can’t help but smile. He scoots back down, rests his head against the pillow, and closes his eyes.
Coulfret. Coulfret. Where have I heard that name? It’s French; I’m on the right track, but I’ve studied Noel’s business dealings and his family tree going back generations and that name isn’t there. And yet I know I’ve seen it. I know it.
I am sitting in the Hall public library on South Michigan, just about to type Coulfret’s name into a Google window when the first bullet rips through my side. It’s a low-caliber round but goddamn does it hurt, like someone swung a hammer into my rib cage.
A civilian’s natural reaction is to drop to the ground when struck by a bullet no matter where it hits the body. It is ingrained from watching thousands of cop shows, thousands of movies, countless hours playing good guys and bad guys: when a gun goes off, the victim clutches his or her heart and falls to the earth like a punch-drunk prize fighter. But a professional killer knows better, knows you can live a long time with a .22 bullet inside you, knows that instead of dropping to the ground, you should be moving away from the direction the bullet hit your body.
I wasn’t expecting this, had no warning other than the small cracking sound to my right followed by the blow to my side, but my instincts take over and people are starting to scream and flee and I act like I’m going to fall, only to leap onto the computer table, just as another crack and a bullet rips into the ground where the person holding the weapon thought I would drop, but I’m up and off the table and diving for a row between two bookshelves.
I catch a glimpse of some dark hair, and I know it’s Llanos, the one from Argentina, and she managed to get one bullet in me but I’ll be damned if she’s going to manage two.
I chose poorly on the row; there are nothing but bookshelves and a concrete wall in front of me, so I swing low and dive through the “H”s in the biography section, scattering hard-covers like buckshot, until I burst out on the other side of the shelf, hitting the ground hard.
My ribs now feel like someone is trying to rip them out of my skin and I’m fighting to breathe, holding my shirt tight over the wound, but I’m pretty sure the bullet caught bone and stayed there, didn’t ricochet, because I’m not throwing up blood, not yet, and my wits are still about me. I may not have anything else, but I’ve got that.
My eyes sweep my new position, homing in on the exits, because one thing is sure, a woman shooting a man in the middle of a Chicago public library is going to draw a hell of a lot of police. She knows it too and that may be my only advantage. She simply doesn’t have time to try and finish the job, not if she wants to escape.
Across the aisle, I spot a door marked “Employees Only” and it’s my best shot, my only shot, a break room or a snack room or something leading down or up or outside.
I grab a large book with the hand not pressed to my side, Lincoln’s face on the cover, and fling it across the open aisle, no-man’s-land, and I am moving while the book is still in the air. Lincoln draws the bullet instead of me and before a second shot is fired, I cross the ten steps to the employees’ door, and I’m through it, startling a corpulent woman in a small hallway who smells like cigarettes.
“Smoking section!” I shout, a little louder than I would have liked, making the universal sign for cigarettes with the first two fingers of my good hand pressed to my lips and she’s too surprised to do anything but point a chubby finger at a door at the end of the hallway.
Twenty yards and I’m slamming through the opening into sunshine and fresh air and freedom. My side feels like someone is jamming a spear into it; my right hand looks like I dipped it in paint.
The alley behind the library opens to the street and I spot a cab idling at the curb with a skinny white kid behind the wheel.
“Out now!” I
Coulfret. Coulfret. Where have I heard that name? It’s French; I’m on the right track, but I’ve studied Noel’s business dealings and his family tree going back generations and that name isn’t there. And yet I know I’ve seen it. I know it.
I am sitting in the Hall public library on South Michigan, just about to type Coulfret’s name into a Google window when the first bullet rips through my side. It’s a low-caliber round but goddamn does it hurt, like someone swung a hammer into my rib cage.
A civilian’s natural reaction is to drop to the ground when struck by a bullet no matter where it hits the body. It is ingrained from watching thousands of cop shows, thousands of movies, countless hours playing good guys and bad guys: when a gun goes off, the victim clutches his or her heart and falls to the earth like a punch-drunk prize fighter. But a professional killer knows better, knows you can live a long time with a .22 bullet inside you, knows that instead of dropping to the ground, you should be moving away from the direction the bullet hit your body.
I wasn’t expecting this, had no warning other than the small cracking sound to my right followed by the blow to my side, but my instincts take over and people are starting to scream and flee and I act like I’m going to fall, only to leap onto the computer table, just as another crack and a bullet rips into the ground where the person holding the weapon thought I would drop, but I’m up and off the table and diving for a row between two bookshelves.
I catch a glimpse of some dark hair, and I know it’s Llanos, the one from Argentina, and she managed to get one bullet in me but I’ll be damned if she’s going to manage two.
I chose poorly on the row; there are nothing but bookshelves and a concrete wall in front of me, so I swing low and dive through the “H”s in the biography section, scattering hard-covers like buckshot, until I burst out on the other side of the shelf, hitting the ground hard.
My ribs now feel like someone is trying to rip them out of my skin and I’m fighting to breathe, holding my shirt tight over the wound, but I’m pretty sure the bullet caught bone and stayed there, didn’t ricochet, because I’m not throwing up blood, not yet, and my wits are still about me. I may not have anything else, but I’ve got that.
My eyes sweep my new position, homing in on the exits, because one thing is sure, a woman shooting a man in the middle of a Chicago public library is going to draw a hell of a lot of police. She knows it too and that may be my only advantage. She simply doesn’t have time to try and finish the job, not if she wants to escape.
Across the aisle, I spot a door marked “Employees Only” and it’s my best shot, my only shot, a break room or a snack room or something leading down or up or outside.
I grab a large book with the hand not pressed to my side, Lincoln’s face on the cover, and fling it across the open aisle, no-man’s-land, and I am moving while the book is still in the air. Lincoln draws the bullet instead of me and before a second shot is fired, I cross the ten steps to the employees’ door, and I’m through it, startling a corpulent woman in a small hallway who smells like cigarettes.
“Smoking section!” I shout, a little louder than I would have liked, making the universal sign for cigarettes with the first two fingers of my good hand pressed to my lips and she’s too surprised to do anything but point a chubby finger at a door at the end of the hallway.
Twenty yards and I’m slamming through the opening into sunshine and fresh air and freedom. My side feels like someone is jamming a spear into it; my right hand looks like I dipped it in paint.
The alley behind the library opens to the street and I spot a cab idling at the curb with a skinny white kid behind the wheel.
“Out now!” I
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