“Do you really need to see Harris again?”
She nodded. “I need that disk with the Sheikh video. I want to listen again and make sure I’ve got an accurate translation.”
He pulled into the curb a hundred yards or so past the entrance.
“Wait here. I’ll go get it.”
“I’d better go with you,” Weezy said, reaching for her door handle. “He might not—”
Jack gripped her arm. “I think someone’s watching the place. Good chance they know what you look like now. Better if I go alone.”
She looked worried. “But they’ve seen you too.”
He didn’t want to remind her that pretty much everyone who’d seen him with her was dead—except that self-styled Good Samaritan from the hospital. And Jack didn’t believe for a nanosecond that Bob Garvey was his real name.
“Let me worry about that.”
She stepped out of the car. “No, I’m coming.”
“Weez—”
“We’re wasting time.” She pulled out her—or rather, Jack’s—cell phone as she began walking toward the building. “I’ll call him and let him know we’re here.”
Jack fell in beside her as she punched the buttons. He didn’t like this, but short of locking her in the trunk . . .
After listening for a bit she thumbed the END button and looked at him.
“No answer. Maybe he’s out.”
This was looking worse and worse.
“Or maybe he can’t answer. Go back to the car and—”
“No.”
The finality in her tone told him arguing was futile. He looked back at his car. The Crown Vic had a roomy trunk . . .
Nah.
He checked under his T-shirt to make sure the Glock was nice and loose in its SOB holster, then adjusted his baseball cap as low as it would go over his forehead.
Outside the glass doors he kept his face turned away from the security camera as she pressed Harris’s bell on the intercom. No answer. By luck, a stooped old lady in a babushka came out. He grabbed the door and held it for her, then they slipped inside.
No one about when they reached the eighth floor so they went straight to Harris’s door. Jack positioned himself beside the doorframe with Weezy behind him—just in case a slug plowed through. The hallway walls were reinforced concrete, so no worry there.
He knocked. Again, no answer.
He tried the knob and froze when it turned.
Not good. Not good at all.
He rotated it back to neutral and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is your pal the type to leave his door unlocked?”
“No way.” Her hand shot to her mouth. “Ohmygod.”
“Go back downstairs.” When she shook her head, he pointed down the hall. “At least move away.”
She backed up about ten paces.
Three possibilities here:
Harris went out but left his door unlocked . . . low probability—approaching zero.
Harris home but incapacitated or dead, and his attacker gone . . . possible.
Harris home, incapacitated or dead, and his attacker waiting inside to nab or kill Weezy when she walks through the unlocked door . . . also possible.
Best to play to the worst-case scenario.
Keeping far to the side of the doorframe, he turned the knob and pushed.
Instead of gunfire, a ball of flame exploded into the hallway, propelling the shattered remnants of the door ahead of it and knocking Jack to the floor. He quickly rolled to his feet and ducked away, checking to see if anything on him was burning. No, but the hair on his arms was singed.
Make that four possibilities: Harris home, incapacitated or dead, and the door rigged to explode.
Down the hall, a chalky-faced Weezy crouched and leaned against the wall. Her lips were moving but Jack couldn’t hear over the whine in his ears. He didn’t have to. He knew she’d be repeating “Ohmygod” over and over.
The fireball dissipated quickly but smoke and flame roiled from the doorway. He fought his way back against the heat and peeked inside. The entire apartment was ablaze. A man who looked a lot like Harris was duct-taped to a chair. The chair lay on its side. His eyes were open but seeing nothing. He showed no signs of life, and no way Jack could get to him through that inferno.
Vaguely he heard fire bells.
Time to go.
He found his cap, jammed it back onto his head, and ran for Weezy. Doors were opening up and down the hall.
“Fire!” he yelled. “Get out! Get out!”
He almost collided with a little old lady in a wheelchair as she rolled out into the hall ahead of him.
“Oh, dear God!” she cried, staring at the flaming doorway between her and the elevator. Her voice sounded faint and far away. “What do I do?”
As Jack stopped and looked around, Weezy reached him and clutched his arm. She looked ready to go into shock.
Options . . . push the old lady’s wheelchair past Harris’s apartment, but who knew if the elevators were working. A lot of them automatically shut down with a fire alarm.
She was thin and frail looking. Only one thing to do.
He turned Weezy and pushed her toward the EXIT sign. “Go!” Then back to the old woman. “Come on, lady,” he said, lifting her out of the chair. He slipped one arm under her knees and the other around her back. “Looks like you’re going for a ride.” A thought hit. “You don’t happen to have a dog, do you?”
“No, why?” Her words were faint.
“Just asking.”
He got her into the stairwell where a mute, stricken Weezy held the door for them and they all started down.
“Wh-wh-what happened?” the lady said, clinging to him.
“Explosion of some kind.”
She touched his cheek. “You’re burned.”
“Not surprised. I was in the hall when it happened. Knocked me off my feet.”
And the truth shall set you free.
“What caused it?”
“No idea. Maybe some terrorist was making a bomb and it exploded.”
A little disinformation couldn’t hurt.
“Oh, dear God! A terrorist? In our building?”
“I hear they’re everywhere. Then again, someone could have left the gas oven on, then lit a match.”
“We’re all electric.”
“Terrorist, then.”
They had the stairwell pretty much to themselves for a few flights until someone slammed onto a landing above and pounded down the steps. A sixtyish man, heavy but in good shape, lurched up behind them.
“Let me by, dammit!”
He shouldered Jack and his burden aside, and bumped Weezy against the wall as he raced ahead of them.
“Asshole,” the woman said, then louder, “You always were an asshole, Frank!”
Jack’s burst of anger dissipated as he laughed. “You tell him, lady.”
Firemen were already on the first floor when they reached it.
He leaned close to Weezy. “Don’t go out the front. Find a rear exit.”
With a deer-in-the-headlights look, she nodded and moved away.
Jack kept his head down as he hurried past the firemen and out the front entrance. He saw an EMS wagon and an ambulance at the curb. He left the woman with them. She was profuse in her thanks and wanted to give him money, but all he wanted was out of here.
He looked around. The car with the two men was gone. A crowd of residents and people from the neighborhood had gathered to gawk at the smoke roiling from a blown-out section of windows on the eighth floor.
He joined the crowd for half a minute, then eased away, walking half backward, trying to look reluctant to leave.
He found Weezy waiting outside the car. He pressed the unlock button on the remote and they both got in.
“What happened?” she said, blinking back tears.
“Explosion.”
“I know that. What about Kevin?”
Jack got the car rolling as he tried to think of a gentle way to put it. He came up empty, so he settled for simple and direct.
He shook his head and said, “Goner.”
Weezy began to cry. The sound tore at him.
“What have I done? What have I started? This is all my fault. I brought him into this. If I’d just minded my own business—”