by John Hart
“He’s bleeding. I don’t know. Your friend won’t let me call an ambulance.”
Elizabeth moved to the bottom step. Gideon lay on the floor by Channing. He opened his eyes, but looked bled out and rough. Elizabeth glanced the length of the church and understood, at last, that something was very wrong. It was too quiet after so much time. Channing was wide-eyed and frightened and shaking her head in a small way. Elizabeth knew the look; she felt it. “Where are the people, Charlie?”
He turned his palms. “I told you.…”
“You told me why there are no cops. Where are the paramedics? The boy is hurt. Channing is hurt. There should be paramedics. You could have made that happen, kept it quiet.”
She moved toward the kids, but Beckett stepped between them. He was still palms up and smiling, but the lie was in his eyes. “We need to talk, first.” She stopped after the bottom step. “Come on, Liz. Don’t look at me like that.” He forced a smile that failed. Elizabeth had never been good at hiding the way she felt, and it was all in her face now, the distrust and doubt and anger. “Goddamn, Liz. I’m here to help you. The girl called and I came. Who else would do that? No questions. No doubt.”
“What’s going on, Charlie?”
“This whole week, who has been by your side, your friend? I’ve been that friend. Just me. Now, I need you to be mine.”
She gauged the way he stood. Chin down, feet spread. His hands were out as if he’d grab her if she ran. Whatever was happening, he was serious about it. “Are you really standing between me and those children?”
“We just need to talk. Two minutes. We’ll talk and call the ambulance, and this will all be over.”
Her eyes fell to the gun in his belt. He was good with it. Plus he weighed 250. Whatever this was, she couldn’t take him.
“Why don’t you sit down.”
She stepped sideways. Her father groaned.
“Please, Liz. Sit.”
Elizabeth kept moving. She had no intention of sitting, and Beckett saw it. He nodded and sighed, and something artificial fell away. “Do you know where Adrian is?”
It was the last thing she expected.
“Adrian Wall. I need a location.”
“What does Adrian have to do with any of this?”
“It’s for everyone’s good. You. The kids. I’m asking you to trust me.”
“Not without an explanation.”
“Just tell me.”
“No.”
“Goddamn it, Liz! Just tell me where he is!”
“Yes, please tell him.”
The voice came from the back of the church, loud and familiar. Elizabeth registered the sudden desperation on Beckett’s face, then saw the warden with Olivet and Jacks and Woods. They stood in the open door, four in a line and the sky behind them burning.
“Gideon. Channing.”
She called the children to her, and they obeyed, Channing on her feet, the boy stumbling. They moved past Beckett, but he didn’t try to stop them. His head was down. His shoulders slumped. Elizabeth got the children behind her as the world slowed, and everything came into sharp focus: the scrape of air in her throat, Beckett’s sweat and fear and sudden despair. “You should have told me,” he said, and though she heard the words, she wasn’t listening. The warden led his men down the aisle, and Liz paid attention to the things that mattered. Two autoloaders. Two revolvers. Olivet looked scared.
“Please give him what he wants.”
“Shut up, Charlie.”
“Please, Liz. You don’t know this man.”
“Actually, I do.”
The warden was close, now, fifteen feet, then ten. Elizabeth spoke when he reached the final pew. “I guess you two know each other better than I thought.”
“Of course,” the warden said. “Detective Beckett and I go back many years. How many is it, Charlie? Fifteen? Sixteen?”
“Don’t pretend we’re friends.”
Beckett spat the words, and the warden tilted the pistol in his hand. “Friends. Acquaintances.”
The arrogance was more obvious, now, the smile lazier and slow. It made Elizabeth’s stomach turn. The warden wore a summer suit. His men, behind him, were in plainclothes. She kept her eyes on the warden. “Does he know what you did to Adrian?” She pitched her voice to carry. “The torture and abuse? Does he know your men tried to kill him?” She backed closer to the altar, and the children moved with her, up two steps, then three.
The warden and his men moved forward, too. “I like Vegas,” the warden said. “It’s the motto, I think.” He waved a circle with the gun; held up both hands as if framing a marquee. “‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’ My prison is like that.”
His prison.
He could call it that, and who would contradict him? Guards? Prisoners? Not if he was hard enough, malicious enough.
“Did you know?” she asked Beckett. “Did you know they tortured Adrian? That they killed his cellmate?”
“It doesn’t matter what I know.”
“How can you say that?”
“Desperate men,” the warden interrupted. “I thank God for them every day.”
“There is no money,” she told the warden. “No pot at the end of your sad, little rainbow.”
“I’ve explained once that we’re beyond that. This is about William Preston, who was dear to me. It’s about payback and endings and the natural order of things. Prisoners don’t touch my guards. Inside the walls, beyond them. It doesn’t happen.” The barrel of his gun came up. “Detective Beckett, would you step away from them, please.”
“You were supposed to wait outside.” Beckett stood sideways to the warden, his chin down. “You wait outside. I come in. That was the deal.”
“I’m an impatient man. It’s a weakness.”
“I gave you my word.”
“Yet I have no reason to trust you.”
“You have every reason! You know you do!” Beckett was begging. Elizabeth had never seen him beg. “I can get what you want. Please. Just leave them alone. Give me two minutes. I’ll find out where he is. No one has to get hurt. No one has to die.”
“You think I would kill someone?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Please…”
“Is that man alive?”
The warden pointed his gun at Reverend Black, bound on the floor. Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, the warden shot her father in the heart. The bullet went in small and came out big. The body barely moved.
“That was to get your attention.”
Elizabeth stared at her father.
Channing threw up.
“I want Adrian Wall.” The gun was a .45, cocked. He pointed it at Gideon. “He seems like a nice boy.”
“No!”
Elizabeth leapt in front of the gun, her fingers spread. She was bent at the waist, desperate and small, and begging, too.
“Goddamn it!” Beckett yelled. “This was not our fucking deal!”
“Our deal’s off.” The warden shot Beckett in the gut. For a second the big man stood, then crumpled.
“Charlie!” Elizabeth dropped beside him. “Oh, Jesus Christ. Charlie.”
She put a hand on the bullet wound in his stomach, then felt the exit wound in his back. It was large and ragged, and beneath it was a pistol. Pain swam in Beckett’s eyes, but he mouthed a single word.
Don’t …
She looked at the warden and his men. Guns were up and level. “You bastard.”
“Stomach wounds are extremely painful,” he said. “Yet, people recover.”
“Why…?”
“The violence? This?” He waved an arm across the dead and dying. “So, you would take me seriously, and give me what I want.”
“Charlie. Oh, God…”
His blood pooled against her knees. His fingers twined into hers. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” She felt him fading. “Liz, I’m sorry.…”
She touched his throat when his eyes closed. He was in a bad way, but br
eathing. “What do you have on him?” Her voice cut, and she rose, fearless. “He wouldn’t have done this without a reason.”
“Brought me here? No. But I was with him when the little girl called.” The warden made another circle with the barrel of his gun. “He was trying to protect you. He told me he could get what I want. Obviously, he could not. Now, here we are.”
“He needs medical care.”
“Like William Preston needed medical care?” The warden held the stare; she had no words. “It’s a funny thing, really.” The warden sat on a pew, speaking conversationally. “When we first met, I felt as if I knew you. What you value. The person you really are.” He lit a cigarette and pointed the gun at Gideon’s chest. “Where is Adrian Wall?”
“Don’t.”
He swung his aim to the girl. “You see how this works.” The gun moved back and forth. The boy. The girl. “I want you to call him. Tell him to come here. Tell him he has an hour before I start killing children.”
“He’s farther away than that.”
“I’m an impatient man, but not beyond reason. We’ll call it ninety minutes.”
Elizabeth held the stare. The warden smiled.
At their feet, Beckett lay dying.
36
Adrian was at the window when the phone rang. Only Liz knew he was here, so he answered, “Liz?”
“Adrian, thank God.” She was curt, her voice strained. “Listen to me, and listen carefully. I don’t have much time. You remember my father’s church? The old one?”
Of course, he remembered. He’d joined the church a month after finding Elizabeth at the quarry. He’d hoped to marry Julia there and start a new life. It had, for a time, embodied dreams of better days.
“What’s going on, Liz?”
“I need you at the church, and I need you soon.”
“Why?”
“Just come, please. It’s important.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Do you remember the last thing I said to you? Our last phone call?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I mean it now more than ever.”
Adrian wanted to know more. He had questions.
The phone went dead.
* * *
The warden took the phone from Elizabeth’s fingers and slipped it into his pocket. The conversation had been on speakerphone. His insistence. “Were you being clever, just now?”
“No.”
He leaned close enough to smell his skin, the gel in his hair. He was closely shaven, his eyes too soft and brown for the man he was. Elizabeth averted her gaze, but he touched her hair with a finger, tapped the gun against her knee.
“What was the last thing you said to him?”
“You wanted him here. I said what I had to say to make sure he’d come.”
“I find that answer unsatisfactory.”
She glanced at the children, then at Beckett. His eyes were open; he was watching. “The last thing I said was that I loved him. He’ll come because of that.”
The warden measured her words, her face. “Are you lying to me?”
“All I want is for the children to live.”
“Eighty-nine minutes.”
* * *
Stay away from this place. Stay away from me.
Those were the last words she’d said to him. Did she really want him to stay away? He doubted it. Else why call him at all? Something had changed, and it wasn’t something good.
Cops, maybe?
That was equally doubtful.
The warden?
That was the best bet, but it didn’t really matter. Liz would not have called unless she needed him. The beautiful part was that he had clarity at last, knew what to do and when to do it. He heard Eli as if he were in the room.
It’s only worth so much, boy .
Six million dollars, he thought.
Liz was worth more.
* * *
In the church, it was hot and still. Beckett was alive, but as close to dead as Elizabeth had ever seen a man. She asked the same question for the seventh time. “Please, may I help him?”
Gideon and Channing sat on either side of her, the three of them herded onto the step at the bottom of the altar and held at gunpoint. Olivet was at the door. The warden stood gazing at stained glass.
“He’s dying,” she said.
“Two minutes left.” The warden tapped his watch. “I hope he makes it in time.”
“I’ve done what you asked. No one else needs to die.”
She said it as if she meant it, but deep down she knew the truth. If the warden had his way, no one would get out alive. Witnesses. Risks. He would accept neither, not with one man dead and another dying, not once he had Adrian.
“Talk to me,” she said. “Let’s work this out.”
“Stop talking.”
“I’m serious. There must be something—”
“Bring her here.” The warden gestured, and one of the guards hauled Elizabeth to her feet. “Put her down there. Cuff her to the pew.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“So I have a clear shot at the children.”
She jerked an arm free, but the guard pushed her down, pulled her hands behind her back, and cuffed her to the leg of the pew. “You wouldn’t.”
“Actually, I’d rather not.” The warden stooped beside her. “Can’t you feel it, though?” He traced the line of her cheek. “The suspense.” He was speaking of Adrian, and confidence underlay it all. “Sixty seconds.”
“Don’t pretend you’ll let us live.”
“Not even for the children?”
The smile seemed shockingly real, but the eyes said it all. He’d shot one man in the heart, and put a bullet in a cop’s stomach. It could only end one way. He knew it, and she did, too.
“Movement.” That was Olivet at the open door. Beyond him, it was dusk. Purple sky. Cicadas in the grass. “Car’s turning in. Some kind of green wagon.”
The warden looked at his watch and, before he stood, gave a wink Elizabeth would never forget. Craning her neck, she saw three men at the door, one watching the children. Elizabeth caught Channing’s eye, and the guard—seeing it—put his gun to Channing’s head. “Everybody just stay calm,” he said.
But, that was not possible.
It was not even close.
* * *
When the church appeared on the hill, it was more to Adrian than glass and stone and iron. It was the past, his youth, his undying regret. He’d hoped to be married there, and to start a life with the woman he should have married all along. The building was old, and solid. He’d liked the feel of it and the permanence, the reverend’s message of birth and hope and forgiveness. He’d thought of it often as his marriage failed. At times he’d driven to the church and simply watched it on the hill, thinking, If I am honest at last …
Instead, he’d gone to trial for Julia’s murder and never spoken of regret or redemption. He spent thirteen years dreaming of the life he’d lost, and when the church rose tall in those dreams, he saw Julia die alone and pleading; and it wasn’t God she called for, or her husband. The name on her lips was his, night after night. She was afraid and dying, yet he was never there but in the dreams. When next the nightmares came, would he see his wife, as well? Or Liz? The thought was unbearable so he made a promise as the road fell away and gravel shifted beneath the tires.
Whatever it takes.
Never again.
Cresting the hill, he saw men in the door and parked cars. He stopped twenty feet from the granite steps. The warden stood outside the door with Olivet and Jacks. Woods would be there, too, probably with Liz. Adrian killed the engine and put the key in his pocket. The air outside was warm.
“You should have run and kept running.”
The warden stepped out, his shoes scraping granite. The trees above his head were dark and heavy.
“Maybe I should have killed you. First day out. First night.”
“You
don’t have the balls.”
“Maybe you underestimate me. Maybe you always have.”
“That implies you had secrets to keep, and that you kept them. I find that hard to believe.”
Adrian fished a gold coin from his pocket and tossed it so it rang on the steps. The warden kept an eye on Adrian and picked it up, tilting it. “You could buy the same in any pawnshop.”
Adrian flung another dozen coins.
“So, it’s true.” The warden didn’t stoop that time. He smoothed a thumb across the coin; showed it to Jacks. “How many?”
“Five thousand. They’re yours if you let her go.”
The warden studied Adrian with new eyes. Respect was there, and even a little fear. All that time, unbroken. All that pain. “There’s still the matter of William Preston.”
“It’s six million dollars,” Adrian said. And that was the only truth that mattered. He saw it in the warden’s face, and in the way Jacks shifted his feet. Friendship was fine, but the money came first.
“Do you have it with you?”
“I’m not stupid.”
“How do you propose to do this?”
“If Liz is okay, I’ll take you to the gold. She stays behind.”
“If I say no?”
“You can torture me again, for all the good it’ll do.”
“Maybe I’ll torture her, instead.”
“Death is death,” Adrian said. “We all win or none of us do.”
The warden rubbed his chin, thinking. “And when she tells her story about what happened here?”
“Do you love your wife?”
“Not so much.”
“It’s six million dollars. Untraceable. You can put it in the trunk and go anywhere. Tomorrow morning you start a whole new life.”
The warden smiled, and it made Adrian nervous. “I don’t think Detective Black would accept the idea of her torture as lightly as you.”
“She wouldn’t have called me unless she’d thought it through.”
“Perhaps, she thought you’d come in, guns blazing.”
“I’m nobody’s hero. She knows that.”
The warden ran the same thumb across the coin. “Jacks is going to pat you down.” He gestured, and Jacks took the stairs.
The pat-down was rough and thorough. “He’s clean.”
“All right, then.” The warden picked up the other coins, bounced them in his palm so they rattled and clinked. “Let’s go inside and talk this thing out.”