by Geonn Cannon
Tight spaces had never bothered her before that incident, now she had to steel herself against showers with sliding glass doors rather than curtains. She had vowed she would never let another man drag her into a room against her will, but here she was with history repeating. She could barely breathe, could only think about running, escape.
Estevez caught her by the upper arm and shoved her forward. "Inside, bitch."
She stumbled into the room and, once past the threshold, was able to banish the memories of a year ago. Once Estevez was inside, Hadley hooked the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the knob and pushed the door shut.
Lance scanned the room and saw typical hotel room fare, just better maintained than any she had seen recently. There was a high-powered rifle standing in the corner near the window, and a big leather carrying case in the center of the far bed.
The room had two wooden chairs, one under the window and the other between the beds. They looked cheap, definitely not the standard dressing for the room. Hadley or one of his goons must have brought them in special. The open bathroom door was to her left, directly between the room's two beds.
Estevez walked her to the chair between the beds and shoved her down into it. The wood creaked slightly under her weight. He knelt to one side of the chair, out of her kicking range, and closed a handcuff link around her wrist. The other bracelet went around the wooden arm of the chair. He crossed behind her and did the same with the other wrist.
Hadley stood with his back to the wall, watching with detached interest. His hands still in his pockets, he looked to be deep in thought.
Estevez moved in front of Lance and lifted her foot like a shoe salesman figuring her size. She frowned. "What the hell are you doing?"
He pulled the boot off and tossed it onto the bed. "What, you think we're gonna leave you with these things?" He grinned and took off the other boot, tossed it onto the opposite bed. "They could really hurt one of us guys, if we got careless."
"What?" Lance said. "You guys? Careless? Hard to imagine."
Hadley smiled, genuinely amused. "It's been quite a week. You'll excuse us if we take a few extra precautions." He looked directly at her. "Why did you kill Roy?"
"He was beating Gwen," she said. "Right in front of me."
Hadley's eyes hardened and he looked down at his hands. "Yeah. I guess I can understand you getting bent out of shape about that. I feel the same way. You don't hit a woman."
Lance looked down at herself and shook her cuffs so that the chains rattled. "Really. It's good to know you feel that way."
Hadley laughed and walked forward. "Oh, you don't count, little bitch. You cost us a fucking lot of money. You killed our boss. There's a lot of difference between hitting someone smaller and weaker than you and getting revenge against some fucking bitch who shit all over your territory."
"Whore," Lance said. The men stared at her. "Slut. Cunt, even. You guys have called me a bitch four or five times since we got to the hotel. I'm just trying to enlarge your vocabulary. Bitch is starting to get a little tiring. Call me something else, I need the variety."
"Is that so? Bitch." Hadley stepped forward and backhanded her. She rocked to the left and the chair creaked with her movement. She tugged on her wrists and felt the arms of the chair give slightly. They had bought the chairs somewhere cheap, probably five minutes after someone else had thrown them out. Given enough time and activity, the thing would shatter and she would be free.
Lance straightened in the chair, leaned back, and probed her lip with her tongue. There was a hint of blood, but the lip hadn't been split. She straightened, glared at Hadley through her bangs, and shrugged. "Fine. Bitch is good. I can live with bitch."
"Glad we could come to an agreement." Hadley moved around the chair, out of sight, and she heard the zipper of a large bag. She doubted they had taken the time to pack before leaving Texas, so she turned to look over her shoulder at what he was doing. For the first time since the entire ordeal began, she felt sheer panic.
The leather carrying case she had seen earlier was open. Lying on the mattress next to it were a large Bowie knife and a 9mm handgun. Hadley checked the gun to make sure it was loaded, then dropped it and picked up the knife. He walked back in front of her and sat on the edge of the bed. He looked down at the knife, turning it slowly in his hand and letting the blade catch the light of the room.
"Where is Gwendolyn Morse now?" he asked casually. He looked up and shrugged as if the question wasn't important. "Everything you did over the past couple of days, you did to protect her, right? So you're presumably still trying to do that. You need to tell us where she is. You need to tell us how we can find her, or things are going to get very unpleasant for you."
"She went to hell," Lance said. "If you hurry, you can still catch her."
Hadley smiled. "Clever. It's kind of a long winded way to say Ôgo to hell', but you're not the kind to cut corners, are you? So I'm going to ask you for as long as it takes to get a straight answer. I'll even make it easier for you. I'll make it a multiple choice question. You hired a small plane, right? I figure you either sent her to Colorado, Kansas, Missouri...maybe Nebraska, at the outside. It has to be one of those four, right? Just tell us which state and we'll move on. Simple, right?"
Lance pretended to consider it. Finally, she sighed and said, "I'm going to stick with Option E," she said, looking Hadley in the eye. "Hell."
Hadley stood up and stepped around the chair. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her back until the chair lifted onto its back two legs. The wood creaked again, and she knew that she would be able to break the piece of shit, given enough time. The knife blade came down in front of her eyes and she wondered if she had any time at all left.
Hadley held onto the handful of her hair as the knife drifted lower. He pressed the tip against her neck, the cold steel almost stinging against her pulse point, and then used the blade to run down to the collar of her shirt. She frowned, but realized his intention just before the first button was sawed off. He moved his hand lower and severed the next button.
"That's two. The next time I don't like your answer, I'll cut off three. When I run out of buttons, I'll go after that pretty bra you're wearing. After that..." He looked at Perry and shrugged. "Well, I'm sure you won't let it get that far, will you, Miss Lance?" He clapped his hand on her shoulder and lowered his voice to a vicious hiss. "Now, once again, where did you send Gwendolyn Morse?"
Chapter Seventeen
The police station had a long, narrow, detectives' bullpen, crammed full of cluttered desks separated by gray partitions. An hour shy of midnight, the place was nearly deserted as Mallory and Lazareva came through the glass doors. A low railing separated the detectives' work area from the public space. Mallory spotted Acheson standing next to one of the desks, phone stuck between his ear and shoulder as he scribbled something on a notepad. Mallory knocked on the railing and he looked up to wave them in, hanging up as they neared his desk. "We got eight eyewitnesses to the accident. From them, we managed to get a ten-digit license plate number for the SUV."
Lazareva rolled her eyes. "Was it of any use?"
"We're pretty sure one person got six of the correct seven, in the right order. We used that as our base and had patrol cars keeping their eyes open."
"Had?" Mallory said, though not surprised they failed to locate the SUV. She had learned to keep her expectations low when it came to tracking Lance.
"The SUV was just spotted parked in a Best Western parking lot not far from Will Rogers. Want to take a ride?"
Lazareva nodded. "We'll follow you."
"Good enough." Acheson led the way out of the dark office with Lazareva and Mallory close behind him.
Lazareva hooked her hand in Mallory's elbow and held her back. "Wait, Faye."
Mallory turned and looked at her. "I said I would take your advice under consideration, and I am, but this is our best chance. We're going."
"Yes, we are," Lazareva said calmly. "And you are go
ing to call the Oklahoma City FBI office and bring in reinforcements. You're going in there loaded for bear, but you're not going alone. You're going to make sure Lance can't slip out of your hands this time. Hadley is holding her for you. I doubt he'll let her go without a fight. All I'm asking is that you add another layer of protection between Lance and freedom."
Mallory stared Lazareva in the eye as she reached into her blazer pocket. She looked away from Lazareva's intense golden stare to dial the phone, and then turned to face the wall. "This is FBI Special Agent Faye Mallory from the Chicago field office. I need to be connected to the Oklahoma City office immediately."
Lazareva put her hand on Mallory's back. "Come on. You can be on hold in the truck."
Mallory nodded and hurried after Lazareva.
#
Hadley stood up and examined the belt buckle. He ran his thumb over the raised lion's head. "Wow, this is actually pretty nice. Estevez, you ever seen anything like this?"
Estevez walked over and looked. "What is that, a goat?"
"It's a lion, you imbecile," Hadley said. "It's a...what do you call it? Coat of arms."
"Why's its tongue sticking out like that?"
Hadley shrugged. "It's English or something. Old time." He tossed the buckle onto the bed and pushed off his thigh to stand up again. Lance's shirt was hanging open, the buttons littering the floor around her. Hadley had skipped her bra. "Saving the best for last," he told her with a smile. He tapped the knife against his thigh and shook his head as he paced in a half circle in front of the chair.
"I can be reasonable — that's why your tits are still covered up — but I'm running out of things to cut. Pretty soon I'll have to start on skin, and none of us want that."
Perry was leaning against the wall next to the window, staring at Lance's bra with interest. He had watched each sweep of the knife with bated breath and he was practically vibrating. He looked up at Hadley. "You'll let me have a go at her before you cut her, right?"
Hadley turned and looked at the kid. "You want her?"
"Preferably not bloody," Perry said. "I get sick when I see blood."
"Yeah, so do I." He looked down at Lance and then nodded. "Yeah. We get all her clothes cut up before she answers us, I'll let you have a go at her. It'll be a nice change of pace from cutting. Maybe it'll prompt her to open her damn mouth."
Perry chuckled and Lance didn't want to know what he was thinking. She tensed, but tried to hide it from her tormenters. She knew her window of opportunity: she had to do something before they finished cutting off her clothes and turned her over to the kid. She looked over at him and decided that it wasn't that big of a threat, really. Skinny little kid like him couldn't be packing too much. And the way he was shaking, the way he hadn't blinked since the first button came off, the rape might be over before he even got on top of her. Still, she couldn't risk it. She wouldn't.
"Colorado?" Hadley asked, ticking the knife to the right. He ticked it back to the left and said, "Kansas? Nebraska...or Missouri? It's a simple question, even simpler an answer."
"Boss," Perry said.
"Calm the fuck down," Estevez muttered. "Jesus."
Lance looked over at the kid and saw that his attention had been diverted. He was looking outside now, his cheek pressed against the window to look down at the front of the building. He was no longer shaking with anticipation. His gaze was narrowly focused on the world outside rather than the fantasy coming to life in the room. She didn't dare hope that the cavalry had arrived, but anything that took the pervert's attention off of her was a good thing.
She looked at Hadley and said, "Beirut."
Hadley blinked at her. "What?"
"I sent Gwen to Beirut. The plane will have to refuel a couple dozen times, probably, but that's where she's heading."
Estevez said, "What the hell is a bay root?"
"It's a country in South America," Hadley muttered. "It doesn't matter. She's lying." He knelt down and sighed. "I didn't want to do this, Miss Lance, but..." He pushed her shirt off her shoulders and slid the knife under the left shoulder strap of her bra. He looked up to see if Perry was watching and frowned when he saw the kid's back. "What are you doing, waiting to see it all at once?"
"There are a lot of cops out here, Gar," Perry said.
Lance and Estevez both looked toward the window. Hadley pulled the knife away from Lance's bra and stood up. "What the fuck you mean there are cops out there?" He walked around the bed and shoved Perry out of the way. He pushed the curtain aside and stood to the left of the window to look down. "Where? I don't see any cop cars."
"They're unmarked. Black sedans, all of 'em new and shiny. About eight million antennas between 'em."
Hadley said, "Ben."
Estevez pushed Perry back and took his place next to the window. "Fuck," he said. "The kid's right. Those are unmarked cars, probably the Feds."
Lance's blood went cold. Wrong cavalry.
Estevez walked to the corner of the room, picked up the rifle, and began the process of making sure it was loaded. He carried it to the window and undid the latches. It would only open a crack, a clearance of about six inches, wide enough to allow fresh air in but not wide enough for even a small child to accidentally fall out. But it was certainly wide enough to accommodate the slender barrel of a rifle.
#
Lazareva's truck was the second car into the parking lot, behind Acheson. Behind them, half a dozen unmarked cars from the Oklahoma City FBI field office filed into the lot and branched out to cover all of the exits. Acheson parked under the hotel's awning and ran into the building, planning to get Hadley's room information.
Mallory got out of the truck, still pulling on her FBI jacket. She reached into the pocket of her shirt and found the photo of Elaine she had taken from Lance's car. "For you, Elaine." She brushed her thumb over her sister's image and put the photo in the pocket of her jacket. The bulletproof vest between her jacket and shirt weighed her down, but it was a good weight. It was evidence of how close they were. Lance was somewhere in this building, and she wasn't going to slip away this time.
She zipped up her jacket and stared into the lobby where Acheson was speaking to the clerk. It was a nice hotel, with a long check-in desk to the left, a waiting area to the right, and a gorgeous wide open atrium straight ahead of the doors. The words "Somewhere in there, Lance is somewhere in there" kept echoing in her mind. It took all of her willpower not to rush into the building after him, take over the situation and go charging upstairs to take Lance away from Hadley by any means necessary. But Lazareva's speech about the white whale had shamed her enough to keep her right where she was, for the time being, at least. She craned her neck to look up at the hotel. Dozens of dark windows, hundreds of rooms. Lance was inside, mere footsteps away. Somewhere behind one of these windows, she was waiting to be taken into custody.
Mallory could barely breathe, could barely concentrate. She didn't want Acheson inside getting the information and she didn't want all of these cars parked out here. She wanted the capture, she wanted to do it herself. The little voice at the back of her head was demanding she pull out her gun, rush into the lobby, and take matters into her own hands, turn the FBI and the Okie cops into her own personal army. The desire, and how hard she had to fight to push it down, suddenly frightened the hell out of her.
She walked around the truck to where Lazareva was waiting. She checked her holster and then tugged on the side of her vest to make sure the Velcro was holding. Mallory touched her elbow and softly said, "Toni."
Lazareva looked down at her and straightened. "Are you all right, Faye?"
Mallory opened her mouth to speak, but her voice cracked. She nodded, then shook her head and bit her lip. A tear rolled down her cheek and she sagged against Lazareva. She felt Lazareva's strong arms wrap around her and squeeze gently. Lazareva turned her body to the side and pulled Mallory close to block her face from the rest of the gathered agents. When she spoke, her voice was low and calm. "
Pull yourself together, all right, Faye? We're going to get her."
"Yeah," Mallory said quietly. She swept her hand across her cheek and sniffed loudly, composing herself before she pulled away from Lazareva's embrace. She squeezed Lazareva's bicep in thanks and stepped back. "Yeah, we're going to get her."
"Yes, we are." Looking up at the building, she leaned against the truck and scratched her neck, just under her collar. "Look, Faye. I know what you said in the hotel room, about get in and get out, no strings. But I was thinking maybe, after we do this, when Lance is in custody, how about you let me take you to a celebratory dinner? You deserve it after these past ten months. Either in Texas or Chicago, but I have to tell you that Texas has the best steak in the country."
"Oh, yeah?" Mallory said, grateful for the distraction.
"Yeah. If you eat seventy-two ounces in an hour, it's free."
"The restaurant pays for both the steak and the stomach pump, you mean?"
Lazareva laughed. "Hey, don't knock it 'til you've—"
The world erupted in a red mist. Mallory blinked and watched Lazareva slump against the side of the truck. Her golden eyes were wide with shock and her hand moved slowly to press against her throat. She started to slide toward the ground as blood pumped through her fingers, wet and vivid and unbelievably red. Mallory couldn't comprehend what she was watching. She felt Lazareva's warm blood on her face, saw her face growing pale, but couldn't figure out what had happened. Until the echo of the gunshot reached her, and someone slammed into her from behind.
"Get down, for God's sake!" It was Acheson, shoving her to the ground and covering her with his body. "They have a shooter!"
Mallory lay with her cheek flat against the pavement, breathing hard as she watched Lazareva trying to stop her blood with a hand that was now completely gloved in red.
#
