Not likely, she thought with a flash of bitter anger. He’ll just walk away. Out of sight, out of mind.
He’d regret her death, no doubt, but it would no more change his life than her departure four years earlier had done, i.e. not at all.
For the first time, though, that realization didn’t bring sadness or even anger. It brought her stubborn streak to the fore. He didn’t think he needed her? Well, he was just plain wrong about that. He needed her to keep him from getting stuck in his own rut, needed her to brighten his world with more than a few spider plants, needed her to force him to give her a chance, to give them a chance.
None of which was going to happen if she just sat there, waiting for the moment he showed up with the minidisk and Deighton killed them both.
Done with passivity, she narrowed her eyes and looked around the room, trying to come up with a plan. As she did so, she tugged sharply at the nylon ropes securing her wrists behind her back.
The chair creaked, bringing Deighton’s head up. Scowling, he stalked across the room, dragged her away from the wall, chair and all and checked her bindings. Satisfied, he muttered something under his breath and returned to the position he’d held before, standing just to the side of one of the windows, peering through the gap between the blinds and the frame, idly toying with his gun, sliding the safety off and then on again with rhythmic clicks. Off, then on. Off. On.
Mandy let out the breath she’d been holding, then shifted experimentally to see if what she thought had just happened actually had. When she moved her shoulders against the back of the chair, it creaked, more softly this time, and she felt one of the ladder-back slats give. She cupped her bound hands and moved again, and this time the slat fell free into her fingers, pricking her with the sharp end of a nail.
Forcing herself not to react outwardly and attract Deighton’s attention, she fumbled to set the nail against her bindings, and got to work.
PARKER was no expert at the covert stuff, but he was pretty sure he was being followed as he reached the police station. When he opened the main entrance door, he glanced back in time to catch the two guys who’d been tag-teaming him pause warily on opposite sides of the street.
He had to assume they wanted him to know he was being followed, as another level of warning. More importantly, based on the tracking implants Durst had used on his victims, he had to assume he’d been bugged, and that either his pursuers or the man holding Mandy would be listening to—and possibly even watching—him as he tried to get his hands on the minidisk.
He had to assume the worst, because if he didn’t assume they were listening and watching, then he’d be tempted to find some way to signal Stank. If the thugs caught the signal, though, it would mean the end for Mandy. He’d heard it in the other man’s voice.
No more games.
“Can I help you?” the desk officer asked automatically before looking up from his log book. When he recognized Parker, his expression warmed. “Hey, Doc. Stankowski is out in the field. Can I help you?”
“He sent me to pick up something for him. Is it okay if I just go on back?”
The desk officer waved him past. “Just remember to sign it out under Stank’s badge if it’s evidence.” They weren’t supposed to allow such things, but Stankowski had okayed it before under extreme circumstances.
Little did the younger officer know, these were the most extreme of circumstances.
Sweating lightly, expecting to hear shouts and footsteps at any moment, Parker let himself into Stank’s office and crossed to the desk. He popped a fake rock off its magnetized anchor on the underside of the desktop and shook out a small key, which he used to unlock the lower right-hand drawer, where the detective tended to keep checked-out evidence from ongoing cases. Parker held his breath, hoping Stank had held true to form with the evidence from this one.
Sure enough, the minidisk was neatly labeled and filed in the drawer as though waiting for him.
“Sorry, Stank,” he said aloud, knowing that this one act would probably get him booted out of his consultant role at best, land his ass in jail at worst. Either way, he feared it could spell the end of his friendship with Stankowski.
He’d do it, though, for Mandy. He’d do anything for her…except, of course, tell her that he’d do anything for her.
“Which only proves that I’m an idiot.” Remembering the likelihood of a bug, he shut up and moved to close the drawer. At the last second, he reached in, grabbed another evidence envelope and stuck it in an inner pocket of his heavy leather jacket, where a casual search might not find it.
Come on, Stank, he thought. Be as smart as we both know you are.
He didn’t say it aloud, though. He didn’t dare. Instead he stuck the minidisk in his pocket, relocked the desk and returned the key to its fake rock. Then he left the way he’d come in, sketching a wave at the desk officer and holding his breath in the hopes that Stank hadn’t called in and blown his cover story.
The officer, who was busy on the phone, barely looked up as he returned the wave.
Then Parker was out on the sidewalk, and he could breathe again. Moments later, he was in the street, hailing a cab. “Beacon Hill,” he said even before he got the taxi door shut, giving the address. “And step on it.”
As the cab joined the streaming traffic, he glanced back to see the two men who’d been following him both climb into a parked car together, apparently either assuming he hadn’t made them or not caring one way or the other. He figured on the latter, which should have intimidated him. He wasn’t intimidated, though. He was furious.
More importantly, he thought as he settled back in the rear of the cab and felt the bulge of his gun press beside his spine, he was armed. Maybe this wasn’t what his mother had envisioned when she’d brought him to the range all those years ago, but she’d led by example. She’d stood up for—and died for—what was right. For the people she’d loved.
Parker could do no less.
Chapter Fifteen
The landline phone in Parker’s town house was ringing when he let himself through the door. The two guys who had followed him were nowhere in sight, making him think he was, indeed, bugged. He reset the security system behind him, thinking to slow the others down if they wanted to come in after him—or even better, alert the cops if they tripped the alarm. Then he crossed the sitting room and grabbed the phone on the sixth ring, right before it dumped to voice mail.
“I’ve got it,” he said without preamble. “Let’s make the trade.”
“Agreed,” the metallic voice said, Mandy’s captor having apparently gone back to the voice changer now that they were on a landline.
“Where should I meet you?” Parker looked out the front window, but still couldn’t see the two men. “Are you coming here?”
“Go outside and get in the car.” As if on cue, the two men pulled up in front of Parker’s town house. “My associates will bring you to me.”
“Okay.” He didn’t bother asking why he’d been forced to make the side trip to his apartment—no doubt it had given Mandy’s captors time to see that nothing had changed at the Chinatown station, time to make sure the coast was still clear.
“You have sixty seconds to be outside on the sidewalk. No funny stuff.” The line went dead.
Outside, the sedan was double parked by the curb. One of the men waited in the driver’s seat, the other stood near the rear door, his posture one of casual menace.
Previously Parker had only caught glimpses of the men, and had marked them by their postures and clothing—a tall, slouching man with a black knit cap and thigh-length leather coat, and a shorter, stockier bearded guy wearing a short, thickly lined leather jacket that made him look even stockier.
When Parker reached them and got an up-close look, he saw that both of them wore identical expressions of detached calm that indicated the men were professional hard-asses.
Well, Parker thought, so am I. “You my chauffeurs?” he demanded.
“Shut up
.” The taller man, who was standing outside the car while his buddy waited with his foot on the gas, gave Parker a quick, efficient pat down. He pulled out the minidisk, looked at it and returned it to Parker’s jacket. When he found the 9 mm in his waistband, he pulled the gun and held it with easy familiarity. Then he opened the rear door of the sedan. “Get in.”
Which meant they didn’t just want the data disk, because they could’ve taken it then and there. For some reason they wanted him, too. Or else they actually were planning on giving him Mandy, unharmed.
He wasn’t betting on the latter, but he did feel a spurt of optimism that the search had missed finding the inner pocket with the second evidence envelope.
Come on, Stankowski, he urged. Use your smarts.
Parker climbed into the rear of the sedan, forcing outward impassivity even though his mind was churning. The windows in the rear of the car were heavily tinted, but that didn’t worry him because it wasn’t as though he wanted to attract attention. He needed to reach Mandy first, and for that, he was on his own.
He had to assume that the two men were in contact with the man holding her, had to assume that they were supposed to call in at regular intervals. That, and the lack of amateur jitters in his captors, meant he would have to time any planned attack perfectly. Too early and the man holding Mandy would know something was wrong. Too late and he’d miss his chance.
Perhaps he already had.
The tall guy got in beside him, still holding the 9 mm, and said, “Drive.”
As the vehicle pulled out into unusually sparse traffic, Parker looked out the window, away from the tall man, trying to pretend he was just as tough, just as experienced as they were. For the first time in a long, long time he was grateful for his upbringing, grateful that he’d spent more time on the streets than at the polo club, because he knew he was better off projecting an attitude of “don’t waste my time.” Fear would only escalate the situation, as would aggression.
“Hey, Radcliff,” the tall guy said unexpectedly as the driver turned away from Boston Common.
Parker turned to answer, and got a fist in the face.
Pain exploded and he jerked back, just getting his arms up in time to deflect a second punch, this one from the hand holding his pistol. The blow sang up his arm and sent him reeling back against the far door. Cursing, realizing he’d seriously misread the situation, he got a knee up and used it to hold the tall man off. He threw a punch and felt the impact sing up his knuckles. Shifting, he tried to get leverage, tried to figure out what the hell was going on. He blocked one punch but the next one got through.
The 9 mm connected with his temple, pain exploded in his head, and everything went black.
“EXCELLENT,” Deighton said into the disposable phone. “And don’t worry about hitting him too hard. It doesn’t much matter if he’s dead or alive at this point. His body will do.”
Parker! Mandy thought, heart going still in her chest. He was talking about Parker. The thugs had hurt him, maybe even killed him. Oh God. What was she going to do?
Rescue seemed an impossibility now.
The politician—still looking shiny and polished and TV ready in his suit and tie—glanced at her. “Durst was an idiot of a genius, but he did get one thing right. Why serve just one purpose when you can multitask?”
With that, he crossed the room and opened the door to the bathroom. The smell of gasoline prickled on the air even before he reached down and grabbed a red plastic five-gallon jug.
Mandy nearly drove the now-bent nail at the end of the wooden slat into her wrist at the sight, and the sudden surge of fear. She forced herself to keep going, though, to keep working on the strands of the nylon rope a little bit at a time. She was making progress, but it was slow going. Too slow, she feared.
Tears ran down her cheeks and her heart felt as though it was breaking in her chest. She sucked in a sobbing breath and kept working at her bonds, though, as Deighton shut the bathroom door, then crossed in front of her to open the window in the main room, letting in a gust of arctic winter air.
The slap of cold biting through her clothing made Mandy flinch, and for a second, her blood-slicked fingers slipped on the wooden slat. It banged against the wall, making a hollow, echoing sound.
Deighton spun and was starting toward her when his phone rang. It was a different ring than before, though, and instead of answering the cheap disposable, he cursed and pulled a slick, expensive phone from the inner pocket of his navy suit jacket.
He checked the caller ID, muttered something under his breath and answered it, sounding suddenly polished and urbane when he said, “Senator, what a coincidence. I was just about to call you.”
He turned away from Mandy and crossed to the window, where he stood and breathed clean air while her head spun from the gasoline fumes.
“Did you get a chance to read over the proposal I sent you? I think it would be an excellent forward-thinking move for that area of the city. Some of those old apartment complexes are just a five-alarm fire waiting to happen.”
And if they don’t happen on their own, you’ll make sure they do, Mandy thought as understanding dawned.
Stankowski had been right—it was about politics. Deighton had identified key areas of the city and set out to make problems he could come in and clean up.
He’d created terror so he could become a savior. Bastard, she thought, sniffing back tears and trying to fan the anger instead of the sobs.
“Yes, Senator. Thank you. I’ll see you then and there,” he said into the phone, then clicked it shut and made a satisfied noise. “Here they are. You’ll have your boyfriend back in a minute. What’s left of him, anyway.”
He left the room, heading through the door opposite the bathroom, into the apartment building hallway. He shut the door at his back, leaving her alone.
Sobbing with fear, with grief, she yanked her wrists apart, praying that the rope was weak enough to break.
It held.
“Come on, come on!” she chanted, ignoring the pain as she struggled against the bonds and the nylon strands cut into her wrists. She thought she felt the rope give a little, and sick excitement poured through her alongside the fear.
Hearing footsteps in the hallway, she tugged harder, but the ropes didn’t loosen, didn’t break, leaving her still bound when Deighton returned with his two enforcers behind him.
Between them, they dragged Parker’s limp form.
Mandy couldn’t stop the low moan from escaping, couldn’t stem the tears that ran down her face.
His head, arms and legs hung limply, and the men supported his entire dead weight, puffing from the exertion as they dragged him into the room and dumped him on the sofa. He landed on his side, facing her. She could see red patches and blood on his face, and there was a deep cut on his lip, but no fresh blood ran from the split.
She couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
He’s not dead, she told herself, refusing to believe it. He can’t be.
But deep down inside, she felt the scream building—the same scream she’d made as a little girl, when she and her father had returned from their errands, and she’d stepped inside the front door and slipped in her mother’s blood.
“You have the disk?” Deighton asked, barely looking at Parker’s body.
“Right here.” The taller man handed over an evidence bag with the disk inside.
Mandy stared at the minidisk, thinking of everything that had been put into motion the moment she’d pulled Irene Dulbecco’s chart off the rack at the E.R.
Deighton tucked the disk inside his suit jacket, lifted his weapon and calmly shot the tall man between the eyes.
The pistol made a popping noise that seemed too quiet for the act.
As the dead man crumpled to the ground and Mandy screamed behind her gag, the shorter guy shouted and went for his own weapon.
Deighton shot him in the temple before he got the gun from his pocket.
The thud of the second man
’s body hitting the ground seemed agonizingly loud in the sudden silence of the room, which was broken only by Mandy’s whimpers.
“This should give the cops some closure, don’t you think?” Deighton said conversationally. “These guys kidnapped you and used that as leverage to force Radcliff to recover the disk. There was a scuffle and the good doctor was mortally wounded. He managed to get off a few shots and kill the kidnappers, but unfortunately, he expired before he was able to free you. And the fire?” He shrugged. “They were obviously planning on torching the place to destroy the evidence.”
Mandy barely heard him. Her eyes were fixed on the dead men and she was shaking all over. Her tears had dried and her fear had turned to numb shock, and it didn’t seem important anymore that she’d managed to get her hands free. Her feet were still bound to the chair, and Deighton was halfway across the room. Even if she grabbed him, what hope did she have of overpowering him?
It was over. She was dead.
Deighton crossed to where his expensive cashmere coat was draped over one of the kitchen chairs, and withdrew a scarf and a cheap disposable lighter. After flicking the lighter, he used another strip from the roll of duct tape to fasten the thumb trigger in the “on” position, and placed the lighter between two of the sofa cushions, near Parker’s battered face.
Then he used the soft material to wipe down the pistol he’d just used to kill two men, and bent and placed the weapon near Parker’s body.
The sight of Deighton crouched down like that, so casual he was almost whistling as he set the scene, sent an unexpected wash of fury blazing through Mandy’s veins. Before she was aware of the impulse or the decision, she screamed and lunged at him.
The lunge carried her partway across the room, dragging the chair with her. She caught the killer by surprise, slamming into him knee-high. Her blow drove him staggering sideways, and he lost his grip on his gun as he roared and fell, banging his head on the edge of the TV stand.
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