She was dead; it was all over. She lay on her side, her white shirt covered with blood, her hair floating in it. He felt bile rise in his throat. No, no, he’d done the right thing, the only reasonable thing. She’d betrayed him. Who was she? Some sort of spy, an agent? He didn’t know, and now it didn’t matter. She would burn with Ian.
Matthew turned away from her and methodically poured gasoline all over the apartment, but he didn’t pour any on her. He said her name aloud, one last time, “Vanessa,” and tossed the gasoline can in the corner. He threw a lighted match in the hall beside the stairs, listened to it whoosh as it caught the carpet on fire. He ran down the stairs. He never looked back.
21
BISHOP TO G5
Brooklyn
Vanessa floated.
Had she heard Matthew’s voice? She wasn’t sure, but her brain knew enough to keep her still and silent. There was always danger when you spent half your life undercover, and tonight she’d stepped right in it.
Being awake opened the floodgates and she was suddenly swamped in pain. She smelled her own blood, knew the pain would get worse and worse and she could die.
Matthew had shot her, after he’d shot Ian. Ian had tried to save her, despite the fact that he had to know it was her phone and she wasn’t really one of them. No, she couldn’t think about that now.
There was something else—she smelled smoke. Matthew had set the apartment on fire.
She didn’t want to, but she touched her chest, felt all the hot sticky blood, her blood. It was bad, really bad. She managed to raise her head. She didn’t see any flames, but she heard them in the hallway, whooshing along the threadbare carpet toward the living room. Smoke was creeping in; soon the room would be gray and she wouldn’t be able to breathe.
If you don’t get out of here now you will die. Tie up your chest and go.
Pain ripped through her when she sat up. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to move. She could barely breathe. She figured her lung had collapsed and her chest was filling with blood. The smoke was getting heavier now, the sound of the fire getting closer. She realized it was blocking the hallway to the stairs. No hope for it. She dragged herself to her feet, holding on to a chair for support. She looked down at Ian, then quickly away; there was nothing she could do for him.
She had to get to the hidden access to the roof, the only way out. It was their bolthole, one of the reasons Matthew had chosen this apartment.
The ladder to the roof was inside the closet in the master bedroom. She would make it, she had to, she had no choice. She dragged herself down the hallway, using the wall for support, to the bedroom, then into the small closet, with the ladder at the back.
She imagined she heard her dead father’s voice loud and clear as she climbed that ladder, each step so hard, nearly impossible, but there he was, saying over and over, Be glad of the pain, it means you’re still alive. Now get out of there, Nessa, do you hear me? And it comforted.
His words became a mantra her mind whispered again and again as she began her climb up the ladder in the closet. When she finally crawled out onto the pebbled roof, she collapsed to the ground, coughing. Blood spattered out of her mouth and she sucked in air, but never enough. Smoke was billowing up all around her.
She crawled to the fire escape, her only chance, since the building itself was now burning.
Her father’s voice kept at her, yelling now over the pain, pushing her, pushing her. She crawled to the ledge. The ground looked a mile away, but she knew it was only three stories down. I can’t make it, Dad, I can’t make it.
And again his frantic urging: Don’t you let that crazy bastard win, do you hear me, Nessa? You move, and you move now! Vanessa felt a bolt of fury and swung her legs onto the metal tread of the fire escape.
She heard sirens. She had to get away before they got here. She couldn’t be captured, it wasn’t an option.
She clutched the quickly heating side bars. Down, down, get moving.
Something tore inside her. The pain crashed over her, a tsunami. She felt blood running down her arms. The sweater she’d bound around herself was soaked with her blood. Her father’s voice died in her mind.
She was nearly down when she fainted and fell, boneless, to the hard asphalt.