by Ben Miller
When they got to the threshold leading downward, Dana leaned forward to look at Reilly’s face. He intentionally kept his eyes half-closed, feigning lethargy. She lifted him up even higher so that she could shorten his body sufficiently to make the turn with him. She backed onto the top step and pulled him along. After Dana had descended about four steps, Reilly’s heels slid onto the top step. He now had a superior position. He now had leverage. Now was his only chance.
As soon as his feet flopped onto the second step, he fired his quads to pull his knees up. It burned intensely, but Reilly pleasantly realized that his muscles performed as instructed. He put his feet on the front side of the third step and pushed off with every ounce of remaining strength in his legs. Dana had no recourse to defend against this force. She let go of her hold on him with her left hand to reach for the railing, but she did not find purchase. She screamed as she quickly fell backwards, and they both flew down the steps.
It happened so fast that Reilly could not be certain, but, based on their trajectory and the crack he heard upon impact, he presumed that the back of Dana’s skull was the first thing to hit the concrete floor, thus bearing the brunt of the fall. He bounced once as he landed on top of her, and then he slid off the right side of her, the lower half of his legs resting on the bottom three steps. He pushed back with some additional newfound strength to put some distance between himself and Dana. He rolled onto his left side and pulled his knees into his abdomen, preparing to strike out with a two-legged kick upon her advance.
But Dana did not move. Reilly consciously slowed his breathing and focused on Dana, looking for any twitch that might signal arousal. He could see her chest slowly rise and fall shallowly. He could detect no other movement.
He had to assume that she could rouse at any movement, so he needed to plot a further defense or escape plan. He lifted his head to view the stairs. He counted twelve of them. He considered trying to find a way up to his feet and hopping up the steps. He rested his head on the concrete floor and tried to gauge how much fuel his leg muscles might have left. He quickly judged it to be insufficient, at least for a while.
As he didn’t know how long he had to recuperate until Dana awoke from her concussion, he needed a different plan. Bouncing up the stairs might work, but only if he turned out to have enough time to rest.
He looked around the basement, which consisted of one large, open space covering the footprint of the entire house. Two bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling beams adequately lit the entirety of the room. The stairs were situated approximately in the middle. Faye Dellahunt’s music room had been built into the back one-third of the basement, behind Reilly’s current position, and provided the only segregation in the space. As he extended his neck to look opposite the stairs, he saw a tall metal box, which he recalled as Richard Dellahunt’s gun safe. He surmised that this is where Dana had found and kept the Taser. He hoped she had left the safe unlocked when she had come down here to retrieve the Taser earlier.
He rolled onto his back, pulled his knees up, and planted his feet on the floor to shuffle himself across the concrete. As he approached the safe, he twisted around onto his stomach. He bent at the waist as he twisted his hips, so that his shoulder would slide along the floor rather than his face. He eventually got to a kneeling position. He had to rest there for several seconds before getting up on his haunches and leaning against the safe. It rocked as he did, and Reilly noticed a small crack in the concrete floor near the front leg of the safe, making the underlying surface uneven. He steadied the large box. Knowing it must weigh several hundred pounds, he greatly wanted to avoid having it fall on him.
He brought his hands up and tried the handle.
Locked. It didn’t budge.
He grunted in disappointment, the only sound he could make with the duct tape across his lips. He lowered himself back to the floor to contemplate plan B.
77
Jack loved helicopters. He knew plenty of people who feared flying, and numerous others who found it exhilarating, regardless of the vehicle. But for him the mode of travel meant everything. He was as ambivalent about flying in an airplane as he was excited by soaring in a helicopter. He looked out the window and watched the treetops whirring by, reveling in the adrenaline rushing through his veins.
As soon as Jack had gotten off the phone with Tina Langenbahn, Jeff Pine had returned to the office from the parole hearing at the nearby Federal Prison in Devens, Massachusetts.
While the entire team felt skeptical about any information coming from Tina, they knew they had to track down every possible lead. As a result the team had launched into a full-scale communications attack on ESPN, the cable sports conglomerate and home to SportsCenter, its flagship program. Camilla scoured their website, while Jack and Rita reached out to contact information as quickly as Camilla could find it. Within about ten minutes, shortly after his diversion of talking with Corinne about the happenings in Richmond, Jack had gotten in touch with a marketing executive who gave them the name of the voice of the network: Stanton Newkirk.
“Is everything OK?” asked the executive, whose name Jack had already forgotten.
Jack had replied by saying he was not at liberty to discuss it. The executive had provided Jack with a phone number and address. Newkirk apparently lived with his wife in Waterbury, Connecticut, about fifteen miles southwest of ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol.
“Oh, man. I just hope everything is OK,” the executive had said, just as they arrived at the airport. Jack had been the first to hop out of the SUV and speed-walk toward the helicopter. He had begun to sign off when the executive continued. “I hope the baby’s OK.”
Jack had stopped in his tracks. “What?! What did you say?!”
“The baby,” the executive had repeated. “I hope the baby’s OK. Stanton is on paternity leave. He and his wife had been trying to adopt for years, and they finally got a baby, just yesterday. A girl, I think.”
Within minutes Jeff spoke with his Boston office and secured the helicopter. En route to the airport, Jeff had told the pilot Stanton Newkirk’s address. Serendipity smiled upon them, the pilot had told Jeff, as the address was less than five minutes from the small Waterbury Airport.
Now, as much as a helicopter ride could enthrall him, Jack couldn’t wait to get to their destination. They had found their man. Soon he would recover Ella Hadden for her grieving mother, and discover what happened with Portia Langenbahn and Theodore Gardner.
As they began to descend, and Jack could see the landing pad in front of them, he briefly reflected on what brought them here to the Piper: the voice.
Randall had been right all along.
78
Reilly wiggled his ankles, realizing he had more slack there now than he had previously determined. Perhaps the zip tie had weakened in the fall somehow, or perhaps he had overestimated its efficacy earlier. He rolled onto his side and bent his legs back behind him, hoping he could get them high enough to use his hands to take his shoes off. He could reach his shoes, but he couldn’t get any traction. He maneuvered back into a kneeling position and used his hands to untie his shoes. He then flung himself back to the ground and began squirming, trying to wriggle his ankles free. If he could just accomplish this, he could ascend the stairs and run to safety.
For a second he thought he heard something. He stilled and looked over at Dana. He didn’t think she had moved from her previous position, but he was pretty sure her breathing had become less shallow, more vigorous.
His urgency intensified. He brought his feet back up behind his back so he could dig his thumbs under the zip tie. It took less than half a minute for him to rub the skin under his thumbnail raw to the point of bleeding, but he continued nevertheless. Finally the zip tie slipped past his left heel. He extracted his entire foot from the small plastic loop. His feet were loose. He could stand. He could run.
Dana sat up abruptly and in the same motion twisted her head to look at Reilly. Her movements reminded him of
Robert Patrick’s metallic Terminator from the second movie in the blockbuster franchise. Reilly instinctively tried to shuffle backwards, to put himself into an effective defensive position. Dana got to her knees and stood up, clearly unsteady. Before Reilly knew how much ground he had covered, he bumped into the huge gun safe behind him. It teetered. Reilly quickly spun to move away, still on his butt and scooting along the ground. With his hands cinched behind his back, he couldn’t stop long enough to catch his balance and get to his feet. Dana noticed the unsteady gun safe and ran toward it. With a loud howl she grabbed the top corner of it and pulled it forward. The massive box toppled over, crashing toward the ground. Reilly had almost cleared its landing space, but not entirely. The top edge of the safe caught him just below mid-shin, crushing his left ankle and foot underneath.
Reilly tried to let out an agonized scream, but his mouth wouldn’t open; it translated into a horrific gurgle deep in his throat. He had never perceived of—let alone experienced—such pain. His vision went black for several seconds, and he thought he was going to pass out. His nostrils flared as he tried to catch his breath, a feat that seemed impossible with his mouth taped shut. He had to force himself to maintain consciousness. He focused on the threat of further imminent danger and looked to find Dana. She had not moved from her spot where she had toppled the safe. She had leaned forward with her hands on her knees. She straightened at the waist in an effort to stand but could not seem to catch her balance. She put her hands back on her knees. Within seconds she vomited a huge amount of fluid that splashed against the concrete floor. She backed up and leaned against the wall before she vomited again. She didn’t seem to care that the emesis stained the entire front of her blouse.
Sweat had begun to flow profusely from Reilly’s brow, and he could see the same happening to Dana. She stumbled forward and stopped about halfway to the foot of the stairs, still stooped with her hands on her knees. She lifted her right foot, almost as if her hand picked it up by its tight grip on her kneecap. Before she could plant her foot back on the floor, her left leg gave out. She collapsed, really more of a crumple, defenselessly smacking her face on the concrete. Though the light remained dim, Reilly could easily notice that her right pupil was at least double the size of her left. Seconds later she instantaneously stiffened, as if the floor had suddenly sent electricity through her. Reilly wondered if somehow the Taser had gone off again in a self-injurious accident. Her eyes rolled up and to the right, at a seemingly impossible angle, leaving only the whites of her eyes exposed. Reilly wanted to avert his gaze, but he couldn’t. Subconsciously his focus on the horrific scene in front of him allowed for a diversion away from the excruciating misery below his left knee.
Dana’s entire body then began to convulse, all of her extremities tremulous, moving to some unheard sickening rhythm. More vomit trickled out of her mouth. After a few long minutes, she stopped seizing. Not long after that, she stopped breathing altogether.
79
From the air Jeff Pine had called in local police back-up so they could meet the FBI team at the Newkirk’s home. The uniformed officers positioned themselves around the perimeter to prevent any escape, should Newkirk decide to run. It took much convincing for Rita to stay back with the Connecticut locals, but Jeff insisted. The three of them—Jeff, Jack, and Camilla—knocking on the front door would suffice. If any trouble occurred, Jeff and Jack could subdue the adults and Camilla could rescue the infant.
It hadn’t taken long for Stanton Newkirk to open his front door, a cheerful grin on his face. In that instant, Jack surmised that Newkirk expected a package, something congratulatory about their new bundle of joy. A nearly impish man just the other side of middle-aged, Newkirk did not match Jack’s mental image of the Piper in any way. Upon seeing the three suit-wearing, credential-brandishing individuals on his patio, though, Newkirk’s smile dropped from his face, followed quickly by the color. He stopped breathing. His eyes watered. He did not utter a word.
True to his nature, Jack refused to break the silence. He wanted to see what Newkirk would do. Camilla, having worked enough with Jack to know his tactics, kept quiet as well, a watchful eye on not only Newkirk himself but also the hallway behind him.
Unfortunately, Jeff Pine did not share their prior experience nor have any alacrity in telepathy. “Stanton Newkirk?” he asked.
Newkirk nodded, still incapable of speaking.
“I’m Special Agent Jeff Pine, and this is Special Agent Camilla Vanderbilt and Special Agent Jackson Byrne. We’re from the FBI. Can we come in please?”
Newkirk did not budge. Not a muscle twitched on his face. For a moment Jack thought the man had fallen into a catatonic state.
“Mr. Newkirk?” Jeff pressed, but the man still did not show any response.
Slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, Camilla reached her arm out to place a hand on Newkirk’s forearm. “It’s OK, Mr. Newkirk,” she said in a gentle tone.
He blinked out of his spell and looked down at the hand on his arm.
“We need to talk to you,” Camilla finished.
Newkirk glanced back up to meet Camilla’s eyes. His head bobbed in a subtle nod and he slowly turned to walk down the hall. The three agents followed him; Jack closed the front door behind them after offering a reassuring nod to the dozen officers watching from the shadows outside.
“What’s going on, dear?” Kim Newkirk asked as she emerged from a room to their left. She held a sleeping infant in her arms.
Newkirk suddenly burst into tears. His torso shuddered. He fell into a crouch, and then slowly to his knees.
Kim watched his breakdown in astonishment. Terrified, she looked at the three strangers in her hallway and instinctively clutched the baby girl tighter in her arms. “Who are you?” she whispered. Jack couldn’t decide if she tried to remain quiet for the baby or if that was all the air she could force out through her lungs. “What do you want?” She began backing away, looking at them as if they were body snatchers from some 50s B movie.
“I’m so sorry!” Stanton Newkirk wailed. Jack guessed he was apologizing to Kim and not to them.
Kim looked at him, her confusion mounting. “Stan?” she said more loudly. “What…?”
Newkirk simply hung his head, placed his palms on his knees for support, and continued sobbing, intermittently mumbling, “So sorry…”
Jack knew Newkirk would fully cooperate once he could pull himself together. He knew they would get Ella Hadden back from poor, befuddled Kim Newkirk. Stanton Newkirk was a pawn. He was not the Piper.
Then who is the Piper?
80
It took several minutes for Reilly to look away from Dana Dellahunt’s corpse. Mesmerized, he couldn’t stop gazing at her blank eyes, the pupils buried back in her skull. He had never seen anything like it. Plus, he half-expected her to rise again, like an undead character from one of those seemingly ubiquitous zombie TV shows and movies. Finally he convinced himself of her death, without eligibility of return.
Once he settled on this realization, his attention inevitably turned to his ruined left leg. For the first time since the quarter-ton safe fell on it, he looked down to examine the damage. The pain had mostly subsided, from the initial stabbing sensation of a million stilettos to a dull, bone-deep ache. When he propped himself up on his elbows to look, he got a little light-headed. A small pool of blood congealed around his pants at the intersection of his leg and the safe. These two observations in combination concerned him that he might be losing a substantial amount of blood. He noticed that the safe sat less than an inch off the floor, indicating two horrifying possible consequences. For one, he had no idea how much blood might be obscured by the safe itself. Secondly, his lower leg, ankle, and foot had been condensed to a very small size. He got queasy, so he laid his head back down on the concrete to let the nausea pass. If he threw up with his mouth taped shut, he would surely aspirate most of the vomitus into his lungs, which would kill him faster than blood loss from his injury.
Survival training from his academy days at Quantico kicked in, giving him a much-needed sense of pride. He needed to make a tourniquet to try to slow the blood loss. However, he could not devise a way to do it with his hands shackled as they were. He raised his head to look down at his belt. It just sat there, immobile, teasing him—a perfectly serviceable tourniquet with no way of working itself down to his shin.
He lay back down on the concrete, catching his breath and contemplating his next move. He turned his head in all directions but found nothing within reach. He lay in almost the exact middle of this portion of the room, a perfectly safe distance from any of the walls.
He twisted at the waist to bring his hands to his hips so he could clutch at his front pocket. He remembered that Dana had taken his cell phone from him, but he needed to feel the empty pocket again just to be sure. He wished he could call Corinne. That would be his first call. He could call 9-1-1 later. Right now he longed to hear her voice, to feel her comfort.
“HELP!!” he tried to scream. He impressed himself with the volume he could generate without opening his lips. “HELP! HELP! HELP!” He wondered if anyone outside the house could hear him groan. It was the middle of the day, or so he guessed—he had lost all sense of time. Daylight still crawled through the block window to his left near the ceiling. Most people in this lower-middle-class neighborhood probably were at work and would be for hours to come. Besides, most of these old New England homes had very solid foundations to withstand harsh winter frosts. If anyone were nearby, he doubted his muffled cries would be audible.
He put his right foot on the safe and tried to push it off his left foot. He put as much force into it as he could, but the safe did not move at all. He brought his leg up into his chest, thinking he might be able to inch the safe off himself with a series of blows. He kicked the safe with all of his might, which prompted an electrical bolt of pain to shoot from the tips of his left toes, through his spine, and into his brain. He cried out in pain, regenerating a fresh set of tears in his eyes. He had to focus on his breathing again, limited by how much air he could draw in through his nose. Once the pain began to subside, he decided to assess the success of his endeavor. The safe hadn’t seemed to move. He quickly abandoned this kicking strategy—too painful without any perceived benefit.