Part II, Finale

6.
It was even colder. Bones checked the backlit clock on his iPod. 1:47. He must have been out for a while that first time. Stopping to scan for streetsigns, he tried to get his bearings. He was still downtownish, but close to the river. He opted against going back for the bike.
He pulled his hood up, wondering why he hadn’t done that before. As he rounded a corner, he thought he heard the sound of foot scraping on sidewalk behind him. Not wanting to be that guy who turns around to see who’s coming up behind him, Bones accelerated his pace. The clouds were scattered, but the wind off of the river a couple of blocks away smelled like snow. Not that that was very likely. Too cold for snow.
This time, Bones definitely heard the click of wooden soled shoes behind him. He decided to take a quick right turn. As he turned down the next street, he swiveled his head slightly, looking over his right shoulder, careful with his left hand not to let the hood turn, giving away his motion. Paranoia served him well; someone was back there. A guy in a business suit and overcoat on the other side of the street.
Bones speeded up again. At least being cautious was getting his blood up. He was starting to shiver less, and the moisture that curled back onto his cheeks where his breath was turned back by the wind did not sting as much as it had a few minutes ago. He took two lefts and a right in rapid succession to get back on the quickest course downhill to the park. He had checked. The business suit guy was gone.
Paranoid, then. But at least he was warm. He wasn’t going to start second-guessing himself, though. He’d already been jumped once tonight. A little relieved, he decided to get out his phone and call Kennedy. See if she was surprised to hear from him. Or maybe glad. That was always a possibility. A remote possibility, now. But Bones couldn’t help hoping.
As he began to thumb in the number with his left hand, his right still firmly fisted in his pocket because of the cold, something made him glance back over his shoulder. The suit was back, further back now. He stopped dialing and put the phone back in his left pants pocket. They were almost to the park. It could be coincidence. The guy had fallen back when he sped up. But then, why hadn’t Bones ended up behind him when he’d taken the detour?
His left hand gripped the handle of the knife in his pocket. Stupid, thinking he’d be able to do anything with a knife. What if the suit had a gun? He’d never used a knife in a fight. He’d messed around with them a lot. He was even pretty good throwing them. He’d probably stick himself before anybody else. Still, the rough divots in the bone of the hilt felt comfortable. Eased his mind. He glanced back again. The suit was gone.
Bones stopped and turned. There weren’t very many places he could have gone. The other side of the street was one wall of a brick warehouse for two blocks in both directions, blank of any opening. He turned and started trotting toward the park. As he hit the next intersection and crossed the street, he thought he glimpsed the movement of a large shadow paralleling him one block over. He couldn’t be sure, because the hood blocked most of his peripheral vision. He wasn’t sure. Sure, hell. The impression had been distinct.
Ahead on his side of the street was the parking garage of a small law firm. The repointed building of the firm itself stood next to it. He sped up, letting his feet pound loudly. He could hear his jogging tread echo off the vertical spaces operating, along with the sudden decrease in wind, the dry coldness of the air, to produce a suddenly clear soundscape. Those wooden soles were clicking along nicely, over to the left, behind the parking garage, now. Bones’ breath was growing too loud for him to hear everything. He suddenly needed to hear absolutely everything. He stopped short. His twin’s footsteps stopped soon after. But not soon enough.
Uncertain why he had needed so much proof, Bones slipped off the sidewalk and against the low partition of the parking garage’s ground floor. The parking garage was well-lit and the front of the law firm, too. He looked up and saw a video camera pivoting smoothly towards him. His first instinct was to jump over the low wall and into the parking garage with its vertical columns and climbable surfaces. He didn’t want to be caught on camera.
He stopped himself with his hand on the wall. Why shouldn’t he be seen? He was the one being followed. Thinking in all directions, now, Bones ran back to the last corner, where he found a trashcan. There was a green glass bottle on the top. He stood there, feet apart, listening to everything, trying to find the rhythm of his own thoughts between his overburdened breath and his heart racing.
Where there’s a camera, there’s a security guard watching it. Well, not always. Don’t they usually just run to tape, so the cops can find whoever it is, later? But a parking garage would have some sort of patrol, right? So the cars don’t get vandalized or broken into during the day time, let alone at night. The lawfirm had to have computers and crap that needed protection of some sort. An alarm would probably work as well for that…
Bones grabbed the bottle and ran to the middle of the street in front of the camera sticking out from the corner of the parking garage. He looked over at the law firm. The front door was made of glass. He hefted the bottle, looking at it closely. It was a Heineken bottle with some grunge in the bottom. Backwash and what looked like cigarette ash or dirt. He gauged the distance, and threw. The arc was beautiful. He had found some kind of inner calculus that fit into the secret spaces of the night air and revealed them completely as it described the bottle’s flight.
The planes the bottle created before his mind as it spun end over end flashing in the false light of the parking garage were unlike anything he had ever seen. He wondered if he was dying of exposure. If the rich texture of this flight was the truth of it, or if his body was interfering on a basic level, raw animal perception squeezing out his reason in the face of the twin terrors of the cold and his pursuit. He decided that it was a false distinction. Both body and mind loved that green, flashing missile because they were the same thing. It hit the glass of the front door and exploded.
A high, faint ringing began. The alarm. As he turned back to look at the camera, he managed to catch the suit looking at the door to the law firm. He was not surprised or frightened. He was just looking. Bones couldn’t make himself move. The man was his height. He was looking at the glass on the ground and the still quivering front door. He was very still while Bones watched the side of his head. The head turned. Its eyes were shining. Or maybe, maybe those weren’t eyes.
The man in the suit took a step forward. A little black terror entered the center of him and stood there, putting a hole in his thoughts. Uncertainties mingled there with fear and inchoate plans of action. Another step, and intentional thought drifted up and out of him. He could feel the strands clinging to him and yet spreading out. He laughed as the image of his brain as the sole root of some kind of kelp forest of thought pushing out in every direction—radiating from his head and slowly swaying in the thick night—stole across the moment. As the man took another step, he smiled, too. Like Bones had told a joke.
Bones listened to the miraculous silence of his footfall. There was no chance that he had been heard. The figure…Bones was unsure, now, whether it was quite a man…was a hole in the sharp sounds all around. Cars moving on Riverside Drive were loud whispers and rhythmic thumps, the wind, returning, moving trash and leaves across the sidewalk rustled and scraped and moaned through the alleys and over the parked cars lining them. But the suit…
The suit moved at right angles to sound, stepping off the curb and into the street. Bones’s hand spasmed in his hoodie pocket and found the hilt of the knife. He pulled it out, the blade catching the seam a little as it jerked free, and screamed as he ran at the suit. He pushed himself into a ball of terror and pain and anger at the tip of the blade, pushed himself into a single, bright hot point. He saw the figure in the suit raise a hand, but the gesture held no meaning for Bones. He felt something, then, almost like gravity yielding before the irresistible new pull of his knife, and then nothing.