Unleashed (A Sydney Rye Novel, # 1) (38 page)

The Last Walk We Ever Took in New York

Blue’s tail wagged wildly as we walked toward the park. He was carrying one of the boats on his back in a pack I bought for him at Dog’s Camp!, a store for dogs who camp. Mulberry carried a boat, the air pump, rope, and his life vest in his backpack. Mine held one of the boats, a life vest, and extra bullets. The straps hung heavy over my shoulders, pulling me back. Mulberry and I each carried an oar.

My gun was tucked into a holster Mulberry had lent me. He’d taught me how to load the gun and persuaded me to buy an extra clip and fill that with bullets, too. He didn’t like the idea of letting me march into the mayor’s office to blow his brains out, especially since my experience with guns began and ended with when I shot my molding.

But I didn’t care. I knew that I could do it. I had this sick and unnatural confidence in my trigger finger. “Just squeeze it,” Mulberry told me, “don’t pull it.” I repeated this to myself as we walked. Just squeeze it. The night was hot, and sweat pooled between me and my pack. We had the streets to ourselves. Everyone was at home with the air conditioning humming.

Mulberry had trouble getting into the drainage hatch with his bag on, and we shared a moment of suppressed laughter when he got stuck. Blue wagged his tail and barked. Mulberry and I both told him to shut up. Blue smiled at us and thunked his tail through the air.

Once inside, we moved quickly to the room with our booty. I dropped my pack next to Mulberry’s and pulled my gun out. I put the extra clip in my back pocket. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“You don’t have to do this,” Mulberry told me. I opened my eyes and saw him watching me. “Taking the gold and gems is enough.”

“It’ll be OK. Just leave me a boat.” Mulberry nodded, and I turned to go. Blue tried to follow me. “No boy. Stay here.” I closed the door in his face. I heard him whimpering softly as I moved toward the room with the paisley couch.

I was surprised by how fast the memories rushed back at me when I opened the door. The place was a shambles. A splattering of blood arched across the floor from when the mayor had hit me with the sign. I tried not to think about how much I had lost since then. I turned the sprinkler and began to drop.

Lots of people kill other people every day. People get drunk and drive into other people. Men kill their wives; wives kill their husbands. Sons kill their mothers; daughters are killed by their fathers. Strangers kill other strangers for sexual satisfaction. Doctors kill patients because their hands slip. Humans are constantly dying because another human fucked up, or got angry, or horny, or bored, or drank too much.

Before that summer I had experienced one death—my father’s. He died of cancer. First, he got so thin you could see his skull in his face and then he died. At his funeral, James held my hand and told me that it would be OK. He told me that our father was in a better place, which after watching the cancer eat him from the inside out was easy to believe, especially for a 7-year-old. Our father was gone. We would never hear his voice again or smell his smell. But he also would never yell at us. He wouldn’t be around to be disappointed in us when we got to be teenagers. He would never tell us he didn’t like our lifestyle or our decision-making. My father remains the father of little children. We never had a fight about curfews or grades. He pushed us on swings and helped us build sand castles. That’s what happens when you die. You stop.

And now I was about to stop someone. Kurt Jessup’s wife would never hold her husband’s hand and feel him squeeze back. His mother was going to be forced to attend the funeral of her child. I was going to do this. I was going to make this happen. I knew that he deserved it, but what I wasn’t so sure about was whether his mother did or his wife or his best friend, whoever that may be. Did he have a sister? Did it matter?

I pushed against the wall in the little room and felt it give. I walked down the long hall to the elevator and pushed the button. I held my gun in my right hand. I checked to make sure my extra clip was in my back pocket. My stomach churned. The elevator doors dinged open. This was it. I stepped inside, the doors closed behind me, and I began to rise.

I raised the gun at the doors that would open into the mayor’s study. The elevator stopped. I heard the bookcases on the other side of the door open, and then the silver doors in front of me parted. The mayor was at his desk, his eyes were open, his mouth slack. I stepped into the room. He didn’t move. I fired.

The first bullet hit his shoulder with a silent, sickening tear. His body twisted with the force, but he did not make a sound. I squeezed again, and this one thunked into a pile of papers on his desk, spitting out shreds into the air. The third shot struck him in the neck. A round, red wound slowly poured blood onto his chest. His eyes looked the same as a freshly caught fish—clear and dead.

I took a step into the room. It was very quiet. I looked at him and saw that there was blood on his left temple. He’d already been shot. The fucker was dead, but I wasn’t the one that killed him. Shit.

I turned back to the elevator as it began to close. Sticking my foot out, I made it open. I heard voices on the other side of the mayor’s door. I pushed myself up against the side of the elevator, letting it block me from view. The door burst open, I heard yelling, and then someone was firing bullets into the elevator as it closed.

Three bullets smashed into the back wall, leaving deep dimples in the metal. The doors closed, and the lift descended. Racing down the hall toward the small anteroom, I was breathing hard and thinking clearly. I jumped on the couch and climbed into the room above. The sign the mayor had used to mash my face lay on its side waiting to be put to use. I ran it under the couch. It stretched across the platform, and I hoped it would prevent it from lowering.

I barreled through the door of the treasure room. Blue was waiting for me, standing next to the hole in the floor that led to my escape. But there was no boat. I stopped breathing, and the room swam around me. There was no boat. Mulberry, that bastard, had taken all the treasure and all the boats and left.

I heard a loud banging, clicking, and then whirling sound coming from way too close. They were coming for me. They would catch me. They would kill me.

Blue whined and shifted on his paws nervously next to the hole. “Fuck,” I said out loud. I walked over to him and rested my hand on his head. Glancing into the hole I saw my boat, floating on liquid black. In the boat sat three sacks and one oar.

I lowered myself into the hole. Loud banging came from down the hall. My feet hit the boat. It wobbled until I crouched into it. I motioned for Blue to join me, but he just stood at the edge, looking down at me, whining.

“Get in here,” I hissed at him. He didn’t move, so I grabbed his front paws and dragged him down. He fell, all legs, into the boat. I fought with the knot holding us to the building. The lights went out. For a moment all sound stopped. The power was gone. I fumbled in the darkness, trying to free us from Eighty-Eight East End Avenue. The building’s generator whirled, and the bulb above my head flickered back to life. The knot gave, and the current took us. We headed into an impossible blackness. I stayed low, holding onto Blue, trusting that Mulberry was right. That this would end with the river.

We spent an immeasurable amount of time in that damp darkness. Blue whined softly. I listened to the gentle splashing of water against the hull. When I thought that we would drift in the depths of the city’s drainage system forever, I saw a glow. We moved toward it quickly, and in a rush the sky was above us, Queens was to our right, Manhattan to our left. The East River was carrying us through the city, shrouded in darkness. Sirens screamed, and I heard the distant sounds of people yelling and horns honking—the excitement and mayhem of a blackout.

The wind blew steadily, and the waves carried us up and down. Water splashed against the boat, spraying over its sides, coating us in a fine, briny mist. The moon reflected against the black water, and we were gone. Into the night. Into the future.

Sydney Rye

The sun flirted with the horizon, reflecting off the clear blue Sea of Cortez. I dug my feet into the sand past the warmed top layer down into the moist, heavy stuff. A plate of oysters and an unmarked bottle of tequila sat on the table next to me. Blue slept under the table, his nose and tail sticking out of either end

"How’ve you been?" asked a voice behind me. Blue lifted his head to turn and look. I kept watching the sea. I knew the voice, and I knew there was nothing to hurry about. The sun was getting ready to make a plunge, and I didn’t want to miss it.

“Have a seat,” I motioned to a chair. Mulberry sat. His weight pushed the plastic legs deep into the sand. “You’ve gained weight.” He laughed, his round belly shaking softly.

“I know. I know.” We sat for a while, in silence, watching the sun splash the clouds with gold and pink and purple. The ocean changed too. The sky’s personal mirror reflected the sun’s work, distorting it only slightly to make it more dramatic. The dark blue crept up behind us and started over our heads, invading the sky, forcing the sun to retreat. I turned to my oysters, splashed one with tequila and sucked it into my mouth.

“You want one?” I asked Mulberry, looking him in the eyes. He looked happy, I thought.

“You look like shit. Something haunting you?” Mulberry asked. I soaked another oyster and slid it down my throat before answering him.

“No.”

He laughed again. It was filled with ease and comfort.

“You’re right where I left you, wasting away down here.” I didn’t answer him. “What’s your plan—sit on this beach for the rest of your life, eat oysters from a dirty fucking shack?” He waved at the shack behind us where I’d bought my oysters from a slow-moving man named Ramone. I still didn’t answer him. I had nothing to say. He sat back in his chair. “I want you to come work for me. I’ve got a business I set up with some people. I could use you.”

“I’m happily unemployed.” I skipped the oyster this time, going straight for tequila.

Mulberry was smiling. I spent every day nauseous and afraid and every night sweating and hoping it would just stop. and Mulberry was smiling at me.

“You’re down here making yourself miserable for no reason.” He picked up one of my oysters, and splashed some tequila on it.

“I’m fine.”

“The only problem is your name.”

I turned back to the sea. Thanks to Jacqueline Saperstein, Mayor Kurt Jessup was exposed for the killer he was. Jackie took my letter and ran with it. She kept pushing until the city was forced to acknowledge the truth. Jackie called me a hero. Others called me a cold-blooded killer. The police call me wanted. I considered myself a failure.

I hadn’t told anyone that Kurt was dead when I got there. And no one mentioned that there was more than one type of bullet imbedded in the corpse. Recently promoted Detective Declan Doyle named me the killer, and only I was the wiser. Declan did tell me that Kurt would reap what he sowed. Karma is what he’d called it. Murder is what most people would.

I guessed my Karma would come around someday soon. It turned out the mayor was right about one thing: He owed people, and they came a calling. I was still testing his theory about treasure making you free.

Mulberry laughed. “Don’t tell me it’s guilt about James.” The name stabbed me in the gut, and Mulberry saw it. “Jesus, you think that’s what he wants? You think he wants his only sister down here moping away into the sunset because a psycho killed him?”

“He would have never died if it hadn’t been for me.” Mulberry laughed and threw his hands in the air.

“Of course he would have died. Everyone dies.”

“I mean not so soon.”

“Not so soon. Who cares when it happened? It happened. He’s dead, and guess what? You’re not. No matter how much you try and make out like you are, you’re not. So what do you say? Join me?” He was smiling at me, all confidence. I turned back to the sun. It sat on the horizon, wavering between sky and sea, glowing gold and gorgeous.

“I’m a fugitive,” I said.

Mulberry pulled out a passport, as dark blue as the sky creeping up on us, and threw it onto the table.

“What’s that?”

“Open it.” Inside was a picture of me, the new me with the scars, next to the name Sydney Rye. I looked at Mulberry. He was smiling. “Sydney, you’ve got talent.”

“Talent?” I hissed. “I got my brother killed, myself exiled—what are you talking about, talent?” I spit the word at him. He just smiled, so relaxed and unwound.

“Join me.”

“I can’t.” I put the passport down and stared back out at the darkening sky. Mulberry sighed.

“However you want it.” He pushed on the table to help himself stand. It wobbled under his weight. He stood over me. “You’re never going to be happy here. You’re never going to be happy again until you get off your ass and do something right.” I looked up. His eyes were locked onto mine, and I recognized him as the man I’d plotted with in New York. “Dammit, Joy.” He slammed his fist down on the table, knocking over the bottle of tequila and making the oysters quiver in their shells.

“What do you want from me?” I yelled back at him.

“I want you to work for me. I want you to get off your ass and do what’s right. I want you to be Sydney Rye.”