Ice.”
“Even so, you said we had a lot in common. You’re right. Those guys upstairs are not my cronies. I’m just a working stiff busting his balls for the man. Don’t let me die down here, too.”
“No can do, but kudos on presenting a noble argument. And thank you for not trotting out the old ‘I got a wife and six kids’ routine. It’s so overdone.”
“I don’t have kids, and my ex won’t even notice I’m gone,” Connor said. “The only ones who are going to miss me are the Alley Cats.”
“I hate to break it to you, but cats don’t have feelings.”
Connor laughed. “These cats do. The Alley Cats is the name of my bowling team. If you won’t do it for me, at least do it for them.”
“You crack me up,” Gabriel said. “I wish I could stick around for the whole show, but I’m done here.” He stepped back to inspect the final charge. “Not bad for an amateur.”
“That’s cell-phone-activated,” Connor said. “I’d say that’s a notch or two above amateur.”
“Credit where credit is due, Charlie. I had a great teacher. Mickey Peltz. I hated to have to kill him. I feel the same way about Adrienne, the catering chick upstairs. You too. It totally sucks that good guys like you have to die.”
“I’m touched. Your compassion means a lot to me in my final moments.”
“If it’s any consolation, it’ll be painless. Mickey was right. Sixty pounds is more than enough to split this hull like a ripe melon. Especially with the charge I put under this fuel tank. How big is it, anyway?”
“Each one is five thousand gallons. One blows, and they’ll all go.”
“Then I have twenty pounds all rigged and ready to go that I don’t need down here. I think maybe I’ll take it upstairs and find a nice little spot for it in the main salon.”
“Or maybe you could just shove it up your ass and give yourself a call,” Connor said.
Gabriel laughed. “Charlie, you have no idea how much you’ve brought to this film,” he said, tucking the remaining C4 into his jacket pockets. “When I came up with this scene, I always pictured it as high drama-me sweating like a pig, molding the plastic, scared shitless that I’d blow myself up. But you added just the right touch of comic relief. You’re like the black Quentin Tarantino.”
“So let me get this straight,” Connor said. “You’re making a movie?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s the camera?”
Gabriel tapped a finger to his head.
“Oh boy,” Connor said. “And this movie in your head-I die in it?”
“It’s an action movie. Lots of people die in it.”
“Including you?”
“Oh, no. I’m the hero. I escape.”
“How?”
“That’s a spoiler, Charlie. I can’t tip the ending.”
“First of all, the name’s not Charlie. It’s Charles. Second of all, there’s no way in hell you’ll escape. If the explosion doesn’t kill you, Harbor Patrol will fish you out of the drink before you can swim fifty feet.”
“Oh, I escape. It’s in my script. The problem with you,
“I got plenty of imagination. You want to hear
“I’m not one of them,” Gabriel yelled, pulling the stun baton from his holster and pointing it at Connor. “I’m the star of this whole show.”
“Oh yeah,” Connor said. “And nothing says ‘action hero’ like a young white guy using a cattle prod on a poor old black man who’s duct-taped to a steam pipe.”
Gabriel holstered the stun baton and knelt down next to Connor. “Charles, trust me. This is a great movie, and I really do have a brilliant way of ending it.”
“But since I’ll be dead, I’ll never get to see it. How convenient.”
“You think I’m lying?” Gabriel said. “I got the escape scene right here in my pocket. It’s mind-blowing.”
“Show it to me,” Connor said.
“Show you? You ever even read a movie script, old man?” Gabriel asked.
“I work for Shelley Trager. He leaves scripts in the bathrooms, and believe me, that’s where a lot of them belong.”
“Well, mine is pure gold.”
“Prove it,” Connor said. “Let me read it. Right here. Right now.”
Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t usually show it around. In fact, except for my girlfriend, I haven’t shown it to anybody.”
“Hey, man, I’m not just
Chapter 81
I was flat-out wrong. I felt a little stupid, but it’s a hell of a lot better than being dead wrong.
Not only do I not know squat about explosives, but I totally underestimated the New York City Department of Buildings.
Somewhere, somehow, someone, bless his bureaucratic little heart, foresaw my predicament, and had the vision to insist that all garbage chutes in the city of New York must extend six feet above the roof and be equipped with a safety valve called an explosion cap.
The ball of flame I was afraid would travel up the chute and burn us both to hell never did. Instead, a deafening explosion rocked the building and released a pressure wave of hot expanding gases, most of which blew straight through the roof.
Some of the blowback billowed through the hole in the wall we had created, but at least the little incinerator room we were trapped in hadn’t turned into a blazing coffin.
Neither of us moved for a solid fifteen seconds as ash, soot, and chunks of hot garbage fell around us.
And then, silence.
My mouth was pressed to Kylie’s ear.
“Are you alive?” I whispered.
“No,” she said.
“Me either,” I said.
I rolled off her, and the two of us sat up. We weren’t quite ready to stand.
“You have absolutely no bomb experience, do you?” Kylie said, shaking plaster dust out of her hair.
I stood up and grinned down at her like an idiot, thrilled to be alive. “I do now.”
I helped her to her feet, and she put her arms around me, clasping her hands behind my neck. I wrapped my arms around her waist, and, as the dust settled around us, we stood there, gazing into each other’s eyes.
I remember the first day I saw her at the academy. She was heart-stoppingly beautiful back then and, ten years later, with her face marbled with grime and her hair streaked with gray ash, Kylie MacDonald was still the most beautiful woman in the world.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “If you hadn’t stopped me from unlocking that front door, Spence and I-and you-we’d all be-”
She either couldn’t finish, or she just decided that words weren’t enough. She leaned into me and kissed me gently.
Kylie has the softest, sweetest lips I’ve ever kissed, and feeling them pressed against mine brought on that rush of anticipation I felt back in the days when I knew the first kiss was only the beginning of a night of tender, passionate, soulful lovemaking.
But that was ten years ago. Right here, right now, I knew that it all would begin and end with a single kiss.
