Trust Your Eyes

SIXTY-NINE

“Where’s Ray?” Julie asked Thomas. “Think, okay? Think.”

They were sitting in her car, the engine running, out front of her sister’s cupcake shop. Candace stood on the sidewalk, watching the two of them, obviously wondering what the hell was going on.

“It was dark, and I was running,” Thomas said. His body was trembling, and his clothes were soaked with sweat. “I was running so fast I wasn’t paying attention, not until I got to St. Marks and First Avenue.” He looked at Julie. “It was just like on Whirl360, but you could touch things and smell them.”

“Focus,” Julie said. “You say you ran out into the alley and out to the sidewalk. Which way did you go then?”

“Right.”

“So you didn’t run across the front of the shop where you were being held?”

“No, the other way.”

“What were the first things you passed?”

Thomas thought. “There was a tailor’s, and a bike shop, and…”

“What?”

“I think it was called Mike’s Bikes,” he said.

“Okay.” Julie grabbed her phone from the top of the dashboard. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

“Wait,” Thomas said. Now he had his eyes closed. “Mike’s Bikes. It’s next to the tailor shop.” He jerked his head slightly to one side, paused, jerked again, paused.

“What are you doing?” Julie asked.

“I’m working my way up the street,” Thomas said. He was clicking his mouse, in his head. Advancing through the Whirl360 images.

“What street?”

“East Fourth,” he said. “It’s on East Fourth.”

Julie already had the car in drive and, without even a wave good-bye to her sister, slammed on the accelerator and tore up the street, pitching Thomas’s head back against the headrest. He opened his eyes.

“I can tell you how to get to Fourth,” he said.

“I can figure out that part. Just tell me where on Fourth.”

Thomas closed his eyes again. His head kept jerking. “I’m at an antiques store,” he said. “Ferber’s Antiques. It looks like it has toys in the window.”

“What’s the address?”

He gave her a number. “I think that’s the place. That’s where Ray is.”

Julie ran a light, turned at a cross street, floored it.

“Do you have a gun?” Thomas asked, eyes open again.

“What?”

“Do you have a gun? The man had a gun, and the woman had an ice pick.”

“I don’t have a fucking gun,” she said. Julie knew she couldn’t go storming into this place on her own.

She needed the NYPD and the FDNY. What she didn’t have was time to explain. Julie pointed to the cell phone. “Hit 911, then give it to me.”

Thomas picked up the phone. “Do you hit the talk button first and then the number?”

She grabbed it from his hand, glanced from the phone to the windshield and back again a couple of times, then put the phone to her ear.

When the 911 operator came on, Julie adopted a panicked tone and said, “There’s a fire! It looks like it’s started in the back of Ferber’s! The antiques store on East Fourth! And I think I heard shots, too!” She provided a street number, then ended the call before the operator could ask her anything else, and tossed the phone into Thomas’s lap.

Worked when she was back in school and didn’t want to take her exams.