Relentless (5 page)

She screamed then unlocked her seatbelt and lay all the way over in the passenger’s seat. She looked around, unsure of what to do, when another shot popped loudly, punching a hole in the dashboard just above her.

Still hunched flat in the car, she jammed her foot on the gas, unconcerned about any oncoming traffic she might be turning in to. Once the car had gone a full ninety degrees to the right, she sat up and pushed the pedal as far down as it would go, racing along the college’s back roads.

No pain
. She glanced down to see if she was hurt. No blood stains. She felt her head and her face, which was moist, but she dabbed it with a finger and saw that the liquid was clear. Only then did she realize that she’d been crying since the first shot was fired.

Julie sped her way south along the campus grounds, wiping her face and dodging students. Her muscles were tensed and she was shivering all over.

She snatched her phone and dialed 911.

An hour later, Konrad was still watching.

Through his sniper scope, he could see the woman sitting in a chair. She was plainly worn out and hadn’t regained her composure since his attack. He could see her hands shaking slightly as she accepted a cup of coffee from the duty officer.

She was inside the UCLA Police Department building, near the center of the campus. He watched from an office on the top floor of the Gonda Center, a genetic research building just across the street

A street ran between the Center and the campus police headquarters, with cars passing between very infrequently. A few students could be seen here and there walking and talking, even at this ungodly hour. But Konrad had no fear that he might be discovered. The building was locked down and all the lights were out.

If anyone did somehow intrude on him, he’d simply shoot them in the head with the silenced pistol on his hip.

All of this was part of Konrad’s contingency plan, of course, made long before he’d shot holes into the woman’s car, just as he’d known she would go straight to the police if he missed. He’d been given a complete file on this woman, which was almost as thick as the file for Borrows. She was a good citizen: she paid her taxes on time, she gave regularly to charities, she often worked late at her office.

She cared. She
loved
. She believed that doing right was what mattered.

Of course
she would go straight to the police when someone took a shot at her. She’d be ‘‘safe’’ there.

He was unconcerned about his earlier failure to kill her, but it gnawed at him that he hadn’t been able to off Borrows yet. Still, setbacks were inevitable. He was a detail person, and this was a possibility he’d planned for. Besides, the woman’s movements would prove even
more
predictable in this state.

Best of all, it prolonged the hunt.

And the hunt was all there was.

So he didn’t mind waiting, sipping water from a bottle as he kept an eye on her through the rifle scope. She’d just been handed off to another policeman—a man in a suit sitting behind a desk, concern written all over his face—when a bulky, heavyset man in an overcoat—
Classic detective
, Konrad thought—strode into the office and began speaking to the desk officer with his arms crossed. He looked most displeased.

From what Konrad could tell, the police didn’t seem keen on releasing the woman until they were convinced she was out of danger, though it looked like this new policeman might be shaking things up.

Whatever
.

Improvising wasn’t a problem. Neither was patience.

So he watched, and he waited.

Very patiently.

5

Julie had no idea who this guy in the trench coat was, and she couldn’t bring herself to care.

All she could think about was how she should feel perfectly safe right now, and yet she didn’t. As the two officers in this small room conferred quietly—some kind of jurisdictional dispute, from the sound of it—she was met with the growing sensation that all of the oxygen was very slowly being vacuumed from the room. It was growing steadily warmer, and her heart beat a little faster with each passing minute.

The young UCLA officer finally cleared his throat before smiling again at Julie, as both officers turned to face her. ‘‘This is Detective Drexel, and he’s going to be taking care of you and looking into your case, Ms. Saunders.’’

Julie carefully got to her feet. ‘‘I just want this to be over. I still can’t believe it. Can I go home?’’

Drexel smiled at her reassuringly—though his smile looked an awful lot like the face other people make when they’re in pain—as he hefted his considerable weight a step forward in her direction. ‘‘Very soon, I promise,’’ he attempted to soothe, but his voice was surprisingly nasal and scratchy for such a barrel-chested man. ‘‘I need to get your statement on record at my office downtown, which is between here and your house. I won’t delay you any longer than I have to.’’

Julie thought quietly to herself as Drexel ushered her from the room.

‘‘Could it be gang-related?’’ she asked.

‘‘I doubt it,’’ he replied casually, his hand steering her shoulder through the all-but-empty outer room and toward the front door. ‘‘Any of your students unhappy with their grades lately?’’

She offered a halfhearted chuckle. ‘‘Students are
always
unhappy with their grades, Detective.’’

‘‘Stop!’’ Grant screamed from the back seat of the cab.

They’d reached the street outside of the UCLA Police Department. Standing there on the curb in front of the building was a girl. The girl without shoes.

‘‘Wait right here!’’ Grant shouted, jumping from the cab.

‘‘Honey, I can’t park in the middle of the—’’ the driver called after him, but he ignored her and ran toward the station house.

Grant had just limped through the building’s front door, following the shoeless girl inside, when he stopped cold. The young woman was nowhere to be seen, but Julie was right in front of him, being escorted straight toward him from a hallway on the right. She came closer, into the lobby, and their eyes met from ten feet away. She didn’t recognize him, of course, but she held his gaze nonetheless. Perhaps it was Grant’s bloodied and battered appearance—which was far worse than hers—but there was a peculiar expression on her face as she gazed at him.

Her long black hair was matted, disheveled, and her face gaunt and weary. Bags drooped under her eyes. If Grant hadn’t known who she was, he might not have recognized her. A big man in a blue trench coat had his hand on her shoulder, directing her, but now was shifting his attention to Grant, suspicion unmistakable in his features.

Julie didn’t look away as they drew closer together from opposite corners of the lobby. Time slid into slow motion for Grant as they came close enough to touch one another. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, couldn’t think of what to say, how to explain his situation, his appearance, his fear for her life. What
was
there to say? What could possibly escape from his lips that wouldn’t sound like the ramblings of a crazy person?

Grant took a step toward them. The cop yanked Julie out of concern, and at the same moment glass exploded from the window to Grant’s immediate right. Julie’s bulky escort fell sharply to the ground, but Julie herself stopped cold exactly where she stood.

Grant’s breath caught in his throat.

It was as if Julie had been frozen and bolted into place, in mid-stride, her eyes still trained on him. She simply . . .
paused
for a long moment, before her eyes rolled up and her entire body went limp. She collapsed to the floor.

Grant snapped out of his reverie and dove to shield her body with his.

The police department had erupted into chaos, officers screaming and shouting. More shots rang out and some fled for cover and others ran out onto the street. The first officer to attempt an exit had been gunned down, and now his body lay just outside the door.

For the hundredth time that day, Grant’s thoughts returned to a single notion:
Why is this happening to me?

The shooting paused, and Grant knew instinctively that the sniper—Konrad, no doubt—had stopped to reload. Depending on the model, there should be somewhere between five and twelve seconds before the shooting resumed.

Grant blinked.

How do I know
that
?

No time to figure it out now, Grant labored onto his haunches and threw Julie’s limp, unconscious form over his shoulder. With his new body, she felt almost weightless. He took off down the hallway she’d just emerged from, a corridor without windows that paralleled the street outside.

The gunfire and chaos continued behind him, but it faded as he made a left, and then a right. He found himself at another entrance on the far right side of the building. Outside, he gently lay Julie on the grass and felt her pulse.

Alive
. He scanned her for wounds, found none. Grant hoisted her up again and carried her toward the front corner of the building.

Peeking cautiously around the brick, he spotted a handful of black-suited officers illuminated by streetlamps aiming, pointing, yelling, running, barking into radios. One of them seemed to have spotted where the gunshots were coming from.

Grant’s cab had vanished. He wanted to be angry, after all the money he’d given her, but what could he expect?

No transportation.

Cops everywhere.

And Konrad will start shooting again any second.

Now what?

Come on, you weird new reflexes! Kick in again and tell me what to
do!

Grant ducked and pulled Julie farther away from the edge of the building as another shot was fired. He couldn’t tell where Konrad had aimed this time, but he felt the need to be even farther away from the target area, all the same. It sounded like he had switched to a semiautomatic.

The policemen preparing to enter the Gondo Center were pinned down. Every time one of the men in black got close to the building, more shots would ring out, sometimes connecting with a leg or an abdomen. One fell and pulled himself to safety. Another fell and did not move. Only a pair of policemen remained able to fight, but they were taking cover behind vehicles.

Running out of time. . . !

Approaching the building was a red Jeep with no side doors and its canvas top missing. The Jeep had stopped at the sight of the drama playing out in front of the police station, and Grant seized the opportunity.

He climbed into the vehicle’s passenger side, laid Julie across the backseat, and muttered a ‘‘sorry’’ to the stunned young man in the driver’s seat as he kicked him out the other side. The boy rolled on the ground, but Grant didn’t wait to see what happened next. He dropped into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine.

He’d nearly made a clean getaway when the big cop in the blue trench coat burst through the front door and stopped in front of the car, his gun leveled at Grant’s head.

‘‘Let ’er go!’’ he shouted in a pinched voice, his free hand clutching his opposite shoulder, which was bleeding.

But Konrad chose that moment to start firing again, and the cop turned his attention to the faraway window and fired his pistol in that direction instead.

Grant swerved around the cop and immediately heard a shout of ‘‘Hold it!’’ from behind.

He didn’t.

Julie moaned again. She was waking up.

Daniel Cossick had seen some strange things in his life—stranger than most could claim—but there were no words for what he was seeing at this moment.

Midnight had come and gone, and he’d just tracked down the source of the second shimmer at last.

Stepping across fresh yellow police tape, he tentatively touched the knife that was wedged into the subway station column. It had dug all the way into the cement, stopped only by its hilt from going in any further.

The subway was far from empty at this time of night, but no one seemed to care that he was taking a closer look.

He was surprised the police hadn’t tried to remove the thing from the wall.

Or maybe they
had
, and couldn’t.

‘‘What is it? What do you see?’’ Lisa squawked eagerly in his ear, making him jump.

When he’d settled, he replied quietly, still examining the knife.

‘‘Exactly what we’re looking for. Something impossible.’’

Daniel took a step forward and leaned in close to the weapon, getting as close an impression of it as he could. It looked rather heavy. Probably at least nine inches in length, handle to razor-sharp tip. The hilt was solid and had a comfortable, form-fitted grip.

This was no pocket toy casually left behind. To whoever owned it, this was something of great value. It would not have been left here by choice.

Daniel knew there was little chance of removing it, but he couldn’t resist trying. He gripped it with gloved hands, and after glancing around the station to make sure no one was looking, gave it his best King Arthur tug. It was a pointless exercise.

‘‘What does
that
mean?’’ Lisa asked.

Daniel turned to see the other roped-off area on the opposite side of the tracks. Spots of dried blood were visible on the ground. He twisted to face the pillar in front of him once more.

‘‘It means the Threshold has been breached,’’ he answered somberly, stepping away from the column but never looking away from the knife. ‘‘And all bets are off.’’

6

Grant drove. For hours, much of the time not realizing where he was going.

He had no destination in mind; he just wanted to get Julie away from danger. Eventually he took the 405 to Rosa Parks and then headed east back to the glow of downtown. Traffic buzzed even this late but never bogged down. He almost took the exit back to his penthouse but dismissed it. It was too dangerous.

The stolen Jeep finally came to a stop almost of its own volition at a small park called Hollenbeck Lake. Sunrise was still an hour or two away and Grant tucked the Jeep as far from streetlamps as possible. His mind should’ve been whirling, trying to decide what to say to Julie when she fully came to, but exhaustion overtook him and he fell into a fitful sleep.