by Osborne, Jon
Ann Marie slumped her slender shoulders in complete and utter defeat, all the fight and false protestations that had been coming from earlier gone now. Boiled down to brass tacks, she’d clearly been beaten.
Blankenship’s skin tingled as he took in the look on her face, relishing it. Savoring it. This was the good part of the job. The fun part of the job. Catching the bad guys. Or, in this case, catching the bad girls. Solving the seemingly unsolvable mystery and protecting the innocent. Still, he knew that now they needed to defeat Ann Marie Paulson’s brother and whoever else was working with him. Blankenship only prayed they could do it in time to save the baby – if the poor little thing was even still alive.
He shook himself, wanting to believe that was true. Needing to believe that was true. Only chance in hell of him keeping his shit together long enough to do what he needed to do from this point forward.
Ann Marie Paulson’s voice cracked with the asking of her next question. Happy ending or sad, the end was coming now; Blankenship knew that. Barreling at them like a goddamn freight train. If they were lucky, though, he and Krugman would have more than just a minor say in how the baby’s story ultimately wrapped up.
Blankenship sighed heavily. One way or the other – happy ending or sad – he knew they were about to find out.
“What do you need me to do?” the woman asked.
CHAPTER 43
In the sumptuous living room of his luxurious suite over at the Four Seasons Hotel & Resort on Ontario Street in downtown Cleveland – the same suite in which he’d stayed while wooing the lovely and hopelessly naïve Helen Morgan right out of her pants and her freedom at the same time and chosen for precisely that reason (no way in hell the feds would think to look for him twice in the same place) – Horatio D’Arbinville patted at the left breast pocket of his perfectly tailored suit jacket in frustration. He gritted his teeth angrily and exhaled heavily in irritation, not believing his rotten luck. He’d looked everywhere for it, but he still hadn’t been able to find his goddamn cigarette case anywhere yet. He’d probably dropped it back at that shithole motel they’d been staying at previous to this, the Manor Inn. Stupid mistake on his part, no two ways about it. An amateur mistake on his part. Seemed that an affectation that had worked so very well for him over the years was now working against him. No doubt his fingerprints would be all over the damn thing, considering the way he chain-smoked. Not to mention the fact that he’d just given the authorities his fucking initials.
D’Arbinville shuddered as his brain began to buzz with a vague, unidentifiable dread. Turning away from his splendid window-view, he shook his head in disappointment with himself for the uncharacteristic display of personal sloppiness that now threatened to unravel everything he’d worked so hard to weave. No use in getting all worked up about it now, though, he knew that. Bad as things might seem at the moment, the authorities wouldn’t find his prints in any database, not even in the fabled one maintained by INTERPOL. After all, he’d never been caught before. And as for the initials? Shit, there were millions of people out there with the initials “HD”, weren’t there? Of course there were. So all things considered, he should still feel safe as a house, shouldn’t he?
So why the hell didn’t he?
D’Arbinville ran a hand over his freshly shaven scalp, still not accustomed to the smoothness there. It hadn’t been easy for him to lose his beloved locks but he’d known it had been a necessary move on his part in this rapidly accelerating game of cat and mouse that would soon draw to a heart-stopping conclusion one way or the other. Whose heart would stop at the finale of this match-up of good versus evil still remained to be seen.
D’Arbinville again shook his head in annoyance. Much as it had hurt him to lose his hair, though, he’d needed to change his appearance before coming back to the Four Seasons. That much had seemed only obvious. The only smart thing to do under the circumstances. He’d lost his beloved mustache, too, and that had been even more difficult for him to part with. A sacrifice for the greater good, no matter how badly that particular sacrifice might sting. He could always grow his hair back – facial and otherwise – once this thrilling game had been completed. He just hoped he wouldn’t be growing it back from a cold prison cell somewhere in the middle of a Nebraska cornfield while he served out the remainder of his life in a federal penitentiary where the inmates who ran the place didn’t look very kindly upon those who hurt babies to further their own greedy ends.
D’Arbinville sighed again and reached into the front pocket of his dress slacks. Shaking out a fresh Gitane from the plain cardboard packet they were now nestled in, he tucked it between his lips and lit up before tilting back his head and letting loose with a long, smooth stream of grayish-blue smoke that filled the air above him while Louise fiddled away with God-only-knew what in the master bedroom.
Just then, the prepaid cellphone sitting on the coffee table rang. Frowning, D’Arbinville walked quickly across the oversized room and picked it up. He gritted his teeth again as yet another powerful wave of irritation threatened to make his brain implode. The cellphone was to only be used sparingly, if ever: he’d made that point good and goddamn clear from the very beginning. So this had better be good. D’Arbinville flipped open the phone and placed the untraceable device to his left ear. “What is it?” he barked.
His sister’s voice came across the line, full of drama, as usual. Presumably, she had her palm covering the exposed corner of her mouth, judging from the muted sound of things on her end of the connection. All cloak and dagger and hide-and-seek; that was Ann Marie, all right. A real double-agent if ever there’d been one. “I need to see you right away, Horatio,” she said.
D’Arbinville wrinkled up his face in confusion despite his intimate knowledge of his sister’s hopelessly flaky character. Not a promising way to start a conversation at all, though. “For what?” he asked, attempting to keep his own tone level now. If he couldn’t keep his shit together here, no way in hell his little sister would be able to keep her shit together. So tough as it might be for him to get to grips with right now, D’Arbinville needed to remember that he was the leader of this outfit. The most powerful and important piece on the chessboard. The most deadly piece on the chessboard, even considering Louise’s ugly penchant for performing unthinkable acts of torture just as easily as if she’d been pouring herself a fresh cup of tea. As D’Arbinville went, however, so did everyone else involved. That was just the way things were. The way things had always been. And the way things always would be, right up until the end – whether that ending proved bitter, sweet or some combination of both.
“I think Zachary’s on to me,” Ann Marie said, speaking in short breaths now, practically whispering the words. “I need to know what I should do.”
D’Arbinville rolled his eyes and felt his jangled nerves finally smooth over. He breathed out a slight sigh of relief that deflated his chest, feeling silly for having let his sister work him up into such a lather in the first place. Ann Marie was a worry-wart; always had been ever since she’d been a little kid. Talk about someone who made mountains out of molehills. She was a goddamn miracle worker of a landscaper when it came to those sorts of things. “What makes you think Zachary’s on to you?” he asked.
Ann Marie sniffled, not surprising D’Arbinville in the least. As he’d noted earlier, Ann Marie had always been a drama queen ever since she’d been old enough to wipe her own nose. No chance of her changing that particular aspect of her personality now, no matter how high the stakes might be. His little sister might have gotten most of the looks in the family – even if his own looks were certainly nothing to sneeze at – but he’d definitely gotten all the brains. “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone,” she said.
‘Why not?”
“Because I always feel like someone’s listening to me.’
D’Arbinville shook his head and checked his watch. An irritating job settling down his sister’s frazzled nerves, but a crucial one nonetheless. He n
eeded to keep Ann Marie calm for just a few more hours now. After that, they’d all be on the next plane out to the south of France, where thirty-year-old Scotch by the oaken barrel and Gitanes by the caseload waited for him for the rest of his life. “Not possible,” he said. “We need to check out of here in an hour. There’s no time for us to meet now. I’ll call you once we reach our next destination. Maybe we can meet then.”
Ann Marie paused for a long moment then. Blowing out a slow breath, she finally said, “OK, Horatio, but you never should’ve put me in this situation in the first place. It wasn’t fair.”
A hot wave of anger flared up D’Arbinville’s chest before he could fight it back. He swallowed away the bile in back of his throat, grimacing at the unpleasant acidic taste dancing on his lips. “Don’t kid yourself, Ann Marie,” he said evenly, slowly flexing the fingers of his right hand and studying his manicured fingernails while wisps of smoke from the Gitane floated up toward his eyes and made them water. “You wanted this every bit as much as I did.”
“That’s not true. You forced me to do this.”
D’Arbinville pulled back his head six inches in surprise. He just couldn’t help himself. This had been his sister’s idea the entire time, after all, ever since the very beginning. An insurance policy against her impending divorce. So why the fuck was she trying to rewrite history now? What was the point? Unless…
“What the hell are you talk-“ he began, but the words died in his throat as the doors to his suite suddenly flew open with a violent bang. Twenty feet across the room, a sandy haired agent trained a huge black pistol squarely at his head. Bruce Blankenship.
“Hands up!” the agent screamed. “Put your hands over your fucking head now!”
D’Arbinville dropped both the phone and the cigarette to the plush carpet at his feet at the same time; stunned stupid as he did what he’d just been told without thinking. He lifted his hands over his head as his heartbeat hammered away madly inside his badly constricted chest. For one long, terrifying moment there, he couldn’t even breathe. He struggled to form a coherent thought but couldn’t manage do so through the dizzying waves of confusion racing through his brain and making any sort of cogent thinking impossible. Finally, his strangled voice produced a single, disbelieving word while the smell of burning carpet floated up into his nostrils. The still-smoldering Gitane going to work on the expensive flooring at his feet. “How?” he croaked.
The youthful-looking agent advanced farther into the suite and glanced quickly to his right before returning his burning stare to D’Arbinville, practically sizzling a hole right through him. “Just shut the fuck up and keep your hands over your fucking head, asshole, or I’ll blow your goddamn brains all over this place.” The agent paused and curled his face into a menacing sneer. “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to pay the cleaning bill around here. Living the good life here, aren’t you, Horatio? Too bad that’s over for you now. Now, where the fuck is the baby?”
Just then, from D’Arbinville’s left, Louise suddenly emerged from the bedroom, holding the now-screaming baby cradled in her left arm. D’Arbinville cut his gaze over to her and saw the cushioned handle of a hammer gripped tightly in her right fist. Now he saw what his cousin had been fiddling with in the master bedroom. She’d been practicing. The sight of her with the hammer in her gnarled hand was enough to turn even his stomach – no small feat to accomplish. The sick, sadistic bitch.
Louise glanced over at Blankenship, stunned stupid herself. Clearly, she was also in a state of shock brought about by the unexpected and thoroughly unwelcome intrusion of the shouting agent. A look of pure rage flashed across her ugly face. Then, in one quick motion, she jerked up the hammer and brought the solid steel head of it streaking down toward the baby’s fragile skull.
A flash of movement originated from the doorway. D’Arbinville snapped his gaze over to it. Silver hair and another black pistol. The thunderous clap of a gunshot in the enclosed space, shattering D’Arbinville’s eardrums and making him feel as though his ears might bleed from the jarring, brain-bending noise.
A split-second later, Louise D’Arbinville’s head exploded on her wide, matronly shoulders.
When everything had been said and done and after all the costs had been added up, the cleaning bill would run in the thousands of dollars. And why not? After all, gelatinous gray brain matter, small bits of shattered white bone and bright red bloodstains that seeped deep into the flooring weren’t especially easy to remove from pristine white carpeting, now were they?
CHAPTER 44
Bruce Blankenship dropped his Glock and sprang forward to catch the baby just as the brown-haired woman holding him crumpled hard to the carpet in the luxurious suite over at the Four Seasons. Never in a million years would he be able to understand how he’d accomplished the feat. A single clear thought hadn’t crossed his mind the entire time he’d performed it. He’d just acted.
From behind him, he heard the sudden sound of dress shoes scraping against the carpet, originating from where D’Arbinville had been standing. Blankenship gritted his teeth in annoyance with himself, thankful beyond words to find that the baby was still alive and appeared mostly unharmed but pissed off at himself for having so stupidly put Krugman and the baby in harm’s way by dropping his loaded weapon within D’Arbinville’s reach. No doubt the baby-snatching asshole was going for the Glock right now, one last chance for him to escape the seemingly inescapable mess in which he found himself at the moment. One last chance for him to win this deadly little game of cat and mouse they were playing.
Blankenship had just enough time to cover the baby’s tender ears before another cacophonous gunshot rang out from the doorway of the luxurious suite. After that, everything went deathly silent.
Blankenship turned around tentatively to see what had just happened behind him, his heartbeat hammering away so madly inside his heaving chest that he feared it might actually stop altogether.
He breathed out a grateful sigh of relief at what he saw. Then he smiled widely despite the pulse-pounding circumstances. Fifteen feet away, Horatio D’Arbinville lay sprawled out on the carpet, a neat bullet hole where his left eye had been just a moment earlier. Blankenship widened the smile on his face even farther. After all these years and all the miles the old man had put on his creaky knees, it seemed that Bill Krugman still had what it took to make it as an agent out in the field, after all.
Not only that, the old man was a damn good shot.
Blankenship glanced up at his boss while simultaneously trying his best to soothe the wailing baby in his arms. “Nice shooting, sir,” he said, nodding respectfully as he balanced the squirming child, bringing back memories of when his girls had been infants. “Nice shooting, indeed.”
Krugman tucked his Glock back into its holster at his side and waved a hand nonchalantly in the air, trying his best to appear matter-of-fact about the whole thing but falling miserably short. The satisfaction on Krugman’s face was as clear as day to Blankenship. And why not? If it were possible for the Director to be promoted for his heroic actions here today that was exactly what would have happened for him. Nowhere for you to go when you were already the top dog, though.
“All in a day’s work, Agent Blankenship,” Krugman said, stretching his neck casually before finally allowing himself a small smile that brightened up his lined and weathered face like an abrupt sunburst suddenly breaking through a batch of gray storm clouds. “All in a day’s work.”
CHAPTER 45
Forty minutes later, Zachary Paulson and his son were finally reunited at Fairview General Hospital, the same place from which the baby had been abducted almost a week earlier. The software king looked up at Blankenship and Krugman with tears filling his eyes while nurses worked frantically to re-hydrate the badly malnourished boy fifteen feet away.
Thankfully, despite everything that had happened to the little guy over the past week, doctors had predicted a full and complete recovery from the harrowing experience. The tin
y little tyke wouldn’t even remember it. Should make for some rather interesting reading for him once he was old enough to figure out the Internet, though. “I don’t know how to thank you guys,” Paulson said in a voice cracking with emotion. “You not only saved my baby’s life, you saved my life, too. I was going to put a bullet in my brain if anything happened to little Zachary. I just wouldn’t have been able to go on living.”
Blankenship smiled softly. He could understand the sentiment. He’d have felt the exact same way if anything had ever happened to either one of his own kids. He also knew that the person Paulson should be thanking right now was Maggie Flynn down in DC. By triangulating all the cellphone usage in Cleveland and removing all the registered numbers from the equation, she’d found five signals coming from prepaid devices while Ann Marie Paulson had been speaking with her brother. Once Flynn had rattled off the coordinates of those five signals, the address to the Four Seasons had jumped out at Blankenship and Krugman like a rapist lurking in the night, making their part of the job relatively easy. Blankenship made a mental note to add a nice bottle of champagne to the bouquet of flowers that he’d be sending Flynn’s way later on tonight. The good stuff, too. Again, the least “Google” deserved for all her invaluable work.