Some Gave All (11 page)

The guys broke into cheers and applause and Heather’s hooded friend aimed his weapon at her again. All she had to do was figure out reverse. That was all—

—and then she heard a “chirp-chirp” and the guy opened her door himself. He squatted down on his haunches beside her. He was holding a remote control fob in his hand.

“Fire!” she screamed, which is what you learned in self-defense class, because no one would come to your aid if you screamed for help.

“Hey, calm down, girl,” he said. “
Man.
”

She swallowed hard. “I’m a student. I work part-time. I don’t have very much money and my sister is a cop.”

He pulled in his chin. “No shit?”

“No shit. So don’t try anything or she will put your ass in the electric chair!”

He and his thugs burst into laughter. She was aware that he was dangling his gun between his legs and she could push him over with a well-placed side kick and make a run for it. Except there was no place to run. This place was crawling with gangbangers.

“I just dialed nine-one-one,” she informed them. “The police will be here any second.”

“Nice try, but you ain’t got no bars, baby.” He held up his own phone… identical to hers.

“I
do
,” she insisted. “I have a special police frequency.”

This was hilarious to them. She told herself she would not burst into tears or plead for her life. And she
would
go down fighting.

Attack him. It will scare the others
.

But it wouldn’t. All he had to do was take one step backward and she’d be sailing into the dirt at his feet.

So she opened her mouth to plead for her life and instead of begging to be spared because she was her cop-sister’s only family, she said, “Can I buy that gun off you?”

BELOW
N
EW
Y
ORK

V
incent came to with a sharp gasp. He was sprawled on his back with his right leg bent underneath his left; he hurt all over and there was blood on his hands. And his arms. He raised his head and looked down at himself. His jeans were soaked with blood.

What happened? What did I do?

By the overwhelming stench he knew he was in a sewer. It was pitch dark but his night vision was functioning perfectly. He performed a visual pan of his surroundings, his mind working hard to piece together how he had gotten here. He remembered going to the warehouse and reaching the loading dock. And then…

Vincent began to quake. Fear was like a net hoisting him up into the black night and carrying him away. It wrapped itself around him and tightened, cutting off his oxygen.

There’s nothing to be afraid of
, he told himself sternly. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, then rocked back onto his feet and stood. There were bruises on his bruises. With a doctor’s practiced touch, he examined himself for broken bones. As he walked forward, he limped, but he was pretty sure he had only strained some muscles.

It was confirmed, then. This beast—or whatever kind of unholy creation it might be—could project fear onto prey or potential threats. It must have done the same thing to poor little Aliyah Patel. Even thinking about how he had felt—the abject terror—he wondered how a little girl like her could cope. Tess had told him they’d put her in a pediatric psych ward. As soon as he got out of here and checked in with everyone, he would look in on her. If only he could find words to comfort her without reassuring her that what she had seen was real.

He moved as silently as possible through the tunnels beneath the city, concentrating on tracking his adversary. He smelled the blood on his fingertips and tried to send his mind back to the stretch of time he had lost, but each instant that he began to form an image, a haze of fear blurred it. It was as though his mind simply would not allow him to face his attacker. How was it possible, and who had invented it? Karl Tiptree? This would be an amazing tool in combat: Terrify the other side into immobility, then pick them off one by one. Or as a means for conducting interrogations: Calibrate the fear-reaction and take notes as your subject babbles and begs not to be harmed.

This stinks of Muirfield
, he thought.
Or of the people who funded Muirfield.
The world’s rich and powerful, their tentacles deeply sunk into financial markets and advanced technology, ruling the world and serving up horrors for anyone who got in their way.

I’d be happy to get in their way again
, he thought fiercely.
And bring them down.

Had someone sent Mr. Riley that letter in order to flush out anyone who might be moved to strike against them? Or had the beast been directed to target Vincent through Mr. Riley, because he was the last loose end from the debacle in Afghanistan?

He feared for Mr. Riley. Unless, of course, the old man was in on it. Maybe he had invented the contract between Lafferty and Gheeta Patel and used it to gain entrance to the Patel home. Maybe the Patels had known something about what had happened to Lafferty. Hell, maybe Gheeta died because she knew Lafferty. All Vincent’s letters home had been censored, but the army did make mistakes and allow sensitive, classified material through. Maybe Lafferty told Gheeta things no one should have known.

But why would Mr. Riley help the very organization that had destroyed his stepdaughter?

Maybe they had Lafferty and were using her as a bargaining chip. Or maybe he was just afraid of dying a more agonizing death than the one his cancer was offering him. Vincent had been waterboarded during his army training. It had nearly broken him, and by then, he’d been a hardened soldier. Do that once to a frightened old man…

Or simply appeal to his patriotism in some way, with some twisted story…

What about the string of murders here in New York? Was Indira the beast’s first or its seventh? Had the beast eviscerated each one as payback for the terrible thing that had been done to it? To him? To her? Or was it under the control of the army?

And how am I going to fight this thing if I panic like this?

Just thinking about it made him tremble. It engendered fear at a deep, base level. It would take more than a force of will to stay in command of himself.

He reached for his cell phone. Gone. Lost? Or taken? He thought of the names and messages on it, the damning connections to people he never wanted to put in danger. He had to get topside and find out what had happened while he was out. He hoped to God Catherine was safe. And J.T. and Tess. That they had information he could use to destroy this thing and shut down the operation that created it.

Sloshing through runoff, he employed the left-hand rule—keeping track of his route by following every twist and turn on his left—as he examined the roof of the tunnel. His hope was to see either city lights or daylight. He had no idea how long he’d been out, but he wasn’t hungry or thirsty, so that told him it was probably still night.

Finally he saw a break in the unrelieved uniformity of the curved ceiling, and to his left he spotted a ladder leading up toward it. Manhole. He climbed the ladder and pushed on the cover. It didn’t budge. Vincent closed his eyes and pictured Lafferty in her misery. What had been done to her in the name of advancing the cause of warfare.

Anger surged through him. His body responded, his beast DNA soaking up the chemical changes caused by his emotions and feeding on them. Charged, nourished, the DNA presented and he beasted out just enough to push the cover off the manhole as if it weighed no more than a sheet of paper. By the time he poked out his head, he was back to human.

He had emerged in a busy street, which was both good and bad. Bad for getting out of there as safely and discreetly as possible; good because there would likely be transportation—buses, subways. He’d have to clean up first.

Traffic stopped—had to be a red light—and he slid out beneath a rumbling semi. He lay flat as the air brakes chuffed and the truck moved forward, then quickly rolled to the side of the street and crawled into the shadows. A sign on a chain-link fence read K
ELLY
’
S
T
RUCKING
Y
ARD
. According to the address, he was in Queens.

About twenty feet away stood a small building, practically a shed. He darted over to it and tried the side door. It opened, and he found himself inside an office. An olive-green jumpsuit and baseball cap hung on a hook beside an interior door. A quick glance inside revealed a bathroom. Vincent stripped, cleaned up quickly, and put on the jumpsuit and cap. He found a roll of plastic trash bags among some cleaning supplies inside the sink console and put his bloody clothes in one.

Fortune continued to smile on him as he found a landline on the desk. He called Catherine.

“Chandler.”

“Catherine, it’s me.”

“Oh, my God, Vincent. Where are you? Are you all right?”

“Yes.” He knew Catherine better than anyone else on the planet, and he knew something was very wrong. “Tell me.”

“J.T.’s been kidnapped and Heather’s gone after him—”

“
What?
”

“You weren’t at the houseboat so J.T. was going to check his office. I was down in the sewers and I missed Heather’s calls. I’ve been calling her back and I can’t get through. Where are you?”

He fished through some papers on the desk and found a couple of invoices with Kelly’s’ full address. He read it off to her.

“On my way,” she said.

“No one knows I’m here. I helped myself to some clothes. And I don’t have my phone.”

“I have it. I’ll get there as fast as I can. If I can.”

He understood. If she heard from anyone, she’d take immediate action that might preclude picking him up.

“I’ll check in with you in half an hour,” he told her, figuring he could manage that long and maybe longer if he stayed quiet and didn’t trip any alarms. So far so good on that score.

“Okay.” They hung up. He wished he’d told her that he loved her. The way their lives were going, he should tell her that as often as possible, in case it was the last time he spoke to her.

* * *

Heather and her companion had been driving forever. Queens was filled with one-way streets and construction zones not marked on her phone’s map, and Heather, for one, was getting tired of all the detours.

“Heather,” Cat said on the other end of the line, “wherever you are, stop and pull over. Do not do this. Leave it to me.”

J-Bag—that was the name of the guy who had sold Heather the gun—held the phone up to Heather’s ear because she hadn’t wanted to put the conversation on speaker. She had given him 70 dollars for the gun, although she was sure she had more in her purse earlier—hadn’t she withdrawn that cash she owed Cat on the way home with Walker? Still, it made J-Bag do a touchdown victory dance, because he had gotten the gun for free.

She was grateful down to her soul that he had offered to go with her. They were in a derelict section of the borough, passing blocks so squalid she doubted that even rats went inside them. A burned-out car had run up over a curb and she had never seen more litter in her life. J-Bag had told her not to be afraid and promised to look out for her.

“I’m only one block away,” Heather argued with Catherine. “And you’re going to go pick up Vincent first!”

“As it happens picking up Vincent is practically a straight line from there to where J.T. is being held. Listen to me. I am a cop and Vincent is… Vincent. There’s no reason for you to do this.”

J-Bag pulled a joint out of his baggy pocket with his free hand.

“Oh, my God!” Heather shrieked. “Don’t do that in my sister’s car!”

“Do what? Who’s with you?” Cat demanded.

Heather hesitated. She didn’t know what to say. “My backup. A friend. You don’t know him.”

“Let me guess. Walker?”

“No.” And Heather died a little inside because Walker hadn’t ever called back. “The thing is, Cat, J-Bag is very street-smart.”

“
J-Bag?”

“I heard that,” J-Bag said indignantly.

“Okay. Listen,” Heather said. “We won’t go in. We’ll drive past and I’ll take some pictures and send them to you. So that way you can plan your attack.”

“Attack, damn.” He sucked in the smoke from his joint, held it, rolled down his window, and blew it out into the night. He smiled pleasantly at Heather as if to say,
See? I’m civilized
. When she batted his shoulder, he muttered, “Okay, okay, jeez, you’re worse than my mama.” He spit on his fingers, then clamped them over the business end of the joint. Then he stuffed it back in his pocket.

“Not even pictures,” Cat insisted, but Heather could tell that her sister was liking the idea of pictures. She just didn’t want to tell Heather to go into enemy territory to snap them.

“Who they attacking? Cuz guess what.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun at least twice as big as the one he had sold her.

“Oh, my God!” Heather cried.

“What? What’s happening?” Cat shouted.

“Girl, listen, I’m good with this,” he insisted.

“Heather, pull over immediately,” Cat barked. Before Heather could protest, she added, “If I recall correctly, the people who kidnapped J.T. rammed his car. You’re one block away from their last known location. In the car of Vincent Keller’s girlfriend. If they knew enough to ram J.T.’s car, they know enough to ram yours.”

“Oh.” Heather’s voice was small. “Right.”

“
Turn around now.
”

“Okay.”

“I have another call,” Cat said.

“Okay, bye.”

J-Bag stared at her. “Just like that? You’re the person closest to a friend who is in trouble and you bail?” He shook his head. “You are not the woman I thought you were.”

“So?” she flung back at him, but she was stung. He was right. “But she’s a cop.”

“Yeah, and what? If you don’t do what she say, she gonna to throw your ass in the electric chair?”

She opened her mouth. “You’re right. What the heck, J-Bag? Right?”

“Damn straight. Park and we’ll check it out. You can take pictures and send them to her anyway. Probably get her ass—I mean, herself—here a lot faster, she know you stuck around.”