Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(82)

No, a voice inside me said. Please don’t take my brother. Please. I don’t want to be left here alone. Don’t leave me here alone.

As the tears formed and I closed my eyes, I recognised what I’d been feeling since I left Last Chance. The sickness, the heat, the giddiness. It was Sam.

He was gone.





Chapter 133


I FELT THE fabric of Whitt’s shirt pull tight as someone tapped him on the arm. ‘Sir, ma’am? Is everything alright? Can I offer you some assistance?’

Whitt pulled away from me, took in the sight of the flight attendant before him like she was an alien creature, her spotless red blazer and unreal make-up a puzzlement. He spoke to her. Gestured. I didn’t listen. I turned and looked at the faces of the men and women who’d gathered around us. I looked from face to face. An elderly lady and her husband clutching their matching suitcase set. A pair of pierced young women lugging backpacks. A family. A group of businessmen. I looked at them, and I didn’t recognise them.

Once, I would have thought of these strangers as ‘civilians’. Non-police. Members of the public whose protection was my duty. They were what I woke for. What I breathed for. These strangers standing around me, those walking back and forth beyond them, getting on planes, getting in taxis.

Now they were just faceless people standing in my way.

I felt a rush of warmth over my limbs, an inner surrender. I was no longer a good Harry struggling to control her bad half. A battle had been lost. I felt dark inside. Hollow, dark and empty of goodness.

Because somewhere out there, beyond them all, beyond the terminal and the airport, Regan Banks was waiting. He was my purpose now. He would be what I continued breathing for. There would be time to grieve properly for Sam later, once I had Regan in my hands. I needed to find him, make him confess what he had done, force him to exonerate my brother. I couldn’t let the tears fall yet. There wasn’t time for that.

Second by second, he was getting away from me. And I was not going to let him escape.

I was not going to let him be caught by my colleagues, by Whitt or Tox, men who would spare his life.

He was going to be mine.

I walked away through the crowd. By the time Whitt noticed I was gone, it was too late.





I CAN’T STOP running. Not now. Not ever.

I think the police are following me. Unless they’re not.

That’s the crazy part. I’m just not sure.

Maybe somebody recognized me …

My picture’s been all over. I bet someone called the NYPD and said, “There’s a crazy guy, about forty-five years old, stumbling around SoHo. On Prince Street. Wild-man eyes. You’d better get him before he hurts himself.”

They always say that—“before he hurts himself.” Like they care.

That crazy guy is me. And if I had seen me, I would have called the cops, too. My dirty blond hair really is dirty and sweaty from running. The rest of me? I feel like hell and look worse. Torn jeans (not hip, just torn); dirty army-green T-shirt, dirty classic red-and-white Nikes. “Dirty” is the theme. But it doesn’t really matter.

All that matters right now is the box I’m carrying. A cardboard box, held together with pieces of string. What’s in it? A four-hundred-and-ten-page manuscript.

I keep running. I look around. So this is what SoHo’s become … neat and clean and very rich. Give the people what they want. And what they want is SoHo as a tourist attraction—high-tech gyms and upscale restaurants. Not much else. The cool “buy-in-bulk” underwear shops and electronics stores selling 1950s lighting fixtures have all disappeared. Today you can buy a five-hundred-dollar dinner of porcini mushroom foam with frozen nettle crème br?lée, but you can’t buy a pair of Jockey shorts or a Phillips-head screwdriver or a quart of skim milk.

I stop for a moment in front of a restaurant—the sign says PORC ET FLAGEOLETS. The translation is high school easy—“pork and beans.” Adorable. Just then I hear a woman’s voice behind me.

“That’s gotta be him. That’s the guy. Jacob Brandeis.”

I turn around. The woman is “old” SoHo—black tights, tattoos, Native American silver jewelry. Eighty years old at least. Her tats have wrinkles. She must have lived in SoHo since the Dutch settled New York.

“I’m going to call the police,” she says. She’s not afraid of me.

Her equally hip but much younger male friend says, “Let’s not. Who the hell wants to get involved?”

They deliberately cross the street, and I hear the woman speak. “I have to say: he is really handsome.”

That comment doesn’t surprise me. Women like me a lot. Okay, that’s obnoxious and arrogant, but it’s true. The old gal should have seen me a few years ago. I had long dirty-blond hair, and, as a girl in college once told me, I was a “hunky nerd.” I was. Until all this shit happened to me and wore me out and brought me down and …

The old lady and younger man are now across the street. I shout to them.

“You don’t have to call the cops, lady. I’m sure they know I’m here.”

As if to prove this fact to myself, I look up and see a camera-packed drone hovering above me, recording my every step. How could I have forgotten? Drones zoom through the sky—in pairs, in groups, alone. Tiny cameras dot the corners of every building. In this New York, a person is never really alone.