her out the window.
Eleven . . .
The bomb went off.
CHAPTER 68
The blast waves hurled me out the window in rocket-propelled fashion. I was in free fall. Nails sliced through the air with the speed of missiles. Glass shattered and spread out in all directions. Bricks exploded outward, pelting me with debris, but my rate of descent pulled me down faster than the objects on a collision course with my body. Most of the debris lost thrust and posed more of a risk to the people down below than it did to me. For me, the real danger was falling. Oh, and my stab wounds.
Brooks. I thought about Brooks. The fall would last only a few seconds. My thoughts came and went quicker than a streaking star. This must be how he had felt. Now I knew. Dropping into the infinite. Not knowing what awaited him. The ground rising as fast as the sky fell away. A scream. A yell. One final cry. One last confirmation of life. Or was it?
I hit the inflatable mattress dead center. The whoosh of displaced air filled my ears. I savored the bounce as the mattress gave way to my weight, then rose up again. Ruby rolled into my body. The gag muted her sobs. I fought a tide of billowing fabric to get off the mattress. Bodies converged on us. Hands latched onto my arms and pulled me toward the edge, staining the mattress with long streaks of my blood. Clegg helped me down, propping me up with his arm. I hung on him, limp and useless.
“Don’t move me. Don’t move me,” I said.
We were standing—well, he stood; I was propped—directly in front of the glass door entrance of 157 Beacon Street. Angry spurts of blood spilled my life force onto the street. My vision darkened. The world began to spin. Round and round. Quick like a bunny. I saw Dobson’s fingers making that same gesture. Quick like a bunny. I remembered the coolness of his touch. How clammy his skin felt on mine. But I stayed on my feet, waiting . . . waiting.
The front door opened, and out stepped Dobson. He had the frantic look of someone who had panicked in the face of grave danger and had rushed to safety, leaving Ruby and me behind to die in an explosion. That look faded as soon as he saw me, replaced by one of total surprise.
“It’s him,” I wheezed loudly enough for Clegg to hear. “It’s Dobson. . . . He’s the bomber . . . the Fiend. . . . He’s the Fiend.”
Dobson gave me a wretched look. He glanced in all directions. Then he smiled a big, toothy grin. I saw him touch his fingers to his eyes. He walked toward me. Clegg didn’t budge. He kept me propped upright.
“You need to see this,” Clegg said to me. “I owe you this.” Dobson came closer, his smile widening.
“Show me what?” I said, my voice weakening. “Aren’t you going to arrest him or something?”
“He’s not going down like that.”
Dobson got closer.
“How’s he going down?” I asked.
Dobson reached into his pocket and pulled out the knife, still stained red with my blood. He sliced the air with the knife, smiling, coming closer.
“This way,” Clegg said. Then he shouted, “Police. Drop your weapon!”
Dobson was no more than ten feet from me, crazed, deranged beyond reason. He lunged forward, thrusting the knife out in front of him as though wielding a bayonet. He got to within an arm’s reach of me when Clegg, in a singular motion, took out his gun and fired a shot. The bullet just barely nicked Dobson’s ear as it zoomed past his head.
Dobson staggered backward but managed to stay on his feet, weapon still in hand. Blood spewed out sideways and down from the wound in Dobson’s head.
Clegg kept his gun trained on Dobson. Dobson broadcast his intent by raising his knife overhead. Suicide by cop, that was how he was going down.
“I said drop your weapon!” Clegg shouted again.
Dobson still advanced. Clegg fired again, this time skimming the side of Dobson’s mouth with his bullet. Dobson’s splintered teeth sprayed like ceramic snowflakes, falling in all directions, the knife clattering to the ground.
As Dobson fell backward, blood sputtering from his shattered mouth in a thick river of red, Clegg fired a third time. The third bullet struck Dobson square in the right eye, sending blood, bone, and brains bursting from his body through a massive hole put in his