Close Call (21 page)

Sydney

At nine o'clock Tuesday
morning, Reese lounged in the dentist's waiting room, perusing a year-old
Good Housekeeping
, when Sydney came out of the treatment area swiping her tongue across smooth, clean teeth.

“You must be desperate,” she observed, stepping to the receptionist's desk to take care of her co-pay.

“Don't knock it,” Reese said. She put the magazine back on a listing tower of periodicals. “I found a great tip for cleaning grout that I'm going to try out. You rub a paste of baking soda and water on the grout, and then spray vinegar.”

Sydney wrinkled her nose and handed the middle-aged receptionist her credit card. Without speaking, the sisters left the office and emerged onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Cars, trucks, SUVs, soccer-mom vans, and buses clogged the street, spewing fumes and heat as they idled for the traffic light. Bicycle messengers, pedestrian commuters, and vagrants dodged each other on the sidewalk as they hustled to their individual destinations or staked out their spots on benches and under awnings or eaves that promised shade. The sun had metamorphosed from the gentle warmth spilling through Sydney's window into a brutal glare that bounced off vehicles' chrome, shop windows, and even the patent leather heels of a businesswoman waiting for a bus. Sydney pulled her sunglasses from her purse and slid them onto her face with a sigh of relief.

“It's going to be a scorcher,” she said as a blow caught her between the shoulder blades and knocked her to her knees on the concrete. As the pain of scraped knees and palms registered, she heard a gunshot, then another, and Reese toppled on top of her, mowing her flat.

“She's got a gun!” someone yelled.

Screams and pounding feet sounded as people scattered. Horns blared and tires squealed. “Call the cops,” another voice yelled. A baby started crying.

Paul

Even though his Striker
pistol could fire three shots, Paul only took one. When he saw the bodyguard fall, he cursed. She completely buried the target when she collapsed on top of her. Stuffing the gun into his duffel, Paul got to his feet, his knees crackling after such a long period of immobility. He swayed. He limped the first couple of steps, then regained his stride. He kept his mind from replaying the shot, intent on getting off the roof and away from the scene before the police arrived. He clattered down the stairs, fighting dizziness, and slowed as he reached the garage level. Easing the door open, he pretended to search for a tool in his bag to hide his face from the camera mounted overhead. His shoulder felt like the devil was gouging a red-hot poker into the wound, so he switched the duffel to his other hand. He stepped into the cool twilight of the garage and, still shielding his face, made his way toward the door that led to the street.

He was almost at his destination when a woman approached him on the narrow sidewalk that hugged the garage's inner wall. For a moment he saw two of her, but then she resolved into one plain, middle-aged woman. He mumbled “Good morning” and moved over to let her by.

The woman stopped, blocking his path. “Hey.”

Push past her? He couldn't let her raise the alarm. With his heartbeat pounding in his ears, Paul hesitated.

The woman had springy brown hair and glasses with oval frames. She wore a blouse with a bow at the neck and a dirndl skirt even Paul knew was two decades out of style. Secretary, he decided.

“Lionel?” She sounded unsure.

Had she mistaken him for someone else? It took him a moment to place the name. His chest. She'd read the name off his uniform.

Not making eye contact, he said, “Yes'm?”

“The sink in our office kitchen—Suite 201—has been dripping for weeks and it's driving me absolutely batty. I put in a work order in early July but no one's been up to fix it. Do you think you could get to it today? My boss is on my back to get it fixed.” She cocked her head, sparrow-like.

“Sure,” he mumbled. “Be up after I take care of the clogged toilet in the men's room on four. Suite 201, right?”

“Thanks so much, Lionel,” she said. “I'll be looking for you.” She hesitated. “Are you okay?”

He must look as bad as he felt. “Yeah. Tummy troubles,” he said vaguely.

“Oh. Sorry.” She nodded and continued down the sidewalk toward the elevators.

Paul picked up his pace and cursed his bad luck. Ever since his father had shot him, nothing had gone right. He couldn't remember ever taking more than two attempts to eliminate a target. His shoulder pulsed with pain, he felt light-headed with fever, and now there was a witness who could describe him, at least partially, to the police. The hawks would recognize him, too. They knew who he was. A fellow predator. They hadn't taken their wild eyes off of him the whole morning. He'd felt the weight of their stares between his shoulder blades and expected their talons to tear into the flesh of his back. That was why he'd flinched when he'd pulled the trigger. The hawks … He shook his head, trying to clear it. He needed to get away from here. Stooping behind a van near the door, he quickly shucked the jumpsuit and stuffed it and the cap in his bag. The suit he had underneath would get less notice on the sidewalk at this hour. He ran a hand over his head, smoothing his hair.

Sunlight stabbed his eyes as he stepped out of the garage, and he almost fell back into the comforting dimness.
Keep going.
Bowing his head, he shouldered through the crowd of commuters and looky-loos blocking the sidewalk. People lifted their cell phones over their heads and he tried to puzzle out what they were doing. He finally realized they were trying to film the body on the sidewalk. He took care to stay behind the amateur photographers, who were probably hoping to sell their filmmaking efforts to the nightly news.

“Must have been a crash,” a man's voice said from behind him.

“No, I heard it was a jumper,” a soprano voice said with ghoulish interest.

Paul kept going, keeping his pace at a fast walk—a man late for a meeting, not a hit man fleeing a botched assassination. Three blocks from the debacle, he could hear the sirens, or maybe it was the hunting call of the hawks, and imagined the commotion and confusion as traffic backed up and emergency vehicles tried to reach the scene. Pausing in the shade of a glorious chestnut tree, he held a hand to the stitch in his side. His breath came in short gasps. He felt hot, then cold, as if he was standing in front of an oven set to broil with the door open, then in front of a freezer gaping wide. He shook. Against his will, he sank to his haunches against the tree trunk, wrapping his arms around his shivering body. His bag fell to the ground with a muffled thud.

“You okay, mister?” A wino with a week's growth of stubble peered at him. A camo field jacket rank with mildew topped several layers of clothes that had seen their heyday in the Nixon years. His breath made Paul want to puke. A faded medal swung into Paul's view and he forced his eyes to focus. A Purple Heart.

“Should I call a medic?”

Paul's teeth were chattering too hard for him to answer the old vet, but he tried to shake his head.

“You don't look too good,” the wino said, squatting so he was eye level with Paul. “I got a buddy wi' da malaria and he shakes like you when an attack gets him. You got malaria?”

“Don't let the hawks … ” Paul felt himself listing to the left, and then everything went black.

Sydney

Grit pressed into Sydney's
cheek as she breathed in a mix of dirt and exhaust. A flattened wad of chewing gum smudged the pavement inches from her nose. She tried to take a deep breath, but the weight on her back forced the air out of her lungs. She squirmed beneath Reese, short of breath from her sister pushing her into the sidewalk. Her breasts were squashed painfully to her chest and a throbbing ache told her she'd landed hard on her hip bone. A wet warmth pooled on her back. Had Reese peed on her? “Reese?”

“Hit … roof.” Her voice was a burbly whisper.

“Oh my God.” It was Reese's blood soaking into her back. Sydney maneuvered her arms out from under both their bodies and managed to get her palms flat on the sidewalk. She tried to push up but couldn't budge her sister's dead weight without injuring her more. She couldn't be dead. “Reese?”

No reply.

Sydney stretched her arms out in front of her face and grasped the leg of a newspaper box bolted into the sidewalk. The metal cut into her palms as she pulled with all her strength and felt her body slide out from under Reese's. When her torso was free, she twisted around to sit and face Reese. Her hands supported her sister's shoulders, to keep her face from smashing into the sidewalk, as she edged her legs free.

She dragged in a deep breath. Reese lay prone, her face mashed against the rough concrete, her baseball cap in the gutter. The fall had knocked her sunglasses off and she looked younger, more vulnerable without them shielding her eyes. Sydney willed her to wake up, look at her, but Reese's eyes remained closed. Her hands extended to either side and the fingers of her right hand flopped inches from a gun. Had she fired one or both of the shots? It didn't matter. Sydney didn't see a wound or blood on her sister's back and allowed herself to feel hopeful. Maybe she wasn't hurt too badly. She reached for the wrist nearest her and put her fingers over the pulse. Reese's skin felt clammy, but her heart was beating: onetwothreefour. Too fast.

Sydney needed to call 911. She looked around frantically, but her purse, containing her cell phone, had disappeared.

“Someone help, please,” she appealed to the milling crowd. “Call 911. Is anyone a doctor? I think she's been shot.” The sound of approaching sirens told her someone had already phoned for help. Thank God.

No one stepped forward. Sydney reached up and grabbed the hand of a middle-aged man standing a step away. “Help me lift her.”

The man gaped at her, then dropped reluctantly to his knees. Gently, they turned Reese over. Sydney gasped at the sight of the blood pooled beneath her—it looked like gallons—and still leaking from a wound in her abdomen. One hand flew to her mouth and she blinked back tears. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

Without stopping to think, she ripped off her blouse, balled it up, and placed it over the wound. Blood soaked through it frighteningly fast and Sydney pressed down harder, barely feeling the warm trickle on her face.

“Maybe we should put her feet up?” her impromptu helper suggested. “Doesn't that help with shock?”

“Thanks,” Sydney said.

He elevated Reese's feet and propped them on his briefcase.

“And we need a blanket. Does anyone have a coat, anything?” she appealed to the people still milling about. A woman handed over a cardigan sweater and a twenty-something man passed across a pinstriped suit jacket. Sydney kept her hand pressed tightly to the makeshift bandage as her helper draped the sweater over Reese's legs and folded the jacket to place under her head.

“Thanks,” she whispered again. She pressed down harder, praying the EMTs would come, praying Reese would be okay. She'd lost so much blood.
Don't die, don't die, don't die …

“Syd.” The single word made her jump. Reese's eyes were open. They seemed glazed at first, but then her awareness seemed to sharpen as she focused on Sydney's face.

“Oh, thank God. You're going to be okay,” she told her sister, putting a gentle hand on her cheek.

“ … saying about victims and murderers?” Reese whispered. The corner of her mouth twitched as if she were trying to smile. “Guess I'm a victim after all. But not you.” Her eyes fluttered closed and her head listed to the side.

“Reese! Reese!” Sydney stroked her sister's face repeatedly. “You're not a victim. You're going to be okay. Just talk to me, Reese. I'm right here. Right here. I'm not going anywhere, but you have to talk to me. Reese!”

After what seemed liked decades but was probably no more than another minute, the ambulance pulled up and EMTs jumped out, scattering the small knot of onlookers.

Sydney yielded her place to an efficient woman in a blue jumpsuit who opened a bag and got to work. Soon an IV line snaked into Reese's
arm and the medics were loading her onto a gurney. Sydney glanced around and saw a skinny man reaching for Reese's gun where it lay forgotten on the sidewalk.

“Hey!” She lunged toward him and he scuttled back into the crowd. Gingerly, she picked up the gun and, spotting her purse under the newspaper box, put it in. Reese wouldn't want her gun in the hands of a junkie or a mugger.

A screech of tires and the whoop of a siren announced the arrival of the police. Two pairs of uniformed officers jumped from separate squad cars and the crowd immediately began to disperse, few people wanting to be tied up for hours giving witness statements. The two closest cops, a young white officer with jug ears and an older black man with grizzled hair wearing a sergeant's chevrons, assimilated the basic details in seconds from the EMTs and latched onto Sydney while the other cops rounded up witnesses.

“You were with the victim, ma'am?” the younger officer asked, pulling out a notebook. He had the earnest look of a young Ron Howard. Sydney named him “Opie” in her head. “Your name?”

“She's not a victim,” Sydney said fiercely, then held up an apologetic hand. “Where are they taking her?” she asked as the ambulance pulled away from the curb, its lights and sirens clearing a path through the traffic like the prow of an icebreaker cleaving the polar seas.

“Howard University Hospital. But we need to get a statement from you.” The black cop's nametag read
Morrison
and his voice held a Southern drawl. He shook off a homeless man trying to get his attention by tugging at his sleeve. “Later, bub.”

“But someone's real sick. He needs a medic,” the unkempt man said.

“Donnelly!” Sergeant Morrison beckoned to another cop and she hustled over and led the bum, carrying what was probably all his worldly goods on his back and in a gym bag, to the curb.

“I'm going to the hospital,” Sydney said. She needed to be with Reese. She had a shivery feeling that the first shot she'd heard had been a bullet meant for her. And her sister had taken it. The least she could do was sit vigil at the hospital. She started for the curb, intending to flag a cab, but with a look at his partner, Opie said, “We'll drive you.” He picked up the abandoned cardigan that had warmed Reese's legs. “Maybe you should put this on.”

Suddenly conscious that she was standing on a busy street in her lacy bra, Sydney slipped her arms into the sweater and buttoned it with trembling fingers. The ride in the back seat of the police car passed in a blur of self-recrimination, chatter from the radio, and the smell of sweat and vomit from a previous occupant. When they pulled up at the Emergency entrance, Sydney tumbled out of the car and raced for the triage desk.

“My sister,” she gasped. “Where is she? How is she?”

“Her name?” the nurse asked. She wore yellow scrubs dotted with flowers and had blond hair pulled back in a low ponytail. A stethoscope hung around her neck, along with a hospital badge.

“Reese Elizabeth Linn. The ambulance just brought her in. She was shot.”

The nurse pursed her lips, clicked a few keys, and said, “She's going into surgery. You can go up to the waiting room on the third floor. It may be a few hours.”

Sydney didn't move. She wanted more from the nurse, but she didn't know what. Reassurance? Direction?

A man's voice behind Sydney said, “Ma'am? My little boy's real sick.”

She turned to see a thin, twenty-ish man holding a fever-flushed toddler against his shoulder. She blinked at him. Oh. He wanted her to move. The encounter reminded her of the crowded deli and the dad who needed to get his kids from daycare. With an apologetic noise, she stepped aside and looked blankly around a waiting room stuffed with runny-nosed children, coughing senior citizens, a man cradling his wrist in one hand, and several people staring blankly at the wall as if they'd lost all hope of ever setting eyes on a doctor. You should've gotten shot if you wanted fast attention, Sydney thought, threading her way through the room to the hallway to call Connie.

With a shaking hand, she dialed her mother's number. It went to voicemail. At the beep, she choked out, “Reese's been shot.” The words hammered through her self-control and she started to sob. “Someone tried to shoot me and they hit Reese. You need to come. Howard University Hospital.”

She swung away from the phone and found herself face to face with Opie and Sergeant Morrison.

“We need to get a statement from you, ma'am,” Sergeant Morrison said.

“Okay.” Sydney told them what she knew as they found the elevators and rode to the third floor. When the elevator doors slid open, she dashed down the hall toward a sign proclaiming
Surgical Waiting Area
, saying over her shoulder, “Call Detective West. He knows what this is about.”