Collision

12

Ben ran down the concrete steps. Get away from the crazy bastard, find a policeman now and tell him everything. Yes, maybe he would end up back in the hands of this freaking weird division of Homeland Security, but he was a witness to murder and he wasn’t going to steal a car and he wasn’t going to run. The idle suggestion- We’ll steal a car — had been the proverbial bucket of ice water, clearing the shock from Ben’s mind. That was not the responsible course of action. He had a business to consider, a reputation, and this horrific night could not redefine him as a person. Once he had a lawyer, the world would shift back to its normal orbit. Sam Hector and his vast connections in the government would get Ben’s good name cleared.

He could get to the ground floor faster taking the stairs than Pilgrim could in a car.

He heard the stairwell door bang open, a flight above him. “Ben!”

Run.

Ben didn’t continue down the stairs-they were empty. Pilgrim could fire down at him or catch up with him, the guy was obviously a soldier of a kick-ass stripe. But people might be on one of the levels. Attendants. Barhoppers. Someone who could help him.

He hit the door. The second level was empty. No people, just cars in most of the slots.

He ran across the level, arrowing for the opposite stairwell. Get as far away as you can, he told himself, just run run run-

A van peeled fast down the incline between him and the far stairwell door, and he raised his hands, beckoning for help as the van cornered and roared toward him. Ben saw a young, soft-faced man with stringy dark hair behind the windshield.

The van didn’t stop. The kid’s arm jutted suddenly from the driver’s open window and a blinding red light caught Ben’s eyes. But not before he saw that the kid held a gun.

A silver van, the gunman on the roof had said.

Ben flung himself between a Saab and a BMW. A shot cracked, shattering the BMW’s window above him. The van’s brakes squealed as though the driver stood on the pedal. Ben didn’t huddle under the sedan; he rolled under two SUVs parked next to it, grease staining his shirt and pants, trying his hardest to be silent.

Nowhere else to run. Nowhere to escape. The kid could just get out of the van and shoot him dead, ease down, smile at Ben in his temporary fortress of undercarriage and concrete.

Ben waited to hear the van door open. But instead he heard an eruption of gunfire.

Pilgrim barreled out of the stairwell-he’d caught a glimpse of Ben running down the stairs, hitting the second-level door-and saw Ben dodging a van, a laser sight dancing, a glow seeking flesh, then a shot fracturing the rear windshield of a car behind where Ben had stood.

The van. Jackie Lynch. Teach was inside that van if the gunman had told the truth.

Then the laser sight swung toward Pilgrim, caught between the stairwell door and a parked car, as the van braked to an awkward, neck-snapping stop.

The shots sang a warble of th-weets and Pilgrim retreated backward, the sting and burn of steel ripping through flesh in his shoulder and his arm. He staggered, missing the door as Jackie leaned out the window to tighten his aim and finish the job.

He retreated, blindly, no place to run, and threw himself over the concrete lip of the garage wall. He dropped into emptiness. How far up was he? he wondered. He couldn’t remember past the pain.

Now in a burst of speed the van powered past where Ben hid.

The guy could kill him easy, why was he running?

Because he just shot who he was really after. Pilgrim.

Ben crawled from under the utility vehicle. Bullet holes scored the wall along the stairwell door, a spill of blood decorated the lip of the edge. Where, presumably, Pilgrim had stood in chasing him.

He started to run toward the other stairwell. He heard a screech of brakes. He stopped. Pilgrim could be lying back there, dead, dying.

He leaned against a parked truck. His and Pilgrim’s lives were somehow connected, tied to each other, because of the murder of Adam Reynolds and how Ben had been framed for it. I can answer your questions, Pilgrim had said, and you can answer mine. We can help each other. But not if we’re both in custody. If Pilgrim died, Ben might never be able to prove his innocence. Homeland Security could threaten him all over again, his reputation would be destroyed, he would never know the truth. Pilgrim must know the reasons why Ben’s life had been targeted and ruined.

Pilgrim had saved him from Kidwell, from the gunman on the roof.

Ben ran back to the edge of the garage and peered down the side. Pilgrim lay, a story and a half below him, in a row of crushed yaupon bushes, moving his arms, groggy, hurt, barely lifting his head.

Halfway down the incline to the ground floor, a crowd of college kids were laughing and piling into their cars, debating through the open windows which club to visit. Jackie guessed they hadn’t heard the sounds of the silenced shots or had attributed the bangs to festival noise. But the kids were taking their own sweet, slow time, calling from car to car while they inched out of the parking slots, blocking the passage. Jackie slammed on his brakes to keep from veering into them.

Jackie rolled down the window. “Move it, goddamn it!”

“Hey! Politeness, dude.” A boy his own age, sitting in one of the cars, slurred his syllables and gave Jackie a beer-soaked smile. Jackie wanted to shoot and knife them all, but the cars were full, six kids in each, and it was too many, it would take too long.

“Please,” Jackie said. “Please. Sorry I yelled. I’m in an awful hurry. Please move.”

“See, politeness works,” the loudmouth said. The car inched up enough to let Jackie roar past.

Jackie yanked up his pants leg, pulled the eight-inch steel knife from its sheath. If Pilgrim lay hurt on the ground, he’d dispatch him with the knife. Quiet and it wouldn’t draw the attention a gun would. If there were witnesses helping Pilgrim, the knife was fast-he’d killed a quartet of late-paying drug dealers in a small Dublin room once with the knife, in under thirty seconds.

Nicky, I’m going to make it right, he thought.

Ben sprinted down the stairwell again, hands skimming the railing. He hit the exit, and the cool night air washed over his filthy and bloodied face. He turned the corner and Pilgrim was trying to stand, favoring his leg. Bleeding, shot in the shoulder.

"C’mon.” Ben looped Pilgrim’s arm over his shoulder. Pilgrim was only a couple of inches taller than him but he felt much heavier. Pilgrim-hurt- leaned hard against him. They couldn’t run down the street; the van would be here within seconds, and the shooter in the van was bound and determined to be sure Pilgrim was dead.

“I’m shot…”

“I know, come on, come on.” Ben pivoted Pilgrim, half-dragged, half-carried him back into the garage. They needed to hide. Now. Or the maniac in the van would cut them both down.

The crash of a wooden barrier breaking boomed on the opposite side of the garage. They ran, Pilgrim gasping, for the elevator. Ben thumbed the up button. The doors slid open at once and the two of them fell into the open elevator.

Ben rose on his knees and jabbed the controls. The roar of a car approached, and he’d gambled wrong; they were trapped. He dragged Pilgrim into the far corner of the elevator, where they couldn’t be seen.

The elevator doors slid closed as a van powered past and onto the street, its headlights sweeping the broken bushes and the empty sidewalk.

Pilgrim was gone. Jackie Lynch circled the parking garage twice, peering at the entrances, letting his headlights spill along the streets, lighting the couples and singles walking along toward the restaurants and nightclubs. He could guess Pilgrim’s point of impact from the mashed bushes-but the bastard wasn’t there. Which meant he wasn’t hurt, and he was running.

He turned around to drive back into the garage, but a large crowd of pedestrians-festival-goers, he guessed-were pouring into the garage as a light rain began to fall again. Too many people there now, too many witnesses.

Maybe they hadn’t gone back into the garage.

He drove up and down the neighboring streets, rage building in the cage of his heart. He scanned the crowds for a limping, bloodied man.

Nicky wouldn’t have missed him, not that close. Hell, he thought, kick Nicky off the pedestal. Nicky sure as hell missed when it counted.

The phone rang. He put the knife on the seat and clicked on the cell phone.

“Report.” It was Sam Hector.

Damn.

“They’re dead, they’re all dead…,” Jackie started.

“You better mean Forsberg and Pilgrim.”

The name Forsberg meant nothing to him, but he said, “No, I mean your bloody Arab hired guns. All dead. Pilgrim killed them all.”

“It’s just you left?” Hector didn’t show any emotion; the iron control made Jackie dislike him more.

“Yes and I’m going to find that bastard and kill him… He’s gone; I hit him but he’s gone, he’s gone.”

“Get out of there. Now. Get Teach to my place. I’ll text directions to your phone.”

“But Pilgrim’s still-”

“Do what I tell you or I’ll forfeit your payment.”

Maybe I’ll just keep the woman, see how you like that, he thought in a blistering rage. But no. Sam Hector would be an extremely dangerous enemy to have. Better to deliver the woman. Get his money. Then see if there was any way to use Hector to find this Pilgrim bastard again.

Jackie drove until he saw the sign for I-35 and found an entrance ramp, heading toward Dallas, four hours north. Leaving the town now where his brother had died, and for the first time he wondered what would happen to Nicky’s body, where it would be buried, how he could ever get it home to Northern Ireland. He suspected he couldn’t. He started to tremble, not with grief. With rage.

Today wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Several blocks to the west a Volvo station wagon worked past the crowds.