Terminal City

FORTY-SIX

I had my back to the wall, next to the door.

“What do you have in your apron pocket beside the lighter?” I asked Zoya.

She had heard the volley of shots and was ten steps ahead of me, backtracking in the corridor.

“Nothing. Just a Swiss Army knife and a bottle opener.”

A waitress, of course. “Let me have them, please.”

She fished in her apron and handed me the multitooled gadget first. I pocketed that, then held out my hand for the corkscrew. I pushed in the lock on the door-there was no bolt-then asked her to come back and hold the lighter so I could see well enough to jam the keyhole with the wine opener.

“Let’s go. That should buy us a few minutes.”

“But the gunshots?”

“It’s the cops. They think they see your brother up here.”

“Near us? Coming toward us?”

“I don’t know, Zoya.”

She started to run in the dark, holding the lighter out in front of her. “He’ll kill me,” she said. “Why aren’t the cops here?”

He’ll kill anyone he encounters, I thought to myself. “Where are you going, Zoya? You’re heading back the same way we came.”

Nik could just as easily crawl back to the catwalk he’d started from as come out to the one we’d been standing near. I wanted to find a place to hide.

The young woman kept running ahead of me.

“Zoya, how well do you know this area? There must be supply closets up here, aren’t there? Somewhere we can be out of sight.”

“I’m getting out.” She was frantic now, and I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t thinking any more clearly, although there didn’t seem a way to escape from the top of the building that had countless entrances and exits on the street level.

“We’ve got to stay together, Zoya.”

“I don’t have to do anything you tell me. You’ll get me killed. You’ll get us both killed.”

Halfway down the corridor, she took a right turn, which was the way back to the situation room that we’d exited with Yolanda Figueroa.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

I caught up with her as she pulled on the door. It wouldn’t open. She stepped aside to let me try, but I couldn’t move it.

“Don’t you have a key? Don’t you have anything to help us?” Zoya had lost it, emotionally. She was unable to talk to me now. Everything she said was a scream or a high-pitched rant.

“I don’t have keys. I never did.” This hadn’t been the plan for the evening.

Zoya swept past me and continued down the narrow hallway. I looked back before I followed her. Blunt didn’t appear to be coming yet, if he was still alive. There was no noise from the direction of the landing, where I’d blocked the keyhole-at least temporarily.

Ten seconds later, Zoya let out a shriek. I ran toward her in the dark space, farther away from the corridor that led to the two catwalks, and to the stairwells that eventually could take us down to the concourse.

There was a body on the floor, directly in front of the door to the operations command center. A man in some kind of military camouflage who’d been shot in the chest. He was African American, so I knew that it wasn’t Nik Blunt.

Zoya was out of control. She began banging on the door of the operations center.

I knelt beside the soldier-a National Guardsman or reservist. I grabbed the Bic lighter from Zoya’s hand to take a cursory look at his face and chest. The man was dead.

“Let me in,” Zoya yelled to whoever was inside.

Keith Scully and his colleagues had obviously stationed someone outside the room where the trains were controlled. It appeared that Nik Blunt had killed him and taken whatever gun-whatever kind of weapon-the dead man had thought would protect him.

“Nobody’s coming in here,” a voice called back. “Who are you?”

“I’m-I’m-just a woman. Just-just-help me. What’s the difference?”

“I’m a prosecutor. I’m Alex Cooper,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“You got ID? You got a badge?”

“No, no, badge. But you can call the stationmaster. Call the police commissioner. They’ll tell you who I am.”

“Lady, we can’t call nobody. How the hell do I know who you are? Somebody was supposed to be outside this door keeping us safe. Sounds like he’s gone. We’re barricaded in here till I see the man I work for. All our furniture’s against the door, so don’t try anything.”

“The man guarding you is dead,” I said.

I didn’t know whether I was talking to Yolanda Figueroa’s boyfriend or not, but it wasn’t the time to break that sad piece of news to him.

“I’ve got a gun, lady. Locked, loaded, and perfectly legal. Try to get yourselves in here and you’re dead, too.”

Zoya started stumbling forward again, farther into the dark hallway, into what was unfamiliar territory for me.

I stood beside the man who’d been killed, unable to move.

Then I heard noise, remote but audible. Someone was playing with the lock that I’d jammed with the corkscrew, jimmying it, trying to force it open.

I reached up for one of the horizontal steam pipes and grasped on to it. It was so dark that I couldn’t even see Zoya, but there was only one direction in which I could move.

In ten or twelve steps, I could hear her breathing. I practically bumped into her, where she had stopped at an intersection in the narrow passageway.

I drew next to her and whispered in her ear, as softly as I could. “I think Nik’s going to be coming back this way. We won’t be able to talk. We can’t use your lighter.”

“How do you know he’s coming?” She was panicky, shaking like a leaf.

“There’s someone trying to get through that door on the landing we just left. If it was cops, they’d be calling out to us by now. They’d be offering help.”

“But you said-”

“We had to leave the position Mike sent us to, so the guys don’t know where we are anymore, Zoya. How can they help us till they do?”

“Well, I’m getting out. I’m getting out of here.”

“Where are you going? I’m trying to help you stay safe. There must be some hiding place you remember.”

She turned her back to me and started to walk briskly. It was too dark to run.

Zoya Blunt had no intention of answering me. She was simply trying to put as much distance as she could between her brother and herself.

She made a right turn at the intersection in the corridor. I had no choice but to follow her.

We must have taken another twenty or thirty steps. To my right was a series of doors-probably equipment closets. I slowed down to twist the knobs, but nothing gave.

Zoya Blunt stopped short just ahead of me. To her left were only two choices: a steel-framed door or a wooden staircase located at the bottom of a dozen steps.

I watched as without hesitation she chose the door.

I was practically on her back as she worked the handle. There was no lock.

Zoya pushed on the door and it swung open.

I looked out and gasped. She had stepped out onto the sloping roof of Grand Central Terminal, twenty stories above 42nd Street.