Nothing to Lose (20 page)

S
omething fell on top of me. Some
one
—Morgan. Her first instinct had also been to hit the ground. There were more explosions—gunshots, I realized. We scrambled back against the wall. I couldn't see what had happened to Ling-Kung and Philip. Morgan and I made ourselves as small as possible. Someone shouted, “Stay down, Robbie!” No one needed to tell me that. Morgan and I were already cowering on the ground.

One of the men who had brought us to the warehouse got shot. Blood sprayed everywhere before he collapsed motionless on the ground. Another man set down his weapon and raised his hands. Someone yelled at him to lie facedown on the ground and put his hands behind his head. He obeyed, moving cautiously and deliberately.

I raised my head and looked around. Philip and his father were gone. I heard footsteps, running back down the stairs. For a moment, nothing happened. Then people—cops, armed and fully armored—started to show themselves. Hands grabbed me and pulled at me and all of a sudden I couldn't breathe. My father was hugging me too hard. He released my hands and I peeled the tape from my mouth.

“Are you okay?” he said. “Are you hurt?”

I said I was fine, although I was shaking so hard that I would have fallen over if he hadn't been holding me so tightly.

Then I heard another shot—it had come from down below.

Ling-Kung started for the door to the stairs. A cop ordered her to stop.

“Philip,” she said.

Half a dozen cops started down the stairs cautiously. I held my breath. Someone had removed the tape from Morgan's hands, and she was sticking close to me. Minutes passed like hours. Then someone stepped through the door—Philip. His face was pale, his eyes dazed. He looked like he was in shock. A cop said something. I didn't absorb the words. It seemed as if there were officers everywhere. Then an ambulance drove into the warehouse and two paramedics followed a cop through the door into the basement.

The man who had been shot still lay where he had fallen. The one who had surrendered was handcuffed and taken away. My father held onto me the whole time. He put one arm around Morgan and asked if she was okay. She nodded and mumbled something. I felt her trembling.

After a few more minutes, my father led Morgan and me out of the warehouse to where his car was parked.

“I want you two to stay put until I come back. Okay?”

I said okay.

“Dad, how did you know?”

“Nick called me. He said he was worried.”

Nick. Thank god.

“Where is he?”

“Downtown.”

He didn't mean downtown at the parade. He meant downtown with the police.

“But how did you know where we were?”

He gave me a strange look. “Didn't you activate those radio transmitters?”

“Yeah, but we didn't know if they'd work. We didn't even know if anyone would think about them because they were in my backpack when it was stolen.”

“Nick saw you before you got into the van. He said he didn't know how you'd gotten hold of it, but he was positive you had your backpack with you. He remembered you telling Stan that you had transmitters in there. He figured that if they were still in there and you had a chance, you'd activate them. Turns out he was right.”

 

 

It was nearly midnight by the time Morgan left police headquarters with her parents. Billy had come downtown with them. She had thrown herself into his arms. They each said that the other one was right—Morgan said she shouldn't have gone to the parade. Billy said he should have gone with her. Then he kissed her, in front of her parents, in front of everyone.

My father drove Nick and me back to his place. When we got to the second floor, my father said,“Think you can make it up another flight on those crutches, Nick?”

Nick nodded. He hadn't said a word all the way home.

I sank down onto one end of my father's sofa. Nick stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, hunched over his crutches. My father went into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

“You should sit down,” I said to Nick.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

I patted the sofa next to me. Instead, he sat at the far end. “I shouldn't have gotten you involved,” he said.

“
You
shouldn't have gotten involved,” my father said, coming into the room with two sodas and a beer. He handed us each a soda and then sank down onto an armchair and took a gulp of beer. “What were you thinking, Nick?” he said. Before Nick could answer, he held up a hand and said, “Never mind. It's probably better for both of us if you don't tell me.” He took another swig of beer and then set the bottle down on the coffee table. “You're lucky that no one is pressing charges. You know that, right?”

Nick nodded. He hadn't touched his drink. I think he also knew that my father was probably the reason he hadn't been charged.

“What do you think is going to happen to Ling-Kung?” I said.

My father shrugged. “
If
she gets a good lawyer and
if
she's willing to cooperate and
if
her lawyer can make the case about what will happen to her if she gets sent back home, I think she may be able to make a deal.”

“What about Philip and his father?”

Another shrug. “If Philip's father recovers, he'll be charged with everything from kidnapping to smuggling, violating immigration law, weapons charges, you name it.”

“And Philip?”

“He says he was trying to stop his father from getting away and that his father's gun went off while they were struggling.”

“Is he going to be charged with anything?”

“I don't know. But I doubt it. He didn't do anything except try to protect Ling-Kung.” My father leaned forward in his chair. “Nick,” he said, “if you ever again involve Robbie in something like this—in something even remotely like this—you're going to be in the biggest trouble you can imagine. But it won't be with the police. You understand me?”

Nick met my father's eyes. He nodded.

My father looked at him for a few moments. Then he stood up.

“I have to make a few phone calls,” he said.

“It's after midnight, Dad.”

He strode across the room to his office, went in and closed the door.

“I really am sorry, Robyn. After I heard what happened to Mr. Li, all I could think of was that I had to keep you out of it.”

“By getting mad at me and telling me you weren't interested in me?”

“It was the only way I could think of to get you out of there. I didn't want you to get hurt.”

“If you hadn't called my father, I don't know what would have happened.”

“When I saw you get into that van—” His voice quavered. “I recognized one of the guys with you. He was one of those guys we ran into behind Mr. Li's place. When I saw you get into the van with him, I knew I had to do something. If anything had happened to you, Robyn, I don't know what I would have done.”

I got up and went to sit next to him. It took a few moments, but finally he put his arm around me. I let him hold me for a while before I said, “Nick, the blond guy I saw, he pushed you, didn't he?”

I felt him nod. “Yeah,” he said.

“Who is he?”

“Just some jerk.”

“Some jerk who tried to kill you,” I said.

He let out an enormous sigh.“He lives around here,” he said. “He has—
had
—a dog. I used to hear it barking all the time.”

So did I. Every time I approached my father's building, that dog would bark. Except for the day before the parade. That day it had been silent.

“
Had
a dog?” I said.

“I was coming home one day and I heard it yelping. When a dog yelps like that, it means something's wrong, so I decided to go take a look.” I lifted my head off his shoulder so that I could see his face. “It was chained up in the backyard of this house,” he said. “And this guy was hitting it with a stick and kicking it.” His face was rigid. “I could tell by the way the ground was worn and by the dog sh—” He stopped. “Well, you know, I could tell that the dog spent most of its time out there, chained up. There were sores all around its neck from where it had been pulling. Anyway, I told the guy if he didn't stop, I was going to report him to the Humane Society.”

“And?”

“And he told me to get lost. He told me he would report me to the cops for trespassing.”

“And?”

“And I guess we got into a sort of argument over it and he called the cops.”

“And Stan Rogers showed up, the cop who was here yesterday morning?”

He nodded.

“The guy got his father involved and they pressed charges. They said I attacked the guy, that it was unprovoked. I tried to tell the cops about the dog, but they didn't listen, especially after they checked me out.”

That explained why Nick hadn't been happy to see Stan Rogers at my father's place. But it didn't explain everything.

“Why did he push you?”

“Because he's crazy,” Nick said. “I did exactly what I told him I was going to do if he didn't start treating his dog better. I called the Humane Society. They sent someone around and they took the dog away.”

“When did this happen?”

“About ten days ago.”

It had been nearly two weeks since I had stayed at my father's place, which is why I hadn't noticed before that the barking dog had gone silent.

“The next thing I know, this guy is practically stalking me,” Nick said. “I'd see him at the bus stop on the way to work, and he'd tell me I'd better watch out, he was going to get even with me. He must have followed me, because the next thing I know he started showing up at work with a couple of his loser friends. He told Barry that he was a friend of mine. They started to trash the place.”

“Is that why you got fired?”

He nodded.“Barry told me,‘Tell your friends they're not welcome here.' Like I could do anything about it. The next time the guy and his friends came in, I tried to get them to leave. We ended up in a huge fight. So Barry fired me. The guy still didn't let up. I even saw him downtown yesterday. I don't think he followed me—I checked.” That explained his behavior before we had got on the bus. “It must have been a coincidence or something.”

“You mean, you saw him while you were waiting for the light to change?”

Nick shook his head.“I saw him just as we were coming out of the alley beside Mr. Li's place. I didn't want him to mess up what I had to do.”

That was where he had suddenly pulled me to him and kissed me.

“So that kiss was just for camouflage,” I said.

Finally, a shadow of a smile. “I ducked back into the alley with you to avoid the guy. But the kiss was real,” he said.

I nestled closer to him and felt him tense up again.

“Robyn. I don't have a job. My rent's coming up. Your father's going to want to evict me.”

“No he won't.”

“Plus I got charged with assault because of that guy and his dog. And with my record—”

“Does your aunt know?”

He shook his head.

“Does anybody know?”

Another shake.

“Nick, you're going to have to ask someone for help.”

“How can I do that? Everyone already thinks I'm a screw-up. Your dad sure seems to think so. This will just prove it.”

“I don't think you're a screw-up. And neither does my dad.”

“Right,” he said. “I practically get you killed, and you think there's nothing wrong with me.”

“Well, maybe there's room for improvement,” I said. “But you were just trying to do the right thing.”

He wrapped his arm around me, and we sat quietly until my father returned. When my father said we should all probably try to get to sleep, Nick said, “Can I talk to you for a few minutes, Mr. Hunter?”

 

 

The next evening, Nick was perched on a stool in my father's kitchen, slicing vegetables for a salad. I was making my world-famous chicken and mushroom casserole. We were going to surprise my father with dinner.