The Survivor (45 page)

He flung himself away, landing on his back and firing as Pavlo reared up from the mattress, a silk sheet fluttering behind him like a cape. The room exploded with gunfire, each crack amplified, each muzzle flare multiplied off the walls of facing glass. Concrete chipped near Nate’s face, flecks biting into his cheek, and he saw two holes open up in the still-descending sheet behind Pavlo, everything miraculously missing until a bullet slammed into Nate’s side. The howl issuing from his lips was little more than a heated rush of air.

The old man leaped from the mattress onto the floating staircase and bounced toward the laid-open hatch, lunging two, three steps at a time. On his back, Nate aimed the trembling pistol and squeezed off one shot after another, the sparks catching up to the man until a round finally caught his calf just before it pulled up out of sight.

Pavlo’s body thumped down on the roof, unseen. Not so much as a yelp. An instant of silence.

Then a scraping.

Nate looked down at his side. A quarter-size hole, leaking ink. He reached behind, found the exit wound. Through and through.

Rolling to all fours, he forced himself to his feet. The only way he could walk was in a half shuffle, tugging one leg along. His right hand held the gun, so he tried to clamp the wound with his left but could apply virtually no pressure at all. He mounted the stairs, drizzling blood in a neat line at his feet.

His vision spotted, his legs growing wobbly beneath him. He pictured Cielle with her coloring book on that airplane, bouncing over the Rockies.

Is it gonna be okay?

Yeah. It’s gonna be okay.

Climbing the stairs took such focus that he barely noticed when his head pulled up into the sight line. A flash of light and a bullet wavered the air inches from his temple, the bark of the gun coming on a split-second delay. Across the roof Pavlo backed up, tender on his wounded leg, readying for a second shot.

Nate lifted the gun as far as his strength allowed and fired. A bullet embedded in Pavlo’s thigh, tearing his pants, revealing the tattooed star on his kneecap. Pavlo’s gun clattered to the rooftop, sliding to the edge and then off, and he clenched his jaw and took a few hobbling steps toward Nate, his sinewy face contorting with rage.

“I will not kneel to you.”

Nate’s next shot shattered his hip. Pavlo jerked ninety degrees, red mist puffing from his waist. He wobbled on his feet, then squared himself again, screaming, tendons standing out on his blue-inked neck.

“I will not—”

Hand shaking around the Glock, Nate shot out his ankle.

Pavlo collapsed onto the roof, his knees striking hard, jolting him before he fell flat onto his stomach. Then he started dragging himself away, elbow over elbow, toward the brink of the roof. Nate started after him.

The staggering openness and panoramic view snatched the breath from his lungs, and he paused for a drunken instant to regain his balance. It seemed he was standing on top of the entire city. Los Angeles unfurled below, a bejeweled blanket. The digital billboards and flashing club signs, green stoplights and stalled cars, all the stop-go, all that hot-cold, all those souls floating through the streets on gleaming rims, walking the corners on patched-up pumps, clogging the alleys gripping brown-bagged bottles. Everything was flayed open and laid bare, the gonna-bes and winged dreamers, the glittering lights coursing block to block, the blood of the city. Here Nate had soared and crashed. And here he had salvaged from the wreckage the slivers worth keeping, had pieced them together with trembling hands to form something better, something true.

The taste of the night air was oddly pleasing, wild fennel and sage of the canyon mixed with ash from the explosion. His blood felt warm against his skin and then quickly cold. He sent a signal to his legs, and a moment later they started moving again.

On his belly ahead, Pavlo grunted and scraped, grunted and scraped. Walking across the wide skylight, Nate left footprints of blood. He’d just reached the other side when a voice said, “Stop.”

Nate halted, gun lowered, shoulders slumping, his inhalations coming in weak rasps. For a moment he just breathed, and he heard Misha breathing behind him, too, waiting for a single wrong move.

Slowly, Nate turned. Misha stood on the skylight, aiming directly at his forehead. Nate’s Glock remained at his side in his all-but-dead right hand; he couldn’t raise it if he tried. Misha’s boyish face looked smooth and innocent in the pale light. Blood gleamed on one of his hands, a pinkie finger sticking out at the wrong angle, but that didn’t stop him from keeping the sights dead level.

“Did you really think you could do it?” Reluctant admiration found its way into Misha’s voice. With his damaged hand, he reached slowly for a pocket, pulling out a pair of matte-black handcuffs. The pinkie, bent perpendicular to the back of his hand, looked like a snapped twig. “Even if you killed us all, a man such as Pavlo Shevchenko makes one phone call and ten more of us get on a boat in Kiev. And if you kill all
them,
he snaps his fingers and twenty more come to fill
their
place.”

Nate’s gun hand twitched, and Misha’s eyes dropped to it. A single threatening movement and it was over.

Nate said, “Then I guess I’ll have to kill him, too.”

Misha’s rosy lips pressed together. Amused. “You cannot even raise your hand.”

Nate said, “Don’t have to,” and fired down into the skylight.

The center of the thick pane gave way, Misha lurching back, his arms flaring as his gun discharged, and then he dropped down into the break, fangs of glass biting into him. Sinking to his torso, he lunged to hold on, the handcuffs flying from his grip and skittering across the rooftop. He managed to clutch the crumbling edge, his fingertips sliding on the intact ledges of glass.

The points had raked through his body on its way down, one shard buried between his ribs. A tiny spurt of bright arterial blood splashed against the pane. As soon as the dagger of glass stopped damming that wound, he was done.

He stared at the tip of Nate’s shoe. “A hand,” he sputtered. His fingers slid another millimeter, leaving four streaks on the glass.

Nate raised his shoe, put it on Misha’s shoulder, and sank him through the shattered skylight. Misha landed in the block of moonlight, his limbs twisted this way and that, glass tinkling on the concrete floor around him.

Nate swayed on his feet, summoning strength, the wound in his side drooling. He’d lost a lot of blood.

Behind him he could hear Pavlo grunting, still dragging himself away. The breeze carried the sound of sirens. Down at the base of the hill, flashing lights turned off Laurel Canyon. Winding their way up, they swept around a bend, vanishing for the moment.

Nate forced his body to turn, to walk. He caught up to Pavlo a few yards before the precipice. Despite his decimated lower body, Pavlo had reached a vent pipe and was prying at it, powerful forearm muscles flexing beneath their tattoo wrappings. Remarkably, he’d made some progress, the pipe rattling a bit in the flashing. His movements had slowed, but he was still at it, and Nate realized that he would stay at it until he tore free a weapon, pulled himself back to Nate, and staved in his head. Most shocking was how
unfazed
Pavlo seemed by it all—the still-smoldering house, his fragmented legs, the executioner stalking him across the roof. He grunted and tugged, his inked fingers relentless around the pipe, every last ounce of strength bent to dragging himself one inch closer to violence.

Standing over him, Nate aimed down at the back of his neck and pulled the trigger.

The Glock gave a muted snap. No more rounds.

Pavlo never looked up, never stopped tugging at the pipe, but he registered the sound and gave a rasping chuckle. “You think this is pain?” he said, panting, the roof pressed to his mouth, muffling his words. He released a few notes of laughter, sweat shining on his cheek, the nape of his neck.

Nate grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him across the roof, Pavlo’s hands scrabbling for traction, his feet dragging limply. Nate’s grip gave out just at the edge. A few hundred feet below, the canyon finally bottomed out in a seam of boulders and jagged rocks.

Pavlo’s legs were a mess, streaming blood, one foot twisted around on the ankle. He couldn’t rise or run, but he clawed his way up Nate’s body, tearing at his shirt, grabbing his shoulders, bringing his face close. The warble of sirens grew clearer.

Mustering one last burst of energy, Nate braced himself to hurl Pavlo from the roof.

There was a click between the men’s bodies, and Pavlo grinned maniacally up into Nate’s face. A victorious leer. Nate glanced down.

Pavlo had gotten Misha’s handcuffs and locked one cuff around his own wrist.

And the other around Nate’s.

“Now if you throw me, I take you with me,” Pavlo hissed.

The breeze came up, whipping Nate’s hair, carrying the earthy scent of the canyon and soot from the dwindling fire on the first floor. He turned his head, regarding the drop. Way down at the bottom, spotlit by a preternatural throw of moonlight, Charles stood atop one of the boulders, the breeze lifting his hair and sucking the smoke from his decimated torso. He gazed up. Waiting.

“You actually gonna help this time,” Nate asked, “or just stand there looking dead?”

“Help?”
Charles said. “This is all you.” Even across the ember-flecked distance, the words were clear as day in Nate’s head. “It’s
always
been just you.”

Nate felt something that had been gripping his insides release, something so long forgotten that he knew it now only from its absence. Charles’s stomach began to fill in, the edges of the wound stitching together, and the dried blood on his face and hands moistened and flowed backward, sucked into his body like a horror movie on rewind. Charles touched his intact stomach in wonderment. Then he looked up at Nate again and grinned.

“’Bout fuckin’ time,” he said.

Pavlo sputtered and clutched at Nate, forcing his focus back to the roof and the steel rings enclosing their wrists, joining them. The weight of the man hanging on him, the muscles glistening with sweat, blood, and ink. One step to the left, the plummet.

Nate felt the grainy night take itself apart, pixel by pixel, and reconstitute itself. He thought about Janie’s body surrendering to him in the riptide. Wheeling her out of the maternity ward with that pink bundle in her lap. Cielle’s saving up at the car wash to try to pay for private school. His million-dollar life-insurance policy. Sitting on the bridge above that stream, his daughter’s head resting against his shoulder. Janie’s mouth at his collarbone, her ankles crossed at the small of his back. Their house with the loose brick of the front porch mortared into place again. The family portrait hidden in the depths of Cielle’s closet, waiting.

Pavlo held on with all his strength. He looked into Nate and must not have liked what he saw, for his grin ossified on his face, a skeletal grimace.

Nate tugged his wrist back, testing the strength of the handcuffs.

Then he gave the faintest of smiles.

WHAT WAS FOUND

Funny how fallin’ feels like flyin’

For a little while
.

—Otis “Bad” Blake

Shevchenko, Pavlo Maksimovich

? – November 2

Overbay, Nathan John

AUGUST 10, 1976 – NOVEMBER 2

Nathan John Overbay died Friday of injuries sustained in a fall. On October 23, Nate played a heroic role in thwarting a robbery at the First Union Bank of Southern California, likely saving many lives in the process. The aftermath of that event found him targeted by the criminals behind the failed heist. A statement released by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office credits Nate’s courageous actions with leading investigators to a cache of incriminating evidence that helped break up the criminal ring.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Nate attended UCLA on an ROTC scholarship before serving in the U.S. Army. Upon completion of military service, Nate became a Professional Crisis Responder with LAPD, where he was highly regarded by his colleagues for his empathy and commitment.

He is survived by his father, his loving wife, Jane, and his daughter, Cielle.

Epilogue

Morning light suffused the kitchen, bleaching the walls, buffing the counter to a high shine and lending the room a bright afterworld tint. Wearing the pressed blouse and plaid skirt of her private-school uniform, Cielle perched on one of the barstools, spooning oatmeal into her mouth and staring thoughtfully through the wide doorway into the living room. Above the mantel the old family portrait hung at a minor tilt. She and Janie had restored it to its rightful place the previous night in a quiet impromptu ceremony. There had been no words, just the two of them working in concert to balance on the stool, lift the heavy frame, and guide the hanging wire home.

Afterward they’d stood for a time gazing up, holding hands.

Now Cielle breathed the morning quiet and ate her breakfast. Her face was as pretty as ever, and full, though not as full as it had been.

Footfalls descended the stairs, and then Janie emerged, rubbing one eye with the heel of her hand and stifling a yawn. Passing behind Cielle, she gave her daughter’s neck an affectionate squeeze, and Cielle caught her hand and clasped it. Janie paused, followed Cielle’s stare across to the portrait, and they took a collective moment. The three of them preserved in a crisp photograph, cracking up, the frame still slightly askew.

Janie started up the coffeemaker, leaning over it on locked arms as it percolated, and then she filled her mug and sipped, her eyes wistful. Cielle finished her breakfast, washed the bowl in the sink, and they headed together for the garage. The door closed behind them.

A moment later it opened again.

Cielle came back in, crossed to the living room, and, lifting a solitary finger, straightened the family portrait. She studied it a moment, her features heavy with remembrance, and then a private memory flickered beneath the surface, firming her cheeks, bringing up an incipient smile. She jogged back out, lighter on her feet.