"Help me up," said Sam, grabbing my ankle so I lost what little balance I'd recovered.
"Miss Larson, do you mind?" Stone waved my blue booties in the air. They'd obviously been torn from my feet during my run from his precious crime scene.
Sam squeezed my ankle. "Make a choice, lady."
Kicking free of the thug could get me shot. Or Max. Or the detective. Not much choice.
Max, however, looked content to hang tight. He wagged his tail, his tongue flicking out the side of his mouth, displaying that infamous smile.
"Max, back." I pointed him toward Stone, who tilted his head with a quizzical look cinching his face.
I scooted toward the tree, while Sam pulled my ankle toward him. Once I got my footing, I yoked the thug's thick arm over my shoulder, getting a nose full of wet wool mixed with smoke and ash, odors that revived memories of my accident, threatened to send me back on my ass if I didn't clear my mind. I shook my head to stay focused. And balanced.
With shaky legs, I hoisted Sam to a wobbly start. He yelped as he tried to sustain his own weight, but most of the load was on me. And I wasn't that sturdy. So I leaned him against the tree before he collapsed and face-planted me with him.
Panting, Sam locked his arm around my shoulder. I braced myself, waiting for him to recover and relax his grip on me. Or on the gun dangling in front of my chest.
Stone climbed down the embankment in his dress shoes, cussing quietly but just loud enough I could hear his expletives. "Miss Larson, try explaining what the hell you're doing down—"
"Stop right there." The thug shifted to stand behind me, his arm binding me in a quick headlock.
Halting, Stone spotted something at my lower right that alarmed him enough he gasped. At least now I knew where the thug had relocated his weapon.
Maybe I could kick free, twist and leverage the gun away from the guy. And maybe I could give the detective my coffin size in advance to save time.
Stone must have sensed my intentions, because he raised a hand. "Stay still, Julie. Do as he says, and we'll all come out fine."
Max barked but held his ground. A play bark, of all things. Just when I needed him to actually attack a man, he was playing along, a patsy like his mom.
"Clear my path, Detective," said the thug, his short, hot breaths searing my neck. "No cops, no dogs, no horses. Ten-minute start. Or you know where this is going."
I thought of the corpse under the leaves, wondered if that was underdog-Sam's handiwork, not Goliath's. Crap, did I know how to pick 'em.
"Real slow, lady." Sam flattened the cold weapon on my breastplate and leaned me backwards, dragging my feet over the silt and mud. Guns were hot when they'd been fired, not icicles like this. "Move real slow."
"You're the boss," I choked, less daring with a pistol poised to dig a hole in my chest. Another Glock, like Petosa's, I noted, relieved at the lack of a sulfurous smell in the air. Cold weather could oppress odors, but not enough to keep an experienced nose from detecting cordite, the telltale scent of spent gunpowder. Maybe Goliath had been the shooter after all.
"Wait, we can talk about this," called Stone. "Just tell me what you want."
He stepped foot over foot, hand hovering at his holster, till he caught Max's collar and pulled my little buddy out of the line of fire. Oddly, Max complied. At least one of us was being sensible.
"This isn't a negotiation, Detective. You know the drill. Hostage negotiations aren't your territory. Call it in."
Gripping his radio, Stone hesitated. His cheeks turned red and I could see him steel his jaw. Then he spoke low and slow into the unit, watching our every step. His eyes locked with mine and he nodded.
Stay calm
, he was saying,
stay alive
.
My mouth was open to speak but dry as chalk. All my snappy comebacks dissolved with the thought of causing Stone or Max to get shot with a bullet they didn't deserve. A bullet with my name on it. All thoughts of "this couldn't be happening to me" shushed. Not only was this nightmare a reality, I'd been waiting for it. Accepted such a fate. And this time, no one was taking the hit for me.
The thug yanked me into a thicket, where barberry scratched my legs and branches snapped at my head and shoulders. My moves to avoid the forest's assault only made Sam pull harder. I kept my feet under me to aid our progress. The sooner I got this madman away from Stone and Max the better.
Stone's eyes trailed mine until a woody cloak broke our eye contact. Then the detective and my dog vanished behind a wall of brush. And I was alone.
***
"Keep moving." Sam pulled me by the arm down a row of dogwoods edging North Meadow, clearly avoiding the open acre of flat grass that would conceal no one. Central Park was small enough to know other dog owners, big enough to hide if you knew the terrain. But we couldn't hide forever with cops surrounding and penetrating the park.
Sam groaned again and clutched his side, as if that would keep him upright, sounding more winded than a man in good shape should be. Maybe he'll just pass out. Or maybe I could talk him into surrendering. I knew better than to expect maybes to come true.
If he'd been shot, he needed to keep pressure on the wound. I'd spotted a singed, bullet-size hole in his sweater left of his heart, if he had one. The lack of blood, however, made a gunshot wound improbable. So what the hell was wrong with him?
Why do you care, Jules?
An injury could be exploited. I could strike his wound, kick free. But with that gun flitting in the air, and Sam's stumbling gait, I trusted his motor control even less than my fighting skills. One wrong move and he could reflexively squeeze the trigger.
Besides, emergency field training in third-world countries taught me to save life at any cost, sinner or priest, kidnapper or cop. Damned if I'd break that vow twice.
"You need professional help," I said.
"That's the general consensus," Sam mumbled.
He set a finger to his lips when I started to insist, then his fist rose in the air, like a soldier's signal to halt, and we both froze. With his weapon lifted, he peeked over a clump of bushes. I followed suit, poking my head up to see Bear Man cutting across the meadow, running full tilt in our direction. At his speed, he'd be on us in seconds.
Shit.
Maybe they'd planned a rendezvous, but that hardly seemed likely considering their knock-down, drag-out fight. Then again, they had a new enemy in common: a witness.
"Get down and stay down," Sam whispered as he pulled me to the ground. "All the way."
He nearly flattened my face into the damp leaves and hovered over my back, his thick thigh a wall to my left, a tall bush a wall to my right. His fist gripped the back of my coat tightly enough that my feet would only dig dirt if I tried escaping.
"Doing good, lady. Just stay still and be real quiet."
I wasn't moving far with his hand clamped down between my shoulder blades.
Bear Man's shuffling boots neared our position. Sam tensed, his breath suspended.
The boots stopped, stepped one direction, then the other. Not even a muscle quiver came from Sam, though he was clearly exhausted and injured. Cool control under pressure. That scared me more.
Finally, the boots pounded into the distance.
Sam's hand remained plastered to my back for several minutes. After a few gulps of air, he started to rise. When I followed his lead, he held me down.
"Not safe yet," he whispered.
I remained crouched over my shoes for a couple more minutes, as creepy thoughts raced through my mind. How hidden we were, how easily he could rip off my clothes with a gun pinning me down. I'd fight a wounded man, but would still lose to a bullet round. Yet I recalled who'd shouted for me to run the first time, and prayed he wasn't the bastard he seemed since kidnapping me.
Then I realized he'd eased his grip on my back and was taking on a severe lean. His forehead dropped against my shoulder blade, and he panted so hard I could feel the pressure through my windbreaker. At this point, I calculated how solid he really was, or if a kick to the groin could level him.
He started shaking against me. "Bastard thinks I'm dead." He lifted his head, snickering. "Won't he be surprised when he sees my face again."
Laughing turned into a coughing spell, and he fisted the leaves as he tried to regain composure. I shifted out of his aim.
Sam grabbed my coat with a grunt. "When we go, we go together."
"No one's arguing." I kept my head lowered, my eyes off his face. Mainly I watched the direction Bear Man had run, just in case the beast returned.
"Okay, lady, on your feet."
He waged war against his own pain to get himself upright, and then pulled me in the opposite direction from his buddy's trajectory.
We traversed up and down hills, with Sam leveraging my body or tree limbs to help him stay upright. Through bushes we started and stopped, scoping exits and avoiding trails as we rounded the reservoir. He moved faster than I expected, animal-like and not ungraceful for an injured man. But every time we paused he looked worse.
We reached as far as the park's carousel before Sam's stamina started to wane. Using a low cement wall as our cover, we scrambled on our knees before making a mad dash for Heckscher Playground. Here, fountains and swings stood empty of the day's children yet to frolic and their fussy parents yet to pull their own hair out. Even the homeless had found warmer, friendlier quarters than a deserted, lonely playground covered in frost. But this was a perfect spot for a cop ambush, if they could manage to keep up with an injured goon dragging dead weight like me.
Without warning, Sam veered toward Umpire Rock. I huffed and kept up, lest my arm get pulled out of its socket. The park's daily crew of boulderers hadn't arrived yet to scale the rock faces. Nor had cops taken position in what seemed a well-exposed area for a trap.
Where the hell was Stone or the cops when I needed them?
Safely tucked into the ring of prehistoric boulders, Sam moaned openly as he clutched his side with his gun hand and slid down the rock face. He propped himself on his knees with questionable dexterity. His other hand remained cuffed to my wrist, though I was standing and he was barely vertical.
"Come on down," he said. "The air's fine."
I sank on my heels, keeping my eyes cast aside or on the gun.
Laughing, Sam thumbed to the rock at his back. "Usually going up Red Rock, not down it. That's what we call this heap, you know."
With my peripheral vision I watched him heave for air before pulling off his cap and wiping his brow with it. He brushed aside his long brassy hair, strands of which had glued to his wet forehead. His roots were dark brown, his locks likely bleached by being in the sun for long spells. Too many details, I chided myself, wishing my professional instincts into remission. But his smell I'd never forget: the stew of wood smoke, sweat, and stale beer, like he'd rolled on the floor of a hick-town bar, then sat near a campfire to dry.
Car horns blared, bus brakes squeaked amid the morning commute on Seventh Avenue. We sat dangerously close to a major thoroughfare for a man in hiding. Then again, criminals were notoriously dumb, and this guy seemed on the border of delirium.
"You could let me go," I said, calm as a nun at prayer. "You'll move faster without me."
Scanning the woods in the distance, he said, "Nice try. You a cop?"
I snapped my head toward him. "Hell no."
Shit.
My photographer eyes instantly registered his facial details, features I desperately wanted not to catalogue: a broad jaw buried under a beard thick as a woodsman's, the steep angle of his nose, the bright green eyes rimmed in black circles that followed my examination of him, taking me in with equal severity. Even through his burly getup, I could see his rugged good looks resembled a rock climber in an outdoor magazine, not an arsonist taking hostages.
Shuffling closer, he said, "Gimme your cell."
I shook my head. "Don't own one." Besides Max's leash, the only thing I'd forgotten was my mace.
He scoffed. "What are you, Amish?" Then he patted me down and fished through my jacket pockets, huddling close enough that his breath clouded white over my shoulder.
"My name's Julie." Abroad they taught me to get personal, so if kidnapped, the captor would see me as a human being, not a faceless target.
"I can read just fine," he said, alternating between my license and debit card with intense focus.
"Take them. I also have cash in my shoe."
As soon as I made the offer, I remembered I'd given away the twenty to the homeless vet, who was having a much better day than I was.
"Don't want your money, lady." Sam tossed my cards into my lap but withheld my keychain, thumbing the oval brass plate emblazoned with my nickname. His nails were rough and blackened, like he'd clawed his way through a tar pit. "Pretty dangerous running in the dark out here."
"Hence the dog."
"Yeah, he's got a killer bite. Like his mama." He wobbled backwards, a herky-jerky movement that made him grab his side and hiss with pain.
Serves you right.
He caught my glaring look and shook his head, a smile lifting that thick lawn one might call a beard as he shoved my keys in my pocket. "You got guts, lady, I'll give you that."
He racked the slide of his weapon and peered into the chamber. "Ah, shit." One glance at me and he rested his forehead against the Glock's handle, like he was praying. Or deciding to shoot the witness.
My breath hitched when he rolled his face toward me, his gaze pressing me for a response.
"Finish it already." I squeezed my eyes shut.
When I'd asked Fate to break the standoff in my life, a bullet to the head wasn't exactly what I meant. Part of me accepted the poetry of dying on the same parallel where I'd lost Luke. At least I was home, not ten thousand miles away in some desert village fighting someone else's civil war.
"Relax, lady," he said, and I looked up in time to see Sam pop a bullet from the chamber and drop it into his pocket. "Now that other guy, he'd love to shoot you. And don't be in such a hurry to catch a bullet. Fucking hurts." Wincing, he slid a hand over his chest.