“I got it.”
Harmon said, “All right. Pull the rip cord.”
—
They went through the door, Harmon went left with his bag, Shay went right. Straight ahead, she could see the closed mahogany doors to the private room where the dinner party was happening. To her right, over the railing, a half floor down, was the restaurant’s sumptuous main room, filled almost to overflowing with people eating, drinking, and laughing.
She kept moving, came up to the mahogany doors, slipped inside.
As promised, twenty people were seated along both sides of a twenty-foot-long dining table covered with a gorgeous strip of white linen. Dinner was well under way, the diners chatting with each other, flush with good wine, reaching for another roll.
Shay looked to her left, and there was Cartwell at the head of the table—and at his left hand, her blond hair lacquered into its signature flip, Senator Charlotte Dash. Shay almost turned to run, but smothered the impulse: she’d worn a mask the whole time she’d been with Dash. She forced herself to turn toward Cartwell, and when she reached him, she bent forward and whispered, “Mr. Cartwell?”
“Yes?” He looked up at her with no recognition in his eyes. Next to him, Dash forked a piece of Wiener schnitzel into her bruised mouth.
Shay said, “You have a call on our house phone. The caller said it was extremely important.” She handed him a folded piece of paper. Cartwell opened it and saw the name Jimmie Stewart and the words extremely urgent.
The company’s top lawyer wasn’t one for hyperbole. Cartwell asked, “Where’s the phone?”
Shay: “We have one just down the hall. There’s a little nook where you can have some privacy.”
“Show me.”
He stood, and Dash turned back toward him, but Shay led him away, through the doors and down the hall to the restrooms. In the short hallway was a yellow cone that said OUT OF ORDER, and there was a note on the women’s restroom door: “Please use first-floor restrooms.”
There were no phones.
Cartwell said, “Where?” and turned in confusion toward Shay, and then Harmon was there, stepping out of the women’s restroom with a gun.
“Inside,” he snapped, and jerked Cartwell backward into the restroom. Shay followed and locked the door.
“You sonofabitch,” Cartwell sputtered. “You’re a dead man.”
“Shut up. You’re wasting air and you’re gonna need it,” Harmon said. He put out a leg and half tripped the other man, spinning him facedown onto the floor while wrenching Cartwell’s arm behind him. Shay was there with the handcuffs Harmon had bought earlier that day at a sex shop: Cupid’s Toy Box.
“You’ve got no chance….”
“Shut up.” When he was cuffed, Harmon gestured to Shay and said, “Let’s pick him up. Third stall. Don’t let him kick. Watch his legs.”
Cartwell wasn’t light, probably two hundred pounds, but Harmon was powerful, and Shay was strong from climbing, and they lifted him and carried him into one of the stalls, and Harmon said, “Stand on the toilet bowl.”
Cartwell tried to put his feet down on the rim, finally found some balance, and Harmon let him go and quickly slipped a noose around his neck. The noose was actually a loop in the middle of a fat yellow nylon rope that had been tied to the corner supports of the stall where they met the ceiling.
The rope was loose, and Harmon reached up, pulled it tight, and tied a knot in it, which effectively shortened the rope.
Cartwell was beginning to panic, his Italian loafers moving on the slippery white porcelain.
Shay asked, “You know who I am?”
“God, you can’t do this,” Cartwell cried.
“You tortured my brother. You waterboarded him and beat him so badly he’s almost crippled.” This was a small lie, but it was also how she felt, and it came out in her voice. “Now you’ve got another friend of mine. The penalty for this is…well, look up.”
She reached out with a foot and pushed it against the side of one of his legs, and Cartwell had to do a tap dance to keep his balance, the noose pulling at his throat. “Don’t,” he said, “please don’t.”
“Shay here, she wants to do it,” Harmon said, almost conversationally. “I don’t, because I’m afraid somebody would talk and I’d wind up in prison. But I gotta say, I can see it her way, too.”
Harmon reached into Cartwell’s inside jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “If I wanted to call the people who have Shay’s friend, how would we do that?” Harmon asked.
“I don’t know, that’s Thorne—”
Shay put some weight on the side of Cartwell’s leg again, and he was forced to awkwardly shuffle to one side of the toilet bowl rim; he nearly fell off.
Harmon said, “If you fall off, we can probably lift you back up before you choke…unless the fall breaks your neck.”
“There’s a number for Sac. S-A-C. Ask for Gretsch,” Cartwell groaned.
“Where is this? Sac is Sacramento?” Harmon asked. Twist was waiting in Sacramento, while Cruz stood by in San Francisco; they were hoping that Cade was being held near one or the other.
“Yes, Sacramento…”
Harmon’s eyes clicked over to Shay, and he gave her a tiny nod, then held up the phone. “Hey, passcode.”
Cartwell moaned, “Four-eight-three-nine.”
Harmon found the number, then said, “You’ll have to tell them to let the kid go right now. And tell Gretsch to give him a cell phone and this number. We want to talk to the kid.”
“Ah, you’re gonna kill me,” Cartwell cried.
“Not if you make this work,” Harmon said.
Harmon called and put it on speaker. At the other end, Gretsch seemed reluctant, and Cartwell screamed at him: “Let him go, you idiot. If you don’t let him go, they’ll kill me. They’re gonna kill me right now. Do what I’m telling you, you silly shit. Now! Now!”
Harmon ended the call.
—
Gretsch ran. A moment later, the phone in Harmon’s hand buzzed and Cade was on the line, saying, “Who is this?”
Shay said, “It’s us. Get out of the building, as far and fast as you can, and then hide. Watch behind you. Stay on this line, and if they chase you, tell us. ’Cause if they chase you, there’s a guy here who’s gonna go right in the toilet.”
There was a shuffling noise and a door banging, and Cade said, “We’re going down a hall, I’m going down some stairs. They’re not coming with me. I’m in the stairwell, I’m coming out of the stairwell, I’m by myself….” Breathing harder now. “I’m in a lobby, I’m outside….I’m outside, I’m running….”
They waited three minutes, listening to his labored breathing, then Shay asked, “Are they following you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ve got to go. Keep running, find a place to hide, then call Twist.” She gave him a number, adding, “He’ll come get you, wherever you are.”
“Okay. Okay.”
“Hanging up here,” Shay said.
Harmon took the phone and dropped it in the toilet. “We’ve been eight minutes, we’ve got to go.”
“Don’t leave me here, you can’t leave me like this, I could fall,” Cartwell said.
“I hope not, then we’d have to start all over with the new CEO,” Shay said.
—
When Cartwell didn’t come back, Dash looked down the table to Sync and caught his eye. She curled a finger at him, and Sync nodded, dabbed his mouth with a napkin, said something to the woman to his right. He walked around the table, and bent over the senator.
“A waitress came and gave Micah a note, something about an important call on the house phone, which seemed a little odd, you know, that he wouldn’t get it on his cell,” she said. “He hasn’t come back. And while paranoia is for crazies, there was something about the waitress….”
Sync felt a chill. “What about the waitress?”
“She reminded me of that girl at my house…her figure.
And maybe her voice. The longer I sat here and thought about it…”
—
Sync was already moving. Thorne was sitting at the far end of the table and Sync pointed a finger at him and Thorne stood up and they both headed to the doors, where Sync muttered, “They might have Micah.”
“Jesus…How?”
“Shay Remby…if it’s real.”
They were out on the balcony over the main room. “Couldn’t have taken him downstairs,” Sync said.
At the same moment, they both turned down the hall toward the restrooms. Sync rounded the corner, pushed open the door to the men’s room. “Here,” said Thorne, nearly tripping over the yellow cone. He pushed open the door to the women’s room, and Cartwell cried, “Help me.”
They found him still standing on the toilet.
“They left thirty seconds ago, Harmon and the girl,” Cartwell said. “You might catch them. But don’t leave me, don’t leave me like this….”
Sync said to Thorne, “Go. I’ll cut Micah down.”
—
Thorne went down the hall, down the stairs, caught the numbers of the hotel elevator going down to P1, then P2 and P3. There was a fire door at the end of the hall, and he ran down the stairs, moving as fast.
—
At the bottom, at P3, Thorne pushed through the door, quietly as he could, and stopped to listen.
And heard feet on concrete. He went that way, running lightly, on the edges of his shoe soles, and saw Harmon climbing into a Jeep. He pointed his pistol and screamed, “Freeze.”
Harmon froze. Thorne edged slowly toward him, the pistol never moving from Harmon’s back. “Where’s Remby? Where’d she go?”
The female’s voice came from right behind him: “I’m pointing a gun at your spine. If you do anything except drop your gun, I’m going to shoot you.”
Thorne stopped walking, but said, “I don’t believe you.”
Harmon had turned slowly, and Thorne saw that he had a pistol in his hand, but his hand was at his side. “Heard you coming. You gotta learn to run a little more lightly,” Harmon said.
“I don’t think she’s got a gun,” Thorne said, but didn’t look back, because if he did, even for an instant, it would give Harmon an opening.
Thorne’s pistol was still pointed at him, and Harmon said, “She can prove it to you, but it will hurt.”
“She won’t shoot me even if she has a gun,” Thorne said. “She’s one of those animal rights activists. They won’t even squash bugs.”
“You got the wrong Remby,” Shay said.
“Put your gun down and you’ll get out of here without being hurt,” Harmon said, his voice quiet. “I really don’t want to get anybody hurt.”
“I still don’t believe—” Thorne began.
Shay put the pistol two inches off the back of his right ear and pulled the trigger. The shot sounded like a cannon in the confined space. Everybody lurched and Harmon screamed, “No, no…”
Thorne reeled away, his pistol pointed at the floor, and Harmon’s came up and he shouted at Thorne, “Drop the gun, drop the goddamn gun, you idiot.”
Thorne’s gun clattered on the concrete, and he put his gun hand to his ear and it came back bloody, and more blood ran down his neck. “She shot me,” he said, shocked. “She shot me.”
“Got to get going, somebody will have heard the shot,” Harmon called to Shay. He was walking toward them, his gun never leaving a point on Thorne’s chest. Thorne turned to Shay, the shock gone now, and snarled, “You better hope you get killed when I come for you.”
“What’s that?” Shay said. “You’re gonna torture me?”
Her hand was shaking a little, and Thorne sneered at her—Amateur—and said, “That’d be the least of it. Ask your brother….”
Harmon was there. He picked up Thorne’s gun, put it in his pocket, and said to Shay, “Get the leftover rope out of the trunk. We’ll tie his foot to a car. That’ll slow him down long enough for us to get out.” To Thorne he said, “Assume the position, asshole. Over here.”
He pointed Thorne to a concrete pillar, and Thorne leaned against it with one hand, his other covering his wounded ear, spreading his legs. “I never thought you’d go this far,” he told Harmon. “We’re coming for you.”
“Come ahead.” Shay had gone to the Jeep, snagged the rope from the backseat, and hurried back. Harmon said over his shoulder, “Mr. Thorne does all kinds of karate and Krav Maga and all of that, so keep your gun on him while I do this. I’m going to hook this rope around his ankle.”
Shay blurted, “Thorne? This is the guy who shot West?”
Harmon said, “Easy….”
Shay said, “Forget the rope.” She was standing directly behind Thorne and she kicked him in the crotch. She kicked him like an NFL punter would kick a football, like a German soccer star would shoot on goal. She kicked him so hard that, for a split second, a black patch flashed across her eyes from the impact.
Thorne gagged and went down, and Shay shouted, “Come for me now!” and wound up to kick him in the head, but Harmon hooked an arm around her and dragged her to the Jeep, and a minute later they were rolling. Thorne remained curled on the floor, his mouth open, his head back, one long, long silent scream.
Shay was still breathing hard when they exited the parking structure. Harmon caught two lights in a row, and then blew through a red, and they were gone, lost in traffic.
Harmon slowed and said, “Kinda lost your cool there.”
“It happens,” Shay said.
Harmon grinned. “I’ve seen guys kicked in the goolies before, but I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Shay said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Then: “You think Cade’s really loose?”
“Yeah. If he’s got the sense to really hide himself.”
“He’s been on the street in L.A. He can hide.”
They came to a red light, stopped. Harmon glanced at her, the traffic light picking up the red glint in her hair. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Did you mean that shot to frighten Thorne? Or did you mean to shoot him?”
“I meant to shoot him; I figured that’d frighten him good.”
Harmon said, “Jesus. You’re a little scary, kid.”
“Can we move faster?” Shay asked. “I want to find out about Cade.”
24
Cade lay under a tree, behind a wooden-slat fence, and said into the phone, “Nineteenth Avenue crosses some train tracks. Wait there, I’ll come to you.”
“Pull the battery on the phone,” Twist said.
Twist found the place and, two interminable minutes later, saw Cade limping toward him, his arms wrapped around his body as though to keep his lungs inside himself, struggling to keep moving. He popped the front door and Cade was in.
Twist accelerated away and asked, without taking his eyes off the narrow road, “You hurt bad?”
“I think they busted some ribs. Hurts to run, hurts to cough. I haven’t been laughing a lot, but that’d probably hurt, too. Oh, yeah, they hit me in the eyes a few times, and I can’t see too well out of the left one.”
“Gotta get you to a hospital.”
“We gotta get away from here first….Just try…to take it easy….” He gasped for air. “Doesn’t hurt so much when you don’t hit those potholes.”
“I don’t want to insult you…but did they ask about where we’re hiding?”
“Yeah. I told them that we move every day, because we’re so scared. I think they believed me.”
“You are one tough little street rat,” Twist said. “I think I just shed a tear.”
Cade involuntarily laughed, then gasped, then gasped again when Twist hit another pothole. Twist said, “I’m trying, man.”
“Yeah, don’t worry, keep going.” Cade half turned his head to X in the backseat, said, “Hey, dog.”
X gave his swollen eye a lick, and Cade turned back to Twist and said, “I don’t know what you did,
but it freaked out the guy who gave me the phone.”
“Where’s the phone?”
“Left it by the tracks. You gotta get rid of yours, they’ll have that number.”
“Right.” Twist took the phone out of his pocket, threw it out the window. A minute later, they took a left onto a wider street and eventually merged onto a freeway. “I think we’re good,” Twist said. “Never saw anyone behind us.”
Cade groaned. “Man, that asshole who had me…Thorne…he was the leader of the guys at the hotel….Last night, he said they were gonna kill me. But then they ignored me today.”
They hit a highway seam that Twist hadn’t seen coming, and Cade gasped again.
“Sorry, sorry….”
“Keep going…tell me what happened, distract me.”
Twist told him about Harmon and the meeting on the face of the cliff and the plan to grab Cartwell. “The last I heard, he was standing on a toilet bowl with a rope around his neck.”
Cade laughed, then groaned, then said, “Jeez, laughing does hurt. Don’t say anything funny.”
“I’m not feeling all that funny,” Twist said. “I haven’t heard from them….I should have heard from them.”
“You threw the phone out the window, dummy.”
“Aw, we’ve got more phones than—”
A phone rang in his pocket and he fished it out and said, “Yo.”
He listened for a second, then said, “I got him. We’re clear.” He turned to Cade and said, “They’re out.”
Back to the phone: “He’s got some broken ribs. I’m going to take him to an emergency room, see what they can tell us. It was the same guy that our new friend told us about.”
He listened again and then said, “I don’t want to make our boy laugh, but I’ll tell him anyway. We’ll see you up there.”
He clicked off, turned to Cade, and said, “Don’t laugh.”
“Tell me.”
“They caught Thorne, put him up against a wall, you know, like the cops do when they’re searching you. Then Harmon mentioned that he was Thorne, and Shay punted him in the nuts. Harmon says she kicked him so hard his balls are probably in orbit.”
Cade laughed, then groaned, then laughed even harder.
Outrage Page 23
