Damon kept coming.
Abby Lowell stood up.
In his peripheral vision, Parker caught someone else moving across the square, coming from the alcove hiding the escalators to the underground parking. Bulky trench coat, a little too long, collar up.
Bradley Kyle.
Parker hesitated.
A motorcycle engine revved nearby. Sound seemed magnified. The scene froze for an instant in Parker’s head.
Then someone screamed, and all hell broke loose.
42
Jace didn’t care about the kid with the green hair. The guy was just trying to panhandle. Besides, he created a little diversion. Abby was looking at him, worried, annoyed.
Jace’s heart was thumping. Shove the envelope at her, grab the black bag, run like hell. He reached a hand inside his shirt and started to peel back the tape that held the envelope to his belly.
A sound like a chain saw starting registered in the back of his mind. Then a scream. Then everything seemed to happen at once.
He didn’t know where the shout had come from. His arms went out at his sides. Abby Lowell’s eyes were ringed in white.
The kid with green hair had a gun.
The motorcycle roared from the Olive Street side of the square, coming straight for them.
Jace didn’t have time to even draw breath, or to think that the green-haired cop would shoot him. He lunged for Abby, knocking her to the park bench.
Jace fell into her sideways, just as the cycle hit the cop with the green hair, and blood exploded in every direction.
People were running now, shouting, screaming.
Guns were popping. He didn’t know who was shooting, or who was being shot at.
Jace scrambled to get his feet under him. His eyes were on the cycle. Red bike, black mask, helmet. The driver had already swung it around, one-eighty, almost laying it down on the ground. It came back at Jace like a rocket. He went over the bench and ran for his life.
Parker started running the instant he saw the motorcycle. A red Kawasaki Ninja ZX12R. Eddie Davis. He had to have doubled back to his house before the Hollywood cops got there, ditched the Town Car, and grabbed the bike. The bike racing straight at Damon and Abby Lowell, and at the kid with the green hair, who had his back to the danger bearing down on him.
Parker sprinted, opened his mouth to shout. He never heard the sound. The bike hit Green Hair. A nightmare scene of a body bending the wrong way, blood everywhere.
Davis hit the brakes and laid the cycle almost on its side. One-eighty. Up again and throttle wide open.
People were screaming. The movie crew scattered, some of them running toward the bike, some running toward the street, arms waving.
Parker pulled his gun.
To his right, Bradley Kyle had his weapon out, and was firing.
Damon went over the back of the park bench.
Abby Lowell tried to follow.
Davis roared past.
Parker fired.
The cycle swung hard right and went after Damon.
Jace heard him coming. He hit Fifth Street. It was empty. Traffic was detoured because of the movie people. The equipment trucks seemed a mile away. People were standing near them, staring at him. There was nothing they could do.
He veered right in a wide arc, so he could get a look back without slowing down. The headlights blinded him. Way too close.
Four more strides to the trucks.
Three more strides.
He felt as if he wasn’t moving, couldn’t breathe.
Two strides.
He cut between the trucks, took a hard left, almost wiped out. Stumbling, stumbling, stumbling forward. Sheer will pulled him upright.
The cycle came up over the curb, onto the sidewalk, and around the back side of the trucks. Jace ducked between another pair of trucks. He grabbed The Beast and mounted from a run, fumbling to catch the pedals, to start pumping.
If he could stay hidden by the trucks, if he could get to the other side of Olive Street before the motorcycle came around . . .
He stood on the pedals, ran on the pedals, down Fifth to Olive, through the intersection, horns blaring, lights coming at him, lucky he didn’t end up on a windshield. He jumped the curb onto the sidewalk.
Glancing over his shoulder, Jace could see the cycle racing up the opposite side of the street. He would make it to the intersection before Jace did.
The light at Olive and Fourth turned red. Nothing blocked the intersection. The motorcycle bounced off the curb, hit Fourth, screamed into a hard left turn.
Pumping, pumping, pumping, Jace’s thighs felt as though they would burst. He willed more speed, but it didn’t seem to come. The motorcycle ran the intersection and horns blasted as he split the oncoming cars on the one-way street.
Jace made the corner, went left, stuck close to the meters so he couldn’t get pinned against the buildings if the cycle made it to the sidewalk. He could see his pursuer pushing between cars up ahead of him, trying to come across.
Turning left again, Jace cut through a small plaza with a fountain, and came to a halt. Before him was the precipitous drop of the Bunker Hill Steps, a stone double staircase with a waterfall running between the two sides. It dropped like a cliff down to Fifth Street, where traffic was now gridlocked. Sirens were screaming.
Jace looked down to the bottom. It would be his death or his salvation. He swallowed hard. Horns were still blasting behind him. He could hear the motorcycle getting closer.
Jace glanced back, saw the headlights coming, turned to the drop in front of him, took a deep breath, and went over the edge.
Several people rushed to the aid of the guy with green hair. Kyle ran past him, chasing the motorcycle, chasing Damon. Parker went to Abby Lowell. She lay over the back of the park bench, as if she had just turned to watch the action leave the park.
“Ms. Lowell? Are you all right?” he called above the noise. People were shouting, sirens were wailing.
Blood stained the back of her aqua vest. She’d caught a bullet. He rested a knee on the bench, bent over her, carefully swept her long hair back so he could see her face.
The brown eyes that rolled to look at him were wild with fear. Her breath was wheezing in the way of an asthmatic. “I can’t move! I can’t move! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
Parker didn’t try to move her to see if the bullet had exited. She could bleed to death right in front of him, but if he turned her and a bone or bullet fragment shifted the wrong way, she would be a quadriplegic. Hell of a choice.
“We’ll have an ambulance here in two minutes,” Parker said, pressing two fingers to the side of her throat. Her pulse was galloping like a racehorse. “What did you feel? Did you feel something hit you from behind?”
“In my shoulder. Yes. In my back. Twice. Am I shot? Oh, my God. Am I shot?”
“Yes.”
