Unthinkable

by Brad Parks

  And then she didn’t. When I saw the man sprinting up behind Jenny, I tried to warn her. But neither she nor anyone else could hear my shouts above the still-spinning helicopter rotors, just as she had been unable to hear that man’s footsteps on the soft grass.

  Then it was effectively over. Emerging from my hiding spot would only make matters worse. I was badly outgunned and outnumbered. In addition to Rogers and the two men who had already climbed out of the helicopter, two more men and two women had followed, plus a pair of pilots. There were also the two men who’d tackled Jenny. And who knew how many more people in the house.

  Charging out to confront them would have been reckless, foolish, and, more than anything, pointless.

  We had lost this battle.

  I had to focus on the war. Nothing that had just happened changed my immediate goal:

  Find Vanslow DeGange.

  And kill him.

  The job had gotten harder, since the Praesidium would no doubt be hunting for me. But at least for the next few minutes, I could take advantage of the diversion Jenny and my daughters were creating as everyone figured out what to do about them.

  Once the last of the passengers had come in from the helicopter, I backed away from the planter and crept toward the side of the house with the Praesidium-logoed balcony.

  I went up on my toes for a glimpse into a window nearest the corner of the house. It was a lovely sunroom, probably a place Praesidium members enjoyed in the wintertime.

  But it didn’t look like anywhere DeGange would be hanging out at this hour. I had to get to that balcony somehow.

  It required only a few seconds of study before I spotted my best—and probably only—way up. Running from the ground to the second floor on the side of the house was a trellis covered in blooming growth that did not appear to be roses or anything else forbiddingly prickly.

  The only question was whether it was sturdy enough to support two hundred pounds. I strode over to it and plunged my hand through about fifteen inches of greenery until I found the latticework underneath.

  I gave it a quick shake. It didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so I reached for a spot above my head with both hands, grabbed on, and hoisted myself up. I had to dig around with my feet to find footholds, but soon I had purchase there too.

  It was not the quietest work, what with the tearing of vegetation required to find each new portion of the trellis. But there seemed to be no one outside to hear it. One foot and one hand at a time, I made short work of the climb and was soon vaulting over the banister and onto the tile balcony.

  I crawled over to the side of the house and tried to look inside, but the windows were covered with vinyl. Just like the room I had been held in the first time I was here.

  Then I confronted the door. Which was, of course, locked.

  This was the moment when I’d discover whether that key card I’d swiped was more than just a worthless piece of plastic that the Praesidium had deactivated the moment it was discovered missing—or that had never opened certain doors to begin with.

  Holding my breath, I touched the card to the small pad on the left side of the door.

  I was immediately rewarded with the grinding of a mechanical lock unclenching itself.

  Like that, I was inside. But, immediately, I was disappointed. The PR porch had not, as I hoped, led to Vanslow DeGange’s sleeping quarters. It was the Rembrandt room.

  Perhaps DeGange was in the next bedroom. Or the one after that. I would just have to keep looking until I found him.

  I closed the door behind myself. Then, with barely a glimpse at the multimillion-dollar wall hangings, I crossed the room and stopped at the door that, as I’d learned during my last visit, led to the second-floor hallway. I listened for a moment.

  All was quiet. I held my key card against the reader, and again it worked perfectly, disengaging the lock. Then I slowly eased the door open and peered around the edge.

  The lights were on. And there was a man at the top of the stairs, at the midpoint of a long hallway.

  Rogers.

  He was looking down the stairs and seemed to be directing some kind of effort coming up from below, but I closed the door before I even had a chance to hear or see what he was up to.

  I needed a place to hide. Quickly. I looked around at the room. In the middle was that four-poster bed. It was supported by a platform, so I couldn’t simply slide underneath it. There were also no closets to sneak into. Older houses simply didn’t seem to believe in those.

  My only option was the en suite bathroom. It wasn’t perfect. But it would have to do.

  I closed the door behind me and flicked up the light switch. The bathroom had a modern feel, having been redone within the last decade or so. There was a generous vanity with a mirror running the length of it. On the far side of the room was a large walk-in shower behind a glass door and a glass wall.

  Again, there was no closet. The linens were stacked on a stand-alone wire shelf.

  In other words, there was nothing to give me cover. If someone came in here, I would be spotted as soon as they turned the light on.

  With that in mind, I depressed the light switch, plunging myself into darkness.

  For better or worse, this was where I was going to be for a little while.

  I checked the time on my phone. It was 1:22 a.m. I decided I would risk a glimpse into the hallway every twenty minutes. As soon as the second check was clear, I’d enter the hallway and try the next room down.

  Not knowing where else to go, I felt around in the dark until I found the toilet, then sat on the lid. It was as good a place as any to spend the next twenty minutes.

  Except it turned out I didn’t get nearly that much time. There were voices coming my way. I could hear them coming down the hallway, even if I couldn’t make out the words.

  Then someone entered the Rembrandt room.

  “Watch her head, watch her head,” a man’s voice said.

  “It would help if she’d stop thrashing,” another said.

  “Stop thrashing,” the first one said.

  As I pulled my gun out from the waistband of my pants, I heard Jenny swear at the guy.

  She was still fighting them with everything she had.

  My beautifully stubborn wife.

  “You’re just making it harder,” Rogers said with that preternatural calm I had come to recognize so well.

  This must have been what Rogers was directing from the top of the stairs: the transportation of my wife into the room where he obviously liked to keep his prisoners.

  Jenny replied to him with another curse, followed by some indistinct vocalizing.

  “Ouch,” the first one said, apropos of what, I couldn’t tell.

  “Just throw her on the bed and then make sure she stays there,” Rogers said. “I’m going to get some more rope.”

  This was met with perhaps ten seconds of silence as, presumably, they tossed Jenny atop the four-poster’s mattress.

  “You got her?” one man asked.

  “Yeah,” the other said.

  My wish-upon-a-star now was that they’d tie up Jenny and leave her there, unaware of just how close I was. I could untie her and—

  That thought was quickly obliterated and replaced by a rush of dread when the first man declared: “All right. I gotta take a leak.”

  I stood and took two silent steps toward the wall in front of me, then turned and put my back against it.

  Out in the Rembrandt room, the old hardwood floors groaned as the man clomped my way.

  The door to the bathroom opened, letting in a sliver of light. I saw a hand groping for the light switch, then the arm and body attached to that hand.

  Finally, the bathroom lit up. My visitor was wearing the black tactical gear the Praesidium seemed to favor for its operatives. He was a few inches shorter than me, though at least thirty pounds heavier, with a lot of gym muscles to weigh him down.

  His head was still bent in the general direction of the switch
, and as he straightened, he saw me—with the gun raised and the barrel pointed at the hairless patch between his eyebrows.

  The surprise on his face was complete. His jaw opened slightly but no words came out of his mouth.

  “Don’t move,” I said, calmly, in a normal speaking voice.

  He hadn’t really been moving much, but he stopped anyway. Only his eyes continued. They were darting back and forth between me and the gun I was holding, like he was trying to figure out if he could reach either. We both knew he’d have the advantage if this turned into a wrestling match.

  I had no intention of letting that happen.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  He did as he was told.

  “Lace your fingers behind your head.”

  Again, he complied.

  I grabbed the back of his shirt with one hand and, with the other, held the barrel of the gun to the soft indent at the base of his skull.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bobby,” he said.

  “Okay, Bobby. Tell your friend out there what I’m doing,” I said.

  “Tino, he’s got a gun to my head,” the guy said.

  “Very good, Bobby,” I said, then called a little louder: “Tino, we’re about to come out. You’re going to get on the other side of the room. I better not see you holding a weapon or your friend here is really not going to like it. Do you understand?”

  Tino said, “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m going to want to see your palms facing me, and your arms out in front of you. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said again.

  Gripping Bobby’s shirt tighter, I turned him toward the door, then gathered myself close behind him, so his body would be between me and the rest of the room.

  “Okay,” I said. “Nice and slow now. Let’s see some little baby steps.”

  He was a good soldier, shuffling his feet forward. Slowly, we entered the room. My eyes quickly darted to Jenny.

  She was on her feet, having removed herself from the bed because Tino was now too otherwise occupied to keep her there. Her hands were still cuffed behind her. Her legs had been bound together at the ankles. Her hair was disheveled and her face was a mess of grime and grass, but she seemed to have plenty of fight in her.

  Tino was in front of the open door on the far side of the room, near a narrow table and chair that had been set up in front of a mirror.

  I had just steered Bobby fully out of the bathroom when Rogers came back down the hall. He was still wearing his windbreaker. He had a length of rope in one hand and a gun in the other.

  Tino moved to the side to make way for Rogers to enter the room.

  “Oh, Nate,” he said, like he was disappointed.

  “Don’t move,” I said.

  I crouched a little lower behind Bobby, thankful for the man’s width.

  Rogers scowled.

  “You really think I care about him?” he asked.

  And then, quite casually, he lifted the gun and fired twice.

  I yelped in terror and reflexively threw myself to the floor, rolling behind the bed, near Jenny’s feet. She had screamed as well.

  The moment I’d let go of him, Bobby had dropped like his skeleton had turned to jelly. He landed with a heavy thud. His catastrophically ruined forehead was turned so we could see it. If there was any life left in him, it was fast departing.

  My face was wet with blood. Not mine. Or at least I didn’t think so.

  I scrambled a little closer to the bed, which was now the only cover I had.

  Tino yelped, “What the—”

  “Shut up,” Rogers said.

  Then he fired again.

  Tino let out a brief howl. The next noise was his body crashing into the table on the far side of the room.

  Then came the sound of footsteps. Rogers was on the move. But not in my direction. He was moving away now. He had seen my gun. And now that it was no longer trained on Bobby, Rogers knew I would likely point it at him next. He wasn’t that foolhardy.

  “I found him,” Rogers shouted. “He’s in the Rembrandt room. He just shot Bobby and Tino. I’ll keep him contained in here. Get some men around the house in case he tries to go out the window. If you have a clear shot on him, take it.”

  It sounded like he was in the hallway, just to the side of the door.

  “Okay, Nate, enough games now,” Rogers said. “We’re about to have you surrounded. And if you keep your gun with you, I promise someone is going to take you out. But if you put down your gun right now, I promise you won’t get hurt. You, Jenny, your girls, you’ll all be fine. Better than fine.”

  It was clearly a lie, just like so many of the other things he had said to me. I didn’t bother answering him. He was probably just trying to bait me into talking so he could start shooting at the sound of my voice.

  I briefly took stock of the situation. I was armed. Rogers was armed. I was hiding behind the platform bed, which wasn’t exactly bulletproof if someone really started blasting away at it, but it would at least shield me somewhat from light arms fire. Rogers was behind a wall.

  It was possible I could shoot him through the wall, but then what? Even if the bullets did penetrate whatever they’d made walls out of a hundred years ago, they might not have enough velocity left to kill him.

  More to the point, killing Rogers would only improve my situation so much. The property still contained an untold number of Praesidium members, more than I could possibly gun down.

  “Come on, Nate, think it through for a moment. You have to realize there’s no escape. We’ve got more manpower. We’ve certainly got more bullets. Just surrender already,” Rogers said, almost like he was reading my thoughts.

  “Rogers, why are you doing this?” Jenny yelled. “I’ve told you, I’m never going to come work for you.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Rogers said. “What matters is that you’re staying here.”

  What did that mean?

  How could it not matter?

  Wasn’t that what this was all about? His offer from two months ago. His attempts to get Jenny to kill me. His kidnapping of the children. Wasn’t it all aimed at convincing, cajoling, or blackmailing Jenny into being part of the Praesidium?

  This had to be another lie.

  Though he was telling the truth about one thing: there was no escape. I was penned in. Trapped.

  Unless . . .

  The thought came to me suddenly. It was dangerous, for sure. And totally insane in any measurable way. Though I was suddenly convinced it would actually work.

  Rogers had proven himself to be ruthless, willing to murder indiscriminately to get what he wanted.

  But there was one person he absolutely wouldn’t kill.

  Jenny.

  I looked up at her.

  “I’m sorry for this,” I said softly. “Just go with it.”

  She tilted her head at me.

  Then I stood up and placed myself behind Jenny.

  With the gun at her head.

  “Drop your weapon, Rogers,” I said. “Or I swear, I’ll kill her.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rogers said.

  “Drop. Your damn. Gun. All of you are going to drop your guns. And then you’re going to get the girls, and then the four of us are walking out of here.”

  “Nate,” he said calmly, “we both know you’re incapable of shooting her. You’ve already proven that.”

  “You’re right. I might be bluffing. You really want to find out? You and I both know you’ve scoured the world looking for someone with the gift and she’s the only one you’ve been able to find. Are you really going to risk her life? I’m willing to bet you’re not.”

  Rogers hadn’t shown so much as one inch of himself from behind the door.

  But suddenly, at the top of the stairs, there was a figure, an old man with a tumble of curly white hair that a bedhead had styled in various directions. He was not tall, but he stood like he was, erect and proud even after all the years
and all the gravity.

  It was Vanslow DeGange. Even if Rogers hadn’t shown me his picture, I would have recognized him by his commanding presence.

  He wore vintage, button-up pajamas that hung off his bony frame. His hands were knobby. His feet were bare. He turned down the hall and started ambling toward us, moving reasonably well for a man midway through his nineties.

  Despite the recent gunfire, he seemed to be totally unheeding of his own safety. In his right hand, which hung loosely by his side, he held a gun, a silver-plated pistol, just like the one in mine.

  I was sure it had also been stamped with the WHITE CHUCK NO. 8 oval.

  When he got within about thirty feet of me, I could make out the mole on his forehead. I made it my new target as I swiveled my gun away from Jenny.

  But he just kept walking toward me, like being able to sense death had guaranteed him immortality.

  In another few steps, he would be close enough that even I couldn’t miss. I planned to put several shots into him, hoping that when the Praesidium members learned their leader was gone, they would decide to quit with all the killing.

  Cut the head off the snake and the body dies, right?

  I took in a deep breath, felt the hardness of the trigger, and prepared to squeeze.

  Then, to my utter shock, Jenny threw herself at my arms, blurting, “No, Nate. Don’t shoot him. Don’t do it.”

  I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. Jenny’s entire weight fell into me. It was all I could do to keep her from crashing onto the floor.

  And, truly, I was flummoxed. Why was Jenny suddenly protecting this singular menace? Why didn’t she want to finish what we’d come here to accomplish? What was going through my brilliant wife’s head?

  DeGange had stopped just short of the door.

  “Lorton,” he bellowed. “What the devil is going on here?”

  CHAPTER 50

  JENNY

  The first emotion Jenny experienced upon seeing Vanslow DeGange was profound loathing.

  This was the man who wanted her to kill her husband.

  The man who seemed to have no misgivings about ordering the murder of strangers when it served his purpose.