“Give yourself up,” I said again, but now the pain in my side had come back, more intense than ever, the rush of adrenaline that had got me through my encounter in the bedroom beginning to ebb. I could feel trickling wetness against my skin.
But Cole said nothing, he just shook his head, swiping away the tears with one arm, and headed for the stairs. I followed, pressing my hand against my ribs to try to quell the throbbing.
“Cole, don’t do this.”
“Who the fuck’s going to stop me?” he said, and beneath the sob in his voice there was something close to a choking laugh. “You? You’re practically crawling, Jack. Look at yourself—you should be in hospital, not destroying yourself for a man who’s already dead.”
“Don’t do this,” I said again, but he was halfway down the first flight, and I could only follow much more slowly, holding on to the banister.
“Leave me alone,” he shouted back up over his shoulder. “Leave me alone.”
“What are you going to tell Noemie?” I called, but I was panting now, my breaths coming sharp and shallow, and I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me. He was two flights down. I suppressed a groan and made my legs move faster. “Are you just going to abandon her?”
“Fuck you,” he sobbed back.
Three flights down now, and I had barely made it round the fourth-floor landing. Was he really getting away? That wad of notes wouldn’t last him very long, but the three passports spoke of someone with a plan in place—a plan that probably involved a fat crypto wallet and a bolthole somewhere without extradition to the UK—and much as I’d talked the talk about his bosses hunting him down, in truth, if he kept below the radar and didn’t shoot his mouth off, I wasn’t certain they’d waste their energy.
Malik, I found myself thinking, Malik, dear God, please be the cop I think you are…
And then, as I rounded the corner of the next flight, I heard them: sirens.
Cole was at the ground floor; I heard the screech of the fire door into the lobby, and then the clang as it slammed shut.
Every breath felt like a knife in my side, and when I looked back, I saw I was leaving a trail of blood up the stairs, little drops the size of pennies on every step, more where I had paused to try to gather my strength for the next flight.
What if I didn’t make it?
“Cole,” I croaked, but I was sure now that he couldn’t hear me. “Cole, give yourself up.”
No answer, just the wailing sirens. I forced my feet to go faster, but they were numb and stupid, and now I tripped, stumbling down the last half flight and only saving myself from falling completely by grabbing hold of the rail with a jerk that made me cry aloud.
“Cole!” I shouted again, as strongly as I could, but my voice was drowned beneath the rising scream of the sirens, and there was no answer.
I was at the door to the lobby now, but it was heavy, so incredibly heavy. I put my shoulder to it and leaned with all my might, sobbing with the effort. It creaked open. I pushed, and pushed, feeling the muscles in my side ache with the effort. How had Cole barged through so effortlessly?
And then the door opened enough for me to slip through, and I stumbled into the lobby, blinking at the blinding blue lights that were suddenly flooding the little room.
Outside I could see police spilling out of patrol cars, and they were coming for me, I knew it. I just had to pray that Malik had been listening, watching, taking note. Because Malik, of all people, had been the one who had known something was wrong. She just had no idea how wrong.
The police were opening the lobby door now, moving in formation, like hunters taking down a wounded animal. They were holding out weapons—guns, Tasers, I wasn’t sure. I put my hands up. My legs were trembling so hard, I wasn’t sure I could stand for much longer.
“Did you arrest him?” I tried to say, but the words seemed to stick in my mouth, hard to get out.
“On the ground!” shouted one of the cops. “Get on the ground! You are under arrest!”
I obeyed, shakily kneeling, though the phone sticking out of my hip pocket jabbed into my stomach and made the movement awkward.
“Did you arrest him? Cole Garrick? Did you arrest him?”
“On the ground!” the officer shouted furiously. I nodded and put my hand to the phone to take it out. And I knew as I did so, as I saw the officer reach for his baton, that I’d made a huge mistake.
“Hands on the floor!” he roared, and I heard, dimly, from far away, Malik’s voice saying, “Jake, it’s just a—”
But before she could finish, his baton came down on my hand, the hand reaching for the phone. My wrist, and the baton behind it, slammed into my bad side, whacking against the wound with a force that made me drop like a stone—no longer caring about the phone in my pocket, no longer caring about anything except the red-hot eruption of agony radiating from my side.
“The phone!” I tried to say, but I don’t think the words made it out of my mouth. Perhaps I screamed. I don’t know. I don’t remember. All I know is that I saw an explosion of dark stars and a pain so intense I can’t even describe it shot through every part of my body. And then I passed out.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13 DAY ONE
Babe.” It was Gabe’s deep, soft voice in my ear that woke me, and I blinked and then turned my head to see him lying next to me in the rumpled sheets, the sun bringing out peat-colored lights in his black hair. He was smiling lazily, with that grin that pulled at the edge of his mouth like he couldn’t help it, and my heart clenched with love and longing.
“Hey, honey.” I rolled over to look at him, drinking him in, running my hand over his smooth shoulders, down the ridges of his ribs to his hip, feeling the heat of his skin and the hardness of his muscle and bone beneath my fingers.
“I love you,” he said, and I didn’t know why, but it was as if something inside me was hurting, cracking. Something was wrong. Why did those familiar words hurt me like a knife in the side, like a physical pain in the flesh beneath my ribs?
“Gabe?” I asked. “What’s wrong?” But he only shook his head.
“You gotta wake up, Jack.”
“I am awake,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew it wasn’t true, and Gabe was still shaking his head, moving away from me. I reached out for him, but he was already slipping away. “Gabe,” I said, and it came out like a sob, “Gabe, no, please wait, wait for me.”
“Wake up, Jack,” he whispered, and I tried to scream: No, no, no, I don’t want to go back.
But it was too late. I was awake now, properly awake, and I could feel sun—actual sun this time—on my closed lids. I was back in the real world. The world in which Gabe was gone, and the pain in my side was sickeningly literal. My heart ached. The dream had felt so real, so unbearably real—and I hadn’t wanted to wake up.
Something felt different, though. For the first time in… I couldn’t remember how many days, the surface beneath my shoulder wasn’t hard and cold ground, but the spongy softness of a bed. There was a strange distance to the pain, which yesterday had been sharp and immediate enough to take my breath away. And I was warm—almost too warm.
I opened my eyes. The room was bright—blindingly so—and for a moment I just blinked, trying to figure out where I was. I seemed to be in some sort of… tent? The walls were made of a kind of curtain material. Only, no, not a tent—because there was a ceiling, and a double-glazed window behind the bed.
Before my aching head could figure it out, I realized something else—I wasn’t alone. In a chair beside the bed was Hel, scrolling through something on her phone.
I tried to speak, but only a croak came out. It was enough. Her head came sharply up, and an unmistakable expression of enormous relief flooded her face.
“Jack! Oh, thank God. Don’t try to talk, sweetie. You’re in hospital. You’ve been—well, you gave us a pretty good scare, to be honest.”
I swallowed. My throat was dry as a bone, and I felt more than a little sick. I tried to pull myself up the bed, but I seemed to be tethered by something attached to my hand, and the movement made my side ache and twinge in a decidedly strange way. After a moment’s struggle I gave up and let myself sink shakily back into the pillows.
“Am I under arrest?” I managed, or at least, that was what I tried to say. It came out more like a slurred, croaky ama underess?
Hel understood, though, and shook her head.
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure, but nobody’s said you are, and there aren’t any police here. That Malik woman came past, while you were asleep. She wanted to talk to you, but the doctors sent her away.”
I coughed, and she jumped up and poured some water into a flimsy plastic cup, then held it to my lips. I took it, swallowing the flat, warm water like it was vintage champagne, and then coughed again, trying to clear my throat.
“Where’s Cole?” My voice was oddly hoarse, my nose and throat raw in a way I couldn’t explain. Was I coming down with something?
“I don’t know,” Hel said regretfully. “Malik didn’t really tell me anything.”
I let that sink in, trying to process. Was Cole in custody? Had he escaped? If he had, how long had he been on the run?