Jack froze for a shocked instant, thinking he had to be hallucinating, but no mistaking the loud cracks and muzzle flashes. He yanked the Glock 19 from the holster at the small of his back and broke into a run.
The Lady had stopped and was staring at the men firing nearly point-blank at her head and torso as they moved in on her. She didn’t stagger, didn’t even flinch. They couldn’t be missing.
As he neared and got a better look, she seemed to be unharmed. No surprise. Her dress was undamaged as well. The bullets seemed to disappear before they reached her.
One of her assailants looked Jack’s way. As their eyes locked the man shouted something in a foreign language and angled his pistol toward him. Jack swiveled his torso to reduce his exposure and veered left, popping three quick rounds at the gunman’s center of mass. Two hit, staggering him, felling him. He landed on his back in a patch of old snow. The third bullet missed but winged his buddy behind him. Another of the attackers shouted something and fired just as Jack changed direction. He felt an impact and a stinging pain in his left upper arm. He dropped to a knee and began pulling the trigger, firing two-to-three rounds per second in a one-handed grip. This was going to run his mag in no time, but he had only one man down and couldn’t allow any of the three still standing to get a bead on him.
Relief flooded him as they grabbed their wounded pal and ran back into the trees. He stopped firing and didn’t follow. He’d counted thirteen rounds fired. That left two in his magazine and he wasn’t carrying a spare-a firefight had not been on the morning’s agenda. He did have his Kel-Tec backup in an ankle holster, but that was useful only at close range.
The Lady was staring at him. “They tried to kill me.”
“Ya think?”
Jack looked at the downed attacker. His face matched the shade of the dirty snow cushioning his head. Ragged breaths bubbled the blood in his mouth. His pistol lay by his side. A Tokarev. Jack had seen a lot of Tokarevs lately-too many-and its presence pretty much nailed who’d sent him and his buddies.
The Order.
Drexler had sent out a hit team on the Lady. What was he thinking? Nothing of this Earth could harm her, and lead slugs were of this Earth. Drexler knew that. So why would he try? Unless he thought he’d come into some special super bullets.
As Jack holstered his Glock, he grabbed the Tokarev and felt a jab of pain in his left upper arm. Yeah, he’d been hit. Worry about that later. People were pointing their way, some already on cell phones. Too much to hope for one of the random phone outages here and now, he supposed. And even if they couldn’t get their calls through, they could use the phones as cameras. None of the callers was too close but that could change. Cops would be here soon.
He shoved the Tokarev into his jacket and grabbed the Lady’s arm.
“We’ve got to get you out of here.”
In the good old days-as in, before last summer-she could simply change into someone else or disappear and reappear somewhere else. But nowadays she was stuck in old-woman mode and had to travel like a human.
She wasn’t very spry but Jack moved her along as fast as she could go. He pulled his cap even lower and kept his head down, not exactly sure of where he was taking her-out of the park, definitely, but after that? Couldn’t take her straight back to her apartment. Her damn yellow dress made her stick out like a canary at a crow convention. Needed to get her off the street, then figure out what to do.
As they reached the sidewalk he saw a taxi pull to a stop before a late-middle-aged couple-he wore an Intrepid cap and she carried a Hard Rock shopping bag. Tourists. They stood a few feet ahead. He knew his next step…
The Lady sat beside him in the rear of the cab and stared at the blood on his hand.
“You’re hurt.”
“Yeah. Looks that way.”
Jack wiped his fingers on his jeans and moved his left arm. Pain shot up and down when he flexed the elbow. He checked the sleeve and found the exit hole in the leather. He wondered how bad it was but wasn’t about to remove the jacket here in the cab to find out.
The Lady gently touched his sleeve over the wound, her expression sad.
“Not so long ago I could have healed you.”
“I know.” What he hadn’t known was that she no longer could. “You’ve lost that too?”
She nodded. “I have lost so much. But at least I am still here.”
“Yeah, that’s the important part. But there is something you could do that would help things.”
“Tell me.”
“Can you change into someone else?”
She shook her head. “I am not able. I am still fixed as Mrs. Clevenger.”
“Well, how about switching that dress to something less noticeable?”
“That I can do.” Suddenly she was wearing a drab cloth coat. “Better?”
“Much.”
He marveled at how he’d come to take these things as a matter of course. The workaday world remained blissfully unaware of the secret lives and secret histories playing out around them. As he once had been. As no doubt their cabbie was.
He checked their driver. The Lady was seated directly behind him and he gave no sign that he’d witnessed the transformation. If and when he did notice the coat, he’d assume she’d carried it in with her.
Jack spotted Seventy-second Street approaching. The light was green. He rapped on the plastic partition.
“Take a right up here-into the park.”
The cab turned into the traverse and headed across Central Park. Where to now? Couldn’t head straight back to Glaeken’s. He’d left a dead guy behind in the park. NYPD would be all over the area, collecting witness accounts, checking the traffic cams. They might end up talking to… he checked the operator license taped on the other side of the partition: Abhra Rahman… they might track down Abhra and want to know where he’d dropped them. Jack needed a diversionary stop.
He pictured the city. They were heading east. What was landmarky in this area of the East Side? Of course-Bloomie’s down on Fifty-ninth and Lexington. Get out there, then downstairs to the subway station, hop a downtown N, R, or Q two stops to West Fifty-seventh, then cab back to Glaeken’s.
Yeah. That would work.
He rapped gently on the partition. “Drop us at Bloomingdale’s, please.”
He’d make sure to give Mr. Rahman a good tip.
2
“Who the hell are you?” Jack said as he spotted the guy sitting in the Lady’s front room.
He already had the Glock half out of its holster when the Lady touched his arm.
“A friend of Glaeken’s.”
The guy rose and extended his hand. “You must be Jack. Glaeken sent me down. I was visiting him. He’s told me a lot about you. I’m Bill.”
“Told me a little about you,” Jack said as they shook. “Very little.”
Jack had seen him from a distance before. This was the first time close up. Long hair pulled back into a ponytail and a full beard, both generously salted with gray, a scarred forehead and bent nose, eyes almost as blue as Glaeken’s. The face put him in his sixties, but his lean, muscular six-foot frame seemed younger. Jack felt thick calluses on his shake hand.
Bill shrugged. “Not a whole lot to tell.”
“You were in North Carolina with him. Heard things went sour down there.”
Till that moment, Bill’s eyes had been closed off, showing nothing. The shutters opened for an instant, releasing an almost palpable flash of pain and anguish. This guy had been through hell-a number of hells. Then they snapped shut again.
“You could say that.” He cleared his throat. “Glaeken said you might need help with an injury.”
Jack checked his jacket sleeve. Blood had soaked his arm and begun to drip during their trip back from the park. He’d kept his arm inside the jacket and phoned ahead to see if Glaeken had any bandages. He knew the Lady sure as hell didn’t. Glaeken kept that nurse around for Magda, but Jack didn’t want her involved. She might recognize it as a bullet wound and get all good-citizeny and report it.