The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [169]
Wayne’s own knife had gone flying with the impact of the bullet, and with the back of his head pressed against the floor he felt survival panic, wondering how he could defend himself without a weapon, and all this pain and hardly any strength left.
His body had to find it somewhere.
Bridging himself with his feet and shoulders, he kicked his right leg over and managed to swing all his weight into an excruciating reversal. Lifting himself over Peter, he punched him twice with his right fist, neither time hard but once square in the nose. And while Peter was stunned, he pushed up onto his nearly crippled feet with a groan and hobbled back toward the door, praying the woman he loved, the woman he had come to save, the woman he needed to save him, wouldn’t shoot him in the back.
72
THE VIOLINIST CRADLED the Guarneri as gently as a baby Jesus. Nada held her other hand as they followed Peter back toward the magnificent staircase at the end of the hall. The house appeared empty now. It was hard enough to think with the pain in her head and the spider shrieking in her ears, but she started to process all that was happening. Minutes earlier she had shot Wayne in the arm. Jesus. And he was only one of who knew how many people in this house who apparently wanted her dead, or worse. Peter said she’d been poisoned. She remembered now, the meals always arriving on separate plates. There had never been any sharing in the Jameson house. Nothing family-style. Even in the kitchen, Nada’s food always came from a separate pot. Hugh always complained of his arteries. His stratospheric cholesterol. Molly ate after everyone had been fed.
How had she not noticed? Molly and Hugh.
They had manufactured her illness. Made up an excuse to remove her perfectly functioning spider.
They were on the stairs, Peter barely on the third step, knife held in an almost comically ready position, Nada and the whimpering violinist trailing behind. Shouts and screams from inside the house and out. She could barely feel the heat from the upstairs fire here, but she could smell it for sure, hear it crackling above, and wisps of smoke had kept pace with them down the stairs, providing something of a cover and also something of an obstruction. It was hard to see. It was hard to be seen.
Eight more steps, almost to the bottom. Nada could make out the shadow of Russo’s broken body still on the floor where it had landed. Another person dead because of her, and she didn’t even know if the counter on that statistic had stopped.
Then a voice: “Everybody hold it.”
He was either a cop or a goon hired by Jameson and her mother. Nada hadn’t yet decided which. He looked familiar. He was just to the side of a hallway door, gun covering the three of them. Peter lifted his hands in the air, but he didn’t put down his knife. Nada noticed he had odd little pieces of tape around his fingertips. Bandages, maybe.
The cop said he was a cop. He ordered them to put their weapons on the ground and for the three of them to descend slowly. They had to get out of the house quickly, he said. Nada wasn’t sure how to do something quickly but slowly.
“Don’t move, Peter,” Nada said. Then to the cop, “Let me see your badge.”
The cop cleared his throat but didn’t produce one. “I’m Detective Kloska.” He gestured with his gun at Peter.
“You’re the cop who arrested my father.” He didn’t answer. “That’s a big fucking coincidence, Detective Kloska. Where’s your badge?” No answer. “Are you working for them? For my mom? Nobody’s doing anything until I figure this out.”
“Are you kidding me?” Kloska said.
The heat from the fire upstairs singed the back of her neck now. “If I follow you outside, I’m either dead or they’re taking my spider, and there’s practically no difference.” She looked down at Russo’s body.
“I’m not working for anybody, Canada,” Kloska said. “You’re going to put down that gun and we are getting the hell out of here. This house