in dashes of ozone and hot asphalt now and then for spice.
Thinking the storm only meant to shake its fist and then pass them by, they ignored it, taking their time, walking slowly, Michael bouncing the basketball, the adults taking turns retrieving it when it got away from him. No one talked much-Tom, because it was both his nature and his job to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open, Ethan and Phoenix making the child the center of their attention the way adults do when they need an excuse not to talk to each other. And yet their awareness of each other held more electricity and tension than the storm. It arced between them, bridging the gap between glances that tried hard to avoid meeting; it hummed a background to short, breathless comments and rose to cresendo in the silences. Walking languidly along, Ethan felt a constant need to wipe away sweat, and more winded than when he’d been running in the heat on the basketball court.
They stopped to buy hot dogs from a street vendor who was getting ready to close up shop, and surly about being forced to delay. Then a little later on from another pushcart, ices-a concoction Ethan was sure only a child could find palatable, consisting of sugar water, slush and a dye guaranteed to turn lips and tongues a goulish shade of blue.
While Ethan was paying the vendor for the ices a gust of wind blew Phoenix’s cowboy hat off, and only Tom Applegate’s quick reflexes prevented it from flying into the street.
As he returned the hat to its owner, with a meaningful glance at the darkening sky the agent said quietly to Ethan, “Sir, I think we need to be getting on.”
“Right.” Ethan offered a cone of blue slush to Phoenix. She gave it-and him-a quizzical look but gamely took it.
Knowing it was unwise, he allowed his gaze to linger on her hand as it tentatively enfolded the gaudy paper cone. It came to him as an oddly painful little revelation that it didn’t look like a rock star’s hand-at least not one that went with backless tiger-striped tops and navel rings. The nails were unmanicured but kept short and very clean. It seemed small and somehow defenseless to him, like the hand of a meticulous child.
“Hey, where’s mine?” Michael demanded, handing the basketball off to Tom with a trusting no-look pass and grabbing at the cones Ethan still had in his hands.
“I know your mama taught you better,” Ethan said sternly, holding the cones out of reach. Michael’s face fell. He looked so deflated Ethan had to fight to hold on to his frown. “What do you say?”
“Can I please have my ice?” Michael mumbled, addressing his shoes.
“Much better.” Ethan handed over the cone and gave Michael’s baseball cap a forgiving tug. He offered the last ice to Tom, who declined-with obvious relief. With no other choice left to him, Ethan took a tentative taste. The syrupy sweetness made him shudder.
“Sir,” Tom said again, quietly urgent, “if I’m not mistaken, the sky’s about to open up on us. Unless you want to get wet, we’d best hurry.”
“What are you, his mother?” Phoenix said, making Michael giggle.
But they started moving again, walking quickly now, with Michael having to hop and skip to keep up. The wind scuttled trash along the gutter and pushed impatiently at their backs, molding Phoenix’s skirt to her legs and slapping the edges against Ethan’s pantlegs. Lightning flickered, and raindrops fell with a spattering sound. Moments later thunder boomed a tympany solo.
“Hey!” Michael cried in tones of outrage.
Tom had time to say only, “Uh-oh, here it comes.” And then the sky did open up.
They ran, Ethan holding Michael by the hand, Phoenix with her hat clasped against her chest, Tom vigilantly bringing up the rear, though he could easily have outpaced them all.
Phoenix ran laughing and gasping, filled with a strange sense of euphoria. They would be thoroughly soaked, there was no way to avoid it; her hat would be ruined, there was nothing she could do about it. And something about that inevitability, and her helplessness in the face of it, was unbelievably liberating. She could have no control over this. And thus she was utterly and completely
She was aware that her skirt was plastered to her legs, that her hair had come loose and was clinging in ribbons to her face, neck and back. Blindly she ran, through a veil of rain, following Ethan’s lead, trusting him to know where he was going, leaping flooded gutters, her feet splashing gloriously on the inundated streets.
She was conscious of a feeling almost of disappointment when Ethan turned hard to the right and led them up some cracked concrete steps. Still euphoric and half-blinded by the rain and her own streaming hair, she barely noticed the peeling paint on the door frame, the broken pane of glass in the front door, the crumbling mortar. It was only when they were inside the vestibule, laughing, gasping and stamping away water, and the door was closing behind them with a sticky sound, that the first alarms began to ring in her mind. She was like an animal sensing the trap-too late.
Somewhere beyond the accelerated thumping of her own heart she could hear Michael’s voice and Ethan’s, laughing and exclaiming over the drowned remains of their ices. She knew that Tom was starting up the stairs, and that Ethan and Michael were following. She knew that, unless she wanted to stay and wait for them where she was, she would have to climb those stairs, too.
Claustrophobia coiled its tentacles around her, suffocating her with the smells of poverty and decay. It was hot in the vestibule, and even hotter in the stairwell, a dense and muggy heat that increased with every tread she climbed. But in spite of that, she felt chilled. Cold clear through to her bones.
One level…then another. The smells of cooking, urine and mildew made her want to gag.
She caught up with Michael on the third-floor landing. At the far end of a dusky hallway she could see Tom checking into recesses and doorways, cautiously alert, while Ethan moved purposefully toward him, apparently making for a door halfway down the hall. For some reason, though, Michael was dawdling behind, lingering in front of a door closer to the landing. When Phoenix reached the top of the stairs he turned his head and lifted his eyes to hers, and gazed at her for a long, silent time.
He had strange eyes for a child, she thought-almost yellow, like a hawk’s or a tiger’s, and they seemed to shimmer in the dim gray light. And then somehow, without any idea how it had happened, she found that she was holding his hand.
“This is where I used to live,” the little boy said in a soft, gruff voice. “Before my momma got killed. She was on the balcony and it fell down, and now she dead.”
Phoenix felt her stomach clench as if she’d been punched there, and the air force its way through her lungs to erupt in a soft, wounded gasp. Cold swept her, stinging like an icy blast. A rushing sound filled her ears. Her world seemed to shrink, her field of vision to sharpen and narrow until it contained only Ethan, standing there in the hallway, hand raised to knock, face turned toward her, mouth forming a question, the moment frozen in time as if someone had hit the pause button on a VCR.
“You bastard,” she said softly and distinctly. Then she turned and ran down the stairs and out into the rain.
Chapter 11
Ethan’s swearing brought Tom Applegate in three swift strides, one hand already going to the weapon at the small of his back.
“What’s goin’ on?”
“I don’t know.” But he did know. He did. He swore some more, although after a glance at Michael he was careful to keep it under his breath. On the other side of the door he could hear someone fumbling with the locks. The urge to run after Phoenix twitched through his nerves and muscles; the need to stay where he was filled his voice with a tense and edgy desperation. “Go after her.”
“Sir, you know I can’t do that.” The Secret Service agent’s quiet voice was muffled; he had his back to Ethan, now, having automatically placed himself between his protectee and the empty stairwell.
