Even so close to the outside air, the atmosphere seemed deadly still, with only the barest whisper of wind as it fluttered over the gaping edge of the roof. But the back of Meg’s neck prickled. We are close. She jammed her slender flashlight in her coat pocket, freeing her left hand, and drew her firearm with her right. So high up, the moonlight was enough to guide her way now.
Up ahead, Hawk trotted faster. She wanted to call him back but didn’t dare without attracting attention. He paused for a moment outside a cell, almost seeming unsure of his direction, and then disappeared into the darkness within.
With a breathless spurt of fear for his safety, Meg abandoned silence and jogged after Hawk, focusing on the dark doorway where she’d lost sight of him.
Meg never saw the blow coming. As she paused in the doorway of the cell where Hawk had disappeared, fumbling in her jacket pocket for her flashlight to find her dog in the dark, a man appeared out of the blackness of the adjacent cell, slamming full length into her. They both crashed sideways into the ancient metal railing that was the only barrier between the walkway and a fatal drop onto brick, wood, and steel below. The guardrail shrieked at the pressure, but held, stopping their sideways momentum with an abrupt jerk. But with one hand tangled in her jacket pocket, Meg was forced to let go of the gun so she could free her right hand to clutch at the railing to keep from going over. In a distant corner of her mind, she registered Brian’s gun spinning off to smash against the barred windows twenty feet away and then plummet to the floor four stories down.
Freeing herself, she pushed off the railing with both hands to stand upright and planted her elbow in the stranger’s solar plexus, hearing his grunt as he exhaled heavily. But he snaked his arm around her neck, cranking her head toward him at a brutal angle and taking him with her as he toppled backward. She managed to brace one leg, keeping them upright, but that left the man’s full weight wedged against her windpipe, cutting off her air.
She had only seconds to act.
Send him over the edge before he does it to you.
Years of self-defense training kicked in, and rote actions took over. Pushing up straighter, Meg clamped down with both hands locked on his forearm and pitched forward, gasping cool night air into her lungs as his weight shifted, freeing her throat. She tucked into a crouch, levering downward with all her strength on his arm, and sent him flying over her head. But at the last second, his weight shifted, so instead of going over the railing, he crashed to the concrete platform at her feet.
There was an earsplitting crack, like a gun exploding in her ear, and the solid concrete floor disappeared from beneath her feet.
She heard Webb bellow her name over Hawk’s frantic barking, and then she was falling.
CHAPTER 22
Hacking: The clever use of an urbex setting or materials.
Saturday, November 10, 1:18 AM
Old Montgomery County Jail
Germantown, Maryland
Meg crash-landed on her right hip with a force that shot bolts of blinding pain through her body and stole the breath from her lungs, just before her head struck a solid surface. As chunks of concrete rained down, she curled self-protectively into a ball, her arms looped over her head. But the sounds of scrabbling quickly reminded her she wasn’t alone in the fall, and she jerked upright, taking in the scene in a single glance.
Twelve feet above, a six-foot span of the level four platform had disintegrated and she was now lying on the third-floor walkway directly beneath, which—thank God—remained intact despite both the weight and the force of the materials falling from above. A man was struggling to his feet about ten feet away. He looked back at her quickly—she got an impression of light hair and fair skin, although they were both covered in concrete dust, so she couldn’t be sure—and then hobbled as fast as he could for the stairs.
“Meg!” Webb’s head appeared over one edge of the platform, Hawk at the other. Thank God no one else was hurt.
“Find Mr. Pillai!” She tried to shout it, but she still fought to get her breath back and the demand came out as a croak. She tried again as she struggled to her feet, louder this time, hoping Webb heard, and then staggered after the suspect. Her legs weren’t working quite right, and she nearly fell trying to climb over the concrete debris from the collapse. Then she lurched onto the open platform, but by that time, the suspect had a twenty-foot lead on her.
She tried to sprint after him but was wracked by pain and had trouble focusing her eyes in the dim light, so she had to settle for a stumbling half jog, her left hand out against the bricks, her right extended to grab the railing if she wavered too close to the edge. She took the corner at the end of the cell block as fast as she could, nearly falling but catching herself at the last moment. The man was clattering down the stairs, almost at the landing, as she dove for the steps, clutching the railing to stay upright.
She wasn’t going to be able to manage this on her own. She needed help.
She ripped the radio off her belt, dialed the volume back up, and hit the talk button. “It’s Meg. I found the suspect.” She hit the second level and lurched down the platform to the next set of steps. He was nearly at the bottom. Was he getting farther away? “We’re in the new cell block. I’m in pursuit.” She stopped talking to drag in a breath with lungs that felt sluggish and half-frozen. “Need assistance. He’s hurt. I’m hurt. He won’t be able to run fast. Need assistance.” In the back of her mind, she knew she was repeating herself, but she couldn’t get her brain to fire correctly.
“I copy,” Craig replied. “All teams, do you copy?”
Clutching the radio in her hand, Meg climbed over the pile of debris at the bottom of the steps on the ground floor, squinting at the shadowy figure running for the exit. One by one, the teams reported in with their positions.
“He’s exiting the building. Still in pursuit.”
The suspect disappeared out the door, turning left. Meg jogged after him, clearing the same doorway only about fifteen seconds behind, but in that period of time he’d disappeared. She circled the building and spotted him again, running past the women’s cell block, straight for the trees lining the rear of the facility.
Meg knew without a doubt she wasn’t going to catch him. He was already too far ahead, and she was too unsteady. She leaned against the concrete outer wall of the building, panting, and raised the radio to her mouth again. “I can’t keep up with him. He’s headed north, toward the forest behind the complex. Is anyone near? If not, send the dogs, they’ll pick up his fresh trail. I don’t have Hawk, he’s still inside, possibly with the victim. I’m going back in.”
Turning, she staggered into the building, slowly retracing her steps up the stairs. Her vision was starting to stabilize and, although she was in pain, nothing hurt badly enough to hint at a fracture. Banged up, but not out of the game.
Which was better than she could say for Brian’s gun, lost somewhere in the debris of the first floor.
She was panting in jagged breaths by the time she got to the fourth floor. She jogged down the platform, not sure what she’d find other than Webb trapped on one side of a gaping hole and her dog on the other, but the platform was empty. However, a glow came from one of the cells on the far side, and two heavy wooden beams lay across the gap, forming a makeshift bridge.
Leave it to a firefighter to find a way to jury-rig a bridge.
Bracing one hand on the bricks, she fixed her eyes firmly on the far side and stepped onto the beams, testing her weight. When there was no play under her feet, she carefully started across the gap. She was halfway across when Hawk appeared on the far side, his dark eyes fixed on her, his body still as if sensing her concentration. “Hey, Hawk. I am beyond glad to see you. Give me a second. I’ll be right there.” Four more steps and she was on solid concrete with her arms full of her dog, who went up on his hind legs to lick her face and to sniff her everywhere as if to confirm she was still in one piece. “I’m okay, buddy, I’m okay. Settle down. Todd?”
> “In here . . .”
Webb’s unnaturally forced voice came from the second cell on the right, and she ran in to find him on the floor between a hinged metal bunk and the remnants of a sink and toilet unit at the far end of the cell. He crouched on the dirty floor over an elderly man, his hands layered as he administered CPR. His cell phone lay facedown on the bunk, the flashlight app throwing a cold blue-white light over the narrow room. Webb looked up as she came in, his gaze piercing as he scanned her for injury, taking in her scrapes, developing bruises, and the way she held on to the edge of the doorway for balance.
“How bad are you hurt?” he asked.
“I’ve been worse.”
“Meg.” The word came out as a half growl.
She sank down to kneel beside him, conscious of Hawk shadowing her every move. “Everything hurts, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“Did you hit your head?”
Meg simply stared at the man on the floor and didn’t say anything.
“I’ll take that as a yes. You know the concussion you got in July makes that a problem.”
“It’s not that bad. I didn’t lose consciousness this time.”
“Small favors.”
“I consider it a small miracle I didn’t fall all the way to the ground floor, so I’ll happily take this. Is he going to make it?”
He simply looked at her as he bobbed up and down with the compressions, then stopped and felt for a pulse at the man’s throat. Eyes closed, he held his fingers there for too long; then he sat back, his hands falling to brace on his thighs. “He’s gone. He was gone before we got here, but I had to try.”
Meg drew back as if he’d slapped her. “What? I thought we had a chance this time. He was taken only two hours ago. The difethialone should have taken longer than that to work.”
“Maybe this time it’s a different dose. Maybe it’s a different poison. Or maybe he was already in fragile health and couldn’t take the combined strain of the kidnapping and the poison.”
“He was out walking his dog. He can’t have been that fragile.” Frustrated, Meg slapped her hands to the filthy floor and pushed upright to stand, swaying with the sudden change in position. Hawk jumped up, pressing against her legs.
Webb shot to his feet, grasping her by both shoulders to hold her still. “Whoa, steady.” He bent to peer into her eyes, his expression torn between clinical assessment and a lover’s concern. “I want to check you out. Find out if you’re concussed.” He glanced over his shoulder.
She followed his gaze to the grimy, rusted bunk. “I am not sitting there. If you want to check me out, it can wait until we get back to my place.” Even held between his hands, she felt unsteady and grabbed at his belt to anchor herself. “Maybe you can drive home?”
“That goes without saying. I assume you didn’t catch him, or you wouldn’t be back so quickly?”
“He got a head start on me, and I was a little bleary. I’m better now,” she blurted in response to his intense stare. “Anyway, he was headed for the forest around the facility, so I called in the other teams. The dogs will follow the fresh scent, and Theo is a master tracker. If there’s anything to find, they will. Hopefully there’ll be an update soon.”
“You need to call Craig. Tell him about Mr. Pillai.”
She sagged slightly. “Yeah, I do.” She tried to pull away, but he resisted, holding on tightly. “It’s okay, you can let go.”
He released her, but his hands hovered over her shoulders until he was satisfied she was steady.
She pulled the radio off her belt again. “Where did you get the wood you used to build the bridge?”
“Right off the roof. A bunch of boards were still partially attached, and I yanked two of them off. Lost the first one down below because I wasn’t prepared for how heavy it was. Got the next two. They were solid enough for me to cross. That’s when I found Mr. Pillai. He didn’t have a pulse but was still warm, so I tried CPR.” He looked down. “No dice.”
“Thanks for trying.” She raised her radio to her mouth. “Craig, it’s Meg. We lost Mr. Pillai. He was dead before we found him. We’re going to need an ambulance. Given where we are, I’d recommend calling in firefighter paramedics because it’s going to be a tricky extraction.”
“Copy that,” said Craig.
“Anyone found the suspect?”
“We’re tracking him.” It was Brian’s voice coming over the radio this time. “The dogs are agreed on the scent trail. Meg, are you okay? You said you were hurt. You sound steadier than before, though.”
“Fell about ten or twelve feet when the concrete platform I was on collapsed. Rang my bell pretty good. But Todd is with me and will make sure I’m okay.”
“And will drag you kicking and screaming to the ER, if required,” Webb muttered.
She sent him an irritated glare. “We’re going to stay here until Mr. Pillai is removed. Keep me in the loop. Meg out.” She attached the radio to her belt, sudden exhaustion weighing her achy limbs with lead, her muscles protesting even the tiniest movement. She took in the filthy bunk—no way in hell was she going to sit there—and turned and limped out of the cell, Hawk on her heels. She glanced at the railing overlooking the four-story drop and opted to lean against the opposite wall, tipping her head back to stare up at the moon and stars through the gaping hole in the ruined roof. She felt the warm press of Hawk’s body as he sat down close to her.
Webb came out of the cell, took one look at her, and leaned against the wall beside her. He stayed silent for a full minute, waiting for her to say something, until it became apparent she intended to remain silent. “You okay?”
She didn’t look at him. “I told you, I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I know you. You’re going to consider this a failure.”
“Well, it’s not exactly a win, is it?” She could hear the bitterness and self-recrimination in her own voice but couldn’t hold it back. “We had the best chance we’re probably going to get in this whole case of finding a victim alive, which didn’t seem to matter. I let him get the drop on me—”
“He didn’t get the drop on you.”
“He nearly put me over the railing. That fall would have been fatal. I’d call that getting the drop on me.”
“You notice he didn’t put you over the railing? By the way, I caught part of that fight. You totally had him, and I was flat-out impressed the way you flipped him over your head.” He paused for a moment, as if weighing his words. “And then you scared the hell out of me when the floor disintegrated under both of you.”
The sound that escaped her was dark with a biting edge. “You think it scared the hell out of you? I thought I was dead. It’s a miracle the walkway below us held.”
“Speaking of which, I want a look at you.” Turning to her, he pulled the ponytail elastic out of her dust-covered hair, jamming it in his pocket, and then gently slid both hands into her hair, running his fingertips over her skull, carefully testing for lumps or anything that gave her pain. “Where did you hit?”
She was stiff momentarily, not wanting his touch or his comfort. Can’t he see I don’t want his help? That I need a few minutes inside my own head to process what happened? But when he continued his examination in the face of her silence, she slumped, giving in to his persistence, and covered one of his hands with hers, sliding it up to a spot on the back of her head. “Here.” She groaned as his fingers probed, her nails biting into the back of his hand. “Yeah, that’s it. It hurts, but it’s not that bad.”
His gaze fixed blankly on the wall beside her head as he concentrated on the scalp and bone under his fingertips. “No big goose egg, but I still want to check you out once you’ve had a chance to clean up.” His hands slid away. “Any blurry or double vision, dizziness, nausea?”
“I was definitely wobbly right after, and the trip down the stairs was seriously tough. Like, I thought I’d pitch over the railing kind of tough, but
that was bad only for maybe ten minutes. Once I stopped trying to push it, it got better.”
“Might be a grade one concussion at worst, maybe not even that, but I’m still going to take a better look once we get out of here. What about the knee? Did you tear it open?”
Meg shrugged carelessly. “Honestly, I’d forgotten about it.” She gave it a trial bend and winced. “It hurts, but I think that’s just the original injury.” She dropped her boot to the floor with a broken, cynical half laugh. “I’m a mess.”
“This one’s been rough on you, no doubt about it. But I sense a trend.”
She shot him a questioning sideways look. “Meaning?”
“If there’s anything I’ve learned about you since I met you last April, it’s that when you get involved in a case, you give it your all, and your own physical well-being seems to come secondary. If—”
Meg’s radio came to life with a spurt of static, then Brian’s voice said, “The dogs lost the scent trail. It looks like he did the same thing as before and parked at the side of a rear access road. He’s gone. We’ve lost him again.”
“Copy. Come on back,” Craig replied.
“Roger. We’re on our way.”
Meg sagged against the wall in utter defeat. Vikram Pillai was dead, the suspect had eluded them, they had no additional clues as to his identity, and he now knew they were hot on his trail, which would only make him more cautious than before.
They’d failed in every way possible.
Now the question was, who would pay for that failure with their life?
When Webb wrapped his arms around her, she reflexively pushed back, hissing a protest.
No Man's Land Page 16
