Twenty

by James Grippando

  “I’m leaving now,” said Amir. “And you’re coming with me.”

  “No, she’s not,” said Jack.

  “Why would they be watching us?” asked Molly, staying with her own line of questioning. “Unless they thought one of us had something to do with the shooting.”

  “Maybe they wouldn’t be watching us if you hadn’t tried to get rid of Xavier’s clothes after the shooting,” Amir said. “Or if you hadn’t mailed the footie to yourself to make it look like someone else was the shooter.”

  It was the first Jack had heard of the mailing, but he assumed it was a reference to the foot coverings worn by the shooter, which the police never recovered.

  “I didn’t do either of those things,” said Molly. “And you know it.”

  “We need to go now, Molly.”

  “No, we need to be honest now!” she said, her voice rising. “Why did they mail you that stupid foot covering? Was that to keep you in line, Amir? Were they afraid you were going to break under the pressure, and they needed to remind you that you were already in too deep?”

  “You need to stop right now,” said Amir.

  “How long has this been going on, Amir? Months? Years? Is this why you wouldn’t let me divorce you? The pretty blond wife was your perfect cover?”

  Amir charged toward her. Jack pushed him away, knocking him to the floor. Molly hurried to the reception desk and grabbed the telephone. Amir pulled a gun from under his sport coat and fired one shot, which shattered the base of the phone and sent the pieces flying off the reception desk. He then turned the gun on Jack.

  “Nobody move!”

  Jack froze. Molly was standing at the desk, the receiver still in her hand and the now-detached cord dangling. She didn’t move. There was complete silence.

  Then, from the driveway, came the sound of a car pulling up.

  “Who’s that?” asked Amir.

  “Bonnie, my assistant. She went to get ice for your wife’s eye.”

  He pointed the gun at Jack, then Molly, then back again, as if not sure who was the bigger problem. The car door shut outside the building.

  “We can deal with this,” said Jack. “Just put the gun away, Amir.”

  “Fuck you, Swyteck! Is there a back door to this place?”

  “Through the kitchen.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Jack made one more appeal to reason. “If we go out that door, you go from assault to kidnapping. Twenty-five years to life.”

  Amir raised his pistol. “If we’re not out the back door in ten seconds, you and your assistant are looking at a bullet in the head. Now let’s move.”

  They started slowly.

  “Move!” said Amir, and they hurried to the kitchen and out the back door. Amir’s car was just a few steps away. He had Molly by the collar and his gun aimed at Jack’s back.

  “You’re driving, Swyteck. Molly in front.”

  At gunpoint, they complied, Jack behind the wheel and Molly in the passenger seat. Amir got in the back seat right behind Jack and pressed the barrel of his pistol up against the base of Jack’s skull. The car started with Amir’s press of the remote key.

  “Drive. And do exactly as I tell you,” he said, as he pressed the gun a little harder against the back of Jack’s head, “or that is going to be one messy windshield.”

  Jack had no idea where Amir planned to take them, but for the moment all he could do was obey. The back of the old house faced an alley, and with one streetlamp on the entire block, Jack used his high beams to cut through the darkness. He was turning out of the alley and onto the street when he heard the wail of police sirens.

  “Damn it!” said Amir. “I should have taken care of your assistant.”

  Amir thought Bonnie called the police, but if Molly had managed to punch out 911 before Amir shot the phone off the desk, they had already been dispatched. Jack had done enough criminal defense to know that if you wanted the police to come, dial 911 and talk to the operator; if you wanted the police to come in a hurry, dial 911 and hang up. They were trained to assume the worst.

  “Go!” said Amir.

  “This is not going to turn out well,” said Jack.

  The gun pulled away suddenly, but it returned with a vengeance, the metal butt striking behind Jack’s right ear. The blow stunned him. The car swerved, but Jack fought it off and quickly recovered. Amir jabbed his gun at the side of Jack’s skull.

  “Do as you’re told.”

  Jack felt blood oozing down the side of his face. It was clear that Amir had no intention of surrendering, but it was even clearer that he had no plan. Just ahead, the traffic light changed from green to amber. Jack noticed a squad car at the cross street, waiting for a green light. On impulse, Jack hit the gas, knowing that he couldn’t possibly make the light. The squad car was already in the intersection as Jack sailed past at nearly double the speed limit. Jack’s light could not have been redder.

  Blue flashing lights swirled behind them as the squad car screeched onto the boulevard and gave chase.

  “You did that on purpose!” said Amir. “Outrun him!”

  Jack didn’t react fast enough.

  Amir pushed the gun so hard against the back of Jack’s head that his chin hit his chest.

  “Floor it, or I’ll kill you!”

  Jack hit the accelerator, and the car lurched forward. The squad car was a half block behind them and in hot pursuit, siren blaring. The engine growled, and the speedometer rose beyond seventy miles per hour. The squad car was right behind them.

  “Faster!”

  The streets around Jack’s office were short and narrow, harkening back to the days when the neighborhood was purely residential. But at this speed they were quickly out of the old neighborhood.

  “Turn here!” said Amir.

  They were coming up on LeJeune Road, a major north-south corridor with three lanes in both directions.

  “Turn!”

  Jack had too much speed. He hit the brake and jerked the steering wheel hard right, which put the car into a skid, forcing a corrective hard left, which put the car into one of those smooth sliding maneuvers that professional drivers do on television commercials. But Jack was no pro. The car was out of control.

  Molly screamed, but Jack could barely hear her over the screeching tires, as the car cut across three lanes of oncoming traffic. Horns blasted, vehicles swerved out of the way, and the bright white beams from several pairs of headlamps shot in every direction. The front tires slammed into the curb, and for an instant the car was airborne before coming down hard on an asphalt parking lot, headed straight toward a motor lodge. Jack’s childhood flashed before his eyes, memories of those road trips and cheap motels that all looked the same, a string of rooms with outdoor entrances that faced the parking lot, the flimsy front wall consisting of a door, a picture window, and a climate-control unit all in one prefabricated piece. They scored a direct hit on Room 102. It was like driving into a one-car garage without bothering to open the garage door. Both airbags exploded. The car leveled everything in its path, like a high-speed bulldozer, shoving lamps and dressers and two double beds against the back wall of the hotel room. The mountain of debris had acted like a giant cushion, not exactly a soft landing, but better than crashing into a concrete pillar. Jack’s door had flown wide open in the crash, but the seat belt and airbag had saved his life.

  “Molly, are you okay?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, but he heard her crying, so he knew she was alive.

  “Molly?”

  The room looked as if a bomb had detonated. It was almost completely dark, brightened only by the streetlights that shined through a gaping hole that was once the front of the motel room. The ceiling had partially collapsed into a cloud of dust. Electrical wiring, twisted water pipes, broken furniture, chunks of drywall, and other debris were strewn everywhere. Jack refocused just in time to hear the squad car squealing into the parking lot. The blaring siren drowned out all sounds—except for the gunsh
ots.

  Amir was shooting at the cops as he crawled out of the car through the shattered rear window. The officers in the parking lot scrambled for cover and returned the fire. Jack ducked down in the front seat and told Molly to do the same.

  There was another exchange of gunfire, and the 9 mm slugs fired by the police made a popping sound as they hit the interior walls of the demolished hotel room. The wrecked automobile was suddenly bathed in white light. The police had switched on the spotlight that was fastened to the squad car. Another shot rang out, and the light was history. Amir had nailed it with one shot from a distance of at least a hundred feet. The police returned fire.

  Molly was able to push open the passenger’s-side door and seemed ready to make a run for it. Jack grabbed her before she put herself at risk of getting caught in the cross fire. Another crack of gunfire from somewhere in the demolished hotel room sent an officer falling to the pavement. The other went to his aid. Another shot echoed from somewhere within the mountain of debris, and the second cop went down equally hard. Jack couldn’t see Amir, but wherever he was—whoever he really was—he was one crackerjack marksman.

  Sirens blared in the distance, signaling that more law enforcement was on the way. Jack spotted a fast-moving shadow on the wall. It was Amir, and the instant Jack realized that, he felt the gun under his chin.

  “Move, move!” shouted Amir.

  He was pushing Jack over the console and into the passenger seat. It was like the old Chinese fire drills Jack had run with his friends as a teenager—in one door and out the other. Amir pushed until Jack and Molly were all the way out of the car, through the passenger’s-side door. Right in front of them was a side door that, Jack surmised, led to an adjoining motel room. With a single shot, Amir destroyed the lock, forced open the door, and shoved his hostages inside. A quick look around confirmed that this room had suffered no damage from the crash. Amir pulled open the drapes on the front window facing the parking lot.

  “Molly, stand in the window, hands up! Now!”

  He was using his own wife as a human shield.

  Molly complied, her arms shaking as she brought them up over her head.

  Inside and outside the motel room, all was quiet, but for the sound of their own breathing.

  Chapter 53

  Andie was at home with Righley when the call came.

  Righley’s kindergarten class was learning all about shapes in school, and Andie was in the middle of a dressing-down from a five-year-old for identifying the little window in their front door as a diamond and not a rhombus. She apologized profusely and stepped into the kitchen to take the call from her ASAC.

  “I have some bad news,” said Schwartz, in a tone that made the words even more ominous. “It’s about Jack.”

  He told her what he knew, but details were sketchy. He gave her the address. “Hostage negotiation team is on its way.”

  “So am I,” said Andie.

  It was a great help having Abuela with them on school nights, but Andie didn’t tell her where she was going. “Just don’t turn on the news in front of Righley,” she said on her way out the door.

  Three minutes later she was speeding across the causeway toward a hostage crisis on the mainland. She felt guilty not telling Abuela what was going on, but she couldn’t have handled her falling to pieces on the spot. Abuela was the best grandmother anyone could ask for, but she was a Cuban grandmother, which meant that she wailed when Jack caught a cold. Andie couldn’t possibly have told her that she had no idea when she and Jack might come home. If Jack came home. The thought was enough to make her crazy. Or cry.

  Her phone rang again. It was a number she didn’t recognize, but this was not the time to let anything go to voice mail. She answered, and the voice on the line only confused her.

  “Please don’t hang up.”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Maritza Cruz. I know what’s going on with your husband. Probably more than you do. Agent Carter told me.”

  Mention of Agent Carter lent this call instant legitimacy, not to mention the fact that the media had not yet gotten wind of the hostage taking. But she sounded too young to be an agent.

  “Are you FBI?”

  “I’ve been helping Agent Carter infiltrate the Khoury family.”

  Infiltrate? That was news to Andie. “What do you mean by ‘infiltrate’?”

  “That’s a very long story.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The problem is that you’re not in the need-to-know universe.”

  Andie knew what she meant in the strict FBI sense, but she begged to differ. “My husband is a hostage. If there’s something you can tell me to help, I need to know.”

  “Just understand: if I tell you, I have to go dark.”

  She seemed to mean “go dark” in its military parlance, as in breaking off communication from her contact—in this case, Carter.

  “If you can live with it, I can live with it.”

  A few seconds of silence followed. And then Maritza started talking.

  Chapter 54

  “More, more, more!” said Amir, barking out orders to Jack.

  At gunpoint, Jack was turning the motel room into a makeshift fortress. Anyone trying to rescue the hostages by barging through the front door that faced the parking lot, or through the side door to the adjoining room that was now a pile of rubble, would have to get past a mountain of furniture and a hail of bullets. The dressers, the mattresses, the bed frames, the nightstands—the entire room had been cleaned out, except for the television. There was a crack of light at the edge of the wall and along the top of the window. The drapes were so old and worn that, in spots, the lining had lost its blackout quality. The room brightened every few seconds as the intermittent swirl of police lights seeped in from the parking lot.

  “Get a blanket over those drapes!”

  Jack grabbed the extras from the closet. The room was the typical old-style motel with the climate-control unit below the big picture window. Jack stood on the unit to hang the blankets from the curtain rod. It made the room even darker, but Jack’s eyes had adjusted. Amir tried the light switch again. Nothing. They were obviously without electricity. That didn’t stop him from pushing the on-off button on the TV every few minutes, determined to get a picture.

  “Can’t you see that the power’s out?” said Molly.

  “Shut up!”

  The constant blare of sirens over the past twenty minutes told Jack that an army of police had taken up positions outside the motel. He’d heard helicopters as well, though he had no way of knowing if they were part of a tactical team or the media. His guess was that the police were regrouping and tending to the fallen officers. Jack prayed they were alive.

  “Too damn quiet out there,” Amir said, muttering to himself.

  “Gunfight is over,” said Jack. “Time to negotiate.”

  Amir shot him an angry look. Jack hoped this hostage taker would stay calm enough to appreciate that police didn’t deal for dead hostages. Amir went to the corner and peeled back the edge of the drapes for a peek at the parking lot.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Molly. “Shoot your way out of here?”

  “I’ll shoot you if you don’t shut up. I only need one hostage. Remember that. Both of you.”

  That kind of talk to his own wife spoke volumes, but Jack still had to believe that the lawyer was the more expendable of the two.

  Amir looked at the ceiling. “What was that?”

  Jack had heard it, too.

  “Someone’s on the roof,” said Amir.

  Jack didn’t correct him, but it wasn’t that kind of sound. Perhaps they were snaking some kind of listening device through the attic. Or, Jack wondered, did law enforcement have the technology to listen through walls remotely and wirelessly these days? Jack wasn’t sure. But the very fact that, one way or another, they were listening gave him an idea. It was tied to something Molly had said earlier, back at his office, right before
Amir had gone apeshit.

  “Molly really hit a nerve when she said she was the perfect cover,” said Jack. “The perfect cover for what, Amir?”

  Amir pointed his pistol at Jack. “Did you not hear what I said? I only need one hostage. And in case you’re counting rounds,” he said, pulling a second magazine from his coat pocket, “I have more than enough ammunition. Don’t mess with me.”

  Jack had to say something for the benefit of whoever was listening.

  “Did you grab that extra magazine from your car, or did you already have it in your pocket when you barged into my office?” asked Jack.

  Amir ignored him, but Jack didn’t care about the answer. It was all about conveying information to the hostage rescue team. Jack knew they were out there. Somewhere. And it wasn’t just about saving Molly and himself. Agent Carter’s warning about another school shooting was more pressing than ever.

  “How long have you had that gun, Amir?” asked Jack.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Ah, forget it. You’d probably lie to me anyway. Like you did about the other one. The one used at Riverside.”

  “I told you why I bought that gun. Do you know what it was like to be a Muslim living in this country on September twelfth, two thousand and one?”

  “People were scared, and they made a lot of mistakes. I hear you on that. Problem is, you bought the gun before nine-eleven.”

  Molly went ashen, as if unable to handle the exposure of one more lie about her husband.

  “Is that true, Amir?” she asked.

  “So what?” he snapped back. “It’s an old gun. Who gives a shit when I bought it?”

  “You’re right,” said Jack. “Why would anyone care? Which raises a better question.”

  The two men locked eyes, staring at each other in the dark room.

  “Why would you lie about it?” asked Jack.

  Chapter 55