Taken

by Chris Jordan

  Shane takes my hand, gives it a reassuring squeeze. “The next few hours are going to be crucial. I want you to be very, very careful. This man, whoever he turns out to be, he won’t hesitate to kill.”

  “I’ll be careful. You be careful, too.”

  “Always,” he says with a grin. “That’s my motto.”

  I’m thinking that I’ve known Randall Shane for less than a week, but already we’re so comfortable in each other’s company that it’s like we’re old friends. Is it because we’ve been thrown together under incredible stress and pressure, or is there something else going on?

  A voice hails us from the doorway to the apartment building. Big Mike Vernon stands on the steps with his son, who clings to his hand. “Mikey decided he wanted to say goodbye to the nice lady,” he explains.

  The boy shrieks gleefully, then buries his face in his father’s ample midriff, as if hiding from the world.

  We wave and turn away. Spatters of cool rain hit my face, and thunder rumbles in the distance.

  “God is bowling,” I say. “Tenpins in heaven.”

  “What?”

  “My mother used to say that.”

  “Uh-huh. We need the rain, I guess.”

  We’re crossing the street when a car pulls out from the curb. I’m not really paying attention, other than to note that it’s silver or gray, and looks like a new model. Shane, however, is alert, and that’s the only reason I’m alive, because when the car suddenly accelerates with a screech of rubber, he scoops me up in his long, strong arms, and flings me out of the way.

  I land on my back and get the wind knocked out of me, and sense the whoosh of the tires just missing my head. But there’s a horrible sound of flesh on metal, and then Shane is flying over the hood, spinning through the air, and he comes to earth with a sickening crunch, headfirst.

  Behind me, Mike is shouting, but I’m not really paying attention. All I can think about is Randall Shane, and the blood, and the way he lies as still as death.

  37

  a sleep so deep

  Four miles from the scene of the hit-and-run, with sirens keening in the distance, Cutter pulls into the breakdown lane, opens the door and pukes his guts out, spattering the pavement. Not because he’s revolted by what he’s done—assault with a motor vehicle is a whole lot less visceral than slitting an enemy’s throat—but because he lost control of the situation. Because he allowed himself to react without thinking.

  He’d been parked there at the curb, engine quietly ticking over, debating whether or not to be on his way. So far as he was aware, no one in Sussex had any connection to him. Whoever Supermom was visiting up there, it was not likely to be anyone who could point her in the right direction. She and her hired hand were spinning their wheels. Maybe the tall, lanky dude was intentionally running up the bill, taking her on wild-goose chases for billable hours. Wouldn’t be the first time that lawyers and private dicks conspired to strip a client of assets.

  Almost made him feel sorry for the lady.

  And then, incredibly, just as Mrs. Bickford and company were about to leave, a familiar figure had appeared in the entrance of the tenement building. It took precisely one heartbeat for Cutter to recognize Big Mike Vernon—hadn’t seen the guy in eight years—and to understand with sickening finality that all his elegant survival plans had just been blown sky high.

  If they knew enough to seek out and question Mike, then they were already onto him, or soon would be.

  In that moment he simply reacted, pedal to the metal. He’d felt the collision, seen the investigator airborne, flying over the fender, but was less certain about the woman. Maybe he’d hit her, maybe not. Didn’t dare turn around and attempt to finish the job, not with Big Mike present and screaming for the cops. The guy looked huge and slow, but the glacial appearance was deceptive. When he had to move, Mike was more than capable. Best to flee the scene before the cavalry arrived.

  Not that killing Mrs. Bickford would put the cork back in the bottle anyhow. The knowledge was out there, no doubt already passed on to lawyers and prosecutors and various law enforcement agencies. He had to face the fact that for all his elaborate precautions, he’d somehow been identified, that cops would be looking for him in the next few hours. So, a major alteration in the plans. The surgery would proceed, of course—there was no turning back from that—but he had to stop entertaining the notion that he’d be able to return to his life as a devoted father, that they’d all live happily ever after, he and Lyla and Jesse.

  Wasn’t going to happen. The ever-after was already here.

  You’re a dead man, he tells himself. Deal with it.

  After rinsing out his mouth with a bottle of warm springwater, Cutter takes a deep breath and carefully maneuvers the Caddy back into traffic. Have to ditch the vehicle at the first opportunity. But not before he returns to the boatyard. Not before he prepares Mrs. Bickford’s boy for what must come.

  Sad but true. The boy has to be sacrificed. Tomas will be sedated—Cutter doesn’t wish to cause him any discomfort—and then at the appropriate moment an ice pick will render him brain dead, and he will begin the short journey to the end of his life.

  When Ted passed away I was sitting in the hospital cafeteria, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on a chocolate-chip cookie and mindlessly watching CNN. Talking heads jabbering about politics or crime or maybe something inane, who knew, since the volume was blessedly down. And I was having trouble holding a coherent thought in my head, not having slept in more than twenty-four hours. Ted had been through about four crash codes in that time period, but when I’d left him he’d been resting peacefully, and it was my intention to return to his bedside and stay with him for however long it took, days or weeks, it didn’t matter. That’s what I tried to tell myself. The truth is that knowing he was dying didn’t mean I was ready for it to actually happen. Just as I hadn’t been willing to accept that his form of lymphoma was a death sentence.

  At first I’d wanted him home, made comfortable with hospice care, so it would happen in familiar surroundings, but he’d said no. Afraid of spooking Tommy by letting death into house. If the boy were older and could comprehend what was going on, maybe, but how would a child react at four? Why risk inflicting more trauma than necessary? Ted wanted Tommy to remember him alive and happy, not in pain and dying. Best to stay under medical supervision, where they knew what to do, how to cope with the terminal cases.

  Trouble was, I didn’t know how to cope. And to this day I’m convinced that Ted chose his moment, sending me away for coffee and a cookie while he prepared to leave his poor, ruined body.

  Randall Shane is different, but somehow the same. Not a husband or a lover, but most definitely a friend. And here I am, keeping vigil, at least for a few precious minutes.

  “Mrs. Brickyard?”

  It feels silly and a bit stupid answering to the wrong name—must have been Mike Vernon’s doing, as they loaded Shane into the ambulance—but I can’t bring myself to correct the E.R. doctor, just in case he’s been tuned in to the local news.

  The man in the white coat looks a bit like Doogie Howser, M.D., but he’s all business, with none of Doogie’s sympathetic bedside manner. Only on TV, I guess. Impossible to say what he’s about to impart, as his expression gives nothing away.

  “I’m Dr. Vance,” he announces, then checks his notes before continuing. “Mr. Shane is badly concussed, as we assumed.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “The patient hasn’t regained consciousness, but vital signs are stable for the moment. Head injuries, these first few hours, are crucial. We’ll be monitoring his condition, ready to intervene if his brain swells.”

  “The way he hit, I thought sure he broke his neck.”

  “X-rays showed no serious damage to the spinal column,” the doctor says, ticking off the injury list. “Most of his ribs are broken. Various scrapes and cuts. Let me see…his kidneys may be bruised. He sustained a hairline skull fracture that may eventually requir
e surgery. We’ll make that decision later. Are you next of kin, by any chance?” he asks, indicating his medical notes.

  “There are no next of kin, as far as know.” I fumble in my purse for Mario Savalo’s business card and give him her number, which he dutifully writes down.

  “And Ms. Savalo would be?”

  “His employer. May I see him?”

  “If you like. I must warn you, Mr. Shane is nonresponsive. What we’d expect at this juncture, with a severe blow to the cranium. Oh. The police are on the way. They’ll want to interview you about the accident. I understand it was a hit-and-run.”

  “Yes, it was. I’ll be in the ICU if anybody needs me. Thank you, Dr. Vance.”

  He nods, walks away, on to the next patient.

  Shane is barely recognizable. Every aspect of his face is swollen and misshapen, including his ears, scrapped raw on the pavement and now tinted with green antiseptic. I’d been expecting to see his poor head swaddled in bandages, but the ICU nurse explains that it’s best to leave the scalp stitches exposed for the time being. The hair has been shaved away around the scalp wound, making it look even more vulnerable.

  “He’s breathing on his own,” I observe.

  “Mr. Shane is getting oxygen,” the nurse says. “That little tube in his nose.”

  “But no respirator.”

  “Not unless he needs it.”

  “That’s a good sign, no respirator.”

  “Very good,” agrees the nurse.

  I slip my hand into his, give it a squeeze, hoping for some sort of instinctive response. His hand is cool, dry, and does not respond.

  “That doesn’t mean anything one way or the other,” the nurse says, trying to be helpful. “Think of him as being deeply asleep.”

  “He’d like that,” I say.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind. His belongings?”

  “In the plastic bag, hanging from the bed.”

  Shane’s notes are spattered with blood but legible.

  “I’ll give these to the police,” I explain. “It may help.”

  Then I kiss his swollen lips and leave.

  I’m lying about the police. My son is still out there. I can’t risk being detained. I can’t even wait to see if Randall Shane is going to live, but as I hurry from the hospital I know one thing for sure. He’d understand.

  38

  already dead

  Cutter pulls the stolen Cadillac into a slot behind the boat shed, where it can’t be seen from the access road. Not much traffic in this part of the waterfront, but with his ID out there in the wind, he needs to be ultracautious for the next twelve hours. After that it won’t matter.

  Not that he intends to let himself be arrested. When the moment comes, he’ll do a Houdini, or maybe check out permanently, he hasn’t decided. No rush, he’s good at making instant life-or-death decisions under pressure, and right now he has to concentrate on getting the job done. Not for the first time he regrets having to terminate Hinks and Wald, not only because he rather enjoyed their moronic banter, but because it makes the execution of his plan more complicated.

  No use crying over split blood, he tells himself. Have to play the hand that’s dealt. Living happily ever after had been, he now realizes, a fantasy, a way to keep focused. The odds of getting away undetected had always been low, on the order of drawing to an inside straight flush. Let it go, Cap, get on with the show.

  Next move, prepare the boy.

  Inside the shed, Cutter carefully snugs the padlock to the inner hasp. Insuring there will be no surprises from an inquisitive landlord, not that the old man was likely to drop by unannounced. Still, you can’t be too careful.

  Turning from the padlocked entrance, he senses that something is wrong. Can’t put his finger on what exactly. A noise or sound? Possibly.

  Cutter stops breathing, listens. Notes the transformer hum of the idling air compressor. A barely audible metallic ticking that could be steel drums expanding in the heat—the interior of the shed has gotten quite warm—and from outside the faint cry of a wheeling gull. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  He wonders if the contents of the fifty-five-gallon drums are spooking him. Yesterday it seemed vitally important to dispose of the drums and the bodies they contained. Today, much less crucial. It’s just dead meat. Nothing human about it, not anymore. But he’s keenly aware of Hinks and Wald, their telltale hearts beating in the back of his mind. The look in their eyes as they died.

  Stop it.

  Cutter smacks his palm against his forehead, hard. Grunts and grimaces and forces the kinks out of his mind. The kinks and the hinks and the hinks and the kinks. Stop it. Take a deep breath, hold until your mind clears. Focus on the mission. Focus on saving Jesse, on returning your son to his grieving mother, on making things right in her world, if not your own. You have no life to lose. You’re a dead man, and dead men feel no pain. Dead men do not suffer from guilt or regret. Dead men do as they please.

  The boy. Concentrate on the boy in the white room. He’s waiting. He knows what must be done because he saw it in your lying eyes. You think Hinks can haunt you? You ain’t seen nothing yet, amigo. The boy will send your soul to hell like a rocket-propelled grenade, exploding into eternity.

  Stop, stop, stop.

  Cutter shudders, a full-body writhing, like a snake speed-shedding it’s vile skin. He vomits hot, foul-smelling air. And then he’s clean again and ready for what he must do. Quick-marching to the enclosure, he keys the outer padlock, remembers to lock it behind him. Clever boy, he’ll be plotting an escape. Four strides and he’s at the inner door of the enclosure, noting the blood spatter left by the late Walter Hinks, furious because the clever boy had broken his nose. Hinks complaining, I’m breeving froo my mouf, totally unaware of the comic implications, or that he’d made himself redundant, expendable.

  In the white room, chaos.

  Cutter instantly notes the missing plywood wall panel, the stink of the upended potty-chair. Sees the ragged hole clawed through the Sheetrock of the outer wall. A hole just big enough for a boy to pass through.

  Gone.

  The loss brings a banshee howl from his throat. A broken scream of grief, because if the boy is gone, if he’s found a way out of the boat shed, then all the killing was for nothing.

  Cutter lets instinct take over. Instinct shaped by years of training. Without even thinking about it, he crashes through the damaged Sheetrock, finds himself standing in the back of the boat shed, with the dilapidated stern of the ancient Chris Craft rising above him.

  He searches for a breach in the outer walls. Walls and roof constructed of galvanized steel, fastened from the outside. One of the features that had attracted him to the building in the first place. The boy unscrewed the plywood inner wall somehow—how did he manage that without tools?—but galvanized sheathing is another matter. Needs a drill and a hacksaw, at the very least, or better yet a cutting torch. No torch on the premises, but there’s got to be a hacksaw lying around somewhere. Did he find it? Did clever Tomas cut his way to freedom?

  Cutter forces himself to complete a circumnavigation of the outer walls. Smacking on the sheathing as he goes, looking for weak points. With great relief, he ascertains that the outer barrier remains intact, securely fastened to the steel frames of the building.

  The boy is inside the shed. Inside and hiding.

  “Tomas?” Cutter hardly recognizes his own voice. “It’s Steve. Guess what, you passed the test.”

  Making it up as he goes along, as he so often did while interrogating prisoners and suspects and civilian troublemakers. Breaking them with his mind, molding them to his will. Creating stories and scenarios that seemed so plausible that they were soon dying to cooperate.

  “This whole thing was a test, Tomas! An elaborate test! We had to know if you were strong enough, clever enough to find a way out of the white room. You passed the test with flying colors. Congratulations!”

  Cutter prowls the boat shed, eyes
scanning every dark corner, searching for movement, for the quivering of a frightened boy.

  “This is part of a top-secret government project, Tomas,” he says, riffing. “You’ve been chosen. We need a boy of your size and your cunning to complete a very important mission. Your mom knows all about it. She gave us her permission.”

  Cutter finds the ladder on the floor, under the boat. That’s what his brain noted when he first came into the shed. Not a noise, but a visual clue: the old wooden ladder was missing from the side of the Chris Craft.

  He sets the ladder against the hull, climbs up into the cockpit. The engine hatch is open, tools strewn about. All staged, part of making it look good as if the landlord came by to check on progress. Yup, we’re tearing apart that old Chrysler engine, make it purr like an eight-cylinder pussycat.

  He crouches. Gets a visual line from the back of the engine compartment into the ruined cabin. Interior panel laminations peeling away, the floor all funky with dry rot. There’s a V-berth forward, a small galley, lazarette lockers under the seats, cupboards and a small enclosed toilet. Plenty of places for a determined eleven-year-old to hide.

  Inside the cabin, Cutter sniffs. Amazing how strong and detectable the stink of fear, if you let your brain sort out the various odors. He detects motor oil, rust, mildew, rotting carpet, his own rank odor. Can’t detect the boy, but he must be here. Hiding in a locker, under the V-berth, somewhere very close.

  Time to reach out and touch someone.

  “Tomas? I’ve got a cell phone in my pocket. Your mother really wants to talk to you. She wants to explain what’s been going on these last few days. I know you won’t believe me—why should you?—but you’ll listen to your mother.”

  Using the toe of his boot, Cutter lifts the lid on the lazarette, exposing bundles of rotted rope, rusted anchor chains.

  “Come on out, Tomas. You passed the test.”