“No, you’re right,” Drake said. “If we’re going in there, we have to make sure Jada gets noticed. No matter how much they want to silence her, they’re not going to kill her in the office if a hundred people saw her go in.”
Glass shattered behind them, and they turned to see black smoke and bright fire billowing out of the exploding upper-story windows. The building was going to be a total loss, and you didn’t get that hungry a fire without some kind of accelerant. The investigators would know right off it had been arson, but that didn’t matter if they couldn’t figure out the identity of the arsonist.
Sully climbed in beside Jada. Drake glanced at the baffled-looking cabbie, but the man seemed focused on the spectacle of the firefighters at work. Then an ambulance rolled up behind them and gave a blast of its siren, urging them out of the way, and the cabbie looked irritated and motioned for Drake to get in.
As Drake ducked his head to get into the backseat, the window of the open door exploded in a shower of glass shards.
“What the-” Sully began.
A bullet punched through the roof and lodged in the seat behind Jada’s head.
“Down!” Drake shouted as another shot plinked the outside of the cab.
With a loud roar, a black SUV sped past the ambulance and slid to a shuddering halt beside the taxi. Its glass was tinted, but the passenger window started to glide down, and Drake knew that one way or another they were dead. If the sniper on the roof across the street didn’t kill them-only that would explain the angle of the first shots-these bastards in the SUV would make their deaths look like a gangster drive-by.
“Drive!” he screamed to the cabbie.
The guy behind the wheel of the ambulance smartened up, putting the vehicle in reverse, and it sped backward in retreat. Down West 12th Street people had started to tear their attention from the fire, hearing the gunshots.
“Damn it, drive the car!” Drake shouted, banging the partition to get the terrified cabbie’s attention.
The man had ducked down, hiding behind the dashboard. Something-Drake’s command or his own sense of self-preservation-made him realize that if they just sat there, they were dead, and he sat up and threw the cab into gear.
A sniper’s bullet punched through the windshield and took him in the chest. He jerked against the seat and then started to slide sideways, his hands twitching on the wheel.
“Son of a bitch!” Sully snapped. “I need a gun, Nate!”
But they didn’t have any guns. Not yet. They were damn well going to get them, but for now, running was the only choice. Drake popped the rear passenger door, staying low as he yanked open the one in front. The cab had started to roll but hadn’t picked up any speed.
He spotted a gun jutting from the open window of the SUV as he threw himself into the front seat. With both hands, he grabbed the cabbie and hauled the man toward him, then started climbing over him.
Bullets punched the side of the cab, shattering front and back windows and plinking through the metal doors. One caught the driver in the thigh. Drake had time enough to think that what he was doing was insane, that it was suicide to put himself in the way of the bullets. But he knew that doing nothing would also be suicide.
He got his hands on the wheel, kept his head to the side, and was about to hit the gas when a loud, crunching impact filled the air. He risked looking up and saw that the ambulance driver had purposely rammed the back of the SUV.
“Crazy bastard!” Sully whooped appreciatively.
“Bought us a couple of seconds,” Drake said.
Jada cried out as another bullet punched a hole in the roof, a new attack from the sniper, letting daylight in.
Drake gritted his teeth. They had to get away from both attacks, the sniper and the SUV, and there was only one direction open to them that he knew would accomplish that. He slammed it into reverse, backed the taxi up thirty feet, then put it back in drive, cranked the steering wheel to the right, and skidded into a turn down West 12th Street.
“Are you nuts?” Sully shouted.
“You’re going to hit the fire truck!” Jada warned.
Knuckles white on the wheel, Drake drove straight for the closest fire truck. Firefighters shouted and tried to wave him off. Survivors of the burning building scurried out of the way. The two cops on the sidewalk pulled their guns, but not fast enough, as Drake shot the taxi through the gap between fire truck and ambulance and careened down the street toward the police cars waiting there.
Gunfire punched the air, echoing off the buildings, but he didn’t slow down.
“Jada, are they following?” Drake asked.
She spun in the backseat and looked out the rear window. “Yes!”
“Are you kidding?” Sully said. “Who the hell are these guys?”
“We’ll be out of range of the sniper as soon as we turn the corner,” Drake told them.
“What about these nutjobs in the SUV?” Sully barked.
Drake smiled. He gunned the taxi past the two police cars parked diagonally at the curb, grazing a parked Mercedes, tearing off the taxi’s sideview mirror, and then accelerated even more. At the intersection, he hit the brake, turned into the skid, and slung the taxi into a right turn, driving the wrong way up Washington Street. Car horns blared, and a white box truck swerved to avoid a head-on collision.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw one of the two police cars pulling out to block the road. Two officers on the street had their guns drawn and were rushing up to the SUV as it skidded to a halt.
“We’re clear!” Sully said.
“For how long?” Jada asked, leaning forward, looking at Drake in the mirror. “They’ll have cops crawling all over us in a minute.”
Drake hung a quick left on Jane Street, no longer heading into oncoming traffic. He glanced over his shoulder at Sully.
“What do you think? Chelsea Piers?” he asked.
“No choice,” Sully agreed.
“What’s at Chelsea Piers?” Jada said.
Drake smiled, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “Same thing you generally find at piers. Boats.”
5
The High Line elevated park had started its life as a freight train track built above the city to keep the trains away from public streets. The elevated platform that ran through the Meatpacking District all the way to 34th Street had been converted to a long green oasis. Drake had never walked the park, but he had read an article about it in some in-flight magazine or other, describing it as a hidden gem of New York City. Someday he hoped to get a closer look at the High Line, but today he needed it only for cover.
He pulled the taxi to the curb on Little West 12th Street and let it roll into the shadows under the High Line. In the backseat, Jada was still shaking.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Sully took her hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. “We’re gonna improvise, sweetheart. Don’t worry. If there’s one thing Nate and I know how to do, it’s improvise.”
Drake watched the rearview mirror for cars. The street was one way, so at least they had that going for them. He waited for a red Accord to buzz past them, hoping their shattered windows would earn no more than a quick glance. The Accord slowed and the driver gave him an odd look, but Drake glared at him and the guy accelerated, minding his own business. He might be on his cell phone to the cops in a second, but they had at least a couple of minutes.
He popped his door.
“Get out,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Sully opened the back door and climbed out, with Jada hurrying after him. As Drake stepped from the taxi, she looked at him and then bent to peer through the open driver’s door at the dead cabbie. His blood had started to pool on the seat.
“We can’t just leave him here,” Jada said.