started in the back of Ferber’s! The antiques store on East Fourth! And I think I heard shots, too!” She provided a street number, then ended the call before the operator could ask her anything else, and tossed the phone into Thomas’s lap.
Worked when she was back in school and didn’t want to take her exams.
SEVENTY
The ice pick had entered the side of Lewis’s right leg about five inches below the knee. Nicole had driven it straight in, through his jeans, and the tip had come out the other side, poking through his pants, the tip crimson.
It had the effect of pulling that leg out from under him, because he dropped right there, to both knees, crushing one of the board game boxes, screaming the whole time. He let go of his gun and twisted around so he could get hold of the handle of the ice pick to pull it back out.
That wasn’t something I wanted to see, but I was transfixed, as was Howard. What we both ended up seeing was even worse. Nicole sat up and got her hand on the pick before Lewis could, and instead of pulling it out and using it on him again in a new spot, or shoving it in even farther, she yanked on it sideways. The steel within his leg made new paths through his flesh, causing him to cry out again. He jerked his leg furiously, the heel of his boot catching Nicole, who was up on one arm and on her side, square in the chest.
It knocked her onto her back, but she was up in a second.
Lewis was scrambling, looking for his gun. It was on the floor in a rapidly growing puddle of his blood. He went to grab it, but Nicole had her hands on it first.
She wrapped her hand around the wet, bloodied grip and pointed it at Lewis’s head. He had rolled onto his back, had raised himself half up with his arms, and was scrambling backward, crablike, dragging the wounded leg after him.
Nicole was on her knees now, both hands on the gun, her arms out straight and steady. “I hate guns,” she said. Her blouse was torn open, revealing something else, dark and padded.
A vest.
“Nicole,” Lewis said. “Listen, listen to-”
She pulled the trigger and blew a corner of his head off. His body went flat, the floor a mass of blood and skull and brain matter.
Howard threw his hand to his mouth, like he was going to vomit. He turned, flung back the curtain, and started to run. Nicole scrambled after him.
In the distance, I heard sirens.
I pulled my left hand free of the tape, which now hung loose from my right hand and started tearing into the tape around my stomach that held me to the chair.
The sirens grew louder.
But even closer, the sounds of a car screeching to a stop in the alley. Someone shouting. A woman.
“Thomas!”
Shit.
I broke free of the chair and dived to the floor, scattering toys before me. I wanted to get over to Lewis, to his body.
There was a gun, tucked into the front of his pants. Morris’s gun, maybe.
In the front room, I heard a pfft, pfft and then the sound of another body dropping.
From outside: “Ray!”
“Thomas, stop!”
Julie.
I was on my knees, reaching for the gun, my fingers just touching the grip, when the curtain flung back. I glanced up, just in time to see Nicole’s boot catch my jaw.
It was one hell of a kick.
I saw stars as my body was catapulted backward. My arms went out instinctively to brace my fall, but it still hurt like hell when I landed. Something sharp dug into my back, then skittered out from under me. A toy dump truck.
My right hand had landed on one of the other items that had tumbled off the shelves. Even before I looked at it I could feel that it was part plastic, part metal.
Nicole pointed her gun at me. But before she could squeeze the trigger, there was a loud bang from the short hallway that led to the alley.
A door being thrown open.
“I got help!” Thomas screamed. “I got Julie!”
“No!” Julie, sounding as though she was a step behind him, screamed.
Nicole’s eyes turned toward the voices, and the gun followed. The second Thomas appeared he’d be dead.
I glanced over at my right hand, which was draped across the blue plastic fins of a foot-long, metal-pointed lawn dart.
It wasn’t exactly a javelin. But I wasn’t just good at throwing one of those in high school. I was pretty damn good at regular old darts.
In the milliseconds I had before Thomas ran in, I hoped throwing darts was like riding a bike. You never forget how.
Despite the throbbing in the side of my head, the pain in my jaw and my back, I moved with lightning speed, grabbing the dart by the tail end, swinging it back over my shoulder, then pitching it forward with everything I had.
“Ray!”
Thomas burst into the room.
The dart went into Nicole’s neck. It went in far enough, an inch or two, that it hung there.
Her mouth opened but no scream came out. Her right hand held on to the gun as her left flew up. She grasped the dart, and yanked it out.
It was like water from a tap.
Blood spurting everywhere.
Nicole dropped the dart and clamped her left hand over the wound. She dropped the gun from her right, turned, stumbled over to the desk.
She coughed and blood spilled from her mouth as well as her throat. She used the desk to briefly support herself, but only for a few seconds. She dropped to the floor as the sirens became almost deafening.
Now Julie was in the room, and she hit the brakes as soon as she saw the carnage. A firefighter, running in behind her, nearly knocked her over when she stopped so abruptly.
“Ray?” she said.
Thomas was already helping me to my feet. “Look who I found,” he said. “I brought Julie.” He smiled. “I’m back.”
SEVENTY-ONE
Over the next twenty-four hours, Thomas and I, and Julie, had to answer a lot of questions from a lot of different agencies. We were questioned separately, and together, by New York City cops, state police, FBI, even the Port Authority, for all I knew. One guy, I was told later, was from Homeland Security, but there were so many who wanted to pick our brains that I couldn’t figure out which one he was.
Thomas, when we had a moment together, expressed some concern that there was no one from the CIA. “You’d think they’d be here, wanting to see how I’m doing,” he whispered. I could see the disappointment in his
