by John Hart
How long until dawn?
Two hours?
“David 218.”
The radio squawked, and French keyed the mic. “David 218, go ahead, Dispatch.”
“Detective Burklow requests you call a private line. Stand by for the number.”
“Go ahead, Dispatch.” He found a pencil; jotted down the number.
“David 218, be advised the matter is urgent.”
French was on a four-lane, west side of town, and the last pay phone he’d seen was two clicks back. No traffic this late, so he cut the wheel hard, and left an arc of smoking rubber. When the Food Town appeared, it was across the street, so he left another black arc, and hit the parking lot entrance so fast he grounded out the shocks.
Burklow picked up a half second into the first ring. “This is complicated, so I need you calm. Are you calm?”
French squeezed the phone until he thought his hand would break. “Yes, I’m calm. Where are you?”
“Pay phone eight blocks from your house. Before you ask, your wife tracked me down an hour back, saying things like you were lying to her and she knew it, and it had to be about Gibby, and why would you lie about her last good son. She was on the ledge. I went over to talk her down. That’s when we got the call from Jason. He’s out. He’s looking for you.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t have the answers. He had little time and a lot of things to say, and that wasn’t part of it.”
French ground his teeth, trying hard to fight off the confusion and disappointment. “You said this was urgent. I thought it was about Gibby.”
“That’s the thing. Jason claims to know where he is.”
“Say that again.”
“Where he is, who has him, and how to get him out. He said the kid’s in serious danger, that the guy who took him is a killer, the worst kind.”
“Give me the address.”
“Bill, he says it’s the guy who killed Tyra Norris.”
* * *
French realized something ten seconds after he left the lot: his tires did not have enough rubber for the way he wanted to drive. If he could break the laws of physics, he would. Burn the sky. Shake the ground. None of it was about choice.
But that was not exactly true.
Jason wanted Gibby safe and clear, but needed Burklow and his father to get it done. Just them, though, the three of them. But French believed in bigger help, and that meant manpower, control, the overwhelming force of the state. It was simple math. Roll heavy, and lock shit down. Resolution might take longer, but it was usually the better resolution. The hostage lived. No cops died.
That’s where Jason became a problem.
If he was out, he’d escaped, and that meant people would be looking. French’s people. There’d been nothing on the radio, but he couldn’t exactly call in a request, either.
Dispatch, could you please confirm that my son has escaped from prison?
No. Couldn’t do it.
And if Jason was right? If the man who’d butchered that poor young woman was the same who had Gibby?
The thought was unbearable.
So was the next.
Roll heavy or go light, whatever decision he made in the next few minutes would put one son in greater danger. If he called in reinforcements, Gibby would have a better chance of getting out alive. Tactical teams. Snipers. Trained negotiators. French believed that to the bottom of his shoes. It was instinct, faith, thirty years of cop. But Jason was a wanted man, a suspected killer; and there were cops in the city that would take him down without thinking twice, oil and fucking water. And Jason was very likely to give them a reason. He’d go hot; resist arrest. If French could do it, he’d tell Jason to leave, go now, let us handle it. But Jason had no trust for cops. They’ll get my brother killed … He’d told Burklow as much.
French rolled down the window, but it didn’t help.
There was this house, and in it, a killer …
Was this really the question he faced?
One son or the other?
It wasn’t fair, but what was? French had gone to war, and killed, and lost one son already; he’d seen victims and unspeakable crime, spent years in the pursuit of evil men. In a good life, there’d been bad moments, but this was the worst, wind screaming in the car as he did the same in the silence of a breaking heart. One or the other, he had to choose.
French reached for the mic.
He made the call.
* * *
Finding the house was not a problem. The neighborhood was new money, but big money. Lots of gates and walls. Garages the size of a workingman’s house. French got there first, did a slow drive-by, and then parked where he could see the gate, the roofline, the glow of lights beyond the wall. Burklow rolled in five minutes later, and it was a long five minutes.
“You okay?”
They met on the sidewalk, low-voiced as Burklow did a hard-target search of French’s face. Whatever he saw there made him happy enough. He didn’t repeat the question.
“Where’s Jason?”
“I don’t know. He said he’d be here.”
The street was empty. They settled more deeply into the shadows cast by a streetlight two houses down. “Tell me everything he said.”
Burklow glanced at the house. To save time, they’d decided to do the full rundown in person. “Jason knows a lot about the property. The structure is fortified with polycarbonate, armored glass and steel-core doors in hardened frames. The security system is state of the art. Eighteen cameras on the grounds. Another dozen inside. Motion sensors and infrared. Pressure plates at the main and rear gates.”
“How does he know that?”
“How does he know any of it?”
“Do you believe him?”
“Do you?”
French thought, Yeah, I do. “Did he give you a name?”
“Reece, but he thinks it’s fictitious. There’s no Reece listed at this address. We can check property records after.” An unhappy moment passed between them. “I think he might be injured.”
“Jason? Why?”
“Something in his voice, his breathing, the fact he called us at all. I’ve never known him to ask for help.”
That was true. Not even as a kid.
Burklow shifted uneasily, looking down from all his great height. They’d been together a long time, thick and thin. French didn’t have to see his face to know his thoughts or the unanswered question that still hung between them. He nodded once, glad for the shadows, and how they hid his face. “Yeah,” he said. “I made the call.”
“I’m sorry, Bill.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“How soon?”
“Not long.” French did not trust his voice to say more. The first wave was already rolling: everyone on duty, and close enough to get there fast. Behind them, other cops were being called up, body armor issued, the armory broached. They had no warrant; they barely had probable cause. But no cop in the city had ever seen anything like what had been done to Tyra Norris, and every one of those cops wanted the guy who’d done it, proper procedure or not. French had slipped the chain, and it was coming, no stopping it.
Where was Jason?
Why wasn’t he here?
Misunderstanding the expression on his partner’s face, Burklow said, “Brother, you made the right choice.”
French believed that, too.
It didn’t help in the slightest.
45
Inside the bedroom, Sara rode emotion like the crest of an impossible wave. It lifted her, took her, and tossed her. She’d never been the angry person, the forceful personality. She’d gone along to get along. The easy friend. The laid-back neighbor. Only twice in her life had she lost complete control of her emotions, once on the day her parents kicked her out, and then again on the foggy, back-alley night she’d had the abortion. That was it, two times lost and out of control. This was the third, and after so much helplessness and fear, she stepped joyfully into the fire
of pure, blind rage, screaming wordlessly as she tried to beat down the prison, the man, the wall she hated. When one chair came apart, she picked up another. Every chunk of drywall was pure adrenaline, the haze of dust like a drug.
Him. He. Whoever.
The rat in the walls.
The second chair shattered, and she could feel it out there, the tail end of her madness. Sheeted in sweat and fine, white dust, she picked up a length of jagged wood, thinking, Fuck this place, and fuck this guy. The screams were gone, but she stabbed at the Sheetrock, hoping the hard, sharp point would find something soft behind the wall.
* * *
Reece had no idea what to do. He’d chosen the girl for many reasons, one of which had been the easy compliance he’d seen in her approach to the world. He knew from bitter experience that women so lovely could be prone to disdain for men who looked and thought as Reece did. Sara had every quality he admired in a woman, the way she looked and moved, the soulful eyes and easy laugh. He’d followed her long enough to make sure, and everything he’d seen confirmed that first assessment.
She was compliant.
She could be taught.
Reece had never been so wrong in his life, and had no idea what to do with this rage machine tearing down his house. There was no saving this. His mind was already in transition. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d cut losses.
The question was how.
She’d broken through the drywall and was attacking the plywood underneath it. Given enough time, she might actually punch through.
He’d have to shoot her, he decided. No fun in that, but he had no desire to be stabbed, either.
With a strange shock, Reece realized that he was feeling something close to actual fear. He lived for control, and had none. She was pounding on the plywood, and if anything, the pounding was getting louder and harder.
Get the gun; kill the girl.
Yet his paralysis was total.
Boom.
She hit the plywood.
Boom.
It gave a little more.
A high-pitched laugh found its way past Reece’s lips, another disbelieving titter. Could it be any worse?
No, he thought. Not possible.
Two seconds later the alarm went off.
* * *
Schematics or not, the security system was too good for Jason to chance on his own. He had a fine memory and knack for tactical thinking, so keeping track of sensors and sight lines was far from impossible. But he didn’t like the odds of running half speed on unfamiliar ground, not against a man like Reece.
So he did need help.
What he’d said to Burklow was not an actual lie.
Jason arrived ten minutes before his father, and parked one street over, slinging his weapons, and working through a strip of forest where Reece’s property touched a neighbor’s. He made a quick recon along the perimeter wall, located the rear gate first, and then a good access point to scale the wall, and watch the front approach. Lying flat, and invisible in the darkness, he was there when his father arrived. He watched Burklow arrive, too; saw them huddle in the gloom between streetlamps.
Jason studied the sky in the east. Paling, at last. Barely perceptible. He turned his attention to the house and grounds, confirming his opinions on sight lines and sensors, then marking doors and windows, looking for problems and the most likely places for opportunity to arise. More light in the east, false dawn, a time Jason knew well. Soon, he thought; and then it happened: sirens in the morning stillness, a cavalry call, the sound of his father’s choice.
* * *
The alarm broke Reece’s paralysis, his thoughts suddenly quick and sharp. The girl wasn’t going anywhere, not for a while, at least. Somewhere was a larger threat. Reece hit the security monitors at full stride, eyes on the screens. It was a nightmare. Cameras at the gate showed a swarm of cops. Ten cars. A dozen. Three more rolled in as he watched.
Byrd, he thought. He’d told someone about the job, given someone the address in case he didn’t make it out. Now, Byrd was in the freezer with his two friends. Reece’s thoughts rolled over, logical and mechanical. The house was lost. Unfortunate, but not irretrievably so. Ownership was held by carefully layered corporate entities, none of which would trace back to Reece. Same with the cars, the utilities. He stored his financial information off-site for exactly this kind of circumstance. They’d collect his prints, of course, but Reece was not his real name, and he’d never been printed.
“Damn it!”
His control slipped, and he beat his fists on the console. The girl would live; he didn’t have time to kill her now. Guns were in the main house. There and back would take time. What about the boys? That required thought, but he had to think fast. If the cops were smart, they’d circle the entire block. Reece didn’t need to go through the front gate, but if they shut down the surrounding streets …
A terrible thought struck like a jolt of electricity. Cops on the street would not trigger the alarm. Reece scanned the screens.
Camera 1? Nothing.
Camera 2?
A flicker of movement drew his attention to camera 9, a slash of something dark, there for an instant and then gone.
Reece pulled at his hair.
Nothing!
No, wait …
Camera 12 caught another hint of movement. Someone was on the grounds. Cops? Something else? It didn’t matter.
“Time to go.”
Reece twisted through the secret corridors, and sprinted from the north wing, his thoughts touching again on the boys. Could X be responsible for this? He’d given his word: no contract on Reece’s head. And X would never call the cops, not if his own life depended on it.
“Think!”
He’d planned for this. He had time.
But what if X was responsible?
Reece burst into the main house, snatching up cash and a gun, running numbers in his head. His escape route was through the side door, then across the rear grounds and through the small gate at the back. He owned the property on the other side, a second house with a second garage, bought years ago for contingencies like this. He’d timed it out before. He could clear the gate in sixty seconds. Another forty, and he could be in a car and on the road. What about the boys? Kill them? Take them? Kill the little one and take the other? He ran those numbers, too. Ten seconds to get out of the house. Five more to reach the basement door.
He made the decision on instinct. X was not involved. He’d been specific. It had to be Byrd. Or Reece had made a mistake with Tyra, or with Lonnie Ward, some bread crumb of a clue that brought the cops, at last, to his door. Smart move was to go, and do it fast.
But he did hate Jason French.
Handsome Jason.
Favorite Jason.
In the dark outside, the thought only grew. He couldn’t get to Jason, and even if he could, he couldn’t beat him. He’d seen what the bastard could do; those qualities X admired so much. A dark desire built as Reece hugged the shrub line, moving quickly, no sign of cops or intruder. He wanted to make Jason hurt, and for Jason to know it was he who’d taken, and he who’d destroyed. It would be easy, too. The boys were caged; the basement door was right there. How long could it take?
Pop, pop.
Two seconds, and gone.
46
When the last bolt dropped, Gibby bent the mesh as quietly as he could. It took time; it was harder than it looked. “You first.”
He pulled the mesh as high as he could off the floor, and Chance slipped through like a greased ferret.
“Here, take this.”
Chance took the pressure, and Gibby forced himself into the gap. He was larger, but made it through with only a few cuts and scrapes. Dusting himself off, he said, “I’ll never look at a dog pound the same way.”
“Whatever, man, I’m calling you Houdini from now on.”
“Not yet. That door’s locked from the outside.”
Chance checked to make sure. It was solid steel, and
seriously locked. “So what do we do?”
“A lot of dangerous stuff in here. I guess we find something sharp, and kill the bastard.”
Chance waited for the punch line.
It never came.
“You check over there.” Gibby picked up a scalpel, gripped it like a knife, and then put it down when he found a larger one. “Anything?”
Chance opened a few cabinets. “I found bleach.”
“Check that big chest.”
“It’s a freezer.”
“Check it, anyway.”
The freezer door went up. “Um, Gibby.”
“Yeah?”
“No. Seriously.”
Chance’s face should have been warning enough. It wasn’t. Gibby crossed the room, and stared down. “Oh, Jesus.”
“That’s somebody’s leg.”
Gibby closed his eyes, but the image wouldn’t go. Plastic, frost, those things that were beneath …
“Oh shit,” Chance said. “I think that one is somebody’s head.”
“Close it, please.”
Chance did that, too.
Behind them, a key grated in the lock.
For a moment, time stopped, then Gibby charged the door. It opened, and framed the small man—same gun in his hand—and there was a moment of pure comic genius: his face when he saw what was about to happen. Because Gibby was big and fast, and not about to slow down. He tucked his shoulder, and hit chest-high, one hundred and ninety pounds of pissed-off, shit-scared, eighteen-year-old with a very strong desire to live. He drove the little man back through the door, and they went down in a tangle, Gibby on top, and trying hard to stab a man somewhere it actually mattered. He had little luck, and no time at all. The gun went off, maybe into the dirt. Gibby rolled right, and the world exploded again, powder grit and fire as the gun lit off ten inches from his face.
Still alive, though.
Chance must have been close behind, because the next three shots went into the basement, then the little bastard was up and running. Gibby tried to stop him, but couldn’t. He was half-deaf, half-blind.