by Lisa Unger
“How does that all change if Mickey didn’t kill himself, if Lily was right and he was actually murdered?”
She could hear him breathing. “I’m not sure,” he said finally.
“What if she found proof that Mickey didn’t commit suicide?” She heard Lily’s voice again. “I’m out of my league. Big-time.”
“Then it would mean that whoever was threatened by that proof is a likely suspect in her disappearance.”
“Right, so it would mean that there was another motivator in getting rid of Lily, not just another blow to Samuels.”
They both knew there was a big piece missing, a hole that ran through their investigation which had been there all along. They had just been too blinded by their assumptions to realize it.
“You know what else is bothering me?” said Lydia.
“What’s that?”
“Michele LaForge.”
“How she seduced both father and son?”
“That was okay when we were assuming that The New Day was trying to take Tim Samuels’ life apart. She seduced Tim as Marilyn and Mickey as Mariah, a siren luring them onto the rocks of The New Day.”
“Very poetic.”
“Thank you. But if we’re thinking that Mickey and Lily were going after The New Day and not the other way around, where does Michele LaForge come into all of this?”
Jeffrey was quiet. She felt rather than saw him lift his head and sniff the air.
“What?” she said.
“Do you smell something?” he asked, standing up and pulling her to her feet.
She took some air in through her nose. She did smell something. Smoke.
She put her hand against the metal door and drew it back quickly. It was burning hot. She backed away from the door, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Jeffrey.” Her throat suddenly went dry. Her heart started to pump in her chest. They were trapped and there was a fire raging outside the door.
“Come here,” he said, pulling at her arm, dragging her to the far corner of the room and pulling her to the floor. She lay down on her stomach in the corner and Jeffrey lay in front of her, protecting her body with his, so that she was between him and the wall.
“It’s okay. This room is made out of concrete and the door is metal. The heat will rise. We’ll be okay.”
It seemed wildly optimistic but she chose to be comforted by the sound of his voice and the feel of his body beside her, his arms around her. The smell of smoke was getting stronger and the temperature seemed to have risen twenty degrees.
“We’re going to cook in here,” she said, her voice tight with fear.
There was a pounding on the door then, and the muffled sound of a shouting voice.
“What was that?” asked Lydia.
More pounding and then the voice came again louder. Lydia couldn’t understand what he was saying but she recognized the cadence of the voice. It was Dax.
“What the hell is he saying?” she yelled at Jeffrey.
“I think he said to stay away from the-” Jeffrey started. “Shit. Cover your head.”
The explosion was so loud that Lydia wouldn’t hear right for hours. The metal door that had seemed immovable crumpled like paper and they were blasted with a wave of heat and concussion that Lydia was sure was going to kill them both. The silence that followed felt like a vacuum to Lydia. Then there was a high-pitched ringing in her ears as her body wracked with coughing from the concrete dust. She could see Jeffrey coughing too, but she couldn’t hear him. A bulky form emerged from the cloud. Dax. He was yelling something at them, then leaning in and dragging her to her feet, pulling on her arm. Jeffrey got up and stood behind her. She looked at Dax’s face; he was scared, angry, something, still yelling. She tried to read his lips.
“It’s on fire. We have to go,” he was saying.
“What do you mean it’s on fire?” she yelled. “What’s on fire?”
“Everything. It’s burning.”
He pushed Lydia and Jeffrey in front of him and they all started to run down a long hallway, toward cool air they felt flowing from somewhere, the heat of flames at their backs.
For a second Jesamyn almost lowered her guard as the knob started to turn and then stopped; whoever stood outside started jiggling the knob lightly. She had locked the door behind her like a good New Yorker. She thought, what if it’s Theo or Matt’s dad. But then the dark form moved in closer to the door and blocked all the light coming in from the nine glass panes. He was huge; she felt her heart drop into her stomach. Tired apparently of messing around with locked knobs, the form put a gloved hand through one of the panes of glass as if it were made out of cellophane, reached in and unlocked the dead bolt and turned the simple lock on the knob itself. Then, as if thinking now he should be quiet, he opened the door slowly and stepped inside. He had to bend his head to avoid hitting it on the frame.
From her place behind the couch, she had a good look at him as he entered the foyer. Giant, with a buzz cut so close to the scalp that his hair looked like a five o’clock shadow. His face was grim and blank of expression, deep lines carved between protruding bones, a long hook of a nose. She checked his body for the bulge of a gun and saw something inside his jacket that could very well have been a big revolver or a semiautomatic. He stood and lifted his nose to the air for a second and turned his head toward the living room, moved toward her slowly. She felt the reverberations of his footfalls in the floor beneath her own feet. She crouched lower. She’d need the element of surprise to have the advantage over his size. She’d need him to come very close to her before she revealed herself. The blood was rushing in her ears as he approached the couch. When he was not a foot away from her, she moved from her spot and held the gun in front of her, aimed directly at his center mass.
“Freeze,” she yelled, deepening her voice. “Get on the ground and put your hands behind your head.”
She hated the way her heart was pounding, the way her chest was heaving with her fearful breathing. He smiled at her like she was a pretty child putting on a show and that made her angry as well as afraid. He put his hands up and mock shivered, started backing away from her.
“Oooh,” he said.
“Get on the ground,” she yelled, making her voice as loud and deep as possible. She didn’t want to kill this guy; he might know something that could help Mount. But she would kill him if it came to that. He moved backward and she followed, her finger on the trigger of her gun. She could already hear the deafening boom it would release when she fired. He had his back against the wall now, knocking down a portrait of the Stenopolis family. She jumped when it crashed to the ground and shattered. In that instant she saw him glance down at the bulge in his jacket, saw his right hand twitch.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said, reaching behind for her cuffs. “How many times do I have to tell you? Get down on the fucking ground. Right. Now.”
He started to bend toward the ground, but telegraphed the lunge that followed by bringing his right knee up quickly. All her fear subsided now that the fight had begun. All her training from the academy and from the kung fu temple kicked in. She was pure action, no thought at all.
She sidestepped him easily and he crashed into the low coffee table, headfirst. She let a round go and felt the concussion in her chest, was temporarily deafened by the roar of the Glock, felt the sting of powder in her nose. She’d missed him, the bullet creating a valley in the end table and exploding the lamp on top of it. A piece of glass or something ricocheted and hit Jesamyn below her left eye. But she barely felt it, seeing that the giant had managed to draw his weapon, a huge revolver that looked like a Ruger with a big long barrel.
She dropped as he got to his feet, put her hands on the ground with the gun still in her grip and swept him hard, using her foot as a hook. Her ankle connected hard with his thick leather boots and it hurt like hell, but he fell right on his back, feet flipping up from beneath him like he was wearing roller skates. She heard his head connec
t with the floor and it sounded like a bowling ball dropping on a lane. The Ruger came loose from his hand and landed harmlessly on the velour couch. She was on him then, her knee in his solar plexus as the porch outside exploded with light and sound. He reached to pull her off him and she used her elbow to strike him hard on the side of his face. Once, he was still smiling. Twice, the smile faded and he started to get a dazy look in his eyes.
The front door slammed open and the room was full of voices and heavy footfalls. She knew the sound of her colleagues: radio static, booming voices, holsters unsnapping. She felt hands on her then and she got to her feet, still pointing her gun at the man dressed in leather. He looked stunned; two blows to the head and a knee to the solar plexus could do that to a guy, no matter how big he was. Still, it took two guys to flip him and two sets of cuffs linked together to bind his hands.
“We had to link the cuffs together for your partner like that,” said Bloom, coming up behind her.
She turned to look at him. The adrenaline was draining, leaving her shaking in its wake, the wound on her face starting to throb. “You followed me?”
She wouldn’t admit to it, but under the circumstances she was grateful. She’d been able to bring the guy down but she wasn’t sure she would have been able to cuff him. She might have wound up cuffing one wrist to the couch leg and calling for backup.
He nodded, watching as two uniformed officers pulled the intruder to his feet. He was a little unsteady, dazed, and he hadn’t said a word. One of the uniformed officers starting reading him his rights.
“I figured you’d lead us straight to Stenopolis.”
“But instead I led you to this guy. He matches Mount’s description. Don’t you think?” she said, nodding toward the leather-clad freak.
“We’ll see,” he said, noncommittal. “Anyway, I’d go so far as to say things are looking a little better for Stenopolis, except that he’s a fugitive on the run considered armed and dangerous.” He sighed. “It’s always a bad idea to run.”
She shook her head at him. He’d made all his assumptions already; he’d have to wrestle his ego a little before he came to terms with the fact that she’d been right all along. But she could tell he was the kind of man who’d put the truth first and she respected him for it.
Dylan came through the door then, looking afraid and a little angry. He walked over to her, eyes scanning the room, then resting on the big man in cuffs. She’d split off from Dylan after he brought her back to the precinct to get her car, saying she wanted to get home and rest. Really, she hadn’t wanted to drag Dylan into the gray area of entering Matt’s house and looking for clues as to where he might have gone. It could be bad for his career, considering he was already on temporary suspension. And, maybe most of all, she’d just wanted some distance from him.
“I thought you were going home,” he said to her.
“I thought you were going home,” she said, looking at him. She fought the urge to wrap her arms around him until she could stop shaking.
“I was. I heard the call on my scanner and turned around.”
He put a hand to her face and she winced at the pain. “You’re gonna need stitches on that,” he said as the two uniforms moved past them with the prisoner.
“Not before I talk to that guy.”
“I’ll be talking to him, Detective,” said Bloom. “I don’t need to remind you that this is not your case.”
“The hell it isn’t,” she said, pushing past Bloom. “I would have been the one to put the cuffs on him if your boys hadn’t come in. I would have had him for breaking and entering, assaulting an officer.” He put a gentle but firm hand on her arm.
“I don’t want to have to arrest you for obstructing an investigation,” he said quietly. “Which I could do, considering we both know why you came here.”
She looked him up and down. He was half the size of her most recent assailant, but there was something tougher about him.
“If you’d listened to me in the first place, we wouldn’t even be here. It never would have gone this far,” she said, looking down at his arm and then turning her eyes on him.
He gave her a black look and she let out a sigh, looked at the ground.
“Let me come with you, at least,” she said when he didn’t answer her.
He nodded grudgingly and released her arm. “Paramedics are outside. Let them patch you up first. Meet me at HQ.”
What is happening?” yelled Lydia.
“They moved in. They’re taking the compound.”
Dax’s sentence was punctuated by the sharp report of semiautomatic gunfire. In the distance she heard voices but they sounded faint and far away, yelling, as they stepped from the building they’d been in into the humid night. There was another sound, too, also faint and far away to Lydia’s damaged ears: the crackle of flames. The thick, hazy air seemed to hold an orange glow and smelled strongly of burning wood. She felt like she was breathing in the color gray. She held a hand over her mouth.
“Who’s moving in? The Feds? I thought they couldn’t come in here,” she said as they followed Dax at a run into the cover of a glade of trees.
She was feeling disoriented and her heart was still chugging. But something was bugging her, nudging at her consciousness. She could see the look on Jeffrey’s face, too. Blank but eyes slightly narrowed, trained on Dax.
How did Dax know where they were? Was it her imagination or did he seem to know where they were going?
“About a half an acre west of here, there’s a wall that we can get over and get out of here,” said Dax.
“No,” she said. “We’re not leaving without Lily.”
He looked at her. “Do you understand what’s happening here?” he asked her. There was something cold in his tone she’d never heard before. She didn’t like it.
“No, I don’t, Dax. Why don’t you tell me?” she said, turning to him, moving in closer.
She felt Jeffrey’s hand on her arm. “We should do this later,” he said. “We have to get out of here.”
“We have to find Lily,” said Lydia.
“Look at the reality here,” said Dax. “The place is burning. Every building in this compound is on fire. FBI and ATF are all over the place.”
The sky exploded with light and the chopping blades of a helicopter. Lydia felt her hair whip around her, and she covered her eyes, squinting against the brightness of the spotlight that shone through the trees directly on them.
“Drop your weapons and get down on the ground.” It sounded like the voice of God coming down from the sky. But it was really just someone in full body armor with the big letters ATF printed on his chest. Still, Lydia figured it behooved them to listen. He had a gun trained on them-a very big scary-looking gun much like the one Dax was carrying. A moment later, four other men in body armor emerged from the trees around them, their faces obscured behind the Plexiglas masks of their helmets.
Jeffrey and Lydia exchanged looks and did what they were told.
What? I can’t hear you?” Lydia yelled. She wasn’t trying to be obnoxious; she really couldn’t hear very well. Maybe she was trying to be a little obnoxious, but given what the FBI was trying to pull she figured they deserved it.
The young agent who was questioning her looked annoyed. They sat together in the back of a van that was mercifully air-conditioned, just the two of them, on two metal chairs he had provided. She didn’t know where Dax and Jeff were; she imagined they were in two other vans somewhere close by. The agent had given her an ice pack when she’d complained of a pain in her ribs and then he’d started questioning her. She wasn’t worried until he started acting like he didn’t know Agent Grimm.
“Did he show you any identification?” the kid yelled at her. He was a kid, maybe not even twenty-five. He had the fleshy, earnest face of the very young and wore the look that milk-fed people have before they’ve experienced the rest of the world, before they’ve realized that 95 percent of people are living in poverty and chaos, that hatr
ed reigns and justice is in short supply. But maybe Lydia was just feeling bitter.
“Yes,” she said more quietly. “He showed us his shield and identification.” He’d flashed it, actually. She hadn’t inspected it closely, mainly because they had guns that she recognized as Glocks, pretty standard law-enforcement equipment.
“You got a close look at it?”
She shrugged. “Close enough.”
“Close enough?”
“Close enough to be convinced. He was out of shape and wore a bad suit. He had a crappy attitude and a kind of annoying self-righteousness to him that just screamed FBI.”
Agent Gary Hunt ignored her comment, to his credit, and scribbled something in a black notebook.
The doors to the van were closed but through the rear windows she could see that the fire at the New Day Farms still raged; she could smell burning wood and hear the hiss of the chemical spray firefighters were using to quell the blaze. They were a safe distance from the scene now, but the occasional shout and bursts of gunfire carried through the air. The New Day compound was a war zone, another Waco in progress, and they were a part of that. Maybe the biggest part, since the Feds were using them as their reason for invading the compound. And for all Lydia knew, Lily Samuels was somewhere inside. Failure sat in her stomach like a piece of lead. Lydia still felt herself start to shiver slightly from a cold that seemed to come from deep inside her center and spread out through her veins to the rest of her body.
The kid ran a hand through a thick, silky shock of jet-black hair.
“Okay,” he said. “You, Mr. Mark, and Mr. Bond are private investigators. You were following leads on the disappearance of a girl.” He stopped and checked his notes. “Lily Samuels. You were planning on gaining entry to the New Day Farms to search for her when someone claiming to be an FBI agent named Grimm approached you and your associates. He told you that Lily Samuels was working for him when they lost contact with her. He wanted you to go in and try to retrieve Lily Samuels and provide proof that The New Day was stockpiling weapons so that the resultant publicity would make it possible for them to take down an illegal organization that was being protected by highranking members of the government.”