by Brad Parks
She had a point. And since she had already slid out of her seat and was retrieving the rifle from the back of the SUV, I was assuming she didn’t want to sit around and discuss matters further.
I grabbed the silver-plated pistol from the glove compartment and stuffed it in the back waistband of my pants. She was already marching across the lawn, toward the water, with long strides. The rifle was slung across her back.
It took an effort to keep up with her. She reached the edge of the lawn and plunged down to the beach, not breaking stride. Then she angled right, toward the Praesidium compound.
I did the same, and we continued in that position—her in front, me behind, which was how our marriage seemed to work best—as we walked past several more houses on our way around the cove.
The water was millpond flat. Tiny curls of waves, the largest of which was maybe three inches, licked the beach. The tide was going out, and Jenny was walking just above the waterline, where the sand was firmest and she could keep up a good clip without being bogged down by softer sand.
We surely looked odd, a pair of beachcombers out for an after-midnight stroll, but legally there was nothing anyone could do to stop us. There’s an important concept in English common law, which was then adopted in US law, that the sea belongs to no man (or no person, if English common law had been a little less chauvinist). That includes the beach, up to the mean high tide mark. We were at least safe from the law there.
Whether we were also safe from other forces remained an open question.
Before long, the last of the houses were behind us. We were now skirting what I knew to be the backside of the Praesidium compound, though there was nothing to mark it as such. It was just beach, a small strip of natural grasses, and then a thick stand of loblolly pines.
There was something primordial about it, this section of shoreline that bled quickly into wilderness. I kept looking through the trees, seeing if I could glimpse one of those houses I had seen from the satellite. But between the woods and the inky darkness of night, there was nothing visible.
We rounded the edge of the cove and were now facing the Chesapeake Bay. The riprap—a pile of white and gray stones that was probably six feet high and ten feet deep—had started. Up ahead I could see where the forest ended and Vanslow DeGange’s massive lawn began.
“Jenny,” I whispered.
She stopped and waited for me to come closer.
“Let’s climb over the rocks here,” I said. “No one from the house will be able to see us.”
She nodded and began scrambling across them. I followed her. We crunched through the forest for thirty yards or so until we reached its edge.
This was the point of no return. From here, it was just open grass between us and the main house, this hulking black shape. I could barely make out the rooflines, dormers, and chimneys jutting up into the dark-gray sky.
There were no lights on, inside or out. It seemed every bit as uninhabited as that FOR SALE place had been, and I wondered if we were, in fact, storming an empty mansion.
Vanslow DeGange was here and not in, say, California, wasn’t he?
Jenny had paused behind the last thick tree between us and the clearing. I joined her there.
She was wearing her own jeans and an overlarge black sweatshirt that belonged to Seb. Her hair was up in a ponytail. I could smell the light sweat that had broken out on her. She looked incredibly alive.
This was probably not the most suitable time to be aroused by my wife or be thinking that she was gorgeous, but there it was.
“You’re cute, you know that?” I whispered.
“I know it’s been a while,” she said. “But if you’re trying to end our dry spell right now, I have to tell you, I really don’t think this is the time.”
“Come on,” I said. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
She grabbed the back of my head and kissed me hard on the mouth. “Later, for sure. I happen to know a nice little bomb shelter.”
“Is that thing soundproof?”
She gave me a playful whack on the ass. “Okay, let’s focus. That place is huge, and we don’t know where DeGange is—first floor? Second floor? When we get over there, we should split up. We’ll be able to cover ground more quickly that way.”
“But we only have one key card.”
“I’ll just have to find my own way in.”
“And if either of us trips upon an old man with a mole on his forehead we—”
There was no need to complete the thought.
“Exactly,” she said. “When you hear a gunshot, that’s the sign to hightail it back to the car.”
“How will I know you’re the one doing the shooting?”
“If I’m not, it means it’s coming from someone else, and you should hightail it even faster.”
“Good point,” I said.
Some plan.
I nodded my head toward the house, which was roughly three hundred yards away. “Okay. You ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“I think we have to stay low and crawl.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“After you,” I said, gesturing toward the lawn.
“Such a gentleman.”
She went down on her belly, then started slithering toward the house, commando-style. I let her get a short head start, then went after her.
This grass was short, well manicured, and slick with dew. After a few feet, I was soaked.
Nevertheless, I settled into a rhythm. It was a little bit like swimming, just ten times more arduous. Now and then, I’d lift my head to inspect our progress. The rest of the time, I kept as low a profile as I could.
Thirty yards of progress became sixty, then ninety. We were really out in the open now, passing near the helipad, which was roughly halfway between the forest and the house.
It had no helicopter on it, as had been the case in the satellite photo. The Praesidium must have kept it somewhere else. Either that, or it no longer had the aircraft.
I continued my crawl, staying alert for a warning shout, a flashlight cutting the night, something that would signal we had been spotted.
Nothing came. It remained dark and quiet. Truly, the loudest sound was our labored breathing.
Soon, I was judging the number of yards left to the house, counting backward with each stolen glimpse—seventy to go, fifty to go, and so on.
By the time we reached the semisafety of the side of the house, my arms and legs were shaking and my abdominal muscles were on fire. Jenny flung herself against a section of stone foundation and tilted her head up, straightening her windpipe so she could suck in as much air as possible.
I huddled next to her and caught my breath for a few moments as well.
We were on the north side of the house, with the bay to our east and the rest of the peninsula to the west.
From my Google-based aerial reconnaissance, I knew that the balcony with the Praesidium logo was on the south end. That was where—based on nothing more than a hunch—I thought DeGange’s bedroom might be. Didn’t it make sense the grand leader’s balcony would be decorated with the logo that he loved enough to have branded on human beings?
I wanted this to end as quickly as possible. And maybe I even wanted to be the one to end it. I didn’t relish the thought of killing a man. I just wanted to spare Jenny the nastiness.
So, when I finally stopped gasping, I tapped her on the shoulder and whispered into her ear, “I’m going around to the other end and starting on that side.”
She gave me a thumbs-up.
I stood up. Now that we were next to the house, it was less vital to stay quite as low. The first-floor windows had enough elevation to them that I could walk in a hunch and still stay beneath the sight line of anyone inside.
Being mindful of the noise I was making, I quietly picked my way around the corner, then across the width of the house. The only fraught portion of the trip was a large patio that required me to go on my b
elly to stay beneath the brick retaining wall that fronted it.
I had just crossed that obstacle when I started to hear this rhythmic thumping coming from the sky in the distance. This was not anything like the buzzy whine of the drone I had heard earlier. It was deeper, more resonant.
A helicopter.
I looked up, peering into the underside of the clouds, hoping to be able to see something. The Doppler effect told me it was getting closer. But was it definitely coming here? Maybe it was just a coincidence—some other rich person’s helicopter.
That thought abruptly ended when seemingly every light on the property came on at once.
For a moment, I was stunned, stupefied. I stood there, shielding my eyes, a dumbstruck deer in the blinding brilliance of all those headlights.
When my senses returned, I threw myself next to the house, under a window, making myself as small as I could.
But I was still terribly exposed. Between the landing lights on the helipad and the floodlights from the house, most of the yard was lit up, almost like daytime. The black clothes I was wearing were like anticamouflage against the off-white siding of the house and the matching foundation. Anyone walking outside would easily be able to see me.
My heart was pounding almost as hard as the helicopter rotors that were fast approaching.
When I looked up this time, a dot of light had emerged from the clouds. I watched the dot grow larger until I could see the aircraft itself. It was a decent size, with a rounded prow made almost entirely of clear plastic, such that it reminded me of the eye of a housefly. If I had to guess, I’d say it sat roughly eight, in addition to the two pilots.
It came from above the water to my right. As it passed overhead, I could feel the thump of the rotors with my body. I feared that if anyone was looking down, they would easily see the man pinned against the side of the house.
The vessel hovered for a moment, its light swiveling downward to further illuminate the landing area. Then, slowly, majestically, it descended, staying perfectly level until its skids kissed the ground.
Almost immediately, the pilot cut the rotors, which began slowing but still had a lot of momentum to disperse. The door on the side of the chopper opened.
A man dressed in black tactical gear stepped out first, followed by another. They stood to the left side of the door and helped out the next passenger.
Rogers. He was wearing khakis and a blue windbreaker. No military-style garb for him.
From inside the helicopter, someone handed him something, which he then passed to one of the men next to him. I couldn’t see what the package was, because of the distance involved, and because his back was shielding it. He received another item, which he handed to the other man in front of him.
Then the three of them turned and started walking toward the house.
In a nauseating instant, I saw they weren’t transporting items or packages.
They were carrying children.
CHAPTER 48
JENNY
Something went blank in Jenny’s mind the moment she saw her girls being toted across the lawn like so much luggage.
It was probably because of their little faces. The floodlights from the house were bright enough that Jenny had no problem making out their expressions.
The shock.
The fear.
The panic.
Cate had her mouth open and her eyes pinched. Jenny couldn’t hear her younger daughter’s wails over the sound of the helicopter, but the little girl was in obvious distress. She didn’t know where she was or what was happening, just that it terrified her. Jenny could feel the anguish in that visceral place where parents experienced their children’s pain.
Parker was, in some ways, even more difficult to look at. Her face registered something that was worse than confusion: comprehension. She was three. She knew this wasn’t her house, and that these men were not nice, and that her mommy and daddy—who should have been with her—were nowhere around, and that she and her sister were in terrible danger.
Save me, her eyes seemed to be saying. Someone please save me.
Jenny didn’t used to believe in maternal instincts. She’d thought it was a cultural myth, created by the patriarchy to keep women in their place.
Then she had two babies and it was like she had grown a third arm, one that was forever groping for her children. It was a need that was deeply physical, and it compelled her to hold her children, to breathe them in, to feel their skin, to nurture them in every way. Those girls might have left her womb, but they never stopped being a part of her.
As such, any thought of self-preservation or caution was gone.
Nothing mattered more than the safety of Parker and Cate—not herself, not killing Vanslow DeGange, not the safety of her husband.
And this was the moment. Once the men took the girls into the house, they would only become more difficult to rescue.
Unslinging her rifle from her back, she raised it until she had it firmly anchored against her shoulder. Jenny was a fine shot. Her father had taught her how to hunt, how to handle a firearm. She had taken down animals from a much longer distance than this.
If she fired from her current hiding spot against the house, she could probably eliminate both men before they even knew where the shots were coming from. But the moment that thought formed, so did a competing one.
The girls.
It was one thing to fell a deer from a blind in the woods of Surry County, when your heart rate was down, your arms were fresh, and there was no real pressure on the shot.
Shooting a man—while her heart was still pounding, while her body was still recovering from a three-hundred-yard crawl, while her nervous system was going haywire—was something else entirely.
Both men were carrying the girls against their bodies, so she couldn’t simply aim for center mass. She would need to go for a head shot, a smaller target. Plus, she didn’t know how much of a factor the turbulence from the helicopter would be. The rotor wash would push the bullet down, but by how much?
She didn’t dare pull the trigger. Instead, she waited until the group was about halfway across the lawn. Then she emerged from the shadow of the house with one eye in the scope and the other on the men.
“Freeze!” she shouted. “Don’t move!”
The lead man, the one with Cate, actually startled before coming to an immediate stop. The other man, who was a few steps behind with Parker, also halted his progress.
Jenny walked a few more steps toward them. She was roughly sixty feet away. It felt like the right distance—close enough that she could control the situation, not so close that they would be able to make a move on her.
“Put them down,” Jenny barked. “Put them down or by God I’m planting a bullet in your forehead.”
Neither man had yet made a move when Rogers shouted, “No, lift them up. Use them as shields.”
The men immediately complied, holding the girls out in front. Parker was squirming ineffectually. Cate might as well have been a sack of flour.
Jenny kept her rifle up but knew she couldn’t possibly use it.
“You’re a monster, you know that?” she yelled.
“I’m doing what I have to do. The bomb shelter was a good thought, by the way. Too bad it had vents that lit up like Christmas trees when we looked at the house with the night vision goggles. Led us right to them.”
“Go to hell.”
“Your parents are fine, by the way. Or I’m sure they will be once someone finds them. There was no room to bring them on the helicopter, so we had to tie them up.”
Rogers was still behind his men, keeping both them and Jenny’s children between himself and the angry woman with the rifle.
“Now,” he said. “Put down your gun and come inside. Your children are staying here, just like you’re staying here. This is your family’s new home. Where’s Nate?”
“He’s not here.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Rogers said. “But we’ll f
ind him soon enough. Now put the gun down.”
Jenny didn’t move. She also didn’t know how to end this stalemate.
Rogers did. He partially unzipped his windbreaker, dipped his hand inside, and brought out a pistol, which he promptly held to Parker’s temple.
“No!” Jenny screamed.
In the act of bringing the gun to the child’s head, Rogers had exposed himself, just slightly, enough that she could take the shot. The helicopter was still making a lot of noise, but the downdraft from the rotors was dying off quickly. From sixty feet, with a scope, she could aim just above his ear and maintain every confidence a bullet would wind up there.
She moved the rifle, centered the crosshairs on that neatly parted, gunmetal-gray coiffure, and—
Got tackled from behind, by a man she neither saw nor heard coming.
The man’s shoulder plowed squarely into Jenny’s back. Her arms reflexively flew outward, to break her fall, and she lost the grip on her rifle, which sailed out of her hands.
Whatever air had been in Jenny’s lungs was almost entirely displaced when the man landed on top of her, and she heard herself grunt as she was driven into the wet ground.
The guy outweighed Jenny by at least seventy pounds, and she could feel the hardness of his chest and arms wrapped around her. She tried to get her legs and arms underneath her, so she could buck him off.
But another man was just behind the first. When he arrived, he sat on her legs, depriving her of whatever leverage she might have been able to gain. Jenny grunted and strained, pouring all her strength into her attempts to free herself.
All of which were futile.
Before very long, the first two assailants were joined by another pair. They had her hands cuffed behind her back and were carrying her—still thrashing uselessly—into the house.
CHAPTER 49
NATE
I watched the confrontation unfold from behind a planter at the edge of the patio, which was as close as I dared get.
It all happened so quickly. I wasn’t frozen as much as I was uncertain. I couldn’t hear what was being shouted back and forth, and I didn’t want to throw Jenny off. She seemed to have the situation under control.