I looked over my shoulder again but saw no sign of the #6. When I turned my head back, Mike had already spotted the figure under the farthest arch of the platform.
“Quillian! Freeze!” Both Mike and Mercer drew their guns.
“Alex,” Mercer said in his firmest voice, “get back up on there.”
I retreated to the second step of the staircase, my heart pounding as I watched Mike start to trot lamely toward Quillian.
The fugitive raised an arm. He had a gun, too, and I had no idea how much ammunition he had left, or whether he had discharged any bullets in the days since he’d left the courtroom-before putting two rounds in Teddy O’Malley’s back.
“Give it up, Quillian,” Mike said. “There’s cops on both ends of the tunnel-and a very hot third rail in between.”
Mike was too far from Quillian-and it was pitch-black around them-for either to take aim and shoot, but I ached at how exposed both Mike and Mercer were on the narrow platform. Once the train made its approach, they’d be silhouetted in its high beams and at a great disadvantage in the standoff if Quillian fired at them.
“Come over here,” I hissed at both of them, but they didn’t move.
Brendan Quillian must have been inching farther away, his back against the wall. I couldn’t see the movement, but I heard Mike yell at him to stop.
Then his shadow picked up speed as he seemed to reach a corner and round it. Mike barked again and ran away from Mercer and me, slowed by his weak ankle.
He reached the end of the platform and paused before jumping down-practically three feet-to the bed of the train tracks. His bad leg crumpled beneath him from the impact of his weight. This time Mike screamed in pain as he toppled over and slid against the tracks.
48
Mercer took off in Mike’s direction in a flash and Quillian disappeared from sight. I dashed after Mercer and reached the platform’s edge just as he jumped down and leaned over beside Mike.
“Go on back, Alex.”
I sat and eased myself off the platform. “It’s safer being with you. At least you’ve both got guns.”
“This isn’t any sprain, man. I’d be surprised if you haven’t torn a ligament or broken a bone,” Mercer said. “Can you stand? Let me help you up.”
Mercer picked his head up, looking for Quillian to reappear, while he tried to help Mike up at the same time. His revolver was still in his right hand.
But as Mike had landed, his good leg had shot out in front of him. It was bent to the side, and his foot was wedged under a tie of the old train tracks, where once tightly packed gravel had loosened and created crevices like the one that now trapped him.
I was on my hands and knees, trying to ease Mike’s foot out of the loafer without further twisting it. Mercer attempted to lift him again with one arm, keeping the gun as steady as he could with his other.
I saw the lights of the #6 gleaming on the tracks a second before I heard the blast from its horn. Peterson’s cops must have ordered the driver to barrel in at full speed to rescue the three of us from the isolated platform. Only now we were directly in the train’s path.
Mike clutched my shoulder again, trying hopelessly to pull himself out from under the grip of the tie. His fingers dug deep into me before he gave up and let go.
“Run, Coop!” Mike yelled at me. “Dammit, girl, run!”
I tugged and tugged, but the heel of his shoe had become stuck between the steel and a rotting piece of wood covered by gravel. I wasn’t going anywhere without both men. The sweat was streaming out of my pores as I realized there was every likelihood we’d be crushed to death under the wheels of the subway cars that were racing to bring us to safety.
“Take her, Mercer, will you, for Christ’s sake?”
“Make the damn thing stop,” I shouted.
Mercer’s ebony skin looked as dark as the rest of the station’s interior. He picked up the flashlight that had dropped to the ground next to Mike and stood in the middle of the tracks-all that separated Mike and me from the oncoming train-swinging the small beam around and around in a circle until the driver jerked his powerful machine to a sudden halt, inches from where we were huddled together.
49
“What the-?” a young detective asked as he stepped off the front subway car, his shield displayed in his pocket. He was carrying a large brown paper bag in his left hand, his gun in his right. “You guys lost your minds?”
“Mercer Wallace. Special Victims. My partner’s got his foot stuck in the track.”
“Chapman? That you? You oughta lay off the fancy legwork. You caught your perp?”
“No. Not yet,” Mercer said.
“There’s more ways out of here than Osama bin Laden has caves,” Mike called out. “Quillian may even know about most of them ’cause he came here as a kid with his old man. Can you get me an EMT? I think I’ve got a fracture.”
I hoisted myself up onto the platform. “I’m Alex Cooper. Did the lieutenant send this bag for me?”
“Yeah,” the detective said, handing it over, and taking a matchbook from his pocket. “And these. I’ll radio for a bus. We got to make it snappy. The trains will be stacking up behind us. They’ll be really restless to get going.”
“Make it snappy?” Mike said. “The train gets any closer to me my foot’s gonna break in two. I’m not looking for a Phinneas Baylor saw-off-your-ankle-yourself solution.”
The detective pulled a walkie-talkie from his pants pocket and stepped back into the subway car, directing the driver to reverse direction by thirty feet-perhaps relieving the pressure on the tracks-while he radioed for a team of paramedics.
I turned to Mercer, who was kneeling beside Mike, using his penknife to jab at the wood. I leaned over, intent on removing the shoe from Mike’s foot to ease his obvious pain.
“Nobody move.”
I was startled by the sound of Brendan Quillian’s voice. He had inched along the darkened tunnel wall and was no more than twenty feet from us, his gun pointed directly at Mike’s chest. He was shielded by one of the arches that formed beneath the vaulted ceiling.
“You, Miss Cooper. Take each of their guns and bring them over here to me.”
“Don’t move, Coop,” Mike said, grabbing my wrist with his hand. “He doesn’t have enough cartridges to shoot all of us.”
“Stay on your knees, Wallace. Tell her to bring me your guns.”
Mike’s fingers were pressing into my wrist. I looked to Mercer for his reaction and got nothing but a stone-faced stare. His gun was back in his waistband, where he had placed it to work on Mike’s foot. He shifted his large body to try to block me from Quillian’s line of fire.
The subway car with the young detective was just out of sight around the curve behind us. He couldn’t see what was happening.
“We’d be dead already if he had three rounds left,” Mike said to Mercer and me, loud enough for Quillian to hear. “Think about it. He wouldn’t be talking to us.”
Maybe that was true, or maybe he was being cautious until he got close enough to use his ammunition well.
“I just want to get out of here,” Quillian said.
“So did O’Malley,” Mike said. He was wincing in pain, ready to counter any excuses Quillian threw at him.
“I don’t want to kill the three of you, but you know I’m capable of doing it.”
“You killed your own child, you sick bastard. I know there’s nothing to stop you from shooting us if you had the lead,” Mike said. “If that fucking evil eye could see us at this range, maybe you would.”
Mike was throwing it all at Brendan, while I couldn’t help but think of the irony of his killing the baby he’d conceived with Bex, then never being able to father kids with Amanda.
“How about Teddy O’Malley, Brendan? Did he double-cross you?”
Quillian didn’t answer.
“He brought something to you in here that you needed, didn’t he? Food, for one thing? And I bet it was money. I bet he went to your sister’s house to get cash for your unexpected trip out of town.”