Coldness swept through Corey. They had been so vulnerable. . he knew it wasn’t really his fault, but he couldn’t help blaming himself for not taking more precautions.
“For someone who’s stayed two steps ahead of the FBI for three years, Leon’s got no brains at all,” Todd said. “He was supposed to run an extortion job on you and keep upping the ante, kidnapping your wife and kid was the last resort. But he moved way too fast-and that crap he pulled at that sports bar with you, throwing the beer mug and tipping off the Feds. . I’d had it with him there. I tried to cut him loose.”
“By paying him fifty thousand dollars,” Corey said.
“He would have split town for fifty grand,” Todd said. “That’s what he said, anyway. But that didn’t work out, either, thanks to the Feds, so here we are. When you want something done right, I guess you’ve gotta fuckin’ do it yourself. “
“You’re unbelievable.” Corey shook his head. “You teamed up with a career criminal, and risked everything, all because you wanted me to sell my share of the company?”
Todd’s lips tightened. “When I tried to talk you into selling out the first time, you were too goddamn stubborn. You brought this on yourself.”
“But the risk you took-”
“I breathe risk, partner,” Todd said, a savage glint in his eyes that reminded Corey, chillingly, of Leon. “Leon’s nothing to me, a burn card. The risk of using him was worth it. With you out of the picture, I can get five million for selling off GWS.”
Corey stared at him. “Five million?”
Todd grinned. “I’ve been in talks with interested parties. Do you know the games I can get into with five rocks backing me? Do you have any clue of the crowd I can play with, the pots I could buy in on? I’m talking major league, more money than you’ll ever see in ten lifetimes sitting on the table, one glorious, mega-pot waiting to be won.”
Corey blinked. “Wait a minute. You’re talking about gambling with the money you’d get from selling the company? Playing cards?”
“Of course.” Todd glowered at him. “What the hell else would I be talking about?”
Corey’s shock took his breath away. His wife and daughter had been kidnapped, severely traumatized and possibly abused by that maniac Leon and his pedophile partner, all so Todd could force him out of the business, sell it, and blow the wad on card games? Fucking card games?
The florescents flickered again, the darkness lasting for a couple of heartbeats, and then brightness returned. Todd glanced worriedly from the lights, to Corey.
“You’re sick,” Corey said. “You’re as nuts as Leon.”
“Spare me the analysis. You’re going to sign these papers.” Todd shoved the documents across the desk. “You’re going to sign them, the company will cut you a check tomorrow or Friday, and Leon will give your family back and go away, after you pay him a fair portion.”
“A fair portion? Not a million?”
“I told him to say he wanted a million to force you to come up with this bright idea of selling out all on your own. I thought it would lead you down that road, but I guess I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.”
Corey smiled sourly. “Ditto.”
“Give Leon a hundred grand or so, and he’ll hit the road and be out of your hair forever. He’s itching to go ’cause the Feds know he’s in town.”
“They aren’t going to leave me alone, either. They’re suspicious.”
“Hey, that’s your problem. But if you’re thinking of cooperating with them and turning me in, well, your old partner in crime told me all about a certain unsolved case that went down in Motown. All it would take is an anonymous tip, know what I mean?”
Corey bit his lip. Once again, he was hemmed in by his past.
“Sign them,” Todd said. He slapped an ink pen onto the desk.
Corey stared at the pen. “Tell me where my family is being kept.”
“Leon will cover all that with you after you settle up with him. They’re fine, trust me.”
“Trust you?”
“You don’t have a choice.” Todd fixed the Walther on him. “I’m holding the royal flush. Sign the docs.”
“No.” Corey locked gazes with him. “You tell me where they’re being held, or I’m not signing anything.”
“Oh, you think I’m bluffing?” Todd’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “I think you’re the one bluffing, Corey. You always sucked at poker, you know.” Todd pointed the pistol at Corey’s head. “Stop screwing around and sign the goddamn papers so we can get out of here.”
Corey glanced at the documents, mouth dry as sawdust. Todd had him, and they both knew it. It was as simple as that. He had no choice any more.
But he couldn’t make himself reach for the pen. It was as if his wrists were strapped to the armrests.
Can’t do it, he thought. I can’t give in, can’t let them win. .
The lights sputtered off again-and remained off, blackness falling like a tarp over the room.
“Fuckin’ storm,” Todd cursed.
Not thinking, acting purely from instinct, Corey shot out of the chair, grabbed it, and heaved it in the general direction of the desk. Todd shouted. Gunfire rang out, the muzzle spitting fire. Corey ducked. Glass shattered behind him and tinkled to the floor.
Ears ringing, Corey scrambled through the darkness to where he remembered the door to be and stumbled out of the office, Todd grunting behind him, furniture banging to the floor.
The warehouse was dark as a moon cavern, and Todd was coming after him.
47
Running through the echoing darkness, bumping against hard-edged objects, shoes clapping against concrete, Corey struggled to remember the location of the loading dock doors. His memory was a blur, as if it had been wiped clean by the shock of Todd’s betrayal. He was thoroughly lost, a mouse in a giant labyrinth.
He heard Todd’s rapid footsteps somewhere behind him. Todd had used to work there, knew the warehouse’s floor plan well. And he had two guns.
Shit. When the hell would the backup power generator kick in?
Pressing forward, one hand extended straight ahead, Corey dug his other hand into his pockets. He felt the Leatherman in his front pocket, a tiny utility tool he carried on his key ring, but it didn’t include a flashlight. His fingers slid across the cell phones holstered on his hip. Maybe the BlackBerry would be good for a little light-
His shoulder slammed hard against something. A metal shelf of some kind. The collision knocked the breath out of him, and he staggered.
Adrenaline kept him balanced on his feet. Sticking both hands out in front of him, he felt the sharp edge of a corner. He sidled around it.
He spotted a door ahead, a crimson EXIT sign glowing in the darkness.
He paused, listened, but didn’t hear Todd’s footsteps anymore. Maybe he had lost him.
He sprinted toward the door. When he was halfway there, lights suddenly flooded the area, disorienting in their brightness.
Like some macabre jack-in-the-box, Todd sprang from around the corner on Corey’s left, pistol in his hand and a death’s head grin on his face. Corey shouted in surprise, and started to spin away.
Todd clubbed him with the gun, and his world went dark again.
48
Cold water splashed over Corey.
He came awake with a rasped shout. He wiped water out of his eyes, blinked. Blinking made him wince. His head felt as if it had been split open like a coconut, soaked in gasoline, and set on fire.
He lay on a smooth floor that felt like a sheet of permafrost. Todd stood above him in a cone of light, a red plastic bucket dangling from his hand, the pistol jutting from his waistband in an inverted “L.” Veils of mist swirled around them, and the entire room hummed and pulsed.
They were inside a freezer.
It was as large as a two-car garage. Tall metal racks lined the stainless steel walls and stood in rows throughout the chamber, every inch of shelving packed with boxes of assorted size
s, many of them dusted with frost. A galvanized steel door that looked as impregnable as the entrance of a bank vault hung half-open behind Todd.
Head throbbing, Corey sat up. Bone-deep shivers coursed through him. He was completely soaked with water, and already felt it hardening into a shell on his skin.
Todd wore a good-humored expression, strings of frosty breath curling from his nostrils.
“I thought I’d let you chill for a while.” Todd chuckled at his joke and cast a look around. “This is actually one of the smaller cold storage areas. I got trapped in here once when I was a teenager. Twenty minutes of sheer hell. Wouldn’t you know my cheap-ass old man still hasn’t fixed the handle?”
“Todd. . no. .” Corey’s throat burned; his voice came out cracked. He grabbed the support leg of a nearby rack. The freezing metal numbed his fingers. Groaning, he started to pull himself to his feet.
Bucket swinging from his hand, Todd backed toward the door. “Chill out in here and think about making the right decision for your family, Corey. It’s about five below zero. Better keep moving to stay warm, or you might lose some fingers and toes.”
Corey’s knees quivered and popped as he rose. “Listen. .”
Todd’s smile was downright sunny. “I’ll be back in a bit. Gonna grab me a burger. We’ll see if you’re ready to deal then.”
Corey tried to move forward, but dizziness swept through him. He swayed against a shelf, jarring a box to the floor.
Todd slipped outside and slammed the door, foam sealing the portal shut with a soft sucking sound. Shouting, Corey ran-stumbled to the door and pushed it.
It did not budge.
“No!”
His voice bounced back to him, muffled and flat.
Wincing at the pounding in his head, he studied the handle mechanism. There was some sort of mushroom-shaped cap as big as his fist that should have sprung the lock, but it was coated in a thick jacket of ice. When he pushed it, it didn’t give at all.
No, no, no.
He hammered his fists against the door. Ice slivers cascaded from the door and ceiling and rained over his head. But the door held firm.
Call someone.
Fogged breaths spewing from his lips, he searched his belt. His BlackBerry and the other cell phone were gone. When he was unconscious, Todd must have taken them.
“No!”
He was trapped.
49
He refused to believe that he was trapped.
But there was no emergency alarm on the wall, no phone box, no other exit. When he shouted for help, yelling until his voice broke, no one responded.
I’m not trapped.
He attacked the door, kicking the frozen mushroom cap repeatedly, as hard as he could, pain jolting through his shins and knees. Tiny chips of ice wafted to the floor. But the cap did not give.
He kicked it again. “Come on!”
Nothing.
One more time. “Damn it, open!”
No good.
Panting, he bent over. His legs burned, as if razor blades had been driven deep into his flesh. They ached so intensely it was difficult to stand, but he welcomed the pain. Throbbing pain meant blood was circulating.
It’s about five below zero.
Goose pimples rashed his arms. His damp clothes were getting stiff, freezing, and crackled when he moved. He thought of stripping out of them, but couldn’t imagine how that would help. His entire body felt as though it were under attack by a thousand knives.
How long would it take before frostbite set in? A half hour? Minutes? He wasn’t the kind of guy who spent his time roughing it in the great outdoors, and the temp rarely dipped below freezing in Atlanta. He had only a general idea of the symptoms of frostbite. Like tingling. Numbness. Pain.
And he knew the potential risks. Like tissue damage. In the worst cases, amputation.
Hard shudders wracked him. His teeth chattered.
Move, keep moving, keep blood flowing.
He paced back and forth across the freezer, weaving between the aisles, from the door to the back wall. He clapped his hands, pinched his nose, rubbed his cheeks, clenched and unclenched his fingers and toes.
He checked his watch. Ice crusted the face. He scraped it clear with his thumbnail. It read 9:34.
How long can I last?
Vaporous ghosts swirled and hissed around him. The freezer compressor hummed, a rumbling vibration he felt echoing in the core of his heart, as if he were turning into ice from the inside out.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
He paced, paced, paced.
I’m not trapped.
He lunged wildly at the door again. He bounced off as if it were elastic, slipped, and fell down, slamming against the floor with a grunt.
Get up. Get up and keep moving.
He tried to push himself up. His arms trembled. A pins-and-needles sensation attacked his fingers.
I’m. . not trapped.
He squinted at his watch. 9:49.
Not. . trapped.
He collapsed to the floor.
50
Sprawled on the cold floor, shrouded in mist, eyes glazed, Corey saw not the walls of the freezer and the frozen boxes on the racks, but an eighteen-year-old and his older friend. .
Leon picked the house on that sunny April day as he always did: on the spur of the moment. His impulsiveness thrilled Corey, and when he found himself having doubts about his friendship with Leon, when he asked himself when he was going to go straight and find a job somewhere, or go to college, like Grandma Louise was always telling him he should do, he remembered that rush, that charge of adrenaline that came only from Leon picking the house to hit and not wasting any time about it-doing it right then and there.
“I cruised past it last week, man,” Leon said. They crawled past a neatly kept, brick bungalow in Leon’s Cutlass Supreme, Corey riding shotgun. A Public Enemy track boomed on the Alpine stereo, “Rebel without a Pause,” the ceaseless trumpet glissando piercing Corey’s brain.
Leon sneered. “Guy who lives there, shiny-headed, Humpty Dumpty, fried-pork-skin-eating motherfucker, he had a white Cadillac parked out front. He was waxing it like it was some bitch’s luscious ass.”
“Why didn’t you hit it last week?” Corey asked. Leon sometimes pulled house jobs without Corey. The revelation that he’d gone solo always left Corey feeling a strange mixture of disappointment and relief.
Shrugging, Leon took a drag on his Newport and exhaled a thread of smoke, a gold watch glittering on his wrist that complemented the scalloped chains around his neck.
“I didn’t feel it then, you know I have to be in the mood, the golden gut has to be talking to me, C-Note-but I feel like doing the old one-two punch on his crib right now.”
For no reason at all, Corey’s stomach clenched. He was always a little nervous before a break-in, but nothing that felt like this. He had big-time butterflies.
Corey cracked his knuckles. “Maybe we should come back later. Or go somewhere else.”
“Fuck that.” Leon glared at him. “It’s one o’clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday, no one’s gonna be in there, you’ve got to respect my instincts, if I worked on the New York Stock Exchange I’d be a motherfuckin’ billionaire, Dow Jones Junior, respect the hustle, hombre, or drag your black ass back to church and holler hosannas with Nana and pass the collection plate, you dig?”
Corey recognized that feverish look in Leon’s eyes that made it clear he would not be denied, that look that said he was going to go through with it whether Corey was down or not. But if he backed out, Leon would never let him hear the end of it. He would be branded a punk, he would lose respect, and Leon would spread the word that he’d let his boy down, and among their crowd, there was no worse label to wear. No one wanted to deal with a punk except other punks, and who cared what they thought?
“All right,” Corey said.
Leon flashed his gap-toothed grin. “That’s my homeboy.”
Leon swung
around the corner and parked in the shade of a sycamore, across from an elementary school. Children at recess pranced and skipped on the playground in the afternoon sunshine, looking as if they would be innocent, young, and carefree forever.
Corey found himself wishing that he were one of them.
“Pass the piece, chief,” Leon said.
Corey sighed, looked away from the school. Two rumpled nylon book packs lay on the floor beneath his feet, one red, one blue. Corey handed the red one to Leon.
It contained a Glock 9 mm with a scratched off serial number. The blue one, which Corey picked up, held a crowbar and other tools. Both knapsacks bore ID tags with someone else’s names on them. It was Leon’s idea. His theory was that if they ever had to cut loose from the scene, they could toss the bags in the bushes somewhere, and the items they contained would be linked to someone else.
“Let’s act like we’ve got a purpose, my man,” Leon said, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Time to get money.”
Bags strapped over their shoulders, they strolled back to the house, walking confidently, as if they were high school students who lived in the neighborhood. Leon always said that was the key to not getting caught: act like you have every right to be wherever you are, and no one notices you. It’s the skittish ones that get nabbed.
They swaggered right up to the front door of the chosen home. While Leon did look-out duty at the end of the walkway, Corey rang the doorbell, and knocked three times.
No one answered. No dogs barked.
He levered the forked end of the crowbar into the doorjamb. In half a minute, he had pried the door open.
“Let’s do this,” Leon said, coming up behind Corey and slapping his shoulder. He withdrew the Glock and went inside.
Cornered Page 19
