The Temporary Agent (29 page)

Their eyes met, and there was a moment of cognition.

Cahill paused for a second more, then squeezed the trigger.

His expression did not change.

Not during the execution, nor after it.

The echo of his single shot was still ringing when Tom heard the high-pitched shriek of screeching tires.

It was the sedan in which he had arrived, rushing up from the floor below.

Cresting the ramp, it turned sharply, was coming up behind them fast, its engine gunning.

Savelle was visible behind the wheel.

Cahill was still staring at Kadyrov, seemingly unaware of the vehicle bearing down on them.

Tom grabbed him and pulled him out of the way just in time.

The sedan sped past them, heading for the ramp.

It was now Tom who took off in blind pursuit, sprinting after the vehicle.

He heard Cahill call his name but ignored it, just kept running.

While making the turn onto the ramp, the vehicle slid sideways, colliding with the wall and slowing, though only briefly.

Savelle gunned the engine again and the sedan sped upward.

Tom reached the bottom of the ramp several seconds later and looked up to see the sedan skidding to stop to avoid colliding with an SUV parked near the top of the ramp.

Three of its four doors were open, and Tom knew it belonged to the dead men on the floor below.

Men who had clearly arrived in haste.

Savelle steered around the vehicle, scraping its bumper, then exited the garage.

Tom ran after it with everything he had.

He reached the SUV and was climbing in behind the wheel when he spotted two men facedown on the pavement.

Two men wearing attendant’s uniforms.

The men who had replaced Raveis’s men, who Savelle had tasked with warning her of Cahill’s arrival.

Caught off guard by the former Recon Marine, they were now among the dead.

The many dead.

But Tom couldn’t care about that.

About the bodies here and the fallout that was sure to come.

How could he possibly get away with what he’d done?

With his part in all this?

His fingerprints and DNA were now all over the Colt.

And while Raveis had control over the security system inside the garage, the city was a net of public and private surveillance cameras.

Street cameras, shop cameras. Every inch of Tom’s movement from the moment he exited this structure would be recorded.

It wasn’t a matter, though, of getting away.

It was a matter of stopping Savelle, no matter what it took.

Tom caught a break—the keys were in the SUV’s ignition. Starting the engine, he shifted into gear and gripped the wheel with both hands as he pressed the accelerator to the floor.

The motion of the vehicle lunging forward swung the doors back.

They slammed shut as Tom exited the parking garage and turned onto Seventy-Second Street, racing after Savelle.

Fifty-Eight

The southbound traffic on the FDR was heavy but moving.

Savelle’s sedan was three car lengths ahead, weaving in and out of lanes as she passed slower vehicles.

Her sedan was more maneuverable than the SUV, but Tom had horsepower on his side.

And weight.

His vehicle itself was a weapon.

If need be, he’d drive Savelle—and himself—into a wall.

But the speeds he was traveling required two hands on the wheel, so Tom opened the console between the two front seats and placed the Colt 1911 inside.

It was then that he saw a cell phone.

Grabbing it, he closed the console lid and, holding the phone with one hand, entered Stella’s current number with his thumb.

There was no time to talk to her, so he typed out a single word, one that he could write quickly and that Hammerton, if not Stella, would understand.

Displace.

Hitting “Send,” he looked up in time to see that he was about to ram a slow-moving vehicle in front of him.

Cutting the wheel sharply to the right, he swerved to avoid it, barely missing sideswiping the vehicle in the next lane.

Recovering, he spotted the sedan, now even farther ahead.

Still, he held on to the phone, driving one-handed as he waited for a reply.

Finally, a message came through.

One word, but it was enough.

Affirm.

Tossing the phone onto the seat, Tom gripped the wheel with his right hand and flattened the accelerator.

The sedan continued to change lanes, maintaining its lead.

It was all Tom could do to keep from losing even more ground.

They passed several exits before traffic thinned slightly and the sedan entered a relatively empty patch of highway.

Savelle gunned it, pulling ahead even more.

When Tom reached the empty stretch, he gunned it as well. The gap between the two vehicles instantly began to close.

Tom could feel that the SUV was on the verge of flying out of control, but he kept the accelerator to the floor.

He was less than a car length behind the sedan when it entered yet another cluster of heavy traffic and began cutting in and out of lanes.

Tom was forced to slow, and immediately the gap began to widen again.

Two car lengths, three, then four.

Tom knew he had to be more aggressive and started pushing the SUV even more, clipping first one car, then another as he maneuvered up the pack.

Glimpsing ahead, he saw another open patch, waited for it as they rushed to reach it.

The sedan cleared the pack first and shot forward.

As much as Tom couldn’t stand holding back, he knew he had to wait or risk colliding with other cars, putting innocent people at risk.

Fortunately for him, the driver of the vehicle in front of him sensed trouble and veered onto the narrow shoulder.

Tom barreled through the now-open lane, once again closing on the sedan fast.

It swerved from the right lane into the far left, and Tom followed it.

The front bumper of the SUV was yards from the rear of the sedan.

Then feet.

Then inches.

Tom didn’t have to ram it, just tap it right, to cause the sedan to fishtail into a spin.

But before he could close the remaining inches, the sedan cut to the right suddenly, crossing lanes as it headed toward an exit ramp at the last possible second.

Tom did the same, but the SUV was too cumbersome and threatened to roll.

He maintained his reckless course, though, holding steady, the SUV turning into a sideways slide.

He watched through the windshield as Savelle’s sedan made the exit ramp, only to slam sideways into the concrete barrier.

But this barely interrupted the vehicle’s forward momentum.

His SUV was in a clockwise spin, so that was all he could see of the exit and the sedan before he was facing north—and an oncoming wall of speeding headlights.

The spin continued. He briefly faced the East River at the edge of the highway.

And then the SUV completed its roughly 360-degree ride and collided sideways with the water-filled plastic safety barrels just past the exit.

The barrels exploded upon impact as designed, sending columns of water up into the air.

Tom made a quick check of the rearview mirror, saw the oncoming traffic but didn’t care, shifted into reverse anyway, and backed up till he could make the turn onto the exit.

He was halfway down the ramp when Savelle’s sedan reached the bottom.

The intersection was blocked by stalled traffic, causing the sedan to stop.

Savelle couldn’t turn right or left or even go straight.

Tom saw his chance to overtake her once and for all.

End this in whatever way he had to.

He grabbed the seat belt with one hand, pulled it across his chest and latched it, then punched the accelerator, the engine roaring as he set the SUV on a collision course.

Traffic in the intersection began to move slightly, opening a hole for Savelle.

She steered the sedan into it, forcing the vehicles to her right to stop.

A second lane of cars beyond the first also began to move, but even more slowly.

Savelle was creeping into that lane as well, cutting those vehicles off, wedging her way through.

She would be on her way again once she cleared this obstacle, was moving around a driver who had no intention of letting her cut him off when she ran out of time.

Tom saw that the speedometer was reaching sixty when the SUV collided with the sedan, instantly crumpling the tail end as it drove the lighter vehicle through the intersection and onto the wide cross street.

Savelle attempted to steer out of the crash, but her efforts only served to send the sedan into a sideways slide.

The SUV was well out of Tom’s control now, and it rammed the sedan’s passenger side, tipping the vehicle into a violent roll.

Its forward momentum continuing, the SUV itself veered sharply to the right, turned sideways, and was about to begin its own roll when it crossed onto the sidewalk and collided with a lamppost.

Tom felt the impact, heard glass shattering, metal twisting, and automotive plastic splitting.

Then he felt and heard nothing, saw only blackness.

When he regained some of his senses, the first thing he noticed was blood on the left side of his jacket.

It was shortly after that that he became aware of the deafening ringing in his ears.

This was all he was aware of for a time.

Orienting himself, he looked out his window and saw the battered sedan resting on its roof.

He realized that he must not have been unconscious for too long because the sedan’s tires were still spinning, a haze of dust only beginning to rise.

There was no knowing how badly he was injured, but there was also no knowing how long he would hold on to consciousness, so he decided to move while he could.

Opening the center console, he grabbed his 1911 with his right hand and the door handle with his left.

But the driver’s side had struck the lamppost, and the vehicle had folded around it, bent at close to a fifteen-degree angle.

The brunt of the collision had been taken by the rear door, but the damage was enough that the driver’s door wouldn’t open. Tom would have to exit through the window, which he only now realized had no glass, or cross to the passenger side.

As he pulled himself across the seat, bits of glass covering him poured off his clothing.

He felt pain, but wasn’t sure from where, so he ignored it.

He could move, and that was all that mattered now.

Making it out through the passenger door, he walked around the back of the SUV and started toward the overturned sedan.

He could still hear only a deep, metallic ringing, and his view of the world titled sharply to the left as he walked, then corrected itself, only to tilt to the left again.

He stumbled forward like this, the weapon in a hand that was numb.

Reaching the sedan’s passenger side, Tom clicked off the safety and knelt down.

His balance shifted—it was almost as if his head was suddenly filled with gallons of water—and he nearly fell but caught himself with his left hand.

When he was ready, or ready enough, Tom bent forward till he was able to look into the vehicle’s compartment.

Savelle was suspended upside down in the driver’s seat, but it wasn’t the safety belt that was holding her there.

The steering column had bent upward, the broken wheel piercing her midsection.

Her silk blouse was soaked with blood.

Blood also dripped from a deep gash in her head.

But Savelle was still conscious, and though she couldn’t move her head, her eyes found Tom.

She whispered something, but he couldn’t hear it.

By the way her jaw barely moved, he knew it was broken.

Savelle whispered again, and this time Tom heard it over the ringing.

“Kill me,” she said.

Her eyes went to the pistol in his hand.

“Did you make the call?” Tom said.

She didn’t respond.

“Did you make the call?”

“Please just kill me.”

Tom thumbed the safety upward and tucked the pistol into his waistband at the small of his back.

“I’ll get you out of there. Hang on.”

Savelle flashed with anger.
“No!”

Her voice was a scream, not a whisper.

Tom tried to calm her. “You’re going to be okay,” he insisted. “I’ll get you to the hospital.”

Her anger was gone as fast as it came. Tears filled her eyes.

“No.” Her voice was barely a hush. “No more hospitals. No more doctors. Just kill me. Now. Please.”

“Just hang on, Savelle.”

She stared at him.

Her eyes were pleading.

Tom couldn’t look away.

“Please, Tom,” she whispered. “Please.”

Her eyelids fluttered, then closed.

It took only a few seconds for her face to completely drain of all indications of life. All Tom could do was watch her die.

To his surprise, he felt a wave of grief.

After a moment, he sat down on the cold pavement.

Numbness washed over him.

He let it, felt no desire to move, felt nothing, thought nothing.

It was, however, a false peace.

His still-addled mind went to Stella, that he had to get her, had to get Hammerton, too. Despite his warning, they were likely still in danger.

Pushing himself up to his feet, he looked for the nearest street sign to tell him where he was.

And how far he had to go.

He was able to work out that if the highway behind him ran down the east side of Manhattan, then what was in front of him had to be west.

He started walking in that direction but only made it a few steps past the sedan before his legs gave out and he tumbled to the pavement.

As he lay there, the ringing in his ears was joined by the sound of sirens wailing in the distance.

He needed to get up again, so he placed both hands on the pavement and pushed till he was on his hands and knees.

From there he got up onto one foot, had to pause there, noticed as he did that the smartphone he had secured beneath the laces of his work boot had been smashed in the crash.

Its display screen was shattered, but it was not dead.

Still active, still recording.

Rising to his feet once more, Tom lumbered in the direction he believed—hoped—was west.

He really couldn’t be sure now.

The dual notes singing in his ears were growing louder.

The cacophony became a frantic shriek that somehow served to drive him forward.

He was, at best, stumbling, but soon enough he found a rhythm that wasn’t too awkward.

And not long after that he was running.

Or close enough to it.

He had barely covered a quarter of the block, though, when a vehicle pulled up beside him.

It was a ten-year-old black Mustang, matching his slow pace.

The passenger door swung open, the man behind the wheel calling to Tom by name, waving for him to get in.

It took a moment before Tom even realized that it was Cahill.

He was shouting now, leaning across the passenger seat, still waving.

Tom as much read the man’s lips as heard his words.

Stella’s safe
, he said.
Hammerton, too. Carrington is getting them out of the city now
.

Tom understood the words, even nodded to indicate that he did, but for some reason he continued his slow running.

Eventually, though, after a half-dozen steps, he came to a stop.

And so did the Mustang.

For a second, Tom didn’t know what to do.

He stared dumbly at Cahill, who was looking at his left arm.

“Tom, your arm is broken.”

Tom continued to stare at him.

Cahill said, “Can you hear me, Tom? Your arm is broken.”

Looking down, Tom saw a sharp jigsaw bend just below his elbow joint.

“C’mon, Tom. Get in the car.”

Cahill glanced quickly in the rearview mirror.

Tom turned his head and saw what had caught Cahill’s eye. Flashing lights were approaching the crash scene. The police were almost there.

“C’mon, Tom,” Cahill said. “We have to get to the extraction point. Now.”

It took another second, but finally Tom climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed.

He felt gravity tug at his core as the Mustang took off down the street.

The speed further overwhelmed his limited senses, but he was determined to hang on to consciousness, or what passed for it.

Cahill raced westward, heading across town, weaving around vehicles to catch green lights and pausing at red lights only to jump them when he could.

It wasn’t long before they reached their destination.

The commercial heliport at West Thirtieth Street, on the edge of the Hudson River.

Cahill led Tom toward a waiting black EC-135, its rotors spinning.

Once on board, Cahill pulled the door closed and took the seat directly across from Tom.

They were facing each other as the copter lifted off, carrying them up and out over the river.