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Then it exploded.
Deadly metal missiles were flung in all directions. He dropped and saw Sam do the same. Heat and flames hissed through the night air, scorching several elms that lined the curb. The door behind them shattered, showering them with glass.
He scrambled to his feet, shook free the glass, then grabbed Sam, helping her rise. The blast would draw Kazdan and his cronies down to the ground. They had to get out of here—fast.
“There’s a taxi stand just around the corner,” he said.
She nodded. Her expression was remote as her gaze went back to the car. Only her clenched fists gave any sign of emotion. He touched her arm, trying to get her to move, and she looked up. There was something almost chilling in her gaze. Something decidedly unhuman. Then she blinked, and the moment was gone.
“We have to go. Now,” he said.
She nodded again and followed him down the steps.
“HE TRIED TO KILL ME.” Again, Sam added silently, and she shook her head in disbelief.
In the passing gleam of headlights, Gabriel’s eyes seemed fired with gold. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he keeps missing. It could be intentional.”
“That car bomb definitely would have killed us.” But why would he have set it in the first place? If he’d been so certain they’d escape, why wouldn’t he have rigged the service elevator? It was the only other way out of the apartment.
He shifted. The plastic covering the cab’s backseat squeaked in time with his movements. “Think about it. You escaped the kite, something no human has ever been able to do. Two men break into your apartment and bomb it after you escape. They trace us to the hotel and let themselves be seen before they firebomb us.”
“That still doesn’t explain the car bomb.” Even as she said it, she had an uneasy feeling he was right.
“It does if the bomb was meant to take out only me.”
That made a little more sense. If the gas in Jack’s apartment had been meant to knock them out, not kill, it would be easy enough to take Gabriel down to the car and blow him up. It still didn’t explain why they’d bother, though.
A trickle of moisture ran down the side of her face. She wiped it away and glanced down at the smear on her palm. Blood. She had cuts all over the place from the glass that had flown everywhere. So did Gabriel. It was just as well the cab had plastic covers in place.
She looked out the side window. They were traveling over the Bolte Bridge, and the lights of the western suburbs stretched out below them, firefly bright in the darkness. Thousands upon thousands of lights. Millions of people, living side by side uneventfully. Why couldn’t fate have given her one of them as a friend? Why did it have to choose a nutter?
She crossed her arms and tried to ward off a chill. Maybe fate had nothing to do with Jack becoming her partner and friend. Maybe it had all been planned from the very beginning.
“Why would he do something like that? Threaten me, but not kill me, I mean.”
“You claim to know him so well. You tell me.”
She frowned. She’d seen Jack push suspects until they were so afraid they’d do just about anything he wanted. Hell, that’s why they’d argued the day he’d disappeared. Was that what he was doing here? Pushing her? For what reason? What did he want that he couldn’t just ask for?
“I don’t know.” It was an answer to both his question and her own.
He shifted again. There was something oddly angry in the movement. “Answers are going to be damned hard to come by if you keep refusing to face the questions.”
She glanced at him. His hazel eyes were as emotionless as his face. Yet she could feel his anger, almost as if it were a blanket about to smother her. Gabriel Stern was pushing her as much as Jack was, and his reasons were just as unclear.
She studied the river of lights again. “Where are we going?”
“Karl’s.”
The weird-looking hippie he’d introduced her to earlier. “Why?”
“He might be able to enlarge the filmstrip I found in the envelope.”
“And?” she asked, sensing there was more.
