Collision

They muscled through the crowd, headed east for two blocks, and ran to the garage’s stairwell. They climbed the stairs up to the floor where Pilgrim had parked.

“Wait here,” Pilgrim ordered Ben. Pilgrim eased into the row of cars, gun out, up, watching. The garage was quiet. He scanned the parked cars. No sign of a silver van. Many slots remained full, either people working late or downtown for the music festival. But he didn’t see anyone leaving or heading toward a car.

The stolen Volvo sat where he’d left it. Pilgrim turned back toward the stairwell door and gestured an all-clear.

He saw the door closing. Ben Forsberg was gone.

12

Ben ran down the concrete steps. Get away from the crazy bastard, find a policeman now and tell him everything. Yes, maybe he would end up back in the hands of this freaking weird division of Homeland Security, but he was a witness to murder and he wasn’t going to steal a car and he wasn’t going to run. The idle suggestion- We’ll steal a car -had been the proverbial bucket of ice water, clearing the shock from Ben’s mind. That was not the responsible course of action. He had a business to consider, a reputation, and this horrific night could not redefine him as a person. Once he had a lawyer, the world would shift back to its normal orbit. Sam Hector and his vast connections in the government would get Ben’s good name cleared.

He could get to the ground floor faster taking the stairs than Pilgrim could in a car.

He heard the stairwell door bang open, a flight above him. “Ben!”

Run.

Ben didn’t continue down the stairs-they were empty. Pilgrim could fire down at him or catch up with him, the guy was obviously a soldier of a kick-ass stripe. But people might be on one of the levels. Attendants. Barhoppers. Someone who could help him.

He hit the door. The second level was empty. No people, just cars in most of the slots.

He ran across the level, arrowing for the opposite stairwell. Get as far away as you can, he told himself, just run run run-

A van peeled fast down the incline between him and the far stairwell door, and he raised his hands, beckoning for help as the van cornered and roared toward him. Ben saw a young, soft-faced man with stringy dark hair behind the windshield.

The van didn’t stop. The kid’s arm jutted suddenly from the driver’s open window and a blinding red light caught Ben’s eyes. But not before he saw that the kid held a gun.

A silver van, the gunman on the roof had said.

Ben flung himself between a Saab and a BMW. A shot cracked, shattering the BMW’s window above him. The van’s brakes squealed as though the driver stood on the pedal. Ben didn’t huddle under the sedan; he rolled under two SUVs parked next to it, grease staining his shirt and pants, trying his hardest to be silent.

Nowhere else to run. Nowhere to escape. The kid could just get out of the van and shoot him dead, ease down, smile at Ben in his temporary fortress of undercarriage and concrete.

Ben waited to hear the van door open. But instead he heard an eruption of gunfire.

Pilgrim barreled out of the stairwell-he’d caught a glimpse of Ben running down the stairs, hitting the second-level door-and saw Ben dodging a van, a laser sight dancing, a glow seeking flesh, then a shot fracturing the rear windshield of a car behind where Ben had stood.

The van. Jackie Lynch. Teach was inside that van if the gunman had told the truth.

Then the laser sight swung toward Pilgrim, caught between the stairwell door and a parked car, as the van braked to an awkward, neck-snapping stop.

The shots sang a warble of th-weets and Pilgrim retreated backward, the sting and burn of steel ripping through flesh in his shoulder and his arm. He staggered, missing the door as Jackie leaned out the window to tighten his aim and finish the job.

He retreated, blindly, no place to run, and threw himself over the concrete lip of the garage wall. He dropped into emptiness. How far up was he? he wondered. He couldn’t remember past the pain.

Now in a burst of speed the van powered past where Ben hid.

The guy could kill him easy, why was he running?

Because he just shot who he was really after. Pilgrim.

Ben crawled from under the utility vehicle. Bullet holes scored the wall along the stairwell door, a spill of blood decorated the lip of the edge. Where, presumably, Pilgrim had stood in chasing him.

He started to run toward the other stairwell. He heard a screech of brakes. He stopped. Pilgrim could be lying back there, dead, dying.