Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (46 page)

“I’m already in pain,” Kevin replied. “Hey, better watch out,” he added. “I’ve got a cone. See?” He held the orange thing up and waved it back and forth like a flag.

No plan
, Kevin thought.

The men hesitated. They could make out something that
looked
like a traffic cone, but it was too dark to be sure; the announcement Kevin had made was surely a trick of some kind. A traffic cone was not a threat. It had to be something else, or at least it had to be
hiding
something else.

In any case, they both had knives. And they knew how to use them.

They continued forward, closing the distance.

Kevin felt calm. Peaceful, even. He waited, breathing easily. “I’m ready for you,” he said to them. He sounded almost eager.

This time the men didn’t stop coming. This second strange announcement did not resonate with them; the notion of being
ready
for a two-on-one knife fight was not realistic. If this man was trying to intimidate them, then he’d have to think of something a lot more convincing.

Anyway, intimidation was out of the question. They were going to fuck this guy
up
, ready or not.

In the darkness, Kevin Brooks smiled.

He swung the traffic cone at the last second, moving it in a wide arc from low to high. The men saw it coming even in the shadows, and they dodged it easily, one left and one right. They weren’t sure what was hiding in that cone, but it was best to be safe. In that moment of separation Kevin dove between them, and as he rolled past he gave a short, powerful jab straight to the knee of the man on the right.

An observer of this economical little hit might have scoffed, might have said that such tactics would score no points in a
real
contest, but Kevin was not interested in points. And this was not a contest. The guides on street fighting said that there were very few things you needed to remember for survival; the most important thing was hitting first.

Kevin thought Cristiana’s hard-nosed friends would have agreed.

The man’s leg buckled as if it were a twig, and he went down hard, wailing in pain. Kevin tried to spin around and bring the other man down with his rear leg, but this man was too quick. He jumped back as if he were a snake and then crouched low to the ground. He could hear his friend crying out as if he had been stuck with something, and he wondered if the orange cone had been concealing a knife of some kind. There was a sudden noise behind him, and the man whirled around –

No, you idiot.

He stood and turned back, realizing his mistake, but it was too late. Now Kevin had no cone to use as
a
distraction – he had already thrown it over the man’s head – but he didn’t need it. He closed the gap in an instant, pulled the man toward him, and then delivered a sharp blow to his Adam’s apple with an open hand. The knife was already in mid-swing, but it lost all its momentum as the man’s windpipe was crushed, and it poked impotently at the back of Kevin’s shoulder blade as the second man’s strength left him.

“One to the knee, one to the neck,” Kevin said, his tone conversational. “Right out of the textbook,” he added.

The Big Guy

Kevin left them lying there on the path. He turned and began walking back the way he had come, heading south. Suddenly he didn’t feel like running anymore. He had exercised enough, and now he had demonstrated to himself – and to any annoying voice that might want to make itself heard – that he was ready when it came to subduing thugs in the park.

Not that he knew of too many jobs that required such a skill, but never mind; it was yet another thing he was ready for, another thing he could use to tell that voice to leave him alone.

He ambled through the trees and back onto the main running loop, taking his time. It was a relief to be able to walk with a quiet mind, and he let his thoughts drift. He passed the grassy space behind the Metropolitan and saw an uncommon emptiness; the homeless man was no longer there.

Early riser. Busy day.

Finally he came to the place where he would have turned off to get home, but instead Kevin kept walking. This sense of peace he was experiencing was too good to let go. So he continued all the way down to the southern-most exit, emerging finally onto 59
^th
street west of Fifth Avenue, and then he walked to the corner and headed uptown on Fifth. He had gone just three blocks when he came to a bus pulled over at the curb.

There was no one inside but the driver. The bus’s engine was off, and Kevin could see the man talking on a yellow phone connected to the main dashboard. After a moment he slammed the phone down into its cradle.

Kevin poked his head into the open double doors. “How’s it going?”

The bus driver turned to Kevin as if they were old friends. He threw his hands up. “They’re
kidding
me, right? I’ve got less than twenty-five minutes left on my shift, and this piece dies on me.”

“They’re sending someone out?”

“Sure,” the driver said sarcastically. “‘Soon as they can,’ they said. But who knows what that means? My wife is waiting for me. My
kids
are waiting for me, I need to get home.”

“Okay. I’ll take a look.”

“What? You’re a mechanic?”

“Yup, definitely. You’ve got a few basic tools up here, right? Screwdriver, stuff like that?”

“Of course, but – ”

Kevin beckoned to him.

Let’s go, then. Hand them over. Don’t argue with the technician.

The man reached down into the compartment beneath his seat for the little tool bag, and he gave them to Kevin with forced hope in his eyes. The driver
wanted
Kevin to be telling the truth, wanted it because he had no other choice. Kevin looked nothing like any bus mechanic he had ever seen, but that didn’t matter. Couldn’t a bus mechanic be wearing shorts and a t-shirt? He didn’t
have
to be always wearing coveralls, any more than an off-duty police officer had to have his nightstick always at the ready. Kevin probably wasn’t a tool thief, so at worst he was a pathological liar. Or just a weirdo in running clothes who had nothing better to do than pretend to be an off-duty technician.

Worth a shot.

Kevin walked to the back of the bus with the tool bag under one arm, humming as he did.

I don’t know what I’m getting ready for
, he thought,
but maybe I don’t ever
need
to know. Because it’s starting to look like I’m ready for absolutely anything
.

When he was finished he stood back and looked around him, feeling disoriented. It had taken longer than expected, and somewhere between removing the side panel, hot-wiring a fuse connection, and double checking the fuel lines and battery terminals, some kind of secondary process in his head had taken over. He had become so immersed in the mental texts of his engine-maintenance collection that he had gone into the same grayed-out state that came over him while he was reading.

But in the meantime, I think I did it.

It would work, he knew it. He could tell just by the feeling of satisfaction in his stomach; it was as though he had found a set of keys that had been lost until just this minute. He walked to the front and told the driver to give it a try.

He did, and the bus started up with a grateful rumble. “You just saved my
life
,” the driver said.

Kevin returned the tool bag, waved at him like a bellhop dismissing a tip, and then he was back on his way up Fifth. He glanced up at the steadily lightening sky and realized he had to get going.

Don’t want to be late getting fired.

He began jogging again. Faster now. Running. He reached 67
^th
street and was about to turn right when he heard someone calling out to him. “
Now
you’re moving.”

Kevin looked, saw no one at first, and stopped.

“Feeling better, huh?”

This time Kevin found him: the homeless guy from behind the Metropolitan. He was sitting on one of the benches by the wall enclosing Central Park. All of his possessions were with him, shopping cart, coats, boxes. He seemed to be migrating.

“Where’s your training buddy?” the man asked.

Kevin hesitated. Then he understood. “That guy who was following me? No, he wasn’t – ”

“Not him,” the homeless man said impatiently. “Your
buddy
.”

“What buddy?” 

“The guy you always used to run with. The big guy.”

Kevin froze.

Hold on. The big guy?
“Tell me what he looked like.”

“The
guy
. Your friend. He’s a beast, looks like you but a little shorter, a little thicker. Like a linebacker. Every
day
you guys would run by. Every afternoon, like clockwork. You
know
,” the homeless man insisted.

Kevin stood there for another moment.

Yes
, he thought suddenly.
I do know
.

He turned and ran east, toward his apartment. Maybe he would still be late. And maybe he would still be fired. But now those things seemed far less important, far less interesting. Because he had a few hundred questions to ask his buddy Danny Fisher, his buddy who claimed to have met him just a few days before school started.

No, Danny was part of the team. Part of the team in charge of getting me ready. And Petak is full of shit. Today is the day. Today I’m going to go find out what’s really going on.

Kevin was right.

Today
was
the day.

Though not at all for the reasons he expected.

Part 5 – Pop Quiz

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