FREE PREVIEW

DON’T GET CLOSE

BY MATT MIKSA

PROLOGUE

If he finds me, he’ll stab me again, right through the belly.

Sophie Whitestone pushed into the holiday crowds gunking up Michigan Avenue. She’d fold into the herd and disappear. When zebras packed in close, their stripes confused predators. Hadn’t she read that somewhere?

Strings of lights wrapped around the tree trunks lining Magnificent Mile, the wires like green snakes, coiling up every crooked branch, reaching the raw tips where new buds wouldn’t emerge for another five months. Each blinking bulb reflected off the carpet of fresh snow, where Sophie’s rubber soles made glistening patterns—little lacy flowers. These boots were her favorite. Something about leaving trails of icy blooms seemed magical, like spreading winter wishes.

These were childish notions, she realized with some sadness, not the ideas of a young woman. A college woman, who just that morning had stamped those enchanting impressions across the University of Chicago’s snow-covered quad, each oval evenly spaced and deep-set from a confident stride. Not hitched and staggered, like the damp shapes she was now marking on the downtown sidewalk.

He’ll follow my footprints, Sophie thought. Even if I’d lost him back at the L station, he’ll track those kiddie sunflowers.

Another drop of blood detached from the cuff of her coat and landed on the bright ground. Sophie winced and grabbed the sleeve, which was too long and hung limp past her fingertips. It wasn’t actually her coat. It belonged to a forgetful businessman who’d sat beside her on the Red Line. Sophie had stolen it, in fact. That S-word made her sound like a criminal—like a thief—but she’d only taken it because she had to. In any case, she’d ruined it (blood never came out completely), but it was still in better condition than her own coat, which now sat stuffed inside a trash bin with a hole punched through its Gortex shell. A perfect, round hole that matched the one in Sophie’s shoulder.

Even if he can’t track the boot prints, he’ll follow the dripping red trail. And if he catches me . . .

A woman screeched and Sophie’s shoulder blades flinched, sending shoots of pain down her arm. She dared to turn and look, just as the shriek swooped into a clucking laugh and the woman fell into a handsome guy’s embrace. He smiled through a graying beard. This man looked kind. It wasn’t him. He was still out there, somewhere in the crowd.

Sophie pushed through the pain. She accidentally kicked the back wheel of a stroller—a double-wide couch-on-wheels built for two. The lady steering the monstrous thing glared and the pair of tots strapped inside, bundled up to their gums, squealed like piggies.

“I’m sorry, excuse me,” Sophie mumbled, and then regretted opening her mouth at all.

Shut up! she begged silently. Don’t speak. He’ll hear you and then he’ll find you and he’ll take out that weird screwdriver, the one with the handle shaped like brass knuckles, and he’ll add a few more holes in your body, or maybe more slash marks to match the ones from before, so please please please SHUT UP!

The lady snapped, “Just watch where you’re going, all right? Look, if you can’t handle a crowd, you should turn around now. It doesn’t get any better down there.”

The wind whistled her words into an updraft and whisked them away, toward the lake, where barges were moving into formation for the midnight fireworks show. Sophie burrowed her chin into her collar, mashed a hand into her injured shoulder—applying pressure would help stop the bleeding, she’d read that, too—and turned east onto Grand Ave, into the thickening mass of humanity.

She passed a coffee shop, and a sushi restaurant, and a store selling fuzzy slippers for half off. only one shopping day left in the year, a sign in the window warned. She wanted to burst in and holler for the saleswoman to call the police, before he found her again. But that would only put Sophie in more danger. A policeman couldn’t protect her, not from him. He would track her all the way to the station, if he had to, just like he had been following her around the city for weeks.

A month ago, Sophie had discovered fingerprint smudges on the glass of her second-floor dormitory window. Fingerprints on the outside, right beside a sticky smear that her roommate had guessed was probably semen. And just last week when she’d met her study group at the library, Sophie had excused herself to use the ladies’ room and returned not six minutes later to find someone had tampered with her backpack. She was one-hundred-percent positive of this. Sophie always pulled the two zipper sliders to the far right side of her bag. She never closed them together at the top, not since Steve Barino had come up behind her in tenth grade, hooked his thumb into the small gap between the sliders and, in a single yank, spilled a week’s supply of tampons onto the cafeteria floor. When Sophie had returned to her seat and reached for her backpack, she’d seen that the sliders were indeed at the top, not the sides. Irrefutable proof of tampering.

Her classmates swore they hadn’t seen anyone touch her stuff, but Sophie couldn’t take any chances. On the walk back to her dorm, she’d slung her backpack into the dumpster behind the library. The whole darn thing, with everything inside. Even her driver’s license and credit card. She’d felt so stupid for leaving her bag unattended. He might’ve slipped something in there to track her. That was probably how he’d found her tonight, too. He’d probably tucked a homing beacon into the lining of that ruined coat.

The crowd coagulated into a hard clot as Sophie neared Navy Pier. She squirmed through the tight gaps between men with potbellies and women with sharp elbows. Every bump against her shoulder sent another scream down her arm, into the bones of her knuckles. She pulled her hood over her forehead, down to her eyes, which scanned each face. If he caught up with her here, in this hardening tumor of bodies metastasizing at the base of the Ferris wheel, she’d have nowhere to run. He’d brush up against her, close enough to smell her hair, slip a hand around the small of her back, and run his screwdriver straight into her naval like it was a keyhole. Her legs would give out, but she wouldn’t fall; the knot of other bodies would hold her up. She’d exhale her last foggy breath into the cold night and die standing up, pinched by the throng. The thought made her shudder. She wished she was home, in her pink bedroom above her father’s study, listening to Celine and Mariah and Snoop Doggy Dogg (but only on her Walkman, so Daddy couldn’t hear the songs with the bad words). Those days were over. Those safe days. Sophie was a woman of the city now, with important stuff to do. She was intelligent and fearless.

And she needed grow the eff up.

So, no, she wouldn’t let him get her. Not tonight. She had safety in numbers, crammed inside the zebra herd with its dizzying, protective stripes. If you suspect you’re in danger, or being stalked, find a crowd, Mom had taught her. Perverts and thugs don’t like a bunch of beady little eyeballs fixed on them. They operate in shadowy alleyways and backseats. And sometimes university libraries, too, Mom. Did you know that?

The masses began shouting the countdown to a new year, a new beginning.

Ten . . . nine . . .

Sophie felt a surge of confidence, surrounded by the grinning, bubbly faces. She’d made it. She’d played the victim for too long, spent months looking over her shoulder, running from shadows. No more, she thought. Let him find me. He can’t stop me now. No one can.

Eight . . . seven . . . six . . .

In the white space between seven and six, an older woman howled, “It’s a bomb!”

The herd twitched, heads turned.

Turned toward Sophie.

She’d unzipped the stolen coat that smelled of men’s cologne. Like a heavy blanket, it had concealed the messy puncture beneath her right collarbone, still oozing. It also had hidden the bricks of C-4 plastic explosives strapped to her bare stomach, just beneath the wire of her exposed bra. The coat fell away and Sophie felt the cool breath of December hit her shoulders. It’s almost over.

“What the hell is that on her back?” a man asked behind her. He’d seen the long, curved scar along her spine. Sophie lifted her pale arms, one hand gripping a detonator, the other with its fingers splayed.

Five . . .

Farther away, voices continued the countdown. Maybe they’d mistaken the screams on the pier for jubilance. A new year is upon us, Sophie thought. They should rejoice. All of them. Even if they’ll never know what the Sons of Elijah have done for them. What I’ve done for them.

Four . . . three . . .

A guttural bark cut through the chanting rhythm of a thousand throats. He’d found her after all, and now he was ordering her to stop.

Sophie stared back at him, her chin raised. The man stood out, in that black cap with those three tall yellow letters beaming: FBI. He yelled for people to let him through, but they had nowhere to go. Every inch of the pier had filled in with revelers. He tried to claw through, but the mob pushed back on him like a muscle. He still gripped the screwdriver—the one he’d snatched from a technician’s work cart and jammed into the L train doors right before they’d snapped shut on his wrist. The tool had punctured her shoulder then, but now the man was too far away to hurt her again. Or to wrestle the push-button detonator from her grip.

Sophie smiled underneath the spinning shadow of the Ferris wheel, her arms straight as sticks in a high V for victory. She felt no pain now; the white-hot flame in her shoulder had blown out in a whoosh. Others were prepared to make a similar sacrifice. Sophie had made sure of it. They’d reveal themselves at the airport, the mall, wherever a large group had gathered. Even if the cops managed to round them all up, the Sons of Elijah would return. Sophie knew just how much depended on that, and she was proud to play her part. In this moment of triumph, death didn’t frighten her. The thought of only one thing made her blood run cold: failure. The Sons of Elijah mustn’t be stopped.

Sophie’s eyes locked with the FBI agent’s and she mouthed a final warning: “Don’t get close.”

Two . . . one.

Click.

The horde pulsed. Arms and legs flung out from a center point, like a daisy blooming in fast-motion. There were no more screams, just the rush of heat. A squeal of metal sang out, a regretful moan. The steel latticework of the massive Ferris wheel bent against its braces. Bolts popped. One of the gondolas snapped loose and fell more than a hundred feet. It smashed into skulls that were no longer connected to necks and rib cages that held in nothing but boiling pulp. A minute later, the whole affair collapsed, a pile of steel bones. The air filled with fine, gray dust that smelled like bacon. Like crispy piggies. A half-mile out from the tip of the pier, the floating barges launched their first battery of rockets over Lake Michigan, right on schedule. Smoke from the fireworks mingled with the black pillar rising from the explosion on the pier. A damaged electric sign hanging high up on the terminal building sputtered its gleeful message.

H  PPY  NE   YE  R 1995!