The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(25)

He took one more long breath. As he turned, he caught sight of his face in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. You made this deal, he told himself. You put Gina’s life and Adriana’s life on the line. You will do this.

You have no other choice.

Mason went back out through the door, shutting off the light behind him. He was wearing black jeans and a black jacket. He put the gun in the jacket’s pocket and went to the stairs. The exit sign glowed a sickly orange. There were a Coke machine and a candy machine, both with crudely lettered signs indicating you were out of luck if you wanted either Coke or candy. An ice machine rattled, apparently still in business.

Mason heard a car moving somewhere, maybe a block away. He turned the corner. The balcony was empty. He walked slowly, feeling the slight sway of the concrete slab beneath him as he moved his weight from one foot to the other. He counted down the room numbers. 223. 221. 219. 217.

Mason could see the office below him, on the other side of the L. He could see a dim light through the window, but he did not see an occupant.

He paused for a moment. Room 215 was ten feet away. His heart was pounding. Breathe in, he said to himself. Breathe out.

He took another slow step. Then another. He couldn’t see any light coming from the room’s window until he reached the center and there was a slight gap between the curtains.

The man in the room was stained blue by the glow of the television. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and he was a big enough man to make it sag halfway to the bottom of the frame. He looked at his watch, then stood up and brushed off the back of his suit coat, looking down at the bed like it had been a mistake to sit there. He was wearing a white dress shirt under his suit, no tie, but everything was perfectly pressed. His leather shoes had just been shined.

Mason’s senses were so amped by adrenaline that every detail of the room, of the man, of everything else around him, was burned into Mason’s mind in that one instant.

He closed his eyes and took one more deep breath. He took the gun from his jacket pocket and held it close to his chest.

A car turned onto the street below and its headlights swung across Mason’s back. He froze for a moment. When the car was gone, he took the final two steps to the door. He knew one good kick would open it. But the headlights had set off a timer in his head and now that a full two seconds had passed the bell had started to ring. Yes, he told himself, the man may have seen your shadow against the curtains.

That’s the exact moment when the door opened and the man came out and at Mason, moving impossibly fast for his size. He grabbed Mason by the collar and pushed him back against the balcony. For one sickening moment Mason felt the whole thing start to give. He could picture the two of them falling to the concrete below. But then the man pulled back like they were two wrestlers coming off the ropes and Mason was thrown into the room. The door swung closed behind them. The gun was wrenched from Mason’s hand. He heard it land with a soft thud somewhere on the carpet.

The man’s hands were wrapped tight around Mason’s throat. Mason tried to dig his thumbs into the soft pressure points of the man’s elbows, but the man was too heavy and strong.

The man pushed him back against the television set and it fell to the floor, plunging the room into almost total darkness. Mason brought his knee up into the man’s groin and he felt the grip around his neck loosen and then give way. The man was breathing hard and making noises like a feral animal as he started swinging his fists. There was an explosion of light and pain when he caught Mason above the left eye.

Mason ducked and drove his shoulder into the man’s gut. He drove him backward, past the bed and against the far wall. He felt the night table splintering and heard the picture frame sliding down the wall. The man tried to ram his head into Mason’s nose, missed, but still caught him on the cheek, and another explosion went off as Mason felt himself overwhelmed once again by the man’s pure physical mass.

After all of the fights Mason had been in, ever since he was kid, a ninety-pound weight advantage was the one thing he had no answer for. Now it seemed like the one final fact that would end his life.

The man was on top of him. Mason could smell the faint trace of alcohol on the man’s breath, mixing with sweat and fear. He could already taste the blood in his mouth as the man hit him again. Then again. It was all going dark. And when the man hit him square in the throat, he took what would surely be his last breath. For one moment he saw the face of his daughter when she was four years old. He’d never see her as a nine-year-old. He’d never see anything else again, apart from the dark outline of the man above him, poised with his fist in the air, ready to drive it into Mason’s head one last time.

Then he felt the hard metal of the gun butt just under the bed. He pulled it out and brought the barrel to the man’s chest. He fired, the kick of the gun twisting it painfully in his hand, the body muffling the shot for everyone in the city except Nick Mason. It rang in his ears. And the ringing said to him, This is the first man you’ve ever killed.

Mason untangled himself from the man’s dead weight. He went to the bathroom and flicked on the light. As he looked back, he saw the exit wound in the man’s back. It was a ragged, softball-sized hole in the man’s suit coat. And as he looked at the walls and ceiling, he saw the man’s blood and tissue all over the place. He looked in the bathroom mirror and saw more blood on his face. His own blood, the man’s blood—he didn’t even know, or care, at that point. His cheek and eyebrow were already beginning to swell.