Larkin turned.
Standing in front of the parked cars and cruisers on the opposite side of the one-way street was a man: white, about sixty years old, with long gray hair pulled into a ponytail. He wore jeans and a disheveled Army jacket, despite the weather. The stranger didn’t say another word, just retrieved a 9mm semiautomatic from his waistband and took aim.
Larkin thought maybe he’d shouted for the stranger to stop, reached for his own weapon, but then he was airborne, spinning and slamming sideways against the stone wall before falling to his knees as the deafening sound of gunfire rang out half a second later.
—a storm of gray bullets churning the earth, dousing the flames, silver and slate raining down from overhead, like a treasure-trove of coins to pay their passage—
Boom.
—sugar and vitriol mixing like water and oil, dandelions torn apart in the squelching mud underfoot, blood and whiskey pooling in broken glass—
Squish.
—“I’m the Devil, son.”—
Crack.
—his brain starving for oxygen, beetles and worms crawling from the hollow sockets of Death’s eyes, and just beyond the veil, waiting for Larkin to survive, wasGuilt—
Fear was feral.
A rabid creature dumb to words and reason.
Nothing but a primal rage to defy, to endure.
Because no matter the suffering, the senselessness—instinct forced us to survive, to wake, tofight back.
Larkin sucked in a lungful of air and opened his eyes. His heart hammered against his ribcage, adrenaline rushed in his veins, and distantly, Larkin was aware of a pounding ache in his temple. He couldn’t see out of his left eye. Larkin could hear his thoughts panic-spiraling, repeating over and over like a damaged record player:my head, my head, my head, I’ve been shot in the head.
“Put the weapon down!” That was Stolle.
Larkin blinked a few times. His left eye didn’t hurt, but his vision was full of blood. He reached up, touched his brow, and it came back slick and red.
A second shot.
Stolle crumpled to the ground at Larkin’s side, a gaping hole in his chest. He hadn’t even had the time to clear his pistol from the holster.
Larkin automatically reached into his coat for his SIG, turned to the street, squinted his left eye, and fired without hesitation. He watched the gunman drop like cement shoes tossed into the Hudson before he scrambled to Stolle’s side. In a matter of two, maybe three seconds, the entire street was alive with patrolmen and plain-clothed officers rushing to respond to the danger. They surrounded the gunman, they surrounded Larkin, and he screamed for someone—anyone—to call EMS as he started CPR on Charlie Stolle.
Chapter Ten
It was 5:31 p.m. and Larkin sat on an exam bed in the ER of Mount Sinai Beth Israel. His gray glen plaid suit coat lay draped to his right and a male doctor stood on his left, stitching the gash on Larkin’s forehead. Larkin winced, gripped the hair tie on his left wrist, and snapped it hard.
The doctor noticed. “Has the anesthetic worn off?”
“No.”
“All right. Just a few more, then.”
Larkin snapped the hair tie a second, third, fourth time.
The last hour had been an overload of sunbaked sidewalks, blood sticking between his fingers, relentless inquiries volleyed back and forth by competing voices, and the antiseptic stink of a hospital. It’d been so much stimulation that while Larkin had been waiting for medical attention, he’d briefly shut down. So completely and entirely, in fact, it hadn’t even occurred to him to call Doyle. That had been until a nurse, setting out the suturing supplies now being used by the doctor who stood too close for comfort, had managed to bring Larkin back to the present when he picked up on her humming “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” under her breath.
“Evie? Listen, before you say anything—”
“I’m at Beth Israel.”
“You’re what?”
