My father froze in its path, still clutching the handle of the suitcase. Adrenaline fired into my system like a shot of nitrous. I took three or four rapid, boosted strides and hit him shoulder against shoulder, the force of my momentum enough to send him pitching clear of the cab’s flight path.
Spinning halfway towards the threat, I saw nothing but the black plastic of the front grille and a vast sea of yellow steel that made up the car’s bonnet. I even had time to notice the taxi medallion riveted to the center.
In that weird, slowed-down way things have, I recognized that I didn’t have time to run, and nowhere to run to. My only thought was to minimize the hit.
Years of falling off horses as a kid taught me not to try and break a fall with my limbs outstretched. Later, years of martial arts training of one form or another taught me how to use them to slow my descent much more scientifically.
So I jumped, straight up, tucking my knees in like I was dive-bombing into a swimming pool. I didn’t have nearly enough height to clear the Crown Vic’s front grille, which clipped my left leg halfway down my calf as the car shot underneath me, causing me to tumble violently. As I somersaulted across the expanse of yellow bonnet, I slapped my hand and forearm down hard onto the steel to lessen the impact, but hit the windscreen hip and elbow first with enough force to break the laminated glass anyway.
I had visions of continuing to roll right up over the roof, at which point the huge slant-sided advertising hoarding that ran full length along it would probably have broken my back. Then the driver of the rogue cab slammed on his brakes.
The Crown Vic lurched, slithering, to a stop, jolting as it hit something that I could only pray wasn’t my father’s body. The sudden deceleration was enough to spit me straight off the front edge of the bonnet and send me thumping back down onto the ground, knocking the wind out of me. The last time I’d been hit by a moving vehicle while on foot, I recalled whimsically, at least I’d had the forethought to be wearing bike leathers.
Rid of his inconvenient hood ornament, the cabdriver punched the accelerator before I’d even hit the deck. I flinched, trying to roll out of the way of the fat front tire that was now heading straight for my chest, and knowing I didn’t stand a hope in hell of doing so. All I could smell was hot oil and burned rubber and rust.
Game over.
Just when I knew he couldn’t possibly miss me, the cab jolted to a stop again, engine revving high enough to send all the hairs up on the back of my neck. I realized, to my amazement, that my mother’s heavy-duty suitcase was rammed between the opposite front wheel and a mammoth concrete tree planter at the edge of the curb. I started scrabbling backwards on my bruised backside, arms flailing. The cab’s rear wheels spun up more smoke as the driver forced it on. The planter trembled. The suitcase began to buckle and twist.
The shell of the case gave up its last breath and collapsed completely. As it did so I felt a hand grab my shoulder and another hook under my armpit to wrench me up and out of the way. I was peripherally aware of a yellow blur flashing past as I flew through the air, before I slammed up against a solid male body, robbing me of what little air I’d managed to draw back into my lungs.
Dazed, I looked up, met Sean’s near-black eyes only a few inches from my own. The sheer fury in them shocked me back into life. I wrenched myself out of his grasp and staggered back a pace.
I turned. For a moment everything was imprinted on my brain in minute detail and total silence.
The doorman was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring after the disappearing cab with an expression of outraged disbelief on his face. The driver of the cab he’d summoned had leapt out and was gesticulating wildly. I could see his mouth moving, but could hear no sound coming out. My mother was crouched in the shelter of the doorway where Sean must have practically thrown her to keep her out of harm’s way. She was clutching her handbag to her chest like it was her sole means of protection, knuckles white around the straps.
But my father was the one who worried me. All I could see of him, sticking out from between the planter and the cab waiting by the curb, were his legs from the knee downwards, good dark gray socks and highly polished black lace-up shoes. For a moment, I felt a dreadful cold leap of fear, then his feet twitched and he sat up abruptly, brushing the dirt from his suit jacket. He looked annoyed rather than hurt, and pale as dust.
The world kicked back into gear. I heard our cabdriver’s raucous shouts in what sounded like Ukrainian, the squeal of brakes and the blowing of horns all the way up the next two blocks as the cab that had tried to hit us swerved through traffic. I could only hope the crazed windscreen was making it harder for him.
Sean brushed past me to bend over my father and his eyes were everywhere.
“Can you move?” he demanded.
My father glanced up at him with irritation. “Of course I can.”
Sean yanked him to his feet without another word and hauled him back inside the building, covering his back all the way. I did the same with my mother, depositing her onto one of the low sofas on the other side of the entrance lobby, well back from the doors. She threw herself at my father and held on tight, sobbing.
The reception staff were fluttering with shock, telling each other in loud voices what it was they thought they’d seen. A moment later the doorman dragged the sorry-looking remains of my mother’s suitcase into the lobby and jerked his head at the Ukrainian cabbie.
“The driver says he thinks the other cab was stolen,” the doorman told Sean. “Says one of their guys got’jacked in Murray Hill’bout an hour ago. The word was out to the other drivers to keep an eye out for his ride.”
“Looks like they found it,” Sean said.
The doorman nodded, eyes flicking over my shocked parents and the ruined case. “You want I should call the cops, Mr. Meyer, or is this a … private matter?”
“I think this was too public for that. You’d better call them.’
“Got it.” He paused. “What about a medic?”
I turned fast at that, scanning my father. He’d moved awkwardly when Sean had rushed him inside, but he’d seemed basically okay—no obvious injuries, no blood, and I didn’t think he’d hit his head or lost consciousness when he fell.
“No, he seems fine,” I said, turning back to find the doorman staring at me like I’d totally lost it.
“Er, I meant for you, ma’am.”
I followed his gaze and looked down, realizing for the first time that I was the one with blood on my hands. I turned them over to find I’d scraped the palm of one and cut the other. I’d put a hole in the knee of my trousers as well. The blood didn’t show up much against the dark brown fabric, but I could see grit stuck to the wetness around the torn edges. I swore under my breath.
My jacket was ripped, too, one sleeve almost hanging by a thread where Sean had grabbed at it. When I went to step forwards I realized my left leg was already stiffening up, and by the feel of it I was going to have a bruise the size of Wales from hip to ankle.
I glanced at my father again. He was staring at me over the top of my mother’s weeping head with an expression on his face that I couldn’t quite decipher, and didn’t have the patience to try.
“You may think it’s all over,” I said bitterly, jerking my head in the direction the cab had taken, “but nobody seems to have told the opposition.”
Parker’s office had its own private bathroom and that’s where I stripped off. The designers had lined the place with mirrors, so I practically had a three-sixty view of my injuries, such as they were. One scraped knee and elbow, two scraped hands, and a sizable grazed bruise that started in a remarkably neat line halfway up my left calf and was spreading rapidly. Nothing that wouldn’t heal up or scab over in a few days.