by Eva Hudson
“He stole a helicopter.”
“In the scheme of things, I think the police might overlook that, don’t you?” She was surprised Gurley hadn’t brought up the subject of the missing gun and ammunition from the base. She sure as hell wasn’t going to mention it.
Her phone beeped. It was a text message from Foster telling her to stand by for further instructions.
50
An hour later Ingrid and Gurley were hunkering down in an anonymous embassy car at another abandoned industrial park. This one was much more run down and older than the first—the buildings were made of red brick rather than prefabricated particle board. No doubt the architects had built them to last, even though by now many of them had started to fall down. Ingrid noticed some of the roofs had collapsed. Most of the windows had no glass in them.
“He’ll be calling you, right?” Gurley asked. “My phone is low on juice.”
“Mine too. Hopefully the battery will last long enough.”
Gurley had pushed back the passenger seat as far as it would go, but his knees still seemed to be butted up against his chin. He adjusted the seat so it reclined at sixty or so degrees and tried to relax his head against the head restraint. He closed his eyes. He started to say something then stopped.
“He’ll call when he’s ready,” Ingrid said. “We can summon a little more patience, can’t we?”
“Seems this whole investigation has been about waiting.”
“We’re so close to the end now. I’m sure I can talk some sense into Kyle.” She turned on the radio in the car, keeping the volume low, and retuned it to a news station.
She and Gurley listened in silence for the next five minutes, but there was no mention of Carrie Foster’s arrest. The bulletins were full of eye witness reports from Jackson, Minnesota. As the body count increased, so the reporting seemed to get more ghoulish. Ingrid turned off the radio.
“Nothing about the Foster case,” Gurley said. “Seems the British media are more interested in something that’s happening 4000 miles away.”
“Got to keep their audience happy.” Ingrid hoped Kathleen Avery wasn’t still watching every news report back home. She hated to think of her being exposed to the gruesome details of how each victim had died.
“I guess a head injury sustained accidentally doesn’t make for exciting headlines.”
“We don’t know it was accidental. That’s for a jury to decide.”
“What?” Gurley turned awkwardly in his seat to face her. “You don’t seriously believe Carrie planned to hurt Molly?”
“How can I possibly know one way or the other?” Ingrid really didn’t want to have this argument now.
“Come on, you said yourself it was probably an accident.”
“I’m not sure what to believe. You’ve obviously made up your mind.” She paused a beat. “But then you were certain she was innocent. Until she confessed.” Ingrid had her own suspicions why Gurley was so ready to accept Carrie’s version of events, but now really wasn’t the time to broach the subject. She reached for the radio dial again, hoping she might find some inoffensive pop station.
Gurley leaned forward and grabbed her hand.
“What the hell?” Ingrid snatched her hand out of his grasp.
“What are you getting at?”
“Can we just focus on the task ahead of us? I’d like a little time to prepare myself, if that’s OK with you.”
Gurley turned away and stared out at the street. “How long have you known?”
“Known what?” She really didn’t want to have this conversation now.
“Did Rachelle tell you?”
If she hadn’t been certain about her suspicions before, she sure as hell was now. Ingrid stared out through the windshield too. Those street lights that were still working started to flicker into life.
“If you have something you want to confess, maybe you can save it for another time?”
“I know Carrie couldn’t hurt Molly deliberately. I just want you to understand that.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessary.”
“Kyle was on a training mission in Iraq. Carrie was lonely. I was in the right place at the right time, I guess.” He put a hand to his forehead and sucked in a breath. “The whole thing ended a little under two years ago. It was over before it started. We both knew it was a mistake.”
Ingrid didn’t respond. What was there to say?
“I promise you I knew nothing about Molly. I had my suspicions, obviously—the timing kind of worked out—but when I asked Carrie about it, she swore to me Molly was Kyle’s.” He ran a hand over his short hair. “What a fucking mess.”
Ingrid sat very still. She tried to recall their first meeting with Carrie Foster at the hospital. There had been something strange about it—a tension she couldn’t identify at the time. Then there was Gurley’s subsequent refusal to have any doubt about Carrie’s account of the incident.
Gurley was right: it was a fucking mess.
“Say something for God’s sake.” Gurley twisted in his seat again.
There were no words of comfort or reassurance she could give him. She reached up and squeezed his shoulder, looked into his face, trying to muster an expression of sympathy, suspecting she was failing spectacularly.
Her phone beeped.
It was a text from Kyle Foster.
“We’re on,” she said, “I have the directions.”
Gurley blinked hard a few times, as if he were trying to refocus his attention.
“I can’t let you go in there on your own,” he said after a moment.
“He’s not going to hurt me. He has no reason to.”
“He could be armed.”
“Really?”
Gurley slammed a hand against the dash.
“I really don’t think he had anything to do with the missing gun at the base. He didn’t have the opportunity.”
Gurley turned to the passenger door and opened it. “I’m going in.”
“He didn’t ask for you.” She put a restraining hand on his arm. “Please, Jack. Think about it.”
He glanced over his shoulder.
“Maybe Kyle knows about… Maybe you’re the last person he wants to see.” She braced herself, worried how Gurley would react. She needn’t have. He just slumped back in his seat.
“I don’t want you going in there without backup.”
He still didn’t trust her abilities. She would have gotten mad if she’d had the energy. “Tough—we’re doing this my way.”
“You should have some protection at least.”
“I can look after myself.”
“Why not have a little extra help?” Gurley shoved an arm behind his back, beneath his jacket. He yanked something from the waistband of his pants. Then held it out to Ingrid.
The Beretta M9 seemed small in his huge hand.
51
Recoiling from the gun, Ingrid pressed her back into the driver door. “What the—”
“Take it.”
“No way. Do you have any idea how much crap I’d be in if anyone found me with that?”
“Same for me.” He proffered the gun again.
“It’s the missing pistol from the munitions store, isn’t it?”
“We were hunting a man who tried to kill a fourteen month old and had abducted his son. I wanted a little backup.”
“And how convenient, to blame Kyle Foster for the theft. You were actually prepared to frame him?”
Just when Ingrid thought she was getting a measure of the man, that maybe Gurley wasn’t the dick she’d supposed him to be, he threw this at her. What was wrong with the guy? She wanted to punch him in the mouth now more than she ever had. How could he possibly think his actions were in any way justifiable? She was tempted to report him to his superior when this whole thing was done.
“I just wanted to get Tommy back safe and sound,” he said. Then added, “By any means necessary.” The gun was still balancing on his open palm, his arm outstretche
d towards her.
“Get that thing out of my sight.” She thumped the steering wheel with a fist. “And find some way of returning it to the munitions store. You better make sure it’s clear to everyone Kyle Foster had nothing to do with it.”
Gurley reluctantly shoved the gun back into his waistband. “You said yourself he sounded like a desperate man. You can’t go in there unarmed.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do. Foster’s instructions are quite clear. I have every intention of following them to the letter. If I can’t convince him of Carrie’s confession, that we finally believe his version of events, I can at least go along with his plan. That way no one has to get hurt.”
Her phone beeped again. The message contained just one word: now.
Gurley started to open his door.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Let me at least walk you to the outside of the building, for God’s sake.”
“I go alone.”
She climbed out the car and hurried to the second building on the right-hand side of the street, as per Foster’s instructions. The darkness seemed to be falling more quickly now. She checked her watch: it was a little after eight-thirty. A distant street light was doing nothing to illuminate her path. She stumbled awkwardly over a brick or lump of masonry as she reached the curb. She glanced back towards the car. Much to her relief, Gurley hadn’t decided to rush to her aid.
She reached the entrance of the dilapidated building, one of the rotten wooden doors was hanging off its hinges. She shoved it a few inches to one side and squeezed through the gap. As soon as she was through the other side, the light disappeared almost completely. Standing still for a moment in the dark, she hoped her eyes would adjust to the gloom, but apart from a pale glimmer from a distant window, somewhere way over to her left, which cast the faintest of glows onto the uneven, litter strewn floor, she couldn’t really make out any detail. Even though she was reluctant to use her precious phone battery, she flipped on the flashlight app and quickly swept it in an arc in front of her. She spotted a doorway on the other side of the high-ceilinged, hundred-square-foot space, switched off the flashlight and slowly made her way towards it, each footfall landing on broken glass or rubble. After a few dozen more steps she reached out her arms, ready to touch the wall she’d been heading for. When she got to it she was surprised the doorway she’d seen wasn’t immediately in front of her. She must have deviated from a straight line. She felt along the wall and edged sideways, frustrated progress was so slow.
Her phone beeped.
Another text message from Foster:
whr the fck ru?
Instead of wasting time fumbling with the phone to text a reply, she located the doorway and moved through it as fast as she dared. She hollered loudly, “I’ve just crossed the first big room. Can you hear me?”
“Hello?” a distant child’s voice answered. “Who are you? Have you—” The child let out a muffled yelp, as if someone had put a hand over his mouth.
“Tommy? Is that you?” Ingrid shouted. “Are you all right?” She stared into a deeper darkness, relieved that Tommy was still alive, but worried now that someone was hurting him. “Tommy?”
As she stood perfectly still, trying to hear his reply, a loud noise, a shuffling, scraping sound, came from somewhere ahead of her. She switched on her phone flashlight again, but there was no one with her in the twenty-foot square room. In the far corner she saw another doorway. With the flashlight trained on the floor, she quickly picked her way over the debris. She reached the door. Through the other side she was relieved to discover a narrow corridor, just as Foster’s instructions had described. She called out again, “Kyle? Tommy? I’ve reached the corridor now. Where are you?” She waited a moment for a reply, but didn’t really expect one.
The corridor would be much faster than the previous two rooms to navigate in the dark. All she had to do was reach out both her hands to touch the walls on either side to guide her. She was pretty sure, according to Foster’s instructions, her final destination was the room beyond this passageway.
She turned off the flashlight.
After a dozen or so steps another noise, much closer this time, forced her to stop in her tracks.
She felt something scurry over her feet. It was heavy. It had to be a rat.
She continued down the corridor, even faster than she had before. She reached the doorway at the far end and listened.
She heard only the rush of blood and beating of her own heart thump in her ears.
Concentrating hard, Ingrid tried to recall exactly what she was supposed to do once she’d come to the end of the corridor.
Through the doorway she turned right, and, with her fingers lightly touching the rough brickwork of the wall on her right-hand side, followed it until she reached another doorway.
Here she was supposed to wait. Though she was tempted to switch on the flashlight again, she resisted, concerned that in the pitch blackness she might startle Foster with the dazzling bright light.
He might be just feet away from her.
She held her breath and tried to make out the sound of Foster’s breathing nearby.
“Kyle? Are you here? Is Tommy with you?” she said, after a few moments.
She listened again.
All she heard was scuttling behind her. More rats, she supposed.
She swallowed hard. The rats themselves weren’t a problem. It was the fact she couldn’t see them that really bothered her.
She turned her head to the left, then right. But the blackness was absolute.
Behind her the scuttling noise stopped. She exhaled.
“Kyle?”
A split second later she felt an intense pressure across her throat.
Before she could react, a violent shove from behind pushed her face into the rough brick wall. More pressure on her throat, swiftly followed by heavy weight pressing against her body, and she was pinned flat against the wall.
She couldn’t move her arms or legs. She couldn’t make a sound.
52
“Are you alone?” Though the words were spoken in a harsh whisper, the voice was unmistakably Foster’s.
It was impossible for Ingrid to speak, the pressure against her throat was crushing her windpipe.
She managed to nod once.
“You’d better be.” Kyle Foster quickly slipped his arm from her throat, grabbed her head by the hair and shoved her left cheek hard against the wall. The rough surface scraped against her skin.
With his spare hand he patted her down, lingering at the pockets. He located her cell phone and threw it onto the ground.
“Please, Kyle.” Her voice came out in a murmur, her throat stinging. She coughed. “You’re not in any trouble. Carrie has told the police exactly what happened. How she hurt Molly. Why don’t you take me to Tommy?”
“You think I would trust you, after you betrayed me before?”
“The police insisted on being part of the operation. It was out of my control.” She coughed again. “They’re not here now—doesn’t that mean anything?”
“Maybe it’s a trap.” He pressed a knee into her thigh.
“Where’s Tommy?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Is he with Yvonne?”
“Shut up!” He shifted his weight, leaning more heavily against her. His breathing was rapid and uneven.
Ingrid relaxed her muscles as best she could, hoping Foster might loosen his grip.
He didn’t. After a few moments his breathing slowed a little.
“If what you’re saying is true, why did Carrie decide to change her story?” he said.
“She had no choice.” Ingrid coughed again, her throat felt raw. She tried to swallow. “The police found new evidence.”
“I’ve said all along I wanted to protect Molly and Tommy from her and you didn’t believe me. And now you’re telling me she’s confessed?”
“It’s true.”
&nb
sp; “You’ll say anything to get Tommy back. You make me sick.”
She couldn’t argue with him. The way he was talking, nothing she said would make him trust her. “OK,” she said, “just tell me how you want this to work.”
He shoved her harder against the wall.
For the first time Ingrid worried what he planned to do to her once he released Tommy.
“Where’s Tommy?” she asked again, eager to focus on the reason she was there. “Is he safe? Is Yvonne here with him?”
“Do you have his papers? He needs them for the plane.”
“We have an embassy car waiting outside. All the paperwork is inside,” she lied. “We’ve done everything you asked.” Ingrid swallowed again. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could continue speaking. “You have me now. You can let Tommy go.”
He shoved her again. “Shut up! We’re doing this my way. When I say.”
“You wanted an exchange. You got it. Please. I just want to help you.”
“Stop lying to me!” He twisted sideways in an attempt to shove her even closer to the wall.
But this time Ingrid resisted with all the strength she had.
Her efforts threw Foster off balance. He stumbled.
She took her chance.
Driving back both elbows as hard as she could into his torso, she stamped down onto one of his feet. It was enough to knock him further off balance. She used the little momentum she’d gained to spin around and wrap both her arms across his body, pinning his arms to his sides.
He struggled against her.
Now she shoved him against the wall. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hold him there for long. He was bigger than her, stronger.
“Kyle—listen to me. Tommy will be safe. We can work together on this.”
“Why should I believe you?” He struggled against her grasp.
A strange, high-pitched gulping sound came from behind her. Then a bright light threw her shadow onto the wall. She couldn’t turn to see what was there without loosening her grip on Foster. She heard the noise again. More of a sob this time. Then a scream.