False Positive

by C. Ryan Bymaster

“I can buy you some breathing room,” Jason said to Dent, almost like he was asking for Dent’s approval.

  “Dammit, both of you, listen to me!” she cried, but neither paid her any heed. Dent was immune to her and she saw Jason respond to her words and the frustration she was pouring out by gritting his teeth and clenching his fists.

  Dent looked to the backlit front door, then back down at Jason. “People make the mistake of heading straight for the country roads in a high speed pursuit. They don’t want to risk harming innocents. You’ll want to do the opposite, to increase your chance of escaping. Cut through the main streets, find the most populated areas to lead the cops, preferably places with a lot of pedestrians. Keep your foot on the gas. If they know you’re willing to risk innocent lives to evade them, they’ll back off slightly. When they do, that’s when you head for the country roads, get out of the city.”

  Jason nodded, taking Dent’s advice like it was gospel.

  “You won’t outrun them,” Dent told him. “In the long run, they will catch up to you. Once you’re free of populated areas, they won’t hesitate to knock you off the road by any means necessary.”

  Jason looked over at Kasumi. “It’s worth it.”

  She stepped up to him, grabbed his hand. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said. Pointlessly.

  He laughed. “Sure.”

  With one more determined look her way, and another threatening glare at Dent, Jason said, “I’ve got to get going.” He shrugged. “Now or never, I guess.”

  He headed for the door and all too soon his hand slipped from hers.

  With a heavy breath, Jason threw the front door open and rushed outside. She threw her hands up to block out the blinding light from the spotlight and rushed forward. Before she could get to the door, Dent was there, slamming it shut and throwing the deadbolt while grabbing her by the shoulders and keeping her put.

  Shouts from the police, followed by Father Lance’s car starting up, and she knew she likely wouldn’t see Jason again. As she heard tires squeal and the grating sound of metal crunching against metal, she fell into Dent, her eyes pouring, her heart aching.

  A woman cop yelled something over a megaphone and Kasumi held her breath when she heard more tires squeal and sirens start up and fade away as more than one cop car gave chase.

  Dent pulled her away from the door, back into the living room, where Theresa still sat on the couch, worthless as ever.

  She wanted to run over and slap the living crap out of Theresa. She was the reason for all that had happened. She was the reason Kasumi felt the way she did. She hadn’t realized she stepped toward the stupid girl until Dent put a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place.

  When she looked back up to him, she saw an odd look on his face. He looked to the front door, to where the sounds of engines and sirens receded in the distance as they gave chase to Jason, as he bravely led some of the cops away from here, hopefully giving Kasumi and Dent a better chance of escaping. The telltale flash of red and blue in the front windows said that there was at least one cop car outside. They would have to deal with that, hopefully without Dent killing them.

  “Are you actually concerned for Jason’s safety?” she asked as he seemed to be looking far off into space.

  Dent shook his head. “My mind’s still foggy. I wish I had the chance to ask him if his mother kept a gun in the house.”

  She almost punched him for his callousness, but the truth of it is, he was right. Jason, hopefully, would lead some of the cops on a chase far from the house. But that still meant the security team had to be dealt with. And, as much as she hated to focus on this problem, knowing that worrying about Jason right now would do her, do them, no good, Dent had a point.

  Without a gun, they were screwed.

  That was when an alarm or buzzer of some type went off in the kitchen.

  And it looked like Dent recognized it.

  XXXII

  Dent headed to the kitchen, went to the counter near the stove. The small timer he’d fixed for Lynn the first time he’d come here continued to ring. His gun was sitting behind it. He shut the timer off, picked it up.

  From behind, Fifth asked, “What does it mean?”

  “It’s a message.”

  Dent knew. He understood. And the minute he’d fixed the timer, Lynn had understood. Such an easy thing for him to do, to fix the timer. Even easier for a mechanic like Lynn. It had been a test. And he’d failed. By fixing it, she knew that Dent was more than capable of repairing the truck that he had purposefully shorted out, that Dent had likely been the reason the truck had shorted out in the first place.

  She knew back then that Dent wasn’t who he’d claimed to be. And she went along with it.

  But why? She could have done something about it. About him. Could have taken him out on numerous occasions, could have called in for back-up, probably the very same security team that would be swarming the house in minutes.

  But she hadn’t acted upon what she knew.

  Picking up his gun and checking the magazine, Dent wondered over and over, why, why, why?

  “Dent?” Fifth asked softly. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head. “Ten rounds left,” he said.

  “Not what I was asking.”

  He turned. “Come on. We need to plan for an escape.”

  She let him lead her back to the living room.

  “What about her?” she asked.

  Dent looked to Theresa. The target. His contract was nearly completed. He’d located the source, had stopped the test run of the subject. What did he do with her now?

  Kill her?

  That would ensure Herristown would no longer be under her influence. It would be the most practical plan of action. Kill the target, take out as many men of the security team as he could, and then take Fifth and drive away. Leave this town, the confusing emotions it somehow provoked in him, and collect his payment for fulfilling the contract.

  “Dent?”

  The target — like Fifth, but not.

  “Dent?”

  Kill her? Or not?

  The sounds of two heavy, deep-throated engines pulled up in front of the house. Someone, a female, began yelling out orders and demands over a megaphone.

  Theresa finally pulled herself from the couch and went to the front windows, pulling aside the curtains and peering out.

  “The security team is here,” she said. “There’s only one cop out there now, a woman, and she’s shouting at them.”

  Dent was there in four strides, grabbing the target’s shoulders and yanking her back away from the window. He took her place, in time to see one man in black raise an arm, the entire scene outside unfolding in increments of alternating red and blue flashes. Then there was another type of flash, a pop, and the police officer fell back to hit her car then slide to the asphalt. Dent pulled away from the window, the curtain falling back into place.

  “Two Suburbans, eight men,” he said aloud, more to himself than to inform Fifth. And now, with the police presence outside eliminated, nothing stopped Chisholme’s team from encircling the house and securing the perimeter. Jason’s diversion might prove to be fruitless, at least for Dent.

  “What do we do?” Fifth cried out, looking to the target.

  Dent followed her eyes. The target was crying again.

  “Don’t … don’t let them get me again,” the target was saying. “Please, don’t.”

  “Why not?” Fifth screamed at the target, and Dent wondered why she was so angry.

  “You don’t know who those outside people are!” the target screamed back. “What they’re capable of!”

  Fifth stomped closer to the couch and the target. “You don’t know what I’m capable of!”

  Dent stepped between the two.

  “Those people,” Theresa said, “they’re monsters.”

  “And yet you worked for them,” Fifth spit out. She had a good point, so he turned to the target.

  Dent asked, “Why are you
working for people you call monsters?”

  “I’m not working for them, you ass! I’m stuck with them. They were the best option left to me.”

  Option, Dent thought. That meant … “If you didn’t work for them here, at Saint Nicholas, where exactly would you be?”

  In response, the target whipped her head to the side, using both hands to throw her hair over her head.

  Fifth gasped.

  Dent slowly reached out, ran a finger along the exposed section of the puckered scar that seemed to run a complete circle over the girl’s scalp. He pulled his hand back, and the target straightened back up, let her concealing hair fall back to hide what had been done to her.

  In barely more than a whisper, Fifth asked, “What did they do to you?”

  “What didn’t they do?” the target replied in a harsh voice. At least she wasn’t crying anymore.

  Dent saw Fifth’s hands raise, like she wanted to search her own head for a similar scar that they both knew wasn’t there.

  “It was my only way out,” the target said. “I don’t care if you don’t understand. You never will, but my only way out of the pain of what they did to me was to do what they wanted. To live at Saint Nicholas and just be a girl. No needles, no drugs, no cutting my head open.” She stared directly at Fifth. “What would you have done, huh? What would you have done to get away from being a lab rat?”

  “I … I …” Fifth stammered and took a step back. Another step. She looked at Dent.

  Dent didn’t have time for pointless questions and queries into scenarios that didn’t apply to their current predicament. If Dent were part of the team outside, he’d already be covering the possible entrances and exits.

  “Two doors,” he said, drawing both girls’ attentions. “Two points of entry into the house.”

  “Three,” corrected Fifth. “There’s a door to the basement in the backyard.”

  “They won’t use it,” Dent countered after a moment of thought. “That would put them at a disadvantage, having to fight their way up. No,” he reasserted, “two points of entry. And I can’t contain both.”

  The front door would be easy, but the back door was around the staircase. He couldn’t contain both, didn’t have a position that would give a clear line of view to both simultaneously.

  “Take the targ—,” he caught himself and said, “Take Theresa upstairs. Find somewhere to hide.”

  “No,” Fifth told him.

  “Fifth ….”

  “You’re already hurt. You can’t keep an eye on both doors. You need me. I’ll cover the back door.”

  “You don’t have a weapon.”

  “I have this.” She tapped her temple.

  “That won’t—”

  “And you have me,” Theresa said, standing and walking to Fifth’s side. Both girls held their heads high, their chins firm. Odd, because only moments ago they were at each other’s throats.

  Dent ran through scenarios. The back door opened into a small hallway. If the team outside knew the layout of the house, they would know that entry there would put them in a bottleneck. The likely point of entry would therefore be the front door.

  He looked at Fifth.

  “I can try to scare them away,” she said. “Wouldn’t be too hard, since I’ve got plenty of fear to spare.”

  “I can … I can help,” Theresa said.

  Dent didn’t see how, but he gave both girls a conceding nod. They had mere minutes before the armed men outside attempted to become the armed men inside.

  He ran to the kitchen, came back with two knives.

  “Don’t cut yourself,” he told Fifth as he handed her a knife. He said nothing to Theresa as he handed her the other.

  “What’s the plan?” Fifth asked.

  “Anybody comes in, use the pointy end on them. Don’t stop until they stop. You got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He noticed the usual firmness of her voice was not there.

  He wanted to tell her it would be okay, wanted to promise they would get out of there alive. But Dent was terrible at lying.

  Fifth wasn’t. She grabbed his hand, squeezed, and said, “We’ll make it through this, Dent. Okay?”

  Liar or not, Dent had to smile down at the resilient girl he’d grown so accustomed to having around.

  XXXIII

  Ingram stepped through the crush of branches and bushes to the east of the Wilkens’ residence. He was fashionably late to the party, hopping out of his borrowed car just as three of the four police cruisers took off after a car that had bashed its way through them when it sped out of the driveway.

  He was tempted to walk to the front door, past the remaining woman cop stationed next to her cruiser just along the sidewalk, when two dark SUV’s pulled up, and out poured eight men. Precision, weapons, clothing, all told Ingram that they were professionals. And that they would complicate things. He looked up at the house.

  As the lone cop argued with the professionals, Ingram opted to see how this played out. Maybe he could wait for the men to infiltrate the house and, in the confusion, he could snag Fifth and be on his way.

  A single gunshot rang out and he turned to see the woman cop drop.

  So these men were going to play things that way.

  His thoughts of them being professionals took a downturn. Professionals didn’t start their game with an open show of killing officials. It only invited more officials to join the game, to play for the other team.

  What happened to taking pride in your work? People these days just had no clue, killing without compunction or forethought.

  Ingram figured he’d probably kill the idiot who’d shot the cop just for the hell of it. Teach him a lesson in how things were done in the land of real men.

  As he watched from his tangled, leafy, hidey-hole, the eight unprofessional professionals spread out. Three stayed at the front of the house, three worked their way around to the back yard, and two stood well back, one going to the far west side of the house, one taking position on the east side, not more than four feet in front of where Ingram hid.

  Ingram knew Dent, Kasumi, and the test subject were alone inside. What he didn’t know was how well-armed Dent was. Likely the man had his two Glocks, but did he bring any more weapons to the party? He hadn’t seen him use anything but the guns lately, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have any other firearms with him.

  He wondered if Dent would make it out alive, wondered how he felt about someone else killing the man. It would be satisfactory if Ingram were the one to kill Dent, to be the last recognizable face Dent saw before he went lights out.

  Maybe he’d wait to see how things played out. Knowing Dent, there would be one hell of a show. Reality TV at its best. All he needed was some popcorn, a beer, and—

  There was squawk from the two-way of the man positioned in front of him.

  “We have a go on lethal force. If necessary, kill the man, kill the girl. No witnesses.”

  A few acknowledgments and responses came back. The man not four feet from Ingram clicked his two-way and said, “Roger that. Lethal force.”

  Ingram sighed. No, buddy, we can’t have that. Don’t know which girl you got the okay to kill, but I’m sorry, but I need at least one of them alive. Can’t have you going unprofessional and killing Kasumi on accident.

  The leaves rustled and a few disturbed branches groaned as Ingram came out of his shadowed place. The man turned, scanned the bushes and trees, looking right past Ingram. A confused look on his face at seeing nothing, the man turned back, keeping his eyes on the house.

  Ingram’s special talent for being ignored did its job.

  He casually stepped up into the man, driving five inches of serrated stainless steel through his lower back and into his kidney. The hand he’d clamped over the man’s mouth stifled his pathetic attempts of crying out, either for help or in pain.

  Ever so slowly, Ingram dragged the man back, using his knife and muffling hand to make the job easier. By the time he laid the man in
the leaves and dirt, there was barely much life left in his body. Wheezing breaths, a slight trickle of blood from one corner of his mouth. Ingram made sure to lean over the man, let the man’s last image be of the person no one ever saw.

  A quick wipe of his knife on the body’s pants, and Ingram stood to survey the Wilkens’ residence.

  “If I were Dent ….” he whispered to himself, maybe even to the dead guy behind him.

  If he were Dent, he’d make sure the front entrance was covered. The rear would present a problem. If the professionals acted in unison, they’d breach both doors at the same time. And if Dent were at the front of the house, the rear would be left unprotected.

  And Kasumi ran the risk of being caught or killed.

  Ingram couldn’t have that. He’d leave Dent the front of the house. Ingram would take the rear.

  Maybe they’d meet somewhere in the middle.

  XXXIV

  “I can’t do this, I can’t do this,” Theresa cried over and over, looking back at the stairs they had just passed, like rushing upstairs would keep them safe.

  They had just reached the small hallway that led to the back door and Kasumi whirled on Theresa, grabbing a fistful of her shirt to get her attention.

  “You can, and you will!” she snapped at her. She was tempted to slap the girl, like they always did in the movies, but the knife Dent had given her for protection was in her free hand. She let go of Theresa — maybe a bit too roughly, but the girl deserved it — and stared hard into her watery eyes.

  “Listen, Theresa. We’re in this mess because of you. Jason is out there ….” Kasumi stopped, had to swallow. “Jason is out there risking his life for yours, and now I’m risking my own life.”

  “And Dent,” Theresa said boldly, her pathetic way of trying to contradict Kasumi.

  Kasumi leaned in close and said in a harsh whisper, “Right now I’m the only thing keeping you alive. If Dent had his way, you’d be taken out—”

  Theresa mouthed “taken out” questioningly.

  “Yeah, taken out. Eliminated. You get that?”