Chimera Read online

  She stopped in midsentence. She was staring through the window of the cab, looking up at her house—a modest two-story building not unlike the one where her mother had lived.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Beyond the obvious?”

  “Captain Chapel,” she said. “I didn’t leave the lights on when I left this morning.”

  He leaned across her to look up at the house. There were definitely lights on in the second-floor windows. As he watched, someone walked past the window, someone big and definitely male.

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:59

  “Dr. Taggart,” Chapel said, “give me your house keys, and stay in this cab no matter what happens.”

  Her eyes searched his face. She wasn’t stupid. She knew this couldn’t be a coincidence. Still, she clearly had her doubts.

  “I am not kidding,” he told her.

  She nodded once and reached in her purse to fish out her keys. She slapped them into his outstretched right hand.

  He tapped on the partition between them and the cabbie. “Wait here. Keep the meter running—it’ll be worth your while.”

  The bearded cabdriver just shrugged.

  Chapel stepped out onto the sidewalk. With his artificial left hand he brushed the front of his jacket, just to remind himself his sidearm was still there.

  Approaching the house he saw right away that he wouldn’t need the keys after all. The front door had been forced open. It was a heavy steel-core door with a Medeco lock, a lock that was supposed to be impossible to pick. Whoever had opened the door hadn’t bothered to try. He’d simply smashed the lock mechanism, maybe with a sledgehammer. Chapel looked up and down the street but saw nobody watching him. Breaking that door must have made a lot of noise but nobody had come to investigate.

  He shook his head and pushed past the swaying door. There was a second door inside, a security door with an electric buzzer. That door, too, had been smashed open and the buzzer was whining a plaintive cry.

  “Up the stairs. It’s the apartment on the left,” Angel told him.

  The building had been a single house once, from the look of it, but had been subdivided at some later point to make four apartments. Chapel headed up the stairs and found himself in a narrow corridor between two identical doors. These were simple wooden doors, child’s play to kick in. It looked like both of them had been bashed open by force. Maybe the intruder didn’t have an Angel to tell him which door he wanted.

  Chapel drew his weapon. He reached for a safety switch before remembering there wasn’t one on the P228. The handgun had an internal safety—the first pull on the trigger was a double action, cocking the hammer a moment before the handgun fired. That meant his first shot would be slightly slower than expected.

  It had been a long time since he’d fired a pistol at anything but a paper target. Chapel set his jaw and pushed open Julia’s apartment door with his foot.

  From behind the door he heard shattering glass. Had the intruder jumped out a window? No—he could see blue glass fragments all over the floor.

  The apartment might have been nice, tastefully decorated and cozy, once. He saw framed pictures of dogs on the walls and a bricked-in fireplace. Other than that the place was a shambles. The furniture had been broken into sticks of wood. Books had been torn from their shelves and thrown across the floor. Foam stuffing from ripped-up pillows and cushions floated on the air.

  The place hadn’t just been ransacked. It had been demolished.

  A loud clattering, rattling noise broke his concentration. Stainless steel cooking implements—salad tongs, spatulas, slotted spoons—bounced and danced across the floor. The intruder must have pulled out one of Julia’s kitchen drawers and just thrown it through the opening to the kitchen.

  Careful not to trip on anything, Chapel advanced into the room. He was still blocking the main exit, but he stayed far enough from the kitchen entrance to not be surprised if the intruder came running out.

  He cleared his throat. Summoned up his best command voice. “Stop where you are! You’re under arrest!”

  Silence filled the apartment. To one side of Chapel, a broken lamp rolled off a table and landed in a snowdrift of old tax forms. He managed not to jump, even as keyed up as he was.

  “Step out of the kitchen. Lie down on the floor in here with your fingers locked behind your head,” Chapel demanded.

  The intruder took a step toward him. Chapel could hear the stamping footsteps on the wooden kitchen floor. He could hear the intruder breathing heavily, now, too. Chapel felt like his senses were coming alive, growing stronger. He remembered this focus, this clarity, from the days when he’d worked in the field.

  “Step out of the kitchen,” he repeated. “Lie down on the—”

  The intruder didn’t just emerge from the kitchen. It was like he exploded out of it, like he was a bullet fired from a gun. Chapel had never seen a human being move that fast—before this moment, he would have sworn it was impossible.

  He jerked the trigger of the P228. His instincts were good, his reflexes just as sharp as they’d ever been. He was certain he’d hit his target, that the 9 mm round had caught his target in his shoulder.

  The intruder didn’t slow down at all. He collided with Chapel, knocking him over, sending them both rolling into the remains of a couch. Chapel saw a massive fist lift in the air, the arm behind it curling as the intruder readied a devastating blow aimed right at Chapel’s head.

  He managed to yank his head to one side. The fist came down with a thunderous crack. Chapel felt splinters dig into his ear and the side of his face. He glanced to the side and saw the intruder’s fist buried in the shattered floorboards.

  Impossible, Chapel thought. This is impossible—

  And then strong arms grabbed him and hauled him into the air. He kicked and struggled, because he knew how hard it was to lift a human being who refused to let his center of gravity stay in one place. The hand gripping his leg squeezed. Hard. Chapel felt the muscle there, honed by years of swimming, crush and start to tear.

  Then the intruder tossed Chapel into a corner of the room and made a break for the apartment door.

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+9:03

  Chapel picked himself up off the floor and shook some dust off his jacket. His head swam for a minute, but he fought the wooziness off.

  No damn time to be hurt, he told himself. Except it sounded like Top’s voice inside his head. “That’s right, Top,” he said out loud. And then he dashed for the apartment door and down the stairs.

  Chapel had gone through Special Forces training with the Army Rangers. The Rangers were famous for always being the first boots on the ground—wherever the army went, the Rangers were the first group sent in. They had a reputation for moving fast and keeping their wits about them. It had been a while since he’d used it, but conditioning like that doesn’t break. He took the stairs two at a time and put his good shoulder into the door, knocking it wide open and spilling him into the street.

  Just in time to see the back door of the cab slam shut, and the vehicle take off down the road at high speed. He saw two people in the backseat. One was Julia.

  He was certain the other one was the intruder.

  “Hell, no,” he said, and lifted his weapon, aiming with both hands. The cab was already a hundred feet away and gaining speed, weaving to avoid other cars. He couldn’t risk firing into its cabin in case he hit Julia by accident, so he snapped a
shot at its rear right tire. The bullet dug a narrow trench through the asphalt, barely missing by a foot.

  Chapel wanted to swear. He wanted to shout in frustration.

  Instead he took off at a run. There was no way he could catch up with the speeding cab—his legs were strong but he was only human. He had no intention of just giving up, though.

  Even if there was no hope at all.

  “Chapel,” Angel said. “Chapel! Tan Lexus, just ahead on your left!”

  Chapel didn’t waste time asking questions. He ran over to the indicated car and grabbed the driver’s-side door handle. It resisted him—but then he heard a chunk as the door lock opened.

  He had no idea what Angel was planning. He knew how to hot-wire a car, but it would take too long. This was pointless, it was just a token gesture, but—

  As he slid into the driver’s seat, the car rumbled to life.

  “Keyless ignition,” Angel said, “tied in to one of those always-on satellite services, so if you lose your keys you can just ask the nice man in India to start the car for you. Or, you know, your favorite hacker.”

  Chapel pulled on his seat belt and stepped on the gas.

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+9:04

  Chapel jerked the wheel to the side to get around a slow-moving bicyclist and nearly collided with a line of cars coming the other way. He swerved back into his lane and accelerated. He could just see the cab ahead, a block away. There was a red light between them, but he took it at full speed, ignoring the horns that blared at him and the shouts of pedestrians.

  He had to be careful, had to avoid accidents—it was far too easy, in the heat of the moment like this, to trade speed for safety. If he caught the intruder but ran over six pedestrians in the process, why exactly was he doing this?

  The cabdriver didn’t seem to have any such qualms. He sideswiped a city bus and then rocketed across his lane and half up onto the sidewalk to get around another car. The intruder must have been threatening him to make him drive like that, Chapel thought. He must be afraid for his life.

  From what Chapel had seen, he had good reason to be.

  “Is New York traffic always like this?” Chapel asked.

  “Day in, day out,” Angel told him. “There’s another traffic light up ahead—I’m going to keep it green for you, but you need to watch out. Jaywalking is the official pastime in this city.”

  “Noted,” Chapel said, palming the wheel as he gunned around a double-parked delivery van. Up ahead in the crosswalk people were standing in the street, inches from the cars that blasted past them going both ways. “You can’t get these people to actually wait on the sidewalks, can you?”

  “There are some things even I can’t hack,” Angel told him. “Sorry, sweetie.”

  Too much traffic. Too many people. On an open country highway Chapel could have given chase for miles. Here he was going to kill somebody if he didn’t end this, and soon. The bright yellow cab was inching closer, but the cabbie was taking ever more serious risks. He blasted right through a fruit cart, sending its umbrella twirling and spattering the road and passersby with bright orange mango pulp. A woman in a business suit screamed and threw her briefcase at the cab as it nearly took her toes off.

  “I need to get close and drive him off the road,” Chapel said.

  “Hold on,” Angel told him. “Up ahead—perfect! One lane of the road up ahead is closed for construction. There’s a blue wooden barrier and some orange netting making a temporary sidewalk. Do you see it?”

  Chapel squinted at the road ahead. Yeah, the cab was just entering a new block where the road had been dug up. Big construction vehicles were leaning on the sidewalk and out into the street, protected from sideswipes by a blue wooden wall. Three more feet of the road had been cordoned off with traffic barrels and netting so people on foot could get around the construction.

  “The intersection ahead is clear . . . now!” Angel said.

  Chapel stepped on the gas and the Lexus shot through the open space, just as the traffic light overhead turned from yellow to red. The Lexus bounced and jumped on its suspension as he hit a trench dug through the asphalt, but suddenly the yellow cab was dead ahead.

  Chapel pulled around the cab, trying to get level with it. He could see Julia and the intruder in the backseat. He had her in some kind of choke hold, and he was shouting at the cabbie through the partition.

  There was blood on the partition. Who the hell was this guy?

  He didn’t look like the detainees Chapel had seen in the grainy surveillance footage Hollingshead had shown him. This guy’s hair was cut short and his face was clean-shaven. Of course, that transformation would have taken only a few minutes in a train station bathroom. Chapel was certain this had to be one of the men he was looking for. It was just too unlikely that this was some random criminal who had broken into Julia’s apartment the same day her mother was beaten to death.

  Besides, Chapel had seen the way the man moved, the strength in his arms. That was exactly what Hollingshead and Banks had tried to warn him about. The detainees were stronger and faster than anyone Chapel had ever seen.

  “Angel,” Chapel said, “the owner of this Lexus—how’s his insurance?”

  “She’s got a five-hundred-dollar deductible,” Angel told him.

  “Send her a check,” he said, and he yanked the steering wheel over to the side, slamming the nose of the Lexus right into the left rear wheel of the cab.

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+9:10

  Metal screeched and safety glass shattered. The steering wheel jumped in Chapel’s hands like a wild horse trying to break free of a rider, and the car under him skidded and floated over the asphalt, all control lost. The cab spun around and broke through the blue wooden barrier, sending broken scraps of wood flying in the air. Orange netting wrapped around the windshield of the Lexus, obscuring Chapel’s view. A moment later the air bag exploded in his face and he couldn’t see anything.

  “The cab has stopped moving,” Angel told him.

  The air bag deflated almost instantly, and Chapel already had his seat belt off. He shoved the door of the Lexus open and ducked out, keeping his head low. He didn’t think the detainee had a weapon but he wasn’t about to find out the hard way.

  Dashing around the front of car, he came at the cab with his handgun in a two-handed grip. He saw the cab was up on two wheels, its front end propped up by broken wood and a pile of gravel on the far side of the barrier. It wasn’t going anywhere.

  Someone tumbled out of the passenger door. He raised his weapon but lowered it again when he saw it was Julia. She looked banged up, a little, but he didn’t see any blood on her. “Dr. Taggart,” he called. “Are you all right?”

  “He went through there,” she shouted back, pointing at a building on the far side of the broken barrier.

  He had to hand it to this woman. She was a civilian and she’d been through more than her share of shocks and horrors for one day, but still she kept her wits about her. She knew what was important—catching this man. She could look after herself.

  Chapel clambered over the shattered barrier and ducked around the side of the gravel pile, a giant backhoe giving him cover on his other side. Dead ahead was the building she’d indicated. Its ground floor was lined in sheet glass windows, but they’d been covered over with brown craft paper held on with duct tape so he couldn’t see inside. The door of the building might have been locked
up tight, but now it was hanging open on one hinge. He recognized the detainee’s handiwork.

  “Angel,” he said, “what does this building look like inside?”

  “It’s been gutted. Used to be a department store, but it went out of business two years ago. The current owners tore out all the copper wiring and anything else of value and have left it empty ever since.”

  “So you’re telling me there’s no power in there. No lights.”

  “I’m afraid so. Be safe, Chapel.”

  Not much chance of that.

  Chapel shoved his back up against the window just to the right side of the door. The door hung open wide enough for him to get a glimpse inside. He saw a bare concrete floor, with pillars here and there holding the ceiling up. Piles of construction debris, an old wheelbarrow, and a stack of two-by-fours sat inside. The light streaming in through the broken door only illuminated a small patch of the floor.

  He saw no sign of movement. For all he knew the detainee had just run through this building and out a back door. If he had, the chase was over.

  Every instinct in Chapel’s body told him that wasn’t true. That he was standing right outside of a death trap.

  He shoved the door out of its frame with one foot. The remaining hinge gave way, and it fell outward, smashing onto the sidewalk. Chapel ducked inside before the noise had stopped and got his back up against the nearest pillar.

  He could hear nothing. The place stank of mildew and dust. Nothing alive but rats had been in there for a long time.

  Chapel held his breath.

  He waited.

  Finally he heard what he’d hoped for. A footfall, the sound of someone big, human sized, crunching the dust underfoot.

  “This building is surrounded,” he shouted. “Your only chance is to turn yourself in. I promise we won’t hurt you.”

  “I’ve been hurt before,” the detainee said.