by Nick Thacker
Before the woman could argue he was off again, and she seemed suddenly conflicted about tracking him and realizing that he hadn’t come alone. She pulled her eyes away from Joey and saw me. Her head tilted sideways just a bit and I smiled, the biggest fakest smile I could muster.
“I’m… with him,” I said.
“Right,” she said. “Got it.”
She turned the other direction and started hollering at a few workers standing around. Something about making sure she had the list of help for the weekend on the clipboard and checked for accuracy.
Good, I thought. We’re walking into a maelstrom of chaos, just as we had hoped. I knew we wouldn’t be around for the get-together tomorrow or the drink service after, but it was good to get some details about the plans. She was probably not frustrated that she didn’t know who we were, but frustrated at her team for scheduling two extra grunts for today's setup when they could have gotten by with fewer.
I wasn’t a caterer, and I’d never poured for large corporate events like this, but I knew that scheduling and payroll were two of the most niggling annoyances any professional firm faced. I’d kept things dead simple from the beginning, only hiring Joey after he’d proven to me that my life was far easier with him around. So this woman, no doubt in charge of some aspect of the catering or beverage service, was frustrated that she now had to worry about another few hours of minimum wage expenses.
Joey was already close to the far end of the tent, working his way down the tables and glancing at the assortment of liquors and liqueurs on display. Some of the tops had been replaced with QuickPour spouts. They helped with neither pouring easier or quicker, but were nice for measuring proper amounts of liquor in mixed drinks, a necessity for an event as large as this.
He was hustling, obviously trying to look busy for the gal in charge without actually taking up too much of our precious time. I caught up to him in a few seconds and copied his actions, glancing down at bottles, spinning some of them around so the labels faced us, and checking the QuickPours for a tight seal.
“What are we doing?” I asked through the side of my mouth.
“Looking busy,” he said.
“No, I got that. I mean after this. Are we safe?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. I want to make sure the others see us working, just so we’ll have an alibi later.”
“Joey, I don’t plan on getting arrested today.”
“Neither do I. Just due diligence.”
“Well my due diligence is done. I’m ready to start shooting some bad guys.”
“Me too, boss. Just a few more minutes of faking it and we’ll make a move. you go back out the way we came in, and I’ll head around the outside of the tent. Meet somewhere near the rear exit.”
“What if she —”
Joey cut me off. “She’ll probably ask you something. Just say you’re hitting the restroom.”
I nodded, feeling for the first time in a long time that I had a teammate I could trust with my life.
Except that he wanted me to get confronted with the lady again. I didn’t like the lady. She gave me the creeps.
47
WE MET BY THE LARGE double doors that led from the house to the driveway, then down to the path toward the beach. Seeing the massive doors gave the house some directional organization. There was a similar set a little to the south, and I figured there was one set of main doors for both the north and south wings of the mansion, with one huge entrance on the front side of the estate.
There were other doors, scattered around and in small nooks that led into the house, but we weren’t sure if they led straight in or were like patio doors that led into bedrooms and sitting rooms. I figured we’d be safest just walking in through the main doors and seeing what we could see.
We were armed, and while I was positive Hannah’s crew would be at least equally armed, I counted on the fact that they weren’t just waiting inside pointing guns at the main entrances. There were too many entrances to guard, and it was a good bet the funeral staff and guests wouldn’t take too kindly to a contingent of mercenaries walking around.
No one knew what we looked like, and no one knew I had a companion with me. To anyone we ran into, including the thugs, we would seem like just a couple of servants or staffers. I was suddenly glad I’d left the rifle in the trunk. Having the black leather tube hanging on my shoulder would cause no alarm for a civilian, but anyone who had ever served or spent any time with firearms would know exactly what I was carrying. I looked at Joey and knew there was nothing about us that could give us away.
We walked through the back foyer of the great house, into a large hallway that stretched to the left. To our right was the northern wing of the house, but it was mostly filled by the single massive room at the end of the hallway. A fireplace sat at the end of the room, glass walls on either side of the rock structure, and I could see the waves a few hundred feet beyond crashing up onto the beach. The ocean met with the inlet here, the bay that separated this island from Edisto Beach to the north. There were no boats on the water at the moment, but I could almost picture the view from inside the house during a lazy summer day, watching the yachts and sailboats maneuvering around the bay, the larger rigs far out on the horizon line heading south for their offshore dropoffs.
I shook my head, taking it all in. The scale and scope of the house was appalling, but every detail seemed to be in place.
I looked up at the lights. I could see clearly inside, yet the hallway seemed to be dimly lit. Far above our heads a double set of chandeliers twinkled with their artificial candle light, casting small shadows on the intricate crown molding covering the edges of the walls and ceiling. About five feet from the top of the walls a ridge jutted out a few inches and ran horizontally the length of the hallway. More light washed out from the small shelf, providing a beautiful ambient glow that mixed perfectly with the chandelier light.
“That’s the kind of interior lighting I was talking about,” Joey said. “For the bar. Use the right lights and you can make it dim enough to feel nice, but still let people see.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think I’ll be putting any chandeliers up anytime soon.” I looked back down the hall, then up again at Joey. “Which way should we start?”
“Well,” Joey said, “assuming we’re sticking together, let’s just make our way down the hall, north to south, checking every room. Then we can go upstairs and start over.”
I shook my head. “I’d bet all the downstairs rooms are larger meeting spaces, living areas, and kitchens. Too open to hide anyone, and with the funeral going on they would have been spotted.”
Just as I said it, a pair of workers, dressed in the whites of a catering company, entered, turned left in front of us, and started down the hall. They nodded at us as they passed, then disappeared into a large space through a set of wood and glass double doors.
“Let’s just walk down to the stairs at the middle of the house,” I said. “We can peek into the rooms on the way and see if there’s anything we’d want to check out more closely.”
“How do you know the stairs are in the center?” Joey asked.
I flashed him a grin. “Haven’t you seen any movies? The stairs are always at the center. Big, elaborate, grand staircases, spiraling down along the huge curved walls.”
He laughed, and we started down the hall. I felt the weight of the pistol under my coat giving me strength, encouraging me to continue on. I wasn’t one to place my trust in the tool but instead in the wielder of the tool, yet today I felt like I needed the weapon more than it needed me.
The hall barely echoed our footsteps. Rugs and tables on the floor dampened and broke up the sounds, and large framed landscape paintings covered the walls, acting like acoustic paneling. Beneath the rugs a dark, deeply stained and worn wood floor cracked at us while we walked. I knew this place hadn’t been here forever, but it seemed as though the wood I was walking over had been. I pictured it being pulled from the sides of a massive
pirate ship, bent straight and cut into sections, then sanded down and finished.
My imagination was acting up again, a sign that I was feeling the stress of a situation I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. The stress would eventually give way to adrenaline, but until then I had the built-in response of over-analyzing every minute detail and bringing it to life in my mind.
“There,” Joey said.
I followed his finger and saw the staircase I had pictured. It was actually two staircases, one close to us and one farther down, both twisting downstairs into a large, round atrium. I couldn’t see the front door, but I knew it would be just opposite the bottoms of the stairs.
We turned and walked upstairs without seeing anyone else. At the top of the flight another hallway, this one narrower and darker, stretched all along the same north-south route of its first-floor counterpart.
“Looks like all the bedrooms and bathrooms,” Joey said. “Start on one side, or right here in the middle?”
“Middle,” I said. “I don’t want to waste any more time. Whatever this guy wants, I don’t have it, so I want to get in there and let him know as soon as we can.”
“Then he’ll just say, ‘okay, no problem, sorry for the inconvenience’ and let Hannah go?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”
48
MOST OF THE ROOMS WERE locked, but we did get a glance into one of the bedrooms we passed. It was lavish, a purplish hue to the whole thing caused by the natural light from the glass balcony doors spilling in through a light lavender curtain. The bed was a perfect fit for the vague-Southern style of the rest of the house, a vertically massive king with bedposts that stretched to the ceiling, all strung up with more linens and frills than I had ever owned in my entire life.
A vanity, large plush chair, dresser, and full-size standing mirror completed the furniture assortment, and a closet lined one wall while a doorway into a bathroom stood on the other. It wasn’t a particularly large room, but it was well-appointed enough to fit into any of Charleston’s top hotels.
“Nice place,” Joey said.
“Yeah, wish we could stay awhile,” I said. “Maybe when this is all over…”
He winked at me. “We get Hannah back, I have no doubt she’ll invite you to a sleepover.”
I pushed him down the hall away from the room, ignoring the comment. Deep beneath the feelings of anger and building adrenaline and the longing to bring Hannah’s captors to justice, I felt a smaller, yet growing, desire. I wanted Joey to be right, and I had subconsciously wishing for the same thing.
“How do we know these guys won’t be behind a locked door?” Joey asked. “Shouldn’t we try to at least pick the locks and look inside?”
“First, they invited me here, remember? They’ll be waiting impatiently for me, so I doubt they’ll make me pick a lock or break in to get to them. This is a negotiation, not hide-and-seek. Second, they’re confident. They wouldn’t bring her here during a time when the house is going to be busy with visitors unless they knew they had the situation under control.”
“What about the Feds?” Joey asked. “Don’t they know about them?”
I shook my head. “Unlikely, or they’d have already bailed and taken Hannah somewhere they can’t get to her. Plus, the suits are slow. They’ll be scheming for days and waiting for every piece to fall into place. We’re sort of their advance team.”
Joey shot me a look that said, ‘you mean we’re the infantry.’ I shot him a glance that said, ‘yeah.’
“Right,” he said. “So the door will be unlocked and they’ll be waiting for us. Should we have our weapons out?”
I thought about this for a moment, recalling the plan I’d made.
“No, not yet. I want to be checking the rooms myself first, while you wait in the hall. You’ll know when we have the right one, so when I go in I need you to duck out of the way for a bit, while they check the hall. When it’s clear again, come back and post up nearby, preferably within earshot. If you hear gunshots, come on in.”
Joey stared at me. “That’s your plan? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I sneered at him. “You have a better one?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Literally anything else would be better than that. What if they just shoot you in the head when you open the door? What if there’s nowhere to hide and they shoot me in the head after you go in? What if they —”
“Joey. Listen. I don’t usually make plans for this sort of thing.”
“You don’t usually do this sort of thing.”
We were whispering, but our voices were growing louder and louder the more heated we became. I held up a hand, waited for Joey to cool off, and started talking again.
“What I was going to say was that I don’t usually make a plan for this sort of thing. I don’t do this often, but that doesn’t mean I never have. You don’t always get a nice, clean mark. But I can’t risk your life, or Hannah’s, so I couldn’t just do it the old way and run in shooting.”
“Still,” Joey said. “That plan is nuts. You’re going to get all of us killed.”
I shrugged. “Best I had at the time.”
“Okay, you wanted me to wait in the hall. For what? Gunshots? Arguing? A thumbs-up sign?”
“Something like that, I guess. You’re a smart guy, and you’ve been in some sticky situations. I guess I figured you’d just know when to come save the day. If I needed you to.”
Joey’s eyes widened. “There it is,” he said. “That’s what you’ve been worried about. You think that I’m your responsibility or something, like you’ve got to protect me. You think I don’t really understand what we’re into here and you’ve got to keep me out of harm’s way.”
I stared at him.
“Well?”
I shrugged.
“Jesus, Dixon. I’m not a kid. Get over yourself. If I wanted to stay out of harm’s way, I would have stayed out of harm’s way. I didn’t follow you down here because I’m just so completely wooed by your heroism.”
“I know that.”
“Okay, then bring me in, man. Let me help you.”
“Then how do you suggest we —”
Two gunshots cracked through the hallway, one of them landing with a deep thud into the hardwood paneling that covered the lower half of the wall just behind me.
I reached out to push Joey out of the way, but he was already in motion, diving for the floor. I repeated the motion, landing hard on the thin rug and smashing my knee against the foot of a side table. I gritted my teeth and looked up, trying to place where the shots had come from.
My instinct was that they had been shooting from the northern side, the wing of the house we were currently in, but I realized I was facing the wrong direction.
I looked up and my suspicions were confirmed. There was nobody in front of us — the hallway was empty.
Shit. I knew I wouldn’t be able to swivel around and get my pistol out quick enough to get a shot off before the opposing shooter —
Crack!
Another round burst into my eardrums, and I flinched. This shot was louder, closer.
I opened my eyes as I finished my rotation on the floor, coming to a prone position next to the wall and the legs of the side table jutting out a foot from it. Another blast echoed into my ears, momentarily deafening me.
I looked up and saw the shooter, stopped in the middle of the floor. He was on one knee, but holding a handgun in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other.
Joey was also on one knee, aiming down the hallway toward the enemy with both hands on a pistol that had the telltale smoke of a round freshly fired steaming off the back of it.
He watched the man, and I saw out of the corner of my eye him fall to his other knee, then finally backwards onto the hallway floor. Joey had fallen facing the other direction — the right direction — and had gotten off the two shots quickly enough to take the man down.
The guy was on the floor now, but he was trying to talk
into his radio. The pistol had fallen away, resting a few feet away on another rug.
We waited, silent, until the man lay still.
“Uh, thanks,” I said. My knee was going to swell up, and some of the pain had already set in, but I forced it to the side of my conscious mind and let the adrenaline pool in to take its place.
Joey lowered his weapon and looked over at me. There was a mischievous look of rage mixed with excitement in his eye, but he still seemed calm and collected.
He nodded, then stood. “I think it’s time I earned that raise.”
49
“OKAY, WISE GUY,” I WHISPERED. “What’s the play?”
“Work our way down the hall, saving your ass the entire way.”
I nodded and smiled, my pistol still up and ready. “Sounds good to me. Lead the way, Rambo.”
Joey stepped out and poked each door on his side of the hall with the end of his pistol. I did the same on my side, and each of us took turns glancing down the way we’d come from to make sure we weren’t being ambushed from behind.
“They’re going to know we’re here,” he said.
“They’re going to know I’m here. And they’re going to know one of their own is down, since they heard his shots and the return fire, then nothing else.”
“So they’ll be expecting you,” he said.
“They already were. Same plan, okay? I want them to think it’s just me as long as possible. That has to be better than letting them know you’re here.”
“Yes, that part makes sense,” Joey said. “I’m just a pawn — they don’t want anything from me, so they’ll probably try to get rid of me right away. But once you’re in, I’m not sitting quiet while you try to talk your way out of this.”
“I’m not following,” I whispered.
“I’m going to give you five minutes in there,” he said, holding up his wristwatch so I could see it. “That’s it. Five minutes, then it’s party time.”
I thought about it and nodded. “Fine. Not much I can do to stop you, so if you think that’s best. Just…”
