by Rachel Caine
Sounds perfect. "And I just committed an act of terrorism," I say.
"Better make that we," he says. "This had better fucking work."
"Rivard must have a private elevator," I tell him. "They'll bring him down that way. We need to find it."
"Oh, I already know where it is," he says. "When Rivard got involved in all this, I dug into him, top to bottom. Didn't find much, but I remember the elevator. It's one floor above us in the parking garage. A secured exit, but we don't need to go in. They're going to come out."
I nod. "Then we disarm his guys, and we make him talk. You got a problem with that?"
"Nope," Mike says. "Let's find your lady."
It takes another twenty torturous minutes for the alarms to start sounding, and I can't stop thinking about where Gwen could be. If she's in Wichita, if Absalom gave us the right info from the beginning . . . but why would they? No, that's a misdirection. It has to be.
But I can't turn my brain off. Gwen's alone, and she thinks I abandoned and betrayed her. Every second we're waiting counts in drops of blood, and screams, and I have to work to keep my nerves in check. Not moving feels like another betrayal.
We wait in a corner by the unmarked private exit, and finally we see a sleek, oversize Mercedes SUV pull up the ramp and park. It's been fitted for a wheelchair, and the driver gets out to open the back and pull down a ramp.
I exchange a look with Mike, and Mike shrugs. The chauffeur is a black man of approximately Mike's height and build. This area of the parking garage is relatively clear of other vehicles--probably a badge-only level--and nobody's come in or out of the place since we took positions. It's a risk.
But it's worth it.
With the unconscious chauffeur tied up and left behind a retaining wall, Mike stands right out in the open in the tireless stance of someone used to waiting. His cap shades his face, and in my experience, people see what they expect to see. Shapes, not features. When the exit door opens, a flood of security men piles out--more than we could take without gunplay, and even then, I don't think it would be likely we'd come out on top. But we no longer need to.
Ballantine Rivard's wheelchair glides out at top speed. He's wearing a dark-blue suit with a pale-yellow tie. No comfortable sweat suit today. He's angry; I can see that from where I slump in the passenger seat up front. All the windows are darkly tinted, which is useful just now. I have my gun out, in case I need to use it, because now my nerves are all firing, and I know we are one smart security guard away from this blowing up.
But they're not looking at us. They're looking outward, for threats. Rivard ignores his guards and stops, spins his chair backward, and drives it in reverse up the ramp. Rivard is practiced at this. His back is to the driver's compartment, and I hear him snap some restraint system in place. Mike pushes in the built-in ramp and gets into the driver's seat. I don't think Rivard has so much as glanced at him.
"Where to?" Mike asks Rivard.
"We're heading to the disaster office. Go," Rivard snaps.
Mike nods as if he knows exactly where that is, and the whole thing is unbelievably smooth. Rivard still hasn't realized that Mike isn't his usual driver, and he doesn't know he has a silent passenger up front. I was worried one of his guards would ride along, but they're moving toward another vehicle entirely.
We come out of the garage. There's a barrier in place, but the men on duty--who aren't police, not yet--move it to let us pass. The place is still being evacuated. Rivard Luxe holds close to two thousand people in its offices, and this is going to disrupt Atlanta traffic for hours. If they catch us, we're definitely going to jail now. Terrorism and kidnapping.
It'll be a while before anybody misses Rivard, but now the clock isn't just ticking for Gwen . . . it's ticking for us.
I don't know when Rivard works out that something's wrong--maybe when Mike doesn't follow the expected route--but because I'm watching him in the rearview, I see him take his phone out of his pocket. I put my gun to the back of his head. "Drop it," I tell him. "Now."
The phone bounces to the floor and slides all the way to rattle against the back door. Rivard is silent for a moment. When he finally speaks, he doesn't sound the least bit afraid. "Mr. Cade. I suppose I should have anticipated that you'd come back. I just expected you to try something more conventional."
"Glad to disappoint you," I tell him. "Where is she?"
"Melvin Royal's wife?"
"Gwen."
"You mean Gina. She'll always be his wife first. Surely you realize that by now."
I feel my muscles tightening, and I have to make a real effort to relax. "You really want a bullet?" I ask him. "Because, hey, keep going."
"Do you want to explain to me why you've taken me hostage?"
"You're going to tell me where Absalom's taken Gwen."
"I have no idea." That rich, thick Louisiana accent feels like mockery right now. I never wanted to pistol-whip an old man before, but the urge is pretty strong. "Why in the world would I know?"
"Sam?" Mike's voice is quiet, but tense. "Ease it down, man. Where are we going?"
"Where he left Rodney Sauer," I say. "Seems appropriate."
Rivard doesn't keep talking. Maybe he's trying to figure out what buttons to press this time, and not finding any. I keep my gun pressed close and tell him to keep his hands up. He's an old man. His arms tremble, and the shakes get worse the longer we drive. Good. I want him tired and afraid.
We park in a darkened alley between two warehouses. Everything on the block is derelict and empty. The only tenants are rats and pigeons.
While Mike takes a turn holding him at gunpoint, I open up the back, grab his phone, and strip the battery. I wouldn't put it past a man this rich to have a fail-safe tracker in it, so I find a handy brick and batter the phone into bits, then drown the bits in a muddy puddle. The violence feels good.
I climb in, then kneel down so I'm on Rivard's level. When he studies me, Rivard's face changes. It tightens, and for moment I see a skull under the skin, and hell in those eyes. "You'll go to jail for a long time for this," he says. "And I'll still be free. You know that."
"I know that if you don't tell me what I want to know, you're going to die here," I say. I mean every word. I'm already in this deep.
"You'd kill a helpless old man in a wheelchair. That's sick."
"You should know," I tell him. "Billions of dirty dollars in your bank account from worse than that. You think we don't know?" I put the gun under his chin. "Because we do."
Rivard's eyes dart to Mike. He's unnerved now. Mike's stripped off the Rivard security jacket and thrown it in the van, and now he's zipping up the hoodie. "You, I recognize you. You're a federal agent," he says. "You can't let him do this!"
"Which part?" Mike says. "The terrorism threat, the kidnapping, or the murder? First two are my problem. Last one's all yours. Murder's not a federal crime."
Rivard's lips are pale and compressed, and his eyes dart from one of us to the other. Starting to realize, I think, how deep the shit hole is.
"You're Absalom," Mike says. "The rest are just minions. You're a bloated white spider getting fat off the dead. How long's that been going on? Five years? Ten? I'm guessing before Melvin Royal strung up his first victim. Finding out how to use the dark web to find your customers and make your money must have been like tapping a river of pure gold."
Rivard's silent. If looks could kill, all of Atlanta would be a mushroom cloud. But I don't care about finding out more about Absalom. "Gwen," I say. "Talk. Now. Because I promise I'll start shooting pieces off you. I'll be nice. I'll start with the ones you supposedly can't feel anymore." I move the gun to tap the barrel against his kneecap. His raised arms are shaking wildly now. Ready to drop. "Keep those hands up. I'm counting to five, and then you lose a leg."
It's almost a normal tone of voice, but there's nothing right about the corrosive hate that's churning inside of me. I thought that Melvin Royal was a monster, and he is, but this man . . . this man is
the one who uses monsters to make money. And if I have to pull this trigger, I'm not going to care.
"She's gone, Mr. Cade," he says, then licks his pallid lips. His tongue looks like a worm crawling on a wound. "You already know where. Absalom told you, just as I ordered them to do."
I don't blink. I start counting. Because I don't believe him. She isn't in Wichita.
When I get to five, my finger tightens, and Rivard blurts out, "Stop! All right! If you want to know, I'll tell you! But please, let me put my arms down!"
"Tell you what," Mike says, taking out his handcuffs. "I'll make it easier for you."
The bitter rage that flashes over Rivard's face confirms for me that he had a plan, and once Mike has his hands secured to the strap that keeps his chair in place, I search Rivard.
There's a sleek, small gun in his breast pocket. Fully loaded. I toss it to Mike. "Engraved," he says. "Only assholes put their initials on a gun. Go on. Shoot him."
Rivard is sweating now. Everything he's counted on is failing, and he has to know I'm serious. If he doesn't, he's going to find out when his kneecap hits the floor. "All right," he says, in an oily tone that manages to be desperate at the same time. "Let's just calm down. We're all men of reason here. And I can be reasonable. You know the resources I have at my disposal. What exactly is it that you'd like me to do? Turn over some of our more creative suppliers? I'm happy to do that. I'm sure the FBI will find me very useful."
"I'll bet," Mike says. "And you know what? We're going to get it all without your help. Shoot him, Sam."
"I can't even feel my legs. Shooting me is just theater!"
"I think the sight of the inside of your knee might make an impression," I tell him. "One, two--"
Rivard blurts out, "There's a pay-per-view event at midnight!"
"And why the hell do we care?"
"It's how we do things," Rivard says. "For . . . premium content. A live event, a thousand virtual passes, fifty thousand dollars per pass."
I already feel sickness boiling up. I can see the shape of this thing coming, and it's a horror. "You have two seconds to tell me how this helps me find Gwen."
"It's her!" he blurts, and he flinches when he sees what crosses my expression. The loathing I feel is making me sick, it's so intense. I want so badly to kill this man, so badly I can taste it. Murder has a sharp, metallic taste, like biting tinfoil. "Her and Melvin Royal. We wanted it recorded. It starts at midnight. We sell the recordings later, but the live event is--special."
"Fuck you," I say, and I come so close to pulling the trigger; the tidal wave of fury that's breaking inside me nearly drowns my sanity. "Where is it?"
Somehow, impossibly, he smiles. It's a sickly thing. Sweat glitters on his forehead. "You can buy a seat, Mr. Cade. It's not quite sold out yet. I think we have five tickets left."
Shoot him. Shoot this piece of rotten meat right now. I don't know whose voice that is, but I think it's my sister's, and I might have done it if Mike hadn't stepped in by the end of that awful little taunt and slammed his fist squarely into Rivard's mouth. The surprise shocks me out of the urge to kill, and I think he just saved Rivard's life. And mine. My skin feels like it's going to burst, the container of a bomb that's going off inside me with too much force to contain. I've never felt hate like this before, not even for Melvin Royal. Everything's tinted with it, tastes of it.
Mike's punch leaves Rivard rocked back in his chair, and his mouth is bloody. He looks shocked, and vulnerable, and all of a sudden, I see a pathetic old man.
I take my finger off the trigger.
"Let me tell you one true thing, Mr. Rivard," Mike says, and I know that tone in his voice. That's the Mike who kills. That's the Mike who walked me out of a war zone when my plane went down in enemy territory. The Mike who put down every bastard in our way. "Sam Cade's the nice guy in this van. So you think real goddamn hard about the next thing you say, because I don't care anymore about my badge, or my career, or how much time I have to spend in prison."
I believe him. I don't know if he's lying, but I know that Rivard certainly doesn't, and there's a savage joy in that, in seeing the real, liquid fear in his eyes.
"Louisiana, outside Baton Rouge. There's a derelict house there, right on Killman Creek. Triton Plantation. That's where it will be held." He tries a smile. "You need me, though. You need me to order it to stop. You can't get there in time."
"We don't have to," Mike says. "That's the great thing about modern police work. All I have to do is make a phone call and get everybody out there arrested."
Rivard's not quite broken. He bares bloody teeth now. "In Louisiana? I don't think so. We own many, many police officers down there, and we're not careless. You have no assurance that the police on the other end will do anything. Even if you get lucky, find an honest cop, that area is very well defended. You'll never get her out alive. Or Melvin. You need me to--"
Mike yanks the expensive silk handkerchief out of Rivard's pocket and shoves it in his mouth, then roughly strips off the man's tie and cinches it in place as a gag. "Sick of your voice," he says, then turns to me. "I'm calling a guy. He can keep Rivard on ice until we have enough proof to put him away."
My throat's dry, fried with anger and adrenaline, and I have to try twice before my voice works properly. "You believe him about the police?"
"I think it's possible. Worst thing we could do is call the local cops and tip his men off down there."
"You think he's telling the truth? That he can call it off?"
"I think if we let him near a phone, the first call he's going to make will burn that place to the ground and kill everybody in it," Mike says. "Because a cockroach like this? He knows how to survive, first and last."
Mike steps out of the van and makes a call, and I hear Rivard making muffled noises, but I ignore him now. He's meaningless. I'm trying to calculate how far it is to Baton Rouge from Atlanta, and what the chances are we can get there in a few hours. Not good. The flights up and down the East Coast are a mess from the storm, and even if Mike can somehow work his FBI magic again, the storm's moving southwest, which means it's between us and where we need to be. It'll cause rolling chaos.
We have to get Gwen out of there. The idea that she's in that house, with him, makes my skin crawl and my stomach turn. I don't care how it happens, but I want her safe. I want to hold her again and tell her how sorry I am that I let this happen to her.
And every passing minute means the chances are smaller I ever will.
Mike's first call is brief, and when it's done, he says, "My guy's on the way. He'll make the van and Rivard disappear until I say different."
"He understands who Rivard is, right?"
"He knows. He's solid, and he owes me."
I wonder what kind of person is solid against the wealth Rivard has, but I have to trust he's right. "What about the cops?"
"I'm calling the New Orleans FBI office instead," he says. "Rivard could well own half the cops in that parish down there, but I know the NOLA folks. He doesn't own them."
Except, when that call ends, I can tell it doesn't go well, and my blood pressure spikes up again, pounding my temples. "What?" I ask him.
"Major stuff going down in New Orleans. Terrorist alert," he tells me. "My guys say there's no way they can break loose to help us. They say call the locals."
"What about the state police?"
"Most of them are going to be stretched thin, and dispatched to New Orleans to assist. Besides: same problem as the locals. We don't know who Rivard's bought off, and I don't have any personal friends down there I can count on."
I check my watch. It's just gone six o'clock. Gwen's murder starts at midnight, streamed live.
We have seven hours to get to her. Time zone change gives us the extra hour.
Hold on, I think. Jesus, Gwen, hold on for me. You promised.
Hold on.
25
GWEN
When I wake up this time, I wake up in bed.
; The nausea hits me immediately in a violent rush, and I curl in on myself to try to hold it back. My head pounds so hard I think my skull will crack, and I can feel myself trembling--not cold now, but shaking from the aftereffects of the drug. Once that begins to recede a little, and the burning bile calms in my stomach, I feel other things. The same pains from before, but with more added. My back feels raw. I think the rough wood of the crate left a small forest of splinters.
When I open my eyes, I try to make my foggy mind tell me where I am. The room's dim, but I can make out white sheets over me. They feel damp and smell like someone else's skin. A stench gradually creeps over me: mold, an old smell: bodies in the ground. The reek of age and decay.
The fear creeps back sluggishly, too tired to continue . . . but it brings clarity with it. Purpose.
I shift to relieve a torturous cramp in my hip, and I feel the bed shift in a way that isn't due to my motion at all. I freeze. There's someone next to me in the bed. I can feel the animal warmth of his body, and every instinct in me screams at me not to move, as if like a child, I can make myself invisible. Staying still won't help me.
I have to help myself.
I try to edge away, hoping to slide out of bed quietly, but I stop when I realize I can't move my left wrist.
The one that aches so badly.
My wrist is tightly handcuffed to the old wrought iron bedstead. I must have broken something, maybe a small bone in my hand, because trying to pull at the restraint, however gently, earns me a pulse of agony so bright it takes my breath. I want to scream, and I can't.
I'm not in my clothes. Someone's changed me into an old, stiff nightgown. The nylon feels brittle, as if it might crumble into dust if I move too aggressively.
The light outside the window is getting dimmer. The sun's going down. I turn my head, and I can just make out the features of the man who's lying next to me.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it's Melvin Royal, but I am. Seeing him here, asleep without a care in the world, is such a shock that it feels like a punch to my heart. A fatal blow. I feel a scream gathering in my throat.
Kill him is the next thought that rushes into the void of my mind, and I bend my right elbow and lunge. I'm trying to bury it in his throat, lean my weight on the point of it until I shatter his hyoid bone, and for a second it feels like I'm going to accomplish that. I feel my elbow bear down on his throat and I start to push . . . and then he's rolling away. Laughing.