by Rachel Caine
We land at three o’clock. The weather is crisp and clear and barely qualifies as fall, much less the winter we just left. We rent another SUV, this one on Mike’s personal credit card, and he takes all the damage insurance. “Screw it,” he says. “I’m not worrying about the paint job.”
We get to Rivard Luxe and park in the visitor’s area in the garage. We sit for a moment, and Mike says, “You got even the vaguest idea what we’re going to do now?”
“Sure,” I say. “I’m just trying to think of a better one, because this tactic is liable to get us adjoining cells. Mike . . . I’m talking federal offense.”
“You’re selling this plan hard. Well, I said I’m in, so let’s get on with it. Don’t spell it out for me. I don’t want to know.” I know he feels every tick of the clock, just like I do. Gwen’s out there, and in the back of my mind, I can’t help imagining what might be happening to her already. I have to keep that locked up. If I don’t, I’m going to rush, make bad decisions, and all this will be for nothing.
“Okay,” I say. “I need you to go across the street to that convenience store we saw on the corner. Buy a ball cap, a clipboard, a manila folder, bottled water, sunglasses, and a pen. If they have any hoodies, get two—one for me, one for you. By the way, do you have evidence gloves on you?”
“Sure,” he says, then reaches into his coat pocket. He pulls out a set and hands them to me. “I’m guessing what you’re asking me to get is a disguise. Anything else?”
“Baby powder.”
“What kind of party are we starting, here?”
“Just shut up and get it.”
“Where are you going while I’m off doing the shopping?”
“Copy shop down the block,” I tell him. “Meet you back here in fifteen minutes.”
Fifteen minutes later I’m standing by the SUV with a thick cardboard documents envelope in my hand. Mike comes walking down the ramp with a plastic sack stuffed with items. He’s got everything, even the hoodies.
As we get back in the rental and shut the doors, I take the papers I’ve printed out of the envelope. “Here. Put that on the clipboard.”
“Sure,” Mike says. He slips the paper under the spring clip. “Sign-off sheet. I assume we’re doing a delivery. That only gets us to the front desk.”
“We need to make them evacuate the tower,” I tell him. “In a building like this, the fire alarms are zoned, so only certain floors get evacuated first. Keeps the whole place from being shut down at once, and makes evacuations easier. But to trigger the fire alarm for his floor, we’d have to be in his penthouse, or the security center.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“No. Which is why we need the whole building out at once. We need Rivard to come to us.” I hold out my hand. I see him register that I’ve got on the latex gloves he gave me earlier. “Baby powder.”
“Oh shit,” he says, even as he hands over the small container. “You’re not serious, Sam. Shit. You get any prints on that envelope?”
“No,” I tell him. I pour a generous amount of powder into the manila envelope and use the bottled water to wet the flap and seal it. Then I slide everything in to the thicker cardboard envelope, turn it over, and press on the printed label I created at the copy shop. It has a bogus but official-looking address from a local legal firm, and it says PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL: BALLANTINE RIVARD, and on a separate line, URGENT: OPEN IMMEDIATELY. “Trust me, I don’t want adjoining cells.”
“Okay. So what do I do?” Mike asks.
“You wait here. Only one of us needs to be on that camera.” I zip up the hoodie, put on the ball cap and sunglasses. I secure the cardboard envelope under the sign-off sheet so all I have to handle is the clipboard, then strip off the latex gloves. I have to be careful now with what I touch. Clipboard’s okay. I can’t put my fingers on the paper, or the package.
Mike knows I’m doing it to keep him out of it, in case this goes bad. “Keep your head down and sunglasses on. Good thing you’re an average-looking white boy.”
When I hit the lobby, I’m walking fast. It’s nearly quitting time, so a lot of people are already streaming toward the doors. I head like an arrow straight for the reception desk. I don’t recognize anybody on duty, and as I shove the clipboard across the desk at the man behind the computer, he barely spares me a glance anyway. “Sorry,” I tell him. “Signature. Package for”—I pretend to squint at the label—“Ballantine Rivard. Personal and confidential. Urgent delivery.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. Why would he? He scrawls a signature, fills in the date, prints his name, and takes the envelope without any prompting from me. He shoves the clipboard back. Now the man in the Rivard Luxe jacket looks harassed. “Great,” he says. “You know it’s almost five, right?”
“Must be nice,” I tell him. “I got four more stops before quitting time, man.”
That’s it. I exit fast out the front doors and walk around to the parking garage. I get back in the SUV and toss the clipboard in the back. Mike’s got his own blue hoodie on now. “Went about as well as it could. So what’s standard protocol for these things?”
“In a high-rise building? When somebody identifies possible anthrax in the mail, they pull the alarms and call hazmat, cops, FBI, everybody. It’s a big scramble. Building security evacuates everybody, all floors, to a safe distance. Circulating air gets shut down. It’s a zoo and a circus, and the bigger the building, the bigger the chaos.”
Sounds perfect. “And I just committed an act of terrorism,” I say.
“Better make that we,” he says. “This had better fucking work.”
“Rivard must have a private elevator,” I tell him. “They’ll bring him down that way. We need to find it.”
“Oh, I already know where it is,” he says. “When Rivard got involved in all this, I dug into him, top to bottom. Didn’t find much, but I remember the elevator. It’s one floor above us in the parking garage. A secured exit, but we don’t need to go in. They’re going to come out.”
I nod. “Then we disarm his guys, and we make him talk. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope,” Mike says. “Let’s find your lady.”
It takes another twenty torturous minutes for the alarms to start sounding, and I can’t stop thinking about where Gwen could be. If she’s in Wichita, if Absalom gave us the right info from the beginning . . . but why would they? No, that’s a misdirection. It has to be.
But I can’t turn my brain off. Gwen’s alone, and she thinks I abandoned and betrayed her. Every second we’re waiting counts in drops of blood, and screams, and I have to work to keep my nerves in check. Not moving feels like another betrayal.
We wait in a corner by the unmarked private exit, and finally we see a sleek, oversize Mercedes SUV pull up the ramp and park. It’s been fitted for a wheelchair, and the driver gets out to open the back and pull down a ramp.
I exchange a look with Mike, and Mike shrugs. The chauffeur is a black man of approximately Mike’s height and build. This area of the parking garage is relatively clear of other vehicles—probably a badge-only level—and nobody’s come in or out of the place since we took positions. It’s a risk.
But it’s worth it.
With the unconscious chauffeur tied up and left behind a retaining wall, Mike stands right out in the open in the tireless stance of someone used to waiting. His cap shades his face, and in my experience, people see what they expect to see. Shapes, not features. When the exit door opens, a flood of security men piles out—more than we could take without gunplay, and even then, I don’t think it would be likely we’d come out on top. But we no longer need to.
Ballantine Rivard’s wheelchair glides out at top speed. He’s wearing a dark-blue suit with a pale-yellow tie. No comfortable sweat suit today. He’s angry; I can see that from where I slump in the passenger seat up front. All the windows are darkly tinted, which is useful just now. I have my gun out, in case I need to use it, because now my nerves are all firing,
and I know we are one smart security guard away from this blowing up.
But they’re not looking at us. They’re looking outward, for threats. Rivard ignores his guards and stops, spins his chair backward, and drives it in reverse up the ramp. Rivard is practiced at this. His back is to the driver’s compartment, and I hear him snap some restraint system in place. Mike pushes in the built-in ramp and gets into the driver’s seat. I don’t think Rivard has so much as glanced at him.
“Where to?” Mike asks Rivard.
“We’re heading to the disaster office. Go,” Rivard snaps.
Mike nods as if he knows exactly where that is, and the whole thing is unbelievably smooth. Rivard still hasn’t realized that Mike isn’t his usual driver, and he doesn’t know he has a silent passenger up front. I was worried one of his guards would ride along, but they’re moving toward another vehicle entirely.
We come out of the garage. There’s a barrier in place, but the men on duty—who aren’t police, not yet—move it to let us pass. The place is still being evacuated. Rivard Luxe holds close to two thousand people in its offices, and this is going to disrupt Atlanta traffic for hours. If they catch us, we’re definitely going to jail now. Terrorism and kidnapping.
It’ll be a while before anybody misses Rivard, but now the clock isn’t just ticking for Gwen . . . it’s ticking for us.
I don’t know when Rivard works out that something’s wrong—maybe when Mike doesn’t follow the expected route—but because I’m watching him in the rearview, I see him take his phone out of his pocket. I put my gun to the back of his head. “Drop it,” I tell him. “Now.”
The phone bounces to the floor and slides all the way to rattle against the back door. Rivard is silent for a moment. When he finally speaks, he doesn’t sound the least bit afraid. “Mr. Cade. I suppose I should have anticipated that you’d come back. I just expected you to try something more conventional.”
“Glad to disappoint you,” I tell him. “Where is she?”
“Melvin Royal’s wife?”
“Gwen.”
“You mean Gina. She’ll always be his wife first. Surely you realize that by now.”
I feel my muscles tightening, and I have to make a real effort to relax. “You really want a bullet?” I ask him. “Because, hey, keep going.”
“Do you want to explain to me why you’ve taken me hostage?”
“You’re going to tell me where Absalom’s taken Gwen.”
“I have no idea.” That rich, thick Louisiana accent feels like mockery right now. I never wanted to pistol-whip an old man before, but the urge is pretty strong. “Why in the world would I know?”
“Sam?” Mike’s voice is quiet, but tense. “Ease it down, man. Where are we going?”
“Where he left Rodney Sauer,” I say. “Seems appropriate.”
Rivard doesn’t keep talking. Maybe he’s trying to figure out what buttons to press this time, and not finding any. I keep my gun pressed close and tell him to keep his hands up. He’s an old man. His arms tremble, and the shakes get worse the longer we drive. Good. I want him tired and afraid.
We park in a darkened alley between two warehouses. Everything on the block is derelict and empty. The only tenants are rats and pigeons.
While Mike takes a turn holding him at gunpoint, I open up the back, grab his phone, and strip the battery. I wouldn’t put it past a man this rich to have a fail-safe tracker in it, so I find a handy brick and batter the phone into bits, then drown the bits in a muddy puddle. The violence feels good.
I climb in, then kneel down so I’m on Rivard’s level. When he studies me, Rivard’s face changes. It tightens, and for moment I see a skull under the skin, and hell in those eyes. “You’ll go to jail for a long time for this,” he says. “And I’ll still be free. You know that.”
“I know that if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you’re going to die here,” I say. I mean every word. I’m already in this deep.
“You’d kill a helpless old man in a wheelchair. That’s sick.”
“You should know,” I tell him. “Billions of dirty dollars in your bank account from worse than that. You think we don’t know?” I put the gun under his chin. “Because we do.”
Rivard’s eyes dart to Mike. He’s unnerved now. Mike’s stripped off the Rivard security jacket and thrown it in the van, and now he’s zipping up the hoodie. “You, I recognize you. You’re a federal agent,” he says. “You can’t let him do this!”
“Which part?” Mike says. “The terrorism threat, the kidnapping, or the murder? First two are my problem. Last one’s all yours. Murder’s not a federal crime.”
Rivard’s lips are pale and compressed, and his eyes dart from one of us to the other. Starting to realize, I think, how deep the shit hole is.
“You’re Absalom,” Mike says. “The rest are just minions. You’re a bloated white spider getting fat off the dead. How long’s that been going on? Five years? Ten? I’m guessing before Melvin Royal strung up his first victim. Finding out how to use the dark web to find your customers and make your money must have been like tapping a river of pure gold.”
Rivard’s silent. If looks could kill, all of Atlanta would be a mushroom cloud. But I don’t care about finding out more about Absalom. “Gwen,” I say. “Talk. Now. Because I promise I’ll start shooting pieces off you. I’ll be nice. I’ll start with the ones you supposedly can’t feel anymore.” I move the gun to tap the barrel against his kneecap. His raised arms are shaking wildly now. Ready to drop. “Keep those hands up. I’m counting to five, and then you lose a leg.”
It’s almost a normal tone of voice, but there’s nothing right about the corrosive hate that’s churning inside of me. I thought that Melvin Royal was a monster, and he is, but this man . . . this man is the one who uses monsters to make money. And if I have to pull this trigger, I’m not going to care.
“She’s gone, Mr. Cade,” he says, then licks his pallid lips. His tongue looks like a worm crawling on a wound. “You already know where. Absalom told you, just as I ordered them to do.”
I don’t blink. I start counting. Because I don’t believe him. She isn’t in Wichita.
When I get to five, my finger tightens, and Rivard blurts out, “Stop! All right! If you want to know, I’ll tell you! But please, let me put my arms down!”
“Tell you what,” Mike says, taking out his handcuffs. “I’ll make it easier for you.”
The bitter rage that flashes over Rivard’s face confirms for me that he had a plan, and once Mike has his hands secured to the strap that keeps his chair in place, I search Rivard.
There’s a sleek, small gun in his breast pocket. Fully loaded. I toss it to Mike. “Engraved,” he says. “Only assholes put their initials on a gun. Go on. Shoot him.”
Rivard is sweating now. Everything he’s counted on is failing, and he has to know I’m serious. If he doesn’t, he’s going to find out when his kneecap hits the floor. “All right,” he says, in an oily tone that manages to be desperate at the same time. “Let’s just calm down. We’re all men of reason here. And I can be reasonable. You know the resources I have at my disposal. What exactly is it that you’d like me to do? Turn over some of our more creative suppliers? I’m happy to do that. I’m sure the FBI will find me very useful.”
“I’ll bet,” Mike says. “And you know what? We’re going to get it all without your help. Shoot him, Sam.”
“I can’t even feel my legs. Shooting me is just theater!”
“I think the sight of the inside of your knee might make an impression,” I tell him. “One, two—”
Rivard blurts out, “There’s a pay-per-view event at midnight!”
“And why the hell do we care?”
“It’s how we do things,” Rivard says. “For . . . premium content. A live event, a thousand virtual passes, fifty thousand dollars per pass.”
I already feel sickness boiling up. I can see the shape of this thing coming, and it’s a horror. “You have two secon
ds to tell me how this helps me find Gwen.”
“It’s her!” he blurts, and he flinches when he sees what crosses my expression. The loathing I feel is making me sick, it’s so intense. I want so badly to kill this man, so badly I can taste it. Murder has a sharp, metallic taste, like biting tinfoil. “Her and Melvin Royal. We wanted it recorded. It starts at midnight. We sell the recordings later, but the live event is—special.”
“Fuck you,” I say, and I come so close to pulling the trigger; the tidal wave of fury that’s breaking inside me nearly drowns my sanity. “Where is it?”
Somehow, impossibly, he smiles. It’s a sickly thing. Sweat glitters on his forehead. “You can buy a seat, Mr. Cade. It’s not quite sold out yet. I think we have five tickets left.”
Shoot him. Shoot this piece of rotten meat right now. I don’t know whose voice that is, but I think it’s my sister’s, and I might have done it if Mike hadn’t stepped in by the end of that awful little taunt and slammed his fist squarely into Rivard’s mouth. The surprise shocks me out of the urge to kill, and I think he just saved Rivard’s life. And mine. My skin feels like it’s going to burst, the container of a bomb that’s going off inside me with too much force to contain. I’ve never felt hate like this before, not even for Melvin Royal. Everything’s tinted with it, tastes of it.
Mike’s punch leaves Rivard rocked back in his chair, and his mouth is bloody. He looks shocked, and vulnerable, and all of a sudden, I see a pathetic old man.
I take my finger off the trigger.
“Let me tell you one true thing, Mr. Rivard,” Mike says, and I know that tone in his voice. That’s the Mike who kills. That’s the Mike who walked me out of a war zone when my plane went down in enemy territory. The Mike who put down every bastard in our way. “Sam Cade’s the nice guy in this van. So you think real goddamn hard about the next thing you say, because I don’t care anymore about my badge, or my career, or how much time I have to spend in prison.”
I believe him. I don’t know if he’s lying, but I know that Rivard certainly doesn’t, and there’s a savage joy in that, in seeing the real, liquid fear in his eyes.