Linda Fairstein - Bad blood

Mike clutched my shoulder again, trying hopelessly to pull himself out from under the grip of the tie. His fingers dug deep into me before he gave up and let go.

“Run, Coop!” Mike yelled at me. “Dammit, girl, run!”

I tugged and tugged, but the heel of his shoe had become stuck between the steel and a rotting piece of wood covered by gravel. I wasn’t going anywhere without both men. The sweat was streaming out of my pores as I realized there was every likelihood we’d be crushed to death under the wheels of the subway cars that were racing to bring us to safety.

“Take her, Mercer, will you, for Christ’s sake?”

“Make the damn thing stop,” I shouted.

Mercer’s ebony skin looked as dark as the rest of the station’s interior. He picked up the flashlight that had dropped to the ground next to Mike and stood in the middle of the tracks-all that separated Mike and me from the oncoming train-swinging the small beam around and around in a circle until the driver jerked his powerful machine to a sudden halt, inches from where we were huddled together.

“What the-?” a young detective asked as he stepped off the front subway car, his shield displayed in his pocket. He was carrying a large brown paper bag in his left hand, his gun in his right. “You guys lost your minds?”

“Mercer Wallace. Special Victims. My partner’s got his foot stuck in the track.”

“Chapman? That you? You oughta lay off the fancy legwork. You caught your perp?”

“No. Not yet,” Mercer said.

“There’s more ways out of here than Osama bin Laden has caves,” Mike called out. “Quillian may even know about most of them ’cause he came here as a kid with his old man. Can you get me an EMT? I think I’ve got a fracture.”

I hoisted myself up onto the platform. “I’m Alex Cooper. Did the lieutenant send this bag for me?”

“Yeah,” the detective said, handing it over, and taking a matchbook from his pocket. “And these. I’ll radio for a bus. We got to make it snappy. The trains will be stacking up behind us. They’ll be really restless to get going.”

“Make it snappy?” Mike said. “The train gets any closer to me my foot’s gonna break in two. I’m not looking for a Phinneas Baylor saw-off-your-ankle-yourself solution.”

The detective pulled a walkie-talkie from his pants pocket and stepped back into the subway car, directing the driver to reverse direction by thirty feet-perhaps relieving the pressure on the tracks-while he radioed for a team of paramedics.

I turned to Mercer, who was kneeling beside Mike, using his penknife to jab at the wood. I leaned over, intent on removing the shoe from Mike’s foot to ease his obvious pain.

“Nobody move.”

I was startled by the sound of Brendan Quillian’s voice. He had inched along the darkened tunnel wall and was no more than twenty feet from us, his gun pointed directly at Mike’s chest. He was shielded by one of the arches that formed beneath the vaulted ceiling.

“You, Miss Cooper. Take each of their guns and bring them over here to me.”

“Don’t move, Coop,” Mike said, grabbing my wrist with his hand. “He doesn’t have enough cartridges to shoot all of us.”

“Stay on your knees, Wallace. Tell her to bring me your guns.”

Mike’s fingers were pressing into my wrist. I looked to Mercer for his reaction and got nothing but a stone-faced stare. His gun was back in his waistband, where he had placed it to work on Mike’s foot. He shifted his large body to try to block me from Quillian’s line of fire.

The subway car with the young detective was just out of sight around the curve behind us. He couldn’t see what was happening.

“We’d be dead already if he had three rounds left,” Mike said to Mercer and me, loud enough for Quillian to hear. “Think about it. He wouldn’t be talking to us.”

Maybe that was true, or maybe he was being cautious until he got close enough to use his ammunition well.

“I just want to get out of here,” Quillian said.

“So did O’Malley,” Mike said. He was wincing in pain, ready to counter any excuses Quillian threw at him.

“I don’t want to kill the three of you, but you know I’m capable of doing it.”

“You killed your own child, you sick bastard. I know there’s nothing to stop you from shooting us if you had the lead,” Mike said. “If that fucking evil eye could see us at this range, maybe you would.”

Mike was throwing it all at Brendan, while I couldn’t help but think of the irony of his killing the baby he’d conceived with Bex, then never being able to father kids with Amanda.

“How about Teddy O’Malley, Brendan? Did he double-cross you?”

Quillian didn’t answer.

“He brought something to you in here that you needed, didn’t he? Food, for one thing? And I bet it was money. I bet he went to your sister’s house to get cash for your unexpected trip out of town.”

I was trying to figure which direction Quillian wanted to go to make his escape. If he could find the outlet to the street that he was looking for, maybe he’d let us be.

Now footsteps echoed on the platform behind us. The young detective sauntered forward, walkie-talkie in hand, no way of knowing that we’d been joined by Brendan Quillian.

“The bus is coming, Chapman,” he called out.

“You!” Quillian shouted from the darkened tracks. “Drop your gun and your radio right there. Get down on your knees. Bend over and put your hands on top of your head if you don’t want to see these three get blown up.”

“Don’t listen to the bastard,” Mike called out, but the young cop knew he had walked into a trap he couldn’t make sense of, so his equipment clattered to the platform as he followed the killer’s orders.

“Duke did all your dirty work, didn’t he?” Mike said. “Ever since you were a kid.”

“Let me see you lay your guns down and I’ll be out of here before there’s any more blood, okay?”

Brendan knew as well as we did that he had only minutes before the EMTs-and perhaps Peterson’s backup forces-would be in the tube.

Mike was shouting now, calling Brendan a baby killer, the noise reverberating in the tunnel. If Quillian dared to come out from behind the archway, both Mercer and Mike were capable of picking him off.

“That’s a lie! I didn’t know Duke was going to kill Bex. That was his idea-that was his plan to let me start a new life. He took it on his own to do that when I left the country. I didn’t talk to him after that-not for years. I turned my back on the whole damn bunch of them ’cause of what he did.”

“Till you needed Duke to kill your wife,” Mike said.

I looked up in Quillian’s direction. He seemed to be slithering along the wall toward our position, moving to conceal himself behind another arch, one step closer to the long-forgotten mail tunnel Mike had described that branched off at the south end of the platform. Perhaps Brendan had been looking for that since he’d run off after shooting O’Malley.

I knew Mercer would want to take a shot at him if he got within better range, but that he feared drawing fire because I was so close.

I opened the paper bag that Peterson had gotten me from Chinatown and pulled out one of Uncle Charlie’s devices. Mercer looked back and tried to push my hand away from it.

“Quillian’s only got one eye. Don’t stop me. He can’t see well enough to shoot unless he gets right on top of us,” I said. “And I know you’re not going to let that happen.”

My hand was shaking as I placed several of the Chinese firecrackers on the ground beside us.

“Keep talking to him, Mike,” Mercer said.

“I bet you paid Duke to kill Amanda. When you were ready to bail out of your marriage, but wanted to keep the Keating money, that’s when you realized you needed your brother again. Mailed him money-in the envelope Trish showed us today.”