Under the Surface

by Anne Calhoun

  “It wouldn’t take much to overpower him,” Matt said. “I’m ninety seconds away.”

  He braked to a halt in the parking lot at the back of the building. Both phones in hand, he sprinted through the back door, shouldering aside officers in his haste to get to the team. Hawthorn, Sorenson, McCormick, and a couple more uniforms crowded into a conference room with Caleb Webber.

  Caleb looked over Matt’s shoulder. “Where’s Eve?”

  “Gone,” Matt said, then set his phone down on the table.

  “Jesus fucking Christ! You said you’d—” Caleb began, but the sound of Eve’s voice echoing tinnily from Matt’s phone cut him off mid-bellow.

  “Where are we?” Matt could hear the fear running under Eve’s question. A car door slammed shut, then Eve said, “Is that the old Tyson plant?”

  “Has she been relaying her position the whole time?” Lieutenant Hawthorn asked.

  “Yes,” Matt said. “She’s dropping hints like bread crumbs, and there’s long stretches of silence. Two Slices, Madame LaMoue, then a shooting that happened at Lassom Park.” All heading toward the river, toward the maze of abandoned warehouses weighing down the East Side.

  “Counselor, make a list of places your father could be,” Hawthorn said. “We’ll dispatch a squad car to check them out.”

  “Mom checked his appointment book. He wasn’t due anywhere until this afternoon,” Caleb said.

  Sorenson stood in front of the large map of the East Side. “The Tyson plant is at Sixth and Harrison,” she said as she tugged on a bulletproof vest.

  “And before that, at First and Hancock,” Caleb said, moving to stand beside her. He tapped an intersection an inch further north and east from Sorenson’s. “Tyson moved operations in the nineties before they shut down. If they’re deep in the alleys, Eve’s not going to know exactly where she is. She’s got a shit sense of direction.”

  Matt moved the phone to a safer location and searched for his size in the pile of gear on the table. Hawthorn and Sorenson were suiting up. McCormick and the other uniform were already in bulletproof vests, but McCormick was checking his equipment, patting his extra clip, turning down the volume on his radio.

  “What’s he doing down there?” Sorenson asked under her breath. “It’s not near the projects.”

  Caleb surveyed this ratcheting up of firepower. “Isn’t this the kind of situation for the SWAT team?”

  “They’re serving a warrant on a violent offender in north Lancaster,” Hawthorn said.

  McCormick woke up Hawthorn’s laptop. “Is her phone GPS enabled?”

  “Yes,” Caleb said, still staring at Hawthorn. “You’ve only got one SWAT team?” he asked disbelievingly.

  “Yes,” Hawthorn said tersely, tuning his radio and staking claim to a channel. “A city this size barely justifies one team, and they all have other duties.”

  “What’s her phone number?” McCormick asked.

  Matt and Caleb rattled it off in unison. Caleb’s eyes locked with his. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not,” Hawthorn said.

  “The hell I’m not. That’s my sister,” Caleb said, pointing at Matt’s phone.

  “I’ve got her,” McCormick said, his gaze focused on the computer screen. “She’s at First and Hancock.”

  “How accurate is the read?” Caleb asked.

  “Depending on her phone and service, could be accurate to within inches, or it could be pinging off the nearest tower,” Matt said.

  “So she just as easily could be at Sixth and Harrison. That’s a lot of territory in blind alleys. I grew up running those alleys. I know them better than anyone in this room,” Caleb said.

  “Regardless, you are not coming with us,” Hawthorn said imperturbably.

  Matt could see Caleb assessing his chances. There were six police officers in the room, and adrenaline was running high. “This won’t help Eve,” Matt said.

  “She’s my sister,” he said again, helplessness twisting his features.

  Sorenson looked over her shoulder. “How would you characterize your relationship with Murphy?” she asked.

  Caleb blew out a deep breath and gave her a searing look. “What do you think, Detective? He hates my guts.”

  “Then you need to stay here,” she said quietly. “Best-case scenario we resolve this quickly and without injury. Worst-case scenario, you can’t help us deal with Murphy. Stay here. Please.” And she turned back to the map.

  “Which warehouse would Eve mean by ‘the old Tyson plant’?” Matt asked Caleb.

  He shook his head. “Either one.”

  Eve’s voice rang out. “Where‘s Lyle, Travis?”

  “Two targets,” Hawthorn said, making eye contact with each of the officers to make sure they knew this. “Travis Jenkins and Lyle Murphy. Assume someone else was waiting for them at the warehouse, to make sure it was empty.”

  Caleb stared at the phone. “Travis’s not answering. That’s not good,” he said. “He’s an obsequious little suck and he’d lick Eve’s boots if she’d let him. If he’s gone silent, she doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Look, I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know where Lyle went. This is freaking me out a little.” Matt could hear panic in Eve’s voice. Keep it together, he thought, as much to himself as her. You’ve got this. “Is that the Tribune’s old production plant?”

  “Sixth and Harrison,” McCormick said. Two more uniformed officers had been rounded up after a trip to the city jail, briefed in low tones, and now focused intently on Matt’s cell phone.

  Still nothing from Travis.

  Hawthorn and Caleb joined Matt and Sorenson in front of the map. “These are the old warehouses from the days when shipping along the river was as important as railroad, right?” Sorenson asked.

  “Yes. They’re all two-story warehouses,” Caleb added, obviously desperate to help. “Big. Lots of open space on the ground floor, maybe an office upstairs along one wall. They’ve been empty for years. If the redevelopment plan passes, they’re all razed for the business park.”

  Matt tapped the corner of First and Hancock with his index finger. “I’m betting on this one,” he said. “The river.”

  “Oh, that’s clever,” Sorenson breathed, eyes alight. “Old-school clever. You think they’re moving the drugs into the city via the river.”

  “It’s a good strategy,” Matt said. “They drive the drugs to one of the state parks south of here, then move them upriver on fishing boats and unload into one of the warehouses at night, when no one’s around. We don’t patrol the river, so it’s less risky than driving through the city.”

  “You don’t patrol the river?” Caleb said incredulously.

  “Lost funding two years ago,” Hawthorn said without looking at him.

  “I’m developing a strong opinion about the current bond issue,” Caleb muttered.

  “Get out.”

  The room went silent as everyone stared at Matt’s cell, relaying the drama unfolding in a back alley. There was a scuffling noise, then, “Ouch! Good grief, Lyle, take it easy!”

  A rumble, slow then speeding up before clunking to a stop, obscured Eve’s next words. “Sounds like a garage door,” Hawthorn said.

  “The loading docks down there all had big manual doors,” Caleb said. “We used to pop the locks off the doors and set up skateboard ramps inside until the cops ran us off.”

  Matt shook his head in increasing frustration. “Still nothing that tells us which warehouse.”

  “She’d tell us if she could,” Caleb bristled.

  “I know she would,” Matt snapped back, then took a deep breath. “But if we head to the wrong one—”

  Caleb couldn’t understand. Every second counted. Milliseconds counted. Sweeping the wrong warehouse would waste precious minutes, not to mention the possibility of losing the tactical advantage of surprise if someone saw them and called Lyle.

  She could be beaten, raped, or killed on the filthy cement f
loor of an abandoned warehouse while he listened, unable to find her, helpless to stop it.

  Hawthorn looked at Matt and Sorenson. “We go with Matt’s instincts,” Sorenson said. “First and Hancock.”

  “Dorchester, you’re on the roof,” Hawthorn said as he handed Matt a rifle, then pointed at the four uniformed officers. “You two take Harrison to the river and come up along the canal trail. You two, come around from the north,” he said, pointing at the map to the alley running behind the warehouse at First and Harrison. “Let us know when that alley’s secure. Sorenson, you’re with Dorchester. McCormick, you’re with me.”

  A logical division of duties, given that Matt achieved expert marksman status before he left the Army, and he’d kept up his skills. But he wasn’t operating on logic. “Sir, put Sorenson on the roof,” he said. “She’s as good as I am, and I want point.”

  Caleb looked at Sorenson, both eyebrows raised. She met his eyes without flinching, then looked at Hawthorn. “I am,” she confirmed.

  “No,” Hawthorn said.

  “Sir.” Matt fisted his hands on his hips, squared up, and looked his lieutenant right in the eye. “I want point.”

  Hawthorn heard Matt on multiple levels—Army, cop, man. His LT studied him for a moment, his gaze completely expressionless. “Sorenson, you’re on the roof.”

  Matt swapped Sorenson the rifle for extra clips for his Glock and shoved them into his vest pocket.

  “Lyle, who’s that?” Fear made Eve’s voice high, uncertain.

  “Oh, no,” Caleb said. His gaze locked with Matt’s across the room. “No.”

  A laugh filtered into the room from Matt’s cell phone, a low, derisive, mocking laugh, taking pleasure in her uncertainty and growing fear. Eve’s voice rose, loud and panicked, and cut off his train of thought. “Oh my God!” she cried. “Dad!”

  * * *

  Eve stumbled across the cracked, dirty cement floor, twisting her heel on a loose chunk of concrete before falling to her knees at her father’s side. The sun streamed through broken windows high above, light and shadow lying in jagged angles over him.

  “Dad,” she said again, reaching out to steady him. His face was waxy gray, the skin slack and shining with sweat. His arms trembled as he pushed himself up.

  Lyle, circling the two of them, kicked and knocked her father’s hand out from under his shoulder. He dropped heavily to the floor again, and this time made no move to get up.

  “Stop it!” she screamed at Lyle over her shoulder. “Stop this right now! Do you hear me?”

  Under the cover of hysterics, she slid her hand down her father’s arm, the comforting move intended to cover transferring the cell phone to his palm. He pressed his palm to his chest, either to conceal the phone or assuage the pain.

  “He had a heart attack last year,” she continued, no need to fake the tremor or fear in her voice. “Please, let him go!”

  In response Lyle spat on the floor by her father’s head. “Ready to talk business, Evie?”

  “First, let him go.”

  Lyle laughed. “You’re in no position to negotiate, Evie. In fact, by the time we’re done, you’re going to be thinking of really creative ways to keep me happy. You think Mr. New Boyfriend’s going to be okay with that?”

  Her brain couldn’t keep up, spinning wheels at seeing the terrifying emptiness in Lyle’s eyes where a soul should be. It looked like something she should recognize, but she couldn’t find the word. “Who?” she asked, distracted. Because she didn’t have a new boyfriend. She had a cop.

  He dropped to his heels beside her, and despite her tough façade she flinched back. “Not a good sign if you can’t remember his name. Chad. He’s in your bar, in your apartment. In your bed. So serious, so quickly,” Lyle said, studying her face. “Are you in love with him?”

  Evil. That was the word. Evil. After a lifetime of hearing about it in church, she was seeing it personified for the very first time. She controlled the impulse to look at the phone, still hidden in her father’s palm. “Maybe,” she said

  “Maybe? The Eve I remember was either in love or not in love. So impetuous, all these whirlwind, passionate affairs. You were like something off a soap opera.”

  Heat rushed into her cheeks. “That was ten years ago. It was high school,” she snapped.

  “Do you love him?” he said again.

  The nearly inaudible words somehow drew Travis’s attention from his position standing guard by the loading dock’s door. Eve looked at him, wide-eyed and pleading. Maybe he wasn’t having as much fun playing with the big boys as he thought he would. Maybe he’d help her.

  Travis didn’t move.

  Dying in this warehouse was looking more and more likely. She didn’t want the words to go unsaid. She knew the core of Matt Dorchester, and she loved that man. It didn’t matter if he could love her back. She loved him. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I love him, but he’s got nothing to do with any of this.”

  Lyle dug his fingers into Eve’s arm and dragged her to her feet. “You think Lancaster cops don’t have something to do with this? Don’t lie to me, Evangeline.”

  For the first time in her life, impulse compelled her to freeze. Still holding her, Lyle swung his gun, clenched in his fist, at her face. She screamed and ducked, heard her father’s weak shout from the floor behind her. The blow glanced off the top of her skull. Lyle hauled her upright and stepped into his swing, this time with the full weight of his body behind his arm. When he connected, white-hot pain exploded under her eye, replacing her bones with a strange sense of weightlessness. Then the back of her head hit something hard and the world went black.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Matt hadn’t driven so much as an unmarked police car in two years, had totally avoided driving anything that handled like a Crown Vic with the police package. He’d studied the way his fellow officers walked and talked, then trained himself to do the opposite. He’d crafted a smile, a stance, mannerisms and speech patterns that were as far from cop or ex-military as he could manage.

  But when he heard the sound of something striking Eve Webber’s flesh, heard her shocked cry of pain, an endless moment of silence, and then the scrape and thud of a body hitting cement, training took over. Lights and sirens switched to full wail, gas pedal floored, and within seconds he was doing eighty miles an hour down Thirteenth Street, Hawthorn and McCormick right behind him in another unmarked car, with the uniforms flanking them down Hancock, heading to cut off any escape at the river.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  Hawthorn’s furious question echoed in his ear, but Matt didn’t bother to answer.

  “Sounds like Murphy just hit Eve,” Sorenson said into the radio. She had one foot braced against the floor, the other tucked under her as she loaded her vest with extra magazines, then ran the cord connecting her radio’s handset under her arm and clipped it to her shoulder. She fitted her earpiece. Matt’s earpiece was already in as he tracked the input from the car’s radio, the earpiece, and Eve’s voice all while maneuvering through traffic.

  “Tell your partner to turn that fucking siren off when we hit the alleys.”

  “I heard him,” Matt said. Fuckfuckfuck! Any more mistakes and Eve could pay with her life! He flicked the switch to cut the lights and sirens. When he swerved into the alley running perpendicular to the river and rolled to a halt at Second and Hancock, they hurled themselves out of the car.

  Please God, let this be the right one. Let me be thinking clearly, logically. No emotion.

  Hawthorn and McCormick pulled in behind them. Under a fire escape Matt laced his fingers together and braced himself. Sorenson put her foot in his cupped palms, her hands on his shoulders. On her count he boosted her to shoulder height. She pulled herself through the hole in the bottom of the fire escape, then reached down for the M4. With the carbine slung across her body she swarmed up the second flight of rusting iron stairs and disappeared onto the roof. Moving very lightly for such a bulky guy, McCorm
ick jumped for the fire escape on the next building down, hauled himself through the opening, and took the stairs two at a time before hoisting himself over the wall, onto the roof.

  Steadying his breathing, Matt waited with Hawthorn for Sorenson’s voice over the radio.

  “I’m in position,” she said, low and calm. “Looks like just Jenkins and Murphy. Pastor Webber’s on the floor, Eve’s about ten feet away from him, possibly unconscious.”

  “Weapons?”

  Matt heard the click as Sorenson scanned the building through the high-powered scope. “Jenkins has a gun in his waistband. Murphy’s holding a semiautomatic. No sign of anyone else.”

  “Confirmed,” McCormick said.

  “Do either of you have a shot?”

  Through the connection to Eve’s phone, Matt could hear footsteps. “No,” Sorenson said, frustration obvious in her voice. “They just shifted position.”

  “Affirmative. I have the shot on Jenkins,” McCormick said. “Murphy’s pacing in and out of sight behind one of the big cement pillars in the middle of the floor.”

  Through the phone Matt heard Eve’s sob as she achieved consciousness. Hawthorn pointed at himself and Matt, then at the front tires of the Escalade.

  “You bitch! You were fucking a cop and lying to me!”

  Anguish ate like acid at Matt’s chest, but he used Lyle’s raised voice as cover to dash behind the Escalade, Hawthorn close on his heels. They skidded to a halt on their knees in the dirt by the passenger-side wheel. The scent of heated rubber and grease seared into Matt’s nostrils, the hot wheel burning his arm as he pressed against it.

  “He’s a cop?” Eve said in a dazed voice. “Wow. I didn’t know. Good thing you found out when you did.”

  Matt had spent a fair share of his professional life crouching in the dust and dirt behind various impenetrable objects—vehicles, walls and berms, sandbag barricades—his mind usually empty except for awareness of the progress of sweat down the length of his spine and whatever snippet of song he had stuck in his head. In this moment, behind this particular tire, one completely out of context phrase from of all things, the Bible, floated to the top of his brain.