‘Can you walk?’ he asked.
Jones was hurting all over. Her left leg, the knee already damaged at Princeton, was sending shooting pains through her whole body. But she could stand on it, just about. At least nothing was broken, it seemed.
‘Yes,’ she said, although she wasn’t entirely sure. ‘I–I think so...’
‘Come on then, the cab’s round the corner.’
Jones grabbed Dom’s arm.
‘But Marion?’ she queried. ‘What about Marion?’
‘There’s nothing we can do for her.’
Dom’s voice was strangely calm. Jones glanced up at him. An isolated tear rolled down the big man’s cheek, but his mouth was set in a hard line and his eyes were expressionless.
Jones looked back. Marion still lay in a crumpled heap in the road. She couldn’t tell whether or not the wheels of the truck had passed over her a second time. But Marion seemed to be in a different place. Jones glanced at Dom again, in amazement. She suddenly realized what must have happened. The big man had either pulled or pushed poor Marion, as much as he could, out of the truck’s path, while, at virtually the same time, cannoning into Jones and almost certainly saving her life. Only someone with rare strength and speed could have achieved it.
‘Come on, before the goddamn cops arrive,’ said Dom.
A small crowd was gathering around Marion. People were speaking into their mobile phones. Probably calling the emergency services.
Jones hesitated. Suddenly a concerned young woman appeared at her side.
‘Weren’t you hurt too?’ she asked in the nasal twang of the Bronx. ‘Are you all right?’
‘She’s fine,’ said Dom.
‘I’m fine,’ Jones repeated, surprised she could even get the words out. The shock was setting in now. Her whole body was trembling. She was controlling her nausea only with great difficulty. And she knew she must look far from fine.
However, the young woman’s attention had been diverted by the wail of the siren of an approaching police car.
‘C’mon,’ said Dom again. ‘You’re still in danger, Dr Jones. And Connie. I’m gonna find a way to keep you both safe, that’s what Marion would want.’
Dom hooked an arm around the small of Jones’s back, propelling her forwards. She leaned against him. He half-carried her along the street. By the time they reached the cab Jones could contain her nausea no longer. She bent over and emptied the contents of her stomach, partly in the gutter and partly down the side of the vehicle.
‘Oh shit!’ said Dom. ‘Just get in.’
He unceremoniously pushed her into the back of the cab before virtually jumping into the driver’s seat.
The tyres screeched on the wet cobbles, just as the tyres of the fearsome Chevy had done, and the cab catapulted forwards as Dom slammed his foot on the accelerator. Jones, still barely in control of her limbs, nearly bounced off the rear seat and was then flung backwards so that her head rocked on her shoulders.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘Anywhere that’s the fuck out of here,’ replied Dom.
The cab swung from side to side as they hurtled through the Meatpacking District as if it were Monte Carlo and Dom was determined to win the annual rally.
Jones’s stomach seemed to have transported itself upwards to somewhere around chest level. She feared she was going to be sick again. And this time she would have little choice except to throw up inside the cab.
But thankfully, after just a few minutes, Dom slowed down to a more or less normal speed, presumably confident that he had put enough distance between them and the scene of the incident, and Jones’s stomach descended to very nearly its normal position within her abdomen.
With the release from extreme discomfort, came the full awful realization of what had just occurred. If Dom had not arrived on the scene and manhandled her so dramatically out of the way of the charging truck she would be dead. She had no doubt of it. And she had no idea whether he had managed to save Marion, who, at the very least, had been dreadfully mutilated.
Christ, she thought. How was she going to tell Connie?
Suddenly Dom’s deep voice filled the rear of the cab, the speaker system amplifying its Willard White resonance.
‘Right Dr Jones, what we gotta do first is get Connie to safety. But we can’t just go back to my place and get her. Not if we want to live. Have you got a safe way of contacting her?’
Jones slipped her hand inside her raincoat pocket. Miraculously the burner phone was still there, and, even more miraculously, it did not appear to be damaged.
She opened her mouth to tell Dom. Then shut it again. Her head was beginning to clear. And she didn’t like the thoughts that were filling it. Jones put the phone back in her pocket, and pressed her hands tightly together in a bid to stop them trembling.
‘Did you hear me, lady?’ Dom’s voice boomed.
‘How could I not?’
‘Well, we gotta move. We gotta get Connie outta my place. She’s the target. She gotta be the target. Do you see?’
Jones saw. Connie had almost certainly been right all along. The RECAP lab had been deliberately blown up, just as she’d always believed. And Connie had indeed been the target back there on that street corner. The driver of the Chevy had made a mistake. He’d mown down the wrong woman.
The would-be assassin must have been waiting and watching outside Dom’s apartment. And when Jones had emerged with Marion wearing Connie’s cover-all oilskin, the assumption had been instantly made that she was Connie. Marion was slightly shorter than Connie, but about the same build. She had been bent into the weather, and had pulled the hood of her cape up and forwards over her forehead. The little of her face that could have been seen had been further concealed by the umbrella she’d been holding in front of them both. In addition, the assassin may not even have known that there was a second woman in the apartment along with Connie and Jones.
So persons unknown must already have been aware that Connie had not been killed in the Princeton blast, that she was alive and in hiding in New York. They had then tracked her down and attempted, yet again, to kill her. Or so they had thought.
And who the hell were they, anyway, these murderous bastards? Connie suspected the establishment. The government even. Or at least a government affiliated body. But did the American government really go around arranging for its citizens to be mown down on the streets of New York?
The sequence of events had been such that the attack had to have been orchestrated by someone in a position of considerable authority and power, that was for sure.
Jones studied the back of Dom’s head. Dom, as Marion had said, was a man capable of summoning all manner of unknown resources, and Jones had just seen him act in a way that would have been far beyond the capabilities of most human beings. It seemed bizarre that she was so suspicious of a man who had almost certainly saved her life. And it was highly unlikely that Dom would ever be involved in anything that might harm Marion, whom he adored. But Marion had not been the target. Dom himself had said that. Certainly Jones considered Dom to be too much of an unknown quantity to unreservedly trust. For a start, how exactly had he contrived to arrive so conveniently on the scene right after Marion had been mown down?
No way was she going to hand over her burner phone to him, nor use it herself to contact Connie. Not for as long as she was with him.
‘Come on, ma’am, I need your help,’ boomed Dom from the front.
‘Sure, sure,’ muttered Jones.
Dom eased the cab to a halt at a set of lights. The traffic was a little heavier now. There were vehicles queued in front of them, and behind.