The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,90
lamppost right by his face. He didn’t flinch. This was his city now too, and these were his streets, and the slices of darkness and cars and concrete edges seemed designed to protect him. He fired, and I saw Nick spin as he caught one in the shoulder.
Susan brushed past me, straightened up a bit so that she could steady her aim on the hood of the car. She fired twice at Cline. One bullet hit the wall behind him, alerting him to the coming second round. He whipped his head left, which made what would have been a fatal shot in the face a graze across the temple by his ear. The shot spooked him, and he fell into the shadows.
He was gone, ducking between the cars, a flash of black coat between a car that had turned into the street and stopped at the sound of the firefight. Gunshots roared between the buildings overhead, clapping and echoing like thunder. I grabbed my gun from the car and followed Susan to the other side of the road, where we crouched by Doc Simeon, who was pointing in the direction that Squid had gone, coughing blood onto his cheeks and shirt.
“It’s going to be okay,” Susan told him, pulling his coat closed over the wound in his stomach. Her hands were instantly drenched in blood that looked purple in the gold light of the apartment building. “You’re okay. You’re okay. It’s nothing.”
Sweet lies from a beautiful woman. There were worse ways to die, I thought. The old man’s feet scraped against the sidewalk. I looked down the street and saw Malone and Nick running toward us.
“Are you all right?” I grabbed Nick. His jaw was clenched, and he was panting hard. Malone tossed me an extra clip for my gun. Nick’s shirt was wet with blood, but he hardly seemed to notice the wound, that strange manic electricity taking hold of him quickly, making him shiver under my grasp.
“We’ve gotta go! We’ve gotta go!” He tried to drag me down the street. “They ran that way!”
“I’ll stay here.” Susan knelt over the doctor, pressing hard on his wound. Every cell in my body was telling me to stay with her, to be here for the moments that my friend lay dying on the ground, to somehow try to stop the life from draining from his worn body.
“Go, Bill.” Susan pushed at me. “You’ve got to stop Cline.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ONE
MALONE WAS AHEAD of me. He turned the corner of a closed and silent bank and a gunshot clapped overhead; the concrete corner of an ornate pillar just by his face exploded, forcing him back. We ran into each other, then pressed against the wall. I saw movement to my side and noticed a couple who had been out for a late-night walk cowering between two cars, their big spotted dog twisting and tugging on a leash, terrified. Malone rushed forward into the alley between the streets, but when I looked back to find Nick, who I thought was following us, he was nowhere to be seen. Cline rose from behind a dumpster at the end of the alley, fired off a couple of shots, and sprinted into the dark.
“Nick’s not with us!” I grabbed Malone’s arm. “I have to go back.”
“He’ll be fine!” Malone dragged me forward. “We’ve got to get this bastard off the street!”
We ran across the road, causing a car to slam on its brakes, the hood halting inches from my knees, the headlights blinding. In a courtyard, the water in a large square fountain set into the pavement was so still that Malone didn’t see it; he sprinted in, tripped, and splashed to the other side. We crouched against a post as bullets popped into a low garden wall beside me.
Across the courtyard, Cline and Squid met, two frantic silhouettes against the reflective glass of an office building.
Cline turned, and for a moment I thought it was his reflection that stepped out and raised the gun and pumped Squid’s frail, lean frame full of bullets. But it was a bigger, stronger man, a shape I recognized, gunning the kid down with the precise motions of a machine. Nick didn’t even seem to see Cline, who shot out the glass door beside him and ran into the dark. Nick looked down at his victim, then up at me as I ran to his side.
“Jesus,” he said. His eyes were wild, flicking between realities, over Squid’s body and