Sins of the Father (33 page)

“Skulking in sewers now, are you Bishop?” Big Eddie said. “It suits you.”

“Listen, Eddie, you don’t want to be here,” Peter said. For a moment he thought about grabbing the gun and turning it on the Scotsman, but quickly discarded the idea. If he did, there was no way he or Julia would survive. So he didn’t fight when Little Eddie shoved the barrel of his Benelli into his stomach. Big Eddie took the Sig out of Julia’s hand and stuffed it into his waistband.

“Maybe I don’t, maybe I do,” he replied, and he turned toward the Englishman. “You the ponce that called me?”

“I am indeed,” McCoy said, turning toward Peter. “He was becoming a thorn in my side, and I thought the two of you might want to catch up, perhaps revisit some past adventures.” Big Eddie nodded at him, and McCoy lowered his hands. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

He placed the vial onto the control panel of the device, and went back to flipping switches.

“You’ve got to listen to me, Eddie,” Peter said. “He’s about to release a disease into the subway system, and it’s going to kill a lot of people. We’re all going to die.”

“What, you think I’m gonna fall for that shite?” Big Eddie replied. “You’re a great spinner of tales, Peter Bishop. Why don’t you tell me the one I want to hear? Like the one that goes, ‘Eddie, here’s all that money I owe you, plus interest.’ You know that one, don’t you, Bishop? You’ve told it to me enough times, I figure you know it by heart.”

“Look, Eddie, I’m not—”

“
Shut it
,” Eddie said, pistol-whipping him with the .357. A white-hot flash of pain shot through the left side of his skull.

Peter knew Big Eddie wasn’t going to let him walk out of this, so he didn’t have much to lose—but he had everything to gain. He let his legs go out from under him, pitched toward the mobster, and made a grab for the Sig sticking out of his waistband. The two of them toppled to the ground.

Peter tugged at the Sig, but lost his grip. It clattered against the cracked pavement, bouncing into some shadows near the wall.

The pistol lost, Peter focused on keeping Big Eddie from shooting him with the cannon in his hand. He took an elbow to the face, but managed to dislodge Big Eddie’s .357, sending the gun skittering across the uneven floor.

“Julia, get out of here,” Peter yelled. “Get the cops!”

He only hoped she’d be able to do so before Little Eddie knew what was happening.

But instead of running to the exit, she ran toward the discarded gun, scooped it up, and continued toward the Englishman. Little Eddie wouldn’t open up on Peter as long as there was a chance he might hit his father, but there wasn’t any such risk if he took a shot at Julia.

Momentarily distracted, Peter got Big Eddie’s knee to the groin. The mobster shoved hard, pushing Peter away from him. He rolled on the floor, scrambled to stand up, and a wave of nausea swept through him.

It was over.

But he was damned if he was going to die lying down.

The shotgun roared in Little Eddie’s hands, at the same time as Julia fired the .357. Gunshots so close together that Peter couldn’t tell who was shooting at whom. It took him a stunned second to realize that he wasn’t dead. Then he turned, and saw Little Eddie slump to the floor, his enormous girth turned into dead weight.

Big Eddie screamed and ran to his son.

Peter expected to find Julia dead, but instead she stood over McCoy with the .357 smoking in her hand. The Englishman lay face down on the ground, his back a meaty crater where Little Eddie’s Benelli had blown a hole the size of a soccer ball. Peter blinked. In the dim light of the tunnel, the man’s blood looked oddly silver.

“We need to call the police,” he said. “Have them get a bomb squad down here. Disarm this thing.”

“You go ahead and do that, Peter,” she said, kicking the Benelli into the shadows of the tunnel, far out of Big Eddie’s reach. “I’m not sticking around for it.” She leveled the gun at his chest, moved to the control panel, and slipped the vial of virus into her pocket.

“I’ve got what I came for,” she said.

“What are you doing?” he replied. But he thought he was beginning to understand.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” she said. “I didn’t expect any of this to happen. You have to believe me. If McCoy hadn’t caught me outside of Doctor Westerson’s house, none of this would have happened.”

“You’d have gotten away scot-free.”

“I would have, yes. And this time I will.”

“You bitch,” Big Eddie screamed. He held his dead son, blood covering his hands, soaking into his clothes. Little Eddie’s formerly pretty blue eyes stared sightless at the ceiling. “You killed my boy.”

“Goodbye, Peter,” she said. “Don’t follow me. I don’t want to have to kill you, too.”

She started to back away from him.

Peter thought furiously, trying to find some way to get her to stop.

“The police will find out about the virus,” he said.

“They’ll take it and they’ll study it. And they’ll make more of it. Do you want that out there in the world? Your life’s work? You’ll be a pariah, and somebody else will get the credit.”

Julia paused, considering his words.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s too dangerous in the wrong hands.”

“Exactly,” Peter said. “Help me get rid of it. The police…”

“We don’t need the police,” she said, stepping over to the control panel and shoving McCoy’s body out of the way. She examined the panel until she found the switch she was looking for—flipped it, and a readout showed five minutes. Then it began counting down. She reached under the panel, finding the wire leading to the switch, and yanked it out, rendering it useless.

“Julia, are you
insane
? You’ll kill thousands of people.”

“I’m not releasing the virus, Peter. You heard McCoy.

This thing’s wired with enough thermite to destroy it, and turn this whole place into slag. I’m leaving now. If you follow me I’ll shoot you. When the countdown reaches three minutes you can leave. That should give both of us enough time to get out safely.” She looked at Big Eddie crying over Little Eddie’s corpse. “Even him.”

She backed away again, and started up the stairs.

“At least answer me this,” Peter said. “Is it true? What McCoy said? About Walter’s lab? About Carla?”

She smiled at him, pausing at the doorway.

“A girl’s got to have her secrets,” she said, and she disappeared from sight.

Peter stopped himself from running after her. By the time he got up there she’d be long gone. Or she’d shoot him.

That was fine. He’d find her. He knew exactly where she was going.

Peter looked back at the device, the clock counting down the seconds. There was no way he’d get the switch re-wired in time to shut it off. And did he want to? This way, nobody else would get the virus, and thousands of people would be saved.

He gave it another ten seconds before heading up the stairs. As he stepped through the doorway, he heard Big Eddie’s voice, bellowing behind him, followed by pounding footsteps. So he ran, taking the stairs two at a time and flying up the ladder like he had demons at his heels.

Worse than demons, he had Big Eddie.

When he popped up through the open manhole, Peter threw himself into the gutter, sliding behind a parked car as if he was stealing home base. Seconds later flames belched forth from the tunnel, and the ground lurched beneath him. He covered his head with his hands.

When he dared to sneak a look at the chaos in the street, he saw a crowd of anxious Brooklynites milling around the manhole. A pair of hipster Samaritans were trying to help a guy slumped against the power company truck. The guy’s bald head was burned bright pink and there was a raccoon mask of soot on his furious face.

Big Eddie. Still alive and kicking, the hard old bastard. Luckily, he was distracted by the hipsters, giving Peter an opportunity to melt, unnoticed, into the crowd.

DUSK AT REIDEN LAKE.

It was an innocuous place, drowsy and lost in time. Not really big enough or scenic enough to attract out-of-state visitors. Mostly kids with nothing better to do, who wanted an unsupervised place to drink and make out, and the occasional lone older man in a splintery canoe who didn’t really care that the fish were small and scarce.

The beach was narrow and rocky, the water murky and cold even in the summertime. A cracked rowboat had been abandoned belly-up on the far end of the beach. There were a few modest cabins clustered around the northern end, most of which seemed to be empty this time of year. If Peter remembered correctly, one of them belonged to some relative of his father—an uncle maybe.

But like all of Peter’s memories of this place, it felt foggy and jarringly incomplete, as if he’d made it up or seen it on some television show. There was nothing about it that wasn’t utterly mundane, yet it felt profoundly haunted, pregnant with mystery and secrets.

Like the scene of an unsolved murder.

I’ve got to stop reading so many cheap crime novels
, he told himself.

Peter ditched the stolen car on the overlook and ran down to the beach. There was Julia, standing in the water up to her hips, a loaded syringe in her hand.

“Julia!” he called out.

She spun toward him, eyes wide.

“I thought you might follow me,” she said.

“I had to,” he said taking a step closer to the water. “I need to know what the hell is going on. What are you trying to do? You’ve done nothing but lie to me from the minute we met, and now I want some answers, dammit!”

“I understand,” she said softly. “Of course you want answers. About your life. Your childhood. About why you feel so out of place, no matter where you go. We’re alike in many ways, Peter. Outsiders. Strangers. Alone even in a crowded room. The difference is that you chose to run away and keep on running, even though no matter how far you run, you can never get away from your own head.

“Me, I chose to do something about it.”

She leaned in, eyes glittering.

“You want to know who you really are, don’t you?” she asked.

“I know who I am,” Peter said.

“Do you?” she asked.

The question echoed, unanswered across the water. Peter clenched his fists.

Do I?

Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he? There was never any doubt in his mind.

Except there was. A deeply rooted doubt, all tangled up in that strange time when he’d been so sick as a child. When things seemed to get so mixed up in his head, and everyone was acting like nothing was different when everything obviously was.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Peter asked, taking a step closer to the edge of the water.

“Let me
show
you,” Julia replied.

She plunged the syringe into the crook of her arm. His hand jerked forward instinctively, then he stopped. It was too late.

Nothing happened for several seconds. The two of them just stood there in the cool, quiet evening while a single optimistic cricket and the soft lapping of the lake water against the shore provided the only soundtrack.

Then, something strange started to happen. The air behind her started to shimmer and split open like a wound. She turned toward this anomaly and let the syringe slip from her fingers.

“It’s working!” she whispered.

“It’s like what happened at the hotel,” he said, squinting against the curious light. It was growing larger. “What is it?”

“The way home,” she said, turning back to face him and extending her hand. “Come with me.”

He looked down at her hand, and over at the pulsing gateway that seemed so alien, and yet at the same time so familiar. There was a cold coil of nausea beginning to churn in his belly, and he felt as if he was starting to lose his grip on what he thought was real. None of this was possible, yet it was happening before his disbelieving eyes. This, and of all the impossible things he’d witnessed over the past few days, left him feeling profoundly unsure.

He looked back at Julia’s hand. Hadn’t he been searching for answers his entire life? Could he live with himself if he turned away from the understanding he’d been craving all these years?