Like a Knife (16 page)

Rachel ran from the zoo, following Nick east to the car. Her mouth dried up, her chest heaved.
Will I ever catch my breath?

Isaac kicked and yowled; nothing soothed him. The hysteria created a beacon pinpointing their location. Soon several of Rennie's men lined up behind them.

Faster. Run faster.

But she was going as fast as she could.

Nick dodged a zigzag path down the street. For a few hundred yards, he lost their pursuers, but Isaac's howling led the men right back to them. After a while, she stopped hearing the screams. Her own huffing filled her ears.

Down side streets, around people, between speeding cars.

Her lungs gave out; she couldn't take another step.

She took another step.

And finally, finally, thank you God, the crying stopped.

Nick slowed to a fast walk; glancing over his shoulder, she saw Isaac quivering in exhausted sleep.

"Poor baby." She stroked Isaac's tired, sweaty face.

"Poor baby, my ass."

Scurrying low and ducking behind cars, they crossed a street and entered the garage. Once again, the attendant's booth was empty, but it didn't matter, as Nick had kept the car keys. Turning away from the vacant stall, Rachel rounded a corner and spotted the VW, its faded red hump a welcome sight. They tramped up the short ramp and headed for it.

Without warning, a viselike arm around Rachel's throat snapped her backward.

"Nick!"

She screamed again, but the arm choked off the sound, crushing her against a hard chest. Nick whipped around.

"Put down the boy," a male voice said. The cool, metallic circle of a gun barrel bit into her temple.

Rachel's blood froze;

"Let her go." Nick's stare drilled into the man behind her.

"Don't fuck with me! Put the boy down, or I'll blow her face off."

"You can have the kid, and you can have me. But you have to let her go, or you get nothing. Kill her, and you'll have to kill me. And you can't do that without killing the boy." Nick nodded down to the sleeping child in his arms. "And Rennie isn't going to like that."

Rachel couldn't see the man, but she sensed his indecision. Trembling, she focused on Nick's severe, implacable face. He never once looked at her, but she clung to his hard expression the way a rock climber clings to a sheer wall of granite.

As if it were the only thing keeping her alive.

She sweated out the silence. The next second might be the last she'd ever have. Or the next. Or the next. Pictures swam in her head. A pool of blood, black as night. Sightless eyes. Her mother's dead fingers, twitching.

Suddenly the hold around her throat loosened. The man flung her away.

Never taking his eyes off the man behind her, Nick said, "Come over here, Rachel."

Could she move? She was shaking so much. Somehow she found herself next to Nick. She faced her attacker.

The man in the sports coat, the one who had been at the zoo entrance, reading the paper.

"Put the kid down."

"I can't put him down," Nick said, "he's sleeping. You'll have to carry him."

"I can't carry-" But Nick was already unloading the boy into the man's arms.

The gunman struggled to hold the dead weight of the sleeping child and still keep his weapon trained on Nick. "Back off."

"I can't back off until you take him. Watch it, he's going to fall-"

Automatically, the man reached down to support Isaac's weight. For a second his gun hand was occupied with the boy.

In that instant, something flashed in Nick's palm. He moved fast. A hard, vicious upward thrust.

The man staggered, dropped the boy. Isaac hit the pavement, screaming. Shots thudded into the ground, their sound dulled as though by a silencer, and Rachel threw herself over the boy as more shots popped faintly behind her.

It lasted forever, but was over in seconds.

"Let's go," Nick said.

Go?

She couldn't go. She could only sit on the concrete, feeling sick.

Nick hauled her to her feet. Behind him, a body lay crumpled and still.

Mama?

Nick stepped into her line of sight, blocking her view.

No, not Mama.

"Get the boy in the car. Go on." He gave her a little push.

She lurched to the car on wobbly legs. Isaac clung to her, hiccuping with sobs, eyes blank and wide.
I know. I understand. I'm here.

She put him in the backseat and looked toward Nick before getting in herself. He pulled something out of the body, and when he straightened, she saw the knife. Calmly, he used the man's sports coat to wipe it clean. Another wave of nausea passed through her, but she climbed into the back next to Isaac.

Nick dragged the dead man to a parked car, wedging him out of sight between the front bumper and the garage wall It was a miracle the attendant hadn't shown up yet, but Nick suspected he was retrieving a car parked at the far end of the garage and had heard nothing. But blood splattered the ground where Rennie's man had fallen; someone would find him soon enough.

Nick checked himself. Red splotches on his hands, on his thighs, and just above the waistband of his pants.

God.

His legs weakened, and he braced his back against a concrete support, filled with self-loathing. A wail roared in his head. He wanted to shout, to howl like a wolf.

But he'd known this was coming. Ever since he'd laid eyes on Rennie again, Nick knew he'd end up stained with someone's blood.

He pounded the rough beam.
Don't think about it. Find a bathroom, wash your hands. Send Rachel for some clothes.
He had to keep going if he wanted to get them away.

Forcing himself to move, he stumbled to the VW and slipped behind the steering wheel, hands shaking, mouth so dry he would have given his life for a shot of whiskey.

Removing the Magnum from underneath his shirt, he stowed it in the glove compartment. The gun he'd taken from the dead man still had most of a clip left, and he laid it on the seat next to him, along with the knife. If he'd known he was going to confiscate an arsenal, he wouldn't have bothered with his last request to Danny Walsh that afternoon. In fact, his suddenly ample stockpile would be laughable if it weren't so sick.

Swallowing the nausea that threatened to erupt out his throat, he turned the key. In seconds they had pulled away.

He headed uptown, keeping to side streets as much as possible and constantly checking the rearview mirror for a tail. After fifteen minutes the sweat had dried, and he began to breathe a little easier. Now all he had to do was get out of the city.

He drove west, cutting through Central Park, his thoughts on his visit with Danny Walsh. The Irishman had been busy, but he'd showed up as promised at the deserted dockside warehouse where Nick had arranged to meet him.

They'd shaken hands. "What can I do for you, Nicky?"

Nick plunged right in. "I need a safe house. Something near enough to the city to make accessibility to Manhattan easy, but far enough away to be safe. And if it's in an area where's there's enough stuff to keep a kid happy, all the better."

"A kid?"

"A six-year-old."

Only the barest of pauses gave away Danny's surprise, "How long will you be needing it?"

"I don't know. A week, maybe two. A month at the outside. And I'm not asking. I'm telling. Can you help?"

"Possibly. Depends on what you've got."

"I've got your arms shipment for the Liberation Council."

Danny laughed. "Don't joke with me now." Then he took another look at Nick's face, and the laughter died. "You're serious."

"I don't know what port it's bound for, but I do know it had some kind of breakdown and had to stop at Malta for repairs. It probably left there yesterday or the day before."

Silence. Nick imagined the enormity of what he' d just said took a few moments to absorb.

"All right," Danny said at last "But I'll need a few hours to check it out."

He canceled the rest of his appointments, and they retreated to a hole-in-the-wall apartment that was empty of everything but a computer, phone, and fax machine. Nick spent most of the afternoon there, waiting with Danny for confirmation. By four, the British had the ship in their sights, and Danny had given Nick directions to the safe house, a cabin on the Jersey shore.

He'd laughed at Nick's surprise. "The Irish have friends all over the world, Nicky. I had the refrigerator stocked for breakfast. What else can I do for you?"

Nick told him, and Danny said he would take care of it. Nick wrote down the directions to the cabin on a scrap of paper. After he'd left, he'd memorized them, then thrown the paper down the sewer.

Now he turned onto Columbus Avenue and then over to the West Side Highway. Luck was with them; traffic was slight. It didn't take him long to get to the Lincoln Tunnel.

Isaac whimpered when the car entered the darkness, but in the rearview mirror Nick saw Rachel gather the boy in her arms, and soon he was quiet again.

Ensconced in the backseat, Rachel tried to stop her teeth chattering. She was alive. They were all alive. That fact was so miraculous it brought tears to her eyes. But she quickly blinked them away so she wouldn't scare Isaac. He was huddled against her, a dark little thing with a gamin face and serious eyes the same color as Nick's.

She shuddered involuntarily, the feel of the gun against her head still imprinted on her memory. Leaning back, she closed her eyes, trying to shake off the terror. She had to tell Nick about the switched printout He had to know they had a hold over Spier. But she couldn't do it now, not with Isaac here. She'd have to wait until she and Nick were alone. In the meantime, this mournful boy needed her attention.

Putting her own fears aside, she rummaged around in the tote.bag at her feet. Through all the tumult, she had somehow managed to hang on to it, and to Isaac's bear, which was stuffed inside.

"Look, Isaac. Look who's here." She put the bear in his lap. "Do you think your bear was scared when the bad men were chasing us?"

Isaac didn't answer. He was staring at the back of Nick's head,

Nick's gaze flicked at her in the rearview mirror. "He's probably not sure he's escaped them. Martin told him I was one of the bad guys."

She turned to Isaac. "Is that right? Are you afraid of Nick?"

The boy didn't answer.

"He won't hurt you," Rachel said softly, "I promise. Look, he found your knapsack." She showed him the bag resting on the floor. "And he got you away from the men at the zoo, didn't he?"

Isaac still didn't respond. An air of isolation enveloped him, as if he were his own desert island and would brook no intruders, She'd seen that look a hundred times on Nick's face when he worked at the preschool.

Rachel ruffled his hair. "It's okay. You don't have to say anything now. But if you want to, I'm right here. No one's going to hurt you anymore. Not me, and not Nick."

Later she took out the paper and crayons she'd packed. Isaac stared at them for a while without touching them.

Rachel prodded him gently. "Do you like to draw? What kind of pictures can you make?"

But he didn't pick up a crayon. Instead, he spoke for the first time since they'd got in the car. "Am I going to the hospital?"

Rachel met Nick's gaze in the rearview mirror. "Is there someone in the hospital you want to visit?"

"The aunt who took care of him for Shelley was probably in the hospital before she died," Nick said.

"Do you want to visit your aunt, Isaac?"

"Auntie Mary went to the hospital, and then she went away."

Rachel swallowed the lump at the back of her throat. "A lot of people have gone away, haven't they? Well, we're not going away, honey. We're staying right here with you. But I don't think we'll go the hospital. Not today."

His little body relaxed against her. Without another word, he picked up a crayon and began to draw.

The car was steady but not fast; the trip took hours. Every twenty minutes or so Nick took a stray exit off the parkway to see if they were being followed. He never spotted anybody, but it didn't appear to ease his anxiety. And it made the trip interminable.

In the back, Isaac drew pictures that broke Rachel's heart. Dark, angry blotches of color, he explained them to her in a matter-of-fact voice.

"These are the dead people." He pointed them out. "See the blood?"

At dusk, they stopped at a strip mall with a clothing store and a burger joint. Nick sent Rachel to look for clean clothes while he waited in the car. She brought back a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. Nick changed in the restaurant's men's room, where he scrubbed the bl6od off his hands and changed into the new clothes, stifling any thoughts about what he was doing or why.

When he came out, he found Isaac and Rachel at a table, a hamburger and fries in front of the boy. It would have been better to take the food and go, but Nick didn't have the heart to say so.

The restaurant had a promotion for kids, and Nick bought a small plastic truck to replace the one they'd left at the zoo. He gave it to Isaac, and the boy played with zeal but little joy. He zoomed the truck over his hamburger and made engine noises, his face sober and intent

Nick slid into the seat next to Isaac and watched, absorbed. Maybe it would be all right Maybe they could work it out For the first time, he allowed himself to acknowledge the one thing he hardly wanted to face.