August stood, raising his own gun. Oh. Did not want that.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and slammed my fist into the side of my friend’s head. He staggered and I hit him again, hard, across his wrist. The gun fell from his nerveless fingers.
‘What the hell!’ he yelled and he parried my next blow. ‘What are you doing?’
Leonie, who had been silent, started screaming in my ear, wanting to know what was happening. I couldn’t shoot August. I wouldn’t shoot him. I just needed him sidelined so that I could kill Jack Ming. I would explain later, if he let me. If he didn’t shoot me on sight.
I hit August, a hard right cross, catching him off balance, and he fell. But as he hit the concrete, he kicked out at my legs. I hit the floor, mad. We’d entered Special Projects together, trained together, sparred together. August was bigger than me, heavy with Minnesota farm and college football muscle that he maintained. And now he was mad at me for screwing up what had to be a career highlight. He delivered a kick toward my chest and I caught his foot.
Corner of my eye, I saw Jack Ming scrambling for his gun.
He might shoot both of us. I would if I were him.
I pulled on the foot, going into a roll, knocking August off balance. He was bigger than me but I was more wiry and faster. I couldn’t think of him as a friend, I couldn’t. Not now.
He wrenched free from my grip – despite his bulk, I underestimated how strong he was – and kicked me, catching me in the face. Heel hit jaw, hurt like hell where I’d already been battered by the sisters. I felt blood on my lips. August circled me, a look mixing disgust and confusion on his face, and hammered three hard, fast punches into my chest. I fell back against the wall; I felt the raised thumbs of the light switches stab my spine. He started to scream at Ming and I, stumbling back, twisted to see Ming running. Gun in hand, but running. From both of us, throwing himself out into the alley.
‘Grab him!’ August screamed and I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to a partner who was listening in, same as Leonie.
I yelled ‘Ming’s heading out!’ But I already heard footsteps pounding on the stairs. Leonie dashed past me and August. He made a grab at her but she dodged him, mostly because I roundhouse-kicked him as hard as I could in the chest.
He fell but as I turned to pursue Ming I stumbled over his backpack. He’d left it behind in his panic. I fell. August, huffing, closed hands around my throat and threw me into the adjoining, unfinished wall I’d complained about to Meggie when she was pretending to be Beth Marley.
The drywall gave way and we tumbled through it together. Coughing, I fought to free his grip from my throat. He wouldn’t let go and those damn sausage-thick fingers started to squeeze the life out of me. He didn’t want me dead, he wanted me out of the way. So I sagged, like I was passing out. He let go and levered back a fist to slam it into my face.
I clawed my hands around his fist and held it still.
‘Why?’ he yelled.
‘They’re gonna kill my kid if I don’t,’ I said, before I could think.
‘Evacuate the informant if you have him,’ he yelled. Oh crap. He was talking to someone. He was wired. A team was here.
I shoved him off me and I seized a splintered support from the broken wall. I wrenched it free and I skimmed it right across the back of the skull. He collapsed.
For one horrifying second I thought I had killed him. I checked him. He was breathing.
I ran, stumbling into the alley, after Leonie and Jack, into whatever awaited.
48
The Streets of Williamsburg
Jack Ming bolted from the building into the cool of the alleyway. The red notebook, wedged in the back of his pants, hidden under a jacket, rubbed his skin at the top of his butt. He could hardly breathe.
This had been a trap. Either August had set him up or August had been set up himself. There would be no surrendering to him today. That Capra guy was after him. He stumbled. He had to get out of the neighborhood. Neither of those guys might be here alone.
He heard the chook of the discharge from a small gun, nearly soft in the humid air. He felt the heat of a bullet whizz close to his ear.
Someone was shooting at him. He stumbled, turned, and saw a woman racing after him. She was petite, red-haired, with mouth gritted. She wore jeans and sneakers and a blue T-shirt and she looked like a young suburban mother. She stopped and she stared at him as he stared back at her, backing away in shock, and for a second he screamed, ‘Get out of here, someone’s shooting… ’
But she raised a gun. It shook in her hand.
‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘You have to die. I’m sorry.’
And she fired as he turned and ran toward the end of the alley. A black Lincoln Navigator slammed to a stop thirty feet ahead of him, blasting toward him.
He had nowhere to go.
49
I heard the distant pell-mell of shots. The space between them told me they weren’t fired with confidence. I hit the door and ran into the alleyway and headed toward the gunfire.
It was the battle of the hackers who couldn’t shoot straight. Leonie stood, discharging the weapon at the running Ming. She hadn’t hit him as far as I could see.
Two men in suits spilled out of a Lincoln Navigator, braked in the alley. I know Special Projects when I see it and these two were August’s men.
I hurtled past Leonie, told her to run, take cover.
Jack stopped, tottered, caught between the twin threats. One of the men seized him from behind as he turned back to Leonie – just as I ran past her – and levered him toward the Navigator. The other man – stocky, short, with a neck thick with muscle – raced toward us, aimed his weapon at me.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I yelled. ‘Holdwine is in trouble!’
And he paused. He knew me; we’d worked briefly in New York before Lucy and I moved to London. His name was Griffith. And that moment of recognition, tethered to doubt, bought me three seconds I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
‘He’s been shot by that kid!’ I yelled.
‘He’s lying!’ Ming screamed.
‘Stop,’ Griffith yelled. But too late: I slammed into him with a jump; if I’d stopped to throw a punch it would have telegraphed my half-truth of being on August’s side.
I knocked the wind out of his chest, tumbled to the pavement, rolled against a Dumpster. The other agent – who I didn’t know – strong-armed Jack toward the Navigator and aimed his pistol back across the hood at me. Jack fought him, and he had to turn his attention to Jack, to force him into the car, and I ran toward them both.
The agent shoved Jack into the driver’s side, then followed him into the Navigator.
He wheeled hard, rocketing out of the alley, backing into traffic with a blaring of horns. He had to wait several seconds to execute a U-turn. He was leaving Griffith and August behind. Which meant they were under orders that Jack Ming had to be protected at all costs.
I ran at full throttle. I hoped the adrenaline rush would make up for any lack of gracefulness like I showed in my sloppy running back in Las Vegas. I didn’t dodge into traffic behind them. I read the road, the direction they’d gone, with a glance – the level of traffic, the obstacles, the shifting pattern of the cars. You have to read the terrain in a parkour run and that’s why normally you only run where you’ve walked and explored, thoroughly. I was
