Exit Strategy Read online

  Mason picked himself up, found all of his weapons, and wiped the blood from his cheek.

  “Make sure he knows,” Quintero said to him. “Make sure he knows who sent you.”

  “You think there’s going to be any doubt in his mind?”

  “I’ll pay you,” McLaren said. He was slowly getting to his feet, one hand pressed against the side of his head where Mason had hit him. “Whatever Cole’s paying you, I’ll double it.”

  “It’s not always about money,” Mason said as he raised the semiautomatic again.

  This was the one step Mason didn’t have to plan for. Didn’t want to plan for, or think about, in any way. He knew this moment would come, knew that everything else would fade to gray, that the target would stand before him and he would pull the trigger, everything reduced to pure technique: concentrate on the front sight, let the target become nothing but a blur. One more breath, then a smooth pull.

  “Please,” the accountant said. And Mason pulled the trigger three times.

  Chest, chest, head.

  The body hit the floor.

  Mason looked at his watch. It was 9:57 p.m. The decoy room had cost him valuable time.

  He had three minutes to get out before Quintero’s bomb went off.

  2

  Mason left the dead accountant in a pool of blood, stepped over the body of the unconscious marshal, and opened the door. Hearing footsteps and voices to his left, Mason went right.

  He opened the stairwell door and started going down, still carrying the shotgun, the semiautomatic tucked back into his belt. The balaclava was still pulled down over his face, until he pushed it up clear of his mouth so he could breathe as he pounded his way down one set of stairs after another.

  He made it down ten floors. Then twenty. The numbers went by in a blur, as he looked at his watch and saw that he had less than two minutes left. He was on the landing of the twenty-seventh floor, pausing for one second to grab another breath.

  He heard the squawk of a radio on the other side of the hallway door, froze for one beat and was about to continue going downward, but then the door opened and he found himself suddenly face-to-masked-face with one of the marshals. The man quickly recovered from his shock and yelled, “Freeze!”

  Mason shot the first marshal below the vest line. The silicone plug folded the man in half and made him drop his gun. Mason threw himself behind the cover of the door, racked the shotgun, and in one smooth motion emerged to take down the second marshal. He pulled himself back behind the door again, racked the shotgun one more time, and recognized the subtle, hollow feel of an empty weapon.

  Fuck. All six rounds gone.

  Staying behind the door, Mason let the third marshal come closer until he could see the barrel of his Glock. He slammed the door on the man’s arms, pulled the Glock away and hit him across the face with it. Wrapping him up, Mason pressed his forearm against the man’s throat, the other arm to the back of his neck, and locked everything together. Ten seconds of steady pressure on the carotid artery, cutting off the blood supply. Then he let the marshal slide to the floor.

  He checked his watch.

  One minute.

  He heard the voices above him again. More footsteps. He kept going down the stairs, one flight after the other. Until he heard another voice yelling and, a half second later, a gun blast and the metallic sound of a slug ricocheting off the rail inches from his hand. He threw himself against the wall and took the semiautomatic from his belt. He didn’t have time to think about lethal force versus nonlethal force versus anything else in the world. He pictured what would happen next if he hesitated: the marshals cornering him, ordering him to drop his weapon, taking him away in handcuffs, just the first step in a process he’d already been through once before. Only this time he’d end up in a prison cell for the rest of his life.

  Whatever he had to do, he was not going to let that happen.

  There were voices below him now, echoing the voices above, which were getting louder. He threw open the door and ran down the hallway. He had no choices left.

  He was fifty feet down the hallway when he realized where he was.

  The twenty-first floor.

  “How the hell am I supposed to get out?” Mason had asked Quintero. “These weapons aren’t exactly quiet.”

  “The twenty-first floor is being renovated, so it’ll be empty at night. There are explosives in one of the rooms, and they’ll go off at exactly ten o’clock. Exactly. Make sure you have your watch right.”

  “What if I’m on that floor?”

  “There’s eighty-two fucking floors in that place, Mason. You only got one to avoid. Just be on the move at ten o’clock and you’ll get out.”

  He didn’t bother checking his watch. He knew he had seconds left.

  “Drop the weapon!”

  Mason turned and fired the semiautomatic just to give himself cover. But then he felt another impact, this time high on his right shoulder, the pain so much different from the shot that had hit him in the vest. This pain was sharp instead of dull and concentrated in one white-hot pinpoint.

  I’m hit. The words rang hollow and far away in Mason’s mind. Not urgent, just information. A problem that he didn’t have the time to solve yet. He fired again and saw the marshal retreat behind the door, turned just in time to see another marshal coming from the opposite direction.

  “Get on the ground! Get on the ground!”

  Mason fired at the doorknob closest to him, kicked open the door, and ran through the empty room. He barely registered the bare drywall and paint cans, shooting out the back window as he ran, shattering it into a million pebbles of glass just before he went through to the balcony and over the edge of the railing.

  The next moment was nothing but heat, light, and sound, obliterating everything else. The force of the explosion chased him, as sudden and immediate as a giant animal pursuing him into the cold night air. He grabbed at the railing with one hand, already feeling it slipping from him, the street twenty-one stories below waiting to receive his falling body.

  A second wave hit even harder than the first, and he had to let go. He felt himself falling, reaching out with nothing more than pure instinct until another iron railing slammed against his left arm and he wrapped his arm around it. He was one floor below the explosion now, the cold like a dive into the ocean, but as he grasped the rail he felt his fingers slipping again. Hanging there, trying to pull himself over, he could hear the fire raging on the floor above him. Another window blew out. The sirens wailed in the distance. He looked down and saw the flashing blue lights on the police cars twenty floors below him.

  It all felt so far away, everything but the pain in his right shoulder and the four inches of cold metal he could feel through the glove on his left hand, the last anchor keeping him from falling.

  Mason gathered himself and tried to raise his right arm.

  Nothing. The arm was dead.

  He could feel the blood trailing down his arm. His right glove was wet, blood dripping from his fingertips. His left hand was growing more numb by the second. His grip was weakening. He could hold on for one more minute. Maybe two.

  After everything he had been through, to die this way …

  He thought of his daughter, pictured her face in his mind, pictured her running across the soccer field. Said her name out loud—“Adriana”—in defiance of the howling wind that swirled about him. He tried one more time to swing his right arm up to the rail.

  Got it.

  He had the iron railing under his armpits now, and as his feet scrambled against the edge of the balcony he found purchase and pushed himself up over the top. He collapsed on the balcony, lying on his back and taking long breaths of air. There were more sirens down on the street, the police cars’ wails mixing with the firetrucks’ honking bass notes. In one second, the Aqua had become the center of the world. As Mason rolled to his feet, he touched his right shoulder with his left hand. He couldn’t feel blood through his glove, but as he p
ulled it away he saw shiny bright red.

  He tried the window. This one was unlocked. He went through another apartment, stopping to rummage through a laundry hamper until he found a red shirt. It was short-sleeved and three sizes too big for him, but he slipped it over his black shirt, the entire right side of which was now soaked in blood. He stopped for one more moment, felt the room spinning and had to reach out to steady himself against the wall. Then he went out the door and into the chaos of the hallway. The fire alarm was blaring wildly, hazard lights strobing on either side of him. A dozen people were moving toward the stairwell. Mason joined them, folding the balaclava into a skullcap again. Wondering if there was any chance he could blend into the crowd.

  There were at least a hundred more people in the stairwell. Every age, every race, but all with one thing in common: the blind panic of something real. They could all feel it. This was not a fire drill. Somewhere a few floors above them, these people were stumbling onto the incapacitated marshals, probably causing a new round of panic on top of everything else. But down here on the twentieth floor, it was a simple issue of survival, of getting down the stairs and then out onto the street.

  Mason kept up with the throng until he had to stop again for a moment and brace himself against the wall. When an older woman touched his arm and asked if he was all right, he looked away from her and kept moving. The crowd kept growing, as more people streamed off each floor into the stairwell like tributaries into a river, until reaching the ground level and emptying into the lobby.

  “There’s an exit directly in front of that doorway.” Quintero’s instructions coming back to him now. “Fifty feet and you’re out.”

  Mason hung back, looking through the doorway at the main entrance. A half dozen marshals stood by, not stopping anyone but carefully scanning the face of everyone leaving the building. He saw the marshals stop a man around Mason’s age and size, check him over, then finally let him go.

  “If there’s a problem, you have another exit to your right. A hundred feet.”

  He looked in that direction, saw another group of marshals watching the other exit.

  “Your third choice is the tunnel. But you go down there, you’re out of options.”

  Mason looked toward the glass doors leading down to the underground pedestrian walkway, the rat’s maze of tunnels that ran beneath most of the Loop. There was one local cop at the entrance directing people away, back toward the main doors.

  “Use the tunnel only if you have no other choice.”

  As Mason edged his way out into the lobby, he stayed against the wall until he saw the cop talking to a middle-aged couple. He slipped the balaclava back over his face and moved quickly to the entrance. The cop was turning just as Mason got there and barely got his hands up before Mason hit him with a left cross. Mason stepped over him, swung open the glass door, and went down the stairs to the tunnel.

  “Go north. Then west. There are exits on Water Street, Columbus, Stetson.”

  Mason’s shoulder was on fire now, and he could hear someone coming down the stairs after him.

  “After that, stay left at every intersection. If things get really fucked, find the abandoned tunnel just before Michigan Avenue.”

  He was trying hard to keep the map of the tunnels clear in his mind, but his head kept spinning and the map with it.

  More voices, pounding footsteps, echoing loudly against the tile walls. Everything looked blue in the harsh artificial lights, cops seemingly everywhere in the maze, as Mason started running, his heart pumping and more blood soaking into his shirt.

  I’m lost. I have no fucking idea where I’m—

  There!

  He saw plywood boards covering the entrance to what had once been a freight train tunnel. There was a door cut into the plywood, kept shut with a padlock. He shot at the lock and missed it the first time, focused his eyes and shot again. Then he pushed the door open and made his way down through the darkness. There was water dripping, rats moving somewhere close to him, the smell of dust from another era. He reached for the stun baton so he could use the flashlight on the end, but it was long gone.

  He staggered and tripped his way across the old railroad tracks until he saw a dim light shining up ahead. A city block away, but it looked like a distant star in the sky. The creak of wood behind him, more voices, a thin beam from a flashlight, searching for him.

  Mason picked himself up from the ground one more time, saw the light growing brighter, and finally found the wooden stairs leading upward. He made it to the top and put his right shoulder to the wood without thinking about what he was doing, almost passing out as a wave of pain and nausea swept through him. He pushed the door open, the sudden glare from a streetlight almost blinding him.

  It was all a blur after that. He made his way down the street, turning away from the sirens and the blinking lights as they went by. He found his car somehow, through muscle memory and sheer guts. Got behind the wheel, turned the ignition, missed one car after another by inches as he pulled out into traffic.

  And then he made his biggest mistake of the night.

  He headed north.

  3

  When Lauren opened her door, she saw blood.

  She tried to catch Nick as he collapsed across the doorway. He hit the floor hard. The dog, locked in another room, started barking.

  “Oh my God! What happened?”

  He didn’t answer. She felt his soaking wet shirt, saw the drops of blood spilling onto her hardwood floor. In one of his pockets, a cell phone was ringing. Lauren shut the door behind Nick and pulled him into the apartment, back against the wall. He let out a moan as she started to remove his shirt.

  “Who did this to you?”

  She stopped when she saw the black tactical vest.

  The surprise lasted for only a moment, then that feeling turned into something else. She’d always known this day would come. When he’d leave, he couldn’t tell her where he’d go, what he’d do … All she knew was that he hated doing it. And now, whatever he’d done tonight, it was going to kill him. He was going to die right here on her floor.

  “It’s not so bad. You’re okay,” she said. It felt like both a lie and a prayer.

  She undid the vest’s Velcro straps, slowly pulling it from his body. He let out another moan, and she saw the wound to his shoulder. A jagged hole in his flesh just above his collarbone, close to his neck. The blood flowed again, streaming down his chest. Lauren gasped, nausea and panic nearly overwhelming her. She willed them away. Running to the kitchen for towels and the portable phone, she slipped on the blood-wet floor but didn’t fall. When she returned, she pressed the towels against the wound with one hand. With the other hand, she dialed.

  Mason reached up and slapped the phone out of her hand. It skidded across the floor.

  “No,” he said. His voice was ragged, like he couldn’t catch his breath. “No calls.”

  “You’re bleeding to death.”

  “No nine-one-one! Just let me—”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Mason grabbed her wrist.

  “Nick, please …” She tried to pull away.

  Mason held on. He was losing consciousness.

  His cell phone rang again. This time, Lauren slipped it out of his pocket and read the screen.

  PRIVATE NUMBER.

  “Don’t answer that!” He slurred the words, his eyes fluttering shut.

  Not ever touching his phone: it was one of the things she had promised him. That, and she’d never ask where he’d been or what he’d done.

  “I have to answer,” she said, pulling out of his grasp. “You’ll die if I don’t. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  • • •

  MASON FLOATED THROUGH an ocean of darkness. Beyond light, beyond sound. As he slowly came toward the surface, he heard words being spoken somewhere in the distance. Words that didn’t yet mean anything.

  My name is Lauren. Nick’s been shot. He needs help. He won’t let me call nine
-one-one. What do I do?

  Mason turned away from the surface and dove back down into the darkness. He stayed there for a minute, or an hour, or a day, until he felt himself rising again. There were sounds—a knock on the door, the muffled bark of a dog, a woman yelling—drawing him toward the surface. Then he broke the surface and saw a face looking down at him.

  Quintero was kneeling before him on the floor, a brown plastic bottle in his hand. As he poured the peroxide onto the wound, pain racked Mason’s body again, every muscle clenching so hard it was like a seizure.

  “What … are you … doing? … How … did I … get here?” Mason said, eyes unfocused.

  “I don’t know, man. But you fucked up.”

  Quintero poured some of the clear liquid into a metal mixing bowl. The gold chains around his neck were swaying with every movement, the muscles flexing and animating the world of tattoos on both arms.

  “Lauren,” Mason said as it came back to him.

  “I’m here.”

  Her voice came from somewhere behind him. He strained to see her, but Quintero put one hand on Mason’s chest to steady him.

  Why’d I come here? Mason asked himself. Because this place is my refuge. From that first night she brought me here, this became the one place I could come and at least pretend that nothing else in my life could find me here.

  And now I’ve destroyed it.

  “Come here. Hold this,” Quintero said to Lauren, waving a gauze pad at her. “Press it to his shoulder.”

  She didn’t move.

  “He’s going to bleed out if you don’t help me,” he said, louder but still calm.

  Mason could see it in Lauren’s eyes: she knew this man. He was her nightmare. The man who followed Nick. Gave him orders. The obstacle that stood between Nick and her having a life.