The van’s dashboard was dark except for the faint green glow of the stock radio, tuned to an all-night FM station that played show tunes. The radio was on low volume, and couldn’t be heard five feet away from the van even though the windows were down. Beam was listening-and not listening-to the orchestral score of Phantom of the Opera.
His slitted eyes took in the dimly lit street, the parked cars, the stunted, silvered trees that bent gently in the breeze, the infrequent headlights and passing of vehicles at the intersection. And Nell’s guardian angels. The bulky bundle on one of the concrete stoops near Nell’s building was actually an armed and ready undercover cop, not a drunk or a street person. Behind the windowed double doors of a brownstone apartment building was a tested and reliable uniform named Sweeney, using the vestibule as an observation post.
A violin solo began, rich even on the van’s economy speakers, as subdued and melancholy as the night.
Light flared in the van’s outside mirror as a car turned the corner twenty feet behind Beam. In the brightness wrought by the headlights, Beam glanced at his watch.
Three-fifteen a.m.
Looper, on schedule, in his turn around the block.
The dented brown five-year-old Chevy rolled past the van and continued down the street. Looper didn’t glance Beam’s way. Beam, barely aware of the violin, watched the Chevy’s taillights, one brighter than the other, recede down the block, then merge and disappear as the car turned the corner. Looper would park not far down the cross street, and in a few minutes would drive another slow, circuitous route along the streets surrounding Nell’s apartment.
The violin again, rich and expressive in tone, yet not much louder than a kitten’s meow. Beam wished for dawn and a larger speaker.
Nell pressed the water glass against the refrigerator’s ice-maker lever and cubes tumbled down into it. She switched the setting, gave the glass another shove, and purified water streamed over the cubes.
Three cool swallows brought her almost fully awake.
Almost.
She noticed a dim light coming from the living room and thought immediately that she’d gone to bed and forgotten to switch off the TV. She’d done it before. And she had been watching late-night news before going to bed.
Her fear still part of her dreams, she moved automatically into the living room, the glass in her hand.
Took three steps, then realized her mistake.
The light wasn’t from the TV. It was from a flashlight. Held by a dark, unmoving figure standing just inside the door.
Nell’s harsh gasp startled even her.
In the dimness, enough light from outside filtered in for her to recognize the man in her living room.
72
Rooted by astonishment and fear in the dim room, Nell said his name in a choked voice:
“Terry.”
“I had to see you,” he said. “I was so worried about you, Nell. Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to protect you…needed to. I couldn’t forgive myself if something happened to you while I was tossing and turning in my bed, close enough to help but not helping.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I remembered some of the tricks I learned from my days riding with the police, so I knew how to get on the roof from next door. Then I came down through the service door. As for the apartment, I still have the key you gave me.”
All the time he’d been speaking, he hadn’t moved. Her fear was like a wall between them. A wall her love was trying to climb.
Nell wanted to believe him. Wanted to so badly. She knew he was leaving it up to her. Trust and terror. It would have to be one or the other for Nell. One direction or the other.
More awake now than she’d ever been, her mind raced as she made the calculations, figured the gravity of her choice, and factored in the risk.
Decision time. The edge of the blade.
She came unstuck from her terror and indecision and ran away from Terry, toward the bedroom and her gun.
He was moving now, too. She knew he was close behind, heard the rush of his body, could even imagine she felt the heat of his breath. The gun in the nightstand drawer. That was what she concentrated on, what meant everything to her now.
The gun.
“I can’t raise Garcia.”
The voice came to Beam over his two-way, from the bundle of rags on the concrete stoop.
Garcia was Sergeant Wayne Garcia, the uniform stationed at the end of the hall outside Nell’s apartment.
“Sir?”
“I heard,” Beam said. He thought for a moment. The problem was most likely simple equipment failure. He couldn’t imagine Garcia falling asleep. But there were other things he could imagine. “Let’s go see.”
He twisted the ignition key and heard only a low groaning sound. Tried again and got only a faint series of clicks. The van’s battery was dead. It held enough juice to power the radio, but not enough to turn the starter and kick over the engine. Instead of driving down the street to the apartment building, Beam would have to walk.
Shit happens, he thought. Especially around three in the morning.
He got out of the van and began trudging down the eerie dark street toward Nell’s building.
Ahead of him, the bundle of rags stirred and stood up.
Nell made it to the bedroom ahead of Terry and slammed the door behind her.
Almost immediately it crashed open, bouncing off the wall. Nell hadn’t stopped moving. She dived onto the bed, lunged to the far side of the mattress, and fumbled to open the nightstand drawer.
“Nell!” he said behind her. “Listen, Nell!”
She yanked the tiny drawer too hard and it came all the way out and fell to the floor.
Damn it! Gun!
She couldn’t see the gun.
It must be down there on the floor somewhere in or around the drawer. The drawer she couldn’t reach.
“Nell!” Terry pleaded again. He was on the bed with her, his weight bearing down hard on her upper body. Her right bicep was clamped painfully in his powerful grip. “Nell, damn it!”
Terrified, she craned her neck to glance up at him.
Then froze.
Terry and Nell weren’t looking at each other.
They were staring at the uniformed cop in Nell’s bedroom. He was holding in his right hand a gun with something bulky fitted to its barrel.
Terry acted first.
He rose from the bed and flung himself at the figure with the bulky handgun.
And ran into an iron fist that struck his shoulder and staggered him.
He knew he’d been shot.
He took a few backward steps, still with the presence of mind to stay between the cop and Nell. The cop very deliberately edged to the side to get a better angle on his target.
And Nell’s powerful Glock exploded the night’s silence.
The bullet snapped past Terry’s right ear and shattered the window.
“Get the hell outta the way, Terry!”
A faint sound came to Beam and the raggedy cop through the night, a flat bam! that reverberated only once,
