Concrete Savior (31 page)

Charlie suddenly ached to put his arms around Brenda and hold her, but at the same time, he didn’t know how. What he had done, or what he hadn’t done by cutting himself off from her, had created a chasm between the two of them, the likes of which had never existed in all their years together. He didn’t know how to fix this, how to throw a lifeline across that enormous void. For the first time since their naive first dates, he didn’t know what to say to Brenda.

Brenda, however, had never been one to mince words. A little shy at the beginning of their relationship, she had let that personality trait go by the time their first child had started kindergarten. If there was something on her mind, she said so . . . although you could count on her not to be overly mean about it.

“I’ve missed you, Charlie,” she said now. “I’ve been calling you . . . but you know that. Why haven’t you answere my calls or called me back? Did something go wrong with meeting your father?”

Charlie looked at the floor. His throat was locked tight, like someone who was silently choking at the dinner table. How could he explain to her that there was another woman? Someone he’d never touched, never kissed, never been with, but who was nearly eclipsing everything good in his marriage? How could he explain himself?

He couldn’t.

“Talk to me, Charlie.” She had that eternally patient look on her face. He’d never liked it when it had been directed at him, but at the same time had always admired it when it surfaced as a result of his children. There were pros and cons to everything.

“It went okay,” he finally said. “Well, less than okay.”

“What happened?”

“My father didn’t want to talk to me. He’s not a very nice man. He did give me my brother’s name and address.”

“You have a brother!” Her face lit up. “Did you meet him? Did you go talk to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“What can I say? He was just as surprised as I was. I didn’t call first. I just showed up at his door. We talked for a while. I went back over one more time, but it didn’t go very well.”

“Why not?”

Charlie thought about lying, about making up some story and saying that Eran had thought Charlie was after his girlfriend. Immediately he realized how despicable that would be, not to mention effectively cutting him off from his brother for the rest of his life. He didn’t want that to happen.

“I guess we don’t see eye to eye on some things,” Charlie said. “I’m sure we can work it out in time. It was a big shock to both of us.” Even to himself, he sounded tired and evasive. “I learned some details about my father and my mother that aren’t so nice, I suppose. That didn’t help.”

Brenda was silent and they just sat there for a while, her looking at him, him looking at the floor. “Charlie, what’s going on?” she finally asked. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

He shrugged but he didn’t know how to answer that. He couldn’t answer that. “I guess being here, in this city,” he said after a while, “has made me think about my life.” He risked a glance at her and saw her jaw tighten. Still, she said nothing. One of the greatest things about Brenda was that she also knew how to listen. “Maybe it’s a sort of grass-is-greener syndrome. The people, the excitement . . . it’s so different from Van Wert.”

She nodded. “It is.” She studied him for a minute or so. “There are definitely lots of different people here, Charlie.”

His gut twisted as he realized that Brenda knew what was going on in his head, his deepest secret. She knew about Brynna somehow. Maybe she didn’t know the details—Brynna’s name, what she looked like, or even that there was any connection to Eran. But Brenda was a smart woman, smarter than most.

“Have you been seeing someone else? Another woman?”

“No.” At least he could answer that honestly. Had she chosen her words differently and asked,
Did you meet someone else?
he would have had to lie. And Brenda would have known immediately that was exactly what he was doing.

“I haven’t been seeing anyone. I haven’t gone out with anyone.”

“But someone has caught your attention.”

Ouch.

When he didn’t deny it her expression sagged, but only for an instant. Then she drew herself up and nodded slowly. “I see.” Brenda looked around the hotel room, but the movement was more robotic than searching. “Well, I don’t think I should stay here,” she said. “So I’m going to get my own room. You can call me on my cell if you want to talk, whenever you’re ready. I’ll stay for a few days. Hopefully by then you’ll have things sorted out. You’ll figure out what you want . . . either way. Goodbye, Charlie.”

And she left him, sitting there on the edge of the bed and staring after her, and realizing that she had taken a huge part of the light in his life with her. The question was, did he want it to stay that way?

There was an enormous difference between Brenda and Brynna . . . and how odd was it that their names were so similar? Brenda was light and warmth and sunshine, and all the things that made his existence worthwhile. Brynna was darkness and intrigue, all the things his life was not and would never be with Brenda. Did he want that? And even if he did, did he stand a chance of getting it? The way things had gone so far—absolutely not. Was he fool enough to give up everything he had, all the love, on the far-fetched notion that Brynna might change her mind? Or was he man enough to look in the mirror and call himself an idiot for even considering such a thing?

Charlie got up and walked to the tiny bathroom, flipped on the light, and stared at his reflection in the age-spotted mirror hanging over the single sink. There were shadows under his eyes, bruising from where he hadn’t been sleeping, tossing and turning his way through each night. The face that stared back at him looked older than Eran’s, but bore a strong resemblance. It also held unpleasant shades of Douglas Redmond, the man of questionable reputation who was his father. Did he want to look in the mirror five years from now and see a man who had walked out on his family, whether or not he achieved what he thought he wanted?

He ran a hand through his hair, fingering the strands and wishing there were more of them, accepting that there weren’t. Then he rinsed his face with brutally cold water. Accepting; that’s what he should be. Someone like Brynna was never meant for him. It wasn’t a matter of class or station in life—nothing like that. There was something about her that, if he stood back and took his thoughts away from where they shouldn’t be to begin with, he realized didn’t fit with him. There was something . . .
wrong
about her, something untouchable. No, that wasn’t it—it was definitely touchable, but it shouldn’t be. That nailed it. It
shouldn’t
be.

He stared at himself for perhaps another ten seconds, then reeled out of the bathroom and headed for the door. Somewhere out here was his wife and he needed to stop her before she got her own room. She didn’t need that—she would
never
need that. She should be with him, and him with her. That’s where they belonged . . . together.

He would not go back to Eran’s, and he would not take the chance on seeing Brynna again. Obviously there was something inside him that could not resist her, and like the owner of a puppy that gets into the trash, he was going to take not the most intellectually challenging way out, but the most logical: remove the trash, remove the temptation. He would call Eran and say goodbye. When he did, he would apologize for his behavior and hope that he could somehow undo the damage he’d done so early in their brand-new relationship. Maybe someday they could actually be brothers, be a family.

But Charlie knew that someday was not going to happen for a long, long time.

E
ran must have made
a dozen phone calls as he raced toward the James R. Thompson Center. Brynna watched him from the passenger seat, impressed with the speed and efficiency he used in contacting all the right people to help find and stop Tate Wernick. Human technology was such a wonderful thing and had pushed their ability to contact each other so far from the story of Pheidippides running the first marathon in ancient Greece. Unfortunately, the criminals had evolved right along with the communication, and that seemed to be exactly what Eran was battling here.

“Of course he’s not at work,” Eran snapped into his cell phone. “And you won’t find him at home, either—don’t even bother. You’ll find Wernick somewhere around the Thompson Center. Odds are he’s going to want to detonate the device himself
and
be close enough to see the thing blow so he can see the outcome, take satisfaction in it. Depending on how savvy he thinks he is, he may be planning to go back to work, or he may have the day off. Check with his employer about that. He might also have a detailed getaway scheme already worked out.”

Eran was silent for a few moments, then he said, “It was an anonymous tip. Yeah, another one. No, there were no illegal searches going on here, no shake-downs that are going to come back and bite us in the ass.” Another pause, then Eran’s voice became even more frustrated. “No, I did
not
lean on anyone, and I am not hiding anything. Tell the commander to call me if he has any questions. In the meantime, we need to block the streets all the way around the Thompson Center, cut it off to incoming traffic and funnel the existing cars out. Get as many people away from there as quickly as you can without causing a panic, hopefully before the press gets too heavy in the area. Yeah, I know the mayor won’t evacuate based on a tip, but that’s the best I can do. All right. Let me know.”

Eran cut off the call and gripped the steering wheel, his face hard as he negotiated the traffic. The bubble lights were on the roof of the car, but as usual most of the other drivers simply ignored them. It took them almost twenty-five minutes to make it from Gina Whitfield’s place to LaSalle and Wacker, where yellow sawhorses had been set up and traffic was being rerouted. Vehicular movement surrounding the cordoned-off area was reaching fiasco proportions, and Eran had t the pain of it as he tried to get the car closer to his destination. A uniformed officer moved the sawhorse and waved him in, and Eran pressed the accelerator hard. But there were still so many moving and parked vehicles in the area, including trucks, that Brynna had no idea how they were going to figure out which was the right one.

“How can you tell?” she asked as she scanned the streets. “There are so many.”

Her frustration must have been evident. “Look for a rental truck,” Eran told her. “Something like a U-Haul or a Penske, or maybe some no-name local outfit. That would be more likely because it would be cheaper. It’ll be parked as close as possible to the building.” LaSalle had already been blocked off so he ignored the one-way signs and swung the car to the left, driving south on LaSalle until he reached where the building’s main entrance began to curve east. There he bumped over the curb hard enough to make Brynna’s teeth clack together and drove across the sidewalk, pulling into the small plaza and stopping directly in front of the black and white Dubuffet statue that Gina had described.

“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath. “I don’t see—wait! Over there!” Brynna followed his pointing finger to a rickety-looking gray and brown truck on the Clark Street side of the building. It was tucked between a street sign and the fire hydrant and had been pulled front-first almost all the way onto the sidewalk. Eran ran toward it and Brynna followed, and when they got closer, she could see a cheap magnetic sign on the door that read “Scott’s Truck Rents” and listed a suburban phone number. There were already a dozen cops warily circling the vehicle.

“Yeah,” Eran said. “That has to be it. Damn it—where’s the bomb unit?” He snapped open his phone and in another five seconds, he was barking questions to someone on the other end. “Has anyone called the rental place and checked on who rented this truck?” He was silent, but only for a moment. “Well, that figures—stolen.” He hung up. “The truck’s out of Cicero,” he told Brynna. “It was reported missing off the lot three days ago. Not something that would have generated much interest in the downtown area.” He held out a hand to stop her just as they crossed behind the Dubuffet statue. “You need to stay here.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a civilian,” he told her. “I’d get my ass handed to me on a platter if I brought you any closer.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “This is already
too
close. If Gina’s right and Tate has that truck rigged to blow, we’re all dead if we can’t stop him.”

As if to emphasize his words, one of the uniformed cops ran toward them, slowing only when Eran held up his detectivets star and said, “I’m the one who called this in.”

The officer nodded. “Right. I wouldn’t get any closer. A security guard had already called for a city tow when the word came over the radio.” He shook his head. “For once I guess it’s a good thing the damned tow truck took too long.” He squinted at the truck but made no move to go back to his original position. “You really think there’s a bomb in that thing?”

“Absolutely,” Eran said. “Make sure you get any stragglers the hell away from here.”

Brynna tugged on his sleeve and he stepped off to the side with her as the cop hurried away. “So how does this work?”

“What?”

“The bomb,” she said. “I don’t see Wernick. How does he make it explode?”

Eran scanned the street, which despite the steadily increasing number of squad cars still had plenty of people on it. More, in fact, because gawkers were starting to build up along the do-not-cross lines set up by the police. “You can’t track Wernick?” he asked. “I thought you had ways—”

“I never got close to him,” she reminded him. “We were too far away from him on Navy Pier for me to pick up anything.”

“Damn.”

“The bomb,” she prompted. “How does it work?”

He blinked at her. “Stuff like this—some local yahoo who’s out for revenge—could go a couple of ways. It might be rigged on a timer, or he might have it set to a remote detonator.” He scowled. “Or he could cover his bases and do both.”

“So we have to find those things?” She frowned and looked around a little helplessly.

“If it’s a timer, it’ll be in the truck itself,” he told her. “Most likely in the engine compartment, close to the power source—the battery. Nowadays a remote detonator is generally rigged via a cell phone. You call the number of the phone that triggers the switch on the engine.” Eran pushed his hair back, his gaze cutting up and dowhe streets. “I’m almost positive he’ll want to see the damage done by the bomb. The question is how close is close enough?” He glanced at his watch. “Damn it, it’s almost four o’clock. Where’s that fucking bomb unit? They need to get in there and disable the switch to the battery.”

He started toward the parked truck but Brynna closed a hand over his wrist and turned him back toward the corner of Clark and Randolph. The man in question was across the intersection, standing on the northwest corner in front of the Richard J. Daley Center. On the other side of police cars that were parked end to end, quite a crowd had built up but he had staked a spot for himself in front of everyone and was staring intently toward the old rental truck. “Isn’t that him?” she asked.

Eran looked where she was indicating, then he gasped. “Yes!” He took a long step forward, then froze. “Oh
shit.
”

Brynna focused on Tate Wernick and saw what had stopped Eran. Wernick was pulling a cell phone from his pocket, flipping it open literally as Brynna and Eran stared.

“We don’t have enough time!” Eran cried.

What Brynna did was completely by instinct.

Fire.

It was her best weapon and something with which she was intimately acquainted, in all its beautiful, exquisitely agonizing forms. The buildup of heat in her center was instantaneous and vaguely pleasurable—she so seldom satisfied the Hell-born pyromaniac that was always secreted inside. The blast that rolled out of each palm was all but invisible, nothing more to the eye than two shimmering circles that resembled the heat mirages that formed above the sand at the height of summer.

The one from her left hand was infinitely more powerful, but before it hit the truck Brynna yanked her hand back and stretched it into an unseen rope, slipping it under the front bumper and into the engine compartment. There was a white-hot flash and the front end of the rental truck lifted up three feet before slamming back to the sidewalk. Noise, like someone beating the world’s biggest drum, rolled across the plaza, drowning out the startled yells of the cops who were a little too close. At the same time, the smaller, more condensed burst from Brynna’s right palm hit Tate Wernick at chest level, enveloping his hands and forearms in a micro-eruption of scarlet fire. The cell phone he was dialing exploded and Wernick shrieked and pitched onto his back, flailing and kicking as people leaped away from him.

Everything went instantly to chaos as people ran in all directions, sirens and alarms began to howl, and more vehicles and police filled the area to overcapacity. The cleanup would, Brynna knew, last for hours, so after a few moments of watching Eran run back and forth, she caught his gaze and tipped a hand to her forehead to signal she was leaving. The single calm moment in all the confusion was the silent look of gratitude he sent her before she headed home and left him to deal with the aftermath.

BRYNNA FOUND CASEY ANLON
standing on the edge of the two-foot-high barrier that ran around the roof of his building. The sidewalk was nearly a hundred feet below him and he was staring at it with an almost mesmerized expression on his face. She didn’t know how long he’d been up here. Sweat was trickling down both sides of his forehead, and his hair was plastered to his skull. There were rings of dampness beneath the arms of his light-colored T-shirt.

“Hey, Casey,” she said as carefully as she could. She didn’t want to startle him into stepping forward. She must have done a good job because his face turned slowly in her direction but his feet didn’t move. The look he gave her was dull, as if he didn’t quite understand why she was there.

“Oh, uh . . . hi.” He frowned slightly. “I—I’m sorry. I can’t remember your name.” One hand came up and he rubbed at his forehead. “That’s rude, isn’t it? I don’t know what’s wrong with my mind right now.”

“I’m sure you’re thinking about a lot of things,” Brynna said. “Maybe some things that you shouldn’t be.”

He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Oh, you mean this.” He glanced back over the edge of the roof. “I guess this is kind of a personal decision, don’t you think?”

She nodded. “I do. But it’s also a very permanent one. Not much chance of changing your mind about it.”

“Some things should be permanent. To . . . stop more damage.”

“Is that what you think?” she asked. “That you just do damage?”

“Oh, I know I do.” He waved vaguely at the city spread below him. Brynna sucked in her breath as the movement made him lean forward a little. “The proof is right there, splashed in the papers. Everyone knows how much ‘damage’ I’ve done.”

“And you think this will what? Make up for it?”

He tilted his head. “No, not make up for it. Retribution maybe. Payback.”

Brynna’s mouth thinned. “Revenge? For who?”

“A lot of people. The families of the ones left behind.”

Brynna shook her head. “Revenge is never a good thing to begin with, but it doesn’t apply to you anyway. Revenge is for those who lost something because someone did something to them intentionally. That wasn’t the case here.”

“It might as well have been.”

“No, not at all,” she insisted. “Don’t you see, Casey? Jashire—she’s the one who orchestrated this whole mess. If there’s anyone who should carry the blame, it’s her. Everything that happened, she did. She moved you and Gina like pieces on a game board, and that’s what it was to her—an ugly sport.”

“Yeah, I met her,” he said. “But does it really matter who
started
it? The results are here, in black and white. Those are what count. How it happened is past history.”