Smith & Wesson, take aim at the center of Bekami’s forehead, and I pull the trigger.
Twice.
CHAPTER 62
Then everything explodes.
The blast crushes my eardrums.
In an enormous plume of smoke and heat, I am launched through the air.
When I come to, my skin is on fire. Hot pieces of metal gash my forearms like fiery embers; they singe my shirt, engulfing the pavement and every nearby surface.
Choking on the smoke, I roll onto my stomach. The air is so dense I can’t see.
I push my palms against the ground. It is hot and littered with shattered glass and debris. “Aksel?” I cough out, stumbling upright. A woman is screaming beside me, clutching her daughter. I reach for them as they disappear through the smoke.
I put my hand on a car to steady myself, but the metal’s heat scorches me. Stepping over cinders and shoving aside burnt wreckage, I make my way over to the dock where I last saw Aksel, where I last saw Bekami.
Suddenly, an arm coils around my waist. “We need to get out of here,” Aksel warns in my ear.
“I want to see him,” I say desperately, turning to look over my shoulder. “I have to see Beka—”
“He’s dead, Sophia. You killed him.”
A coolness has hit me with Aksel’s embrace. I realize Aksel is soaked. His wet, burned clothes, blackened with oil and soot, cling to his body. But my attention immediately diverts to Aksel’s left, where he is holding an equally wet, battered figure.
Todd’s head rolls forward, limp, onto his chest. I gasp, reaching forward to help hold his weight.
“This way.” Aksel nods.
As the smoke thins, the sensations hit at once: sunlight, voices, sirens.
People run in every direction. Already, bodies are being pulled from charred vehicles. By the time we clear the wreckage, several bystanders are pointing at us emerging from the rubble.
Somehow, Aksel manages to carry Todd while running alongside me; he has an arm solidly locked around Todd’s knees, with Todd’s body draped over his shoulder.
“We need a car, Sophia!” Aksel shouts.
Our motorcycles are somewhere in the rubble, but with Todd’s condition, they are useless. We move out, searching for a car not blocked in.
Near the ticket kiosk, I find an old Fiat. I take off my tattered sweater, wrap it around my fist, and punch through the glass. Reaching through the shattered window, I unlock the door and drop into the seat.
I reach under the steering column. “Hand me your knife.”
Aksel props Todd against the car and reaches into his boot, handing me his Ontario knife.
I pop open the panel under the steering column and fumble around for the wires. I clamp the green ignition wire between my teeth, peeling off several centimeters of insulation.
A policeman runs toward us. Lifting a baton from his holster, he waves it wildly.
I strip the red battery wire and the brown starter wire and twist the two together. The lights on the dashboard switch on.
I pull out the choke once to give it some gas. I take the brown starter wire in my left hand and the red and green wires in my right. With my left foot, I engage the clutch, hold only the insulation, and then push both wires together.
In my side mirror, I see Aksel bodycheck the approaching policeman, launching him backward into a row of scooters.
The ignition growls. The engine rumbles. I press on the gas, revving to keep it alive.
Aksel shoves Todd into the back seat and clambers in after him, their two muscular bodies propped up by the narrow confines of the back row.
Another policeman draws closer. A third is behind him. “Durmak!” he yells. Halt!
I shift the car into first gear and whirl the steering wheel hard to the left. I accelerate but the car whines and doesn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” Aksel asks.
“No steering.” I grab Aksel’s Ontario off the front seat, jam it into the column’s metal keyhole, and twist hard. There is a loud crack as the spring unloads and the wheel breaks free. The policeman is two meters away. I palm the wheel hard to the left and accelerate.
From the rearview mirror, I watch the policeman shout into a radio.
Swerving onto Yalibou Road, I grab a half-empty liter of seltzer water from the floor and toss it to Aksel. My head is unsteady from the explosion. My ears ring. A thin film of ash and soot covers my shredded clothes.
I failed. After everything … I failed.
“You couldn’t have prevented that explosion, Sophia,” Aksel says, as if I had said the