Collision(79)

Ben ducked back against the alcove and waited.

Jackie ran past, intent on catching sight of Ben, and Ben rushed him in six steps, swinging the vase hard as Jackie turned and dipped his hand in his jacket pocket. The vase slammed into Jackie’s face like a ceramic baseball bat, shattering.

Jackie reeled back, and Ben swung at him again with the remnant of the vase, the heavy bottom. He socked Jackie in the mouth and the young man went down, face bloodied, lip cut, in a half-conscious sprawl.

Ben leaned down, took Jackie’s gun and keys from his jacket pocket, dropped them down the front of his own shirt. Where was the knife?

Jackie tried to focus on him through a bloodied mask. Ben leaned down and, with his good hand, hit Jackie as hard as he could in the jaw. Twice. Jackie tried to make a fist and Ben pounded Jackie’s head three times against the floor.

Jackie stopped fighting, his eyes unfocused.

“Hey!” a woman started screaming. Ben looked up. The woman was a sales associate, manicured hand at mouth.

“He has a gun. I saw it in his pocket. Call the police,” Ben said. “He followed me from a house on Nottingham Street. He hurt a woman there.”

The woman retreated toward the sales desk’s phone. She pointed a finger at him as though it would freeze him in place. “Don’t move.”

Choose. Stay and explain to the cops that Jackie had killed Delia. But then he was in jail and maybe funneled back to another Kidwell. He stumbled to his feet and ran. He heard the woman yell, “Stop!” He didn’t.

She’d have security on him in a minute. He headed for a door marked “Associates Only.” It wasn’t locked and he went through, hearing the woman yelling behind him. He rushed down a corridor leading off to an empty break room and a much larger back stock area.

And a freight elevator. He hit the button.

Get out to the parking lot. This was an anchor store, it would have a lot of exits. Find Jackie’s car, take it.

He waited for the elevator to arrive; it cranked up sluggishly from the ground floor. It boomed as though it hadn’t been serviced in years, a noisy throat-clearing rise up the elevator shaft.

He pressed himself against the wall. The elevator chimed its arrival, the cargo-wide doors slid open like a slowly drawn curtain. The elevator stood empty. He rushed inside and jabbed the first-floor button and the close-door button.

He heard the door to the employee area open. Feet running, stumbling. “I’m . . . gonna cut you . . . to shreds.”

No. The doors began to close, sliding on their own ancient schedule. Ben yanked out his shirttail, groped for the gun and the car keys.

Jackie raced toward the closing door, his forehead a blood smear, eyes raging, nose bent. The knife low, tight in his hand, ready to strike.

The doors started to close. Ben raised the gun and fired; Jackie saw the gun, his expression of rage shifted into surprise; Jackie dodged to the left; Ben pivoted to follow Jackie’s lunge and fired just before the doors slid shut; the elevator began its arthritic descent.

Did I hit him? Did I kill him?

Ben stood motionless in the elevator, the gun warm in his hand. What the hell’s wrong with you, you could have stopped the doors, dumb ass, you had the gun, he thought.

The elevator settled; the doors inched open. He hid the gun awkwardly under his shirttail, listening for pursuing footsteps. Only silence.

He turned and hurried out of the cargo bay exit, jumped down to the parking lot.

Ben ran now. Pain drove him like an engine. He reached the stretch of parking lot where he’d abandoned the Explorer. The black Mercedes still stood where Jackie had left it, an angry man standing by the sedan, blocked in.

Ben hurried to the driver’s door.

“For Christ’s sakes, learn to park,” the man said.

“I will,” Ben said.

The man gawked at him, the blood on him, the sweat. “Hey, do you need help?”

“I’m fine, thanks.” Ben slid into the Mercedes.

“Wait a minute, wait . . .” A note of recognition in his voice. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket.

Of course it was a stick shift, since his arm wasn’t working right. But he was alive. No complaints. He gunned the Mercedes into a lurching motion, found a rhythm. Every time he changed gear the dull agony pulsed.

Ben powered out of the lot. You had a gun, he only had a knife. You could have hit the button, opened the doors, you could have shot the murdering bastarddead. You cannot run, you have to take the fight back to these people. They will never stop chasing you.

Through the pain he thought of Delia, lying broken on the floor, gone in a second, like his Emily. He’d shot twice at Jackie and missed both times. Pilgrim was right; he was no good at this war. He prayed as he pulled back onto the main road through Frisco that the man in the parking lot didn’t get the license number, wasn’t calling the police, that sirens wouldn’t rise in pursuit of him in the next minute.