Heart and Soul by Jackie May (reading list .TXT) 📗

On the verge of blacking out, I throw my Hail Mary by unlocking my legs from his waist, which shifts our weight, pulling him backward by the neck. As he flips upside down, my hand snakes inside his coat to his shirt pocket, where my fingers find the thin metallic cylinder of my toothpick. With a flick of my thumb, I expose the ash wood splinter and bury it in his throat. It’s a fatal strike, though it won’t be immediate. He’ll suffocate to death with excruciating spasms.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to maintain my perch by clutching at his head with two fistfuls of hair. I have to pull my feet up to avoid the water as we continue to swing back and forth. A drop into this freezing water would be deadly in minutes. I don’t see how to avoid dropping. I do a pull-up and try to lock my elbows, but human hair doesn’t make for great handholds. It’s slipping through my fingers.

High above me, there’s a terrible sound of groaning metal. Glancing up, I see a worse fate than icy water. Half the box trailer, still flaming from the explosion, teeters on the edge of the bridge railing. The groan of metal is the sound of the trailer folding over the edge, announcing its impending drop, like a kid screaming, “Cannonball!”

And yet, would you believe it, I still have a third option of doom to choose from. The throaty growl of a motor pulls my attention to a speedboat racing straight for me. Bowler Hat grips the wheel with murder in his cataract eyes.

I make my choice, but just before I can release my grip on this guy’s surprisingly strong head of hair, another speedboat T-bones Bowler Hat, sending him skipping away. Jay’s behind this wheel. “Drop in!” he shouts.

I reach out with my foot, but it’s too far. “Closer!” He works the controls, inching closer, but the water’s choppy from the boat’s wake. The bow slips away.

“Dammit!” he barks.

I hear a scraping of metal from the bridge above, followed by a scary silence. I know what Jay is seeing when he looks up, mouth gaping: the box trailer is in freefall. He guns the engine and swings the boat around so the back end slides beneath me. I drop, landing on the engine cover and holding on for dear life, and Jay floors it. The bow shoots up into the air as the propeller spits us away just before the box trailer splats the pinstripe revenant and plunges into the river with an eruption of water.

“He’s running!” Jay shouts over the screaming engine and blasting wind. The other boat has a huge lead on us. “Take the wheel!”

I don’t like being on boats, much less driving them, but it won’t do any good to protest right now. Jay doesn’t see me as me right now. He sees an asset that he can use in his pursuit of a goal. One revenant is killed. The next is getting away. That’s all there is.

On the floor of the boat is an East Side thug, unconscious. The original driver, I assume. When I take the wheel, Jay steals a pistol from the guy’s belt. Then he slaps his face until the guy snaps awake with a start.

“Swim!” Jay orders. The thug balks, but when Jay points the gun at his leg and starts counting, the guy throws himself into the river.

I happily turn the wheel over to Jay. He guns the throttle, and we bounce from wave to wave; wind whips my hair; sprays of ice water sting my face. Jay is impervious to it all, eyes locked on the other speedboat, too far ahead. We’ll never catch him.

Jay’s tuxedo coat is shredded, hanging from his arms. I help him untangle it from one arm, then the other. His dress shirt is spotted with blood in several places. I don’t ask if he’s all right, because I know that information is irrelevant at the moment. All he’s thinking about is what to do next. How to win.

I see police sirens ahead—Detroit’s river cops in their black-and-white police boats. Officers wave neon batons, directing all boat traffic off the river, away from the burning Ambassador Bridge. One police boat guides a massive freighter into dock at a shipyard. The sight jolts me with a sudden insight. Like most revelations, it seems very simple—even obvious—in hindsight, but in the moment of breakthrough, I can hardly keep up with the race of my thoughts, each one reaching further back into memory and logic.

Gripping wet upholstery with my claws, I fight against the turbulence, climbing into a position at Jay’s shoulder. I scream over the chaos into his ear. “Jay, this isn’t it! The bridge wasn’t the thing!”

I don’t think he hears me. He shows no sign of acknowledgment.

I keep at it. “All this—the bombs, the bridge—it wasn’t just an answer to the Windsor clan. It was a trigger! To force all the boats on the river to have to dock.” When he still doesn’t respond, I grip his elbow. “Jay, they’re going after Arael! They’re going to kill him.” At last, his hand falters on the throttle, and he looks at me with grave comprehension. “The underworld prison is one of these giant cargo ships, and it was headed this way. Hillerman told me it was coming upriver. Erie freezes over, so they have to winter on Lake Huron. That would bring them straight through here.”

I’m just about to say that I don’t know if I can recognize the cargo ship, but just then a bright explosion rises from an upcoming shipyard. Docked there is the Seawaymax bulk carrier, with its three domes the size of football fields. The five-story control tower is on fire.

“But I thought all this was top secret,” Jay says. “You didn’t even know about it until she took you there. How did they know about it? Are you telling me this is an