First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [145]
With a desperate swing, Jack knocked the Glock from Brady's hand. It went skittering across the floor. He hauled Brady to his feet, but one foot trod on Brady's gun. It was, like everything else in the area, slippery with blood. Jack lurched forward, taking Brady with him as they pitched through the window in a blizzard of shattered glass. Brady teetered for a moment with Jack over him, the two of them in stunned equilibrium. Jack tried to pull back, to right himself, but Brady was too far. Without Jack's weight to hold him in place, he began to slide headfirst out the window. Jack made a grab for him, but Brady slapped his hands away.
Brady stared up into Jack's face without expression of any kind. "Makes no difference. You'll never stop it."
The next instant he plummeted down three stories to the concrete apron. Jack, covered in blood and shards of glass, scooped up his Glock, ran out of the apartment, along the catwalk. He clattered down the stairs three at a time, around the side of the building.
Brady lay in a grotesque heap. He might have survived the fall, but the impact had broken his neck. His handsome face, under the harsh sodium glare of the parking lot lights, was a patchwork of seams, as if over time it had been stitched together. The eyes, devoid of their animating spark, were only buttons now. Stripped of charisma, he was nothing remarkable to look at. He was dead, Jack was dripping blood, and twenty-five years of rage, sorrow, and feeling abandoned drained away like grains of sand.
FORTY - SEVEN
WALKING INTO the vast hushed public library on G Street NW put Jack immediately at peace. The dry, slightly dusty scent of books came to him like a breath of fresh air, bringing back memories of so many hours happily poring through books to his heart's content. There was a certain kind of quiet here that calmed and stirred him at the same time. It was like being in the ocean, feeling your body light and buoyant and, at the same time, attuning yourself to the galaxy of unknown life that seethed beneath the surface. The knowledge of the world lay before him, the wisdom of history. This was his cathedral. Here was God.
IT WAS the morning of January 20. Inauguration Day. For a few hours, Jack had slept in his car before waking up just before dawn stiff and tired, his eyes full of grit. He went home, stripped off his bloody clothes, climbed into a hot shower, and putting all thoughts aside, stood under the cascade for fifteen blissful minutes. Then he scrubbed himself with soap, rinsed, dried off.
Fighting the urge to call Sharon, he dialed Alli's cell.
"I'm sorry I wasn't able to come by last night."
"That's okay." Her voice sounded furred with the remnants of sleep. "I missed you." There was a slight hesitation. "I had another dream last night." She meant about Ian Brady.
"Can you remember it?"
"He was talking to me, but his voice was all gauzy. It—I don't know—I had pictures in my head, like a movie. I was walking through a crowd of people."
"Were you trying to get away from him?"
"I don't know. I guess."
"Alli, you don't have to worry about him anymore."
"What d'you mean?"
He heard in her voice that she'd come fully awake.
"This is just between the two of us, right?"
"Right."
"That's why I couldn't come see you," Jack said. "I was with him. And now he'll never hurt you again."
He heard her sharply indrawn breath. "Really?"
"Really. I'll see you at the inauguration, okay? Now let me speak with Nina."
After a short pause, Nina came on the line.
"Good idea not contacting me on my cell. Are you calling from a pay phone?"
"A burner I bought a couple