Vigilante (32 page)

He nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

“You pulled me out of it,” she said, her eyes growing wide and angry. “But you left Vincent to die.”

“Who’s—?”

“Vincent was my boyfriend!” she said, raising her volume a notch but still keeping quiet enough to not alert anyone outside the room. “He was my everything! My parents didn’t know about us, they wouldn’t have approved. . . . We were going to get married! We were going to have . . .” She tried to go on, but the words caught in her throat and she couldn’t hold back a bitter sob.

“I’m so sorry,” said Nolan, wishing he could comfort her somehow. He remembered her truck, and it was caved in on the passenger’s side where another vehicle had landed on top of it. He’d had no idea there was anyone else inside.

“
Don’t
pity me!” she said, suddenly raising the gun and strengthening her grip on it. “I don’t want your sympathy! I don’t want anything from
you
!”

Nolan looked around the room, trying to think of anything he could say or do. Anything at all. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked. He wasn’t frightened, or concerned for himself. A large part of him wished that she
would
do it.

She took a step forward and pointed the gun at his head. It shook violently from her rage and her grief. Finally it fell to her side and she dropped her head into one hand and let herself cry for a long moment.

“Why didn’t you go back for him?” she whispered.

Nolan had no answer that she wanted to hear. “I didn’t know,” he said.

Elise snapped and brought the silver revolver around to collide with Nolan’s face. He was already seeing stars when she hit him again.

“
Why?
” she screamed, no longer concerned about keeping her parents from hearing. With every word, she pounded him with the gun another time. “
Why! Didn’t! You! Know!
”

Nolan thought he heard shouting outside the bedroom and fists pounding against the door, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He was trying as best he could to shield his face from Elise’s blows, which hadn’t stopped just because she ran out of words. The gun kept knocking him back and forth, sweeping one way across his face and then the other. He saw blood stain the bedspread and realized, dazed, that he wasn’t feeling enough pain.

His vision went red.

He knew he was close to passing out when the big window to his left shattered and someone screamed, “
Freeze!
”

Nolan looked up through the fog and the blood and saw someone he knew. A woman. She seemed familiar. He recognized her. But what was her name? He couldn’t piece any thoughts together in the haze of the stinging pain all over his face.

“
Don’t you move one muscle!
” shouted the newcomer with righteous authority. She was pointing what he recognized as a black, federal-issue Sigma 9mm at Elise.

Elise was startled by the newcomer’s appearance and dropped the revolver on the ground. Immediately she burst into tears again, and Nolan saw her lost, bitter eyes move from him to the woman who’d just come to his aid.

“Uncuff him!
Now!
” yelled his rescuer.

Coral! That was her name. Coral Lively! OCI agent and moonlighting vigilante. She grabbed something off of a chair near the bed and tucked it under her arm.

Nolan felt his hands being released from the cuffs, and then Coral’s arm was under one of his as she helped him up from the bed.

“Stay back!” Coral warned, and Elise withdrew, backing up to the bedroom door and making no attempt to interfere.

Coral led Nolan to the broken window, where a blast of arctic wind woke him up. With a bit of awkward help, she pushed him through it, where he landed flat on his back on what must have been at least eighteen inches of snow, because it cushioned his fall nicely. Coral jumped through the window and pulled him back up to his feet.

“Come on,” she said, still holding her gun with one hand and pointing it back at the window, “I’ve got you now.”

C
oral supported his weight, taking Nolan to an SUV parallel-parked on the street. She helped him inside and grabbed a blanket out of the back seat; wadding it up, she gave it to him to wipe the blood from his face. Coral started the vehicle, and Nolan tossed the blanket around his shoulders and tried not to shiver.

She noticed this and wordlessly turned the heat up as she turned the SUV and roared down the snow-covered street. She was all business, her eyes darting around her mirrors to ensure they weren’t being watched or followed.

Nolan glanced out his window and saw that he was still in Chelsea, not terribly far from Vasko’s storehouse.

Fifteen minutes later, Coral parked the vehicle at a homeless shelter and told Nolan to put the blanket up around him to conceal his face. Carrying a large backpack, she spoke to the man at the back door and then led Nolan quickly inside, down a dingy hall, and into a small room with a bed, a nightstand, and a chair.

“Sorry about the accommodations,” she said, shutting the door behind him. “But they don’t ask a lot of questions here.”

Nolan sat down on the bed, but nothing more. He was tired of lying down.

Coral dropped her backpack and pulled out a small first aid kit. She seated herself in the chair facing him and motioned for him to lean in close enough that she could begin stitching up the numerous cuts from the revolver’s impact on his skull, forehead, nose, and cheeks.

Nolan didn’t want to think about what he must look like now. With the hideous scars Branford had given him already disfiguring his face, and now at least a dozen or so cuts slicing up his skin, he figured he probably resembled Frankenstein. He was glad there was no mirror in the tiny room.

He was so lost inside his own mind that he almost forgot he had company.

Pathetic! She saved your life, she’s helping you now, and she’s risking everything by doing it. Don’t you dare forget she’s here, Nolan Gray.

He sat up at attention and truly entered the room for the first time. He looked intently upon her.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Of course,” she replied, continuing to work at cleaning his cuts.

“No, really. I mean it,” he said, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to stop working for a moment. “Thank you.”

Coral looked into his eyes and for one moment, he saw more vulnerability in hers than he’d ever noticed before. But she snapped out of it and merely nodded.

“You followed me to the warehouse?”

She used a moist towelette to wipe the dried blood away from his wounds. “For all the good it did. Got there right as Vasko sprung his trap. He had so many men there. . . . I pulled back by a block or so and watched what happened through a sniper scope. Tried to call it in, but the police didn’t answer, and my director at the OCI said our team was in the middle of an operation and couldn’t be recalled. And he wasn’t happy that I went AWOL for a few hours.

“When I saw what they did to you . . . I just freaked. They watched you float away for a few minutes but then left, so I ran down to the riverside and tried to reach that box. The river was carrying you downstream pretty hard, and it was all I could do to keep up. I thought it was over when I spotted that fishing boat and shot off a flare to get their attention.”

Fireworks,
thought Nolan.
Rene said he saw fireworks right before he found me. It was Coral’s flare
.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Coral said.

He appreciated that she didn’t speak of what had happened with the wet cement; he didn’t need to go down that memory lane right now.

“Who was he?” she asked.

“Colonel Aaron Branford,” said Nolan, looking far away. “My commanding officer during the war. When Thor and I were in the enemy prison, Branford was on the other end of the transmission I sent out that led to our rescue. He led the rescue mission himself.”

Coral didn’t respond to this. There was nothing to say anyway. She doubled her efforts and after ten minutes or so, declared him finished. She gave him a couple of painkillers and set her first aid kit aside, on the nightstand.

Also in her backpack was the item she’d carried under her arm from Rene’s house, and he saw it was his specialized black combat fatigues. “Vasko dumped your gear in the river. But you still have this.”

“Let me see that,” he said, and she tossed the flak jacket to him. He found a pocket knife in the medical kit and swung open the dull blade.

Coral was still examining the pants, holding the fabric up close to her eyes. “Huh. It’s not Kevlar. . . . Where’d you get this?”

“Ah, you know . . . Craigslist,” he said, and she actually let out a single breath of laughter.

Carefully but forcefully, he used the knife to scratch out the white hand on his jacket. He wasn’t sure what it was made of, exactly; Arjay had applied it. Screen printed, maybe. Nolan worked at it for five or ten minutes, until the logo was erased and all that remained was the black material underneath.

Done, he tossed the jacket back to her. “The Hand is dead. He died in that river.”

Nolan pushed back until he was sitting on the mattress with his back against the wall. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer, asking for forgiveness and direction, and offering gratitude that his life had been spared once more.

Coral returned to the chair and sat, patiently watching and waiting.

“She was right,” Nolan said, speaking at last. His eyes searched the room.

“Who was?”

“That woman with the gun,” he replied. “Her name was Elise. She said I saved her life at Battery Park, but I didn’t save her fiancé. I’ve failed as many people as I’ve saved.”

“That’s not true,” said Coral, apparently surprised.

Nolan sat up and faced her. “Branford wasn’t the first friend I got killed. There was another. I also blew someone up. An innocent girl in a nightclub. I torched the place because it belonged to Vasko, not knowing there was someone still inside. She’s dead because of my actions. And Elise’s boyfriend couldn’t have been an isolated incident. I didn’t know about him—how many more are there that I don’t know about?”

“Nolan, stop. You’re going to make yourself crazy—”

“Nolan’s dead,” he said, interrupting her.

“What?”

“I killed Nolan Gray when I started all this,” he replied. “Now The Hand is dead too.”

For the first time, Coral’s confidence appeared to waver, betraying a sliver of concern. “So who’s left?”

“Just me,” he said in a bleak tone of voice.

“Shut up and listen to me,” she said, taking him by the hand to get his full attention. She sat forward as if to look deep into him. “Whoever you are, there are still people out there who believe in you. I’m one of them. People who believe you can give them something that no else in this city can—”

He pulled away from her grasp. “If your next word is about to be ‘hope,’ spare me. A friend named Alice put her hope in me, and I got her killed. I’m fresh out of hope.”

I’m dead. That’s all I am. I am death.

Wait a minute
 . . .

“Vasko thinks I’m dead, right?” he said. “He doesn’t know about you or the fishing boat?”

“I have no idea. But I wouldn’t think he does, no.”

“What day is it?”

“The thirty-first. Tonight’s New Year’s Eve. Pryce has got me working Times Square, but I can’t imagine why. It’s not like anybody in their right mind is going to show up at such a farce. . . .”

This was it, then. The end of this year would be the end of everything.

“They’ll show up,” he said slowly, his mind racing. “Because most of them haven’t left their homes in months and they need some release. Because they aren’t in their right minds. And because they’ll want to see for themselves . . . what’s going to happen.”

He swung around and stood up, a surge of adrenaline helping steady him. With his feet under him on solid ground, he felt something he’d been missing for several days. Purpose. Resolve. Clarity.

It was time.

Nolan turned to Coral. “Will you do something for me?”

She never hesitated. “Anything.”

“I need you to get some things for me,” he said. “Stuff that won’t be easy to come by.”

She merely nodded, as if nothing were out of the ordinary about such a request. If this concerned her, she hid it well. “What are you going to do?”

“The only thing I can do. Finish what I started.”

A
t sundown, Nolan drove Coral’s SUV west through Chelsea until he reached the river.

Turning parallel to the shoreline, he drove south. He stopped and pulled over when he spotted Vasko’s massive storehouse through the falling snow, just two blocks away. Vasko’s dozens of men were still there, black forms visible through the white haze, surrounding the building just as they had a few nights ago. Nothing else seemed to have changed. Nolan noted with disgust that the cement truck was still parked on the far side of the warehouse.

He sat back in the driver’s seat and slammed his foot down on the gas, tearing through the snow on the road. When he neared the storehouse, he slammed on the brakes, sliding sideways to a stop across the street from the pier where the warehouse stood.

Vasko’s men stationed on this side of the building were startled and began shouting at this unwelcome vehicle and its driver.

Nolan swiveled in his seat to grab a large object that was waiting for him in the back seat, along with a black duffel bag. He opened the vehicle’s door and stepped out into the biting cold, his boots crunching the snow. He walked around to the front of the SUV so Vasko’s men could get a good look at him.

They recognized him right away and raised their weapons, but Nolan ignored them. Onto his shoulder, he hefted an RPG-7, the large object he’d retrieved from the vehicle’s back seat. One look at the long tube-shaped device and Vasko’s men shouted in fear and ran.

Nolan took quick aim with the preloaded rocket launcher and pulled the trigger. The grenade, shaped like a thick javelin with a cone on one end, jumped free of the RPG-7 and then lit like a missile, soaring straight across the street and through the outer wall of Vasko’s storehouse, where it left a hole more than two feet wide. Nolan watched until it finally hit something deep inside the warehouse and ignited. The blast tore a hole in the roof and shattered the snowy quiet of the evening. Once the explosion ended, Nolan could hear dozens of Vasko’s men yelling in a panic.