by Brian Harper
But Cain would send Tyler and Gage, and Blair didn’t want their help. He wanted to bag Robinson himself.
It wouldn’t be hard. She had to be hiding under the dock. Out of sight, but not for long.
He crossed to the ladder and descended, almost regretful the game would soon be up.
Black boots on aluminum rungs. Trish submerged.
The flashlight searched for her. Even on the lake floor, her hands plowing the silty bottom, she wasn’t deep enough to escape its reach.
But she didn’t have to be. The thick scum of waterwort clogging the surface deflected the beam and kept her safe.
For the moment her adversary couldn’t find her. But he must know she was here somewhere, and he would not stop looking until he made her dead.
To survive she had to think. Come on now, think.
She’d seen a pair of boats moored at the dock. If she could circle around the boats and surface behind one of them, screened from his view …
She moved forward along the lake floor, her lungs emptying, the need for air urgent once again.
Where was she
Balanced on the bottom rug of the ladder, Blair peered below the dock at a green carpet of heart-shaped plants. Robinson was under there, he would bet on it, but where
He waited another full minute, then reluctantly concluded that only a real mermaid could hold her breath this long. She must have given him the slip.
No choice now but to summon help. Together he and Tyler and Gage would flush her out of hiding.
Pocketing the flashlight, he took out his transceiver. His finger was poised over the push-to-talk button when he heard a soft splash.
It had come from behind the nearest sport boat.
Of course.
Trish couldn’t help making noise when she surfaced alongside the fiberglass hull. Her craving for oxygen had reached the critical stage. Nothing mattered except air.
She gulped breath after breath, and then the boat lurched, someone hopping aboard.
Down.
Blair crossed the bow in one stride and peered over the port gunwale into the dark water.
Directly below him, a blur of silt and thrashing legs.
He fired twice. The Glock’s sound suppressor was degrading with use; these shots were louder than the last.
The diver vanished under the boat. Had he nailed her She’d been close, but he hadn’t had time to aim. It was just point and shoot.
He watched hopefully for a cloud of blood.
Trish knew she’d been shot at, didn’t think she’d been hit.
Still, the man knew where she was. He had the high ground. He could get her as soon as she emerged from beneath the boat.
What now, Trish Think.
Think or die.
No blood in the water. Robinson had one of her nine lives left, it looked like.
But only one.
Blair pivoted in the bow, scanning the water on all sides. The boat was small, a Sea Rayder mini-jet, lightweight and barely bigger than a dinghy. He could cover every angle from this vantage point. She couldn’t get away. She-The boat listed with a sharp impact from below.
What the hell
Another blow-starboard side-the boat rocking.
Trying to capsize him, the little bitch.
His radio dropped into the bow. He groped for a grab handle, missed it, and the boat lurched again.
Stumble. His knees banged the gunwale, momentum carrying him forward, and suddenly the world was spinning like a turntable as he was pitched headlong into the lake.
A fist of black water closed over him. For a split second he was disoriented, helpless.
But he’d grown up near water, been dunked plenty of times.
And he still had the Glock.
He whirled in a haze of his own air bubbles, scanning the dark for a target, and something flashed past his face.
A chain-handcuffs-she’d snagged him from behind, drawn the chain around his neck.
Although the surface was only inches above him, he couldn’t raise his head, couldn’t breathe.
The gun. Shoot her.
He raised his arm, elbow bent at an acute angle, the Glock pointing upside down over his shoulder, and risked a blind trigger pull.
Trish saw the gun come up, saw the silencer twist toward her.
She leaned hard to her left as the Glock bucked, bubbles hissing from the tube, a 9mm round blowing past her face like a torpedo.
Probably he couldn’t shoot again. Probably the water pressure would prevent the slide from cycling fully, and the gun would jam.
But she wasn’t counting on it.
Knees wedged against the killer’s back, she twisted her wrists, jerking the chain taut.
He fought her, thrashing savagely, a whipsawing marlin, and she hung on, her mouth squeezed shut against the urge to scream.
Her wrists were on fire, the cuffs biting deep. His larynx must have been crushed by now-God, he couldn’t hold out much longer, just couldn’t.
The gun swiveled directly at her face. He jerked the trigger. Nothing happened.
It had jammed, thank God.
An instant later air burst from his mouth in a silent shout, and he went limp.
The pistol dropped from his slack fingers. She pulled free, snatched it, then broke water, gasping.
Below her, the killer sank slowly into the silt, maybe unconscious, maybe dead.
Leave him there, a hard voice said in her mind.
But she couldn’t. She needed the gear on his belt.
Anyway, that was the reason she gave herself as she crammed the Glock in the waistband of her pants and submerged.
She grabbed him by the neck of his nylon jacket. He was impossibly heavy, a hundred sixty pounds of inert mass.
It was a hard struggle to haul him to the surface, harder still to kick for the shore with her burden in tow.
The beach wasn’t more than ten yards away, but her vision was graying out, her heart skipping beats by the time she reached it.
Staggering, gasping, she dragged the man onto the sand and rolled him on his back.
Exhaustion dropped her to her knees. She leaned over him, staring into his face.
He was so young. A teenager. Seventeen Not even.
With a shaking hand she felt his left carotid artery. Pulse faint but regular. Her ear to his lips, she heard no whisper of breath.
She’d been trained in CPR but had never expected to use it under circumstances like these. Part of her rebelled against the idea.
But she couldn’t let him die. Though he would have killed her and laughed about it, he was a person, wasn’t he He mattered to somebody.
Pinching his nostrils, she tilted his head to face the sky. His airway should be open; still, he wouldn’t breathe.
She pressed her mouth to his, blew air into his lungs. His chest lifted but didn’t deflate. She fed him another breath, and this time his chest heaved as air hissed out of his mouth in a splutter of droplets.
He coughed, eyelids fluttering. Awake.
Intent on keeping him alive, she hadn’t stopped to consider that he was still a threat.
She reached for the Glock, but before she could grab it, his right hand closed over the chain of her handcuffs and snapped both arms forward, holding them uselessly outstretched.
For a frozen moment he stared up at her. “You saved my life,” he rasped in a voice like sandpaper.
Mutely she nodded.
He bared an evil smile. “Big mistake.”
With his left hand he plucked the Glock from her waistband.
Nobody had ever taught her the proper defensive move for this situation. Instinct guided her as she ducked under the gun and thrust her upper body forward.
The crown of her head caught him hard on the chin. His jaws clacked. The Glock cast up a white puff of sand as it fell, and for the second time in five minutes, she felt him go limp.
Was he really out or just stunned Get the gun, get the gun.
&
nbsp; She scrabbled blindly for the pistol, recovered it, cycled the slide manually as she rolled on the sand, kicking clear of him in case he went for her with his knife or his fists.
When she looked up, she saw he hadn’t moved. Unconscious-or faking
Rainbows dazzled her, filling her field of vision, pulsing in sync with the ache in her head. She blinked the colors away and looked more closely at the young man in black.
Blood leaked from his mouth. His eyelids twitched.
Out. Really out.
And she had the gun, and she was safe.
“Congratulations, Officer Robinson.” Her sudden hoarse whisper was startling in the stillness. “You’ve just made your first arrest.”
A laugh hiccupped out of her, and then she lowered her head and her stomach flipped and she was sick on the sand.
Death had been close, very close. She’d nearly ended up like Wald. Nearly said goodbye to the world. Nearly.
Nausea subsided into shudders, racking her body like fever chills. Her teeth chattered, and her shoulders shook.
Trish sat on the beach and hugged herself as best she could, her chained wrists crossed over her heart.
24
“I say we break down the doors.”
Philip Danforth dabbed his split lip with a monogrammed handkerchief. A thread of light filtered through a hairline crack between the closet doors, striping his face. The reek of his sweat was acrid and close.
“That’s absurd,” Charles answered evenly.
“What’s absurd about it If we use our combined strength, we can blow them right off the hinges.”
“Do you have any idea how much noise that would make”
“To hell with the noise.”
“Just wait a minute, Phil.”
“Don’t call me Phil.”
“Philip. Sorry. Listen to me.”
Charles was using his courtroom voice. He had found that juries were more readily persuaded by quiet self-assurance than by inflamed rhetoric. The jury in this case was a panel of two: Judy and Barbara. He would never get through to Philip, but one person alone couldn’t smash open the closet.
“We can’t just say to hell with the noise,” Charles went on in his reasonable way, wishing the close confines didn’t require him to stand so close to Philip, nearly nose to nose. “Five armed men are out there.”
“Woman.” Barbara spoke as if every word were the first note of a scream. “One of them is a woman.”
“All right.” Charles showed no annoyance at the interruption. Never alienate the jury. “Four armed men and one armed woman. If we break out, they’ll hear us and come running.”
“For all we know,” Philip snapped, spraying Charles with a mist of spittle, “they may have left the house by now.”
“With Ally” Barbara sat down suddenly on a wicker hamper. It creaked.
“Philip,” Judy said in quiet reproach.
“Well, no.” Philip softened. “Not with Ally. I just meant they could be gone.”
“But they’re not.” Charles tapped an ear. “Listen.”
From the living room came faint noises: shatter of glass or porcelain, thuds of overturned furniture.
“What are they doing” Judy whispered.
Charles shrugged. “Wrecking the place, it sounds like.”
The low groan came from Barbara.
Philip stared hard at the doors, as if willing them to open, then turned to Charles, about to embark on another line of argument. Before he could, a new sound froze him.
The quick tread of approaching footsteps.
“Maybe they’ve brought Ally.” Barbara’s whisper was as solemn as a prayer.
Rattle of a chain. Flood of light. The bifold doors opened to reveal two ski-masked figures, the gray-eyed man and his female companion, both with guns drawn.
The man spoke. “Mr. Kent, we need your help with the safe.”
Charles blinked. “The safe”
A gloved hand closed over his arm and yanked him forward.
“Where’s my daughter” Barbara screamed.
The closet doors slammed in her face.
Thrust into the brighter light and fresher air of the bedroom’s glare, Charles was momentarily disoriented. He watched, dazed, as the two doorknobs were chained and padlocked.
Then the killers ushered him out of the room, down the hall.
He passed Ally’s bedroom. Through the doorway he saw his daughter seated in her desk chair, wrists bound to the tubular armrest with torn bedding. Her eyes met his.
“Daddy …” She hadn’t called him by that name in years.
The man behind him yanked the door shut. Charles whirled, an angry question riding on his lips, but it died when he looked into those cold gray eyes.
Out of the hallway. Crossing the threshold of the dining area.
Charles stopped short, staring.
He had expected some damage, but this …
The dining table had been upended and broken.
The chandelier cut loose to crash in pieces.
Every painting torn off the walls and savaged, the expensive frames splintered.
Love seat, twin sofas, matching armchairs-slashed, the leather upholstery curling in ribbons to expose gobs of foam stuffing.
In the dining area stood the man who had shot Officer Wald. His mask was off, his suntanned and stubbly face sweaty in the peculiar half-light of the one standing lamp still unbroken.
With robotic efficiency he was removing chinaware from a cabinet and smashing it on the floor. The dishes, priceless, had been in the Ashcroft family for generations.
“Good God,” Charles breathed.
He turned again, intending to register a protest, and the gray-eyed man said, “In the den.” To the woman: “Get back to work. This place still looks way too presentable.”
Presentable, Charles thought numbly as he traversed the living room, shoes crunching glass from a ruined end table. What would it look like when they were done The aftermath of a bomb blast
Nearing the foyer, he noticed absently that the patrolwoman was gone.
Funny. He hadn’t seen her in Ally’s bedroom.
He entered the den. It was his personal retreat, a video screening room. From any of the four plush recliners facing the projection TV he could watch satellite programming or a laser disc. Or he could stack CDs in the sixty-disc player and surround himself in music, his eyes blissfully closed.
No bliss tonight.
In the living room the vandalism continued, the noise redoubled now that the woman had joined in.
The den had not yet been trashed but soon would be. Already the safe had been violated, its contents heaped on the rosewood table near his favorite armchair.
The safe …
Ally must have revealed the combination. So why was he here
He turned as the door of the den clicked shut. The gray-eyed man stood facing him across five yards of deep pile carpet under the slow revolutions of a ceiling fan. He holstered his gun, then casually stripped off his mask.
“Hello, Mr. Kent.”
After all this, Charles was hardly in the mood for pleasantries. “Cain-what the hell”
“Relax.” Cain crossed to the bar and got out a bottle of brandy. “Have a drink … on the house.”
“I can’t go back in there with liquor on my breath.”
“You can rinse out your mouth later.” A loop of amber gurgled from the spout. “Take a drink. You’ll need it.”
“Need it Why What’s going on Why’d you have to get me away from the others”
“There’s been a complication.” Cain handed him the snifter. “Cheers.”
Charles hesitated, then decided he really did need the drink. Seeing Wald’s face shot off-tasting the sprinkle of blood—
Abruptly his knees threatened to unlock. He sank into the nearest chair and tipped the snifter to his lips.
A slow burn trickled down his throat. He let his head fall back.
“Complication
,” he whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Is it the patrolwoman”
“She’s not a problem.”
“Where is she, anyway”
“The lake.”
It took a moment for the words to register. Then Charles snapped forward. “Dead”
“Very.”
“Damn it.” Brandy sloshed in the pearl-shaped glass. “That was totally unnecessary.”
“I decide what’s necessary, Mr. Kent.” Cain said it with a peculiar emphasis.
“The woman was unconscious, for God’s sake. She was handcuffed and disarmed, no threat whatsoever.”
“She was a cop. I hate cops.”
Charles looked away, not wanting to see Cain, not wanting even to be here.
“Bad enough with just one,” he breathed, “but … two of them.” He drained the snifter. “You know what they do to cop killers”
“One cop or two-it’s death row either way.” Cain smiled. “Anyway, you’re the one who gave the signal.”
The signal. Four words: Take care of it.
Out of earshot of the others, Cain had told him to say those words if somehow the patrol officers were surreptitiously alerted to what was going on. Charles had worked the signal into his conversation as the cops headed for the foyer, raising his voice to be sure Cain’s thugs in the closet could hear.
So yes, he’d known the ambush would take place. But he hadn’t thought either of the officers would be killed.
Had he
He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know what he’d expected.
Anyway, it was too late now.
His hand shook as he offered Cain the empty glass. “More.”
“That was enough.”
“I’ve been on seltzer water all night, passing it off as vodka and soda. You’re the one who wanted me to start drinking for real.”
“And now I want you to stop.”
The snifter made a dull thump as Charles set it down on the rosewood table.
“If it’s not the patrolwoman,” he whispered, “then what You don’t seem to be having any trouble trashing my house. And you got the safe open.”
“Eventually. Your daughter was less than cooperative.”
“You didn’t hurt her”