Macy didn’t appear convinced, but she nodded reluctantly, then moved to meet Joey near the door.
Nina sat again, deciding to wait for them to go before leaving herself. The meeting certainly hadn’t been what she expected, but at least it had been different, a break from blankly vegging out in front of the TV.
Though that was all she had to look forward to when she got back to the apartment. Eddie probably wouldn’t finish work for hours. She sighed.
Macy and Joey turned to go. The door opened before they reached it.
And Macy shrieked.
Nina looked up in surprise. In the doorway was a greasy-looking man in a snakeskin jacket, his straggly goatee twisting as he leered at the young woman.
Macy jerked back. ‘That’s him! He’s one of them!’
‘Hi again, li’l girl,’ said the man, his grin widening unpleasantly as he advanced. Jaw set, Joey stepped in front of him—
And crumpled to the floor, doubled over as the man smashed a punch - and a set of brass knuckles - into his stomach.
The other customers reacted in shock. The man stepped over Joey as Macy fled past Nina to the back of the room.
He followed—
‘Hey!’
He turned towards Nina’s shout - and she flung Macy’s untouched cappuccino into his face. The cup hit his jaw, foaming coffee splashing everywhere.
She kicked a chair at him as he lurched back. ‘Macy! Run!’
4
Macy shoved past a waitress to a door behind the counter, hesitating as she looked back at the moaning Joey. ‘Don’t stop!’ Nina ordered as she ran after her. Macy went through the door. Nina followed. The manager moved to bar her way, but flinched back at her shout of, ‘Not me, him! Call the cops!’
The man in the snakeskin jacket hurled the chair aside. She slammed the door, seeing several large boxes full of bags of coffee beans on shelves. A pull, and a box slammed to the floor.
Macy reached a fire door, barging through it into an alley—
A thick arm lashed out, clotheslining her to the ground.
Snakeskin had set a trap, an associate lying in wait outside.
Another shelf held several hefty Pyrex coffee pots. Nina snatched one up and ran for the fire exit. The door behind her was kicked open. The box crumpled - but the beans inside it absorbed the impact, stopping the door from opening wide enough to get through.
Nina reached the fire exit. Macy lay dazed on her back outside, a doughy, shaven-headed man bending down to grab her—
The coffee pot hit the top of his head with a flat clonk. He let out a surprised grunt of pain, stumbling back. Nina swung the pot again. This time it shattered against his skull, chunky fragments bursting outwards like hailstones. The man fell against a dumpster. Nina reached out to Macy. ‘Come on, get up!’
Pain and fear momentarily replaced by wide-eyed wonder, Macy gazed up at her before grasping her hands. ‘Oh - oh, my God! That was amazing!’
‘You should see me with a teapot. Come on!’ Nina pulled her up, jumping over the bald guy as they ran down the alley.
‘How did he find me?’ Macy cried. ‘I didn’t tell anyone where I was, not even my parents! How’d they know I was in New York?’
‘You told Lola,’ Nina realised. ‘She must have told someone at the IHA, they told Berkeley, he told - whoever those guys work for.’ They reached the street.
‘But how did they know I was meeting you?’
‘What am I, a detective?’ Nina saw a cab up the street. She waved furiously as they ran after it. ‘Taxi!’
‘We’re getting a cab?’ said Macy in disbelief.
‘Unless you’ve got a helicopter, then yeah!’ The cab stopped - but not, Nina realised, for them. A well-dressed couple stood on the opposite sidewalk, the man’s hand outstretched. ‘Hey, that’s our cab!’
The man grabbed the door handle. ‘He was stopping for us.’
‘This is an emergency, we need it!’ Nina reached the vehicle and yanked open the other rear door. ‘Macy, get in!’
‘What the hell are you doing?’ the woman shrilled. ‘Driver, don’t take them!’
‘I don’t want no trouble,’ said the driver, a skinny man with a strong Brazilian accent, as he leaned out of his open window to address Nina. ‘I stop for this gen’leman and lady, okay? You wait for next—’
The window of Nina’s door exploded. The driver screeched in agony as a bullet ripped into his left shoulder, speckling the windscreen with blood. Nina whipped round, seeing Snakeskin at the end of the alley with a gun in one hand.
Aiming—
‘Get down!’ she yelled. Macy shrieked and dived headlong into the cab as the rear windscreen blew apart.
Nina threw herself to the asphalt. A bullet hole erupted in the cab’s flank just above her with a plunk of cratered metal. Another window shattered, the woman screaming hysterically. Other pedestrians ran for cover.
The onslaught stopped.
The gunman’s weapon was a revolver, a six-shooter. He needed to reload.
Nina jumped up and threw open the driver’s door. The Brazilian was hunched in his seat, right hand squeezing his wounded shoulder. ‘Move over, move!’
He gasped something in Portuguese before reverting to English. ‘You crazy? I been shot!’
Nina stabbed at his seat belt release, then tried to shove him into the other seat. ‘I’ll get you to a hospital - just move over!’
‘You can have the cab!’ the well-dressed man gabbled as he ran off, his screaming companion clacking after him as fast as her high heels would allow.
Macy peered over the top of the back seat. ‘Oh, oh oh!’ she cried, pointing.
‘ “Oh!” what?’ Nina demanded, finally forcing the weakly protesting Brazilian out of the driver’s seat and jumping in to take his place. She looked back and saw the reason for Macy’s panic. The gunman had drawn a second pistol. ‘Oh, shit!’
She slammed the gear selector to Drive and stamped on the gas pedal.
The balding tyres screeched before finally finding purchase, the taxi lurching away. It was one of the city’s remaining Ford Crown Victorias, the former mainstay of New York’s taxi fleet being phased out in favour of less-polluting hybrids. To Nina, it seemed as though it should have been retired itself a long time ago, the transmission clunking and whining.
Whatever its state of repair, it could easily outpace a man on foot.
But not his bullets.
‘Duck!’ shouted Nina. Macy dropped flat again as more shots clanged against the taxi’s bodywork. One whipped over her and struck the bulletproof partition between the front and back seats with a crack, leaving a jagged scar across the Plexiglas.
‘My cab!’ the driver moaned, financial pain briefly overcoming physical. Teeth gritted, he forced himself upright, took his hand from his wound . . . and started the meter.
Nina looked at him. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘No free rides,’ he gasped. ‘Now get me to hospital!’
More noise from behind - not gunfire, but the shriek of tyres as a massive, bright red Dodge Ram pickup truck skidded to a standstill. The bald man lumbered from the alley and climbed in, the snakeskinned gunman glaring after the retreating taxi before holstering his empty weapons and running to the cabin’s rear door. With a V8 roar almost as loud as the gunshots, the Ram snarled into pursuit.
Nina now remembered seeing the distinctive vehicle earlier that day - outside her apartment. They had found out that Macy was trying to contact her . . . and staked her out in the hope that she would lead them to their prey.
‘Forget the hospital,’ Macy said. ‘We need the police! Where’s the nearest precinct?’