by Sharon Potts
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Be safe, Mama,” Aubrey called after her.
Aubrey watched her mother follow Smolleck to the mustard-colored building.
“This isn’t good-bye, Mama,” she whispered. “Promise me. It’s not good-bye.”
CHAPTER 46
Diana stopped on the sidewalk, about twenty feet from the three-story yellow building. There was a warped garage door on one side of the entranceway and windows to a ground-floor apartment on the other. Tall hedges surrounded the property, blocking most of the windows on the bottom floor. The glass entrance door was covered with decorative bars, as were all the windows. It would be impossible for someone to jump out. Although the lights inside were off, she could see shadows in the hallway beyond the door.
She felt the creeping terror in her gut she had experienced so many years before in front of the brownstone, but then she realized something she wasn’t feeling. No dizziness, no disorientation.
There was only clarity.
She needed to save her grandson. She needed to end this with Gertrude.
Smolleck seemed to be listening into his earpiece, then spoke to her. “Someone—probably Janis—is approaching the back door.”
Diana could see a shadow moving down the hallway. “Does she have Ethan?” she asked.
“She’s carrying what appears to be a child wrapped in a blanket.” Smolleck’s body was tense, like an animal ready to spring into an attack. “She’s at the back door.”
Diana’s heart was pounding so hard she could hardly hear anything else.
“Walk slowly toward the front door with your hands in the air,” Smolleck said. “When you get to the door, press the button on the intercom for apartment one hundred. Star’s instructed me to stay here, but I’ll call to you with instructions. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do not go inside the building until I say so. We must be certain Ethan has gotten out safely.”
“I understand.” She started walking slowly, her hands in the air. Her body was shaking. It wasn’t fear of Gertrude but terror for her grandson’s life. She reached the front door and studied the old, corroded intercom.
That last time, at the brownstone, she had banged on the door, screaming, Let me in! Let me in! And Gertrude had opened the door.
She didn’t want to think about the aftermath of that conversation. She pressed the button for “100” and waited. And waited. Perspiration ran down her back.
Diana pressed the button again. No answer. That’s when she noticed that the door, with its wrought iron frame, wasn’t completely closed. She heaved open the door, but stopped and glanced over her shoulder at Smolleck. He signaled to stay where she was.
She looked inside. Lights were on in the alley behind the building, and she could see down the hallway through to the rear door. A woman was by the door, holding a large bundle over her shoulder and chest like a shield.
Please, God, let Ethan be all right.
The rear door opened a few inches. She willed the woman, Go, go, go! Get my grandson out of this place.
The woman turned back to look at her. There was an instant of déjà vu. A flash of Gertrude’s blue eyes and her defiant chin.
But it wasn’t Gertrude.
It was Gertrude’s daughter using Diana’s innocent grandson for protection.
They were locked in a stalemate. Janis wouldn’t leave the building until she was sure Diana was inside, and Diana wouldn’t go all the way in until Ethan was safely out.
Diana opened the door a few more inches and put one foot inside the small foyer.
“Not yet, Diana,” Smolleck’s voice boomed behind her.
Janis turned to look at her again. Why wasn’t the bundle moving? Was that even Ethan?
Janis pushed the rear door open another few inches.
Diana eased herself inside a little more as Janis watched.
Janis opened the rear door a little wider.
Good girl. “Janis,” Diana called, “let’s do this on the count of three.”
Janis nodded.
“One,” she said, coming inside as she watched Janis with Ethan continue cautiously out the door.
“Two.” They each inched forward.
“Three.” Diana started to step farther into the foyer just as something rushed toward her, smashing painfully into her legs and upsetting her balance.
She heard Smolleck yell, “Wait, Diana!” as she toppled over the low, rolling object and fell hard on the floor.
The hallway was dark. Was Ethan out? Was he safe?
She struggled to stand up, but someone was restraining her. She felt a stinging sensation in her leg.
And saw a tangle of metal, spokes on wheels going round and round.
A red tricycle just beyond her reach.
CHAPTER 47
Something was wrong.
Aubrey paced by the van, where one of the agents had instructed her to stay. She had lost sight of her mother when Mama had gone up to the front door.
Had she made it inside the building?
Was Ethan out?
The area closest to the small apartment building had been cordoned off, and there were no pedestrians, no moving vehicles. She strained to see Smolleck in the dim light. He was talking to several people in uniforms and suits, including Detective Gonzalez. Smolleck was shaking his head in a way that couldn’t be good.
She ignored a loud voice behind her to stay where she was, and ran down the street toward Smolleck. He gestured for her to stop. She slowed her pace as she watched him say something to the others and then come toward her.
His face was grim as he approached. “You need to stay back, Aubrey.”
“Where’s my mother? Where’s Ethan?”
“Your mother’s inside. She seems to have tripped or fallen over something.”
“So you don’t know if she’s okay?”
He shook his head.
“And Ethan?”
“Star set us up,” he said.
“Set you up?” Her heart bounced. “What do you mean?”
“Star’s daughter was carrying a pillow wrapped in a blanket.”
“A pillow? Oh, my God. Ethan’s still inside?”
“Our medics are trying to calm down the daughter so we can debrief her, but she’s hysterical.”
Failed. Their plan failed. “But Ethan’s in that building. And now my mother’s in there, too.”
“She understood the risks.”
“But you let her do it.” She heard the panic in her own voice.
“We all agreed it was the best chance to get Ethan out of there.” His face was red. “We had no way of knowing Star was bluffing.”
She took a deep breath. It wasn’t his fault, even though she sensed he blamed himself, but that didn’t change the situation. Star was capable of doing anything. “How are you planning to get my mother and Ethan out?”
“We’re working on it. Everyone seems to have an opinion.” He glanced back toward the group he’d been talking to.
“You’re not thinking of doing something that would endanger my mother and Ethan, are you?” If they stormed the building, Mama and Ethan wouldn’t have much of a chance.
“We haven’t decided on a plan.”
“But—”
He held up his hand and listened to his earpiece, then replied, “Okay. I’m coming.” He motioned with his head at Aubrey. “Come to the van. We’ll talk.”
She hurried alongside as he loped away from the time-share.
“Star’s back in communication with us,” he said.
“Back? You mean she was out of communication with McDonough?”
“Yes,” he said. “For a few minutes.”
“Did she say anything about my mother and Ethan?”
“She said your mom’s okay. But McDonough said she seemed surprised Ethan hadn’t come out with her daughter. He couldn’t tell if she was playing dumb or if something really went wrong with the swap.”
<
br /> None of this made sense. “So where’s Ethan?”
“Hopefully Janis will have some answers when we debrief her.”
Aubrey took in a shaky breath. “What happens now?”
They reached the van. Smolleck rubbed the back of his neck. “We continue trying to negotiate with Star.”
A crowd had gathered behind the police line at the end of the street. Aubrey could make out news vans and reporters pushing up against the barricades. She felt completely helpless. The FBI would continue to negotiate. But what was there to negotiate? Star had both Ethan and Mama. Her own daughter was out of danger, and Star didn’t seem to care about her own life.
Aubrey thought about the behavioral-psych classes she’d taken. She turned to Smolleck. “The problem is that Star has nothing to lose.”
“It’s a big problem,” Smolleck said.
“But what if she had something to gain?”
He frowned. “What are you thinking?”
“What does Star really want in all this?”
“She said she wanted your mother.”
Aubrey shook her head. “She told McDonough she wanted justice. But justice for what?”
“You don’t believe your mother is her end game?”
Aubrey thought about the photo of the three friends that her mother had kept hidden in her room. The way Gertrude fingered her brother’s dog tag. Mama said Gertrude never took it off, even to shower.
“Maybe Star is looking for justice for some larger grievance,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Why did Star—why did Gertrude—join a revolutionary group in college to begin with?”
“A lot of young people did back then.”
“Yes, but very few of them took it to the level Gertrude did. Most of them, like my mother and father, disassociated from the organization when it advocated killing people to make a point.”
“What are you saying?”
“My mother told me Gertrude wanted to blow up Columbia’s library. She had believed people had to die in order for Stormdrain to be taken seriously.” Aubrey stopped to catch her breath. “What made Gertrude willing to take lives?”
Smolleck seemed to be considering this.
“Whatever it was,” she said, “I believe that’s the injustice Gertrude has been trying to right since she was a freshman at Barnard.”
“How the hell are we supposed to figure out what an eighteen-year-old was angry about over forty-five years ago?”
“She had a brother,” Aubrey said. “She wore his dog tag. Can you find out what happened to him? Maybe we’ll have something to offer her that she actually cares about.”
Smolleck didn’t look convinced. “It’s worth a try.”
Aubrey looked back at the mustard-colored building. In it were her mother and her nephew. With an unpredictable psychopath and a bomb.
“Try hard, Agent Smolleck,” she said.
CHAPTER 48
Diana heard ringing. A phone? An alarm? She just wanted to sleep. She tried to roll over and hug her pillow, but her hands wouldn’t move. She tugged on them again, but they were stuck behind her back. She kicked her feet, but they didn’t move, either.
Something sharp and acrid crept up her sinuses. Gasoline fumes. She opened her eyes to darkness and felt a paralyzing terror. Where was she?
Her brain cleared abruptly. She remembered stepping into the foyer of the building, something crashing into her legs. The red tricycle. Gertrude was clearly determined to get all the details right in this reenactment of the past.
Then she remembered the sting in her thigh.
She had been drugged.
So where was Gertrude? And where was the smell of gasoline coming from?
She blinked to clear her vision. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she could make out a pale light coming in from behind closed drapes. She was in a small living room, on a sofa, facing an open kitchen.
Gertrude must have given her a shot of Versed, or something similar, then tied her up. How long had she been unconscious? Had Ethan gotten out safely?
Smolleck’s shouting voice came back to her. Wait, Diana. Why had he told her to wait, unless Ethan was still inside?
A wall air conditioner coughed and began to hum.
Diana looked down at her ankles. They were bound with duct tape, and she assumed her wrists were as well. There was nothing covering her mouth, but who was she going to scream for? The FBI already knew she was in here.
Now that her eyes had adjusted, she took a more detailed inventory of the room. She could see ugly rattan furniture and a glass étagère, a light-colored mica coffee table, and another floral-patterned sofa, catty-corner to the one she was on. On the counter between the dining room and kitchen were several piles. A few short pipes with long fuses. Bottles with rags sticking out of them—Molotov cocktails. Rolls of what looked like thick candles, but knowing what she did of Gertrude’s intentions, she assumed they were sticks of dynamite.
Gertrude had created a bomb factory just like the one that had brought down the brownstone on April Fool.
There was no sign of Gertrude, but she might return at any moment. Diana had to get out of here and find Ethan. She looked for something to cut the tape around her wrists and ankles. There were knickknacks on the upper shelves of the étagère, beyond her reach. Maybe there were knives in the kitchen. She struggled to stand up, then hopped around the coffee table until she reached the kitchen counters. She turned around and pulled open a drawer with her bound hands, then checked its contents. A pair of dark sunglasses and a wig of long hair, the same color as Diana’s.
There was a note written on top of the wig in thick black marker:
did you think i’d leave you a knife, pollyanna?
She tried the next drawer. A white blouse and jeans, just like Diana always wore.
The monster had taken her husband, her fiancé, her grandson, and her identity. Well, she wasn’t going to let Gertrude win.
She grasped the knob of one of the upper cabinet doors with her teeth, pulling it open. Drinking glasses glinted in the thin light, but she had no way to reach them. She scoured the kitchen for something long to hold in her mouth to swipe at them, but saw nothing that would work. She didn’t know what Gertrude’s plan was or how much time she had until Gertrude returned.
Her eyes fell upon the Molotov cocktails on the counter. Glass bottles with pieces of rags. Filled with gasoline. If she broke one of them, the gasoline would spread over the floor. Harmless if not ignited.
Was the risk worth it?
She might be able to get herself out of the apartment and building without cutting her bindings, but she’d never be able to rescue Ethan without the use of her hands.
She hopped around to the other side of the counter. Using her forehead, she pushed one of the bottles toward the edge. It toppled off and fell against the terrazzo floor. Without breaking.
Damn. She pushed the next bottle toward the edge. This time, she gave it a hard shove with her head. It hit the floor with a crash. Glass and gasoline burst over the floor. She leaned against the wall and slid down until she was able to reach the broken glass. As her fingers closed over a long, sharp sliver, familiar laughter rang out from the far side of the kitchen. She frantically sawed at the tape on her wrists, feeling the edge of the glass slice into her hand. A searing pain from the gasoline radiated up the nerves in her arm.
She heard a click, and light flooded the kitchen.
“There. That’s better,” said a soft southern female voice. “Now we can see each other.”
The stranger had short, wispy white hair, arched black eyebrows, and wide blue eyes. She wore a flowing blue tunic and slacks. Star—the woman she’d only seen in photos. If only Diana had recognized Gertrude in this impostor, all of this could have been prevented. But Star’s disguise had been so masterful that no one had suspected, not even Larry.
“I know ya wanna split, Di,” said the pretty woman, switching to Gertrude�
�s Brooklyn-accented voice. “But that’s not gonna happen.”
In the next blink, Star dissolved. Gertrude stood before her. Haughty. Sexy. Confrontational. The surgeon’s scalpel couldn’t change who she really was.
Gertrude walked around and pushed Diana forward with one of her feet. “You’re bleeding,” she said. “Drop the broken glass. I’d hate for you to hurt yourself.”
Diana released the shard and heard it clink against the terrazzo. Gertrude kicked it away.
“Good job,” Gertrude said. “Now get your ass back up and over to the sofa.”
Diana did as she was told. Her hand throbbed from the stinging gasoline.
Gertrude sat down on the other sofa.
Could sharpshooters see into the room through the heavy drapes, now that a light was on?
“They can’t see in,” Gertrude said. “And if they could, they’re just as likely to shoot you.”
Diana searched her old roommate’s face for something familiar, but the prominent jaw had been reshaped in a delicate heart, the nose was smaller and narrower, and her upper lip, once bowed, was now puffy with cosmetic filler. Even the beauty mark on her cheek was gone. Only her probing eyes were the same.
“You look like shit, Di,” Gertrude said. “Of course, you have been under a lot of strain the last couple of days.”
“Where’s Ethan?”
“That’s the question of the hour.”
“You were supposed to let him go,” Diana said. “That was the deal.”
“That was my plan, but the FBI tells me he never came out.”
“Please let him go. This is between us.”
“I would if I could find him.”
Was she lying, or had Ethan hidden somewhere? Was Gertrude capable of blowing up the building with a little boy inside? Unfortunately, Diana knew the answer.
“They said you died in the brownstone explosion,” Diana said.
“Obviously, they were mistaken.”
Diana took in Gertrude’s creamy pale hands, the rings that covered all her fingers.
