Kill Switch (29 page)

Authors: Neal Baer

BOOK: Kill Switch

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C
HAPTER
28

“T
he question is,” Claire asked Nick, putting down her coffee cup, “do you believe Curtin?”

“I'm not sure I know what to believe anymore,” Nick said, taking a bite of the stale apple pie that had lost its taste at least an hour earlier.

They'd stopped at the diner on Broadway at 56th after leaving Curtin's apartment, talking for hours, sometimes heatedly, about what they knew, thought they might know, or didn't know about the link between Sedgwick and Quimby, and whether Curtin was in some way involved.

“You know the guy better than me,” Nick said. “Did it sound to you like he was lying when he said he didn't know Sedgwick?”

“I couldn't get a read on him,” Claire said. “Maybe I was too busy concentrating on how sick he is.”

“Here's the thing,” Nick said, taking another bite of pie. “For Sedgwick to know about Quimby would be one coincidence too many. I'm telling you, Curtin's in this up to his pointy little head.”

“The man has gone after killers his whole career,” Claire argued.

“Why would he become one? It doesn't make sense.”

“Along with all the other evidence in this case that doesn't track,” Nick added. He was frustrated and tired and running out of the time Lt. Wilkes had given him to come up with something fresh.

The waitress put the check on the table and said, “You can pay at the register up front.”

“What do you want to do?” Claire asked Nick.

Nick eyed the check, then looked at his watch. “It's after midnight,” he said, the fatigue beginning to show in his voice. “And we've been going around in circles for hours. Whatever Curtin's involvement, we're not going to prove it tonight. I vote we head home and get some sleep.”

Claire's eyelids were starting to feel heavy, despite the three cups of coffee she'd had. “Agreed,” she said.

It was past one a.m. when they emerged from the subway station around the corner from Nick's apartment. He was technically off duty and didn't have use of the Impala, and the cab fares they had spent getting around the city were starting to add up. Claire had always been careful about her money, never spending what she didn't have and refusing to borrow from anyone, so taking the subway and staying at Nick's was a welcome way for her to both save some cash and feel safe.

But now, heading back there in the middle of the night, when the city was starting to quiet down, she was having second thoughts. Part of it was that she valued her privacy. But she also didn't want him to feel obligated.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked as they walked down Lexington Avenue.

“What's bugging you?” Nick replied.

“I feel like you're bringing your work home with you.”

Nick couldn't help but smile. “If I felt that way, I wouldn't have offered.”

“I just don't want to be an intrusion.”

“You're not. It won't be the first time I've been banished to the couch,” Nick said.

“You really know how to charm a girl.”

“I live with my mother and two daughters. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to charm anyone.”

They turned the corner onto Nick's block, just in time to see a man pop open the hood of his ancient Dodge minivan, which he'd double-parked a few yards in front of them.
Must've broken down,
Nick thought.

They walked along Nick's street, coming upon the van, and Nick took a look at the driver, whose head was buried under the hood.
That's odd,
Nick thought.
He's not working on the engine
.

Instinctively, Nick looked down and saw the man's boots. They were black, tapered to the toe, and expensive. Nick didn't think they fit with the piece of crap the guy was driving.

Just then, he heard a grinding sound down the street and looked up and away from the guy and his car. On the corner, brightly lit by the overhead streetlamp, was the profile of a city sanitation truck, backing up to empty the public trash can on the corner.

“Look at that,” Nick said, annoyed. “Idiot's blocking the whole damn street.”

And then he realized. The truck wasn't beeping as it backed up.

Nick took a breath. Claire could feel him tense up.

She looked at him and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” he said without affect. “We're almost home.”

They were only about fifty yards from Nick's building. His eyes darted between the front door and the garbage truck across the street. The driver was just climbing down from the cab and moving slowly toward the rear. Alone.

They never ride alone. And they never pick up garbage this late.

The driver appeared, passing the truck's rear opening, grabbing a garbage can, and wheeling it toward the compactor. For a split second, he lifted his head, his eyes on them, confirming Nick's fears.

He's looking at us. And he's not wearing gloves.

Nick's right hand found his gun. His left hand tightly latched on to Claire's arm.

“What's wrong?” she whispered.

“Just keep walking,” he said.

“You're scaring me,” Claire replied.

As if on cue, the unmistakable sound of a car's hood slammed shut behind them. Nick looked back just as he heard the engine turn over.

The minivan.

His head whipped around, just in time to see the sanitation worker leave the trash can behind and reach inside the truck's hopper.

Not to put something in but to take something out.

Nick picked up the pace, pulling Claire with him.

“What's going on?” Claire asked, now terrified.

“Just do exactly as I say.”

As he said it, the minivan's engine gunned behind them. Nick turned just in time to see the headlights, blinding him.

The door to the building was still a dozen yards in front of them. The man from the garbage truck walked toward them, and Nick considered running for it.

He's got something in his hand....

He realized they'd never make it.

Nick made his move when the minivan screeched to a stop behind them.

“Get down!” he screamed, pulling Claire to the ground between two parked cars.

“What's happening?” Claire said with hysteria in her voice.

“Stay down!” Nick yelled.

Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

A spray of bullets tore up the cars in front of and behind them. But there was no sound of gunfire. Only metal piercing metal.

They have silencers,
Nick realized.
They're professionals
.
Hired assassins
.

For a second, the fusillade of bullets stopped. Nick knew they were reloading. He raised his head above the trunk of the car in front of him. Both killers stood in the shadows.

I can't see a damn thing.

He handed the gun to Claire.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

“Shoot them!” Nick ordered. “I can't see them!”

Claire looked down at the gun, scared to death. “I don't know how!”

“Just point and shoot! Now, dammit!”

Only a few seconds had elapsed. Claire stood up. The garbageman, surprised to see a woman facing him ten yards away, let his guard down for a second too long. Claire raised the gun and pulled the trigger.

And then she heard a groan of pain.

Nick looked up. Claire had hit the garbageman in the right leg. He dropped his gun and fell to the ground.

“Cover me!” he whispered to Claire.

“How?” she asked, scared out of her mind.

“Just keep pulling the trigger!”

Claire pointed the gun and fired. Nick maneuvered around the sidewalk side of the cars, moving fast but keeping low, covering the distance between them and the corner in no more than five seconds, grateful for the city's bright streetlamps. He ran around the blind side of the garbage truck where he could see the legs of the hired gun, trying to drag himself back over to where he'd dropped his weapon.

Nick reached the assassin before he could get to his gun and grabbed him under his arms, flipping him headfirst into the hopper so that Nick could snatch the weapon he knew was hidden there.

It was an Uzi with a huge, custom-made silencer on the barrel.

Nick saw the wound; somehow Claire's shots had found the man's femur and had shattered it. He was contorted in pain when Nick hit the lever that started the compactor. Then he reached in and closed his hand around the assassin's throat, pulling him up and bending his head backward out of the hopper as the compactor's blade rose above the man's waist, ready to pulverize him. “Talk now or that thing'll cut you in half,” Nick threatened. “Who else besides you and the guy in the minivan?”

The killer only struggled against him. Even his agony didn't make him talk. Nick tightened his grip on the man's throat. “How many?” Nick screamed at him. “Who the hell sent you?”

“Screw you!” the killer said.

Nick released the man's neck just as the compactor's blade descended. Nick backed away from the hopper's opening, watching the man scream and blood spray from the rear of the truck.

An engine gunned. The minivan roared up the block, then screeched to a stop.

Right where Claire's hiding.

Nick ran toward the headlights and could see the man in the boots bolt from the vehicle with something in his hand. Nick knew it was a gun, probably an automatic weapon like the Uzi he had taken from the other guy. He wanted to shoot the bastard down, but he couldn't see Claire and was afraid to fire.

He did the only thing he could.

“Police!” Nick screamed, advancing on the guy. “Drop the gun or I'll blow your head off!”

Assassin number two stopped and spun around to face Nick, who pointed the Uzi and pulled the trigger.

Click, click, click.

It's jammed. Shit.

The assassin smiled at Nick. Raised his weapon.

Boom.

All Nick saw was the man's forehead explode from an exit wound. His gun clattered to the ground as he went down, revealing Claire standing behind him, Nick's gun still in her trembling hand, pointed at where the assassin's head had been. Nick bent over the dead man, still holding his Uzi, and ripped the gun away.

And then he smelled it. Again. That bitter, rotten odor he'd smelled before, coming from the dead man's body.

Nick ran to Claire and grabbed his Glock from her hand. She was shaking and crying. He put his arm around her.

“It's okay. You're okay,” Nick said.

“We have to call the police!”

“We've got to get out of here!” he yelled. “They smell like bitter almonds. Sedgwick sent them. When he finds out they missed, he'll send others.”

“Where are we going?”

“To get my mother and the girls.” He took her face between his hands. “I need you with me. Every second counts. You understand?”

This snapped Claire out of her fear and into action. “Yes,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I'm with you.”

They ran the short distance down the street and into Nick's building, up the stairwell to the third floor and down the hall to the apartment. Nick unlocked the door and they went in, moving as fast as they could.

“My girls are asleep in their room. Second door on the left down the hall.”

Claire raced down the dark hall, when the first door opened. She tensed, thinking it was another killer. Until she heard a female voice.

“What's going on?” asked Nick's mother, Helen, pulling on her bathrobe. “Sounds like someone was using a jackhammer outside.”

“We've got to get the girls and leave,” Nick said to his mother.

“Leave?” Helen asked, her face pale with fear. She switched on a light. “It's the middle of the night. They're sleeping.”

And then she saw the blood on her son's clothes. And the two Uzis in his hands.

“Oh my God! What happened?”

“Never mind that now,” Nick said. “Just hurry!”

They could now hear sirens approaching.