The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (34 page)

We were still skidding backward, and I looked
forward to see blue halogen headlights filling the windshield.
Before I could catch my breath, yet another vehicle joined the
insanity by marrying itself with great purpose to the front end of
ours. I snapped backward amid the deafening crunch, watching with
detached interest as the interior filled with a hazy fog, and the
windshield was instantly obscured by the deploying airbags.

* * * * *

I didn’t black out. At least I don’t think I
did. Still, I couldn’t begin to tell you how much time passed or
what actually transpired between this moment in time and my last
clear recollection, which was the white fabric of the airbags
filling my field of vision.

The shrill cacophony of a car horn was
insinuating itself into the mix of other sounds, effectively
pushing everything else into the background.

I opened my eyes and saw that I was pitched
forward, almost doubled over, and now staring at the floorboard. I
put my hand against the back of the seat in front of me and pushed,
levering myself into an upright position. I could feel someone
moving next to me and turned to find Felicity pushing herself up as
well. I could tell by the way she was moving that she was
completely disoriented.

She began reaching toward the passenger side
of the vehicle as she cried out for me, “Rowan!”

I slipped my hand over to her, and she jerked
toward me the moment I touched her leg. She quickly shifted
direction and grabbed for me, struggling against the center
passenger lap belt that still encircled her waist. Her lower lip
was bleeding, and there was a gash over her right eye, but she
seemed to be coherent and moving okay.

“Are you all right?” I shouted over the din
of the vehicle’s horn.

“Aye, yes, I’m okay,” she cried. “Are you
okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I reassured her.

“Felicity! Rowan!” Ben’s voice cut through
the noise.

I looked up to see him reaching across the
back of the seat. His nose was bloodied, and he seemed to be
favoring his right hand. Looking past him, I could see a spidery,
circular shatter point on the windshield that looked like it would
just about fit his large fist.

“Ben!”

“Are you two okay?” he screamed.

“Yeah, I think so. You?” I shouted back.

“I think my fuckin’ hand is broke,” he
returned. “Mandalay’s unconscious. I think she’s hurt bad.”

“Oh Gods!” Felicity exclaimed as she
continued to struggle with the lap belt. “Is she breathing
okay?!”

“Yeah, I think so!” he yelled.

“Don’t move her,” Felicity called back to
him.

“I know, Felicity, I know!” he returned. “Can
you two get out?!”

“I don’t know,” I yelled back at him.

I sent my hands in search of the latch on my
own safety harness and managed to thrust my knuckles into it hard
enough to make it pop free. Taking hold of the door handle, I
pulled it up and pushed. The door gave outward slightly, but other
than that, it didn’t really budge.

Looking out the window, I could see that the
side of the vehicle was caved inward at the center structural
pylon. I looked over at Felicity. “Honey, can you move over a
bit!”

I was shouting to be heard over the blaring
horn, but mid-sentence, there was a dull pop as a shower of sparks
exploded from the front of the car. The lights flickered and went
black. The horn warbled sickeningly then faded to silence. The last
half of my sentence resounded through the cabin, breaking the new
found calm.

Felicity shifted as far as she could to the
opposite side of the vehicle, and I scooted with her. Twisting in
the seat, I drew my legs up and lay back with my head almost in her
lap. I pushed my right hand against the back of the front seat and
then levered my left elbow into the other for support. Pistoning my
legs with everything I had, I kicked hard against the door. It
bounced outward a few inches and then sprung back against me.

I could hear the pained groan of metal from
the front of the vehicle, and the ambient noise of the exterior
burst inward along with a healthy blast of cold air. I kicked
outward again, and the rear door creaked as it pushed open a few
inches farther and remained there this time.

I sucked in a deep breath of chilly air and
tensed all my muscles as I continued levering pressure against the
mangled door. As I groaned, I looked up through the window and saw
Ben with his shoulder wedged into the scant opening as he joined me
in muscling it wider.

The sheet metal complained loudly, and the
hinge popped out audible complaints as the door started to move. I
closed my eyes and forced out a guttural scream as I sent
everything I had into my legs and pushed. The sound started slowly,
creaking through a low pitch, rising along the way until it burst
forth as a loud crunch. My legs pistoned outward against
nothingness as the door popped past the sticking point and flung
open.

Ben’s torso was already through the opening,
and his good hand was extended toward me. I released my grip on the
seats and took hold of the offered appendage. With a smooth pull,
he slid me out the opening and up to my feet. As I stepped forward
I turned, but he was already tucked back inside in the process of
extracting Felicity in the same manner.

“Is everyone okay here?” A voice met my ears,
and I looked back around to find a uniformed city police officer
staring back at me, detached concern in his eyes.

Over his shoulder, I could see two patrol
cars parked in the near westbound lanes on the opposite side of the
concrete barrier. The emergency lights on the vehicles were
flickering madly, and passersby were already slowing to gawk.

“The driver is hurt,” I declared in answer.
“She’s unconscious.”

The officer nodded as he looked over my
shoulder at Ben and Felicity. I noticed that his arm moved almost
instantly, and his hand rested on his firearm. I glanced back and
saw that my friend’s jacket was pushed back, revealing the grip of
his Beretta peeking out of its snug home in his shoulder
holster.

“I’m a cop,” Ben told him, taking immediate
notice of his posture. “Detective Storm. My shield’s on my
belt.”

Ben moved his left hand slowly across and
pushed back his jacket to reveal his badge. The uniformed officer
relaxed noticeably and shifted his hand away from his weapon. As
soon as the immediate tension faded, Felicity stepped forward and
took hold of my arm.

“The driver of this vehicle is injured, and
she is an FBI agent,” Ben added, shifting without hesitation into
his professional mode.

The uniformed officer immediately keyed up
his radio and began speaking. “Dispatch, Unit Twenty-seven,”

“Twenty-seven, go ahead,” came the
static-plagued response.

“Dispatch, Unit Twenty-seven, ten seventy-two
multiple vehicle accident with injuries on Interstate Forty-Four
just west of Exit Two Eighty-eight. I have a federal officer down,
over.”

The speaker hissed again. “Twenty-seven,
repeat officer down, over.”

“Dispatch, Twenty-seven. Driver of involved
vehicle is unconscious. Has been identified as FBI. One passenger
identified as Detective Storm with homicide. He’s injured but
conscious and lucid, over.”

“Twenty-seven, dispatch, rolling paramedics
your location, over.”

“Ten-four, dispatch.”

I was rattled. It took a moment for me to
realize that I was just standing there staring at the scene around
me. I counted a total of five cars resting askew across the
eastbound lanes of the highway. Mandalay’s vehicle sat at the
center of a small cluster of three that comprised the crux of the
accident. The other two were spread out like billiard balls, one
canted against the center median, the other was farther back and
pointing into the oncoming traffic.

To my left, another officer was igniting
flares and tossing them to the pavement at various intervals to
create a cordoned area. I glanced around and saw that the occupants
of the other vehicles seemed to be in far better shape than us.

“Rowan?” Felicity’s voice called to me. “Are
you okay?”

“Yeah, honey, yeah, I’m fine.”

“You’re staring off into space, then,” she
pressed. “Did you hit your head?”

“No, really, I’m okay,” I said as I brushed
her hair back from her face and gently touched her forehead. “How
about you? You’ve got a pretty nasty cut over your eye. Looks like
you’re the one who hit her head.”

“Aye, I’m okay. I’m worried about Constance
though.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

I heard an electronic peal dance through the
air, growing louder with each note and noticed Ben struggling to
pull his cell phone from his belt with his left hand. By the time
the device started into its next chorus, he had managed to snatch
it up and thumb it on.

“Yeah, Storm here,” he said, then waited a
moment. “Yeah, well excuse me for not hearin’ it. Uh-huh… Well that
would be because somebody decided to hit us. Yeah… Uh-huh… Yeah, as
in car wreck. Yeah, fuckin’ totaled. Yeah, I’m busted up and
Mandalay’s hurt pretty bad but they’re okay. A little rattled but
okay. Yeah… Uh-huh…”

I was just turning to watch the officer who
was checking on Constance when I heard my friend bellow, “You’ve
gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me! Awww, Jeezus! There’s no way in hell I
can get him there that fast!”

“Hell yes I know it’s only four miles,” Ben
barked into the cell phone. “If the fuckin’ highway was open… Yeah,
exactly. Uh-huh… There’s a pileup at Jefferson too. Yeah, we’re at
Grand and Forty-Four, just west of the exit ramp. Yeah, can’t miss
it, there’s a big friggin’ pile of cars and enough flares down to
decorate my birthday cake… Yeah, we’ll be waitin’. Bye.”

“What’s going on?” I asked him as he made a
few clumsy attempts to hook the phone back onto his belt then
aborted the task and shoved it into the first available pocket he
could find on his jacket.

“You were right, white man,” he confessed.
“Porter went off the deep end.”

My stomach fell. I had almost forgotten why I
was even out here in this mess to start with.

Felicity tensed against me and muttered, “Oh
no…”

“He didn’t?” I asked, leaving the subject of
the question a solid implication rather than a spoken reality.

“No. He hasn’t done anything yet that they
know of, but he’s making the threats.” He spilled the details.
“They thought they had him under control after they cut the line,
but he escalated all of a sudden, and they haven’t been able to
talk ‘im back down.”

Car horns were randomly sounding from the
growing sea of impatient drivers, adding punctuation to the blend
of noises issuing from running engines and passing vehicles. Police
radios scratched out communications in bursts of intermingled words
and semi-cryptic ten-codes to keep the officers updated on the ETA
of the paramedics, fire/rescue, and countless other things.

Looking past Ben and back down the highway, I
could see flickering red lights in the distance. Far off sirens
warbled and provided a high-pitched background for the occasional
burp of an air horn.

“I hate to say…” I started.

“…
I told you so, yeah, I know.” He
nodded his head vigorously as he finished the sentence for me.
“Better just keep that observation to yourself, Row.”

“Yeah, I will,” I agreed. “So what are they
doing?”

He continued his explanation. “They haven’t
gone in because they still don’t know where he’s holed up in there.
But he’s keepin’ tabs on them somehow ‘cause he knows what’s goin’
on every time they make a move, no matter which side of the
building they go for. They’re thinkin’ he’s gotta have a police
band radio or a portable scanner. Something like that.”

To my back, there was a droning hum that
continued to grow louder by the second, throwing itself into the
chaotic fray of sounds against an underscore of echoing thumps. It
was the familiar sound of a helicopter. In the back of my mind, I
wondered whose it was. It seemed too soon for an air ambulance, and
I wasn’t sure the media would even bother responding to the pileup
considering the drama that was playing out on the riverfront.

“Great,” I muttered with heavy sarcasm.

“Tell me about it.” He nodded as he raised
his voice against the growing din. “Anyway, about fifteen minutes
ago he started demanding that they bring you to the scene. Since
you were already on the way, they had no problem consenting even
though it was going to be on their terms.”

“Aye, that’s about when Constance got that
call,” Felicity interjected.

“Yeah, exactly,” Ben said. “And right when we
got nailed.”

“So can’t they just tell him that I’m still
on the way?”

He shook his head. “They’ve played that out.
It’s not workin’ anymore. He finally hit ‘em with an ultimatum.
Says if he doesn’t see you in front of the building in ten minutes,
he’s killing Sullivan, and that…” He paused and glanced at his
watch. “…Was about three minutes ago.”

A heavy rush of icy wind whipped around us,
lifting a cloud of loose snow and causing me to squint as my eyes
watered.

“Ten… Seven minutes?!” I yelped, forcing my
voice upward to compete with the sound of the helicopter overhead.
“There’s no way…”

“Can you fly?” Ben shouted.

“Ben!” I returned. “This is no time for
joking around. You know damn well that whole thing about Witches is
just a myth!”

“No! I mean do you have any problems with
flying?” He bellowed over the roar as he took hold of my shoulder
and urged me to turn. “Cause right there’s your fuckin’ broom!”

The machine-fabricated vortex bit into my
face as I twisted around, forcing me to cock my head down and to
the side. My ears were filled with an inescapable roar as I watched
a Bell JetRanger hurriedly touching down on the pavement a little
better than thirty yards away.