[Continuing chapter fourteen]
Casey pulled the car to the curb, opening his door before he’d come to a stop. He didn’t bother to set the brake, just pulled the wheel to steer the front wheels into the curb. Then he was out and running toward Eve and her—prisoners? victims?—keeping the Harlows’ car between him and Eve for as long as he could.
Eve was saying something, but she hadn’t pitched her voice loudly enough for Casey to be able to make it out. Probably it was intended for Jean Harlow anyway; the girl’s face looked cold and smooth, almost death-like. Like something from Madame Tussaud’s, Casey thought.
Clearly he was out of time. Shouting, he rounded the back of the car. Hope she’s rattled enough not to aim. Everyone, he noted, was staring at him. Good.
Now Eve brought the gun up. It was shaking, he noted. He could see a sort of glazed sheen overlaying her eyes, the sort of look he’d seen on a few faces in the hospital while convalescing back in late 1917. Mad, he thought. Utterly mad.
Everything was happening with excruciating slowness, the way aerial combat had sometimes played out. Usually the combats where you were badly outnumbered. Casey saw the revolver’s hammer move back, then snap forward. He let his body guess the direction the bullet would travel, and shift himself to the other side. He did not slow in his rush toward her.
Eve did not get off a second shot; Casey heard the explosion of the first just as he slammed into her. She grunted as the air exploded from her lungs, and then the two of them were sliding on the dew-slicked grass. Casey grabbed for both of her hands, just to be sure of getting the one holding the gun.
A moment’s struggle, and then Casey felt the chill weight of the metal against his hand. Wrenching it from Eve’s grasp even as she clawed at him with her other hand, he threw the gun away. It clattered under the Harlows’ car, safely out of reach.
Now Eve was screaming at him, a pretty much incomprehensible howl of frustration and rage. Casey pulled himself up, trying to stay away from fingernails that seemed claw-sharp. His hand was bleeding where she’d scratched him, he noted distractedly. His ribs screamed with the new pain—no, he realized. His entire body was in pain.
The Harlows had disappeared. Good; Desiree must have got them away. He hoped Grey didn’t mind being awakened this early. He got to his feet. It’s really late, he thought. And I’m so tired.
Eve made no move to get up, or even to crawl away. That was good; he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to restrain her if that proved necessary. She didn’t move, though. She’d stopped screaming, too, and was now staring past him, in that mad way that too many veterans did.
Too late he realized that her eyes were focused on something just behind him, and not on the middle distance, the way, say, Telford’s eyes had often been. He had just started to turn when the blow struck.
Because he’d started to turn, though, the blow didn’t fully connect with the back of his skull. Casey went down, but though his vision flared as if he’d been staring into Klieg lights, the effect was only momentary. He was able to roll as he landed, putting some distance between himself and his assailant.
It was Oakes. The baby grand who’d assaulted him earlier, and trailed him and Desiree onto the Venice pier—Buckley’s torpedo, he reminded himself—stood between him and Eve Adams, a blackjack or something similar in one hand. “You don’t listen too good, do you, Casey?” the man said. For a moment, he stood there, uncertain of whether to help Eve or finish Casey.
Casey’s response was to roll away, down the lawn and toward the car. Why couldn’t I have just held on to the damned gun? he asked himself. Just stay there another second or two, he thought to the torpedo.
“He’s after the gun!” Eve shouted, and the sudden burst of sound seemed to galvanize the man. Grabbing one of Eve’s hands, he hauled her—screaming at the pain and indignity—to her feet, and ran with her to his car.
Casey reached under the car, but could not get his hand on the gun. He’d have to go around the other side.
He heard the starter on Oakes’s car engage as he struggled to his feet. Then he was back on the grass again, and sleep seemed to be the most important thing on the morning’s agenda.
Next Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five
Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen
No comments:
Post a Comment