Greg Rucka - Critical Space

There was no noise from her end of the phone.

"Couldn't do anything," I said.

"Wh…" and her voice snagged, thick, and she had to clear it. "Where are you?"

"Hoboken. The PATH station."

"Is there a building around, anywhere you can go and sit down?"

"There's a bar," I said. "The Rail Side Bar."

"Go inside. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"You've got to call them, Nat. Dale and Corry…"

"I'll call them from the car. Go inside. I'll be right there."

She hung up and I listened to the dial tone before replacing the handset in its cradle. It was still raining. I looked around and realized that I was only a ten-minute walk from where I'd found Lady Ainsley-Hunter, from where Alena had found me. Construction had begun on what was to be Hoboken's shining new hope, the great towers of Trump and Lefrak. I wondered if there was an irony in that, that I would be here again, and I thought about what had brought me back to New Jersey.

The bar was almost entirely empty, and my watch explained that was because it wasn't yet noon. There was an empty booth near the back and I put myself in it, pressing my back to the corner of the wall, watching the door. A tired woman who had painted her face to look otherwise asked me what I wanted to drink. I told her ginger ale.

"You sure?" she asked, peering at me. "Nothing stronger?"

"Just ginger ale," I said, and from a pocket I pulled some of my remaining bills and had to look at them in my hand before deciding how much to give her. In the end I handed over a twenty and told her to keep the change. She brought me the ginger ale and left me alone.

I looked at the bubbles climbing along the inside of the glass and thought about what I needed to do next. When the last of the soda was gone and the ice cubes were rattling at the bottom, I knew I'd already decided I would kill him.

More people came into the place, men dressed for construction work, and they bought bottles of beer at the bar and settled onto stools and glanced my way. The woman came back and silently replaced my empty glass with a full one.

By the time Natalie arrived my stomach had settled, and after she'd located me she stopped at the bar and bought herself a soda, then came to my booth. The construction workers who had noticed only her body and not her face stopped staring when they realized she was coming to join me, and went back to their third or fourth beers. I wondered if they would be operating any heavy machinery after lunch.

Her eyes looked puffy, the skin beneath them a little darker than usual, as if bruised, and perhaps she had cried already, or perhaps she was waiting for a better time. In a soft voice she told me to scoot over, and I let her in beside me, and after she'd sat she put her head to my shoulder, and for almost a minute neither of us moved.

Then she sighed and lifted her head and said, "I called them. They're on their way here."

"They shouldn't be. They should be heading to their homes and then the hills."

She shook her head. "He went to the office."

My stomach lurched. I couldn't speak.

Natalie read my mind. "They're okay, they didn't even see him, Dale just told me that some guy with a bandage over one eye came in and gave the receptionist a sealed box with a note on it, saying the box was for you. Then the guy left. That was all."

"They checked the box?"

"It's not transmitting anything and the chemical sniffer didn't detect any explosive, and when they used the portable X ray on it, Corry thought it looked like a cellular phone."

"Did they read the note?"

"It said that he would call at nine tonight. It said that if you didn't answer, more people would die."

The construction workers left, and were replaced by a few businessmen and women who had apparently all opted for a liquid lunch, and they were more gregarious than their predecessors, and soon they were laughing over their drinks. One of them, a guy perhaps my age with the body of a slipping jock, was especially loud, and I thought about climbing over the table and beating his face in just to make him go quiet.

Natalie didn't seem to like it, either, and after a few minutes of his prattling, began muttering about assholes and how everyone had them.

Dale came through the door first a little past one, Corry right behind him. Their expressions were stressed and grieving and worried. Corry slid me the box and the note without a word as the painted woman returned to the table.

"If this is a drug deal, you all have to order something," she said. It was meant as a joke, but it lay on the table much like the box itself, and when she saw our looks she added, "Not that you're dealing drugs or anything."

I ordered another ginger ale, and Natalie ordered another Diet Coke. Dale and Corry asked for mineral water. We waited in silence for the drinks to come, and after they had and the woman was gone, I read the note and it said exactly what Natalie had told me it did. Then I opened the box. The phone was small and cheap, no frills, lime green. I didn't turn it on, just put it in a pocket.

"It was on the news on the way over," Dale said. "FBI agent stabbed to death in Madison Square Park."

"Everyone's looking for the guy who did it," Corry said. "There's a description circulating for a possible suspect. It matches you."

That wasn't surprising, but it made the guilt come back as strong as ever, and the looks from Dale and Corry weren't helping.

"Get out of town," I told them quietly. "Get Ethan, get Esme, get the baby, and get out of town, and wherever you go, go there together. You'll be able to watch out for one another if you stay together. Natalie or I will let you know when it's safe."

"How?" Dale said.

Natalie said, "You closed the office up?"

"Of course," Corry said.

"I'll change the message on the answering service. When it says we're open, you'll know it's okay to come back."

"You have any idea how long that'll be?" He didn't ask her: he was looking at me.

"Just tonight," I said.

"That's all?" It was clear in his voice he didn't believe me.

"One way or another, it'll be over tonight. He left you guys the phone for only one reason, because he wants to communicate with me. When he calls, I'll offer him what he wants."

"You'll hand her over?"

"Do you really think this is still about her?" I asked.

"I don't know what the flick any of this is about, Atticus," Corry said, and he got up from the table and waited for Dale to join him, no longer willing to look at me, focusing on the door to the bar.

Dale slid out along the bench, unfolding himself and rising to his feet. He left the bar without another word, Corry following after him.

The businessman who had once been a jock finished telling a joke where the key words seemed to be "Polack," "Jew," and "corn-bread."

"Let's get out of here before I kill him," I told Natalie.

We headed out of the bar, and Natalie stayed close to my side as we left, putting herself between me and the man I'd threatened, and it wasn't until we were outside and at her Audi that I understood she'd been afraid I was serious.

I didn't know how I felt about that.

It was almost four when we returned to the house in Allendale. Natalie had taken a roundabout route through several of the small townships that peppered 17 North, and we'd doubled back twice, just to make sure we were clear. There was no one tailing us that we could see, and I doubted that there was anyone tailing us that we couldn't. Oxford had a more efficient means of finding me; for now, I knew, he was content to wait.

Once during the drive, Natalie switched the radio on to one of the all-news AM stations out of New York, and it hadn't been three minutes before the report of the murdered federal agent came on the air. They weren't releasing Scott's name until his family could be notified, and the search was continuing for the man whom bystanders had seen kneeling over the dead man's body. More information was promised on the hour. When the report was over, Natalie switched the radio off, and we listened to the sound of the wipers clearing rain from the windshield for a couple of miles.