She waited beside the taxi, looking in both directions. No headlights, no police cruisers, no sirens.
The thin man came outside. “Miss, may I help you?”
He had an accent she couldn’t place, West Africa or somewhere in the Caribbean.
“I need a ride,” she said. “To somewhere not far from here.”
He looked around, then back at her. “Are you alone?”
“Yes.” Her breathing grew faster. She wanted to get in the cab, off the street.
“Where are you coming from?” he said.
“Queens. My car broke down. Can we go?”
With her left hand, she worked loose a bill from the pack. Her other hand stayed on the gun.
She folded the bill, held it out. It was a hundred.
“Just a few blocks,” she said. “But we need to leave now.”
He looked in the direction the Navigator had gone, then at her, the hand still in her pocket.
“Now,” she said. “Let’s go. Please.”
He took out keys, hit the remote button, unlocked the cab. The headlights blipped.
“Of course,” he said. “Anywhere you want.”
She watched the signs on the deserted streets they passed, giving him directions through the grid in the Plexiglas divider. When they came to a block that looked familiar, she said, “Slow down.”
She recognized the neighborhood now. Warehouses, muffler shops, and garages. Ahead was the side street where they’d left the Volvo. A dark White Castle on the corner had been their landmark.
“Turn left up there,” she said.
From a wide alley on the right, an SUV charged out, blocked the street. The Navigator. The taxi driver braked hard, sounded the horn, stopped when he saw the men spilling out of the Navigator into the cab’s headlights.
She threw herself across the backseat, clawed at the passenger door handle just as the first shots came through the cab’s windshield. She got the door open, tumbled out onto the ground. The cab was still rolling. It thumped solidly into the side of the Navigator.
She pulled out the Glock, brought it up. Three men were still shooting into the cab, glass and upholstery exploding. They hadn’t seen her get out.
She stood, took one of them down with a center-mass chest shot, swung her muzzle toward the next one, fired, and missed. The round blew out a side window in the Navigator. The two men dropped down behind the cover of the cab.
Farther down the street behind her, another vehicle was coming fast. The Acura. She ran into the alley the Navigator had come out of, heard the pop of guns behind her. A bullet ricocheted off the pavement to her right. She cut across the alley into a vacant lot, ran through thigh-high weeds. More shots. Something tugged at the tail of her jacket.
The Acura turned down the alley after her. There were men on foot as well, coming through the weeds. But she was away from the streetlamps now, and they had no clear target. She hurdled an overturned shopping cart and then she was back on cracked sidewalk, another empty street, this one wider. There was an elevated roadway ahead, cars speeding along it, a dark underpass below. She heard the men behind her, didn’t look back.
She crossed the street, ran for the shadows of the underpass, cars humming above. The Acura turned left, caught her in its headlights. She made the underpass, lungs burning, came out on the other side. There on the right was a lot full of tractor trailers, surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire. Parked in front of the closed gate, facing away from her, was a police cruiser.
She stumbled onto the weedy shoulder at the fence’s far corner, about thirty feet behind the cruiser. She couldn’t breathe. To her right, a dirt access road ran parallel to the overpass.
The cruiser’s interior light was on. A uniform cop sat behind the wheel, drinking from a Styrofoam cup.
The Acura emerged from the underpass, the front passenger window gliding down. The car slowed and came to a stop, headlamps illuminating the cruiser. The uniform turned to look back at it. Traffic rumbled by above.
The Acura didn’t move. After a minute the window slid closed again, and the car made a long, slow U-turn away from the cruiser. Giving up.
She raised the Glock above her head and squeezed the trigger three times. The sharp cracks split the night. The Acura’s tires squealed as it pulled away fast. The cruiser’s rollers flashed into life, and the cop swung it into a hard U-turn, headed after the car, siren rising and falling.
Across the street, the lot was empty.
She sat down in the dirt of the access road, couldn’t seem to get enough air. Head between her knees, she resisted the urge to be sick. She put the Glock away, felt the right side of her jacket, the rent where a bullet had passed through the material without touching her. Pure luck, she thought. The only reason you’re alive.
From the access road, an embankment led up to the overpass. She started up it, heard another siren. A second cruiser sped past below, lights rolling, following the first. Backup.
Once on the elevated roadway, there was a shoulder wide enough to walk on. A car flew past, so close she felt its slipstream. Another slowed, beeped its horn, came abreast of her. She put a hand on the Glock in her pocket. A man yelled something at her from the passenger-side window, then the car sped up and passed her.
She walked on. There was a major intersection ahead, where the highway dropped down to cross another main road. On one side of the road was a dark strip mall. On the other, a three-story building with a bright lobby and a sign above it that read PARKWAY MOTOR INN.
She let two cars pass, then sprinted across the road toward the motel. The parking lot was less than half full. She stopped to get her breath back, brushed grit and dirt from her clothes as best she could.
She gripped the big silver handle of the glass door, pulled. It wouldn’t open. Inside the lobby, a turbaned clerk stood behind bulletproof glass at the front desk. He frowned at her.
Wearily she took out the hundred she’d offered the cabdriver, unfolded it, and pressed it against the glass. She held it there, waited. The door buzzed.
She opened it and went in. She was done running.
The clerk took the two hundreds she gave him without a word, offered no change, and asked for no ID. A key card attached to a diamond-shaped piece of green plastic came back in the pass-through slot. Room 110.
The lobby smelled of stale cigarette smoke and disinfectant. There was a skinny ATM near the front desk counter, a couple of worn chairs, and planters full of dusty plastic flowers.
She went down the orange-carpeted hallway. An ice machine rattled in an alcove at the end of the corridor. She heard grunting from behind a door she passed.
The room was as she’d expected. Mirror on the ceiling over the bed. Dresser and nightstand, a single chair, and no windows. White shag carpet and a TV bolted to a brace on the wall. The cigarette smell was strong in here as well.
A door led to an adjoining room. The connecting door was locked. She put an ear to it. No sound inside. She closed her door again, bolted it.
The bathroom was small, the sink mineral-stained. She realized then how thirsty she was, ran water, cupped some and drank, then spit it out. It tasted of metal.
The chair went against the hall door, the top rail wedged under the knob. It would give her warning at least, if the clerk or someone else with a key tried to come in. Then she took the Glock into the bathroom, set it on the toilet tank, undressed, and showered, let the spray wash the last bits of safety glass from her hair, the tension from her shoulders. She would be sore and aching tomorrow.
When she was done, she dried off with a towel that smelled like burned hair, dressed again. She checked the doors a final time, then sat on the edge of the bed. She thought about the cabdriver. He was dead, almost certainly, and for no other reason than he had tried to help her.