Collision

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.

A rage filled him, eclipsed the pain in his arm and along his body from Jackie’s toying cuts. It was a hot and fierce anger he’d tamped down hard into his heart, kept at a simmer. Seeing Delia die gave it energy, fueled it like long-dry tinder exploding into flame.

You ran and you should have killed him. You should have killed him for what he did.

Jackie Lynch trembled. More from fury than pain. Ben’s final shot had missed him, because he’d gotten out of the line of fire, stumbling against the wall.

And not had the guts to leap and jab the elevator button, reopen the doors, confront Ben. The thought of being shot with his own gun had slowed him, made him hesitate. Not caution, but cowardice. Stupid, he could have gutted the amateur with one sweep of the blade.

“You worthless shit,” he said to himself, mumbling through his broken nose and cut lips. The heat of shame warmed his bones like a fever. He had hesitated as Ben cut into the mall crowd, when he should have taken the shot, then run. A terrible mistake, a sorry excuse for a Lynch.

He suddenly fought back tears. He was the son of one of the most feared men in the IRA. He remembered the dark basement in Belfast where men who were suspected of whispering into British ears were brought; he could still see the terror in their eyes as they were placed in the chair across from his father. He was brother to a man revered for his ability to kill and not be seen. But he was a sorry legacy of their blood, taken down by an amateur he’d badly underestimated. He didn’t even have his car keys now. His face was a bloody fright; anyone who saw him would remember him. And if the police found him, started questioning him, found his ties to his brother and hence to his brother’s clients in the Mideast-then all was ended. He would never see the outside of a prison again.