After the explosive crash, the silence was deafening.
The left side of the limo was seriously mangled. Several side airbags had deployed, but no one in the car had escaped unscathed.
Some were worse off than others.
The car itself had been knocked several feet to one side, and the SUV that had hit them had bounced back from the impact, its front end a crumpled mess, the hood buckled, the windshield spiderwebbed. A bloodied, deflated airbag was visible beyond the glass.
There hadn’t been time for anyone in the car to scream. No one had seen it coming. They were talking, waiting to turn onto Seventieth, and then there was the incredible crash, the disorientation.
And then, briefly, the quiet.
It was Charise who spoke first. “Is everybody okay?”
Clearly, she was not. Blood was streaming down the left side of her face. Her door had caved in about six inches, and when she looked down at her leg, covered in crystallized glass, she saw blood.
Gold said nothing.
Miles had heard Charise call out, but her voice had sounded like it was coming from underwater.
Dorian said, “Miles, Miles, talk to me.”
Miles looked down at himself and was surprised not to see blood. But his left shoulder was aching, his head hurt, and he wondered whether he’d suffered a concussion. He turned to check on the doctor, whose head was sitting close to sideways on his shoulder.
“Gold,” Miles said, his voice echoing in his own head. “He’s not moving. I think he broke his neck.”
Charise said, “My leg.”
Dorian opened the front passenger door — easily done since the car had not been hit on that side — and staggered out to the street. She needed a moment to get her balance. She opened the rear door. Gold rolled out with it, his body half in the vehicle, half out. Dorian reached around him to undo his seat belt.
“Shit,” Dorian said. “I think he’s dead, Miles.”
Dorian, summoning a strength she did not know she had, gently dragged Gold from the car and placed him carefully onto the pavement.
There was a smell of gas.
Miles’s door was too damaged to open, but as he went to slide across the seat toward the other side he found he couldn’t move.
“Miles,” Dorian said, “come on.”
He felt paralyzed. He didn’t think he’d been injured, but his body wasn’t getting the message he was sending it, which was: Get out!
Dorian went headfirst into the car, got her arms under Miles’s shoulders, and started to drag him out.
“Anybody else smelling that?” said Charise, trying without success to open her door.
Dorian had Miles halfway out when he said, “I’m okay, I can move.”
The messages were getting through. The moment he was on the street he looked down and saw gas flowing across the ground.
“Charise, get out,” he said.
“Door won’t open.”
“Scooch over!” Dorian said.
“My leg,” she said again. She tried to shift across the seat but was moving slowly.
Dorian reached in and grabbed Charise’s right arm with both hands, pulling hard enough to almost take it out of the socket. When Charise reached the door, she had to put an arm around Dorian’s shoulder so that she could stand. Her left pant leg, below the knee, was torn and bloody.
A crowd had formed. People were rushing about. Someone was on a cell phone, calling for help. Another was taking video, something they could sell to the local newscasts.
Sirens.
Miles, wobbling some because of some soreness in his left knee, got around the other side of Charise to help Dorian get her away from the car. He yelled at the rubberneckers, “Get back!”
Charise said, “I never saw... came out of nowhere...”
When they were about twenty feet away from the limo, Miles asked Dorian, “You got this?”
“Yeah.”
Miles let go of Charise and went to check on the car that had hit them.
“I know that car,” he said under his breath.
He limped along until he was at the driver’s door. The window had shattered, and he could see the woman behind the wheel.
The airbag, having exploded and collapsed, looked like an enormous, melted marshmallow dribbled with strawberry syrup.
“Caroline,” he said.
She did not hear him. Her head sat at an odd angle on her neck. Her eyes were closed. Miles reached out tentatively, touched her below the jaw.
“Caroline,” he said again.
It wasn’t up to him to make the call, but he had little doubt she was dead. He stood and looked at her for another moment, believing it and not believing it, and then limped his way back to the limo.
An ambulance was already pulling up to the scene. Seconds later, another one. There were more sirens in the distance.
A paramedic ran over to Miles. She said, “Sir, are you hurt?”
Miles looked down Seventieth Street. They’d almost made it.
He said. “Look after the others.”
As the limo started to erupt in flames, Miles hobbled his way to Jeremy Pritkin’s brownstone.
Sixty-Seven
New York, NY
Chloe and Nicky successfully faked out the security guard. He was ready to block their way down the stairs, but as they hightailed it up the steps to the third floor, they were leaving him in their dust.
They hoped a few seconds’ head start would be all they needed.
They sprinted, side by side, to the closed doors that led down the wide hallway to Jeremy’s office. Nicky quickly entered the four-digit password into the keypad and pushed the door open. They flew past the erotic art on one wall and the windows on the other one. When they opened the second set of doors at the end of the hall, Nicky was relieved not to find the man of the house there. That would have been a complication.
Nicky ran straight to Jeremy’s desk and slid open the drawer she had seen him take the gun from the night she’d been discovered in the Winnebago. “It was here,” she said breathlessly.
She found the gun immediately, but set it aside on the desk.
“Don’t we want that?” Chloe asked.
“He doesn’t keep it loaded,” Nicky said.
They could hear someone running down the hall.
“Where is it?” Nicky said. She was tossing everything from the drawer onto the desk. Pens, small Moleskine notebooks, computer sticks, reading glasses—
“Yes!” she said, taking out a key ring with a two-inch silver W attached to it. There was only one key on the ring.
She came running around the desk and headed for the Winnebago’s side door. She swung it open for Chloe, who jumped in first. Nicky followed, and slammed the door shut behind her at the same moment the security guard came storming into the study.
“Lock it!” Chloe screamed.
Nicky reached for the deadbolt above the knob and turned it. The guard ran across the room and tried the outside handle. Finding it locked, he banged on the door with his fist.
“Open up!” he demanded.
“Fuck you!” Nicky said.
Jeremy could be seen beyond the study doors, running down the corridor.
“He’s coming,” Nicky said.
Chloe got behind the wheel of the Winnebago and placed her palm on the center of the steering wheel and applied pressure.
The vehicle’s horn began to blare.
This had been the plan. It was simple enough. Grab the keys to the RV, get in and lock the door, then lay on that horn until help arrived. And as simple as the idea was, Nicky wasn’t sure she could pull it off alone. She might need Chloe to stall while she looked for the key. Plus, she’d had to admit to Chloe that she didn’t actually know where the horn would be. On the steering wheel, sure, but would it be a little button on the spokes? Would it be in the center?