Page 39 of Breakdown
Peter pushed up his sleeves, leaning hard into Jordan’s abdomen in an attempt to stem the flow of blood and keeping his eyes on the front of the shop. Another black-and white had joined the initial car, and the quartet of cops was almost through the lock now.
Jordan pawed weakly at Peter’s arm. “Hurts.” His mouth opened and closed like a fish on a dock, his breath coming in harsh, uneven gasps.
“I know, I’m sorry.” That didn’t begin to cover it. He’d gotten Jordan involved in this mess in the first place. Peter kept the pressure on the makeshift compress, guilt crashing over him in in unrelenting waves. The sweater was warm and wet in his hands, the rise and fall of Jordan’s chest unnervingly shallow beneath it. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay,” he lied to him soothingly, repeating it over and over until the words didn’t make any sense. Jordan didn’t seem to hear them anyway. His eyelids had slipped closed and stayed that way.
The cops were taking their sweet fucking time and Peter was ready to scream with frustration. The kid was going to die. The kid was going to die and he was going to get caught and none of this had done a goddamn lick of good because Peter was incapable of not fucking up everything he touched.
Finally, after less than a minute and a fucking eternity, the chain fell loose from the gate. The cops streamed forward with agonizing caution. He was surprised to see that Callie Gibbs—Liv’s little pet on the force—wasn’t among them.
They finally neared the door. The first officer pushed it open carefully, his maglight sweeping the room and landing on the first body.
“Shit,” the guy hissed under his breath.
Peter gritted his teeth, knotting his sweater as tightly as he could around Jordan’s middle. “Hey, we need help back here! We have a man bleeding out,” he called. He gave Jordan’s hand a final squeeze of reassurance, praying the kid could still feel it. Then Peter bolted for the rear door.
There was yelling, a rush of footsteps on concrete, and the flicker of bobbing flashlight beams trained on him. Peter raced down the hallway, took the back door with a crash of his shoulder and launched himself over the threshold at a hard sprint. He looked back only once and saw someone kneeling over Jordan in the darkness, yelling into his radio. He saw the rest of the cops giving chase.
Unnervingly close, the first officer burst out of the building in pursuit, his boots scraping for purchase on the gravel. “Freeze!” His fingertips brushed Peter’s shoulder, narrowly missing his grip.
Peter ducked, hurtling forward through the hole in the fence and gouging his bare arms on the freshly cut wire. The officer’s flashlight was blindingly bright, catching him in profile.Fuck.The cop was bulkier than him; he got caught up in the fence and Peter bolted down the alley, praying that the guy hadn’t had enough time to get a solid ID on him. Blood pumped deafeningly in his ears, his chest heaving as he ran.
The cop fumbled behind him as Peter took two corners in quick succession and scrambled up a fire escape. From that vantage point, he watched the officer take a wrong turn and then another before he lost sight of him. After several minutes, the man returned to the mouth of the alley, bent over and sucking air hard. He swept the beam of his flashlight over the trash cans and dumpsters, cursing to himself. Peter pressed himself flat against the metal grating, holding his own breath, hoping the cop didn’t turn the light upwards.
“Fuck,” the officer muttered, before bringing his radio to his mouth. “Lost him. I’m heading back to the scene.”
Peter counted to a hundred before he began to climb down. He was halfway to the ground when the phone slipped from his pocket, the crunch echoing loudly against the concrete as the cheap thing shattered into a thousand pieces along with any hope he might have had of warning Nik. He flinched, freezing on the ladder and listening hard to the cop’s footsteps.
After a moment, he let out the breath he was holding. The officer was still retreating. He had to get back to the getaway car, back to the shop, back to Nik. Before it was too late.
It was only when his shoes touched the pavement that he realized this was the alley he had parked in earlier. Of course, there was no Jetta there.
Christ. Peter scooped up the remains of the destroyed phone, almost laughing out loud at how goddamn stupid he was. Cynthia Bauer was long gone. At least this time, he knew why. He was surprised how little it helped.
Interlude
Nikos
