"How could you?" she said very quietly as I started to run.
"Just get back in the house!" I yelled.
Chapter 102
Please, God, I said as I sprinted. Please, please, please, let my boy be okay.
Calm, calm. I can handle this, I thought, trying to relax myself as I huffed. I could talk to Apt. Get him to release Ricky. God had given me that gift, the power to talk to folks, to calm them down, especially people who were hurt in some way. People with sick minds.
I'd negotiate for Ricky whatever it was Apt wanted. It was what I did. I had no choice.
Tears in my eyes, my lungs on fire, I crossed over the concrete path of the boardwalk onto the dark sand. I spotted a quarter moon out over the water. On the horizon were red lights, tiny ship lights, so far away.
I was panicking, thinking I'd come to the wrong place. Then I spotted some movement by the lifeguard chair where Mary and I had made out.
Oh, my God! It was them. There was a man standing next to Ricky. He had a Mohawk and was wearing an army jacket and aviator sunglasses. Not only that, but he was holding a knife to Ricky's throat!
I couldn't really tell if it was Apt. He was just a crazy man. A crazy, evil man with my eleven-year-old son's life in his hands. Ricky was actually taped to the chair, I realized. Black electrical tape crisscrossed over his arms and legs, over his neck.
"I'm here," I said, falling to my knees about twenty feet away. My whole body was covered in sweat. "You win, Carl. Let's talk, okay?"
Apt cocked his head at me, his mouth tight and angry.
"Get up, Bennett! Get up, tough guy. Mr. Badass. Stand up like a man!" he said.
I slowly stood. "We can work this out, Carl," I said.
"Oh, we're gonna work this out, all right," he said. "What are you waiting for, Bennett? Come and get me!"
I stood there frozen.
That's when I noticed he had a baseball bat in his other hand. Ricky screamed as Apt turned and hit him in the back with it.
"You want me? Then come and get me!" he screamed.
I ran at him. It wasn't a conscious decision. Some force sent me hurtling forward through the darkness, my feet flying, my toes digging, kicking back sand. Both of my feet were off the ground when I dove at him. I don't think he expected me to reach him from so far away. I know I didn't. I saw shock in his face before I plowed into him as hard as I could, sending the bat flying.
Chapter 103
We both scrambled back up. I got up first and swung as hard as I could at his face. It was a good right. It felt the way it does when you've swung a golf club perfectly, two hundred yards pin straight down a fairway.
It would have probably ended things right then and there, but my swing was too high, and I heard my pinkie snap as I punched him in his thick-skulled forehead. I screamed as I hit him with my broken right hand again. I made contact with his glasses and nose this time. He screamed as I felt something squish.
I really thought I had him again, but then he was on me like some kind of wild animal, shrieking as he thumbed at my eyes and grabbed my face. His hands were like steel. He got his fingers deep into the muscles of my cheeks. It felt like he was tearing my jawbone off as he pushed me back.
A second later, as I was about to try another swing, Apt slammed into me, and I felt something punch quickly into my right side.
I looked down. There was a knife in me. I stared down at the steel blade, embedded through the waistband of my shorts just above my right hip, as blood began to pour out.
Chapter 104
I fell to my knees in the sand again. My whole body began to tingle painfully. I felt a stinging like pins-and-needles, only sharper, like a low-level electric current was running through me.
I had trouble thinking, trouble seeing. The surf was crashing behind me. I knelt there, afraid to touch the knife, beginning to shake as I bled.
Before I could form even the semblance of a thought, Apt kicked me in the side of the head. He was wearing steel-toed combat boots, and I immediately went down, my skull ringing.
"That's all!" he screamed as he reared back and kicked me full in my unprotected balls.
I threw up then. I was leaking from every orifice. Pain was arriving from all points at once.
I don't know how I got to my feet, but I did. I started running down the beach. I was the one he wanted, and I wanted him to follow me. I needed to get this fucking maniac as far away from my son as possible.
I didn't make it twenty feet before I was tackled from behind. I screamed. The knife had opened me up even deeper as I landed. It was in deep, the blade now scraping on bone.
"This all you got?" Apt said, turning me over and pinning my shoulders with his knees.
"You know what I'm going to do now?" he said. He went into his pocket and brought out something orange-tinged and gleaming.
No. Please, no, I thought. It was a pair of brass knuckles.
I went out when he hit me in the side of my face. When I came out of it, the bone near my eye didn't feel right. The eye itself felt like it was hanging wrong.
"This is what Lawrence wanted. Not for me to shoot you. Not for me to knife you, but for me to beat you to death. He wanted you to feel it, he said. What he wanted was for a hero, a truly good person, to feel what it felt like to be him, to be on the bottom, to be nothing. So don't blame me, Bennett. Remember, I'm just the errand boy."
When he swung again, he broke my jaw. My face, my entire self, felt cracked, like a jigsaw puzzle being taken apart.
Bleeding badly, almost unconscious, and barely able to breathe, I was going down heavily, like a foundering ship, when I heard it.
"Freeze!"
I didn't know whose voice it was. At first I thought it might have been God's. Then I recognized its familiar tone, its pitch, its power.
It was the voice of authority that they'd taught us at the Police Academy. It was a cop's voice, I realized. A sole cop's voice crying in my wilderness, and it was the sweetest sound I'd ever heard.
"Relax, relax. We're just messing," Apt said, raising his hands as he got off me.
Then I heard it again.
"Freeze!"
But the voice was different now. Same tone of authority, but from someone else. Incredible. It was another cop! The cavalry.
"Freeze, fucker!" called a woman a moment later.
"You heard her. Put your hands up!" called another voice.
"Down, down!"
Now I heard a litany of voices, a choir. I realized they were my neighbors. Breezy Point's Finest, a regiment of vacationing cops to the rescue.
"On your knees, shit-ass!"
What happened next was a blur. Apt screamed, and then there was a cracking sound. Actually several of them. Cracking and popping like firecrackers going off all around me, and I turned my face down into the sand like a fed-up ostrich and passed out.
"Okay, okay. C'mon, c'mon. Let's pick it up."
I woke up with a start, still lying facedown but staring at the blurring ground. I felt about twenty hands on me, running me across the sand. The face next to mine was Billy Ginty's, my neighbor, an anticrime cop from Brooklyn. I saw another guy from my block, Edgar Perez, a horse cop sergeant with a disabled kid. There was a big burly son of a bitch in a Mets jersey, and I realized it was Flaherty. He was holding me as gently as a baby, his face red as he ran.
My friends and neighbors, all of them heroes, were trying to save my life.
We suddenly stopped somewhere. I wanted to thank Flaherty, to apologize, but he shushed me.
"Don't you dare go out now," he said. "They're getting you a chopper. You're going for a ride on the whirly bird, you lucky dog."
"Mike, Mike," Mary Catherine said from far away.
From somewhere close by, I could hear Ricky crying. Oh, thank you, God. He was all right.
"Tell him it's okay. I'm okay," I said or attempted to. I gagged as I swallowed blood, salty and thick like metallic glue.
"Stop, Mike. Don't t
ry to talk," Mary Catherine said, next to me now.
My cell phone started to ring.
"I got it. I got it. It's for me," I gurgled as I reached for it.
Then Mary Catherine took it out of my pocket and tossed it. My eyes fastened on it in the sand where it glowed on and off, ghostly and blue as it rang and rang and rang.
Then I looked up at Mary Catherine. I remembered how magical she had looked that night diving into the water. I wished we could both do that now. Walk down to the beach, hand in hand, go under the waves where it was quiet and dark, quiet and peaceful down in the tumbling warmth.
Epilogue
Chapter 105
I'm at the window in the bedroom of my apartment.
A strange nickel-colored light fills the streets. The streets are empty. No cars, no people. The lustrous light winks off endless rows of empty windows. Off to my right beyond the buildings is the Hudson River, but I can't see any current. Everything is as still as a painting. The curtains blow in on my face for a moment and then fall back, still, and I know time has stopped.
I'm sitting back against the headboard of my bed, which is funny because my bed isn't anywhere near the window, only now it is. Then I realize it's not my current apartment on West End Avenue. It's actually my old place, the tiny studio Maeve and I rented on a sketchy run of Riverside Drive after we got married.
Just as I realize this, arms suddenly embrace me from behind. I want to turn, but I can't. I'm paralyzed. Hair stands up on the back of my neck as a chin rests on my shoulder.
Michael, a soft Irish-accented voice whispers in my ear.
It's my dead wife, Maeve. She's alive. I can feel the warmth of her hands, her breath in my ear, on my cheek. I check myself, feel my side where Apt stabbed me, feel my face for the dent in my fractured face, but everything is impossibly smooth. An incredible sadness rises in me like an overflowing spring.
No, she admonishes me when I start to cry.
But it's over, I cry.
No, she says again as a finger wipes away a tear and presses against my lips.
It's not the end. There is no end. That's the good part. How are all my babies?
I have trouble breathing, I'm crying so hard.
Baby, you should see Juliana. She's so brave and capable, just like you. And Brian, he's this huge, wonderful, polite young man.
Just like you, Maeve says.
And the rest of them. Eddie's so funny, and Trent. The younger girls have left me in the dust, honey. Pink is cool one second, then it's so babyish. I can't keep up. Oh, God, you'd be so proud of them.
I am, Michael. I see them sometimes. When they need me, I'm with them. That's another good part.
I reach out and suddenly hold her thin wrist. I move over to her hand, run my finger over her wedding ring.
I made it back to you. I knew I would. I never doubted it.
When she squeezes my hand back, my sadness evaporates, and I'm overcome with a pulsing warmth. I'm being filled inside and out with peace. Suddenly there's a pop, and a rushing sound fills my ears, like water roaring violently through a pipe. The bed starts to shake.
Will you show me everything? I say, holding on to her hand for dear life.
Of course, Michael, she says as she lets go of my hand. But not now. It's not the right time.
But I don't want to go back, I yell. Not yet. I have so many questions. What about us? What about Mary Catherine?
I know you'll be good to her, Michael, Maeve yells over the increasing roar. I know you. You would never play with a person's heart.
That's when I turn.
But Maeve isn't there.
Nothing is. Everything is gone. My room, the block, the city, the planet. There is nothing but the roar, and my breath and sight fail as it swallows me whole.
Chapter 106
First, there was just blackness and pain and a relentless chirping beep. It was like a bird had gotten inside of me somehow and was trying to peck its way out. Two large predator birds. One in my side, one in my face.
I opened my stinging eyes. Outside the window beside me, sun sparkled off an unfamiliar parking lot. On a highway in the distance, cars passed normally under a blue, cloudless sky.
A red-haired nurse with her back to me was moving some kind of wheeled cart in the corner. When I opened my mouth to call to her, I tasted blood again. I felt dizzy and weak, and nausea crowded up on me, and I slipped under again.
Next time I woke up, my eyes adjusted to the gray shapes. At first I thought there were people hovering above me, but then I realized they were balloons. Red and blue and shimmering Mylar ones. About as many as floated out of Carl's chimney in the movie Up.
I looked away from them, wincing in pain. My face and my side were hot and tight with an itchy, horrendous stinging. The head-to-toe tightness was the worst. I felt like a sheet being pulled apart.
"Thank the Lord. Oh, thank you, God," someone said. It definitely wasn't me.
A second later, Seamus's face appeared.
"Please don't tell me it's last rites."
"No, no, you've got at least another fifty years to suffer in this vale of tears, you crazy SOB. You scared the H-E-double-hockey-sticks out of us all."
"How long have I been out?"
"This would be day three."
"How's…?"
"Apt? Deader than dog excrement," said another voice.
Emily Parker appeared next to my grandfather.
"Mary Catherine followed you down to the beach. She said when she saw you fighting, she ran back and started ringing doorbells. I guess it pays to have half the police and fire department for neighbors when you're on vacation."
I nodded.
"How's…?"
"Your condition?" Seamus said.
I shook my head.
"Mary Catherine."
"She cried for two days," Seamus said. "But now I believe she's fine, Mike. She's one remarkable girl, or I should say, woman."
"It's true," Emily agreed. "She saved your life. And Ricky's. All of your lives. Feel better, Mike. Call me when you can. I have to go now. There's about a thousand people waiting to see you."
I squeezed Emily's hand.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"For what?" she said.
"For leaving the hotel."
She smiled.
"You're where you're supposed to be, Mike. I know that now."
The redheaded nurse came back then, looking pissed.
"Visiting time is over," she said as she shoved Seamus toward the door.
"Get better," ordered Seamus.
"I will."
"Promise," he called back.
I smiled.
"I swear to God, Father," I said.
I slept for another stretch. When I opened my eyes, it was dark and all my kids were there.
At first, I flinched. I didn't want them to see me this way. Their mother had died in a hospital bed. They'd seen enough horror in their young lives, hadn't they? But after a minute, I found myself smiling as I looked from concerned face to concerned face.
They were all trying to be brave and to make me smile, I saw. Mary Catherine most of all. A wall of concern and love and support was bearing down on me whether I liked it or not.
After a little bit, I smiled back through my tears. I couldn't have helped it if I'd wanted to. Resistance was futile.
"Go give your Da a kiss," Seamus instructed my kids.
And incredibly, somehow, all at the same time, that's exactly what they did.
HAYS BAKER: FATHER. HUSBAND. PATRIOT. HERO. #1 MOST WANTED. FOR AN EXCERPT, TURN THE PAGE.
"My, my. The president wants to meet us," Lizbeth whispered in my ear as we followed Jax Moore farther into the mansion.
"Of course he does," I said with a wink.
Actually, Lizbeth and I were considered stars at that particular moment in time. We'd just returned from Vegas where we had saved countless lives while arresting a gang of moderately clever human bank robbers who had
been terrorizing the West.
Anyway, Jax Moore whisked us through eight-foot-tall carved oak doors that led to the mansion's private living area. Well-concealed scanners examined every pore of our bodies as we walked to the entrance of the president's oval-shaped office, which was modeled after the famous original in the now-sunken city of Washington, DC.
I was immediately reminded that humans had created some good things in the past, such as this fine neoclassic style of architecture. But they'd also severely ravaged the planet, hadn't they? A couple decades ago, the first generation of Elites had barely managed to save it from total destruction. Washington, DC, was one of many cities on the casualty list, along with most of the low-lying eastern seaboard, including New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia, all of which had been swallowed up long ago by the rising oceans.
When we stepped into the Oval Office, President Hughes Jacklin was standing in front of a full-length mirror, fumbling with his cravat. At his side was his faithful bodyguard and supposed lover, a behemoth named Devlin.
Seeing us, the president let the tie go and strode across the room to greet Lizbeth and me, as if we were old friends. He was a hugely impressive man, classically educated, firm-jawed and broad-shouldered, and his thick dark hair was just beginning to gray at the temples.
"My dear, the sun is down and it's still as bright as day around you," he said to Lizbeth, kissing her perfect cheeks, one, then the other.
"Mr.-Mr. President," Lizbeth stammered ever so slightly, "I'm speechless-almost anyway."
"What you are is incredibly charming," countered the president.
He turned to me and gave a firm handshake. "Hays Baker, this is a great pleasure. You're beautiful too. Look, I'm late for my own party-we'll have time to get better acquainted later. But I want you to know I've followed your careers at the Agency closely. And I'm a big fan. That operation in Vegas was pure genius. Efficient and effective. Just what I like."
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