Харлан Кобен - Run Away

No time to hesitate.

When Simon landed on his feet, he reached around the door for the woman’s wrist. His fingers found skin — some part of the arm maybe — and his hand started to encircle it. He almost had a grip on her, a good grip, but then someone, maybe the man, crashed his body against the other side of the door.

The door smashed into Simon’s face, sending him spiraling.

Simon tumbled onto Rocco’s dead body.

The young woman stepped into the room and aimed the gun at Cornelius, who was trying to get his gun out of his pocket while running for the fire-escape window.

But Cornelius was too late.

He had no chance.

Simon didn’t know if time was slowing down or if the calculations running through his brain had sped up. But he could see the truth now.

There was no way both he and Cornelius could survive.

No way.

Which left Simon with no choice.

From his spot on the ground, he kicked the door, so that it would close on the woman. Almost casually, the woman stopped it with her foot. It had seemed a weak effort on Simon’s part, a poor attempt to stop her entry.

But it had bought Simon time.

Not enough time to stop the carnage.

But enough time for Simon to scramble-jump toward Cornelius.

The move had surprised the woman. She had expected Simon to come at her. But he’d gone the other direction. It wouldn’t save Simon. Just the opposite, in fact. It put him in the path of the gunfire.

His body was all that stood between the woman’s bullets and Cornelius.

She fired anyway.

Simon felt the searing pain as a bullet smacked his lower back on the left.

He didn’t stop.

He felt another hit him in the right shoulder.

Simon flung himself toward Cornelius like a defensive end on a blindside blitz, wrapping his arms around his friend’s waist.

He tackled Cornelius into the window.

Time must have slowed down for Cornelius too. Cornelius didn’t fight his natural instincts. He went with the tackle, letting his body fall back, using the time to pull his gun all the way out.

The two men both fell backward. The window shattered upon impact.

Cornelius had his gun out now. He reached over Simon’s shoulder and fired as they started to fall.

Somewhere in the hail of gunfire, Simon heard a man grunt and a woman scream, “Ash!”

Cornelius and Simon, still entwined, landed hard on the fire-escape grate — Cornelius on his back, Simon, his grip slackening, on top of him.

The impact knocked the gun from Cornelius’s hand. Simon watched the gun plummet toward hard asphalt.

The woman again, her cry pained: “Ash! No!”

Simon’s eyes started to flutter. His mouth filled with something coppery, and he realized that it was blood. He managed then to roll off Cornelius. Simon tried to speak. He wanted to tell Cornelius to run, that the redheaded woman wasn’t hit and that she’d be on them soon.

But the words wouldn’t come out.

He looked at Cornelius. Cornelius shook his head.

He wouldn’t leave.

This whole thing — from Rocco turning the knob to now — took fewer than five seconds.

From inside the room, the woman let loose a primitive, guttural scream.

And now, even in this state, even as he could feel some sort of life force leaving his body, Simon realized that the young woman was coming toward them.

Go , Simon tried to tell Cornelius.

He wouldn’t.

Simon could see the redheaded woman reaching the window. The gun was in her hand.

Again: no choice.

Using whatever strength he had left — and perhaps the element of surprise — Simon pushed Cornelius down the fire-escape steps.

Cornelius started tumbling down them, head feet, head feet, like a somersault.

It might hurt, Simon thought. It might break a few bones.

But it probably wouldn’t kill him.

There was nothing left now. Simon knew that. He could hear the sirens nearing, but they’d be too late. He dropped onto his back and looked up into the young woman’s green eyes. He’d maybe held out a glimmer of hope that there would be some mercy in them, some hesitation, but once he saw them, once his gaze met hers, he knew that whatever last hope he had was gone.

She would kill him. And she would enjoy it.

She leaned her body out the window. She pointed the gun at his head.

And then she was gone.

From behind her, someone had pushed her out the window. Simon heard the scream and then a sick splat as she landed on the asphalt.

Simon looked up and saw another woman — an old woman wearing an odd gray uniform with red stripes — appear. She looked at him with concern, hurried out to the fire escape, and tried to stem the bleeding.

“It’s over,” the woman said to him.

He wanted to ask her who she was, if she knew Paige, anything, but his mouth had too much blood in it. He felt his body weakening and slackening, his eyes rolling back. As the darkness descended, he could still hear the sirens.

“Our children will be safe now.”

And then there was nothing.

One month passed.

Simon’s injuries required three operations, eighteen days in the same hospital as Ingrid, several morphine drips, and two weeks (thus far) of physical therapy. There was pain and damage and perhaps, in an odd reminder of Elena Ramirez, he would walk with a limp or even a cane for the remainder of his days, but his injuries ended up not being life-threatening.

Cornelius came out of it all with a sprained ankle and minor bruises. Rocco and Luther had both been killed by gunfire. Same with a hired hit man named Ashley “Ash” Davis. His partner, a young cult member named Diane “Dee Dee” Lahoy, had landed headfirst, cracking her skull. She had not yet regained consciousness and all indications were that she never would.

Detective Isaac Fagbenle tried to explain it to him, though it was taking some time for various law enforcement authorities to put it all together. There was something about a cult called Truth Haven and secret adoptions and hired hits.

But details were beyond sketchy.

To complicate matters, Casper Vartage, the leader of Truth Haven, had died of natural causes. His two sons claimed complete innocence and had top-notch lawyers protecting them. Maybe, the lawyers claimed, Casper Vartage had done something — that they couldn’t say — but he was dead now and his sons knew nothing.

“We’ll get them,” Fagbenle had told Simon.

But Simon wasn’t so sure. The two killers who could best testify as to what the Vartage sons may have done were both out of commission. The police’s best hope seemed to be the woman who had saved Simon’s life, a woman who identified herself as Mother Adiona. They couldn’t find a real name for her. That was how long she’d been in the cult. And they really couldn’t hold her. She had committed no crime other than maybe saving Simon’s life.

There was other stuff, of course. When Elena Ramirez learned about the illegal adoptions, Ash and Dee Dee, the police concluded, had killed her. There was CCTV of her at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store getting in a car driven by Dee Dee Lahoy. It was believed that she was then taken to an empty cabin and murdered there, but her body had not yet been found. When the killers then looked at the texts on Elena’s mobile phone and saw her communications with Simon, they knew that he had to be silenced too. There was more — how the half brothers, including Aaron Corval, had discovered each other, how they swore to keep their relationship a secret until they found their father, how one named Henry Thorpe discovered his mother too and that she had been a former cult member who ended up confronting and thus tipping off the Vartages.