“Joan!” Ruby leaps off the bed and runs to me. I kneel down, and she throws her arms around my neck. “Is everything okay? What was that noise?”
“Nothing, honey.” I swallow. “It’s all right.”
“I’ve been so scared,” Ruby stammers. “I kept asking Ben why we’re in here, but he just said everything was fine.”
I look at Ben, who’s sitting cross-legged on the bed. His face says he knows damn well that everything is not fine.
I grab Ruby’s hands in mine. “I need you to be brave, you understand?”
Ruby gulps. “I can be brave.”
“Then I need you to go with Ben to the train station and wait for me there,” I say slowly. “We’ll grab your things, sneak you out the fire escape. You go as fast as you can to Union Station. Take some of the pocket money I gave you when you arrived, all right? Jump in a taxi.”
“What happened?” Ben says softly.
“There’s no time,” I say. “Later.” I stand and move back to the entrance. “Not a word,” I tell them, as I open the door.
We move down the hall quickly, quietly, and I burst back into my bedroom, spellbind it behind me, start throwing all our things in the drawers into Ben’s suitcase.
“Where do you want to go?” I ask Ben and Ruby as I buckle the suitcase up. “Anywhere in the world.”
“Joan, please,” Ben says. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“This is all falling apart. The deal, my promise from Gunn—everything.”
Ben’s jaw drops. “What are you going to do?”
“What needs to be done.” I hand him the bag. “Pick any city.”
“Jesus, I don’t know, Joan. Baltimore, Philly—”
“Philly,” I repeat. It holds the sound of freedom in it. “By nine o’clock, be at the departure board waiting for me, all right? I’ll find you and we’ll go to Philadelphia.”
Ruby starts whimpering. “But Joan, I don’t want to leave you, we just got here—”
“I don’t want to leave you, either, but it’s not safe.” I bend down to meet her eye-to-eye. “Ben’s going to get you out of here, and then in a little over an hour I’m going to meet you and we’re going to start a new life. We’re going to make our own magic kingdom in Philadelphia.”
“Joan, no.” Ruby starts crying, and it nearly breaks me, “I can’t say good-bye again.”
I wrap my arms around her. “I’ll be with you soon. I just have a few things to take care of, and then it’ll all be over. Then we’ll never worry about anything again.”
I climb over the cot and open the window.
“Hurry,” I tell Ben, “there’s carloads of men pulling up any minute—you need to be out of here before they do.”
Ben’s eyes are wide, but he nods and says, “Be careful, Joan. Whatever you need to do, do it quickly. We’ll be at Union Station, waiting.”
I watch them both slip out the window, climb onto the fire escape, jump down onto the side awning, and sneak across to the alley. A few black cars roll up moments later. D Street.
It begins.
Harrison Gunn, we are going to battle.
And only one of us is going to survive the war.
END OF THE LINE
ALEX
I’m a bloody, sweaty mess as I ride the streetcar up 14th Street, trying to calm myself down despite the glares and disturbed whispers of the other patrons, who’ve left a ring of empty seats around mine. It’s nearly quarter to eight. I’m running out of time. The streetcar finally stops on K Street, and I dash off.
It takes about three painful blocks, but I limp as fast as I can to find a pay phone and duck inside the booth. When the Bureau of Internal Revenue operator comes on, I ask for Agent Frain.
“Alex?” Frain says in under a minute. “I’ve been waiting all day—”
“I’m sorry, they chased me through the whole goddamned city. They nearly had me, but I managed to escape.”
“What? Who chased you? Are you all right?”
“Win Matthews, on Gunn’s order,” I sputter. “McEvoy’s dead, and they found out he planted me.” I catch my breath. “But this score still needs to happen. I can get you into the Red Den—we’ll need a team of twenty, at least. The deal goes down around eight p.m. And there’re the hostages we need to consider—”
“Alex, where are you?”
“K and Seventeenth Streets, in a phone booth right off the intersection.” I close my eyes, very conscious that every minute Frain dallies is an extra minute where Joan is alone in that magic haven, dealing with Gunn. “How soon can you be here?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Good. Bring every honest agent you can muster.”
Frain pulls up with a four-car parade minutes later. “Come on”—he waves me toward him—“hop in.”
I hobble around the front and slide into his passenger seat. He studies me out of the corner of his eye as he pulls back onto 17th Street, with the caravan of squad cards trailing behind.
“Jesus, Alex,” Frain says. “You look awful.”
I wince as I stretch out to sit. “I jumped out of a moving car. It could be worse.”