Saving Faith

by David Baldacci

  "Nothing! I was just wandering. I didn't even know you had your office here."

  "That's because you didn't need to know that."

  "I thought I heard a sound outside the window when I came in here."

  "You did hear a sound, but it didn't come from the window." He pointed to the doorjamb.

  Faith noted the rectangular piece of white plastic attached to the wood there.

  "It's a sensor. Anybody opens the door to my office, it trips the sensor and triggers my beeper." He took the device out of his pocket.

  "If I hadn't had Max to calm down at Mrs. Carter's, I would've been up here a lot sooner." He scowled at her. "I don't appreciate this, Faith."

  "Hey, I was just looking around, killing time."

  "Interesting choice of words: 'killing."

  "Lee, I'm not plotting against you. I swear it."

  "Let's finish packing. Don't want to keep your bankers waiting."

  Faith avoided looking at the phone again. Lee must not have heard the message. He had been hired by Buchanan to follow her. Had he killed the agent last night? When they got on the plane, would he somehow manage to push her out at thirty thousand feet and laugh riotously while she plummeted screaming through the clouds?

  But he could have killed her at any point from last night to now.

  Leaving her dead at the cottage would have been the easiest move.

  That's when it hit her: It would have been the easiest move unless Danny wanted to know how much she had told the FBI. That would explain why she was still alive. And also why Lee was so eager to get her to talk. Once she did, then he would kill her. And here they were flying off together to a North Carolina beach community that would be largely deserted this time of year. She slowly walked out of the room, a condemned woman on the way to her execution.

  'twenty minutes later, Faith closed the small travel bag and slid her purse strap over her head and onto her shoulder. Lee came into the bedroom. He had put back on the mustache and beard, and the baseball cap was gone. In his right hand were his pistol, two boxes of ammo and his belt holster.

  Faith watched as he loaded the items into a special hard-sided container. "You can't take a gun on a plane," she said.

  "You're kidding, really? When did they start that shit?" He closed the container and locked it, pocketing the keys before looking at her.

  "You can take a gun on a plane if you disclose the weapon when you check in and fill out a declaration form. They ensure that the weapon is unloaded and in an approved case." He rapped his knuckles against the hard-sided aluminum case. "Which it is. They check that the ammo is a hundred rounds or fewer and is in the manufacturer's original or otherwise FAA-approved packaging. Again, I'm cool. Then they mark the bag with a special tag and it goes to the cargo bay, where it would be real hard for me to get to if I was thinking about skyjacking the plane, wouldn't you agree?"

  "Thanks for the explanation," Faith said curtly.

  "I'm not a damn amateur," he said hotly.

  "I never said you were."

  "Right."

  "Okay, I'm sorry." She hesitated, intensely desiring to establish some sort of truce, for a number of reasons, her survival being chief among them. "Would you do me a favor?"

  He looked at her suspiciously.

  "Call me Faith."

  The door buzzer startled them both.

  Lee checked his watch. "Little early for visitors."

  Faith watched in amazement as his hands moved like a machine. Within twenty seconds the pistol was out of the container and fully loaded. He put the container and the ammo boxes in his small travel bag and hoisted it over his shoulder. "Get your bag."

  "Who do you think it is?" Faith felt her pulse throbbing in her ears.

  "Let's go find out."

  They stepped quietly into the hallway and Faith followed Lee to the front door.

  He checked the TV screen. They both saw the man standing there on the front stoop of the building, a couple of packages in his arms. The familiar brown uniform was clearly visible. As they watched, he hit the buzzer once more.

  "It's just the UPS man," Faith said, letting out a relieved breath.

  Lee didn't take his eyes off the screen. "Is that right?" He hit a button on the screen that obviously moved the camera, as Faith found herself now staring at the street in front of the building. Something that should have been there wasn't.

  "Where's his truck?" she said, her fear abruptly returning.

  "Excellent question. And the fact is I know the UPS guy on this route real well, and that's not him."

  "Maybe he's on vacation."

  "Actually, he just got back from a week in the islands with his new bride. And he never comes at this time of the morning. Which means we've got a big problem."

  "Maybe we can get out through the back."

  "Yeah, I'm sure they forgot to cover the rear."

  "There's only the one man."

  "No, he's the only one we can see. He's got the front. They probably want to flush us out the back right into their arms."

  "So were trapped," she managed to whisper.

  The buzzer rang again and Lee reached out his finger to hit the intercom button.

  Faith grabbed his hand. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "I'm going to see what he wants. He'll say UPS and I'm going to let him in."

  "You're going to let him in," Faith repeated dully. She glanced at his pistol. "What, and have a shoot-out in your apartment building?"

  Lee's face hardened. "When I tell you to move, you move your ass like a T-Rex is breathing down your neck."

  "Move? Move where?"

  "Just follow me. And no more questions."

  Lee hit the intercom button, the man identified himself and Lee touched the door release. As soon as he did, he activated the apartment's alarm system, whipped open the front door, grabbed Faith by the arm and pulled her out into the hallway. There was a door across from Lee's apartment. It had no apartment number on it. As Faith listened to the UPS man's footsteps echoing in the building down below, Lee already had unlocked the door. They were through it in an instant and he quietly closed and locked the door behind them. The place was very dark, but Lee obviously knew his way around here. He led her to the back, through another door that opened up into what looked like a back bedroom, from the little Faith could see.

  Lee opened another door in the room and motioned Faith in. She stepped through and almost immediately felt a wall against her. When Lee joined her, it was a very tight fit, like a telephone booth. He closed the door and the darkness became blacker than anything Faith had ever experienced before.

  He startled her when he spoke, his breath tickling her ear. "Right in front of you there's a ladder. Here are the rungs." He gripped her hand and guided it until her fingers touched the rungs. Lee continued whispering. "Give me your bag and start climbing. Take it slow. I'll sacrifice speed for silence right now. I'll be right behind you. When you get to the top, just stop. I'll take it from there."

  As she began to climb, Faith started feeling severely claustrophobic.

  And, because she had lost her bearings, she was becoming queasy. Now would be such a perfect time to lose the contents of her stomach, little though it was.

  She moved her hands and feet slowly as she went up. Then, gaining confidence, she started to pick up her pace. That was a mistake because her foot missed a rung, she slipped and her chin painfully clipped one of the rungs. But then Lee's strong arm was round her in an instant, holding her up. She took a moment to steady herself, tried to ignore the pain in her chin and kept climbing until she felt the ceiling above her head and then stopped.

  Lee was still on the rung right below her. Then he suddenly moved up on the same rung she was on, his legs on either side of hers so that her legs were pinched between his. He leaned against her with increasing force, and she wasn't sure what he was trying to do. It was becoming painful to breathe with her chest pushed up hard against the ladder rungs. For one
terrifying moment she thought he had lured her in here to rape her. Suddenly a blast of light hit her from above and he moved away from her. She looked up, blinking rapidly. The view of the blue sky was so wonderful after the terror of the darkness that she felt like screaming in relief.

  "Go up and onto the roof, but keep low. As low as you can," Lee whispered urgently into her ear.

  She went up and through, dropping to her belly and looking around. The roof of the old building was flat, with a gravel and tar base. Bulky old heating units and newer air-conditioning machinery dotted the roof in various places. They made for good hiding places and Faith slid over and squatted next to the nearest one.

  Lee was still on the ladder. He listened intently and then checked his watch. The guy would be at his door right about now. He would buzz, wait for Lee to answer. They had thirty seconds at most before the guy realized no one was coming to the door. It would be nice to have a little more time than that, and also a way to draw in the other forces Lee knew were out there. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and hit a speed-dial number.

  When the person answered, he said, "Mrs. Carter, it's Lee Adams.

  Listen to me, I want you to let Max out in the hallway. Right, I know I just dropped him off. I know he'll head up to my apartment. That's what I want. I, uh, I forgot to give him a shot he needs. Please hurry, I really need to get out of here."

  He pocketed the phone and pushed the bags up and out, then he hoisted himself through the opening and closed the hatch behind him. He scanned the roof and spotted Faith. Grabbing the bags, he slid over to her.

  "Okay, we got a little time."

  Down below they heard a dog start to bark loudly and Lee smiled.

  "Follow me." Squatting low, they made their way to the edge of the roof. The building attached to Lee's was a little shorter so that the roof was about five feet lower. Lee motioned for Faith to take his hands. She did so and he lowered her over the edge, holding tightly until her feet touched the roof. As soon as Lee joined her, they both heard shouts coming from Lee's building.

  "Okay, they've made their all-out assault. They'll go through the door and that'll trip the alarm. I don't have a call-back option with the alarm company, so there's no delay in sending the cops. A few minutes and it'll be a big mess."

  "What do we do in the meantime?" Faith asked.

  "Three more buildings and then down the fire escape. Move!"

  Five minutes later they were running through a back alley and then out onto another quiet suburban street flanked by a number of low-rise apartment buildings. The street was lined on both sides with parked cars. In the background Faith could hear the thump of a tennis ball being hit. She could make out a tennis court surrounded by several tall pine trees in a small park across from the apartment buildings.

  She watched as Lee eyed a line of cars parked at the curb. Then he jogged across to the park area and bent down. When he straightened up, he was holding a tennis ball--one of many that had landed there from years of errant shots on the court. He walked back over to Faith. She could see that he was working a hole in the tennis ball with his pocketknife.