by Jenna Kernan
“Neither do we, but those men by the bog still tried to kill us.”
She didn’t argue with that, just held on as he flew along the highway passing a Subaru with bikes fixed to the back end and a family SUV with canoes strapped to the roof racks.
Chapter Eighteen
“I don’t understand why we didn’t have any backup out there,” she said.
“That’s just one of my questions,” said Dalton.
They tore into the parking area of a chain hotel. Dalton leaped out of the truck and charged through lobby doors that barely had time to whisk open. Erin lowered the windows and told Lulu to stay. Then she followed him inside in time to see him leaning over the desk of the petite receptionist dressed in a polyester blazer with a gold-toned name tag.
“I can’t tell you his room number.” She lifted the phone. “But I can call his room for you.”
Dalton flashed his shield to the receptionist. The wallet was soggy and much worse for wear, but the receptionist’s reaction was instant. Her fingers started tapping on the keys.
“He’s in 116. First floor, right down that hallway.”
“Call 911. Tell them NYC detective Dalton Stevens requests backup for possible B and E.”
“Yes, sir.”
He pointed at Erin. “Stay here.”
“Like hell,” she said.
She’d seen enough cop shows to know how to enter a room with a gun. And if Rylee Hockings could do it, she could, too.
Dalton dashed down the hall toward his colleague’s room and she followed at a run. When he reached the door, he motioned her to halt, and he stood to the side to try the handle. The door was locked. Then he lifted one booted foot and kicked in the flimsy hotel room door.
He entered with pistol raised and the grip cradled in his opposite hand. Erin watched him disappear and then heard nothing.
She crept farther down the hall and made out her husband’s voice.
“Larson?”
Did he see his friend or was he just looking?
There was no reply. Erin peeked around the doorjamb and saw Henry Larson sprawled on the floor, his hands secured behind his back. Dalton squatted at his side.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
Before he could answer, Dalton rose to face her and his eyes went wild. He reached and took two steps toward her. Then she felt it, the hand clutching her jacket from behind, dragging her off her feet, across the hall and into the opposite hotel room. The fabric choked her, sending her hand reflexively to her throat.
Dalton reached the hallway as her captor kicked the door to the opposite hotel room closed and threw the bolt. The impact of Dalton’s body against the door vibrated through the soles of her kicking feet.
On the second attempt Dalton crashed through the door. His gun was up and raised as he advanced with measured steps.
“Far enough,” said her captor. She felt the hard pressure of the pistol pushing into her temple.
Dalton paused, as if playing some deadly game of freeze tag, but his weapon remained up and pointed at her captor.
“Foster, isn’t it?” asked her husband.
“For now,” said the man who had spoken to her in the darn troopers’ headquarters just prior to Dalton’s arrival with the three federal agents, Hockings, Tillman and Shaffer. He had identified himself as Lawrence Foster, an agent with the Department of Homeland Security.
“Lower your weapon or I kill your wife.” He said it as a cashier might tell you to hold on while they print your receipt. The effect was chilling. The man was cold-blooded as a garter snake.
Dalton said nothing but his eyes were on her attacker. The gun barrel moved to her eye socket.
“All right. It’s down,” said Dalton. “What do you want?”
“To interrogate the two remaining witnesses. Find out how much they know about us.”
“We don’t have the package. It’s with the agents at the troopers’—”
Foster cut him off. “I know that. Which is why I blew that building. That virus is now airborne. Anybody sifting through the ashes has a great chance of contracting our little superbug, and the vaccine, well, that doesn’t go airborne.” He made a tsking sound with his tongue on the roof of his mouth.
Was it true? Was that why there was no backup? Were they all dead?
The chill shook her. Was it really just her husband and her and this madman?
“Out,” said Foster.
She didn’t know where they were going and, right this second, she didn’t care. What she did care about was seeing that Dalton did not get shot by some maniac terrorist. She and her husband were going to take Lulu and Jet home to Yonkers and give them a home. Dalton was going to make good on his promise to become a supervisor, and she was going to see that they spent every free minute trying to start that family.
If Foster didn’t shoot her and her husband first.
What would Dalton do?
Something heavy pressed against her side. The pistol, the small one that she’d carried since Jet’s captor tried to kill them. Her hand slipped inside her jacket pocket and she gripped the weapon. Her thumb flicked off the safety. He marched her forward. Sweat ran behind her ears and into her hair. It rolled between her breasts and down the long channel of her spine.
Dalton retreated to the hallway as they reached his discarded weapon. The man stooped and his pistol dropped toward her neck. He motioned with the gun to the floor.
“Pick that up,” he ordered her. “Barrel first.”
Erin slipped the pistol from her pocket and met Dalton’s gaze. She’d never seen him afraid before. But that was what she saw now. Stone-cold terror in the hardening of his jaw and the hands extending reflexively toward her.
* * *
DALTON HAD STOPPED backing up when he saw Erin’s hand moving in her pocket. His breath caught. His jaw locked and he saw stars.
No. No. No.
He’d only set down his gun to keep Foster from killing Erin. But she had other plans, as always.
Had she remembered to flick off the safety of her weapon? His gaze dropped for just an instant to the small silver pistol in her hand, but it was enough.
Foster’s eyes narrowed on him and he lifted the handgun that was now pointing across Erin’s chest.
Dalton took a step forward. Foster hesitated as if deciding whether to aim at Erin or back at him. Erin lifted the gun under her opposite armpit and fired back at Foster hitting him in the chest. He released her, staggering backward, still aiming at them. Dalton made a grab for Erin and missed.
Erin spun to face Foster and stepped between them as Foster fired a single shot.
Chapter Nineteen
Every hair on Dalton’s body lifted and his heart stuttered before exploding into a frantic pounding. Erin spun, staring at Dalton’s shocked expression as Foster aimed at him. But he’d reached him now and grabbed Foster’s wrist, then used his opposite hand to break Foster’s elbow as he retrieved the man’s pistol from his limp hand.
Dalton pointed his attacker’s pistol at Foster, but his gaze flicked from his target to Erin, who sank to her knees, gasping. In that moment, Foster ducked past the doorjamb and out of sight.
The small pistol dropped to the carpet as his wife lifted her hand to her neck, pale fingers clamping down as blood welled from beneath her palm.
His head swam and he shook it in a vain attempt to wake from this nightmare. Erin stared at him, her eyes wide and round, showing the whites all about her brown irises.
“Erin. No,” he whispered to himself as the truth ricocheted through him like the bullet that had struck her.
Erin was bleeding.
She toppled, her hand dropping away from her neck, allowing blood to pour out of her body, staining the carpet.
A wild shrieking came from the man darting down the hall to the lobb
y, his ruined arm flailing, his elbow jutting out at an odd angle. It took a moment for Dalton to realize that part of the screaming was the wail of approaching sirens. Help arriving too late.
Dalton let his suspect run as he dropped to his knees beside his wife. He gathered her limp body in his arms. She was going to die, leaving him after all but not in the way she had planned.
He tore back the jacket from her neck and saw the bullet hole at the point where her long neck gave way to her shoulder. A gentle probing told him that the collarbone was intact, and from the way the blood exited the wound he was certain that the bullet had not struck her carotid artery because there was no spraying of blood. But it had hit some blood vessel because the hole was a deep bubbling well of red.
She was going to leave him like his men back in Afghanistan. Like his partner, Chris Wirimer. Why was he still here when everyone he tried to protect...
“Dalton?” Her voice was weak, but her gaze fixed him steadily. “You okay?”
She was worried about him. Always. And suddenly he understood. This was exactly what she had feared, only their roles had reversed. How many times had she imagined him bleeding out at some crime scene?
This was what he’d done to her, year after year, because he couldn’t stand being the one who made it out.
His broad hand clamped over her wound and pressed hard. He would not let her bleed out on the hallway like some...some...hero, he realized. She’d saved his life, possibly Henry Larson’s life as well, if he wasn’t already dead.
“I’m here. Help is coming. Hold on, Erin.”
“Did he shoot you?” she asked.
“No.”
She closed her eyes then, and relaxed against him.
“Thank God,” she whispered.
Dalton felt the tightening in his throat, the burning as his eyes watered, vision swimming.
Then he started screaming for help. Doors cracked open as people crept cautiously out of their rooms.
“Bring help,” he shouted. “Get her help!”
She had wanted to leave that package behind. Put it on a red T-shirt with a note, she had suggested. But he had to bring it along.
If Foster could be believed, he’d destroyed it anyway, and by bringing it out of the woods, possibly Dalton had jeopardized who knew how many lives, begun some Siming’s pandemic for them. But now, the only life he cared about was Erin’s.
He stroked her damp hair and stared down the hall until, at last, the EMTs arrived, charging toward him in navy blue uniforms, their bulky bags flopping against their thighs.
“Hang on, Erin. Don’t you leave me.”
* * *
THEY LET DALTON ride in the first ambulance with Erin but did not let him into the operating wing. He was directed to a waiting area as Erin disappeared down a long corridor, followed by his partner, Henry Larson, on a second gurney. The waiting room had wooden chairs with mauve cushions set in a U-shape around three coffee tables holding a smattering of torn magazines and discarded paper coffee cups. There were two other men already there, and he was surprised to find both CIA agent Jerome Shaffer and FBI agent Nolen Bersen waiting.
“So it’s true then,” he said. “Troopers’ headquarters is gone?”
Bersen nodded. “Agent Heller suffered injuries. He is in surgery now.”
“So is Erin. Gunshot wound to her neck.”
Shaffer stood and placed a hand on Dalton’s shoulder. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Anyone else hurt?” asked Dalton.
“Mostly minor injuries. The troopers have a K-9 dog. Former marine, and he found the explosives. They were clearing the building when it went off. Heller was hit by part of the ceiling. He’s got a spine injury.”
“What about the...” Dalton looked around. “What we brought in?”
“Long gone. Shaffer and Gabriel had it out of the station well before the blast. It’s safe, Stevens.”
Why didn’t that make him feel any better?
“She’s in there because of me.”
“This isn’t your fault, Dalton.”
“I agreed to go back out there. I let her come along. Of course, it’s my fault.”
“I understand you’re upset. With good reason. Your wife is injured and your colleague, Detective Larson, suffered head trauma in an attack,” said Shaffer.
“Yeah, they just brought him in with her.”
“What happened?”
Dalton’s eyes widened as he realized that Shaffer didn’t know about the impostor and therefore the agent from Siming’s Army was getting away. “At the troopers’ headquarters there was a man. We both met him. Said he was DHS, name was Lawrence Foster.”
“Foster?” asked Shaffer. “I don’t know him.”
Dalton explained, finishing with, “He shot Erin. Don’t let him get away.”
Both men lifted their phones.
“So there is no Lawrence Foster of DHS?”
Shaffer lifted the phone from his mouth, pointing the bottom toward the ceiling. “No.”
“Then how did he get into trooper headquarters?”
“I’ll be checking that.”
“What about the other one, Rylee Hockings?”
“She’s DHS. On her way back to her offices in Glens Falls.”
While Dalton paced, Shaffer and Bersen made calls.
He didn’t realize that Agent Shaffer was speaking to him until he touched Dalton’s shoulder.
“We got him.”
“Who?” He’d been so lost in thought and worry that it took a moment to come back to his surroundings. Dalton was in the hallway now, standing on the wide tiles before the doors that read No Admittance.
“Lawrence Foster, or the man claiming to be Foster. Troopers caught him trying to board an Amtrak train in Glens Falls. Arm injury made him easy to spot.”
“Sweating like a marathon runner,” added Bersen.
“He had the proper ID for DHS. Either real or a very convincing fake.”
Dalton felt none of the elation that usually accompanied a collar. He didn’t care. Not unless they’d let him see him alone so he could settle up. And he knew that would never happen.
How many victims had asked him for that same thing?
“He alive?” Dalton asked, his voice mechanical.
“Yes, in custody. His real name is Vincent Eulich. He’s a physicist, college professor in Schenectady with a bomb-making hobby.”
“We already have agents at his home and office. But we have to go slow. Already found one IED,” said Bersen, referring to the improvised explosive devices most commonly in use in the Middle East.
A man in blue scrubs emerged from the swinging doors and all conversation ceased.
“Anyone out here waiting for word on Henry Larson?”
“I’m in his department,” said Dalton. And Henry was his best friend.
“Any direct family?” asked the surgeon.
“Not here. He’s got an ex-wife and two kids.”
The surgeon pulled a face.
“I’m Dr. Howard. Your colleague has suffered a spine fracture in three places. The rest is cuts and bruises and a mild concussion as a result of a head injury. The back injury is most serious. But the pressure is off the spinal cord and I’ve repaired a herniated disk. His prognosis is good. Barring complications, I’d say he’ll be able to use his legs again after some physical therapy.”
That news hit Dalton in the stomach like a mule kick.
“Walk? The man’s a former Army Ranger. He bikes all over Westchester and runs Ironman contests.”
The surgeon shook his head. “I doubt he’ll be doing any of those things again. He’ll need a spinal fusion once the swelling is down.”
“Fusion?” Removal from active duty, Dalton realized. Just like that.
Dr. Howard nodded.
“Got to get back at it.”
Dalton grasped his elbow and Howard’s expression showed surprise.
“Any word on Erin Stevens? She was shot in the neck?”
“Different surgical team. I’m sure they’ll be out to you as soon as they can.”
“Anything?” Dalton said, his voice gruff.
“Still in surgery.”
He gave Dalton a tight smile and backed through the swinging doors.
Dalton walked slowly to the waiting area and sank into a chair. Bersen and Shaffer took up seats opposite. Dalton folded his hands and bowed his head. He had not done this in some time. Praying felt awkward and uncomfortable. Still he muscled through, asking God’s help in saving his wife. When he finished he found both agents regarding him.
“You two waiting on someone?”
“Yes,” said Shaffer. “You. And your wife. We need to be sure Siming’s Army knows we have the intel they tried and failed to recover and that you two are safe. We’ve also got two agents outside of the operating room.”
“After they know that, you think they’ll try to hurt Erin again?”
“They seem determined to kill you both. So we’ve called some friends from WITSEC.”
Dalton straightened at the mention of the witness protection program.
“That’s extreme, don’t you think?”
“Temporary placement. Until we get this organization shut down.”
Dalton sat back in the uncomfortable little chair. They didn’t think it was too extreme. What would Erin say? What about him? He had a mom, a dad and stepmother, plus two older sisters. Erin had a brother she rarely saw and a sister who lived on the same block.
His job... He’d have to leave his job and, even after relocation, he would not be able to work in law enforcement again.
A voice came from the edge of the carpet just outside of the waiting area.
“Mr. Stevens? I have an update on your wife.”
Chapter Twenty
Erin woke in pain and in the company of strangers. She asked for Dalton and a nurse’s blurry face appeared above her. When the nurse didn’t understand, Erin tried to pull the mask off her own face. There was a sharp sting on her hip and she sank back into blackness.
