Chaos was everywhere.
No one looked at them twice.
He drove two blocks more and the scene fell away. Buildings obscured the flame and black smoke rose to mist. At Hudson Street, Michael turned south, then cut west on Chambers. Elena said nothing. She looked at everything but Michael. “Elena,” he said.
“Not yet.” She shook her head.
He worked the car south, past Ground Zero and the North Cove Yacht Harbor. At Battery Park City, he pulled to the curb and sat for a long moment. He said her name, but she ignored him. Michael checked traffic around them, then removed one gun from the glove compartment, and the other from under his jacket. Wordlessly, he stripped and wiped the guns; then he pulled two zip drives from a pocket and got out of the car. He felt Elena’s eyes on his back as he walked to the water’s edge and flung the pieces far into the river. Back in the car, he said, “Are you okay?”
“Did you just throw a gun into the river?”
“Two, actually.”
“Two guns.”
“Yes.”
Elena nodded once, and her fingers crinkled the white paper bag in her lap. It was small, and when she smoothed the wrinkles, Michael saw that it came from a pharmacy two blocks from the restaurant. She lifted the bag, then let it settle. “I was nauseous,” she said, and smoothed the bag again. “Morning sickness.” She used two fingers to dash liquid from her eyes and Michael knew she was in shock. “I would have been inside the restaurant.”
Trembling fingers brushed the plane of her stomach, and Michael could see her thoughts as if they hung in the air between them.
Her hands came up, and their emptiness was rich in meaning. The car. The fire. The guns. “What’s happening, Michael?”
She needed the truth, he knew. For her safety, for so many reasons. But how could he tell her that the child she carried belonged to a liar? That her co-workers died in her place? That she remained a target? How could Michael tell the woman he loved that he’d killed seven people before lunch? She searched his face, frightened, and when he hesitated, her gaze fell to his shirt.
“Elena…”
She touched a dark splotch on the white cloth, traced it with a finger. “Is that…”
“Listen to me-”
“Is that blood?”
She looked at him then, really looked. She saw similar stains on his pants, on the backs of his hands. “I’m going to be sick.” She folded at the waist, her skin the color of old bone. Michael reached out a hand, but she shied, one hand unfastening the seat belt, the other groping for the door. It swung open and she spilled out onto the street, the sunburned grass that stretched to the river. She managed a dozen steps, then sank to her knees. When Michael tried to approach, she said, “Stay away.”
He watched her heave over brown grass, and was so distraught that when his phone rang, he barely heard it. He tore it from his pocket and felt the world slow when he saw the number. He almost didn’t answer, but then he did. He turned his back on Elena, and, using every ounce of self-control he possessed, said, “You’re a dead man, Stevan.”
“Your brother’s next.”
Michael felt heat on his neck, smelled the river. He looked at Elena and the moment seemed to freeze. “I don’t have a brother,” he said.
“Yes, you do.”
The phone went dead. Michael blinked and an image rose.
His brother.
Like a ghost.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cold air filled the abandoned hall. Gray light. Dirt and debris. The boy who ran there was nine years old and thin, a scarecrow in ill-fitting clothes. Tears cut crescents in the grime beneath his eyes, then tracked white to his chin, his neck, the hollow places behind his ears. Windows flashed past as the boy ran, but he ignored the snow outside, the hints of mountain and other children, barely seen. He ran and choked and hated himself for bawling like some girl.
Breath like glass in his throat.
He came to an intersection, and stumbled left down a darker stretch that smelled of rot and mold and frozen earth. Broken glass crunched under his feet, and his lips moved again.
He didn’t know that he was talking out loud. He felt the rush of blood, the crack of linoleum, dried out and breaking beneath his feet. He dared a look over his shoulder, and his shoe caught on a broken tile, ankle folding like cardboard. He stumbled against a windowsill that tore skin from his arm.
Julian sobbed in pain.
Metal clattered behind him, distant voices. He stopped at the bottom of a rotted-out stairwell. Light spilled from the third floor, a wisp of snow from some broken window. He thought of climbing but was too weak, the injured ankle shooting blades of pain up his leg.
Footsteps behind him, his eyes rolling white.
Another sob escaped his throat and he fled the sound of their steps, the noises they made as they slammed through doors and banged metal pipes on the hard, concrete walls.
Julian burst through a door. The bad ankle crumpled and he went down again, pain a gunpowder flash behind his eyes. He smeared a sleeve across his face because it would be worse if they caught him crying.
Ten times worse.
A thousand.
He dragged himself up and rooms tumbled past: glimpses of naked bed frames and broken chairs, closets spilling old hangers and rotted cloth. He spun into another hall, breath still sharp in his throat, not enough air getting in. Behind him, a wolf-cry rose, and then another. He looked for a place to hide, but a cry skipped down the hall behind him: “There he is!”
Julian looked back and saw tall windows lit by falling snow, then dirty faces and hands, bodies lost in dark, rough clothes. They stormed out of the shadows, five boys in a dead run. He screamed this time, and they came faster, older boys, big ones, their cruelty proven a hundred times in a hundred terrible ways. Their feet made snapping sounds in the shotgun hall, and Julian cried as he ran, half-blind and sobbing and ashamed.
They caught him where the building ended. Julian hit a pocket of cold, heavy air, then metal
