by Hunt, James
“The point is to extend the inevitable,” Stacy said. “That’s always been the point.” She shook her head in frustration. “It’s what you do every day in your job. You try and extend people’s lives.” She turned and smiled at Mallory. “Like hers.” Stacy stood and took two steps closer to Grant but was mindful to stay out of reach should he decide to make a move. “You’re going to walk us out of here. Then, we’re going to get in your car and drive until we either run out of fuel or the authorities stop following us.”
“And if they don’t stop following us?” Grant asked, already knowing full well that they wouldn’t, no matter what she did.
“Then we start all over,” Stacy said. “Stand up, take four steps backward, and leave the gun.”
Grant complied, and he watched Stacy pick up the gun and then aim it toward Grant.
“Now, undo the tape around Mallory’s legs,” Stacy said.
Grant knelt and fiddled with the duct tape with his nails, but eventually had to tear it with his teeth. Once on her feet, Mallory kept close to Grant, and he had a better look at the device strapped to her chest, but the new proximity wouldn’t help him defuse it. If he wanted to stop it from blowing up, then he had to get his finger on that detonator.
“Move,” Stacy said, keeping the pistol aimed at the back of Grant’s head.
The trio emerged into the hall, and Grant noticed the open doors they passed, which told him the officers had cleared anyone still inside the building. He was glad for that.
By the time they reached the stairwell for the descent, Mallory could barely put one foot in front of another. She whimpered through the piece of duct tape and trembled violently.
Grant knew he was running out of time. The moment they stepped outside, things would only worsen. There would be a chase then a standoff, and then Stacy would be backed into her last corner and blow all three of them off the face of the earth.
“How many others have taken this class of yours?” Grant asked, his voice echoing in the stairwell as he took the first step down.
“It’s not my class,” Stacy answered. “I don’t know who runs it. And even if you were to survive all of this, you’d never find out either.” She sounded disappointed. “I am very good with programming code, and I can tell you that whoever designed the site was a genius. The security algorithms would make anyone’s head spin.”
“You admire him?” Grant asked as they reached the fourth floor, his eyes scanning the corners for those empty glass bottles. “This teacher?”
“Could be a her,” Stacy said. “Though statistically that’s not likely. I recognize I’m a bit of an anomaly, but I’m not the only one.” There was a hint of a smile in her tone. “You’d be surprised how many people search for the ability to live out the fantasies they keep to themselves.”
Grant kept one hand on Mallory’s shoulder and made sure his body shielded hers from Stacy’s aim, not that it mattered if he couldn’t get the detonator. They passed the third floor, and if he remembered correctly, there was an empty fifth of Jack Daniels on the second floor. If he could get it without her noticing, then he might have a chance.
“Getting quiet on me,” Stacy said. “Whatever you’re thinking, I would recommend against it.”
Grant made sure to keep the flashlight off as they neared the second floor, and he squinted, praying he could find the bottle in time. He’d only get one shot at it.
“I am thinking,” Grant said. “I’m thinking about how you did all of this work and you’re so willing to accept the outcome of losing.”
“I told you I—”
“I know what you told me. I just think that all of this is useless to avoid the inevitable. At least my inevitable has a chance,” Grant said, goading her forward. “Yours doesn’t. They know who you are now, and they’ll never stop hunting you, no matter how far or how long you run.”
“Shut up,” Stacy said, taking a step closer and pressing the gun against the back of Grant’s skull.
“I mean, for you to just lose everything and for it to come apart so quickly after all of that planning, I can’t imagine that you’ll have any peace once this is done,” Grant said.
“I said shut up!” Stacy pressed the barrel of the pistol against the back of his head even harder.
Mallory placed her left foot on the platform of the second floor, and Grant eyed the Jack Daniels bottle from earlier. With his hand still on Mallory’s shoulder, Grant stepped on the back of her foot, and she tripped forward. He stumbled in the same motion to help catch her, his body blocking the view of him snagging the empty bottle in the process.
“Get up!” Stacy said, her shrill scream echoing over the dark walls.
Grant made sure Mallory didn’t hit the floor hard, and when he helped her up he kept the bottle tucked in the hand that held her shoulder, which he still blocked from Stacy’s view.
“Are you all right?” Grant asked, giving Mallory a light pat on the shoulder. “That could have been bad.” The pressure point from the end of Stacy’s pistol returned to the base of Grant’s skull.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Stacy asked.
For a moment Grant was sure that she’d seen him reach for the bottle and that it would erode the last piece of sanity from her mind and send all three of them to hell. But how could have she seen it? It was dark, his body was in the way, there were too many—
“I said what the fuck are you doing!” Stacy repeated, screaming.
Grant tried to keep his voice calm. “She fell. I was just helping.” He remained still, the pressure from the gun keeping him in place. Mallory froze as well and whimpered through the duct tape.
“Well, keep her upright, or I’ll put a bullet through your brain here and now,” Stacy said.
But Grant knew different. The moment she fired the gun, the entire police force would come raining down on her head, damn the consequences of what happened next. Someone would shoot. Someone would get trigger happy. And then boom.
“I will,” Grant answered then nudged Mallory forward, the bottle still clutched tight in his hand. The bottom floor neared, and Grant knew he’d have to make a move quickly. The best bet would be when they reached the door. It would provide more movement than Stacy could keep track of. It all came down to him just getting his hand over the detonator before she could let go. No matter what.
Mallory reached for the door handle, her hand shaking, and every muscle in Grant’s body tensed. Grant purposely held Mallory back, slowing her down and making all three of their bodies cluster at the door. Grant was waiting for one moment, just the right one where he had a half-second jump on her. That was all he needed.
“Go on!” Stacy said. “Move!”
Stacy thrust the pistol forward past the left side of Grant’s face, and that was his chance.
All in one movement, Grant smashed the heavy glass bottle to the side of Stacy’s face while his free hand closed a fist around the thumb that held the detonator in place. A gunshot fired, and the percussion reverberated so loudly Grant thought his eardrums would burst. The only thing he concentrated on during the one and a half seconds of contact was making sure that thumb didn’t come off the button.
Grant and Stacy dropped to the floor, and Grant felt a pop in his left shoulder in the collision. A white flash blinded him, followed quickly by a sharp pain down his entire left side. The muscles in Stacy’s arm had gone limp, and blood covered the right side of her face where the bottle had made contact. She lolled her head back and forth, and while the sharp pain in Grant’s shoulder kept him frozen in place, he reached his left hand to the detonator.
But Stacy aimed the pistol at Grant the moment he moved, and he was forced to divert his effort to snatch her wrist as the two grappled for the gun. With her finger still over the trigger, Stacy fired three shots into the air until a cluster of S.W.A.T. officers barged in.
Assault rifles spat bullets, and gunshots thundered like fireworks. In the midst of the firefight, Grant felt another shar
p pain, this one on the right side of his abdomen. But through it all he focused all his strength on his left hand, keeping it clamped over Stacy’s, over the detonator. When he looked at her face her eyes were open, but nothing except a lifeless expression looked back. She was dead. The bomb didn’t go off. Mallory was safe.
10
The moment Dana Givens saw her daughter in the back of the ambulance, Grant didn’t think a reinforced steel door would have held the mother back, let alone the two officers watching over the girl as the paramedics examined her. The pair embraced, then cried, kissed, and cried some more.
When it was all said and done, the girl was unharmed. The emotional scars would take a long time to heal, but Grant was glad nothing physical happened to the girl. It could have been a lot worse.
Grant watched the reunion unfold from the back of his own ambulance. The pain in his right abdomen turned out to be a bullet from one of the S.W.A.T. members that barely grazed his love handle, and the crack in his left shoulder was nothing more than a dislocation. It hurt more going back in than it did coming out.
One of the officers from the raid walked over to the Givens girls and escorted her and the mother to a squad car. Neither were aware of anything other than each other, and Grant was glad the two were reunited. There would be time to question them later, but for now it was best to let the girl go.
The phone in Grant’s pocket buzzed, and he jumped from the vibration. It was Mocks. Before he answered, he turned back to the paramedic. “Am I all set?”
“You’re good,” he said.
“Thanks,” Grant lowered his shirt and answered the call. “I didn’t think hospital patients could have cell phones?”
“They make exceptions for officers,” Mocks answered. “And also for people who raise hell.”
“How are you feeling?” Grant slid off the back of the ambulance and wobbled forward. His legs felt like wet noodles.
“Better, but I heard I missed a lot of excitement,” Mocks said, her voice tired. “So is the ambassador going to give you two medals tomorrow or what?”
Grant grinned. “Maybe. I’m on quite the streak.”
“Well, let’s hope your hand stays hot.”
He didn’t like Mocks’s tone or the phrasing. “What are you talking about?”
“Remember the website that was blocked on the youth pastor’s computer?” Mocks asked.
“Yeah,” Grant answered.
“I just got off the phone with Cyber, and they managed to get through. It’s some kind of class where you can learn how to abduct kids. It’s got everything from how to seduce them, where to look for them, and how to make it look like you’re not doing anything wrong.”
“Jesus Christ,” Grant said, whispering to himself.
“And that’s not even the worst part,” Mocks replied. “The site has a subscription list with the usernames of all the ‘students’ that come to learn.”
Grant didn’t want to ask the question, but he had to know. “How many?”
“Over one hundred,” Mocks answered.
The normal sour pit and steel-winged butterflies that filled his stomach at this type of news returned in full force. Grant looked down at his watch, where the timer for the Givens case was still running. He stopped the timer then cleared it, resetting everything back to zero. What came next would be a different beast, one that he’d never encountered before.
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Deadly Web: Trapped- Book 1
1
Chapter 1
Parker read the address one more time, making sure he had it right. He wiped his palm onto his pants. He couldn’t stop sweating. The writing on the paper had faded. He didn’t know why he wrote it in pencil.
He crumpled the piece of paper and reminded himself of the five grand that was waiting for him after he was done. It was a lot of money for one job. And there was the potential for more if he was successful. It dark money though. Real dark.
Parker grew up Catholic. His grandfather and grandmother had raised him and forced him to go to church twice a week. Each visit warranted a confession of his sins. He repented and the priest would absolve him, and Parker would leave.
Parker never understood how the priest just sat there and listened to all the terrible things that people did. He imagined it was a hell of a weight to carry, knowing everyone’s secrets and keeping them to yourself. If Parker was forced to listen to everyone’s troubles, he imagined he would have blown his fucking brains out a long time ago. He could barely handle his own issues, let alone that of a whole community. But that was why he never went into the priesthood, a piece of disappointing news for his grandmother. She’d be rolling in her grave if she saw what he was doing now.
The parking lot mall was busy. Saturday was always a big shopping day. Parker sat in his truck and leaned back low in the seat. He was a big guy, nearly filling up the whole cabin, and he grew more uncomfortable the longer he sat. He was wedged in a spot between a sports car and a minivan, but his truck was high enough to see over both, giving him a three hundred sixty-degree view of the cars that passed and jockeyed for what few parking spaces remained.
One altercation prompted a man to leave his car and threaten another driver that took his spot. It was all just words though. The moment Parker got a good look at the guy, he knew there wouldn’t be any trouble. He always knew who was a pussy and who wasn’t afraid to bleed.
Parker glanced down to his hand and the white gauze that covered his fresh ink. He patted the puffy bandage with his finger and winced upon contact. He’d gotten it earlier this morning, sealing his fate. He was part of the group now, and the only way out was six feet under. But this wasn’t his first go-around with dangerous company.
The rap sheet filed somewhere in his probation officer’s cabinet told the same story of most parentless kids. Spent some time in juvie for burglary and destruction of property, did a stint at the state pen a few years back for grand theft. But he couldn’t put all of that blame on the back of his nowhere-to-be-found parents. And it wasn’t like his grandparents didn’t try and do their part. The old crows loved him, were good to him, gave him every opportunity in the world. But he just didn’t listen.
Booze, girls, and rock ’n roll were all he cared about during high school, which he didn’t hang around long enough to finish. Once he dropped out, his grandparents stopped trying so hard. He figured they finally understood he was a lost cause. That was fine with him.
They let him stay in the house until he was eighteen. There wasn’t much talking that last year together, but there was always food in the fridge and leftovers waiting for him on the stove with a note from his grandmother that had his name on it circled in a heart.
Parker’s stomach soured at the memory, and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth to keep the vomit at bay. He was a long way from those days.
It was funny how he still remembered all those things so vividly. He guessed he was lucky that the drugs and booze hadn’t rotted all of his mind, though he figured it wouldn’t be much longer until it did. Maybe he wouldn’t live long enough to find out. There was something comfo
rting about that notion.
The sun grew higher and hotter in the sky, warming the inside of his truck. Parker cranked the manual lever to lower the window and caught a cool breeze that drifted by. It was a gorgeous day outside. A rarity in Seattle for the month of March.
Hordes of people funneled in and out of the mall’s entrance, and it became harder for Parker to keep track of all the movement. If he missed her, then he would have to do it somewhere else. But that went against the plan, and the new tattoo on his hand was a reminder of what happened when those plans changed. Best to do what they had told him to do in the first place.
A gaggle of girls in the middle of the crowd exiting the mall caught his attention, and Parker leaned forward. There were a few bodies blocking the face, and when the fat man in the Seahawks jersey finally shuffled out of the way, Parker saw her.
Annie Mauer was in the middle of her friends, all of them holding bags from whatever teeny-bop store had the hottest trends these days. All four of them held coffees, smiling and giggling about nonsense. They followed the crowd toward the bus stop on the other end of the parking lot where they would catch their ride home, and Parker started his truck to follow.
With Parker’s attention focused on the girls, he missed the white sedan speeding down the parking lot. A horn blared and Parker slammed on the brakes.
The driver behind the wheel of the white sedan waved his hands in circles, mouthing something that would have gotten him shot if Parker wasn’t in a hurry. The sedan passed, and Parker returned to his search for the little blonde girl amidst the sea of bodies.
Parker sped through the parking lot, hoping to reach the bus stop before the girl did. He would have snagged her while she was walking in the crowd, but that opportunity was lost. He had to improvise now.
