Chapter 2
Donna was crossing the concrete court to her office building when her sleek Nokia—Colin got her a new one for Christmas, year
in, year out—went off. She stopped to answer it because it meant she could finish her cigarette. The after-breakfast cigarette
was her favorite, better than the post-fuck cigarette even. Not that she really ate breakfast, just a juice smoothie, in the
“Where are you?” Allie asked.
“Walking into the office.”
“Get away. Right now. Don’t go to work.”
Donna heard sirens in the background of the call.
“What’s going on, babe?”
“There were men. One of them tried to stick me in the bum with a syringe. I had to pull King Sorrow through from the Long
Dark. They’re all dead now. Please, Donna, please, walk away from the office.”
Donna started walking, across the court, past the entrance to the tower. She strode swiftly up Sixth with her head down. Her
pulse came in hard, jagged throbs. When she shut her eyes for a moment she saw water from a sprinkler, leaping through the
sunlight, flashing like drops of mercury. She remembered the feel of a cold wet bathing suit against her skin, remembered
shivering convulsively. Awful things to recall.
“These men,” Donna said. “How many?”
“One in a pickup. Two on the sidewalk. At least two. King Sorrow wiped them out, but I know there’s more.
There was another team of three in a van in front of our apartment building.
I recognized one of them. I didn’t know him at first, but when I was almost to Garfield Place it came back to me.
He was in Greenland. He was in the room when the FBI interviewed me.
Not always, just sometimes, and I don’t think he was an agent himself, I—”
“What about Donovan?”
“He’s safe. I called him before I called you. He’s already on the move.”
“Why would they come after you? Either of you?” Donna asked.
“They must know something about King Sorrow. I think it was Van’s gosh-darn book. He gave us away.”
The book. Of course, the book. He had to write the fucking book. Colin had told him not to, but Van wanted it so much, wanted
to be important, and Robin had promised she could get it on the bestseller lists. Satanic Skies: The Impossible True Story of BA 238. The book was huge with UFO nuts and people who believed in astral projections.
“Where are you now?” Donna asked.
“On a pay phone. Donovan and I were going to meet up at the Washington Square Arch. Can you meet us there?”
“I’m supposed to be at work.”
“You can’t go to work. I told you.”
“Just because they want you and him doesn’t mean they’re after me. I wasn’t on the flight with you.”
“But you’re in the book. And you’re his twin. Donna, they could be following you now.”
Donna fought back another wave of that shivery wet swimsuit feeling, the sensation she hated most in the world. She slowed,
joining a gathering at the corner, all of them waiting for the walk light, and had a careful look around.
She scanned the crowd for anyone who might be following her.
A young woman with glossy chestnut hair was picking a stone out of one of her sneakers.
Had she also been on the subway with Donna that morning?
A good-looking kid in his late teens, early twenties, was trying to scope her out without being noticed.
Maybe a kidnapper, maybe a horny kid, maybe just someone who had recognized her from the local news.
She couldn’t keep track of all the people moving around her.
Instead of crossing the street she turned right, just to keep moving.
“What about the others? Colin? Gwen?”
“Well, they weren’t in the book, were they? It was just us. Van wanted to thank the rest of the gang, but Colin wouldn’t let
him, said it was ‘ill-advised.’ I don’t know what to do, Donna. I just killed three men. At least three. And cars, a whole row of cars went up like someone hit them with a rocket launcher, like in a movie, Christ, he blew
up half the block—”
“Stop talking and start walking,” Donna said, having heard enough. “I’ll see you soon.” And flipped her phone shut with a
clap.
A Black man, a few storefronts down from Donna, hailed a cab. The taxi started to slow for him, but Donna threw up her own
hand and it put on a little jolt of speed to pull past him and alongside her. She leapt in, told the cabbie to roll. Middle
Eastern driver, his radio babbling idiotically, smell of falafel thick in the air, fucking New York was getting more like
Baghdad every day. When Donna glanced over her shoulder she saw the Black guy still on the curb, tucking one hand into the
pocket of his gray slacks, a look of amused contempt on his face. She gave him an exaggerated shrug through the rear window.
If he wanted better luck catching cabs, he should’ve been born with an ass like hers.
She ditched the cab at Fifty-Seventh Street, went underground to the subway, came up two minutes later on the opposite side
of the street and caught the first taxi to come into sight. She hadn’t seen anyone following her, but if there was someone back there, they were gone now. No way they had stuck with her through that. Her ride carried her downtown toward
Washington Square Park.
Donna’s thoughts were caffeinated, coming too fast. She had spent a lot of her life imagining what she would do if someone tried to grab her.
It was her natural state. Unlike Allie, she had never touched the mark on her chest, had never brought King Sorrow through from the Long Dark.
She’d never had to. But it brought her calm to know that if someone tried to stick her with a needle, she could blast them to cinders with a tap of her fingers.
She thought too, there were people dead in Brooklyn, and it was going to be a big story, and she wished she could have a piece
of it. Which reminded her: they would start the day’s editorial planning session in ten minutes, without her. She flipped
open her phone to dial her producer, Morris Shanley, tell him there had been a big explosion near where her brother lived
and she was worried about him, but her Nokia dropped the call after the third ring. It was hard to find a cell signal down
in the shadowy canyons of brick and glass. Colin said that cell phones were more important than computers or laptops, but
it was hard to imagine it, you couldn’t use the fucking things anywhere.
Of course, Colin knew all about phones, and all about the future too, and he would know better than her. He had been living
in the twenty-first century since at least 1990. His first company sold surveillance technology for hacking into cell phones
to read people’s texts and emails, for tracking their Web searches. His second start-up sold security software, to protect
companies and government agencies from exactly the sort of hacking his first company specialized in. It entertained Colin
Wren to peddle the virus and sell the cure. He had been highly involved in those first two outfits, had even written some
early code for them, although he claimed he wasn’t much of a programmer. He was mostly out of hands-on work now. He had started
a venture capital fund (Smaugloot—he named all his companies after dumb Dungeons and Hobbits shit) and made his money investing
in other people’s clever ideas. Forbes said he was worth two hundred million dollars, but when Donna asked him, he twisted his mouth to one side in a little smile
and said, “Hardly counts when you inherited the first twenty million.”
The drive to Washington Square Park was stop-and-go.
It was warm enough in the direct sunlight, but in the cool shadows of the cab that clammy wet swimsuit feeling came over her again.
She hated it. She hated to feel weak and despised weakness in other women.
Sometimes she despised it in Allie. The thought of men grabbing Allie made Donna shudder.
Made her want to hurt someone. Gregg Pinet had liked it when Donna hurt him, or had learned to like it, anyway.
He was married to an investment banker ten years older than him now—a chain-smoker with great legs, who made him sign a prenup.
Maybe they had kids by now, a dreadful thought.
The arch loomed at the end of Fifth, dingy white marble against a blindingly blue sky. Donna flung herself out of her yellow
cab and into the bright, bitter day. She found a bench under a bare tree. She had a signal here, but before she could call
anyone, her phone hummed with an unknown number. After a moment’s hesitation, she flipped her Nokia open and answered.
“Donna, it’s me,” Colin said. “Don’t say my name. It’s likely the people who are after you have already tapped your phone.
I’m calling from a secure line, but you aren’t, so assume they’re listening. Your phone has a transponder in it. They can
use it to find you. I want you to get rid of your Nokia as soon as we’re done talking. They know about Allie—we just spoke—they
know about Donovan, and I think it’s a safe assumption they know about you. But that might be all they know.”
“Because of that stupid book?”
“Because of the book. I thought it was a bad idea, but there’s no use relitigating the past. If that’s all they know, that’s how I want to keep it. They’re making their move—soon enough we’ll make ours.”
She was on her feet again. She felt like a loaded gun, ready to go off and kill some mother’s son. Colin had that effect on
her, made her feel like they couldn’t lose.
“Get moving, Donna. I know where you are. You have to assume they do too. Allie knows not to meet you there now. We’ll all
meet up at the streetlamp that looks like a question mark. I’ll look for you there every day at exactly six p.m. for a week.
Don’t call me—don’t call any of us—unless you absolutely must, and then use a pay phone.”
She began to walk, swift, long strides, heels clacking on the concrete.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“No. Hang up. Eject the SIM card—”
“What’s a—”
“It’s a memory card in a cartridge on the side of your phone. You can open it with a hairpin. Eject the SIM card and throw
it away. Snap your phone in two and throw that away too. I’ll see you at the question mark. Be safe. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said, and it was true. She could’ve said it to any of them and it would’ve been true: Arthur, Gwen,
Allie, Van. She would’ve died for any of them—although she’d far rather kill for them.
Donna dropped the SIM down a cistern. She struggled with the phone while she walked, finally snapped it in two at the hinge.
She cast her gaze around her, scanning the other wanderers in the park, but if anyone was watching she couldn’t spot them.
She hastened down a cross street and emerged on Sixth at the Washington Square subway entrance. By the time she descended
the steps into the roaring, steam-filled world below, she was running as fast as a woman in four-inch heels could run.