Extreme Denial (41 page)

The explosion sent a shock wave through the stairwell, slamming Decker and Esperanza to their hands and knees. The shock wave was amplified by the confines of the elevator shaft, blowing up and down as well as to the side, making the stairwell shudder, cracking the exterior wall of the shaft. Plaster collapsed. Flames filled the lobby, smoke drifting upward.

With greater effort, Decker and Esperanza straightened, climbing. At the next landing, the door to the elevator had been blown apart. Hurrying past the gaping shaft, Decker saw flames and smoke in there. He whirled as an apartment door was yanked open. An elderly man in pajamas rushed out to see what had happened, his eyes wide with shock when he saw the flames and smoke. An alarm started blaring.

“There’s been an explosion!” Decker yelled. “The lobby’s on fire! Is there another way out of the building?”

The man’s lips moved three times before he managed to make a sound. “The fire escape in back.”

“Use it!”

Decker climbed higher, following Esperanza, who hadn’t paused. At the next floor, other occupants of the building hurried out, dismayed by the smoke that was rising.

“Phone the fire department!” Decker yelled as he passed them. “The elevator’s been gutted! The stairway’s in flames! Use the fire escape!”

He lost count of the floors. Expecting the third, he reached the fourth. The door to the doctor’s apartment was open. Rushing into the kitchen, he found Esperanza arguing with the doctor.

“She can’t be moved!” the doctor protested. “Her stitches will pull open!”

“To hell with the stitches! If she stays here, she’ll bum to death! We’ll
all
bum to death!”

“There’s supposed to be a fire escape!” Decker said.
“Where is it
?”

The doctor pointed along the corridor. “Through the window in the spare bedroom.”

Decker leaned close to Beth. “We have to lift you. I’m afraid this is going to hurt.”

“McKittrick’s out there?”

“He meant what he said at the motel. He and Renata are hunting me. Sooner than I expected.”

“Do what you have to.” Beth licked her dry lips. “I can handle the pain.”

“I’ll get the window open,” Esperanza said.

“Help us,” Decker told the doctor and his wife.

Startling him, the phone rang again.

This time, Decker had no doubt who was calling. He grabbed it, shouting, “You’ve had your fun! For Christ sake, stop!”

“But we’ve only just started,” McKittrick said. “Try to make this more interesting, will you? So far, you’ve done everything we anticipated. Who’s an idiot now?” McKittrick broke out into bellowing laughter.

Decker slammed down the phone and spun toward Beth, noting the thick plastic sheet she lay upon. “Is that strong enough to hold her?”

“There’s one way to find out.” Esperanza came back from opening the window in the guest room. “You take the head. I’ll take the feet.” Using the plastic sheet, they lifted Beth off the table and carried her from the kitchen.

The doctor went out to the hallway and hurried back, appalled. “There are flames in the stairwell and the elevator shaft.”

“I told you, we need help!” Esperanza looked angrily over his shoulder as he carried the section of the sheet that supported Beth’s legs.

“Get the jewelry,” the doctor told his wife, and rushed from the room.

“And don’t forget the gold coins, you bastard!” Decker shouted. Bent over, moving backward, holding the portion of the sheet that supported Beth’s shoulders, he worked into the bedroom. After bumping painfully against the back wall, he turned and stared out through the open window, its curtains blowing inward from the force of the rain. A night-shrouded fire escape led down the back of the building to what may have been an interior garden. He heard panicked residents of the building rushing awkwardly down the metal fire escape.

“Predictable,” Decker said. “That’s where Renata and McKittrick expect us to go.”

“What are you talking about?”
Esperanza asked.

“It’s a trap. McKittrick knows about this place. He’d had time to check the layout. He and Renata will be waiting down there for us.”

“But we can’t stay here! We’ll be trapped in the fire!”

“There’s another way.”

“Up,” Beth said.

Decker nodded. “Exactly.”

Esperanza looked incredulous.

“To the roof,” Decker said. “We’ll move across several buildings, reach another fire escape near the end of the block, and use
it.
McKittrick won’t know where we’ve gone.”

“But what if the flames spread through other buildings and cut us off?” Esperanza asked.

“No choice,” Decker said. “We’ll be easy targets if we try to carry Beth down this fire escape.” He eased Beth headfirst through the window until her back was supported by the windowsill. Then he squirmed out past her, feeling cold rain pelt him again as he guided her farther through the window. In a moment, Beth was lying on the slick wet metal platform, rain striking her face.

Decker touched her forehead. “How are you doing?”

“Never better.”

“Right.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Wrong.” Decker kissed her cheek.

Esperanza scrambled out to join them. “Whatever was in that bomb, it must have been powerful. The flames are spreading fast. The front of the apartment’s on fire.”

Decker peered through the rain toward the top of the building, not far above them. “We’d better get up there before the flames reach the roof.” As they lifted Beth, Decker heard approaching sirens.

“There’ll be police cars as well as fire trucks.” Esperanza followed Decker up the fire escape. “McKittrick and Renata won’t try anything against us in front of the police.”

“Or they’ll count on the confusion.” Decker carried Beth higher. “The police won’t have time to realize what’s happening.”

Flames burst from a lower window, illuminating them on the metal stairs.

“Jesus, now they’ve seen us.” Decker tensed, anticipating the impact of a bullet into his chest.

“Maybe not.” Esperanza hurried to work higher. “Or if they did, it might not be obvious we’re going up instead of down.”

They came to a landing. Beth groaned as Decker was forced to turn her awkwardly to start up the final section toward the roof. His shoes slipped on the slick wet metal, making him stumble, almost dropping her.

“We’re close.”

The fire roared.

“Just a little farther.”

The sirens reached a crescendo on the opposite side of the building. Backing up, Decker felt his hips bump against the roofs waist-high parapet. At the limit of his energy, he stretched one leg and then the other over the parapet, hefted Beth over, waited for Esperanza to follow, and finally set Beth down. Breathing fast, he slumped.

“Are you okay?” Esperanza stooped next to him.

“Need a little rest is all.”

“I can’t guess why.” Esperanza squinted through the rain. “At least this parapet keeps us from being targets.”

Decker’s arms and legs were numb with fatigue. “McKittrick and Renata will wonder why we’re not coming down. We have to get away from here before they figure out what we’re doing.”

“Take another minute to catch your breath,” Beth murmured.

“No time.”

Beth tried to raise herself. “Maybe I can walk.”

“No. You’d rip out your stitches. You’d bleed to death.” Decker calculated: To the left, there were only a few buildings before the end of the block. The fire escapes there would be too close to where McKittrick and Renata waited below. To the right, though, there were more than enough roofs to get them away from the area.

Decker crouched and lifted Beth. He waited for Esperanza to do the same, then backed away from the parapet, guided by lights in other buildings and the reflection of flames bursting from the windows of the brownstone.

“Behind you,” Esperanza said.” A ventilation duct.”

Decker veered around the waist-high obstacle, turning his head to avoid inhaling the thick smoke spewing out.

“The housing for the elevator pulleys,” Esperanza warned.

Decker veered around that as well, alarmed that he could see flames through cracks in the housing.

“It’s spreading faster.”

More sirens wailed at the front of the building.

Decker glanced behind him and saw that the next building was one story taller.
“How are we going to
—”

“On my right,” Esperanza said. “A metal ladder bolted to the wall.”

Decker backed against the ladder. “The only way I can think to do this is ...” He struggled to breathe. “Beth, I don’t have the strength to carry you over my shoulder. Do you think you can stand on your uninjured leg?”

“Anything.”

“I’ll climb up while Esperanza steadies you. When I lean down, you reach up. I’ll lift you by your hands.” Decker mentally corrected himself—by her
left
arm, the one that hadn’t been wounded in Santa Fe.

After he and Esperanza helped her to stand, propping her against the brick wall, Decker gripped the ladder and mustered the effort to climb to the next roof. At the top, his back pelted by rain, he leaned over the edge. “Ready?”

Decker strained to lift her. He almost panicked when he discovered that his strength was failing, that he was able to raise her only a few feet.

Amazingly, the effort became easier.

“I’m resting my good leg on a rung of the ladder,” Beth said. “Just pull me up a little at a time.”

Decker grimaced, lifting harder. Slowly, rung after rung, Beth came up. Decker moved his grip from her hand to her upper arm and shoulder, pulling higher. Then he saw the murky outline of her drenched head, put his arms under hers, and hoisted her onto the roof. He set her down and sprawled beside her.

Esperanza’s shoes thrummed on the metal ladder. In a rush, he was at the top, the plastic sheet tucked under his arm. Behind him, flames spewed from ventilator ducts and the housing for the elevator pulleys. The fire escape was engulfed by smoke.

“Even if we wanted to, we can’t go back that way,” Decker said.

They spread out the plastic sheet, set Beth onto it, and lifted her, making their way through another maze of ducts and housings. Decker stumbled over a pipe. He bumped past a TV antenna.

The reflection of flames revealed the edge of the building and the drop down to the next one.

“It won’t be long now,” Decker said.

A thunderous shock wave hit him, jolting him off his feet. Unable to keep a grip on Beth, he landed next to her, hearing her scream. Only then did he have time to realize—

It hadn’t been thunder.

It had been another bomb.

The detonation echoed through the night. Trembling, Decker lay on his chest, drew his pistol, and stared ahead toward where a shedlike protrusion from the roof had disintegrated.

A voice yelled, “You’re being predictable again!”

Jesus, Decker thought. McKittrick’s on the roof!

“Walked right into it again, didn’t you?” McKittrick yelled. “I gave you fair warning, and you still did what I expected! You’re not as goddamned smart as you think you are!”

“Let it go!” Decker shouted. “Our business with each other is over!”

“Not until you’re dead!”

The voice came from somewhere to the left. It sounded as if McKittrick was hiding behind the elevator housing. Fingers tight on his pistol, Decker rose to a crouch, preparing to charge. “The police heard that explosion, McKittrick! Now they know this is more than a fire! They’ll seal off the area and check everybody who tries to leave! You won’t get away!”

“They’ll think it was combustibles blowing up in the building!”

Combustibles? Decker frowned. It wasn’t the kind of word McKittrick would normally use, but it definitely was a word he would learn from a bomb expert. There wasn’t any doubt— Renata was teaching him.

And she was somewhere close.

“Paint cans! Turpentine! Cleaning fluid!” McKittrick yelled. “At a fire, the police worry about that stuff a lot! Now they’ll be afraid something else will blow up! They’ll keep their distance!”

Behind Decker, flames burst from the lower roof. We can’t go back, and the fires will soon reach us if we stay here, he thought. “Esperanza?” he whispered.

“Ready when you are. Which side do you want?”

“Left.”

“I’ll flank you.”

“Now.” Decker sprinted through puddles toward a large ventilation duct, then toward another. But as he prepared to charge toward the elevator housing, it ceased to exist. A brilliant roar blasted it into pieces. Decker was thrown flat, chunks of wreckage flying over him, clattering around him.

“You guessed
wrong
, Decker! That’s not where I am! And I’m not to your right, either! Where your friend’s trying to sneak up on me!”

A moment later, in that direction, a blast tore a huge chunk out of the roof. Decker thought he heard a scream, but whether it was from Esperanza or occupants of the building, he couldn’t tell.

He felt paralyzed, uncertain where to move. McKittrick must have set charges all over this roof and the next ones, he thought. But how would McKittrick have had time if he was calling from a pay phone?

The appalling answer was immediate and obvious. McKittrick
hadn’t
been using a pay phone. He had been calling from a
cellular
phone. From the roof. While he was placing the charges. That must have been Renata who blew up the Oldsmobile in front of the building and then threw the firebomb into the lobby.
She’s
down in the courtyard. That way, whichever direction we chose, up or down, we were trapped.

Are
trapped, Decker thought. The fire’s behind us. McKittrick’s ahead of us.

What about the fire escape on
this
building? Decker wondered desperately as the flames roared louder. If we can get onto it... Too obvious. I have to assume McKittrick rigged explosives on
it
, as well. Even if he didn’t, we’d still be trapped between Renata in the courtyard and McKittrick on the roof.

With no apparent alternative, Decker rose to attempt another frantic charge toward McKittrick’s voice. But the moment he did, a blast heaved the roof in front of him, knocking him back down, tearing another huge chunk from the building.