Collision (8 page)

“We may not be able to get to my car. We’ll have to steal one if we can’t.”

“Steal a car. Are you kidding me? I am not stealing a car.”

“Borrow, then. We’ll bumper surf.” He spoke to Ben in a voice of utter calm, thinking,
Give him a problem to worry about other than getting shot.
“It’s easy; you hunt for those little magnetic boxes under the bumper that hold a spare key so people don’t lock themselves out . . .” As they navigated into the meandering crowd spilling from the bars and the streets, Pilgrim slowed down, keeping Ben close to him.

“What are we going to do?” Ben said. He was calmer now.

“I’m going to get you to a car, and then I’m going to find my boss while you wait.”

They muscled through the crowd, headed east for two blocks, and ran to the garage’s stairwell. They climbed the stairs up to the floor where Pilgrim had parked.

“Wait here,” Pilgrim ordered Ben. Pilgrim eased into the row of cars, gun out, up, watching. The garage was quiet. He scanned the parked cars. No sign of a silver van. Many slots remained full, either people working late or downtown for the music festival. But he didn’t see anyone leaving or heading toward a car.

The stolen Volvo sat where he’d left it. Pilgrim turned back toward the stairwell door and gestured an all-clear.

He saw the door closing. Ben Forsberg was gone.

12

Ben ran down the concrete steps. Get away from the crazy bastard, find a policeman now and tell him everything. Yes, maybe he would end up back in the hands of this freaking weird division of Homeland Security, but he was a witness to murder and he wasn’t going to steal a car and he wasn’t going to run. The idle suggestion—
We’ll steal a car
—had been the proverbial bucket of ice water, clearing the shock from Ben’s mind. That was not the responsible course of action. He had a business to consider, a reputation, and this horrific night could not redefine him as a person. Once he had a lawyer, the world would shift back to its normal orbit. Sam Hector and his vast connections in the government would get Ben’s good name cleared.

He could get to the ground floor faster taking the stairs than Pilgrim could in a car.

He heard the stairwell door bang open, a flight above him. “Ben!”

Run.

Ben didn’t continue down the stairs—they were empty. Pilgrim could fire down at him or catch up with him, the guy was obviously a soldier of a kick-ass stripe. But people might be on one of the levels. Attendants. Barhoppers. Someone who could help him.

He hit the door. The second level was empty. No people, just cars in most of the slots.

He ran across the level, arrowing for the opposite stairwell.
Get as far away as you can,
he told himself,
just run run run—

A van peeled fast down the incline between him and the far stairwell door, and he raised his hands, beckoning for help as the van cornered and roared toward him. Ben saw a young, soft-faced man with stringy dark hair behind the windshield.

The van didn’t stop. The kid’s arm jutted suddenly from the driver’s open window and a blinding red light caught Ben’s eyes. But not before he saw that the kid held a gun.

A silver van, the gunman on the roof had said.

Ben flung himself between a Saab and a BMW. A shot cracked, shattering the BMW’s window above him. The van’s brakes squealed as though the driver stood on the pedal. Ben didn’t huddle under the sedan; he rolled under two SUVs parked next to it, grease staining his shirt and pants, trying his hardest to be silent.

Nowhere else to run. Nowhere to escape. The kid could just get out of the van and shoot him dead, ease down, smile at Ben in his temporary fortress of undercarriage and concrete.

Ben waited to hear the van door open. But instead he heard an eruption of gunfire.

Pilgrim barreled out of the stairwell—he’d caught a glimpse of Ben running down the stairs, hitting the second-level door—and saw Ben dodging a van, a laser sight dancing, a glow seeking flesh, then a shot fracturing the rear windshield of a car behind where Ben had stood.

The van. Jackie Lynch. Teach was inside that van if the gunman had told the truth.

Then the laser sight swung toward Pilgrim, caught between the stairwell door and a parked car, as the van braked to an awkward, neck-snapping stop.

The shots sang a warble of
th-weets
and Pilgrim retreated backward, the sting and burn of steel ripping through flesh in his shoulder and his arm. He staggered, missing the door as Jackie leaned out the window to tighten his aim and finish the job.

He retreated, blindly, no place to run, and threw himself over the concrete lip of the garage wall. He dropped into emptiness. How far up was he? he wondered. He couldn’t remember past the pain.

Now in a burst of speed the van powered past where Ben hid.

The guy could kill him easy, why was he running?

Because he just shot who he was really after. Pilgrim.

Ben crawled from under the utility vehicle. Bullet holes scored the wall along the stairwell door, a spill of blood decorated the lip of the edge. Where, presumably, Pilgrim had stood in chasing him.

He started to run toward the other stairwell. He heard a screech of brakes. He stopped. Pilgrim could be lying back there, dead, dying.

He leaned against a parked truck. His and Pilgrim’s lives were somehow connected, tied to each other, because of the murder of Adam Reynolds and how Ben had been framed for it.
I can answer your questions,
Pilgrim had said,
and you can answer mine. We can help each other. But not if we’re both in custody.
If Pilgrim died, Ben might never be able to prove his innocence. Homeland Security could threaten him all over again, his reputation would be destroyed, he would never know the truth. Pilgrim must know the reasons why Ben’s life had been targeted and ruined.

Pilgrim had saved him from Kidwell, from the gunman on the roof.

Ben ran back to the edge of the garage and peered down the side. Pilgrim lay, a story and a half below him, in a row of crushed yaupon bushes, moving his arms, groggy, hurt, barely lifting his head.

Halfway down the incline to the ground floor, a crowd of college kids were laughing and piling into their cars, debating through the open windows which club to visit. Jackie guessed they hadn’t heard the sounds of the silenced shots or had attributed the bangs to festival noise. But the kids were taking their own sweet, slow time, calling from car to car while they inched out of the parking slots, blocking the passage. Jackie slammed on his brakes to keep from veering into them.

Jackie rolled down the window. “Move it, goddamn it!”

“Hey! Politeness, dude.” A boy his own age, sitting in one of the cars, slurred his syllables and gave Jackie a beer-soaked smile. Jackie wanted to shoot and knife them all, but the cars were full, six kids in each, and it was too many, it would take too long.

“Please,” Jackie said. “Please. Sorry I yelled. I’m in an awful hurry. Please move.”

“See, politeness works,” the loudmouth said. The car inched up enough to let Jackie roar past.

Jackie yanked up his pants leg, pulled the eight-inch steel knife from its sheath. If Pilgrim lay hurt on the ground, he’d dispatch him with the knife. Quiet and it wouldn’t draw the attention a gun would. If there were witnesses helping Pilgrim, the knife was fast—he’d killed a quartet of late-paying drug dealers in a small Dublin room once with the knife, in under thirty seconds.

Nicky, I’m going to make it right,
he thought.

Ben sprinted down the stairwell again, hands skimming the railing. He hit the exit, and the cool night air washed over his filthy and bloodied face. He turned the corner and Pilgrim was trying to stand, favoring his leg. Bleeding, shot in the shoulder.

"C’mon.” Ben looped Pilgrim’s arm over his shoulder. Pilgrim was only a couple of inches taller than him but he felt much heavier. Pilgrim—hurt— leaned hard against him. They couldn’t run down the street; the van would be here within seconds, and the shooter in the van was bound and determined to be sure Pilgrim was dead.

“I’m
shot
. . .”

“I know, come on, come on.” Ben pivoted Pilgrim, half-dragged, half-carried him back into the garage. They needed to hide. Now. Or the maniac in the van would cut them both down.

The crash of a wooden barrier breaking boomed on the opposite side of the garage. They ran, Pilgrim gasping, for the elevator. Ben thumbed the up button. The doors slid open at once and the two of them fell into the open elevator.

Ben rose on his knees and jabbed the controls. The roar of a car approached, and he’d gambled wrong; they were trapped. He dragged Pilgrim into the far corner of the elevator, where they couldn’t be seen.

The elevator doors slid closed as a van powered past and onto the street, its headlights sweeping the broken bushes and the empty sidewalk.

Pilgrim was gone. Jackie Lynch circled the parking garage twice, peering at the entrances, letting his headlights spill along the streets, lighting the couples and singles walking along toward the restaurants and nightclubs. He could guess Pilgrim’s point of impact from the mashed bushes—but the bastard wasn’t there. Which meant he wasn’t hurt, and he was running.

He turned around to drive back into the garage, but a large crowd of pedestrians—festival-goers, he guessed—were pouring into the garage as a light rain began to fall again. Too many people there now, too many witnesses.

Maybe they hadn’t gone back into the garage.

He drove up and down the neighboring streets, rage building in the cage of his heart. He scanned the crowds for a limping, bloodied man.

Nicky wouldn’t have missed him, not that close. Hell, he thought, kick Nicky off the pedestal. Nicky sure as hell missed when it counted.

The phone rang. He put the knife on the seat and clicked on the cell phone.

“Report.” It was Sam Hector.

Damn
.

“They’re dead, they’re all dead . . . ,” Jackie started.

“You better mean Forsberg and Pilgrim.”

The name Forsberg meant nothing to him, but he said, “No, I mean your bloody Arab hired guns. All dead. Pilgrim killed them all.”

“It’s just you left?” Hector didn’t show any emotion; the iron control made Jackie dislike him more.

“Yes and I’m going to find that bastard and kill him . . . He’s gone; I hit him but he’s gone, he’s gone.”

“Get out of there. Now. Get Teach to my place. I’ll text directions to your phone.”

“But Pilgrim’s still—”

“Do what I tell you or I’ll forfeit your payment.”

Maybe I’ll just keep the woman, see how you like that,
he thought in a blistering rage. But no. Sam Hector would be an extremely dangerous enemy to have. Better to deliver the woman. Get his money. Then see if there was any way to use Hector to find this Pilgrim bastard again.

Jackie drove until he saw the sign for I-35 and found an entrance ramp, heading toward Dallas, four hours north. Leaving the town now where his brother had died, and for the first time he wondered what would happen to Nicky’s body, where it would be buried, how he could ever get it home to Northern Ireland. He suspected he couldn’t. He started to tremble, not with grief. With rage.

Today wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Several blocks to the west a Volvo station wagon worked past the crowds.

13

“Pain is nothing,” Pilgrim muttered in agony. “Pain is a friend. If you don’t feel pain you’re dead.” He repeated it like a mantra.

“Pain says you need a doctor.” Ben drove west on Sixth Street, heading out of downtown, watching his rearview, trying to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He made a sharp turn, headed north for a few blocks, then turned east again. Brackenridge Hospital was on East Fifteenth Street—he could be there in a few minutes.

“No doctor. No hospital.” Pilgrim gritted his teeth.

“Don’t be a dumb-ass. You’re hurt.”

“No. I’m lucky. Haven’t ever been shot before. Haven’t ever fallen from a building. What a fricking day.”

“I’m taking you to a hospital.”

“No. Can’t go. We’ll be right back where we started. You’ll be in custody and I’ll be . . .”

“Where?”

“Hurts too bad to talk. Keep driving.” Pilgrim pressed his fist hard against his shoulder. “A federal agent pulled a gun on you and a killer had your name in his pocket and another killer just tried to shoot your head off. You might want to stay under the radar.”

“I’m still taking you to a hospital.”

“If you want to stay alive, get us to Dallas. If I pass out, get me into a motel, cheap, get a first aid kit.”

“First aid. For a bullet wound.”

“And a tool to dig the bullet out. Don’t forget that.”

“I’m not digging a bullet out of you. Get real.” He turned into the Brackenridge Hospital parking lot, the emergency sign a beacon.

Pilgrim grabbed the wheel. “No. I am begging you. Please. If you bring me here, we’re both dead men.”

Ben hesitated as he started to pull into the overhang by the entrance.

“We’re guaranteed dead. We have to get to Dallas.”

“Why do we go to Dallas?”

“Because the matchbook I found on the gunman is from a Dallas restaurant; Barker betrayed me and his driver’s license address is in Dallas. Those are my only leads.” And then he added: “The guard I knocked out had a Hector Global ID in his pocket. The back of the ID badge gave an address near Dallas.”

Ben tightened his grip on the wheel. “The guards weren’t Homeland agents?”

“Nope. So I’m thinking this Hector company’s connected to this whole mess.”

Ben swallowed. “Sam Hector, he owns Hector Global, he’s a client of mine. He’s one of my closest friends. He wouldn’t be involved in anything illicit or illegal. I spoke with him not three hours ago . . .”

Pilgrim stared at him. “Awful big coincidence. Our friend Kidwell should have Homeland agents working as his guards—not hired guns.”

Two paramedics came out, began to walk toward the Volvo.

“We can’t stay here, Ben, please. Drive!”

“Hector Global must have a contract with Kidwell’s group . . . Sam can help us, can tell us what the hell’s going on . . .”

“Maybe.” Pilgrim leaned against the door, putting pressure on his shoulder wound. “If he’s really your friend, okay, let’s ask him for help. But not here. Get us to Dallas, Ben, please.”

A car behind them honked and Ben pulled back out into the lot, past the paramedics. He turned east onto Fifteenth Street, then headed north onto I-35, toward Dallas.

“That’s the first smart move I’ve seen you make.”

“I’m only doing this because . . . Kidwell implied . . .” Ben swallowed. “Two years ago my wife was killed. Murdered. On our honeymoon. Shot to death. It was a random thing.”

“Damn. That sucks. Sorry.”

In its odd, awkward way it was one of the most sincere expressions of sympathy he’d gotten. Most people said nothing more than
I’m sorry.
A few shared horrors like
At least she didn’t suffer
or
You’re young, you’ll marry again.
And some said nothing, which was somehow worse, as though Emily had never existed. “Kidwell suggested I’d had her killed. Like I had a history with hired killers like Nicky Lynch.”

Pilgrim watched the road spill past, breathing in rhythm to control the pain. Several minutes passed.

Ben broke the silence. “Let me call Sam. Hector Global’s a huge company. Sam might not even know he’s got people working for Kidwell. He could tell us who Kidwell is.”

Pilgrim twisted slightly in the seat. “I’ll make you a deal, Ben.”

“I’m listening.”

“I can help you clear your name, Ben. But only if you help me.”

Ben considered. “What’s to keep me from driving straight to a police officer, then? They’ll force you to talk.”

“If the police get ahold of me, I’ll get turned over to the government and you’ll never see me again . . . and then you’re trapped under suspicion of the worst sort. I don’t officially exist anymore, I can’t help you if we’re caught. You’re going to have a bitch of a time clearing your name. Might never do it.” He stared out the window as they went past the suburban spread of Round Rock, letting the weight of his words settle down on Ben.

The idea made Ben’s skin prickle. He’d already endured the rot of suspicion before, after Emily’s death, because the husband was always a prime suspect. “So what are you, a government agent or an undercover cop?”

“I’m a strange breed.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m not telling you what I do. Not until you help me. I need your help, Ben, I’m asking for it.”

Ben swallowed. “Why me? Why is this happening?”

“I can hazard a guess. Your wife.”

“I don’t . . .”

“Ben. You were a suspect in her murder, weren’t you? It would only be natural.”

His throat closed and he coughed. “Briefly. But the police cleared me. I had no involvement.”

He’d had to fly home to Dallas from his honeymoon alone, the worst flight of his life. Her body lay in the plane’s cargo hold. He arrived alone at the house they had shared; her parents, shattered in their own grief and blaming him because the world had been cruel and capricious, did not meet him at the airport. Sam was on a trip and couldn’t get back in time. Within a few more days he realized that Dallas had gone dead for him, and he’d moved back to his hometown of Austin, where there were fewer whispers about him behind cupped hands.

“If you wanted to frame a person, a man who’s already been suspect once is a much easier sell. To the police. To the media.”

“But why me. . . .”

“I’ll explain why you were framed. Just get me patched up and get me to Dallas.” His words slurred, his eyes fogged with pain. “It’s a fair trade. I’m trusting you, Ben. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes. I give you my word,” Ben said. “We have a deal.”

“I need some water.”

Ben took the next exit, stayed on the frontage road until he reached a gas station. He went inside. The cashier said hi and he said hi back. He bought two bottles of water. He hurried back to the Volvo. Ben opened the bottle for Pilgrim, watched him gulp the water down.

“I should have thought of getting you water sooner. Sorry. I’m not used to dealing with gunshot wounds.”

“I can’t make it to Dallas without getting patched up.”

Ben pulled back onto the highway. “I’m going to find a Wal-Mart, and then a motel, and get you cleaned up, stop the bleeding.”

“Thank you.”

“Can I use a credit card? Will the police or Homeland Security be looking for me? Kidwell said he’d freeze my accounts.”

Pilgrim said, “I got a credit card we can use.” He laughed. “Can you forge a signature?”

“Um, I’ve never tried.”

“Trust me. It’s not hard to learn. You look like a quick study.” Pilgrim sagged against the door, eyes at half-mast. “I’m not in good shape here, man . . .”

Ben floored the car down the highway.