory I tested it at the first opportunity and, hey presto, it worked.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare sits open in front of me now, lifted from the shelf in the living room. But Shakespeare wrote a lot of words. A ridiculous amount of words. How could one person write so many words? I ponder as I flick quickly through it, my hands clumsy with urgency. The thin paper rips. On the fourth flick through, I’m starting to panic. If I can’t get into the safe we’re in trouble. We need what’s in there.
Just as I’m about to toss the book and start raiding through all my dad’s suit pockets for small change or anything that might be pawnable, something catches my eye. I flatten the page and see a small biro mark in the inner margin beside a quote from King John.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes deeds ill done!
Scene 2, Act 4, line 114.
I spin the dial. 2 – 4 –11 – 4.
The click is a beautiful sound. Almost as beautiful as the sight of what’s inside. A stack of cash – probably enough to get Jay and me to the furthest corner of the South Pacific if we only had fake passports – a platinum credit
card in my father’s name, and one of his guns – a Smith & Wesson with two extra magazines lying beside it. I scoop it all out and shove the cash into the backpack I took from my dad’s closet – his go-bag. The credit card I slip into the back pocket of my shorts. I check the gun and then push that into the bag too, along with the extra magazines and the Glock 19 we took from the policeman. For a brief moment I see myself – a girl on her knees pushing a wad of cash and a gun into a bag – and want to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Who have I become? But then I hear the shower cut out and jump instantly to my feet.
I reach across my dad’s desk and scrawl a note on a Post-it.
Dad, I’m OK. Meet Tues 9 a.m., same place we bought the Statue of Liberty. Be careful. I love you, Liva
I shove the piece of paper into the safe, spinning the dial to lock it. I can only hope that my dad finds it, and that he knows where I’m talking about. It was the only place I could think of in a hurry, but it’s a good meeting place – lots of open space, lots of people, lots of escape routes if necessary.
I run back into the hallway, opening my mouth to yell for Jay to hurry, and then I freeze. My stomach drops a thousand feet and slowly, very slowly, I cock my head towards the door. There it is again, a gentle scrape scrape sound – someone tampering with the keypad. With my heart audibly smashing into my ribcage I tiptoe backwards as quietly as I can, my eyes fixed on the front door the entire time.
I fumble without looking for the door handle to my dad’s room and slip inside, closing the door gently behind me and twisting the lock. Then I run to the bathroom. Jay has a towel wrapped around his waist and is just bending to pick up his jeans from the sopping wet floor. He looks up in surprise when I burst in and straightens up slowly, giving me a slyly amused smile, as though he thinks I’ve burst in here specifically to catch another look at him naked, but then his expression switches to alertness when he sees the pure panic on my face and the go-bag in my hand.
‘Someone’s trying the door,’ I whisper.
Jay tosses the towel instantly aside and starts pulling on his jeans. I twist my head automatically away but turn towards the mirror and manage to catch a second glimpse of him naked. He sits on the edge of the bath to pull on his socks and shoes as I crane to listen. The touchpad makes it harder to get through the door – no lock to pick. And the bolts will delay things, but at the end of a day it’s just a door. And nothing has stopped them so far.
‘Is there another way out of here?’ Jay asks as he ties his shoes.
Our eyes meet in the mirror. Water is dripping from his hair and running in rivulets down his chest. I nod. ‘Yes.’ But you’re not going to like it, I think silently to myself.
17
Jay jumps to his feet, snatching for his T-shirt, and I notice the NYPD sweatshirt lying by the laundry bin and grab for it, shoving it in the backpack. It’s proved its worth already.
‘Let’s go,’ I say, motioning for Jay to be quiet as he follows me out into my dad’s bedroom.
There’s a crash that makes us both freeze – the sound of someone slamming their whole body with force against the door. Once they make it through we’ll have about ten seconds before they find us. I sling the bag on to my front, spin on my heel and grab hold of the window, sliding it open.
We’re twenty floors up. The wind barrels into the room with hurricane force.
‘What the—’ Jay starts but his words are whipped away by the snap of the curtain and the noise from outside that’s rushing in to fill the vacuum.
‘It’s the only other way out,’ I tell him, shouting over the wind.
He gives me the look again, the one that tells me he thinks I’m certifiably insane. ‘Two choices,’ I tell him, jerking my head in the direction of the apartment door, where the crashing is only intensifying. It’s not going to hold much longer.
A gunshot, followed instantly by the smack of a bullet ricocheting off metal, makes Jay jump. He inches to the window, arms spread wide. ‘You have a parachute or something?’ he asks.
‘We’re not going down,’ I tell him, nudging him aside. ‘We’re going up.’
He leans through gingerly beside me, holding on to the wall for anchorage, and I point to the roof just a foot above us. There are more advantages to living in the penthouse than the view – something I discovered the first time my dad left me home alone.
Jay pulls back inside, fear turning his features waxen. He shakes his head violently and mutters a string of words in Spanish. He glances one more time at the door as though actually weighing a confrontation with a bullet as a more appealing option.
I ignore him and fit myself into the window frame, my hands finding the corners.
‘Jesus Christ. You’re not seriously going out there?’ Jay asks, his fingers gripping my wrist.
I look at him and nod, and his hand falls away as he realises I’m deadly serious.
I take several deep breaths, trying to quiet my body. The stillness falls. It’s the same feeling I get the split second before I step on stage, when the world falls away and it’s just me and my breath and every cell in my body coming alive, attuned to every vibration, running totally in synch. On the out-breath I move, bracing for the impact of the wind. It tunnels into me, whipping my hair in front of my face and flattening my clothes against my body, but I’m in the zone and it’s barely a hindrance. I slide my hand along the face of the building until I find the thin groove that marks the start of the guttering and then I take a step.
Jay swears under his breath, but I keep going, inching along the ledge. I don’t look down, I just concentrate on keeping my balance, which is slightly off centre thanks to the weight of the bag. Once at the guttering, I ease my hand slowly under the metal bracket and grip tight before I step one foot off the ledge and swing my body around so I’m now face to face with the length of plastic tubing that runs down the side of the building. I hook my other hand around another metal bracket and my feet, stepped wide in a ballet stance, hold fast.
I turn my head. ‘Come on,’ I say to Jay, who is leaning out the window staring at me with eyes so wide they almost eclipse his face.
For a second I actually think he’s going to say no and disappear back into the room but then there’s an almighty sound of plaster and wood splintering and in the next second he’s balanced in the window frame.
‘Don’t look down. Go slow,’ I urge him.
His eyes lock on mine and I have to fight the urge to reach a hand out to him. My heart jerks to a halt in my chest as I watch him take a deep breath and step out on to the ledge. I breathe for him, willing his body to relax. He doesn’t look down, he looks right at me the whole time, and I hold his gaze tight, as though it’s a rope connecting him to me. He edges bit by bit towards me, until we’re close enough for our fingers to touch.
‘OK,’ I say to Jay over the roar of the wind. ‘See where my hand is? You’re going to copy what I do. Exactly. OK?’
I can see he wants to argue with me, but then he changes his mind and he just nods, swallowing away his fear as best he can. He closes his eyes and presses his head back against the brickwork and I see him mumble something that sounds a bit like a prayer.
I twist around, aware that my hands are starting to sweat – that my grip is slipping. I don’t have long. I grit my teeth and then I climb. It’s not hard. The guttering is well bolted and my feet are nimble. I’ve got enough upper body strength to pull myself up without too much difficulty. It’s all about forgetting what’s beneath. If you lose concentration for one second and start thinking about the drop to the sidewalk below, then you’re done for.
The last part of the climb is the hardest. I need to let go of the guttering with one hand, pull myself up with my arms and haul my leg over the ledge. I manage it and roll straight on to my front to look down. I expect to see Jay frozen to the guttering beneath me but he’s already climbing, following in my footsteps, sure now and confident in his movements.
His hand appears on the ledge and
I grab it and start pulling him, hauling him over the ledge. He collapses, panting, on to his back, clutching his side and breathing hard.
I lean over him, throwing the bag on to my back and tugging on his arm. ‘Come on, get up.’
His eyes flash open. He stares at me as though he’s seeing a stranger and it jolts me – but then he’s on his feet again, lurching slightly.
I take his hand and pull him towards the fire escape that clings to the side of the building. I’m doubting anyone will follow us up on to the roof, which means their only option will be to retrace their steps and try to meet us at the bottom. They even have a head start. I do the calculation halfway across the rooftop and come skidding to a stop, almost tearing Jay’s arm out of its socket.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘They’ll be waiting.’ I say and start pulling him in the other direction, away from the fire escape. He doesn’t pause even for a second, he turns with me, understanding. The other side of the building runs flush with the neighbouring apartment block. There’s a drop though. Fifteen feet or so. Jay goes first, hanging over the side and landing in a crouch. He stands and catches me around the waist when I drop. He seems to have shaken off the side effects of the climb and is now sprinting way faster than me. I have to push to keep up with him and, as if he senses the gap widening, he slows and holds out his hand to me. I take it while still running and together we leap on to the fire escape that clings to the side of this building, sending shock waves reverberating hard through my bones with the impact.
The whole thing shakes as we slam down it, grabbing the railings and launching ourselves down whole flights in one leap. We’re both high on adrenaline by the time we make it to the bottom and have to jump another twelve feet to make it to the sidewalk below. A few people have stopped to stare. Jay ignores them, swinging nimbly to the ground and then holding his arms out to catch me again. It’s practised this time, almost choreographed. He places me down lightly and we sprint around the corner. Jay dashes straight into the road, ignoring the traffic, and the cars that swerve around him, honking. He flags down a yellow taxi by standing right in front of it so it has to emergency brake, then he throws open the door and we dive inside, panting, both of us yelling at the driver to go. The driver shakes his head at us but he puts his foot to the floor and obliges.
Out of Control Page 9
