Jeff Abbott - Collision

“It looks worse if we run.”

“Forget looks. Worry about reality.”

The sirens grew louder. Ben handed him the gun.

They ran down the stairwell to the top floor. “Vochek,” Ben said. “There’s a woman with Kidwell…”

“I knocked her out and locked her in a closet. She should be safe. I don’t think they found her.” They paused at the room where Kidwell lay. Nothing to be done-the gunmen had shot him once in the head. The granite face was still.

“Let Vochek out.”

“The cops will. She’ll be okay.” He grabbed Ben’s arm and hurried him down the hallway.

They ran down the stairwell to the first floor.

The hallway was empty, except for the guard Pilgrim had knocked out. The man lay dead, two bullets marring the skin behind his ear. Another guard lay dead by the closed back door, open-eyed, two bullets in his face.

“Jesus and Mary,” Ben said.

“The gunmen came in to kill everybody,” Pilgrim said. He turned Ben to face him. “Listen. This Jackie may be waiting outside, to kill anyone trying to get out. You stay low, you follow me, and if I get shot you keep running.”

Ben nodded. “What if I get shot?”

“Then I keep running,” Pilgrim said.

On the other side of the building, sirens blasted their arrival. Pilgrim and Ben ran for the chain-link fence and went through the gate.

And no sign of a van where Teach would be. But there was practically no street parking, and the closest parking was the garage where Pilgrim had stashed the Volvo.

“Come on.” He grabbed Ben’s arm and they ran down Second Street, toward the parking garage. A couple of blocks away, the gunman said. Maybe he lied. Maybe he didn’t. Pilgrim’s eyes scanned the garage’s levels-if Jackie Lynch was parked there, he’d be waiting for the trio of gunmen. He’d know what Pilgrim looked like. Jackie Lynch could be watching him and Ben right now, seeing them approach, knowing that their survival meant the gunmen’s failure.

“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.

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.