without moving his lips.
“Shut up,” she hissed. “We’re getting off at the next stop.”
The train slowed and entered a station.
Sidney grabbed his hand. “Okay, we’re going.”
The doors rattled open. She yanked him from the seat and bundled him out of the train. The platform was packed. A loudspeaker squawked arrival and departure times. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the high-pitched voice of another TV announcer.
“All right, I can manage,” he said, shaking himself free of her grip. “What’s going on?”
Sidney kept pushing him across the busy platform. He threw her off, but she grabbed him again. “Just keep going.”
The TV announcer’s voice seemed close. Piers looked up. A large yellow cube housed a small television with a badly distorted picture. A reporter with a microphone stood in a sea of police officers. “ … less than an hour ago. He was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Sidney pushed. “Keep going.”
Piers stumbled a single step.
The TV camera panned back. Notre Dame came into view. “Shit,” mumbled Piers.
“Keep going.”
“We were there,” Piers said.
“Full marks. Just keep going.”
The TV picture cut away to the view from a helicopter. A police car was chasing a taxi. The taxi crashed and two figures stumbled out of the rear, a man and a girl. The men from the police car drew guns and dived for the girl, forcing her to the ground and cuffing her. The man mounted a motorbike and swung it gracefully around the front of the car in a macho cloud of smoke and raw power.
Piers remembered how his heart had tried to jump out of his chest when the bike started, and how it hadn’t stopped trying until they reached her apartment.
The bike leapt forward, the rider felling a giant of a man with one blow, and kicking a second clear over their car. The smoke was still clearing as the rider lifted the girl onto the back of the bike as if she were weightless. The helicopter’s perspective didn’t show how she had helped, or how she had twisted the throttle to launch them down the street on one wheel and a cloud of smoke.
The helicopter lost the bike, but it didn’t miss the men crawling back into the police car. Nor their zigzag departure after the couple.
“That was us,” he said, without moving his jaw.
Sidney pushed against Piers’ paralyzed form. “Can’t deny that, but there’s lots of people. Bad time to talk. Let’s go.” She pushed again, forcing him, stumbling, toward the opposite platform.
The TV announcer babbled excitedly about photo-enhancement.
A train approached the platform, but Piers couldn’t drag his eyes from the TV screen. People pushed forward, ready to board the train. He struggled to hear the TV, but he couldn’t miss the picture. The camera was frozen on him on the bike. Sidney’s arms were wrapped around his chest, only a thin arc of her dark hair poked from behind his head. He was gripping the handlebars of the bike, his terror looking for all the world like grim determination. The front wheel was off the ground. He had his leg outstretched, his foot hammering the bald man in the chest. The camera zoomed in. He looked poised and purposeful, balancing the powerful bike as if he were born to it, like a real life James Bond.
The train stopped and the doors hissed open. The crowd waited mere seconds for the travelers to exit the carriages before surging forward. Sidney clung to his wrists. He stared into her eyes as the crowd squeezed them into the center of the carriage. He grabbed a pole for support. “That was us.”
She gave a stupid grin, and a frantic shut-up-now nod.
Piers continued. “That was me. On the bike. Racing away.”
Her smile softened. She tilted her head. “I know,” she gushed. “It is a great picture. They really caught your features. You’re lucky they got such a good angle. Not that you’re really bad looking … I mean, if you got a decent haircut and used a little hair product. I hope they get a good shot of me, too.”
“But I don’t want to be on frigging TV.”
Her smile vanished. “Keep your voice down.”
“But—”
She clapped her hand across his mouth and dragged his ear to her mouth. “Shut the fuck up,” she growled through clenched teeth. She pulled back and smiled. “Darling.”
Piers’ heart raced. He felt the weight of the people around him pushing. He tried to swallow, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
Shit, what had happened? One