“We’re not obligated to go through with this, you know,” said Jackson, obviously taking Carter’s silence as second thoughts. “We can call in a tactical team for support.”
Carter pocketed the key and asked, “Losing your nerve, Jack?” He reached across the seat and retrieved two hefty Maglites from the backseat.
“Just being realistic. This is a volatile situation with no expectation of success. For all we know, she’s already dead.”
Carter refused to consider that possibility. “And if she isn’t?”
“She’s clever and resourceful. You trained her. You of all people know what she’s capable of under these circumstances. She’s just as likely to get out of this without our involvement.”
Everything Jack said was true, but it didn’t change Carter’s resolve. “With or without your help, I’m going in.” He glanced over his shoulder at the building in question with a determination that wasn’t lost on Prichard.
“She means that much to you?”
“She means everything to me,” Carter said. There wasn’t any reason to hide or deny his feelings any longer, not to himself or anyone else. All he wanted was another opportunity to tell her.
“Your falling in love sort of complicated things, didn’t it?” Jackson observed as he shifted in his seat. He reached into his jacket, pulled out a thin, silver flask and took a long swig, then offered it to Carter.
Tempting as it was, Carter shook his head to refuse. “I’m aware of that, but I’m not sorry it happened.”
Jackson’s brow furrowed as he pressed his knuckles against pursed lips. “Then you must also be aware that,” he began slowly and thoughtfully, “this goes against every agency policy. Because of your personal involvement I should remove you from any part of this operation.”
“I realize that, too, but your telling me I can’t participate won’t stop me. I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back.”
“Even if it means jeopardizing everything else you’ve worked for in the process—your career, your reputation, your pension?”
Carter never hesitated. “Yes, sir. None of that holds much importance for me if I can’t save her.”
With only a nearby streetlamp to light the car’s interior, it was still clear that Jackson was pleased with Carter’s unwavering response. He took another pull off the flask, then recapped it and returned it to his breast pocket. “I’m real glad to hear you say that, because over the years you’ve been a little too play-by-the-rules to suit me. Your inflexibility was always by far your worst leadership quality. I’m relieved to see that you’re learning it’s okay to bend the rules when the situation requires it. Can I assume Piper had something to do with changing your way of thinking?”
“Piper had everything to do with it,” Carter admitted.
“Then let’s go get her.” Pritchard grabbed a flashlight and took the lead. Together they slipped into the narrow, cobweb-veiled stairwell and started their single-file climb.
After only the second flight, Jackson’s breathing was labored, but he plodded forward without complaint. By the fourth floor, he was gasping for every breath and sweating profusely. At that point, in spite of his own eagerness to keep moving, Carter suggested they take a break, but Jackson insisted they continue. They made it as far as the fifth-floor landing before he collapsed, leaning heavily against the wall for support and fighting for every breath.
Carter stripped off his coat and rolled it into a pillow, tucking it behind Jackson’s head. “Is it your heart?”
Jackson nodded weakly. “And liver, and lungs. I’ve wasted a lot of money over the years on expensive booze and cigars only to find out they do the same damage as the cheap ones.”
Carter glanced upward, torn between doing what was right for Jackson and doing the right thing for the woman he loved.
“Go on without me. I’ll be right behind you as soon as I catch my breath.”
Carter doubted that. Pritchard’s color had faded from ashen gray to flushed and his breathing hadn’t gotten any better with rest. The man needed medical attention.
“Don’t waste your time on me. I’m beyond salvation, but there’s still a chance to save her.” Jackson clutched at Carter’s shirtsleeve. “You’ve got to right this terrible wrong I’ve done.”
Carter pulled his Beretta from its holster, chambered a round and continued his climb without looking back.
Chapter Nineteen
It was the annoying buzz in her brain that first caused Piper to stir. Even when fully conscious, she could barely lift her head. Every inch of her body ached with unspeakable fatigue and there was a constant, underlying quiver in her tender muscles. She couldn’t be sure if it was just the residual effects of the Taser and stun gun or other factors that made her limbs so weak and slow to respond.
If her fuzzy memory could be trusted, she remembered being stun-gunned at least twice after the initial Taser hit—once to keep her subdued while in transit and a second time just because the assholes who’d grabbed her thought it was great sport to watch her twitch. She’d been zapped and sapped of all energy reserves. She was running dangerously close to empty and didn’t know how much longer her body could function without something to fill her tank.
Once the buzzing settled into a tolerable hum, she lifted her head a get a good look at her surroundings. It took another few seconds for her vision to focus and adjust to the low-level lighting coming from a pair of battery-operated camp lanterns sitting in adjacent corners about ten feet away, giving barely enough illumination to help get her bearings.
The layout of the room looked somewhat familiar, but without the usual furnishings to distinguish it from any other four walls and nondescript carpet, she couldn’t say for certain if it was Riggs’s old office or not.
The one thing she could identify with absolute certainty was the dreadfully uncomfortable chair she found herself strapped to. She might not be able to immediately recognize an office without furniture, but she didn’t have any problem identifying this particular piece of furniture without the room from where it had been taken. It was one of the straight-backed, hardwood armed chairs from the InPro conference room down the hall where there had been eleven more just like it—an even dozen of the most uncomfortable, ungodly, inhumane chairs ever to be created, with the one possible exception being Florida’s retired “Old Sparky.”
Only instead of thick leather straps holding her forearms to the chair’s unpadded arms it was modern plastic flex-cuffs. That and yards of unrelenting duct tape wrapped around her chest keeping her tightly secured to the straight, hardwood chair back.
Struggling against the bonds, she quickly realized she’d been effectively immobilized with a minimum of measures. What she found hard to understand was why whoever had restrained her never bothered to tie down her lower extremities. Under ordinary circumstances she’d have been thrilled to discover that her feet and legs hadn’t been bound, but she saw it as more of a taunt than a victory considering her present weakened physical state. She could barely hold her head up let alone swing her feet with enough force to cause anything more than a bruise, much less a sustainable injury.
She’d never felt so helpless or hopeless.
Not until her captor swaggered into the room clutching a long-barreled Colt .45 that looked like a toy in his oversized fist. Rafe Sawyer was a big man, not quite as tall as Riggs, but just as broad and every bit as formidable. He was dressed in all black, a handsome foil for the head of thick silver-gray hair. The shirt and trousers were tailored with such precision they fit his large frame with exquisite perfection. The man’s elegant image was in direct contradiction to the despicable things she knew he was capable of doing.
Piper had expected to be in this situation someday—held captive with little hope of escape—only she never expected it to be on home turf or held at gunpoint by a man
who was supposed to be on her side. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the only side this man was on was his own. Piper marveled at how he’d managed to hide it from the rest of the world for so many years.
Because of the way he stood, she couldn’t see what he held in his other hand any more than she could see getting out of this mess in any other way but a body bag.
Without saying a word, he produced a popular energy drink from behind his back, popped the top and tipped it to her lips. It was grape flavored. She hated anything grape flavored unless it was aged and fermented, but she clamped her lips around the can’s opening and sucked back the sugar-rich, nutrient-dense elixir her body desperately craved. She was slightly surprised and highly suspicious of this unexpected act of kindness, but she greedily gulped every drop without reservation.
He tilted it higher and higher until she was nearly finished, then he yanked it away and pitched the almost empty can across the room in a blatant display of domination and control. There was nothing surprising to her about that.
Piper licked her lips, dropped her gaze and murmured, “Thank you.” The words left an aftertaste worse than the hideous grape. Subservience in the face of adversity had never been an easy role for her to assume let alone sustain. She wasn’t sure she could do it even now when her life depended on it. Although her first instinct was to lash out with the only weapon she had left, her mouth, she managed to maintain a downcast, hangdog expression and hoped it was good enough.
“You don’t look surprised to see me.”
“I’m not,” she answered.
“How about scared?” he questioned with an intolerant sigh. “Are you scared yet?” He circled around her, taking slow, even steps until he was out of her line of vision. The Colt’s cold barrel dragged aside her hair and caressed the outer curve of her ear.
Her only reaction was to stiffen in response to the intimate touch of the weapon against her skin. He moved around her slowly, touching her only with the gun, until he came to stand in front of her. She watched him raise the weapon and aim it at her forehead. “How about now?” When he thumb-cocked the hammer, the crisp mechanical click flipped a switch inside her brain. “Maybe just a little?”
Fuck submissiveness. Piper slowly raised her gaze and stared him down. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear—I’ve faced bigger bullies than you—smarter ones, too.”
“Fucking operatives,” he groused under his breath. “You, Riggs and all the others like you are like cockroaches—hard to intimidate and harder to kill.”
“You tried to kill Riggs?” she asked, although it wasn’t so much a question as a statement of fact. “His helicopter crash wasn’t an accident.”
“The investigation never proved it wasn’t.”
“I’m sure it didn’t.” It all made sense now—her brother’s murder, Riggs’s crash, Miguel’s attempt on her life, Pritchard’s accusations—all orchestrated by this madman to cover years of illicit activities.
“Tell me why you brought me here.” Piper cocked her head and narrowed her gaze, studying him like he was a specimen under a microscope. “I mean, why go to all this trouble when putting a bullet in my head at the time I was captured would have been so much easier?”
“I think you know why,” he sneered.
“Refresh my memory,” she urged. She wanted information before she died, and she’d learned the only way to get it was to ask. Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes she didn’t, but it always gave her a little extra time she might not have had otherwise, and the granite set of determination on his face said the clock was ticking—her time was running out.
“I should have killed you twenty years ago when I had the chance.”
“As I recall, I never gave you the chance.”
“I’m not leaving anything to chance this time, especially now when you’re a fugitive with a hefty bounty on this pretty little head of yours.” He stroked her hair over and over and over, leaving her revolted and feeling very much like a pampered Pekinese.
“I’m going to guess the conditions of that bounty are dead or alive?”
He pointed a finger at her then touched his nose like he was playing a sick, twisted game of charades, but there was nothing the least bit playful in the execution of his pantomime, or his thin-lipped grin as he performed it. “Of course, your untimely demise will be reward enough for me. I’ve waited a long time for this payoff.”
“Why’d you fill Pritchard’s head with all those lies about me?” That wasn’t as much of a question as an accusation. She knew who he was and what he’d done. She’d waited a long time, too.
“Because after killing your brother, I realized it was easier to lay the groundwork and let others do the dirty work, but the things I told Jack aren’t all lies, now, are they?”
Piper never shifted her gaze. “Unlike yourself, nothing I’ve ever done can be remotely construed as traitorous.”
His casual demeanor vanished and in its place there erupted undisguised rage. A spectrum of purples colored his face as he raised his gun and straight-armed it at her; the muzzle hovered inches from her chest. His index finger twitched against the trigger as violent tremors shook his extended arm when he screamed, “Your actions were traitorous to me!” Angry spittle flew from his lips, splattering her face and trickling down her cheek like winter honey.
“I’m not too fond of your behavior toward me right now, either.” She scrunched her shoulders and tried to wipe her face.
“Do you have any idea how much trouble this recent snooping of yours has caused me?” He poked her in the chest with the muzzle, urging a reaction.
“Plenty, I hope.”
“Plenty doesn’t begin to cover it,” he said as he spun on his heels and paced with an agitated, slightly limping stride. “I have to leave the country because of you.” There was a definite hitch in his giddy-up, as her daddy used to say about any horse with an abnormal gait.
“Your foot giving you trouble?” she inquired with a curious lilt.
He surprised her by admitting, “It never healed right and it aches like the devil when it’s cold.”
Piper broke into a broad grin. “It warms my heart to know I wasn’t the only one left with a lasting memory of that day.”
He stopped his pacing just long enough to toss her a hateful glance. “I can’t tell you how much I’m going to enjoy making you suffer for it. I only wish I could see your face in those final seconds before this place comes crashing down around your head.”
Piper didn’t like the sound of that. “Then stick around. I’m sure there’s more than enough for both of us.”
“Oh, there’s more than enough, but you’re the only one who’ll be here to experience the big finale.”
“Since I’m the guest of honor, the least you could do is fill me in on the big surprise.”
He grinned like he couldn’t wait to tell her what he’d planned. “There are sixteen explosive charges strategically planted throughout this building, with each set to go off every fifteen minutes. Not one of them is powerful enough to take down the building by itself, but blow by blow they’ll undermine the foundation and structure until it can’t do anything but collapse from the collective damage. And you get to ride the carnage all the way down.” He threw back his head and laughed maniacally like he’d just delivered the world’s most hilarious punch line.
Piper wasn’t laughing, but she’d like nothing better than to have the last laugh. “So...when’s the first charge set to go off?”
With a deliberate slowness, she watched him push back his shirt cuff and glance at a big gold watch with a flashy band and diamond-circled face. “In about seventeen minutes. So I hope you forgive my abrupt departure, but I have a flight to catch.”
“Where you heading?”
“Someplace that doesn’t recognize this country’s extradition
requests.”
“Could you at least remove these flex-cuffs before you go? You know, so I can cover my ears or eyes or something when the place blows.”
His expression turned dark, but he laughed out loud. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Well, for starters, I think you’re a fucking moron. Too bad there isn’t enough time to discuss the rest of your shortcomings.”
He shoved his face close to hers and said, “Nothing you say is going to ruin this moment for me.”
“How about just one then?” she asked.
He drew back and looked at her like she’d just spoken in Swahili. “What?”
“This one.” She waggled the fingers of her left hand. “Before you say no, let me point out that removing one isn’t all that big of a deal when you consider there’s still the other one and this heavy duty tape you wrapped around me. I can see that you spared no expense and got the really good and sticky stuff, and you’re obviously real good at applying it, too. You’ve got me wound with what, four or five layers here? If you leave one hand tied and the duct tape wrapped around me and the chair, there’s practically no chance of my escaping, let alone in time to miss the big bang.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
She could see she’d gotten his interest. “You’re more about psychological torture even more than the physical, right?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Why else would you have told me about the bombs? You want me listening and waiting in the silence, counting every blast, feeling every vibration, and wondering if the next one will be the one to send the building crashing down around me.”
“I told you how many there are. This building won’t go down until you hear the very last bomb go off.”
“Are you absolutely certain about that? Did you have an architectural engineer evaluate the building?”
Piper thought she saw a moment of doubt ripple across his features. “No, why would I? I know a thing or two about explosives. I don’t need a damn engineer telling me my business.”
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