by Steven James
How does he see me?
I studied the hallway. No mirrors. No windows.
Tessa had her teeth clenched. Eyes squeezed shut.
“I’ll give you three seconds,” he said.
“Sevren-”
“One.”
Do not relinquish your weapon, Pat. He will kill you both!
I scrutinized the hallway, in front of me, behind me. And saw a cell phone on the floor of the living room, behind me, propped against the wall, taking video.
He’s got another phone in the bedroom. He’s watching “Two.”
I flicked off my flashlight so he couldn’t see my movement, then sprinted toward Tessa, but Sevren yanked her backward into the room. Slammed the heavy oak door shut.
I grabbed the doorknob, tried it. Locked. Behind the door, I heard Tessa struggling, trying to get free. I backed up, raised my heel, smashed it against the door, but it held.
Sevren’s voice: “Kick that door again and I’ll start playing with your stepdaughter.”
My hands squeezed into fists, one tight around the grip of my SIG, the other around my MagLite. Inside of me, a terrible fire roared to life, one I did not want to put out.
There’s no other door to the room “Sevren,” I called through the door. I could hear movement, then a swishing sound that was probably the curtains being pulled shut. A small, gentle light flicked on, shimmered through the crack beneath the door. He set his flashlight down. “There’s no way out of this,” I yelled. “It’s over. It’s done.”
“I want you to tell her,” he said. “Who that is. Outside. Who Detective Warren shot.”
No.
Stall.
“We found the bomb, Sevren. We found your partner.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“No I’m not.”
“Prove it.”
“You used the metal tubes of the wheelchair. It was smart. Even if the lab guys had x-rayed it, the explosives wouldn’t have been visible. But we got to it in time.” I wasn’t sure about that last part.
A pause. “And my partner?”
“Chelsea Traye.”
Silence.
“She did specials on both the assassination attempt and the Gunderson facility. Then at the hotel on Wednesday she announced that the shooting was in the basement, but that was before Margaret revealed the location during the press conference. No one else knew where I’d been shot. Making the 911 calls in Maryland at the Styles’s house was sloppy. We matched her voice. It’s all over.”
No reply.
Keep stalling, keep stalling.
“It was Tessa’s email, wasn’t it?” I said. “You hacked in. Found out about her father. Then had Chelsea look into Lansing’s past. She had access to the archived footage of the assassination attempt’s coverage. You sent Calvin the note. You set this all up weeks ago.”
Silence from the room.
Long and dark.
Then he spoke, “I didn’t come here to kill your stepdaughter, Patrick. But I will if you don’t tell her who Detective Warren shot.”
But he just said you are going to watch her die- “Tell her!”
Time. Buy more time.
“Take off her gag so I can talk to her.”
A slight pause.
“Patrick!” she cried.
“I’m here, Tessa.”
“He’s just to my left! Shoot at my voice through the wall-Ow!”
I banged the door. “Don’t touch her!”
“Tell her now or the gag goes back on.”
The red-blue, red-blue of the approaching squads’ overhead lights flicked through the living room windows, washed through the hall.
“Tessa,” I said, “listen to me-”
She loves Paul. She wanted to hate him today, but she loves him.
I had an idea. One chance at this, that would be all. I backed away from the door. “That man outside…” I aimed my weapon at the wood beside the doorknob.
One chance.
One chance.
We give platitudes to soften the blow, to dull the pain, but that’s not what I was about to do. To help her I had to hurt her. I couldn’t think of any other viable option. I had to stop Sevren. I had to take him down.
“The man Cheyenne shot is…”
I would kick this door harder than I’d ever kicked anything in my life. Right next to the lock. Drive your heel in. Locate Sevren. Drop him.
I eyed down the barrel. “Tessa, it’s your father.” I waited. Waited.
C’mon, Tessa. Please.
“Paul?” A fragile, broken word.
“He’s dead. He was shot three times in the chest.”
“No.”
“Yes, Tessa.”
Louder. “No!”
“He’s dead. Your father Paul Lansing is lying dead in the back-”
This time she shrieked, “No!”
The word cut through the night like a terrible, terrible knife. The instant she screamed I fired into the wood beside the lock, even as I rushed forward and drove my heel against the door. It splintered, flew open.
In a fraction of a second I swept the room and saw Sevren in the corner, standing behind Tessa. His flashlight sat on the floor to my left.
Tessa stood between us. Sevren had the gun pressed against her temple, her hand beneath his around the grip, her finger against the trigger.
Oh no. Please no.
The curling red and blue lights outside seeped into the room through the closed curtains.
Backup.
I eyed down the barrel but I had no shot. Sevren held her head steady in front of his by squeezing a tight fistful of her hair with his right hand. What little I could see of his face was covered with brutal scars.
“Tessa,” I said softly, trying to sound calm. “Do not move your finger. No pressure at all.”
“That’s good advice,” Sevren said.
She had her jaw set, trying to be strong, but a tear was squeezing from her right eye. “Shoot him,” she whispered.
But he was squarely behind her; I couldn’t get off a shot. I edged forward “That’s far enough,” he said.
I paused. Still no shot. If I fired I’d either miss him or hit Tessa.
I heard officers pounding toward us down the hall. “Get back!” I yelled. “He’s got my daughter.” They paused. “There’s a woman outside, by the stone wall, she was shot. Get to her now!”
No movement.
“Go on!” I called. “Do it!”
“Tell them to clear the house,” Sevren said.
“You heard him, clear the premises!” At last their footsteps retreated. Sevren glanced at a phone propped on the bed, and my eyes followed his. The house lights were off, but in the flicker of police lights from outside, the screen showed the outline of one officer still crouched in the hall.
“Go,” I yelled to him. “You, in the hall. Now.”
Finally, he left.
“Detective Warren?” Tessa said, defeat and fear in her voice. “Is she okay?”
“I doubt it,” Sevren said. “I’m a pretty good shot.” Then to me, “I said set down the gun.”
I ignored him, told Tessa, “She’ll be all right.”
Rather than demand again that I set down my gun, he took a small breath. “So here we are.” The words seemed to writhe from his mouth. “Just the three of us. Just like in North Carolina.”
“No,” Tessa said with tight resolve. “That time you had a scissors sticking out of your leg.”
No, Tessa! Don’t provoke him!
“Tessa,” I said. “Shh.”
“You should be thankful, Patrick,” Sevren said. “I hear custody cases can be expensive. Detective Warren saved you a lot of time and money tonight.”
“Kill him!” Tessa yelled.
He tightened his grip on her hair. She winced but refused to cry out, denying him the satisfaction of hurting her.
“Now, put down your gun,” he said to me. “Slowly.”
Sight-lines.
Angles.
If I could edge forward, drop to one knee as if I were setting down my SIG, I might be able to make the shot.
Do it.
“Okay.” I eased my finger from the trigger guard, held the gun loosely. “I am. Don’t hurt her. We can talk about this, but just let her-”
“Don’t insult me!” he roared.
He would either die tonight or go to prison for the rest of his life. He had to know this. He had nothing to lose by killing her. And if his goal was to make me suffer, he had everything to gain by squeezing the trigger.
Nothing to lose.
He has nothing to lose.
I paused. Tried another idea. “Stop hiding behind my stepdaughter. If you were half as brave as she is, you’d step out here and face me like a-”
“It’s not going to be that easy, Bowers.”
“It’s over. Let her go. Take me, if that’s what this is about.”
“No!” Tessa screamed.
He spoke to her then, softly, but I heard the words: “It would have saved us all a lot of trouble if your mother had just gone ahead with the abortion.”
“No!” She squeezed her eyes shut, crossed her right arm over her chest, hugged herself.
“Well, Patrick.” Sevren smiled. “Looks like I win.”
And everything that happened next happened all at once.
He jerked the gun from the side of Tessa’s head, angled it backward toward his own face; I swung my SIG into position and fired just as his gun went off.
Tessa’s finger still on the trigger.
108
Sevren’s body slumped to the ground.
I rushed to Tessa.
She was breathing heavily. Adrenaline. Fear.
The gun was still in her hand; I eased it from her grip, set it on the bed.
Unlike in the movies, people who are shot in real life don’t fly backward, they crumple; and Sevren’s body lay just behind Tessa. One entry wound was through his chin; my bullet had hit his forehead. Both bullets had exited the back of his skull, leaving a fist-sized hole behind. Gray matter and blood were splayed gruesomely across the wall. As I holstered my SIG and took Tessa in my arms I found that the blowback had left her hair damp with a spray of Sevren’s warm blood.
“Don’t turn around.” As I took her in my arms I gently wiped my hand against the back of her head, then onto my other sleeve. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
She stood stone-still. Said nothing.
An officer rushed through the doorway, weapon leveled at us.
“It’s over!” I hollered. “It’s over.”
He saw the wall behind us. The form on the floor. He lowered his gun and edged uneasily toward the body.
In a horror film Sevren might have somehow risen again to attack, to kill, but not here, not now; he was never going to rise again. Not ever.
I wanted to get Tessa out of the house, as far away from this room as possible. I hurried her down the hallway.
“My dad is dead.” The words came out like shards of glass.
“I’m so sorry, Tessa.” All other words escaped me.
We were halfway through the living room when she called to one of the officers entering through the front door. “The woman who was shot. Is she alive?”
He glanced at another officer who’d just arrived. The man shook his head. “I don’t know her condition, ma’am. They have her, though.” He pointed toward the window. “On an ambulance.”
We stepped outside.
One ambulance was pulling away from the house. I guided Tessa toward the other.
I expected her to start trembling, crying, but she did not.
“My ear,” she mumbled. She was shaking her head as if to get water out of her left ear, the one that had been only inches from the gun when it went off. “I can’t hear out of my ear.”
The fact that she was focusing on something relatively insignificant compared to what had just happened told me she was going into shock.
“It’ll be all right,” I said, promising something that was out of my control. A pause, then I went on, “The way I told you about your father. I needed to make you cry out, to distract Sevren. I’m sorry I was so blunt. Will you forgive me?”
She remained silent but nodded.
“Thank you,” I said.
The ambulance was just ahead. I still didn’t know if Ralph had found Chelsea Traye or if the bomb had gone off.
“I killed him.” Tessa’s voice was distant and chilled. It didn’t sound at all like the girl I knew. “I killed Sevren.”
“No. That’s what he wanted you to think. He was trying to shoot himself and make you think you did it, but I shot him. Muscle contraction in his hand made his finger squeeze. That’s what made the gun go off.”
“I killed him.”
“No.”
She shook her head. “I did it.” I wasn’t sure if I heard regret or a dark sense of satisfaction in her words and I didn’t know what to say, but this was clearly not the time to argue. “What matters now is that you’re safe.”
We made it to the ambulance, and two paramedics wheeled a gurney to Tessa for her to sit on. One of the men looked at the welt on her forehead. “We need to get you to the hospital.”
She was quiet as she took a seat, then lay down on her side.
“I’m riding with her,” I said.
He nodded, and as he and his partner rolled Tessa’s gurney into the back of the ambulance, I quietly asked him about Cheyenne. He told me that he’d heard she was in serious condition, but that was all he knew. “As soon as I hear more, I’ll let you know.”
“Quantico? The bomb?”
“It went off. Evidence Room 3a is gone. A few people didn’t quite make it out of that wing. Minor injuries, but I think everyone’s okay.”
I was thankful no one was killed or seriously injured, but if Evidence Room 3a was destroyed, it could negatively affect dozens of cases.
I wondered how Lacey had fared, hoped for Angela’s sake that she was okay.
“Oh,” he said, “they got to Chelsea Traye; she’s in custody. She was about to kill a woman, a prostitute. Agent Hawkins stopped her.”
Well, it was nice to at least hear a little good news.
In the ambulance now, I knelt beside Tessa. The police sirens outside had stopped, but the flashing lights hadn’t, and they twirled and flickered in the window beside me, blurring the night with colors it was never meant to contain.
I held her hand. “You’re going to be okay.”
She said nothing, just stared blankly at the side wall of the ambulance. A single tragic tear fell from her left eye. “My dad is dead.”
And when I saw the brokenness and rage in her eyes, I had a chilling thought.
Maybe Sevren had been right.
Maybe he had won after all.
109
Eight days later
Tessa and I were staying in the spare bedroom in Ralph and Brineesha’s basement so we wouldn’t have to be near the house where Sevren Adkins and Paul Lansing had died.
Right now Ralph was following up on a lead that Lebreau might be in the DC area, and Brineesha was shopping with their son Tony, so Tessa and I had the house to ourselves.
I checked my watch: 1:22 p.m.
Cheyenne had come home from the hospital at 1:00 and we were leaving in ten minutes to see her.
Tessa was downstairs getting ready.
This would be the first time they were going to see each other since the shooting.
I’d visited Cheyenne every day except for the two days Tessa and I were in Wyoming. Even though Cheyenne had invited Tessa to the hospital and had sent half a dozen notes telling her how sorry she was about her father, my stepdaughter had declined to see her and instead simply requested that I ask Cheyenne to read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I assumed it was Tessa’s way of telling Cheyenne that she was some kind of monster, a female Hyde, and it seemed vindictive to me, but Cheyenn
e readily agreed to read it. “Anything I can do to help,” she’d said. So, two days ago, after I’d read the story myself to understand the context of what was going on with Tessa, I delivered the book to Cheyenne.
It’d taken some time to piece together what happened that night, and there were still some gaps, but here’s what we knew: after hacking into Lansing’s lawyers’ website and getting Paul’s phone number, Sevren had lured him to the scene by sending a number of distress text messages that supposedly came from Tessa’s phone claiming she was in danger, that the killers from this week had her, and NOT to call the cops or her dad, but to please come help her!
It’s not easy to mask the origin of text messages but Sevren was smart and had done it well.
Considering that Paul was an ex-Secret Service agent, it wasn’t surprising to me that he’d come armed and ready to save his daughter.
It still wasn’t exactly clear who’d fired the first shot-Sevren or Paul, but Sevren had orchestrated the shootout, no doubt knowing that it was likely either Paul would kill Cheyenne or she would kill him-or Sevren might have planned to kill them both. Either way, it would have devastated both me and Tessa. And I couldn’t help but think that if Cheyenne had not been there, the shootout would have been between Tessa’s father and me.
After Paul’s death, Vice President Fischer sent Tessa a personal note expressing his condolences and explaining that indeed Paul had been the one to save him six years ago. For security reasons Paul had been told never to share that information, and the VP asked Tessa not to blame her dad for misleading her, and from what I could see, she had taken that to heart.
Despite my early suspicions, Paul had only wanted what was best for his daughter and had fought to protect her every chance he had-first when she was a baby, and now when she was a young woman. Knowing that he really had cared for her seemed, more than anything else, to be helping Tessa deal with his death.
Lien-hua, in her evaluative profile, postulated that Sevren had been telling the truth when he claimed that he hadn’t come to the house to kill Tessa. “He wanted you to tell her that Paul was dead as a way of controlling you, of hurting you both,” Lien-hua explained. “Killing Tessa would have only ended her suffering. Even though in the end you cornered him and it looks like he resorted to suicide, I don’t think that was his original plan.”