by Geonn Cannon
Lance looked down at Sam's arm. It was white around her fingers, her fingernails white from the pressure. She let go, ashamed and terrified by the extent of her anger. "I'm not going to do anything," she said. "I'm not...going to do anything." She turned and left the office. When she passed Morpheus, she said, "Watch the hostages with Aphrodite." He started to speak and she said, "Just fucking do it."
She didn't stop to see if he complied. She went into the vault and pulled the door partway shut behind her.
#
"Uh-oh," the technician said. "Either there's an earthquake or someone..." The image on the screen suddenly went airborne. It shuddered and then went to static. The technician leaned back in his chair. "Someone found out the camera was still on."
"It doesn't matter," Mallory said. She pointed at the one screen that wasn't static. The still frame had caught two of the robbers walking out of the vault. One of them wasn't wearing her mask. It was a much better picture than the original shot, which was taken from an odd angle and a large distance. In this one, the subject was half-turned toward the camera to look at the person she was walking with.
Her hair was a lot shorter, but Mallory knew she would recognize that face anywhere. She touched the screen and said, "That's Claire Lance."
The picture had been taken fifteen minutes ago, a hundred yards away from where she currently sat. Mallory felt the warm sting of tears in her eyes and resisted the urge to let them fall. This was it, the end of the line. End game. One way or another, her chase was finally going to come to an end.
#
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lance sat in the vault and stared at the stripped shelves. A lot of money still remained; Morpheus had left behind the stacks that included dye packs or tracer bills. But the room still looked like a supermarket before a hurricane. She sat on the floor, gun at her side, and hands covering her face. Who was that woman she'd become out there? She had desperately wanted to hurt that camerawoman. It terrified her.
"You never could think straight when it came to Faye."
Lance looked up and saw Elaine sitting on the money-counter's table. Lance leaned back and rested her head against the wall. "I really screwed up this time, Elaine."
"Did you?"
"I'm robbing a bank and your sister just happens to show up outside? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm fucked."
Elaine shrugged. "Could be. Or maybe fate is just taking you in another direction. You were willing to turn yourself in so you could be with Jodie sooner rather than later. Maybe this is just what was meant to happen."
Lance scoffed. "I have three murder charges against me in Chicago, one in Texas, two in Oklahoma, and now I'm robbing a bank. A federal offense. That's twenty-five to life right there, right? The only relationship I'll be able to have with Jodie is through conjugal visits."
"Maybe she'll be arrested for aiding and abetting and you guys can share a cell."
Lance actually laughed. She pushed her hair out of her face and said, "An eight by ten apartment. We'd be hard pressed to find something that nice in New York on our budget."
"It's just a little smaller than our apartment in Chicago."
Lance looked at Elaine. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For falling in love with her."
Elaine smiled sadly. "Claire Lance on the run is a little scary. These past five months, I've seen the old you. The version I fell in love with. Anything that brought that woman back to life is aces in my book."
Lance squeezed the bridge of her nose and looked at the band-aid on her wrist. She said, "Well, with any luck this will get infected and twenty-five to life won't be that long a stretch."
Elaine smiled and said, "Hope springs eternal."
The vault door opened and Hatcher stepped into the vault as Elaine vanished. He had washed his face, but his suit was still dusted with white. He looked around the vault and said, "Who were you talking to?"
"No one."
Hatcher walked across the room and dropped onto the floor next to her. Lance didn't look at him, choosing instead to just stare at the opposite wall. "What did you do?" he asked.
"You saw."
"No," Hatcher said. "Why is someone out there gunning for you specifically?"
Lance sighed. It was such a long story, and every time she went through it, she died a little. "I was a cop. Bad guy killed my girlfriend. Made it look like I did it. I went on the run instead of letting them put me in jail for it." She looked at Hatcher. "Your turn. What's in the safe deposit box?"
Hatcher's eyes went cold and he looked down at his hands. He stretched out the fingers of his left hand, made a fist and then lowered the hand to his thigh. "Lost my temper. Killed a guy. I was in jail for three years. When I got out, my son Joseph was a seven year old stranger. My wife stood by me the entire time, was waiting when I got out, but I always felt like I owed her something. Like I needed to earn her loyalty. I tried to get a job, but I was forced to settle for minimum wage crap. I never spent more than a month or two at a job before I lost my temper again, yelled at some asshole manager who was half my age, got thrown out on the street.
"My wife was supporting the family, and I resented her for it. So when she asked me to watch Joe—he was eight by then—so she could go upstairs and take a nap, I lost it. I screamed at her. Called her every name in the book. Accused her of cheating on me. And I did it all right in front of Joe. He ran out of the house and I was too angry to go after him. He didn't come home that night and I never saw him again."
Lance looked at the table where Elaine had appeared and knew she wasn't the only person in the room with a ghost. She wondered if Joseph was standing to one side, watching his father tell the story again.
"Wife divorced me. Long time coming, I have to say. And I just closed down. I was going to bars every night and drinking at home every day. One night I was in a bar and I saw this guy I recognized from the news. Sex offender. Child molester. I bought him drinks, buttered him up, made him think I was his friend. Then I took him out to the alley and beat the shit out of him. He died in the hospital, but I doubt very many people shed a tear for him."
Lance shuddered, but she couldn't feel pity for the victim in the story. "Good riddance to bad rubbish. What does this have to do with a safe deposit box?"
"I'm getting to that. I got a reputation. It was a good way to blow off steam, I figured. It's not like they were innocent victims. A couple ex-con friends of mine brought me info about other sex offenders in the area. We decided to clean house. Breaking one guy's windows, sugar in one's gas tank. We didn't physically assault every one, we just sent some packing.
"After a few months of that, one of my buddies got wind of something big. Huge. He investigated it on his own, brought some pictures. It was an old hotel, bought by some private company. Older guys would walk in, leave an hour or two later with these sick smiles on their faces. My buddy figured it was an illegal brothel, but when he went inside, he found kids, eight, ten years old. Boys, girls, didn't matter. Hopped up on drugs, barely even conscious.
"My buddy was a Marine who was put in prison for biting off a guy's ear in a bar fight. He was no lightweight. But this place made him weep. He threw up every night for a month after that. He said if I wouldn't help him bring it down, he would bomb the place himself. Send everybody in it straight to hell. But I thought that was too easy. So we broke in one night to get the client list. We were going to take down all the bastards one at a time. Make sure their deaths were long and painful."
Lance said, "What happened?"
"The owner was there when we came in. I left him with the Marine and went to find the files. I couldn't find any client lists, but I did find photographs of boys. It was like a fucking catalogue. These...these kids who didn't even have a decade of life under their belt, staring into the camera like Dachau survivors. I felt I owed it to these kids to look at them. To be one adult in their miserable lives who actually saw them as human beings."
His voice cra
cked and he looked down at his fist. "Joe was on page eight."
"Jesus," Lance whispered.
"There was a line through his picture. I found out from the owner that Joe had died of a heroin overdose two months before we broke in. He was in the house for six months. The owner said Joe was 'very popular and well-loved.' They were his last words." He put his gun down on the ground and stood up. He paced away from the wall and ran a hand over the top of his head.
"We got the kids out. But the client lists weren't there. I was ready to settle for getting the kids to safety, save the bastard clients for another day. But then fate smiled on me. Someone knew about a ledger, a comprehensive list that the owner kept that detailed every person who walked through that building's doors, what and who they paid for, everything. The owner was worried about someone like me coming along, so he kept the ledger in a safe deposit box at this bank. My...client, I suppose you could say, got the info about the box." He waved his hand at the vault. "And here I am. America's Most Wanted because of faulty damn information."
"What are you going to do with the ledger?" Lance said. "If you find it."
"The original plan was to take the bastards out one at a time. But now I think we could use this standoff. The eyes of the city are on us. We need to take advantage of that."
Lance held out her hand and Hatcher took it. He pulled her to her feet and she said, "Damn right we do. Lead the way."
She followed Hatcher out of the vault. If this was going to be her last act as a free woman, the least she could do was make it count for something.
#
The storm front that had threatened all morning finally moved in just after one in the afternoon. The sun was blocked out and the sky was draped in a dark gray carpet. Mallory left the MCU and walked back to Agent Weaver's car. She had reached the Seattle Field Office as he was walking out. She identified herself and gave him a number to call to confirm her status, claiming that she was on vacation when she received the call. Once the call was made and her identity was established, Mallory climbed into his passenger seat and they raced the rest of the way to Shepherd with the red cherry swirling on his dashboard. Mallory hadn't stopped to think during the drive, hadn't let herself really believe she would get so close. Now that she was here, the reality was sinking in.
She leaned against the trunk of the car and closed her eyes. A black and white image appeared in front of her, the view of an Oklahoma City hotel hallway. Claire Lance, hands in the air, turning slowly as Mallory read her the Miranda rights. And then pain, white blindness, unconsciousness. And when she woke, an Oklahoma detective gently breaking the news to her that Lance had gotten away. Again.
Mallory reached up and absently touched her neck. She still wasn't sure who hit her with the Taser. Whether it was Gwen Morse, as she suspected, or Garrett Hadley as the official story claimed, the fact was a wild card had slipped into play. Someone had stepped in and let Lance slip away. She wasn't going to allow that to happen again.
The sound of a barricade being moved caught her attention. She turned to see a police officer in heavy armor driving a van up to the front doors of the bank. The van the lead hostage taker had demanded. Their escape plan. She heard the MCU door open and turned to see Detective Camden coming outside. He looked at the van, and then turned his gaze to the threatening sky. When he was close enough to speak without raising his voice, he pointed at the clouds and said, "Looks like it's going to be a nasty afternoon."
"I need your assurance," Mallory said.
Camden looked thrown by the anger in her voice. "About?"
"I need you to assure me that Claire Lance isn't going to get out of this. She's slipped through too many cracks. This is it. The end of the line."
Camden put his hands on his hips and said, "Agent Mallory, I've negotiated three hostage situations in my career. That may not sound like a lot, but this isn't exactly a metropolis. Of those three times, I've never once let a hostage taker walk away, I've never had a hostage taker killed, and I've never lost a hostage. I'm good at this. That's why I got the call. If Claire Lance is in the bank, you'll have her. Hopefully by this time tomorrow."
Mallory closed her eyes. "If I were straight, I'd kiss you."
"If I were straight, I'd let you."
Mallory chuckled lightly and said, "I'll let you get back to your work." She walked past him and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She flipped it open and dialed half of Toni's number before she stopped. She couldn't call Toni, not even with this news. That was a thoroughly burned bridge. She thought about her options, but there was no one else she could call, no one she could share this moment with. Chasing justice for Elaine had cost her everything. She was out there alone in the cold.
She put her phone back into her pocket as the first icy drops of sleet began to fall. There would be time to rebuild her life later. After Lance was in custody.
#
Lance followed Hatcher into the safe deposit vault. He pointed at the holes he had already drilled and said, "If I have to drill through every one of these boxes, I will. If I have to spend a week holding off the cops, I will."
"Which box was the list supposed to be in?"
"Box three hundred fifty," Hatcher said. "The brothel owner had it written in one of his ledgers. It was crystal clear. I came to the bank three weeks ago to open a box of my own, and I saw three-fifty then. I knew it was here. I dreamt about that goddamn box, how it would feel to press the drill into the keyhole. And now, it was for nothing."
"Maybe they moved it," Lance said. "You've spent so much time planning this thing, maybe there were sponsors who got nervous and moved the list somewhere more secure."
Hatcher shook his head. "I can't believe that. This can't be all for nothing."
Lance walked to the pile of empty boxes that Hatcher had discarded. She saw piles of euros, other foreign money that she didn't recognize, and all variety of jewelry. She crouched and fished through the pile. There were papers, photographs, little mementos that meant nothing to her but were probably priceless to someone else. She stood up, glanced at the wall, and said, "What was the brothel's box number again?"
"Three fifty," Hatcher said.
"That's not what you said the first time."
Hatcher frowned and looked at her. "It's three fifty. I've seen it in my mind so often that I've memorized it, trust me."
"You memorized it wrong," Lance said. She pointed at the wall.
Hatcher walked up beside her and stared at the box she was pointing at.
"Three zero zero five zero," Lance said. "Three hundred fifty."
Hatcher stepped forward and touched the number. "I don't fucking believe it." He snapped into action, grabbing the drill off the table. Hatcher put a pair of sunglasses on, and Lance stepped back as he started to drill. She covered her eyes as dust flew into the air, and then the drill sound died. Hatcher yanked the front of the box open and yanked out the long, rectangular wooden box. He dropped it on the table, flipped open the top, and stared reverently at the content.
Lance saw a tall, narrow leather bound book resting inside the box. Hatcher lifted it out and flipped it open to a random page. "This is it. This is it." He was shaking so hard he had to put the book down. He covered his face and turned away from the table. When he managed to compose himself, he turned to Lance and held out his hand. "Thank you. If it hadn't been for you..."
"You would have found it eventually," Lance said.
"Hours from now. Maybe days. Three hundred and fifty. Jesus. Whatever good comes from this information, that's going on your conscience, Claire."
"Lance," she said as she took his hand.
They shook and Hatcher looked down at the book again. "After all this time, I finally have the damn thing. I can barely believe it."
"Believe it," Lance said.
Hatcher picked up the book and said, "Now we just have to wait for Camden to call again."
"Why?"
"I have what I came for. There's no reason to prol
ong this any longer than necessary. When Camden calls again, I'm going to surrender. This hostage situation is over." He smiled, slapped her on the shoulder, and left the vault.
Lance found she couldn't move. She leaned against the table and looked at the empty box number three hundred fifty. Or, to be more accurate, thirty thousand fifty. She found it for him. She led him straight to what he wanted. All that was left was for the fat lady to sing, and for her to leave the bank and let Faye Mallory take her into custody.
#
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lance returned to the offices where the hostages were being held. A teacher, a restaurateur, a plumber. In a few minutes, they would all get to go back to their lives. This nightmare would be over for them, and what right did she have to prolong their pain? All of her tricks, all the games she'd played staying out of sight and making sure no one caught her, they were done. She was done running. There was a kind of relief to the knowledge that she could finally stop running.
Hatcher motioned for the others to join him outside the offices. Lance leaned against one of the office doors and looked down at Torri Hodge. She had her arms around Wendy, and Carey Drake was curled up with her head in Torri's lap. She seemed to be asleep. Lance was grateful that someone was able to find a bit of peace in this whole mess.
Hatcher held up the book and said, "I have excellent news for all of you. Artemis found what we came for," he said.
Ares frowned. "That book? Let me see it." Hatcher hesitated, but then handed it over. Ares flipped through and stopped at random pages to read names. "Oh, shit," he said, eyes wide. "This dude is running for President next year."
"Not anymore, he isn't," Aphrodite said, reading over Ares' shoulder. She pointed at a name. "He works at Lindsay Le's station. I'm sure she'd love to know what her co-anchor's hobbies are. Do you have any idea how much some of these people would pay to keep quiet?"