He tried to head butt her nose. She slipped it and went for the gun again with her free hand, but he pulled it away.
She called out to Rook, but he couldn’t hear her over his grinding.
Nikki leaped back to her feet. Keeping her joint lock on his wrist, she yanked his arm to full extension and smacked it, trying to break the elbow. But Petar jerked his arm back defensively, just enough for her blow to hit his forearm instead. She didn’t disable the joint, but the punch did loosen his hold on the Glock. It dropped to the floor.
Heat dove for it, but the gun landed just beyond her reach, skimming across the deck. Scrambling to snatch it, she reached the edge of the platform just as the pistol tumbled over the side onto the tracks below.
She almost went over after it. But bright light grew in the tunnel. The train raced toward her, seconds away.
Heat shouted for Rook again.
The sparks continued to fall.
Petar got to his feet. He reached for her Sig Sauer in his waistband.
Nikki scoped the platform in the light from the train. No cover for her.
The Sig came out.
The train broke the mouth of the station.
Petar brought it up to aim.
Heat made a choice.
She dove over the side.
Nikki stretched herself out lengthwise and hunkered as flat as she could in the grimy ditch between the rails. In the two seconds before the lead car got to her, she flashed on news stories she’d seen on subway commuters who had fallen on the tracks and survived that way. And those who hadn’t; it all depended on the terrain.
Heat had never been in a tornado, but that’s what it felt like to her. A ten-car cyclone of howling wind and screaming steel. The ground quaked, her body shuddered. She screamed a scream that nobody heard.
On the hike to get there, Nikki had cursed the deep depression in the railroad bed. It had created an obstacle course, making her climb up and over the crossties. Now she hoped that trenching would save her life. She pressed her face hard against the soil and emptied her lungs to make her torso smaller. The tiny breath she dared take made her mouth taste of stagnant water and rust.
Unable to count the cars, they seemed to go on forever. Hundreds more than ten. Which car, she worried, would be the one with the protruding bolt that would carve her open? Or have the dangling loop of chain to snag her and decapitate her?
Then, sudden silence. Except for the grinding of Rook’s power tool, above.
Nikki didn’t wait. She rolled under the edge of the platform and looked for the Glock in the dim spill from Petar’s Maglite. She swept the area but couldn’t see the gun. Only more plastic soda bottles and old spray cans left by taggers.
The flashlight beam hit the tracks. He was searching for her body.
Heat didn’t call to Rook again. She scrunched herself further underneath the lip of the platform and waited quietly. The concrete felt cold on her back where her flesh touched it. The bottom of one of the cars must have sliced her coat and blouse.
The light grew more intense directly in front of her. That put Petar right over her head. “Nikki?” he said tentatively. She had never hated the sound of her name so much as in his mouth just then. Heat readied herself. Made sure of her footing. Waited for his next “Nikki,” and then sprung.
She popped up and twisted to square herself with Petar where he knelt, peering over the edge of the platform, and sprayed his eyes with aerosol paint. He screamed and put his hand to his face, dropping his flashlight but not the Sig. Nikki tossed the spray can and reached up for him with both hands. Clawing him by the shirtfront, she hauled him over the side, letting go of him midair. He landed shoulder-first on the railroad bed and screamed again.