“Fuck you, McShane.” Johnny sat forward in a deliberate motion. “Carter wasn’t anyone’s hope.”
McShane started, eyes widening, but he recovered quickly. He feigned sarcastic indifference, but it never reached his eyes. Johnny spotted the ill-concealed curiosity—and fury.
“Meaning?”
“You know what it means.”
The tension snaked between them, charging the air. Johnny leaned up a scant half-an-inch more. He wouldn’t back down now. He meant to protect Alexa any way he could. Any way…
McShane leaned back. Lost ground. Small, but significant. It wasn’t much, but it meant everything. “Suppose you tell me, Yank? Suppose you…tell…me.”
Johnny didn’t look away. It was costing him, this air of disdainful readiness. He hurt like hell—all over. He was tired beyond imagining—exhausted. And he knew his own new-found dream was crumbling before his very eyes. But he wouldn’t let Alexa down. Or his brother.
“You never intended to ‘escape’ did you, McShane?” Johnny’s voice was low and steady. “You plan to get out, all right; but you’ll do it through death. God only knows what self-centered way you’ve chosen to end it all. Guess we’ll all have to wait for the surprise. But don’t expect cooperation, you sorry bastard. And don’t forget to let Miss Bannion in on your dirty little secret. I somehow think she’ll be less than thrilled at the prospect of dying with you.”
“She has no choice!” McShane shot back.
A slow grin slid across Johnny’s face, and he began to laugh. “You’re pathetic, McShane. What’s wrong? Can’t face the Reaper alone? Gotta take Miss Bannion along for company?”
“Shut up!”
“Sure. Glad to oblige. It doesn’t change shit.”
“I can kill you right now!”
Alexa sucked in her breath.
The laughter left Johnny’s face and he became serious again. “Go ahead, you son of a bitch. I dare you.” He shook his head. “Only, you and I both know you won’t, don’t we? I’m more valuable to you now that you know who I really am. A cop. Bargaining power that you don’t ever intend to use—not really. You just want to see them dance for you…then you’ll decide when… and how.”
The door swung open with a sudden loud bang. McShane wheeled, bringing his gun up in one practiced motion, barely staying his finger on the trigger as Eileen called out to him.
“Don’t shoot, Kier! My damn radio went out and I couldn’t call you.”
Eileen let Traci and Pete walk through behind her, and something flashed through Johnny’s consciousness. She was protecting them, afraid McShane would shoot…she’d come through first.
Pete lifted his head, narrowing his eyes, trying to see—
Johnny sat up again, adrenaline shooting through him at the sight of his brother’s battered face. Pete’s swollen eyes met his, and he nodded at Johnny, trying to grin, but it dissolved in a grimace of pain as he took another jolting step.
“Where do you want these two?” Eileen asked.
“Over here.” McShane shot Johnny a cool glance. “John T. tells me to expect no cooperation from them. Give them a few minutes together to say their final goodbyes.”
♥ ♥ ♥
As Daniel disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the Riverwind, Ronnie Williams’s keening wail of despair rang across the span of green into the woods behind him. The four policemen held him tight—and still, he struggled against them.
Ray Carter grasped Williams’s right arm and shoulder, his mouth close to Williams’s baseball cap. “Mr. Williams! Ronnie! Stop! You aren’t doing yourself or your brother any good with all this.” He dug his fingers into Williams’s shirt, knowing he had to be bruising the flesh beneath as he tried to keep his grip.
Carter exchanged a quick glance with the officer holding Williams’s left arm. Williams seemed to be beyond hearing, beyond feeling, sobbing openly at his loss.
“Danny, Danny.” Williams was held, pinioned like a prize butterfly. “Dear God, what have I done? What have I done?”
The officers began to loosen their holds. Williams sank into a heap on the ground, his tears wetting the dirt. Carter motioned the others away and knelt beside the grieving man.
After a few minutes, Williams dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “I should’ve stopped him.”
Carter shook his head. “You couldn’t have. We had no way of knowing he’d do something so—” he broke off, thinking of how it would sound.
“Crazy?” Williams finished, his tone edged with cynicism.
With reluctance, Carter nodded. “Yeah. But I didn’t mean it that way.”
“If you could’ve known him before Nam, Captain—there wasn’t anything ‘crazy’ about him then. He was just as regular as anybody.” Williams sniffed, still not looking at Carter. He seemed to be far away, remembering another time. “He was a good brother. And he wanted to be a doctor. I know that might sound funny in light of how things turned out, but…he had that dream. After Nam, he didn’t have anything. He couldn’t remember things, couldn’t work, lost his temper—” He glanced up, meeting Carter’s somber gaze. “I’ve been tryin’ to take care of him, Captain, but it just got too big all of a sudden.”
“Why didn’t you take him to live with you instead of putting him up there on the roof?” Carter’s tone held no censure; he just wanted to understand.
Williams sank his uneven teeth into his lower lip, looking away. He didn’t answer. The wind sighed through the trees giving them all a small measure of cooling relief. The shadows were leading toward twilight.
“I couldn’t,” he said finally. “I couldn’t let him be out with other people. I—I even got to where I was afraid if he lost his temper with me, I couldn’t protect myself. He’s four years younger’n me, see, Cap. That was a good thing, all them growin’ up years, ’cause I kept him in line. But now—hell, he’s four years younger, stronger, and faster than I am. Kinda…works backwards now—me bein’ older.”
Carter’s lips curved at the wry admission. “I wish I could tell you he’d be all right. But, you’ve got to know, even if he comes out of this alive, I—well, I’m going to have to ask him—and you—some hard questions.”
Williams nodded and looked at the ground. “I understand. I’ll tell you everything I can, but let’s just get him safe first, Captain, if that’s all right.”
Carter studied the same patch of ground that Ronnie Williams seemed to find so fascinating. They weren’t seeing it the same way, Carter thought, the piece of ground, or the odd, vagrant man that Ronnie Williams called brother. But one thing Carter knew for sure: No matter how it all shook out, whichever way it went, Daniel Williams couldn’t win.
Chapter 35
There was reluctance in Eileen’s expression as she released her hold on Pete. She had no choice but to give him over to Traci’s tentative aid once more.
He took two more steps before he began to fall. Johnny and Brendan Roberts had both come to their feet, but it was Roberts who caught Pete and eased him to the floor, Johnny suddenly dizzy as he slid down beside his brother.
“Are you hit?” Johnny asked, his hands pulling at Pete, trying to turn him to look for blood, for a bullet wound of some kind. Stupid question. “Shot?” he corrected.
Pete shook his head, eyes closed. “I’m swell, brother. Not shot. Just—” he moistened his lips, and Johnny reached behind him for the water bottle. Alexa put it in his hand. “Just beat up a little…that’s it.”
“Not ‘a little’.” Johnny reached to pull up Pete’s right eyelid, then the left. “You’ve got a concussion,” he muttered.
“Yeah, but I didn’t get—shot up…like…somebody I know.”
Johnny pressed the near-empty bottle to Pete’s mouth and let him drink it to the end. Then, he sat back, leaning against the wall. A smile touched his lips. “Still, I made it up here under my own steam.”
Pete gave him a faint smile, his eyes slitting open to look up at Johnny. “Just shows how mu
ch smarter I am, brother. I had a pretty woman on either side of me.”
Johnny didn’t answer the tease. Pete was barely recognizable. Johnny’s palms tingled as he thought of what he’d like to do to McShane. What he would do. He was going to kill that bastard. And he only wished he had more time—to do it slow. He kept his voice steady when he spoke.
“You’ve looked better, hermano. They handled you pretty rough, didn’t they?” He laid a hand on Pete’s shoulder.
Pete moistened his lips, opened his eyes. “I’ll be okay.” The words were ludicrous coming from the battered face; but the bravado was just a measure of the valiant effort Pete was trying to put into a show of strength—and he wasn’t fooled. His brother could be bleeding to death internally in front of them.
He watched Pete for a few seconds, then asked, “What do you know about down below?”
“I think…they’re all dead, Johnny.”
Johnny nodded, exchanging a glance with the Prime Minister.
“All but one…” Pete continued.
“One—terrorist? Or hostage?”
“Neither.” Pete shifted, cutting off a groan, and Johnny tensed, clasping Pete’s forearm silently. “He…was in the wall…the vent…”
“What did he look like?” Johnny asked quietly.
“Mercury eyes…silver…almost like—”
“Like what?” he prodded. “I know you’re hurt, Pete, but try to remember.”
“Like nails…the heads…shiny and new—wild hair…kinda brown… but I saw his eyes…”
“Daniel,” Johnny murmured. He glanced up, meeting Alexa’s gaze.
“He must’ve made it down not too long before they all came back up,” she whispered. “I hope he—he went on outside—escaped. He had to have seen there was nothing he could do.”
“He knew there wasn’t anything,” Pete muttered. “I could tell. He—wanted to help us—he just didn’t know how.”
Johnny sat, unseeing, lost in thought. If only he’d insisted that Daniel hang on to the .38… He could’ve shot McShane through the grate before the Irishman ever realized what hit him. Then, Eileen Bannion.
But, that wouldn’t have solved the problem of Sorley O’Brian as neatly. If he hadn’t been carrying the pistol, he and Alexa would both be dead right now.
He sighed. All in all, he supposed, it had been better that he’d kept the weapon and killed O’Brian with it. But not knowing what had become of Daniel haunted him with an unexpected intensity.
Johnny studied his youngest brother as Pete tried to hold his gaze—and failed. He was losing his brother, and there was nothing he could do but watch it happen. Pete needed a doctor, badly. He reached for Pete’s arm and squeezed. No response.
His tagalong, always. That had landed Pete here, beaten with such severity that he might be dying.
Their time was running out. McShane was looking at them, heading their way. Seconds left, only seconds.
“Rest easy, Pete,” Johnny murmured. “I’ll be here when you wake up.” It wasn’t what he wanted to say. There was no answer, but somehow, Johnny knew Pete understood what he’d been trying to tell him, even though he didn’t say the right words.
Johnny glanced up as McShane came to stand over them. A faint smile, a killer’s smile, curved the terrorist’s lips as he stood looking down at them.
Their time was up.
♥ ♥ ♥
Daniel stopped climbing, tensing at the sound of voices drifting through the vents. He pulled himself onto the ledge at the end of the tubing to rest, straining to hear the words. He looked down, counting the small washes of light, waiting for the voices to come again. Nine, and this would make ten. Halfway up.
“…like what we found on the eighth floor.”
Daniel cocked his head, leaning closer to the tubing crawlspace.
“God help ’em.” The second voice was younger, Daniel thought. The first, from what he could tell, was the older of the pair.
There was silence for a moment, then the first man said, “There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s go.”
“Wait! This one’s got a gun.” There was a heavy thump, the sound of the younger man turning over the corpse, then, “Billings, look at this! It’s one of them! Terry Latham.”
“I wish you hadn’t done that.”
Daniel’s brow creased at the note of cold resignation in Billings’s voice. He’d heard that before. It meant there was something the young pup had discovered by accident that was not going to go well for him.
“Why? This is good news, isn’t it? It means one of the hostages got the gun away from him and killed him. Maybe we need to backtrack to the eighth floor and see if the same thing happened there. There could be a hostage alive, hiding—”
“No. That’s not what happened.” There was a harsh ratcheting, the click of the automatic rifle being dropped into position, the frozen sound of breath barely daring to emerge, waiting for the inevitable and still trying to figure out why. “You’re way too smart for your own good, Taylor. Way too smart.”
“I don’t understand.”
Daniel didn’t, either. He’d twisted and turned himself around taking pains to be silent, crawling toward the vent grate, wishing he had brought Johnny’s .38 with him after all. He could hear the quiet chuckle from the older man, could smell the fear of the other one above all the more pungent odors wafting through the vent.
He reached the grate just as the answer came.
“McShane was kind enough to send an emissary to Richter offering an extra ‘retirement plan’, you might call it, for a few trusted men. Four of us.”
“Who?”
Daniel peered through the metal vent, careful to keep out of the light. He could see the back of the younger SWAT officer, his hands in the air as he stood facing the other man’s rifle. And that was almost all of what was visible of the older man; the end of his rifle and the toes of his boots. His body was hidden in the shadows of the front entryway.
“It won’t matter if I tell you now. I’ll have to kill you anyway.”
“You didn’t have to say anything.” There was anger riding below the surface.
The rifle moved a little as the man shrugged. “If you hadn’t turned him over and noticed who he was, I wouldn’t have,” he agreed. “But, as I said, you’re smart. You’d have thought about it, worried it over in your mind…and you’d begin to question. We can’t have that.”
“They’ll know you did it.”
“My boy, this building will be in smithereens before dawn. There won’t be enough left of you to do a ballistics test on; nor will those poor, overworked coroners or CSIs even try.”
Daniel could sense he was smiling by the smug tone of his answer.
“I can’t believe Don Richter—or you—would betray the team.”
“Believe it.” The voice was icy.
“Who are the others?” Contempt belied the calm question.
Daniel could see the tense lines of the younger man’s body, knew he was itching to take Billings’s rifle away from him and ram it down his throat.
“Frazier and Creston.” There was silence, then a harsh bark of laughter from the shadows at Taylor’s incredulous expression.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I have no reason to lie at this point, Taylor. After all, you won’t be telling anyone.”
Daniel figured the conversation was over as far as Billings was concerned. Taylor’s fist clenched, as he sensed it, too.
Daniel could do nothing but provide some kind of diversion, give Taylor a chance to wrest the rifle from Billings’s grasp. But that was all.
He let out a piercing cry that echoed through the vent. In the deadly stillness of the hotel, others might hear it and come searching, but he’d be gone. The hotel was vast, and he knew it better than anyone. Just as he let the yell pour out of him and wash through the ventwork, he heard a burst of gunfire from one of the guns.
He leaned up to watch as Taylor leapt across the f
ew feet that separated him from Billings, knocking the rifle upward, to the side. They wrestled against the wall, the close quarters of the entryway providing neither of them the ability to bring their longarms to bear on one another.
Billings was the shorter of the two, and stockier, but Taylor had the advantage of his youth and the added strength of a more muscular build. Taylor landed a hard punch to Billings’s cheek, but Billings was fighting for his life. He shook it off and tried to knee Taylor’s groin. Taylor blocked the move.
“You’re fighting like a woman, Cal,” he sneered, his fingers closing around Billings’s throat.
“You’re…the one…who’s bleeding,” Billings shot back in a hoarse jeer.
Taylor’s next punch put him out cold. He rose from Billings’s inert form, panting from the exertion. Daniel watched in disbelief as he stood, deliberating with himself, then snatched Billings’s gun and turned for the door.
“Kill him!” Daniel yelled.
Taylor turned slowly toward the grate, and Daniel saw the blood soaking through the green pants of the SWAT uniform. “Who are you?” Taylor swayed, putting his hand on the wall to hold himself upright.
For a moment, Daniel sat like a stone statue, unable to answer, not knowing how to answer. The question rang in his ears. Who are you? A man. Was he? Was he even that? A soldier? Not anymore. Not for a long time. A medic? No. But he knew enough, remembered enough to see that this man Taylor was bleeding out before his eyes.
“A friend,” he called.
Taylor gave a weary nod. He stood looking at his blood, watching it drip to the floor.
Daniel leaned close to the grate. “Taylor!”
The wounded man lifted his head, meeting Daniel’s intense stare. “Meet me down the hall—at the elevators.”
Taylor nodded. “I’ll try.”
Daniel didn’t wait any longer. He began to crawl as fast as possible through the tubing, pushing aside the aching in his knees and the soreness of his palms.
The tenth floor was the midway mark, with a real floor at the end of the crawlspace on the opposite end. A door opened up into a side hallway—if it wasn’t locked. Ronnie tried to always make sure it wasn’t locked, just in case Daniel needed to use it. He was hoping one of the other maintenance workers hadn’t locked it since Ronnie had checked it.
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