I waddled myself backward, with the chair attached, so that I was back to back with Thomas. I set the chair down gently, careful not to make any scraping sounds, although it’s unlikely the others would have heard anything with the kind of heated discussion they were having. The curtain had fallen back into place, and they’d have to actually come back in here to see us.
I placed my chair close enough so that my fingers could reach the tape securing Thomas’s wrists to his chair.
“We’re getting out of here,” I said, struggling to get fingers from both my hands onto the tape so I could tear it. There were several layers, and it was going to be tough to rip through them with only the tips of my fingers. If I could just start a small tear…
“Hurry,” Thomas whispered.
“Just hang on.”
“Ray, you should have told me you had me working for a mobster person.”
“It was all bullshit,” I whispered, manipulating the tape with my fingers. “I made it up to buy us some time.”
“Oh,” he said. “That was very smart.”
“—Christ’s sake, no, you wouldn’t dare!” Morris shouted, the first distinct sentence fragment I’d heard since they’d left the room.
I could feel the rip I’d started growing. “It feels looser,” Thomas said.
“When you’re free, you untie me, and we’re out of here.”
“Okay,” he said. “Ray, I don’t even know where we are.”
“Soon as we hit the street I’m sure you’ll know.”
I tore the tape another half an inch, felt it come apart.
“That’s it,” Thomas said. “I can get my wrists free, but there’s still tape around me.”
“Just get out of it as fast as you can.”
I could hear Thomas struggling with the tape. I twisted around, saw him trying to shake off bits of tape from his wrist; then he attacked the strips around his waist.
“Almost done,” I said.
The men weren’t arguing quite as loudly, but they were still talking.
“Faster,” I whispered.
“Okay, okay,” Thomas said, and he stood up from the chair, liberated from it. “Now you.”
Lewis said, clear as a bell: “I’ll go check on them.”
“Go,” I whispered.
“It’ll only take a second,” my brother said, starting to pick at the tape around my wrists.
Lewis’s footsteps were approaching.
“There’s not time!” I whispered urgently. “Go! Run! Get help!”
I could sense Thomas’s panic. He didn’t want to leave me.
“But—”
“Get the fuck out of here!”
So he did. He headed into the short hallway off the side of the room that led to an outside door. He ran, pushed open the door, and was gone.
“Yeah, yeah,” Lewis said, stopping midway to the back room. “Don’t worry.”
Just before he came through the curtain, I glanced down at Nicole and wondered, Why isn’t there any blood under her?
SIXTY-FIVE
THOMAS burst into the narrow alley, the white van right there in front of him, filling the space between buildings. He had to blink a couple of times until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, then looked in both directions, figuring out instantly which was the way to the street. He ran for it.
He came out of the alley, turned right for no other reason than that was what his instinct told him to do, and kept on running, past a bike shop, a tailor’s, other businesses. But he wasn’t paying much attention to them. All he could think was that he had to get away, he had to get away as fast as he could, and he had to get help.
Ordinarily, he would have known instantly where he was, but there were two things working against him. First, he was in a state of panic. And second, it was night. Whirl360’s images of the world were all taken during the day.
The first couple of blocks he was running almost flat out, but for someone who’d spent years and years sitting in his bedroom at the computer without ever going outside for exercise, it was pretty impossible to keep up the pace.
So Thomas eased back from a gallop to a brisk walk. He made a number of random turns along the way. A left turn at this cross street. A right turn at the next.
Get away get away get away.
He reached a point where he had to stop. He leaned over, put his palms on his knees, and caught his breath. He was wheezing and his chest hurt.
He straightened up, wandered around in a couple of wind-down circles, and then, once he had his wind back, looked around. Even though it was dark, there were enough streetlights to focus in on things, see storefronts, read street signs.
On one corner, Stromboli Pizza, with some words written on the wall: “This moment is more precious than you think.” Next to it, some place offering vegetarian food. Across the street, a shoe store with all kinds of different sneakers in the window.
Without looking up at the street signs, Thomas said, “St. Marks Place and First Avenue.”
Then he allowed himself to look at the sign, saw that he was right.
“I know where I am,” he said aloud. “I know where this is.”
A short man with shoulder-length hair was strolling past at the time and said, “Good for you.”
Thomas, too mesmerized by his surroundings, took no notice of the man.
“This is New York,” Thomas said. “This is Manhattan. I know where I am.”
He walked over to the pizza restaurant, went right up to the glass, and touched it with the tips of his fingers.