The Second Life of Nick Mason

32

Mason didn’t know where he was driving. He didn’t even know which direction. He was just getting away from the quarry as fast as he could. Drive the fuck away, he told himself. Don’t stop until you’re somewhere safe.

Diana was slumped in the seat next to him. Her eyes were open, but they weren’t focused on anything at all. He grabbed her arm and shook it.

“Diana!”

She didn’t respond.

“Diana! Are you okay?”

As Mason made a quick turn, she was thrown against the side of the car. Then she fell back to the same position. She was still staring at nothing.

“Answer me! Are you okay?”

She inhaled a long breath, ragged and sputtering. Like a diver breaking through to the surface. “Let me out!”

“No.”

“Let me out! Let me out right now!” She grabbed his arm, her fingernails digging into his skin. “Pull this car over, God damn it!”

He jammed on the brakes and brought the car to a skidding stop on the side of the road. Diana was thrown forward in her seat, then came back hard. She grabbed at the door handle.

“Listen to me,” Mason said, reaching over and trying to pull her hand away from the handle. He looked outside, had no idea where they were. Still outside the city somewhere. A darkened warehouse on one side of the road, an empty field on the other. “Will you fucking listen to me for one second?”

First she was comatose. Then she was clawing at the car door like an animal trying to escape its cage.

“You need to calm down,” he said.

She took a few more gasping breaths before she could speak again. “You want me to calm down?” she said. “I was just kidnapped, Nick. I was kidnapped and taken down a fucking tunnel. And then you came and you… you…” She tried to find the right words. “You killed four people right in front of me! You killed four cops, Nick! I’ve got their blood on me!”

She showed him the sleeves of her shirt. The white fabric was sprinkled with bright red dots. He didn’t want to point out that the same blood was all over her face.

And he didn’t feel like telling her that he’d only killed two of them.

Eddie had killed the third.

As for the fourth… He flashed back on the fraction of a second he saw the cop standing there on the other side of his car window. He could see the man’s face and those cold gray eyes. He could see the man’s tactical vest. Then the explosion from the shotgun, aimed right at the man’s chest.

That cop was probably still alive.

He’d only seen the man once before, from a distance. But he knew exactly who it was. Sergeant Bloome.

“That’s their blood, Nick! And you’re telling me to calm down?”

“Fine,” Mason said, letting go of her arm. “If you want to get out, get out. They’ll find you and they’ll kill you. But at least you’ll be out of this car.”

She was still breathing like she couldn’t get enough air. Mason put the car back into gear and kept driving.

“There’s only one safe place for you right now,” Mason said, trying to put some calm into his voice. “And that’s with me.”

“Are you crazy? Every cop in this city will be looking for you.”

“No,” Mason said. “That’s the last thing they want. They arrest me, they start asking questions. They start asking questions, they’ll want to know what I was doing there. They’ll want to know what you were doing there. And they’ll really want to know what Bloome and his men were doing there without backup.”

“What was I doing there?” she said. “What did they want from me?”

“They want something I have,” Mason said. “And then they want us dead.”

Her breathing was finally settling back into a normal rhythm. But her hands were still shaking.

“Where do we go?”

“Not home, not the restaurant,” he said. “They’re not safe.”

“Then where?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

They were heading straight back to the city, so he turned and cut to the west until they were in the forest that ran along the canal. He turned onto a gravel road leading off into the trees, the branches scratching at both sides of the car. He came to a fork and went left, then to another fork and went right. All the way into the middle of the forest until the ground rose and the road ended in a clearing.

Mason stopped the car. Diana had her head back on the seat, but her eyes were still wide open. I wonder if she’ll ever be able to close them again, Mason thought, without reliving this night.

“Where are we?” she said.

“Nowhere,” he said. “Good place to be.”

“How does this end?”

“I don’t know.”

“My house?”

“Gone.”

“My restaurant?”

“Forget it.”

“What about my life?”

“That life is over,” he said.

She shook her head and looked out at the trees.

“This goes back to Darius,” she said. “Those cops…”

“They were in business with him.”

“But he’s always owned cops,” she said. “As long as I can remember. I’d see them parked outside on the street. Darius would send Quintero out to talk to them, give them their money. He hated cops his whole life. He’d tell me stories about what they did to some of the kids on the streets when he was growing up. But he said you had to learn to use the thing you hate the most. ‘Tie your wagon to the Devil’s tail,’ he said.”

“This one got loose,” Mason said. “So Cole had to respond. That’s why I’m here.”

“I was doing just fine until you got here,” she said. “It wasn’t the exact life I wanted, but I was making it work.”

“This was not my idea, Diana.”

“You brought this on me.”

He felt like he was about to say the wrong thing, so he got out of the car and walked away. He looked up at the stars in the moonless night. To the east, he saw a great smudge of light in the sky. This city where he came from. This city where nothing would ever be the same again.

We need to go somewhere, he said to himself. We need to go somewhere safe where we can figure out our next move.

Which means one thing. There is one man out there who told me to come to him with any problems. He remembered his exact words. You need something, you call me. You get in a situation, you call me. Don’t get creative. Don’t try to fix anything yourself. You call me.

That’s his job. He couldn’t have made it any more clear.

He took out his cell phone.

He’s the only man who can help us, Mason thought. So why am I not calling him?

He heard the car door opening behind him. Then he heard the scream. As he wheeled around, he saw Diana halfway out of her seat, one foot on the ground. She was looking at the side-view mirror. At the blood on her face.

He went over and pulled her up from the car. He wrapped his arms around her and held on to her as she sobbed into his chest.

“It’s going to be okay.”

“What are we going to do?” she said. “Where are we going to go?”

“I know a place we can go,” he said. “It’ll be safe there.”

He picked up the phone again. He dialed Eddie.

“Thank you for what you did,” he said. “You saved our lives. Now we’re coming to your house.”

There was a long silence on the other end.

“You can’t bring this here,” Eddie finally said. “I’m glad I got a chance to help you out. You know that. But whatever this was, you can’t bring it into this house.”

“You can open the door,” Mason said. “Or I can knock it down.”