Cold Fury (19 page)

“Oh . . . Willy . . .”

“See, I killed my own daughter, Sara Jane. I was drunk and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car, but she trusted me. She died and I lived, and I will never understand how the universe got it so wrong.” His eyes were wet behind his glasses but his voice was steady. “Yes, it was an accident. But all those drinks I had weren’t. I didn’t intend to kill my daughter but I did, and I loved her more than life, and still . . . still the stain won’t ever wash out.”

“Willy,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Listen to me and listen good,” he said. “You don’t want that cancer on your soul. I know your life is upside down and there are some very bad people after you. But the real fight now is your brain versus your heart, doing what you know is right versus what you feel must be done. Killing someone, especially when it’s on purpose . . .” His words drifted off. He cleared his throat again and said, “Don’t do that to yourself, girl. Promise me you won’t.”

“Willy, we need to call a doctor . . .”

“Promise,” he said, fixing a gaze on me that shone with remorse.

“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

Afterward I got him as comfortable as possible and then called an ambulance. When I saw that he had drifted off, I slipped out of the apartment, shimmied up to the Crow’s Nest, and grabbed the briefcase. I checked its contents—money, credit card, and of course the notebook—and remembered the gun. On my way across the gym, I climbed inside the ring and retrieved it, and then paused only long enough to scribble some words on a few pieces of paper. I opened the apartment door so the EMT people would see Willy, left behind the bloody, shorn shirt I borrowed from them, and hurried back toward the gym exit. I stopped every so often to post one of the pieces of paper, each of which bore an arrow and read
Guy with broken arms this
way.

I climbed in the Lincoln and started the engine, hearing approaching sirens.

I was leaking tears, wondering if I’d ever see Willy again.

I wondered if I’d be able to look him in the eye if I ever broke my promise.

15

I'M NOT CERTAIN,
but I assume that the life of a fugitive doesn’t normally go from sleeping in bloody head bandages on an army cot above a sweat-stinking boxing gym to being saluted by a doorman in epaulets before settling into a four-star hotel suite, gliding from a steam shower Jacuzzi to a warm, enveloping spot between two-thousand-thread-count Egyptian sheets on a bed large enough to host a square dance.

But it did.

I had the notebook to thank.

I couldn’t believe it was real until sushi rolled in on a silver cart.

According to the notebook, the hotel I was in—the Commodore, across the street from Lake Michigan—had been secretly owned and operated by the Outfit for seventy years. I’d randomly selected it from the list of safe houses, closing my eyes and pointing at the page. There was a phone number and scribbled instructions next to it—make the call, ask for the manager, and say “Al sent me.” Afterward, all I had to do was show up and I would be treated like a VIP, no names taken and no questions asked. When I arrived and repeated the line to the doorman—“Al sent me”—he saluted, said my room was ready, and noted that the Lincoln would be at the curb each morning, ready to go. He looked me over from head to toe and politely enquired whether there was anything else I needed. I said no, but asked his name just in case.

“Al,” he said with a wink. “Just like everybody else around here.”

And then I was riding a silent, private elevator.

The key was in the door; the room was vast and smelled like roses.

It was after the three-course room service was demolished and my stomach was aching with satisfaction that the extreme quiet and stillness of the place set in. It was a stark contrast to the past three days. I threw the robe on a chair and lay on my back in silk PJs staring at the ceiling as my beaten body took on the composition of a jellyfish, adhering to the wondrous bed beneath it. My mind, which had existed in a constant state of jumpy alertness, downshifted to a low gear, and my hand inched toward a remote control. The enormous flat screen flicked on, and I heard familiar zither music. I turned my head and saw shadows flash against the walls of a black-and-white, bombed-out Vienna, and smiled—it was Lou’s favorite movie,
The Third Man
. It felt like an omen—whether a good or sinister one, I can’t say—just that it made me feel my little brother was nearby. I closed my eyes and let the music fill my lungs.

Zing-zing-zing.

Tinkle-zing-zing.

Thoughts of Lou moved me closer to my grinning, lanky dad with a permanent five-o’clock shadow and flour on his shoes.

Zing-zing-zing.

Tinkle-zing-zing.

Memories of my dad hugging my mom in the kitchen until she pushes him away, giggling and smoothing her skirt as I enter the room, her face lighting up, so happy to see me, and she opens her arms and I’m right where I want to be, in her embrace. Her arms folded around me, and I smelled her rose-oil perfume and soft dark hair. It was sweet and sorrowful because we were together; I also knew I was asleep and dreaming, but we were together, and asleep, and then I was pitching weightlessly over the edge of a cool blue waterfall, not caring if I ever touched the bottom. Falling, normally terrifying, was a relief. It felt so good that I never wanted to wake up, but I did, because my mom woke me. I felt her delicate hand brush my cheek and opened my eyes without lifting my head from the pillow. She was sitting in the chair across from me, and I said, “Mom. You’re alive . . .”

She smiled. “I’m with your dad and Lou, Sara Jane, and we need you.”

“I need you, too. All of you. But I can’t find you.”

“You can’t stop now. You’ve come so far in such a short time.”

“I’m tired, Mom.” I yawned. “Too tired to go on.”

“But darling,” she said, her smile fading, “if you don’t look for us, who will?”

“So tired . . .” My eyelids fluttered.

“Sara Jane,” she said, and the urgency in her normally calm speech forced my attention. “If you don’t look for us,” she said, folding herself into the chair across from me, “we may never be found.”

“Okay, Mom, okay,” I said through another yawn. “I’ll keep looking. I just need to sleep first, okay?”

Her smile returned. “You’re such a strong girl . . .”

Behind her words, another voice warned, “That’s a nice girl, that. But she ought to go careful in Vienna . . .”

My mom said, “But you have to be careful in Chicago . . .”

The voice returned. “Everybody ought to go careful in a city like this.”

“Everybody,” my mom said, brushing my cheek again, “has to be careful in a city like this.”

I blinked awake at her gentle touch and looked at the robe folded over the chair. A voice murmured behind me, and I turned to the TV. I’d watched
The Third Man
with Lou so many times that I knew the character’s name—Popescu. “Everybody ought to go careful in a city like this,” he said gravely. I looked at the robe again and then lay back on the downy pillow. This time I couldn’t have stopped crying if I wanted to, the tears fed by the cool blue waterfall over which I’d tumbled. It was late Tuesday afternoon, and small gusts of air-conditioning rippled the curtains, moving golden spots of filtered sunlight around the ceiling. The room was so beautiful and comfortable, so desolate and remote, that it felt like the end of a life. I wanted to get up, pack my few things, and continue on my desperate journey to nowhere, but my body was dead weight.

I tried to lift an arm but it wouldn’t move.

I willed my leg to bend but it was paralyzed.

I turned inward to my aloneness and cried until I was unconscious.

When I awoke, the only light in the room was the rectangle of flat-screen TV, glowing on the wall like a secret portal. I looked to it, hoping for an answer, and watched a man bark about politics until his face turned red, and turned it off.

There were so few answers.

So many questions.

There was no one to help me but me.

For the next unknown hours I slept and became conscious and slept again. I remember trying to order room service, slurring my order into the room’s phone and then canceling it, trudging across the carpet to pee in the marble bathroom, and then rolling back into bed. It’s possible that I would’ve remained semicomotose forever if my cell phone hadn’t rung and led me out of the fog. It buzzed for what seemed like an eternity, but I was so far from wakefulness that I couldn’t rouse myself to answer it. After it stopped, I blinked thickly and opened my eyes. Sunlight blared through the curtains. I struggled to sit up, throwing my legs over the side of the bed like they belonged to someone else. I used the heels of my palms to grind sleep from my eyes, not knowing what day it was and not caring. It felt as if my entire being had gone through a gigantic meat grinder and then been slapped and patted back into shape.

It wasn’t quite an emotional breakdown that I had.

It was more like a break apart, clean and oil the pieces, and put back together.

I was far from being in a happy place, but at least more prepared for what might lurk outside the door.

That’s when I remembered my mom’s warning about being careful, since what lurked outside was Chicago. Someone had tried to sneak inside via a phone call, and I looked over at my cell lying silent and inert on the carpet. I bent painfully and picked it up, stared at the display, which indicated the last caller, blinked, and stared again. I’d flexed my emotional abs, prepared for a hard blow to the gut when I saw Uncle Buddy’s number, or Detective Smelt’s, or worse, unknown digits belonging to a phantom in a ski mask.

I did not expect Max’s name and number.

To be honest, I had almost forgotten about him.

Seeing his name now was akin to looking into an alternate universe.

As I inspected the display, the phone buzzed in my hand and I jumped like an electrified rabbit. It was Max again, and I was gripped with the sort of fear that had nothing to do with insane uncles, rogue cops, or masked assassins. Instead, it was old-fashioned crush anxiety—talking to someone you really, really like when you aren’t prepared. But the prospect of not talking to him was even worse, so I took a deep breath, told myself, “Casual, casual,” and pushed the green button.

“Hello?” I said, as casual as a mental patient.

“Sara Jane?” Max said. “Is that you?”

“Hey, Max. How are you?”

“I’m good,” he said. “Are you okay? You sound funny.”

“Oh,” I said, touching at the bruises on my neck. “Um . . . yeah, my throat feels a little weird.”

“So were you sick or something? We were supposed to meet at the Davis Theater on Sunday.”

“Max,” I said, feeling a blush creep over my face, “I’m so, so sorry I missed the movie. I should have called, but this weekend was just really . . . busy.”

“Family stuff?”

“You could say that.”

“I know how it is,” he said. “When my dad calls from L.A. and my mom answers the phone, the fireworks start immediately. I just want to escape, you know?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Speaking of family, I met your uncle.”

That shut me up. I tried to recover but could only murmur, “Uncle Buddy?”

“Yeah. And your aunt Greta.”

“She’s not my aunt.”

“She called herself your aunt.”

“She’s
not
,” I said, too forcefully, which shut Max up. We were both quiet until I cleared my throat and said, “So where did you meet him?”

“At your house.”

“You went to my house?”

“Uh . . . yeah. Your uncle was working on the front door. I held it in place for him while he attached a hinge. Cool old place, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“He and your aunt . . . or whoever she is, mentioned that they were staying with you. Your parents and brother are out of town or something, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said dully. “Or something.”

“Your uncle’s a pretty chatty guy. He had a ton of questions about school: what time we go in the morning, what classes we’re in, what kind of security . . .”

“I’ll bet.”

“He told me I could stop by your house anytime.”

“What? No, don’t do that!”

“Huh?”

“I mean, unless I’m there. Uncle Buddy can really trap you.”

“Listen,” Max said, “I hope I didn’t, like, overstep a boundary, as my mom’s therapist would say. It’s just, you weren’t at the movie and you haven’t been in school. I was worried.”

“You were?” I said. “About me?”

“Yeah. Well, I mean, me
and
Doug were worried. It’s weird when a friend isn’t where she’s supposed to be, right?”

“Right,” I said quietly, that word
friend
from Max’s lips feeling like a punch in the heart. “Weird.”

“By the way, Doug has this movie,
Goodfellas
, scheduled for . . .”

Max’s words faded into the background as my brain kicked into emotional-calculator mode. My home was now off-limits with Uncle Buddy lying in wait plus the fact that I’d brought a curse on Willy and couldn’t return to Windy City Gym equaled Fep Prep—the last place where I could be the Sara Jane I was before this nightmare began. No one there knew about my life outside its walls, which provided a comforting suspension of reality. It was like being in bubble—as long as the bubble came with electronic surveillance every five feet and a squad of security guards that wouldn’t let a cop inside without frisking him. Plus, it’s housed in an old redbrick former shoe factory, with a chiming clock tower that used to call laborers to work (and now warns kids to be in homeroom by eight fifteen), composed of twisting hallways, stairways to nowhere, and out-of-the-way classrooms; only kids who are super-accomplished gamers can easily navigate the place. It’s my second year and I still get turned around in that labyrinth.

I looked at myself in the mirror as Max continued to talk.

The high cheekbones and olive skin were aspects of my mom’s face that existed in my own.