“Hurry!” I tossed a blanket over the plate and the blood on the floor, then sat on top of it. The chain dug into my ass but it was better than him discovering what we’d been doing. Meanwhile, Lizzie arranged herself in my lap.
“Here,” she whispered, tucking my wounded hand underneath her. “He won’t see it this way.”
“You’re a very smart girl,” I whispered. “Now calm down. Don’t let him see you’ve been excited.” Immediately, she went limp in my arms, like a sack of potatoes. She would make a great actress one day if that’s what she chose to do. I followed her lead and looked as whipped as possible—just in time, too, since Jonathon appeared moments later.
“Well, well, well. We’ve been making friends, have we?” He sneered, shaking his head. I glared up at him.
“What have you been doing?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know? Don’t worry. You’ll find out all about it in time.”
“You sick shit.” I couldn’t hold back, no matter if it got me into trouble or not at that point. “Telling this little girl that nobody cares whether or not she’s okay, that nobody’s looking for her. You know damn well there are people looking for her, or you wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of kidnapping her.”
“Shut your mouth,” he warned.
“It’s not bad enough you did what you did?” She shook in my arms. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t mean to upset you.”
“Stop talking to her and talk to me,” he ordered.
“You just told me to shut my mouth.”
“If you’re going to talk at all, talk to me.”
“Fine. You’re a coward. You only feel like a real man when you’re threatening somebody or killing them.”
“I told you to shut the hell up!” He stormed over to where I sat and slapped me so hard, I saw stars and rocked over to the side. But I managed to stay sitting up, covering the plate, and I only glared at him in defiance. He shook with rage.
“You’ll see who’s boss around here pretty soon,” he warned. I didn’t say another word.
Chapter Twenty-One – Pax
We sat nearly a half-mile away from the sheds, down by the new construction. None of the workers were there—they had received a surprise afternoon off once Ricardo made it clear that we needed the space. It was full of unmarked cars and trucks, which were all full of plain clothes officers, detectives, and my agents.
The two scouts Ricardo had sent out to check the sheds came back. They were dressed like winos, stumbling and shambling in rotten clothes.
“The third one.” One of them took off his hat and wiped some of the dirt off his face. “I heard whispering inside, and there’s a glow—like a fire in a barrel. The others are empty.”
“I found the cab back there, too, behind the first shed” the other one explained. “Covered in a bunch of garbage, but it’s there. He ripped a bunch of shit out of it, too—I guess so it couldn’t be traced.”
“He must’ve cut the wires so the tracking system wouldn’t work anymore,” Ricardo muttered. “He didn’t think about it soon enough. He’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”
“So we’re going in on the third shed?” I was about ready to explode by then. The sun was starting to set, and it was going to get much colder that night. I couldn’t stand the thought of the two of them in there, freezing, with him terrorizing them. I couldn’t imagine what he might be doing. What their conditions were like. At least Christa was with Lizzie and she didn’t have to be alone, but that was still cold comfort. I wanted both of them out of there.
“When the time is right, which is still isn’t quite yet,” Ricardo explained.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means we can’t just go in there with guns blazing, Pax. You have to trust me on this.”
“God damn it!” I kicked the side of his car in a rage. “I was a detective, too, and I know what it means to put something like this together. Damn it, I want to get in there, and I want to get in there now! My little girl has been in there for a fucking week!”
“Don’t you think I know that? Damn it yourself, Pax.” He took me by the collar and pushed me back against the car. He had never done anything like that before—not to me, and not to anybody while I was watching. “You act like you’re the only person this is happening to. You remember how that first case tore us both up inside? How you felt just as strongly as the parents about bringing that monster down? Don’t you see? I feel now the way you felt then. It’s been eating me alive, knowing that girl is with him, wondering what he’s done to her and fucked her life is going to be once this is all over. You’re not the only person feeling this right now.” He let me go, shaking his head. “Just like you’re not the only one who feels awful inside over what happened to Suzanne. You’re not alone in this. Stop acting like you are.”
It took a lot of self-control not to lash out at him just then. I had a sick fantasy, only as long as the blink of an eye, in which I pulled out my Glock and put it to his head and dared him to ever lay his hands on me again. The fact, of course, was that he was my friend and I needed him just then. And he was right, too. I would have to apologize one day in the future for acting like he didn’t care about Lizzie.
“We’re going in when it’s dark,” he said, straightening himself out, catching his breath. “That way, it’ll be less likely that we’ll be seen. I’ll have four scouts out there, one on each side of the building, watching to see what’s happening inside. My first wave will go in and focus on rescuing the girls. The next—including you, Pax—will go in afterward to deal with him.”
“Negative,” I said.
“Hang on. You wanted to deal with him, right?”
“Yeah, but I want to be in there to get the girls, too.”
He rolled his eyes with a sigh. “Fine. I won’t argue with you on this.”
“We’ll be part of the first wave, too.” Brett was beside me, and Dylan and Spencer.
“If you want. That’s fine.”
After that, it was a matter of waiting for the sky to get dark. Why was it taking so long? It never seemed to take that long at any other time. Only because my daughter’s life depended on it. Only because the woman I loved was in there with her.
I paced back and forth, replaying the last conversation I had with Christa. How wounded she had looked, like the puppy I’d owned years earlier. I had hurt her so much. She didn’t deserve any of it—all she ever wanted to do was help, just the way she’d given up her life for her mother’s sake. She had that kind of heart. And what did I do? I told her to get lost, basically. Just like I had done to Suzanne, even if I didn’t do it in so many words. Poor Suzanne. That was my fault, too, of course. She had never hurt anybody in her entire life. He only killed her to get to me.
“You all right? I mean, I know you’re not all right, but are you as all right as you can be right now?” Spencer wasn’t a poet, but he was trying.
“Yeah. I guess so. I shouldn’t have lost it on Ricardo.”
“Hey, man, we’re all feeling it right now. Christa’s like a sister to me, and to the other guys. We all have skin in the game—just not as much as you do, I guess.”
“You know about me and Christa?” I asked.
“That you followed her to Jamaica? Yeah. Everybody knows about that. We’re all adults—we drew our own conclusions.” He smiled kindly. “We were all really happy for you two, you know. I mean, really. It took long enough.”
“Too long.” Something was almost choking me, something rising up in my throat. I swallowed it down, pushed it back. I had to keep control of myself if I was going to be any use to the women in my life.
He winced. “I’m sorry. That was a poor choice of words.”
“No, it’s okay. You’re right. It took long enough. And let that be a lesson to me, and to all of you. Don’t wait as long as I did to make things happen in your life. I mean, you have a family and things are great. Don’t talk yourself out of what might be g
reat for you.”
He winced. “You heard about California, then?”
“Of course. The walls have ears.” I patted his shoulder. “Charlotte has an opportunity out there, and so do you. Don’t let the job here get in the way of the rest of your life. If you want to go, we’ll miss you, but you have my blessing.” I felt it best to tell him that while I still had the chance, because there was no telling what might happen once I got in there with Smythe. He might decide to blow my brains out. That might have been his plan all along, come to think of it.
“Thank you.” We both looked down the road, toward the sheds. “So. That’s where they are. Poor kid.”
“I know. Poor kid.”
“She’ll be okay. In time, I mean. She’s young enough yet that she could get over this.”
“Could. But maybe not.”
“Depending on what happened to her this week.”
“She saw her mother’s murder. How much worse does it get than that? Listen, I know you’re being a friend right now, and I appreciate that, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is my fault. The last thing I need to do is go over how fucked up my kid might be after this.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is. I should’ve killed him years ago. I would’ve been doing the world a favor, even the taxpayers who wouldn’t have to pay for his stay in prison.”
He shook his head with a frown. “You might see it that way, but nobody else does. You wanted to see him pay for what he did, and you weren’t a crooked cop. You felt strongly for the girl and her family, but you didn’t let that feeling override your sense of right and wrong. There aren’t many cops or just normal, regular people with the strength to do that. You did it, though. And you sent him to prison so he would serve his time. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s the fucking parole board. What a joke.” He shook his head with a bitter, humorless laugh.
“Yeah, well, that’s a whole other story.”
“You should sue their asses.”
“I should sue their asses,” I agreed with a nod. “If not me, then the family of that cabbie he killed today.”
“Do we know for sure that he killed him?” I rolled my eyes and fixed Spencer with a sarcastic stare.
“Anyway,” I continued, “we’ll see how I feel about this when it’s all over.”
A cold wind blew from over the water and made me shiver until my teeth chattered. I didn’t usually feel the cold so acutely and chalked it up to the strain of the situation. What was taking so long? It was dark. We had to get in there and get the girls out and kill that motherfucker before he did any more damage.
Ricardo approached us moments later, hands in his pockets, shoulders up around his ears. I didn’t know if he was hunching over to protect himself from the wind or to protect himself from a punch he thought might be coming from me. I felt like an asshole for acting the way I had before, but there would be time for apologies later. “Okay. I’m sending my guys in now to scout out the shed. It’ll probably take them around ten minutes to walk over there, so be patient.”
“I will.” I was already being patient, wasn’t I? More patient than probably anybody else in the world would’ve been in my situation. It was all I could do—otherwise, I’d drive a fucking armored truck through the doors of that old shed.
As I waited, I couldn’t help going through all the old memories. Lizzie’s birth, which I managed to be there for even though I was supposed to be on a stakeout. The first time she called me “Da-Da”. Teaching her how to ride a bike. Standing next to Suzanne on her first day of school, watching as she walked up the steps hand-in-hand with her best friend. The backpack which had seemed so small in my hands looked so big on her. I remembered holding Suzanne while she cried once the doors to the school were closed, holding back my own tears all the while.
Suzanne. God, so many memories of her. Holding her, listening to her laughter, even fighting with her. I even missed the fights. The fun we used to have, back before I screwed everything up. She deserved better than me—and she was about to get it, too, until Smythe ruined it for her. She raised a beautiful, strong, fiercely smart daughter and I could never thank her enough for that. Damn it, she deserved better than to die the way she did.
Ricardo’s radio squawked. “We’re out here.”
He glanced at me. “What’s it look like?”
“All I can make out clearly is crates. A ton of crates. They block most of the windows—though there are a few spaces here and there, and I can see through those.”
A second voice chimed in. “Same on the opposite side. I can make out a fire in a barrel, and I can hear voices. Soft. Nobody’s yelling.” That was a relief.
A fire in a barrel? Maybe he was trying to keep them warm. That was something, anyway.
“I wish there was more we could tell you, but I don’t think there is much,” I heard. “It’s almost impossible to tell where we should come in or what’ll happen when we do. It looks almost like a maze in there, whether he set it up or not is anybody’s guess.”
I snickered. “Oh, I’d bet good money he set it up. No wonder it took him so long to pull this off. He’s been setting it all up for a year.” How sick did a person have to be to do that? He took what was already in those sheds along the dock, one on each pier, and set up a maze for us to travel through to get to Lizzie. Christa was with her, though, so that made things a little better. She might be able to find her way out—or knock the fucking things down and barrel her way through. A little girl might not be able to do that so easily.
Ricardo looked at me. “Are you ready for this? I mean, really ready? For whatever might happen?’
“I’m as ready as I’m ever gonna be. That’s all I can say.”
We looked at each other for a beat, both silent. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go in.”
Chapter Twenty-Two – Christa
“You know she’s the lady your daddy was with in Jamaica?” Jonathon looked at Lizzie with a knowing smile. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Stop that,” I warned.
“He was with her while you were here with me.”
“That isn’t true.” I held her tighter. “We got back at the same time you did the terrible thing you did, and you know that. I bet you were watching the whole time when we got to the scene, weren’t you?”
He held my gaze for a long moment, then laughed. “You got me,” he shrugged. “Of course, I was there. Standing in the crowd. Sometimes I dress a little different to blend in. I was wearing a hat and heavy coat and mustache. You couldn’t see me—hell, you actually touched me when you ran by. Did you know that? Pax ran past and you were following him, begging him to stop. It was pretty dramatic.”
I clenched my jaw and counted to five. It was the only way to keep from unloading on him and putting us both in jeopardy. “See, there’s these things called feelings and emotions. I’m sure you’ve never felt anything but hatred, but there’s a whole other spectrum of them. At that moment, Pax was feeling pain and I was feeling pain for him. That’s called empathy.” I chuckled bitterly. “I guess this is all a pretty big learning experience for you, huh? Being the way you are and all.”
“And what way is that?” he asked.
“A sociopath. It’s pretty obvious. You have no concept of what it’s like to feel for other people. You can fake it all you want, but there’s nothing there. Not really. You don’t know what happiness is, or sorrow, or love, or joy. None of it. Boredom, maybe. Emptiness. That’s it.”
His face worked as he struggled to control himself. I wanted him to lose control. I wanted him to come at me and wished he would. That would make things a lot easier.
Finally, he relaxed. “You’re right. That’s how they diagnosed me in prison.”
“I’m not surprised. And do you agree with that assessment?”
He shrugged smoothly. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a doctor. If they say so, they say so.”
“Have you ever felt anything, though?
Really? Do you feel love or joy or pain?”
He shook his head. “No. None of it. I feel empty and bored most of the time, that’s about it. But I do know what hatred is.”
“Are you sure it’s hatred? Or is it just the need to revenge? Do you hate him, or do you just want to punish him? Those are two different things.”
He nodded slowly. “Wow. You’re in the wrong line of work. You should’ve been a shrink.” He stood in one quick, fluid movement. This might be it. I might have my chance. Lizzie stiffened in my arms as soon as he made a move toward us. I squeezed her tight but not too tight—I wanted her to be able to get out of my lap when I threw her out of it. I didn’t want her in the way.
Come on, fucker. See what I have for you.
“It’s a shame you happened to be the one following me,” he said, shaking his head in mock sympathy. “You’re pretty. You’re smart. You deserve a lot better than that pathetic wannabe soldier, Pax Lewis.”
“He was a soldier,” I reminded him. “And he’s a good man.”
“He’s a pathetic, false, ridiculous loser who only thinks he’s a good man. He wants you to think it, too, so he parades around with his dog tags, surrounding himself with vets like you and the rest of those so-called agents working for him. Spencer and Marcus and Jenna and Brett and all the rest of them.”
My blood ran cold. “How do you know about them?”
“How do I know about you?” he asked. “I made it my job this past year to find out as much as I could about all of them. Just in case I happened to come into contact with them. It happened to be you. Yay! You win the jackpot.” He came closer, stalking me like a cat.
“You’re right. Lucky me.” I tensed, ready to strike. My finger throbbed horribly in time with my heartbeat, which went faster and faster the closer he came. Just a little more…
“I’m going to leave such a surprise for your boyfriend, he’ll lose his mind the moment he sets eyes on you.” He was close enough, finally. I took a deep breath and hoped I was doing the right thing.
Lewis Security Page 73
