Ransom X

by I.B. Holder

  Chapter 21 Preservation

  Legacy’s eyes were open; they’d been open for almost five minutes staring at the far wall of his bedroom. He didn’t move or make a sound. There was activity on the other side of the wall, footsteps far too heavy to be those of the elderly occupant. Mrs. Winch was an old widow who voiced the odd hallway or condominium association complaint. She stood up at all of the meetings to urge for more security in the complex because she had so many valuables in her unit. After thirty years of complaints, someone had listened to her, it seemed.

  Legacy had called the police four minutes previous, after he was sure there was a break in – in progress. Now, he waited silently, knowing that any noise could wake Mrs. Winch and alert her to the situation, potentially setting off a powder keg on the other side of that wall.

  Thud. Another noise from beyond farther away, an interior hallway, it could even be near his door. Legacy was out of the bed and silently on his feet in the span of time that it took most people to flinch.

  He’d trained seven years with special ops – until they discovered his hidden talents in the interrogation room and he was reassigned. Legacy had proven himself in the field as a highly rated military resource. When they told his colonel – Franks, an aging hawk –that they needed one of his best operatives to get information out of captives, it probably translated in his head like, “Give me one of your best field assets because we want him to chat with people too important to kill.”

  Col. Franks had told his men repeatedly that nobody was too important to kill. He held a deep belief that bad guys went to the bone yard and bending the rules for some only encouraged others to be worse. Negotiating set up a hierarchy of evil that somehow exempted those at the top from the ultimate punishment because they were somehow a more useful evil. Franks had no use for evil. Legacy remembered how he spat on his shoes the day he’d left the regiment.

  He put on a pair of shoes that he kept beside the bed and was in the hallway. Legacy skimmed the wall heading for Chess' room – three doors down on the right – he hugged the carpet edges because the tack sticks underneath spread out his weight and made his stride even more silent.

  Another sound behind him, shrill, urgent, a scream. Legacy slipped through his daughter’s door to find her sitting upright, baseball bat gripped in her hands. She had the family reflexes after all. Legacy clicked his teeth, and Chess relaxed hearing the signal.

  Legacy hugged his daughter pulling his lips up to her ear. “It’s the next apartment down”

  A second scream came through the walls, followed by a rattle of words that were indistinct. Finally there was a thump on the wall, and the sounds of a scuffle.

  Chess pushed her father away “Do something.”

  Legacy replied barely audible “I can’t leave you.”

  The sound of footsteps continued in the other apartment, but the outcry was over. The alarmed voice had been silenced.

  Legacy looked into the whites of his daughter’s eyes, the light from the hallway cast across her face in a stripe just wide enough to see the depth of disappointment in her expression. Legacy couldn’t stand it, he motioned for silence and she nodded. He slipped out of the room racing his own shadow gliding deftly on the wall. Legacy wanted to make the errand a quick one.

  He knew that the assailants were in escape mode and the hallway offered the only access to the stairs or fire escape and down. Legacy scuttled down the locks on his door, and pushed it open with a click. Legacy crouched in the entryway, lying in wait for whatever passed.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The door on Mrs. Winch’s place was thrown open and a man entered the hallway, as heavy steps came toward Legacy’s door. The lighting in the hall cast a shadow forward that the next light couldn’t quite fill in and judging from the angle, the slight shade that hit the doorframe meant he was about two paces away from Legacy’s door. The calculations were instinct, he was a much better predator than his flannel pajamas and corduroy slippers suggested. Legacy’s hand shot out, catching the fleeing man’s forearm.

  Legacy had the leverage, and the strength, but the fat intruder had fat, lots of it. When he spun around like a turntable ornament he looked at his smaller attacker with surprise that verged on disbelief. Before he could explore the feeling fully, pain hit him and brought him to his knees. Legacy had a grip, thumb to forefinger between the split bones of the forearm. The grip pinched down on the tendons running to the hand and played the nerve center like an over stretched string of a violin.

  Legacy’s command tone was barely louder than a whisper “Is the old lady OK?”

  “Yes.” The fat man said wincing in pain. Honesty is always a quicker defense than a lie. Legacy believed him.

  “Are you alone?” Legacy increased the pressure trying to get another quick answer, but all the blood rushed out of the fat man’s face and the pain caught his breath leaving him unable to speak. Legacy eased off, but it gave the man time. The fat man gasped out “I work with a team, one of us hits each house on a floor.”

  Legacy studied his wide, dilated eyes, he was ninety nine percent sure that it was a lie. In his experience, fat men are often slower on their feet and quicker to think. He puffed out, “Sammy is in your house right now.”

  His neighbor across the hall, Paul opened his door at that moment leaving it on the chain. “Do you need any help?” The sound of his daughters crowding the hallway behind him covered the approach of the police up the stairs.

  “Freeze!”

  Legacy had no time to think. Three officers of the Alexandria police stood with guns drawn.

  It changed the game, now anyone hiding on the floor would be desperate. Desperate enough to take a hostage, being cornered and ready to do anything so as not to be taken into custody. Legacy couldn’t take that one percent chance. He released the fat man and ran inside his home.

  He found Chess on her bed, and she hugged him tightly. “Did you get him?”

  Later, they were all in the hallway. Mrs. Winch was shouting at a group of officers about the response time, she hadn’t thanked Legacy for calling them. She seemed fine. There were other things in the hall that were not at all regular. An ambulance had pulled up in front of the house and two EMTs were wheeling away a stretcher with a frightened young girl still bleeding from a cut to her head.

  After the perpetrator “slipped out” of Legacy’s grasp, he’d broken down the door opposite and it had come down full weight on his neighbor, one of the daughters had suffered a head wound from the splitting wood. They were going to be OK, but the suspect had gotten away through a back window in the other daughter’s room. The youngest, Laney, wouldn’t let go of her father’s broken hand, and although each tug was a splitting pain, he let her hold on. She was shaking with fear.

  Chess heard her father tell the police how the perpetrator had gotten away from him. She waited until the door was closed behind them before she added her opinion.

  “He didn’t get away from you.” She paced the front foyer, furious.

  “He told me that he worked on a crew and that one of them was in my apartment. It could have been you bleeding –”

  “Yeah, I’m thrilled a seven year old and a defenseless grade school teacher took that guy on and not you.” She pleaded in rage, “Please don’t say that this happened because of me.”

  Legacy wasn’t ready for the deeper truth to be tested that night. He kissed her forehead, said “Good night, Chess” and walked back to his room.