The couldn’t move a muscle, but she heard every word. This son of a bitch wasn’t going to die screaming. He would be too busy choking on his own blood.
5:16 a.m.
The El train bucked again, then slowed down. Fucking train. Jack was amazed that more people didn’t puke during their morning commutes in Philadelphia.
Jack was running out of stations.
Only a few left after this one. Tioga. Erie-Torresdale. Church. Margaret-Orthodox. Bridge-Pratt. That was it. And his car was still relatively empty. An old guy a few rows back. A young girl with a schoolbag behind him.
He’d wasted the last few minutes staring out the windows, his mind tumbling around like a dryer sheet. He was tired. So tired. The contact lenses in his eyes felt like they were dried and permanently affixed to his eyeballs. Yesterday, he’d gotten up early to pack and make last-minute arrangements: phone calls, E-mails. So that meant he’d been up how long now, with the hour time difference? Twenty-four hours straight?
Decision time. Soon, it was going to be too late for anything. Had to focus. Either approach Angela and beg … plead … beseech, whatever … her for a place to talk, maybe even a place to stay until he had a chance to call some government agency and tell them what had happened. Then have them call Donovan Piatt. Explain why he’d be “a little late.”
Otherwise, it was a matter of finding someone else on this speeding train, someone he could convince—of what?
Like that would work.
Jack moved up another row. He was sitting close enough behind Angela to smell the smoke in her hair. There was a thin sheen of sweat on the back of her neck.
She must have been able to feel him staring, because she turned around, her eyes sharpened.
“What the fuck is your problem?”
Jack leaned back in his seat. “I need your help.”
She sighed, turned back around. “What happens at the club stays at the club, buddy. Or Jack. Or whatever your real name is.”
“Look, this isn’t easy to explain, and I swear, if I weren’t in desperate need of help, I wouldn’t be bothering you.” He looked at the back of her head. She didn’t move. Maybe she was listening. “Can I just explain it to you? I know it’s probably not going to make much sense. Doesn’t make sense to me. But if you’ll give me the tiniest sliver of trust, you’d be saving my life. Literally.” Her shoulder moved, and she shifted in her seat. But she didn’t get up and leave. That was the important part. For the moment, she was listening. “Last night, I met this woman in a bar at the airport, and she infected me with a tracking device. …”
Angela turned around to look at him. Her eyes were squinted, and her mouth opened slightly, like she was mentally asking herself,
“Which means, to make a long story short, that I can’t be alone, or I’ll die.”
Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed even more. Then she lifted her right arm.
“I know this sounds nuts, but …”
She squeezed the button on the top of the canister.
The liquid nailed him right in his eyes. But he couldn’t even feel that at first. It was the skin on his face. Like jungle fields suddenly introduced to the flash strike of napalm, Jack’s cheeks, nose, and forehead blazed with raw fury. He recoiled, but he couldn’t move anywhere. His back was already against the seat. So he slid to the side and collapsed to the floor, screaming, “You bitch! Son of a fucking …
He was too busy yelling to truly hear, but Jack could have sworn she muttered, “Asshole.”
The burning didn’t give up. The more he cried out, the more he moved, the more it seemed to hurt.
Worst of all, he couldn’t
Where was Angela? Was she still sitting there? Smirking at him as he writhed on the dirty floor of the elevated train?
Stand up, Jack. Stand up and reach out. Get your bearings. For fuck’s sake, man, get up and figure out where the fuck you are and where other people are and move closer to them, or you’re going to die.
“ANGELA!” he shouted.
His eyes now … oh, he could feel those burn in their sockets. His contacts lenses were probably acid-burned to a crisp, and the toxins were sinking into his eyeballs. The more tears he produced, the more the fiery poison of the Mace spread, and he could swear it was already in his nose and throat, and he was swallowing it….
Move.
Move now.
Find people.
Stay alive.
Try to ignore the burning hell on your face.
Jack didn’t exactly know it, but as he stumbled blindly down the length of the car, he brushed up against the old man seated toward the rear. The man, the last person in Philadelphia to still wear a fedora on a daily basis, looked up at Jack with a bemused expression on his face. Ah, kids these days. But what was the deal here? Why was this fella asking out a lady on a train at five o’clock in the morning? That wasn’t the way to do it. He deserved a face full of that stuff, the way he saw it.
The girl with the schoolbag slid over in her seat, moving closer to the window.
Meanwhile, Angela, who had pressed herself against the door at the opposite end of the train, had her cell phone out and was connecting to 911. She had fingered herself in front of enough members of the Fifteenth District to guarantee a quick and passionate response. Once this train reached the end of the line, this fucker was in for it.
If he came back toward the end of this car, though, she was going to have to beat the shit out of him.
She was prepared.
She wasn’t above taking out an eye.
Down the length of the car, Jack smacked up against the glass of the connecting door. He fumbled for the handle. He knew he was in the very first car. But maybe there were more people in the others cars. He could try to cope with the burning in his eyes and face. Sit down near a crowd. Ride this out. Ride this out to the end of the line. Hope his vision returned. Follow someone down. Follow someone near a cab.
The handle opened. The door flung open. Jack rushed past it. Tripped. Threw his arms out, grabbed hold of the thick, greasy chains.
He felt the screaming in his blood, the pounding in his head.
The train was coming to a stop again. The whine of the brakes scraped the inside of his skull. Door handle. There. Turn it. Open it open it open it.
Jack stumbled. There was nothing where a steel platform should have been. His foot plunged down, down down….
5:20 a.m.
Kowalski made it up to the platform as the train doors started to close. He got hung up at the token booth. Two fucking dollars for a subway ride? The clerk, an obese man who probably needed to be
