Blaze (Heat #3)(25)

She puts her hand on the door handle. "Let's bail. My feet are fine. I can tough it out."

I know she can. I pull some bills from my wallet and toss them at the driver. "We're getting out here."

"Fine. Good."

After I slide out of the backseat behind Soph, I slam the door behind me. "Where to now?"

"This way." She jerks her thumb in the same direction the cab was headed. "It's a nice night for a walk. We'll see how far my feet will carry me before we catch the train."

***

We make it a few blocks before we discover the source of the traffic jam. It's an accident. The mangled remains of a small silver car and a black sedan litter the intersection.

Sophia slows as we near a group of people gathered with their phones in hand, many of them taking pictures of the wreck.

"What happened?" she asks a young woman standing at the edge of the crowd.

She says something to Sophia as I take a step forward, my gaze stopping on the rear door of an ambulance as it closes. I catch a momentary glimpse of a paramedic inside leaning over a person on a stretcher.

The siren wails as the ambulance races from the scene.

"The woman driving that silver car was drunk." Sophia points toward the street. "The girl told me the woman tried to take off but some people held her down until the police got here."

"That's good." I focus on the street where five policemen are standing in a tight circle.

"It's not good," she corrects me. "She ran a bunch of red lights and then plowed into the side of that car. That girl I was talking to said they took someone away in a body bag. Someone died here tonight."

"It looked like there was someone hurt in that ambulance." I point at the street even though the ambulance has disappeared into the distance. "I hope they'll be okay."

"I think that's the driver of the sedan over there." She gestures behind us to where a man in a dark suit is speaking to a police officer. "He seemed pretty shaken up when we walked past him. I heard him say something about his passengers. He told the policeman he didn't know their names."

"Do you want to go home?" I feel a knot in my chest. "I'm tired. I think we should stop at the next subway station. We can take the train the rest of the way."

"I can try an Uber." She slides her finger over her phone. "If we walk another block up, I think we'll be good."

"That works." I force a smile.

She falls in step beside me. "Are you okay, Den? You're thinking about Neela, aren't you?"

I am. I haven't stopped thinking about her since we left Nova. "There's no reason for Tyler not to tell me that he's working with his ex. I don't know why he'd hide that from me."

"You'll know tomorrow when you ask him." She stops at the red light even though traffic is blocked in every direction. There's a police officer several feet from us, repeating the same phrase over and over again, telling everyone within earshot to keep moving and to stay clear of the street.

"We can cross." I step off the curb, trying to divert my gaze from the twisted wreckage of the town car.

"Look at all that glass." Sophia points to the street next to us. "There's a jacket there too and something shiny."

I turn to look. Maybe it's morbid curiosity that pulls my gaze to the littered remnants of the accident. That's not what keeps my gaze trained to the street.

"What's that?" I move around Sophia before I crouch down.

"Don't touch that, Den." She bats her hand lightly across my shoulder. "All of that is evidence."

I hear the deep voice of a man, telling me to step back. I don't. I can't.

I reach down and brush some of the glass aside, the shards piercing my fingertips.

"Ma'am, back away from there now."

The policeman grabs my shoulder as I scoop something into my hand. He scolds me, his words lost beneath the deafening sound of the pounding of my heart.

I look down at the blood spattered, cracked face of the weathered, gold plated watch resting in my palm.

The big hand is frozen in place at the three.

The small hand stuck in time at the twelve.