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CHAPTER 68
Chicago
I WAS FEELING almost normal, which felt totally amazing. The sidewalk café was trendy and hopping. The street traffic was a little noisy, but nobody cared. It was exciting to be out in the middle of the city. We were sitting in a small grouping of tables on the wide patio just outside the front door. By 8 p.m., every table was filled. It seemed like the kind of place people went to kick off an evening.
I remembered going to places like this after work by myself, with my nose buried in a research paper. But tonight was different. Tonight, I actually had female company. It felt nice. Even if the female was my kidnapper. Even if she was totally not attracted to me.
Kira was wearing skinny jeans and a flower-print blouse. Her hair was tucked under a black cap. She looked like an art history grad student. She looked great. I saw a few guys checking her out as they passed, but they lowered their eyes as soon as they noticed me. I realized that I now looked like the kind of boyfriend who might punch their lights out just for looking.
I was wearing the new white shirt and khaki pants Kira had ordered to fit my new physique. Larger neck size. Smaller waist size. In addition to everything else, Kira was now my personal shopper. It had been a long time since I made any real decisions for myself. She picked up the little card that listed the evening’s wine specials.
“Are we drinking tonight?” I asked.
“We certainly are,” said Kira. “And I won’t even drill you on the vintage.”
She ran her finger down the choices. I looked over the appetizer options. I realized that, for the first time, I could read a menu without my glasses. New eyes. New body. New clothes. New everything. Mostly, it felt good to just pretend that I had an actual life again, even if it was only for a few hours. I tried to put Doc Savage and his blazing guns out of my mind.
Kira was still reviewing the wines when a blond waitress walked over and set a red votive candle down in the center of the table. The flame wobbled slightly and then settled. Kira looked up to order the wine, but the waitress was already gone.
Kira shrugged. “I guess she’s just the official candle placer.” I went back to the appetizer list. But only for a second. Something was off. A smell. Like bleach from a table cleaner. No. Stronger. Sodium hypochlorite. I jumped out of my seat.
“Bomb!” I shouted.
I grabbed the votive off the table. I glanced toward the street and saw a stake-bed truck passing by. I hurled the votive into the back of the truck, then dove across the table and threw Kira to the ground. I heard a huge blast and felt the shock wave pass through me, shaking my insides. The café windows shattered. Tables flipped, and people were blown out of their seats onto the patio.
I turned my head back toward the street. It was filled with smoke and ash. The truck bed had absorbed most of the blast. The wooden frame had exploded into a thousand chunks and splinters. The driver staggered out of his cab, blood pouring from his nose. All over the patio, people were crawling and reaching for one another, covered in blood and debris. My ears were numb. All I could hear was a high-pitched hum.
I grabbed Kira under one arm and pulled her to her feet. There was a rip in the back of her blouse and she had a scrape on one cheek. But other than that, she seemed okay. As I tried to recover my balance, she patted me down for damage. All I was missing were a few shirt buttons.
Kira turned toward the restaurant and looked down the alley that ran beside it. The hum in my ears was still too loud to hear what she was saying. But I could read her lips.
“The waitress!”
CHAPTER 69
WE HEADED DOWN the alley at a dead run, dodging dumpsters and wooden pallets. Halfway down, I saw a blond wig sticking out of an open trash can. The noise in my ears had dissolved into a mild buzz. I could hear shouts and screams and sirens behind us.
A block ahead, I saw a female figure running away. She was slender and agile. When we reached the end of the alley, she was gone. Kira looked left and right down the busy street. Then she looked back and saw a fire escape ladder hanging off the side of the building we had just passed. She grabbed onto the rungs with both hands and started climbing.
“Up here!” she said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I know,” she said, scrambling higher.
As soon as she cleared the first floor level, I followed. In about twenty seconds, we were both crawling over a low wall onto the roof. The sunset was casting long shadows over the whole city. We were in a strange landscape of massive AC units and satellite dishes. We ran across the rooftop to the other side of the building. I caught a flash of movement from the roof on the other side of the street.
“There!” I shouted.
Kira spun around and ran halfway back across the roof. Before I could react, she bounced on the balls of her feet and then headed toward the edge at top speed. When she was about four feet away, she launched herself across the gap, four stories up. She landed in a somersault on the other side and jumped to her feet. She looked back at me.
“Let’sgo!” she shouted.
I wasn’t sure I had it in me, but there was no way I was letting her go on alone. I gave myself plenty of room for a head start and then jumped off from the same spot she did. But I misjudged my bulk or the distance, or both. As soon as I was in the air, I knew I was coming up short.
As I fell, I grabbed for the bars of a window guard on the top floor. The rusty metal cut into my hands and my knees banged into the bricks below. I gritted my teeth through the pain and pulled myself up. When I rolled over the low wall onto the other roof, Kira was already on the move.
The rooftop was a maze of bubble-shaped skylights and old water tanks. We threaded our way through until we could see across to the next building. A woman with dark hair was hanging from a stone parapet just twenty feet away. As she muscled herself up, her right sleeve fell back to her elbow. Her forearm was red and scarred. Kira immediately dropped down behind the low wall on our side.
