Daredevil, page 10
“I don’t like him,” says Larks. “He doesn’t respect you.”
A slow smile spreads across Fisk’s features. “I couldn’t care less. One of the many things Rigoletto and I disagree on is fear versus respect. Fear keeps people in check. Respect … does not.”
“And what about Rigoletto? And his lieutenants. Do they fear you?”
Fisk stares at the ducks for a while before responding. “They will,” he says softly.
CHAPTER 11
Six years ago.
It takes Matt the rest of the day to climb down the mountain road and finally hitch a ride back to campus. He trudges into his room, shivering uncontrollably. His fingers are numb. He can’t even feel his toes.
Foggy looks him up and down. “Where have you been?”
“I went for a swim.”
Matt turns on the shower—just the hot water. As steam slowly fills the room, he pulls off his almost-frozen clothes, dumps them onto the floor, and wraps a towel around his waist. He sits down on the edge of the bath, letting the heat seep into his bones.
“Swimming with Elektra?”
“Is that her name?”
“Yeah. She’s bad news, man. Crazy.”
Matt sighs as the steam slowly envelopes him in a warm embrace.
“You know Flint’s skiing accident? Where he broke both his arms?”
Matt nods.
“He doesn’t even know how to ski.”
“Hence the broken arms.”
“No! I mean, he made a pass at Elektra. He said the last thing he remembers is her laughing in his face—and then he wakes up in the hospital. That chick is certifiable.”
Matt nods. “Maybe. Now, do you know where she lives?”
Matt isn’t really sure why he’s standing here in the dark, the snow falling softly onto his head, at ten o’clock at night.
All he knows is he can’t get Elektra out of his head. All last night and today, she’s been all he can think about. He knows Foggy’s right—she’s trouble. But there’s something about her that draws him. She’s a magnet, pulling him in.
He’s not even really sure how he feels about her. Is he angry with her? Amused? Irritated? He thinks it’s a combination—which is probably why he can’t stop thinking about her. He’s never felt this way before, about anyone.
He does know one thing: He wants to teach her a lesson. For leaving him out there. For assuming that she knows him. Because all those things she said—she was wrong. He can follow the rules. He’s not like her. He can curb the primal instincts that they all have. He’s spent most of his life doing just that: controlling himself. Making sure people don’t get hurt. And the one time he gave in, the one time he let his emotions get the better of him, someone died.
So who the hell is she to stand there and try to strip him down, to get under his skin?
He wants to show her, to prove that he’s different from her.
But there’s also a small part of him that wants to impress her.
To Matt’s eyes, the mansion across the street looks like a prison, a solid block of stone with high fences and manicured windows. It grates on his nerves. Too neat. Its shape reveals itself to his senses without any work at all: a big block of bricks and mortar. No surprises. Like a pimp whose neck is loaded down with gold jewelry. That’s what this house is: a statement to the world by an insecure man.
Foggy said Elektra’s dad was some kind of diplomat. Maybe they’re all like this. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.
Matt waits outside the fence, letting his senses talk to him. He’s aware there’s some kind of function going on tonight. Lots of cars pulling in around the front. Lots of armed guards. Tricky. He briefly considers calling it off, but he can’t. His curiosity is piqued.
He waits for the moon to pass behind a cloud, then steps out from the shadow of the yew tree and crosses the deserted road to the iron fence. The gap between the bars is small—too small, by the looks of it, for a grown man to squeeze through.
Appearances can be deceiving, though.
He remembers Stick’s words. Your ribs can flex, kid. Let them.
Matt takes a deep breath and forces himself through the gap. For a brief moment, he thinks he’s stuck, and he imagines the faces of the guards as they discover the intruder wedged in the fence. But he manages to pull himself through and moves across the open ground to a low wall that runs along the back of the house, sectioning off the garden from a gravel path.
There are stairs leading down, probably to the kitchens. Not where he wants to go. He needs to go up to the roof, where he feels safest.
He listens, hears the scuff of feet on the gravel, the rustle of paper. Smells a strong scent of mint gum.
The guard might as well have strapped a spotlight to his shoulders. Not that it’d be hard to track him without the gum, but still. Nice of the guy to help out.
Matt waits for the guard to pass, then hops up onto the low wall, using it to jump and grab the ledge beneath a second-floor window. He pulls himself up. Another leap, and he grabs the ledge 10 feet above him. Third floor. He needs to move fast now. If any of the guards happen to look up, they’ll spot him instantly.
The roof is too far. He slides quickly along the three-inch ledge, moving gracefully. Calmly looking for another way, leverage to get up. Nothing. He keeps going until he catches her scent outside a window: jasmine and citrus.
He peers through, sees it’s her bedroom. He hesitates. Suddenly, he feels like an intruder. Almost a Peeping Tom. Is there another way to do this? Matt looks over his shoulder, back down to the grounds. There are another two guards patrolling. They could look up at any moment and catch him.
No. This is the way in. He tries the latch to her bedroom window. Locked. Not a problem. He pulls out the lockpick set Stick gave him, crouches down, and carefully unrolls the worn pouch, taking out the pick and the grabber. He inserts the grabber first, using it to hold down the guard mechanism, then inserts the pick. He moves it slowly, feeling the vibration through his fingers, hearing the click-click-click of the tiny mechanism.
Five seconds later, he has the lock open. He puts away the lockpicks and quietly slides open the tall window, hopping over the ledge into Elektra’s bedroom.
He closes the window behind him and pauses, taking everything in. He can smell her presence as if she is in the room with him. The memory of her scent shows him her movements, where she spends most of her time. It’s strong at her bed. The dresser, too, where it mingles with the smell of makeup.
He moves to the fireplace, his hands running across the numerous trophies there. Swimming. Track. Karate, Aikido, Kendo. First place every time.
Daddy’s little girl can fight.
Matt feels even more like a stalker now, so he moves to the door, gently pulls it open. He can hear sounds from far away. The gentle murmur of a crowd talking and laughing. Music: a piano, harps. The clink of glasses and cutlery.
Must be something big. Probably a fundraiser.
Matt steps into the hallway. Thick, expensive carpet beneath his feet. He pauses. What is he actually going to do here? He hasn’t thought this through. He wanted Elektra to know he’s no pushover, but hadn’t really figured out how he was going to do that. Maybe he should just go back into her room and write something on her mirror in lipstick.
Thanks for the swim. Or, Next time, I’ll drive.
Yeah, he likes the sound of that.
He’s heading back into her room to do just that when he hears the skittering of claws on tiles accompanied by a snarling growl.
Crap.
The dog bursts around the corner, trailing a leather leash. From the sounds of the dog’s footfalls, it’s big. A Rottweiler maybe. Or a German shepherd.
Still, Matt doesn’t want to kill it. As it leaps through the air at him, he snaps out a kick that rattles its brain enough to drop it to the ground, instantly unconscious.
The dog’s handler appears around the corner. He’s holding a walkie-talkie to his mouth with one hand, while the other fumbles at the holster for his gun.
So much for doing this the quiet way.
Matt launches himself at the guard. He gets to the man just as he wrestles his gun free. Matt hits him in the wrist, and he drops the gun. Matt catches it in midair, then snaps it hard against the man’s forehead. His head jerks. Matt drops to the ground and sweeps his leg.
The guard falls back. Too late, Matt realizes he’s close to the window. He lunges forward, but the guard smashes through the glass and tumbles over the casement.
Matt rushes to the edge. He hears another crash, looks down and senses a glass roof about 10 feet below him, now with a gaping hole in it as the guard plunges to the floor of a huge hall.
The hall is filled with people. He can hear their shocked gasps as they look upward—
—directly at Matt.
He pulls back, but not before he catches a whiff of jasmine and citrus, hears the particular rhythm of her heartbeat. She’s down there, playing the piano. It’s a difficult piece—Rachmaninoff, he thinks. But she makes it sound easy. Is there anything she can’t do? She hasn’t even missed a beat. Not even when the glass exploded above her.
She finally stops playing, turns to look at him. He feels it like heat on his face. He’s suddenly trapped. Her eyes pin him like a moth to a board. He takes a sharp breath. A moment of timelessness.
“Get him!”
The ratcheting clicks of automatic weapons.
Gunfire erupts in the hall. Screams, a panicked stampede for the exit. Chairs falling over. Matt jerks back. Bullets rush through the empty window and pepper the wall behind him. This has gone bad very quickly. What the hell was he thinking coming here? He broke the rules. Again. And now bad things are happening. Again. He has to get out. Now.
He runs, furious at himself for doing something so stupid. He hadn’t been thinking clearly. Hadn’t been thinking at all. He let her get to him. Let her get under his skin.
Back along the hallway. The sounds of footsteps from up ahead. Shouting.
He stops, turns back. No. Can’t go back. They’ll be coming that way, too. He tries the door closest to him. Locked. Moves to the next. It opens into a study. He hurries in and sprints to the window.
He pushes the window open, leans out. Spotlights illuminate the grounds like a prison yard. Guards run around, dogs barking and pulling at leashes. No way out in that direction. Have to go up.
Stick’s lessons flood back into his mind. His words, every time Matt got flustered or angry. Keep calm, kid. Breathe. Shut everything out, and focus on the moment.
Matt takes a deep breath and steps up onto the windowsill. He turns around, feeling the wall: rough bricks. At least something is going right. Bricks mean fingerholds.
Matt reaches as high as he can and feels for the deepest groove between bricks. He wedges his fingers in, but there’s no way to tell whether the grooves are deep enough to hold his weight.
Nothing else for it. He makes sure his fingers are lodged as tight as they will go—and takes the weight off his feet. Pain stabs through his finger joints. He manages to hold on—just. He takes a breath, pulls out his left hand. His right shoulder and elbow scream in pain. He winces, tries to ignore it, and pulls himself higher, wedging in his left hand. Then he releases the right, moves it higher, and repeats the process.
It’s slow, and painful, but he reaches the roof without any shouts of alarm from below.
He gets both arms over the ledge of the roof—
—and there’s a loud crack as a bullet tears through his left arm.
He screams in shock and drops back from the ledge. He hangs from his right hand, tears of agony rolling down his cheeks. His left shoulder is on fire, electric shocks pulsating through his veins.
There are shouts from below. More gunfire. Stone shards explode next to his head and pepper his face with tiny needles of pain. He grits his teeth, expecting a bullet to hit his back any second, and pulls himself up again, using only his right arm to lift his entire body weight.
He rolls over and drops onto his back. Stares up at the heavy clouds. He tentatively touches his arm and feels the hole: the blood’s pumping freely, warm and sticky. Have to stop the flow, he thinks. Have to get away. His whole left side is on fire. He’ll go into shock soon.
First step: Get out of here.
He picks himself up, staggers to the other side of the roof. The rear of the house is just as bad as the front—crawling with guards armed with automatic rifles and handguns. Elektra’s father must be really paranoid to have this much protection. That, or he really is as important as he seems to think he is.
Matt moves to the left wing of the house and peers down. Dozens of cars are parked at the end of a sweeping gravel driveway. That’s more like it—better cover down there. The spotlights are all focused on the cars, leaving thick pools of shadows and a stretch of grass between the house and the fence that isn’t lit up like a hospital operating theater.
No time for finesse. Matt turns, gets down onto his knees, and shuffles backward. Lowering himself over the edge, he hangs from his right arm—then lets go. He hits the third-floor terrace hard. His knees drive into his chest, knocking the breath from him. He waits, gasping for air.
No shouts. No alarms.
He waits to see whether the pain will subside—then realizes it’s only getting worse. He drags himself to his feet and grabs the terrace railing, almost tumbling over, and just manages to hang on before dropping the two stories into a flowerbed.
He maneuvers the fall to roll as soon as he hits. He keeps going, moving at a crouch, leaving a trail of blood on flower petals and grass.
He ducks between the cars, moves to the last one in the line, and extends his senses out across the grass to the perimeter fence. He hears guards to the right, fanning out from the front of the house. More coming from the left. Crap. As soon as they see him, they’re going to open fire. He’ll never make it, no matter how fast he runs.
Matt heads back toward the house, pushes open a nondescript door into a security area. Computer monitors. Walkie-talkies lying on the desk. Someone’s packed lunch. (Tuna sandwich and a family-sized chocolate bar.) Matt feels along the walls until he finds what he’s looking for: the car keys, hung up on a board.
He grabs the first set he touches and hurries back to the cars. He crouches down, loses himself in the maze of neatly parked luxury vehicles. He pushes the key fob. A loud blip-blip indicates the disarming of an alarm right on the other side of the makeshift car park.
He moves quickly, knowing the guards will have heard. He’s still not sure which car it is—has to hit the button again. The blip-blip comes from his left. An SUV. He deactivates the alarm one last time and opens the passenger door. Still hidden from the guards. He can hear them talking urgently to each other as they approach.
Matt slides in low and gently pulls the door closed. He keeps his head down as he inserts the key, arranges himself so his feet are on the pedals.
He hesitates. This is insane. He’s never driven before, for obvious reasons. But there’s no other way out.
He starts the car.
The engine roars to life, and he jams his foot down. Gunfire erupts behind him and to his left, strafing the car as it shoots forward. He hears the loud thunk thunk of bullets impacting the metal, and then he’s on the lawn, wheel spinning, churning up mud and grass as he heads straight for the iron fence.
More gunfire behind him. The back lights shatter. The rear window explodes into fragments as he picks up speed.
He hits the fence full on. He’s thrown forward, his knee hitting the bottom of the dash, his ribs striking the handbrake. The air bag explodes into the side of his face. He blinks, dazed, only just remembering to swing the wheel right so he doesn’t carry on straight across the road into the property opposite. He jams down the gas pedal, frantically tries to slap away the air bag so he can get to the steering wheel.
Horns blare as cars veer out of his way. He can smell something burning. Is the car on fire? No. It’s water. Steam. But he can smell oil, too. The car, damaged by the collision. (Or the bullets.) Either way, he needs to dump it. Fast.
He reaches out with his senses and hears the spinning of wheels ahead, the clamping of brake discs as cars slow and swerve to avoid him. He adjusts to their distance and moves the wheel slightly to the right, keeping into his own lane.
There’s a car ahead of him, going in the same direction. Perfect. He focuses all his attention on that, listening as its front wheels shift on the asphalt to follow the curve of the road. He lets the car guide him, like a seeing-eye dog.
He drives for another couple of minutes, but when the road becomes busier, he knows he has to ditch the car or risk an accident. He pulls over, kicks the door open, and sprints into the underbrush at the side of the road, then down a slope and into a park with kids’ roundabouts and swings. He keeps running, his whole body numb. All he knows is that he’s got to get away from here. Back to the dorm. Patch himself up. Stay inside. Keep hidden. Don’t get arrested.
He makes it back into town, although he’s not sure how. His senses come and go, his awareness waxing and waning. He has no idea how many times he falls, only to pull himself back to his feet again. He’s sweating, freezing. Blood still flows down his arm, drips from his fingertips. He crawls deep inside himself, trying to shut away the pain.
Through waves of agony and nausea, through blasts of clammy, icy cold, through surges of intense heat and fever, he struggles to hold onto his concentration, to find the strength he needs.
Until, finally, he’s back in the dorm. Empty. Nobody still up to see him.
Into his room. Past Foggy, snoring and snorting. Past his bed and into the bathroom. He leans over the sink, dripping blood down the drain.
