The Game (7 page)

Chapter 16

T
hey got back to the record store and headed up the stairs to the apartment above. Vince knew there was more to come in this adventure. As usual, he had to play it by ear to see where the fates sent him.

“Vince?” Alexis said as they reached the top of the stairs. “This isn’t a real gun.”

“Huh?”

“That guy’s gun, these aren’t real bullets.” Alexis opened the door and they went inside.

Vince held his hand out. “Let me see that.”

She handed him the pistol. He jacked one bullet from the magazine and inspected it. “Son of a bitch.” He walked in and leaned on the kitchen island. “These are some kind of dart.” He used his nail to peel away a soft wax coating, which exposed a tiny needle about half an inch long.

Candice offered. “He wasn’t aiming at you, he was aiming at me.”

Vince nodded, slid the magazine back into the gun and stashed it into the drawer next to the sink. He pulled his jacket off and threw it on the freestanding wooden rack near the door. A slight pang of guilt touched him for killing the guy, but he hadn’t suspected the gun was fake. It looked real enough. But still, he didn’t like to kill people. It wasn’t his preferred way to deal with people even when they looked threatening. But as is always the case, you have to kill if you’re about to be killed, or to save another life. In this case, he really thought the man was shooting to kill.

The place was dingy but it was his. He wasn’t much for cleaning or putting things away. None of that mattered because he knew he wouldn’t be here for much longer.

They all stopped moving when Candice’s phone rang. “It’s them.” She raised her brows. “What do I do?”

“Answer it. Put them on speaker.”

She switched the phone on speaker and placed it on the counter.

“Candice, where are you?” the man asked.

Vince made a wheeling motion with his hand, urging her to play along.

“I’m waiting for you to release Zee, like your messenger said you would if I went with him.”

“Where
is
my messenger?”

Candice shrugged, held out her hands. Vince urged her again to go with it.

“He stepped out, said he’d be right back.”

“You’re lying to me, Candice.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then where are you?”

“Somewhere in New Jersey.”

The man on the phone let out a long sigh. There was then an almost imperceptible soft beep, and a little girl’s voice came on. “Candy? Why would you lie to me? I know you’re back in the city. It hurts me that you’d lie to me like that. I thought we were friends. Don’t you like me anymore?”

Candice looked at Vince and narrowed her eyes. Vince could only shake his head back.

“Candy, you’ve made me very upset. You’re not playing along, and now I think something bad is going to happen to Zyanna.”

“Please don’t!” Candice burst out. “Please, I’ll do what you want.”

“Candy, you’ve missed your chance. I guess you’ll never see her again. I told you, people in this game don’t get a second chance.”

“Wait, please, I’ll play along. Just don’t hurt Zyanna.”

There was another soft beep and the voice changed again, this time to a seductive woman. “Oh Candice, you have no choice but to play along. We know where you are every second of every day. But unfortunately, you’ll have to play along without your friend. She’s ours now. You missed your chance to spare her. But don’t worry, you
will
learn her fate soon enough, if you can last that long. Game on!”

The call ended.

“Now what?” Alexis said, but no one had an answer.

“How could they know where I am?”

“Turn off your phone,” Vince suggested.

Candice turned off the phone. “Where are we? Do you own this place?” Candice said, looking around.

Vince said, “I rent it.”

Alexis took off her jacket. “Yeah, I own the record store and this place comes with it, so I rent it out to help with the bills. Usually I sleep downstairs in the utility room. But Vince lets me stay up here.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Candice shrugged.

“I’m taking a shower,” Alexis said and headed to the bedroom.

“Do you both work at the record store?” Candice asked.

“No,” Vince opened the fridge and took out a beer.

“What do you do?”

He twisted the cap off and took a swig. “I was a cop.”

Candice unzipped her jacket. “But you’re not anymore.”

He shook his head.

“What do you do now?”

“I live here.”

Vince didn’t really want to go into it with her. It was nothing personal, he just didn’t like to talk about himself. He couldn’t talk about himself.

Candice could tell he wasn’t going to offer anything personal. She found him intriguing. He was a good-looking guy with shaggy black hair and dark blue eyes. He had a good build, and looked to be just under six-feet tall. But there was something mysterious about him she couldn’t put her finger on. He seemed oddly out of place. But then again, this entire day seemed out of place.

Vince plopped down on the sofa. “Help yourself to a drink or whatever. You and Alexis can take the bedroom. I’ll crash here on the couch.”

She watched him settle into the long leather couch, and headed into the bedroom. Kicking off her shoes, she flopped on top of the covers and closed her eyes. It was only a few seconds before sleep came.

Candice woke up. She looked over to the other side of the bed at Alexis, who slept like a baby. For some reason she had no idea how old Alexis was, but found her mind stuck on that. She looked about seventeen but acted far more mature. She was probably Candice’s age or close.

A whiff of something horrible invaded her nose. She took a succession of hard sniffs. Something was burning. It smelled like plastic or rubber. The only reason she knew that smell was because her brother went through a short pyromaniac phase. He used to burn plastic things all the time and delight over the dripping and melting.

She slid from the bed and glanced out the windows. The snow was still falling. A throbbing orange glow pulsated into the night and off the buildings across the street. Initially, she thought the light was a spinning beacon of an unseen rescue vehicle or work truck.

Then she noticed the room vents were leaking with thin trails of ghostly smoke. “Fire…” she said to herself and then she screamed it. “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

She ran to the bed and woke Alexis. “Get up, there’s a fire.”

They both scurried to the bedroom door, Candice stopped, felt the doorknob, it wasn’t hot, so she ripped it open and saw Vince bolt upright on the couch. “Fire!”

Vince was quick. He ran to the door and touched the knob, but quickly pulled his hand back. “The fire escape.”

He ran to the bathroom, the girls followed. The window was stuck, it wouldn’t open. Vince sharply drove his elbow into the glass, shattering the pane. He then slid a black sneaker on his hand and punched out the remaining glass.

Candice grabbed her backpack and slipped on her hiking boots. Vince continued clearing out what glass he could. He held out his hand to Candice and she took hold. He pulled her past him and out the window onto the four-by-six steel platform.

Alexis was at her side instantly and she started down the retracting ladder. Candice swung on her backpack and put her feet on the first rung of the rusty steel ladder just as Vince hopped out the window and onto the platform with a clang.

The fire escape was shaky. It moved and felt unstable. Candid looked down, gulped. She hated heights. She kept thinking they were going to fall. Her stomach churned, but adrenaline was pumping her forward. The honeycomb-shaped holes of the steps loomed larger than they were and she felt as if her foot was going to slip through them.

On the next platform, the steel creaked horribly. Something popped and the entire platform moved forward, pulling away from the building. Candice screamed and nearly tumbled over the railing, but Vince managed to get a hand on the waist of her jeans. He kept her from falling a good thirty feet.

The entire fire escape moved again, pitching them forward and sideways. Alexis ran down the ladder in a panic and leapt the last ten feet to the ground. Candice and Vince froze, neither one wanted to move. They both knew a sudden movement would likely tear the heavy steel from the bricks and send them plunging to the ground.

“C’mon!” Alexis yelled from the alley.

Candice swallowed hard, steadied her breath. “What now?”

“Don’t move.”

“I think we’ve established that.”

The window directly below them exploded, and fire reached out towards their feet. The flames were blackening the red bricks, and licking at their legs through the holes in the fire escape.

Vince took her hand. “We need to go, now.”

She met his eyes, nodded.

“On three, we’re going to jump over to the next platform, and shimmy down low enough to jump.”

Candice shook her head. “No way, I can’t.”

“You can do it. You’re going to do it. It’s only six feet away, you can easily make that and you can hold on.”

Candice took a breath. She took off her backpack and dropped it to the asphalt below. Vince gripped her hand, hard.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

“One, two, three!”

They jumped, the platform creaked and popped and dove away from their feet, crashing down towards the ground. Candice closed her eyes and wrapped her arms and legs around the steel rungs of the adjacent fire escape. The impact hurt for a second but then she realized she’d done it. She was clinging like a monkey to the bars.

Looking down, the ground was still somewhat far away. She watched Vince. He swung down a few feet, hand-over-hand until he was low enough to drop to the alley.

“Okay, now you!” he yelled up to her.

She maneuvered down, using her fingers to hold on. After a brief climb, she dropped to the ground. A huge relief hit her. She felt good to be alive and in one piece.

They moved down the alley to the street. They were looking back at the building, now fully engulfed in flames. Black smoke poured into the sky, eclipsing the falling snow.

“Oh no,” Alexis said. “My store.”

The night was freezing cold. Candice was the only one that even had real shoes on. Vince had sneakers on but no socks. Alexis was woefully underdressed.

Candice never took off her jeans before falling asleep.

Candice unzipped her backpack and pulled out her jacket, and handed a pair of black sweatpants to Alexis. “Sorry,” she said to Vince. “Nothing in here is going to fit you.”

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. FDNY will be here soon. Here, put this in there.” He pulled his pistol from the back of his pants and handed it to her. She stashed the gun in her backpack.

In a few more seconds, the fire trucks wailed in the distance. Then a vehicle turned down the street towards them. It sped up and then slowed just as it reached them. Candice didn’t see anything sinister but thankfully, Vince did.

“Get down!” He yelled and tackled both the girls at the same moment gunfire erupted from the window of the SUV. Bullets exploded off the building in front of them, shattering the glass of the storefront next to the record store.

“Crawl!” Vince said and he started scurrying on his stomach back towards the alley just a few feet to the right. Bullets rang off the newspaper dispensing machines and the large blue mailbox. Candice followed him as close as possible. Glass was raining all around them, mixed with the snow.

They managed to get around the corner of the alley and Vince was on his feet digging into her backpack while it was still on her back. He found the gun and came up firing around the corner at the SUV, which then tore off with tires spinning on the slushy pavement.

“Let’s go,” he said and Candice got up. They ran down the alley to the opposite street. “Give me your phone.” She dug it from her pocket and he smashed it against the wall. “Let’s see them track us now.”

They moved quickly up the next block to the parking garage. Vince stopped at the attendant booth and asked the man for his keys and they went to his Jeep. He opened the back and slid out a large duffle bag. He dressed quickly in some jeans, boots, and a canvas work jacket. He took out another NYPD windbreaker and handed it to Alexis. She also had a pair of running sneakers in there and slid those on.

They all got into the Jeep.

Vince swung the Jeep back towards the store. As they passed by Bleeker, the entire block was closed. Emergency vehicles darted in every direction. They went straight past and headed uptown.

“What now?” Alexis asked from the passenger seat.

Vince just shook his head and looked in the rearview mirror at Candice. She looked away, glancing out the window. “They want me,” she offered.

“What?” Vince asked.

“They were trying to kill you, not me.”

Alexis said, “You don’t know that.”

“Of course I do, this is all about me. They’ve been out to get me all along. They killed Eddie to set me up. They took Zee to get me. You’ve altered the plan, now you two are in danger because of me.”

“No, honey.” Alexis twisted in her seat to face back. “We’re in danger because we want to be.”

“But why? Why are you helping me?”

Alexis sighed, twisting her lips. “A few months ago these people ruined my sister’s life. Everyone thought she was crazy. They got her fired from her job, took her money, and killed her two cats, fer crissakes. No one, including me, believed Alyssa. We just thought she was losing her mind. They even convinced us she had a drug problem and that’s where her money went. She was my twin sister, and I didn’t believe her. She cracked; jumped off the GE Tower in midtown.”