Stones of Fire

19

Glancing through the plate-glass doors of the 7th Street exit, Edie imagined the headline story on local TV news: GUNMAN GOES BERSERK INSIDE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART. Channel 9 and Channel 4 news vans had just pulled up outside the museum, technicians hurriedly unloading equipment. As she continued to observe the action outside, it appeared a great many people were unloading equipment from the back of official-looking vehicles: paramedics with stretchers, firemen hefting axes and water hoses, DC police stacking orange traffic cones. The museum had become a scene of industrious purpose — visitors exiting through one door, emergency services entering through another.

Still in the wheelchair, she sat quietly as Cædmon rolled her over to a large Chinese vase set in a niche.

‘Time for Milady to exit her carriage.’

Edie hurriedly extricated herself from the wheelchair, her legs so wobbly she unthinkingly grabbed the Qing Dynasty vase to keep from collapsing.

Cædmon wrapped an arm around her shoulders, gently removing her hand from the priceless objet d’art. ‘Steady as she goes,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Deep breaths will slow your heart rate. At least it always works for me.’

She nodded her thanks, surprised by the admission. Although she barely knew him, Cædmon Aisquith seemed to have been born with the proverbial stiff upper lip. No deep breaths required.

‘Given the obviously well-planned attack, we must assume that there are more people involved and that our adversaries will attempt to track our movements via electronic transactions.’ Removing his wallet from a trouser pocket, Cædmon peered into the worn brown leather. ‘I’m afraid that my assets are somewhat paltry. Seventy-five dollars and three hundred euros. How much do you have?’ he bluntly enquired.

The question caught Edie off guard. Her eyes narrowing suspiciously, she said, ‘I have five thousand dollars. What’s it to you?’

‘I say! You must have cleaned out your bank account.’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ she mumbled, unwilling to elaborate.

‘Very well then. I suggest we assume aliases, Mr and Mrs Smythe-Jones or some such, and check into a hotel.’

‘The two of us? In a hotel?’ Edie had given no thought as to what would happen once they left the museum; if anything, she’d assumed they’d go their separate ways. She’d only come to the National Gallery of Art to warn him of the danger, not to hook up with him.

Although I suppose there might be some truth in the old adage about safety in numbers.

‘Yes, a hotel,’ Cædmon reiterated. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m in dire need of a soft bed and a stiff drink.’

‘Bed and booze. Okay, I’m in.’

Cædmon motioned to the throng exiting the museum. ‘Shall we join the multitude?’

As they approached the line of people being searched, Edie surveyed the crowd of visitors, most of whom were excitedly chatting about what they’d seen, what they knew or what they’d heard.

She nudged Cædmon in the arm. ‘Did you hear what that man just —’ She stopped suddenly, catching sight of a familiar face out of the corner of her eye.

The bent cop in the alley behind the Hopkins Museum.

‘To your left! It’s the killer’s cop buddy!’ she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

Without so much as turning his head, Cædmon swivelled his gaze to the left. ‘The bloke with sandy blond hair?’ When she nodded, he said, ‘Did he catch sight of you at the Hopkins?’

‘No. But they have my driver’s licence photo. They know what I look like.’

‘Right.’

An absent-minded look on his face, Cædmon patted his breast pocket, giving every appearance of being a man searching for a pen or his reading glasses. It took a moment for Edie to realize that he was very carefully casing the joint, his eyes moving from left to right and back again.

‘In a few seconds there’s going to be a frightful stampede towards the door,’ he said in a low voice, taking her firmly by the upper arm as he spoke. ‘Be ready to run for your life.’

Edie nodded, knowing he spoke literally, not figuratively.

‘Good God!’ Cædmon suddenly boomed in a loud, forceful voice. ‘There’s the gunman! That man standing by the elevator doors!’

At Cædmon’s commanding voice — which sounded an awful lot like a Shakespearean actor bellowing about kingdoms and horses — every head in the lobby abruptly turned.

A second of shocked silence ensued, then the façade of order gave way. Those visitors closest to the doors rushed them. The four museum guards and every policeman in sight charged in the opposite direction towards the elevators.

That being their cue, Edie and Cædmon ran for the doors, elbowing their way to the head of the pack.

Several seconds later, they burst free of the building.

‘Hurry!’ Cædmon ordered, taking her by the hand as he descended the portico steps that fronted the museum. ‘I suspect we fooled everyone save the man searching for us. What’s that across the street?’ He pointed beyond the traffic jam of news vans and patrol cars to a grove of leafless trees on the other side of 7th Street.

‘That’s the outdoor Sculpture Garden.’

‘And in this direction?’ He pointed towards Constitution Avenue.

‘Federal Triangle.’

‘Am I correct in thinking there’s a tube station nearby?’

‘There’s a subway station a couple of blocks away. On the other side of the Archives.’

‘Right.’ Still holding her by the hand, Cædmon scurried past a line of cops attempting to hold back onlookers with a flimsy strand of yellow crime scene tape.

‘In case you’ve forgotten, my Jeep is parked —’

‘Not now!’

Knowing their priority was to escape the sandy-haired cop she’d seen in the lobby, Edie held her tongue. They could thrash out the specifics of the escape plan once they were free and clear of the museum.

Breaking into a run, they crossed 7th Street, Cædmon leading the way to the Sculpture Garden. Through the sparse foliage Edie spotted a steel form on the right and a bronze shape on the left. Ahead of them was an outdoor skating rink, a trio of skaters gracefully gliding across the smooth ice, apparently ignorant of the pandemonium on the other side of the street.

Still leading the way, Cædmon went to the right of the rink, turned right yet again then made a sharp left. For a man unfamiliar with the city, he was doing an excellent job of manoeuvring them through the garden. It wasn’t until they emerged onto Constitution Avenue, some two blocks from the 7th Street museum exit, that Cædmon slowed his pace.

Her lungs burning with the frigid December air, Edie came to a grinding halt, unable to catch her breath. When Cædmon put a steadying hand on her shoulder, she instinctively hurled herself at his chest.

‘That c-cop would have killed… If you hadn’t… We would be…’ She burrowed her head into his shoulder, fear causing her thoughts to collide incoherently together.

Cædmon wrapped his arms around her. ‘Ssshh. It’s all right. We’re out of danger,’ he murmured, his breath warm against her cheek.

It took a good half-minute before her breathing returned to something approximating normal. Embarrassed that she’d thrown herself at him, Edie pulled free from Cædmon’s embrace.

‘Better?’ he enquired solicitously. Other than the fact that his eyes had turned an iridescent shade of cobalt blue, he showed no outward sign of exertion.

Doing a good imitation of a bobble-head doll, she nodded warily. Warily because she could hear the blare of sirens in the near distance. A police net was being thrown around the National Gallery of Art. If the net was extended, they might yet be ensnared.

She glanced at her watch. Unbelievably, no more than fifteen minutes had passed since the three shots had been fired in the museum concourse. It seemed both longer and shorter, as though time had sped up and slowed down all at once.

‘I don’t know about you, but I feel like I just got sucked into a killer cyclone, houses, cows and farm fences spinning all around me.’

‘I feel much the same.’ One side of his mouth twitched up. ‘Certainly, this was not how I imagined spending my afternoon.’

‘I hear you.’ Still embarrassed by her show of weakness, she wiped several wet flakes from her eyelashes. The snow had slowed to a desultory smatter, wispy flakes blowing on a cold westerly wind.

From where they stood, diagonally opposite the National Archives, they had an excellent view in either direction along Constitution Avenue. Spread along the famous thoroughfare were familiar citadels of sanity — hot dog vendors, souvenir stands, T-shirt kiosks — tiny punctuation marks haphazardly placed between the ponderous block-like buildings.

Deciding to take charge, Edie turned to the right, intending to backtrack to her parked vehicle. She’d taken no more than a step when Cædmon grabbed her by the elbow.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘We discussed this already. I’m going to the Jeep. Are you in or are you out?’

‘While there are advantages to having a vehicle at our disposal, there are also certain disadvantages that must be considered.’

Desperate to get back to the Jeep, that being the quickest means of escaping the madness, she straightened her shoulders. No easy feat given that she was bundled in a leather jacket and an oversized trench coat. ‘On the count of three: paper-rock-scissors.’

His copper-coloured brows drew together in the middle. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me. Since there’s just the two of us, we can’t put it to a vote. So instead we’ll use paper-rock-scissors to decide. You guys do that in England, don’t you?’

‘I am familiar with the hand game. In fact, it was invented in the mid-eighteenth century by the Comte de Rochambeau as a means to settle —’

Edie held up a hand, stopping him in mid-flow.

‘More information than I need to know.’ Tired of being the follower rather than the leader, she met his gaze head on. ‘On three.’

In unison, they each moved a balled right fist through the air.