“You’re staring off into space, then,” she pressed. “Did you hit your head?”
“No, really, I’m okay,” I said as I brushed her hair back from her face and gently touched her forehead. “How about you? You’ve got a pretty nasty cut over your eye. Looks like you’re the one who hit her head.”
“Aye, I’m okay. I’m worried about Constance though.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
I heard an electronic peal dance through the air, growing louder with each note and noticed Ben struggling to pull his cell phone from his belt with his left hand. By the time the device started into its next chorus, he had managed to snatch it up and thumb it on.
“Yeah, Storm here,” he said, then waited a moment. “Yeah, well excuse me for not hearin’ it. Uh-huh… Well that would be because somebody decided to hit us. Yeah… Uh-huh… Yeah, as in car wreck. Yeah, fuckin’ totaled. Yeah, I’m busted up and Mandalay’s hurt pretty bad but they’re okay. A little rattled but okay. Yeah… Uh- huh…”
I was just turning to watch the officer who was checking on Constance when I heard my friend bellow, “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me! Awww, Jeezus! There’s no way in hell I can get him there that fast!”
CHAPTER 32:
“Hell yes I know it’s only four miles,” Ben barked into the cell phone. “If the fuckin’ highway was open… Yeah, exactly. Uh-huh… There’s a pileup at Jefferson too. Yeah, we’re at Grand and Forty-Four, just west of the exit ramp. Yeah, can’t miss it, there’s a big friggin’ pile of cars and enough flares down to decorate my birthday cake… Yeah, we’ll be waitin’. Bye.”
“What’s going on?” I asked him as he made a few clumsy attempts to hook the phone back onto his belt then aborted the task and shoved it into the first available pocket he could find on his jacket.
“You were right, white man,” he confessed. “Porter went off the deep end.”
My stomach fell. I had almost forgotten why I was even out here in this mess to start with.
Felicity tensed against me and muttered, “Oh no…”
“He didn’t?” I asked, leaving the subject of the question a solid implication rather than a spoken reality.
“No. He hasn’t done anything yet that they know of, but he’s making the threats.” He spilled the details. “They thought they had him under control after they cut the line, but he escalated all of a sudden, and they haven’t been able to talk ‘im back down.”
Car horns were randomly sounding from the growing sea of impatient drivers, adding punctuation to the blend of noises issuing from running engines and passing vehicles. Police radios scratched out communications in bursts of intermingled words and semi-cryptic ten-codes to keep the officers updated on the ETA of the paramedics, fire/rescue, and countless other things.
Looking past Ben and back down the highway, I could see flickering red lights in the distance. Far off sirens warbled and provided a high-pitched background for the occasional burp of an air horn.
“I hate to say…” I started.
“…I told you so, yeah, I know.” He nodded his head vigorously as he finished the sentence for me. “Better just keep that observation to yourself, Row.”
“Yeah, I will,” I agreed. “So what are they doing?”
He continued his explanation. “They haven’t gone in because they still don’t know where he’s holed up in there. But he’s keepin’ tabs on them somehow ‘cause he knows what’s goin’ on every time they make a move, no matter which side of the building they go for. They’re thinkin’ he’s gotta have a police band radio or a portable scanner. Something like that.”
To my back, there was a droning hum that continued to grow louder by the second, throwing itself into the chaotic fray of sounds against an underscore of echoing thumps. It was the familiar sound of a helicopter. In the back of my mind, I wondered whose it was. It seemed too soon for an air ambulance, and I wasn’t sure the media would even bother responding to the pileup considering the drama that was playing out on the riverfront.
“Great,” I muttered with heavy sarcasm.
“Tell me about it.” He nodded as he raised his voice against the growing din. “Anyway, about fifteen minutes ago he started demanding that they bring you to the scene. Since you were already on the way, they had no problem consenting even though it was going to be on their terms.”
“Aye, that’s about when Constance got that call,” Felicity interjected.
“Yeah, exactly,” Ben said. “And right when we got nailed.”
“So can’t they just tell him that I’m still on the way?”
He shook his head. “They’ve played that out. It’s not workin’ anymore. He finally hit ‘em with an ultimatum. Says if he doesn’t see you in front of the building in ten minutes, he’s killing Sullivan, and that…” He paused and glanced at his watch. “…Was about three minutes ago.”
A heavy rush of icy wind whipped around us, lifting a cloud of loose snow and causing me to squint as my eyes watered.
“Ten… Seven minutes?!” I yelped, forcing my voice upward to compete with the sound of the helicopter overhead. “There’s no way…”
“Can you fly?” Ben shouted.
“Ben!” I returned. “This is no time for joking around. You know damn well that whole thing about Witches is just a myth!”
“No! I mean do you have any problems with flying?” He bellowed over the roar as he took hold of my shoulder and urged me to turn. “Cause right there’s your fuckin’ broom!”
The machine-fabricated vortex bit into my face as I twisted around, forcing me to cock my head down and to the side. My ears were filled with an inescapable roar as I watched a Bell JetRanger hurriedly touching down on the pavement a little better than thirty yards away.
“We’ve got five minutes,” Ben yelled into my ear. “They’ll have us there in two!”
“What about Constance?!” I screamed back at him.
“The paramedics will be here any minute!” he returned.
“Aye,” Felicity’s voice rose in my other ear. “I’ll stay with Constance, then. You go!”
I snapped my head around to look at her. “Are you sure?!”
She nodded with a quick flourish, eyes glistening and her hair whipping about in fiery tangles. “Aye, but damn you, Rowan Linden Gant, you come back to me!”
I felt like I was stuck in the middle of the year’s biggest box-office thriller. The script was moving forward at a frenzied pace, and we had now arrived at the ultimate stage of climactic melodrama. The point where, just before he rides off to save the world, the hero bares his soul to the gorgeous actress who is playing the part of the love interest.
Had I not been in the middle of it, I think I would have been forced to laugh at just how contrived it all seemed. Instead, I threw my arms around her and squeezed, burying my face against her neck beneath a cloud of spiraling auburn. I didn’t know for sure what was ahead of me, but I knew that something still felt very wrong. I didn’t really want to make a promise that I might very well be about to break.
I suddenly found myself hating the Lord and Lady for putting me in this position, despising them for what had been heaped upon me so unceremoniously in the past two plus years. I knew that I was rushing headlong toward a choice that no one should ever be forced to make. Moreover, with knowing that an innocent life was inexorably linked to my actions, there was no escape for me.
I had no idea what I had done to bring about this amount of horror as a payback, but I was rapidly approaching a crisis of faith.
I choked back a lump in my throat and spoke directly into my wife’s ear, mimicking her penchant for using my full name whenever she wanted to drive her point home. “Remember that I love you more than anything, Felicity Caitlin O’Brien.”
“Come on, Rowan!” Ben was screaming at me. “We gotta go now!”
I barely managed to kiss her as my friend manhandled me away, pushing me toward the waiting helicopter. “I’ll bring him back, Felicity!” he screamed to her as we started to jog. “Promise!”
