Crosscut (46 page)

“Then what?”

He shot me a glance, frazzled. “Find another elevator. Bump down the stairs or let you piggyback me. Anything but hang around here.”

Mom scooted around the edge of the car, staying clear of the severed half hand, and leaned out.

“Clear. Let’s do it.” She jumped out.

My heart felt thready. I stepped around the gory fingers and followed her, thumping down onto the wide walkway of the mezzanine. Below us in the lobby the lights were still spasming. Jesse handed me the hunting knife. I backed out of his way, watching him wheelie and balance himself in the doorway. Three feet was no piece of cake. He was going to land damned hard.

“Sure you don’t want to—”

“I’m sure.” He rocked his feet up, inching forward, gauging it.

Something warm sprayed my cheek, a mist. The gunshot echoed around the atrium. Mom fell to the floor.

“Ev,” Jesse yelled. “Get down.”

Mom lay crumpled on the carpet, eyes wide, gasping. I dropped to her side. My horror was airless and jagged.

Jesse shouted at me, “Evan.”

I looked up. Coming down the stairs from the upper mezzanine was Coyote. She was gimping along, her foot turned on its side. The remnant of her right hand hung soaked in a bloody strip of fabric. She had ripped her shirt and wound it around her palm to stanch the bleeding. In her left hand she awkwardly gripped the Glock.

Mom stared up at me. The pain in her eyes looked as though it had come at her from a direction beyond our experience. She opened her lips but didn’t speak.

Coyote balanced her way down the wide mezzanine staircase. Her face was deathly pale but impassive. She appeared less a woman than a zombie eking its way across rough terrain. She wasn’t flinching, wasn’t cringing. Though desperately injured, she obviously felt no pain. Only purpose.

“You took my life. You four.”

She worked to raise the Glock again. It weighed a couple of pounds, and with her arm fractured by the tire iron she struggled to control it. Her hand drooped. She began raising her entire arm from the shoulder.

A rasp rose in my head, the sound I’d heard when I saw Coyote walk past me through the revolving door, and when I knew that Tommy and Abbie were dead, the hollow roar caused by certainty kicking the base out from under my world.

I could run. And the day after tomorrow I would bury Jesse and my mother.

If I didn’t run, I had to get close. All I had to put between them and Coyote was my own body. Now, before the gun came up.

The rasping disappeared. Truth rang through me like a bell. I could not let Coyote get down the stairs. If she did, we were lost. No matter what happened, I had to stand.

Raising the knife, I ran at her. The sound coming out of my throat was wild. She could not get down the stairs. Could not.

Behind me I heard Jesse screaming at me to stop. I saw Coyote brace her torn right arm beneath her left hand, supporting it and working the Glock up to firing position. I charged her, knife out, seeing the gun aimed at the rug, at the air, swinging around.

She dodged and the knife went through her shirt. She grabbed me, wrapping her damaged arms around my chest. And she pulled me back, off balance, toward the railing. Jesse screamed, I screamed. Clasping me like a lover, Coyote flung herself backward and together we flipped over the rail.

We fell. And hit the painters’ scaffold.

I landed on my back on the rickety wooden platform. Coyote whammed down on top of me. Her uneven eyes hovered inches from mine. Her right arm was wrapped beneath me, pinning my left arm to my side. Her left arm, in which she held the Glock, pressed on my right hand. She had the knife pinned to the platform. I couldn’t wrest it free.

“You took my life,” she said. “That day. South Star, I tried to stop it.” Teeth bared. “
Stop it
. You were downwind; I knew you were.”

I tried to get my arm out from under her. No good. I swung a leg around and kicked her broken ankle. That did worse than nothing. It didn’t hurt her, but the scaffold wobbled beneath us. It was only a couple of feet wide. Falling the next twenty feet to the marble floor of the lobby would be easy as anything. She bared her teeth.

“I ran back but it detonated. I got it full force. And this is what I’ve become.”

Over her shoulder, on the mezzanine above, I saw Jesse wedge his arm around the rail and give it every effort he had to stand up. He was at least six feet above us. He couldn’t possibly reach me. The scaffold trembled again. Coyote wrapped her legs around me and the platform, holding on as though riding a wild horse bareback. Frantic, I tried to brace myself. The knife slipped from my fingers. It dropped and dropped, and it was a long time before I heard it bounce on the marble.

Inches from my face, Coyote’s mouth lost its sneer. Her lips quivered. For a second I saw Kai Torrance, the street kid holding her tragedies inside, the woman who so hated herself that she no longer believed she was a woman. The animal that couldn’t feel pain except by inflicting it on others.

“My life,” she whispered.

Groaning with exertion, she brought up her left arm. The Glock came into view. She had wedged her index finger deep into the trigger guard so that she had a secure grip.

“You took.”

She aimed the Glock at my face. I grabbed her hand. She was still strong, but with her arm broken she had only the barest ability to resist. I pushed and bent her broken bones and twisted her hand around to an angle it could never naturally have reached, and I shoved the gun against her temple.

Her gaze cleared. It seemed to burn with startled recognition. “Woman. You.”

Staring her in the eyes, I squeezed her trigger finger. The roar was deafening.

Everything flew. The gun, Coyote, and me. The recoil slammed me sideways and the scaffold shuddered again and though I grabbed for the platform, the whole thing went over like an animal brought down. I rolled off the side, over and over in the air, spinning with Kai Torrance to the floor below.

Fragments remain. Memories like shards of colored glass, flashing with light every now and then.

The fall. Air and darkness, the clear thought: Fuck, this is going to hurt.

Lying on the marble. Still, broken somewhere, Kai Torrance’s body underneath me. Hearing Mom’s voice. Seeing Jesse bump backward down the stairs, hanging onto the rail, calling my name over and over.

Spinning lights, blue and red. LAPD commandos breaking the front window with a battering ram.

Jesse’s face next to mine after he dropped onto the floor beside me, his hand on my cheek. Mom on the other side, holding me.

Reaching up, my fingers touching her, hearing her say she was all right. Shock and pain.

The rest of the night, and the next two days, are nothing but shadow. I spent them under heavy sedation at UCLA Medical Center. When I regained coherence, Mom was standing at the window in my room with her arm in a sling, looking pale and seraphic, her spiky hair a halo in the afternoon sun. Dad was dozing in a hard chair with
HMS Surprise
open on his lap. By my bedside Jesse was frayed and silent, his head and shoulders resting on the bed, his hand clasping mine. He had spent one night in jail before Captain McCracken and Special Agent Dan Heaney combined their leverage to convince the Los Angeles authorities that he was one of the just. No charges had been filed against him.

Kai Torrance was dead before we hit the ground.

Maureen Swayze was on a ventilator in the ICU. The doctors didn’t know if she would survive. The poison in the syringe was a genetically engineered variant of tetrodotoxin, the neurotoxin found in puffer fish. Primacon was researching its potential as a Parkinson’s and epilepsy treatment. She was cardiac and nerve damaged, partially paralyzed, and in excruciating pain. And cogent. When they asked her if she could write down the name of her next of kin, she took the pen and scrawled,
Kill me
. Mom sounded calm when she described it.

After that, I slept like a baby.

 
The next week, after I was released from the hospital and the truck came home from the body shop, Jesse and I drove up to the high desert. My left arm was in a cast. My pelvis had a hairline crack, but there was nothing for that except rest. I’d had an MRI and a dozen blood tests that all indicated I was free from infection by South Star. Jesse rested his elbow on the window frame. Trisha Yearwood was on the stereo, true aching country music, a generous offering on his part and yet another reason why I loved the man so much. The sky was lacquered blue. A hawk soared overhead, riding the thermals, searching for prey.

Far north of China Lake, he turned off the highway and followed the old road up the slope into the sage and scrub. It was late afternoon and the sun was angling down. Thunderheads boiled above the mountains. He stopped and we worked our way across the rocky ground to the overlook. Across the valley the Sierras soared to meet the blue.

In my hands I held an armful of white roses. I chose one.

“For Kelly.”

I tossed it to the wind.

I chose another. “For Ceci.”

And so it went, one for each of them. I felt calm, until the last few.

“For Valerie.”

I flung the rose in the air. Seven remained. I bunched three and raised my hand. My voice had a fissure in it.

“For Tommy.”

They arced out over the rugged terrain. Three more. Her name wouldn’t come easily, and so I breathed and said it in a whisper.

“For Abbie.”

The wind caught them and they soared for a second, and were gone. Jesse took the final rose from my hand. His voice was quiet.

“For the baby.”

Heat ran through me and the wind brushed my back. Above the Sierras lightning rippled, flashes in the clouds so far distant that the thunder died before it reached us. Emptiness didn’t begin to explain how I felt.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“No.” His face was grave. “That’s not what you say to me. Not ever.”

I felt pain behind my eyes. I blinked, trying to hide my tears and confusion. But he pulled me onto his lap and took my face in his hands.

“I’m in this with you. All the way.”

“I only wish . . .” I closed my eyes. “If only—”

Fingers against my lips. “
If
is a word that will eat you alive. Believe me, I know.”

He smoothed my hair out of my eyes and kissed my forehead. We held each other and watched the daylight sail away.

 
“You ready?” I said.

Dad nodded. He squared his shoulders and smoothed down his bristling white hair. I straightened his tie. My hand lingered.

“There’s no turning back,” I said.

“This day has been far too long in coming. It’s time.” Mom stepped up and took his hand. We walked through the courthouse archway. Jesse was waiting outside.

The day was sunny and the television cameras were gathered on the sidewalk. Lavonne Marks was reading to them from a prepared statement. Reporters were taking notes. Dad shook Jesse’s hand.

“You don’t have to do this, Phil,” Jesse said. “Not for me.”

“Yes, I do. Not just because I took the coward’s road with you.”

I could hardly bear to look at my father’s face. I was already frightened over what was coming. Seeing the regret in his eyes when he looked at Jesse was almost more than I could bear. Dad knew he was wrong for asking him to have me terminate the pregnancy. He wanted to undo things, make up for this, redeem himself.

But it was more than that.

He wanted to atone for twenty years when people from my class were suffering and dying because of the explosion at China Lake. He couldn’t have prevented the blast or stopped us from being exposed. But, he had come to believe, he could have done more. Pressed harder. Taken chances and dug deeper. But he hadn’t, and my friends had died.

He stepped to the microphone.

“My name is Philip Delaney. I’m a retired captain in the U.S. Navy, a veteran with twenty-five years of military service. I’m here today to talk about an operation called Project South Star, and how agencies working supposedly to protect this nation instead hired an assassin to murder a group of civilians from China Lake, California.”

He was falling on his sword.

“You in the media have been covering the Coyote killings. What you don’t know is that this killer was made, not born. And she was set loose to execute classmates from the high school in China Lake, my daughter among them.”

I watched the reporters and cameramen. They were attentive. Did they understand what he was doing? He was blowing it all away. He was going to lose his security clearance, his job, his reputation. He would be discredited, shamed within the military and intelligence communities to which he had dedicated his life. He would probably be prosecuted. He was betraying his oath of secrecy for the sake of me, my classmates, and the idea that the nation deserved better than what Maureen Swayze and the black world of government ops had given them.

I was proud of him.

He spoke with dignity and assurance. Beyond the reporters, a small crowd of onlookers was gathering on the sidewalk. I wanted to make sure they listened, closely, and appreciated. I tried to make eye contact with each of them, willing them all to stay and hear him out.

Abruptly, my vision prismed. At the back of the crowd, still, hard, and conspicuous as hell, stood Jakarta Rivera. Her face was somber. I shot a glance at Dad.

He didn’t stop talking or break the rhythm of his statement, but his eyes settled on her and his voice slowed for a moment. He lifted his head, just an inch. In the back of the crowd, Jax did the same. Their eyes held for a second. She turned and walked away.

 
It took me the whole drive home to work up the courage. Swinging the Mustang around the corner onto my street, I finally turned to Dad.