Fractured (11 page)

I screamed, but there was a hand over my mouth. Stars whirled above me like pinwheels and I knew I was about to pass out from the pain. But I needed to fight these lunatics.

The pain bore down on me like a quick dip in hot lava, but I held on.
Think, Jeremy. Just fucking think
. What possible weapons could you find on a deserted Harlem street that weren't a gun or a knife?

Opening my pants, I massaged the painful area where the stump sat inside, detached Veronica, and swung her around like a bolero.

Veronica made a pretty good weapon.

With my back against the fence for balance, I was able to stand on one leg and whack the woman in the face. I could hear her teeth crack as metal hit her expensive cap job. And then she was down.

Brother Dear laughed and feinted like a boxer. “Ooo, I'm so scared. Pogo boy is going to beat me with his leg! I should YouTube this. I'll be famous.”

“Yeah, real famous, you sick fuck.” I held Veronica out in front of me like a shield. And then I had an idea. I started banging Veronica against the fence, making as much of a racket as I possibly could. “Will someone fucking help me? I'm getting mugged! Help!”

“Shut up, you asshole,” he said, lunging for my throat.

“Or you'll what? Help! Help!”

People started shouting out windows for me to shut up. I only needed a split second. When the man whipped around to look up at the catcalling neighbors, I took my opportunity and swung harder and better than I'd ever done in Little League.

Veronica hit the side of his head with a hard
thwack
. His eyes crossed and then he fell forward, nearly knocking me down from my tenuous perch against the fence. He slid to the pavement at my feet, either unconscious or dead, like an offering to an avenging god.

The woman was just then rising up on her haunches, blood in her mouth and murder in her eyes. She pounced on me like a mother jaguar defending her young. I think she even growled.

I didn't need to stay standing to pull off my next maneuver. When she came at me, instead of swinging, I used Veronica to pull her into a chokehold. We both fell to the sidewalk with me struggling to get on top of her.

“Get a room!” someone yelled out the window.

This woman was an Amazon. She tossed Veronica into the street, so that the next passing car was bound to crush her, and climbed on top of me, her knees on my chest and her surprisingly strong fingers around my neck.

Absently, I wondered if she was the one who'd offed Brittany Byers. And then, as if I'd summoned her, a vague outline rounded the corner of Amsterdam, followed by three charging figures.

As I gasped for breath, my eyes practically popping out of my head, I saw a mirage. An avenging angel with raven-black wings picked up a leg off of the street and, with a piercing battle cry, swung it like Thor's hammer.

The woman's head exploded in a spray of red before she fell backward like a felled tree. When the spots of color finally cleared from my vision, I saw Marisa holding a bloodstained Veronica like an actual body part, flanked on either side by Bobby and Gabe.

In a matter of seconds the street was a riot of red and blue flashing lights, blocked off from end to end by police cars.

When the officers got out of their cars and bounded towards us, I was relieved. Until they ordered Marisa to put her hands behind her head, and informed her that she was under arrest for the assault of Ella Wavestone and her brother Ellis.

31

Bobby

Sunday: 2:32 AM

A
mbulances had arrived and the two severely injured people were loaded into them.

Two detectives had already handcuffed Marisa and ushered her into the back of a police cruiser. A squat detective holding a clipboard, and her equally squat partner, strolled toward us.

“Hey!” Jeremy yelled to the officers as Gabe and I pulled him up from the ground. He was propped up between us, his curly brown hair wild and his eyes even wilder. “You can't arrest my girlfriend! She saved me! Don't you get it? I was attacked and she saved
me
!”

“So,” the officer said to him, “the perp is your girlfriend?” She looked at Jeremy's empty pant leg and back at the prosthetic that was currently being dusted for prints by a forensics team. “And I take it,” she added, “that's your leg she used for a weapon?”

“Yes, that's right. They attacked me.”

The officer scribbled in her pad. Her chubby-faced partner had an underbite and jowls that gave him the look of a bulldog. He continued to glare at us. “It was reported you left the restaurant with the victim on your arm?”

“Well, uh, yeah,” Jeremy said, “but she was holding me up. I was having trouble walking.”

The officer's mouth twisted into a sideways smirk. “So you paid your Good Samaritan back by detaching your leg and then beating her to a pulp with it?”

Gabe and I exchanged looks. I'd had my own problems with the law in the past. I was starting to understand why Marisa had been reluctant to report her attack in the first place.

“Are you kidding me?” Jeremy shouted, leaning forward so far he was in danger of falling over. “You think we ambushed these people and beat them with my prosthetic leg?”

The officer stared at Jeremy, pen poised over her clipboard. She had an unnerving way of ending every sentence in a question. “Maybe you've heard of Brendan Wavestone? He's one of the biggest contributors to the Police Benevolent Fund and a major supporter of every university and cultural institution in the city? Do you think anyone is going to believe his two oldest children attacked
you
?”

“So you're saying,” Jeremy said slowly, “that people are going to believe an out-of-town amputee attacked two fit and able-bodied people with his fake leg?”

The officer didn't break her gaze. Her partner continued to nod, jowls jiggling. It was clear that these officers had already tried and sentenced Jeremy in their own minds. “You lured them to this dark street, detached your leg, and your girlfriend attacked them with it, is that correct?”

My head throbbed listening to this insanity. My eyes ached. I searched the ground frantically for a piece of evidence I could offer up that would get the police to listen to reason.

“He has the right to an attorney,” Gabe said quietly. The officer squinted at her and then returned her steady scrutiny to Jeremy.

“The bartender at Pisticci's says you ordered two shots of vodka before you left the restaurant with Ella Wavestone? How old are you? Can I see your ID?”

Gabe and I exchanged looks and rolled our eyes. In the next instant, Jeremy was handcuffed, helped into another cruiser, and driven off. The entire flashing caravan of police cars and ambulances was gone, leaving Gabe and me alone. Except for the forlorn ghost that lingered in the shadows at the corner of Amsterdam and 123rd.

Tonight, someone had gotten away with murder.

I may have solved the crime, but I didn't think that counted until I could get someone to believe me.

It was 2:45 AM. Sixty-two hours and counting.

◆

“What'll we do now?” Gabe asked. Droopy gold strands framed her face like tired sun rays. Her exhaustion showed in her eyes. I could barely keep my own open.

I pulled her toward me and buried my face in her hair. It would have made the perfect pillow. “I'd love to say that we go back to the apartment, crawl under the covers, and warm each other up, but we don't have the luxury. Jeremy and Marisa are in jail, and once those Wavestone freaks get out of the hospital, they'll go free. The police have nothing to connect them to this crime wave.”

Gabe looked into my eyes and kissed the tip of my nose. “I don't get why they'd do this. I think I met them both at an open house once. Those kids had everything.”

“Sometimes everything is too much,” I said grimly. I didn't understand it either, but I had felt the cold, bottomless rage that flowed from Ella Wavestone as she killed Brittany Byers.

And I knew, without a doubt, that once they checked Ella out of the hospital, and they would, she'd be out on the streets, free to kill more people.

Unless I found a way to tie her to the murders.

“Bobby,” Gabe said. “Why do you think Ella Wavestone stole her father's ring? Do you think she wanted to embarrass him? Or punish him?”

“Damned if I know, Gabe,” I said. And it was true. The part about Brendan Wavestone's ring made no sense. Did Wavestone's kids want to frame him?

And, the biggest question of all, the one none of the evidence seemed to answer, was why? Why did the twins target Brittany Byers and Marisa? Had there been other murders?

I scanned the sidewalks for leads, but the area was too disturbed by the violence that had just taken place and clung to everything like static electricity. Every item was equally charged. It was impossible to single out one piece of evidence from another.

We started to walk back to our apartment, but I stopped abruptly in my tracks at a dark puddle. Fresh blood.

I'd never been at a crime scene right after it happened. Never experienced what freshly spilled blood could tell me. Or do to me.

I squatted and dipped a finger into the pool of dark red. It was sticky and still a little warm.

Closing my eyes, I waited for the vision to overtake me. Gabe's hand rested on my shoulder.

My surroundings vanished. Ella Wavestone's life began to unfold in a high-speed crazy quilt of images, quickly accelerating into a spinning blur I couldn't read. It was like paint thrown into a blender. My heart began to race as the whirling colors caught me up in a churning vortex.

I wanted to shout for help, but my jaws were bound together. I blinked blindly into the whirring mass. Ella Wavestone's mind was as clean and smooth as ocean glass.

There was nothing to hold onto.

Nothing to grab as it sucked me into its hungry mouth.

I couldn't breathe.

I was going to drown this time.

◆

My breath returned in choking gasps, like I'd been underwater too long.

As my surroundings clarified, I found myself looking up into the face of a man I'd never seen before. Gabe watched me from over the shoulder of his expensive suit, her face drained of color. He fished into his jacket pocket and presented a badge. FBI.

“Hello, Bobby,” the man said in a rich baritone. “I'm Agent Bill Strauss. And you're to come with me.”

As if it appeared with the flip of a switch, a bright smile creased his flawless mocha skin. It was clearly intended to disarm and set me at ease. And for that reason I didn't trust Agent Strauss at all.

“What happened?”

“Nothing to worry about,” the agent said briskly. In one swift motion, he'd pulled me to my feet and, before I could protest, ushered Gabe and me into the black car with dark-tinted windows that waited by the curb, its engine running. Agent Reston sat in the back seat, facing forward.

“Good evening, Bobby. Gabriella,” she said, without turning toward us.

“What's going on? Where are you taking us?” I jiggled the door handle. But it had already been locked. The windows were so dark I couldn't see out. We were trapped.

The driver, Agent Reston's usual sidekick, remained silent. From the front passenger seat, Agent Strauss swiveled around to whisper something to Agent Reston that caused her red lips to quirk into an actual smile and for her to laugh girlishly, showing her small perfect teeth.

Gabe and I shared a look. We held hands and squeezed.

And the car took off.

32

Bobby

Sunday: 3:55 AM

W
e'd been driving for over an hour. Since the windows were blackened, I had no idea where they were taking us. Agent Reston offered us bottled water, but mostly stared straight ahead into her dark world. On occasion she'd laugh when Agent Strauss turned and whispered something unintelligible to her.

Gabe looked at me cross-eyed, then stifled a snicker. “Fun and games behind the scenes at the FBI,” she whispered in my ear. “Agent X is hot for Agent Y.”

I covered my mouth to hold in my own laugh. From the way she'd involuntarily stroked her thigh, it was clear that Agent Reston liked the sound of that seductive baritone very much. The idea of her having human urges seemed less believable than the sight of a unicorn galloping through Times Square.

The drive droned on, lulling both Gabe and me to sleep. We woke abruptly as the car came to a smooth stop. We could have been sleeping for an hour, or it could have been five.

Agent Reston sat erect in her seat, her regal profile turned to us. I wondered if she had mastered the art of sleeping with her eyes open, since for her it was all the same thing.

Agent Strauss came around to open our door and helped us out of the car, then asked us to please wait on the sidewalk while he helped Agent Reston. They returned with her gripping his arm, her head held high as if she were being escorted to a grand ball. Her mouth curved up in a satisfied smile and I began to wonder if Agent Reston had been blind so long she forgot her expressions showed on her face.

I shook my head and cut a sideways glance at Gabe. She squeezed my hand and looked down, squelching her own nervous smile. There was nothing funny about our situation. From the relaxed way Agent Strauss had left us unguarded to flirt with his hot blind colleague, it was obvious he didn't expect us to run, and wasn't too worried if we did.

The sun was just about rising over the nondescript city we found ourselves in. I decided it must be Albany. My dad had taken me and Coco there once to see a wrestling match before he'd gone to Iraq. But it could have been Boston. I wasn't sure. Or Hartford. Or Newark. Or any smaller city within four hours' driving distance from New York.

Basically, I tried to think about anything other than
why
we were here.

We were standing in front of a glass-fronted tower as the sun came up, our own reflections staring back at us from the blue-tinted glass. The doors whooshed open, and we followed Agents Strauss and Reston inside.