by Jeff Abbott
He stopped, and at an Internet café he booked a ticket for a flight from Denver to Los Angeles in the name of the false ID. He returned to his car and drove home. His wife was at the fitness club; his children were in a private school. Barton Craig had grown up in a far rougher neighborhood. He still felt a rush of accomplishment every time he walked into his own house. In a back corner of his bedroom, he opened up a box hidden in a back corner shelf. Inside the box he found a small box of gel caps. He took them and slipped three into a separate bottle that had once held vitamin D supplements.
He didn’t have much time. He hurried down to his car.
He had a flight to meet.
23
Friday, November 5, morning
I WALKED BACK DOWNSTAIRS. I could spend the hours before Holly’s mother returned tearing apart the house. But I thought it would be a waste of time. You didn’t keep your dark, interesting secrets lying about if you had a vault with a self-destruct mechanism. It sort of defeated the purpose.
I thought about the Marchbanks. Highly successful. Perfect family. Big dream house. And inside, weapons, secrets, lies. I thought of the little lies that had been in my own home. My brother, who I loved dearly but wasn’t quite as perfect as he seemed to the world. My father, mercurial, who didn’t always live up to his own high standards. My mother, the doctor, who worried more about the children of strangers than her own. My foster siblings around the world who kept their own secrets and their distance and watched the Capra family move off to another country to help a different set of people, leaving them behind. Everyone thought the Capras were such a good family. Noble. Kind. But our fault lines were just less obvious. Like the Marchbanks.
I went back to the pantry door and knocked.
“Holly?”
“What?”
“You keep saying you are being coerced because of your kids. Tell me what is going on and I’ll protect them.” Mila, I thought, would agree with me making this offer.
“I don’t believe you.”
I took the chair away from being wedged against the knob. I couldn’t reason with her through a door. I twisted the knob. It wouldn’t budge.
Who puts a lock on a pantry door? From the inside? There was no sign of the lock on the outside knob.
On the other side, I heard a soft laugh. “Not very smart of you to stick me in one of our panic rooms. You can’t get to me now, but I can get to you.”
Then I heard the patio door opening.
Holly had somehow summoned help.
I turned the corner from the kitchen to the back den that faced the patio. I held the Glock I’d taken from Holly.
Him. Standing in the doorway on the other side of the long living room. The man in black. He held a gun with his unusually pale fingers. Aimed at me.
“Hello, Sam.”
He knew my name.
Stalemate if no one shoots. But I’d now been surprised by him twice. I wasn’t going to surrender control again.
“Hello, Belias,” I said as I raised the gun and fired. He dove behind the heavy brocaded sofa, me retreating into the kitchen. As I stepped back I saw another man, muscled and bald, entering the den from the patio. Also armed.
I had no idea how many backups he had with him. And I’d learned what I could from the talented Mrs. Marchbanks.
I ran. My new life—the several weeks of traveling to my bars around the world and eating New Orleans food and playing with my infant son—had left me rusty and thoughtless. She’d been perfectly safe in there, free to cut her bonds loose, call reinforcements, and she’d played me for a fool.
A bullet socked into the doorframe, maybe four inches above my shoulder as I went through it into the dining room. Belias, unlike Holly, was giving chase.
I skidded across the table back first, knocking down a bowl of decorative golden apples, firing back at him twice. I saw the wood right by his chest splinter when he showed himself. I’d almost hit him.
Squeezed the trigger again; the magazine was empty of rounds. Thanks, Holly. She must not have reloaded after practicing.
I rolled off the table, onto the floor.
I heard a spray of bullets from behind me, and when the gunfire ceased, I heard the tinkling of a broken chandelier, glass tears weeping and shattering on the floor. The bullets hadn’t been aimed directly at me; the shots were designed to pin me down.
He wanted me alive. To talk.
The closest exit was the front door. And the front was on the entirely opposite side of the house from the back driveway and my car. I’d have to circle the house, running in front of windows, a clear target.
Across the dining room floor, with the heavy table’s ornate chairs between me and him, I saw Belias’s nice shoes. He didn’t know my gun was empty. Right? Where was his partner? Probably getting Holly. Three against one.
Belias stepped back behind the wall.
“Sam,” he called. “This fighting is senseless. We should talk.”
“Belias, what should we talk about?”
“Your future.”
I heard the pantry door opening, him calling back, softly garbled, to Holly. And I had to presume she was armed again.
Belias said, “I’ve been studying you. Fascinating how there are these gaps in your past. After Harvard, after your brother was slaughtered. What could you have done with yourself? I don’t think you went to bartending school.”
A chill prickled my skin. He couldn’t find out about Daniel and Leonie.
“So you’ve decided to take Diana under your wing. This is a very poor decision. Because you will lose, and Sam, you’re so not a loser. You are a winner, and I only deal with winners. Come out and we’ll talk. We won’t harm you.”
If he winged me, I was at his mercy, and I figured that was exactly what he wanted.
“Sam. Every person has his price. I want to know yours. What is it you want most? Because, believe me, I can give it to you.”
Part of me wondered if there could be any truth to this claim. Look at the home of the Marchbanks. Look at Glenn’s runaway success. But how could it be managed?
“We know who you are, Sam,” he said. “And unfortunately so do the Rostovs. They have a man headed to San Francisco to kill you. I am going to protect you. As a sign of good faith. So stop shooting at me, please.”
My chance was the stairs. If I could get upstairs, I could get out. Too many of them down here, too many wide-open spaces where they could corner me. Upstairs was more likely hallways and smaller rooms and windows that led to the roof.
Or I could trap myself. But I didn’t have a chance with all three of them gunning for me across the lawn.
“Now, you could have brought the police here; you didn’t. So you’re not interested in law, per se,” Belias said. “Diana needs to know it’s all going to be okay. I’ll need you to tell her that. I can give you everything. I can give Diana everything. She just doesn’t know it. But she doesn’t want her mother hurt, neither do I. I know you can convince her we can all work together.”
I had a whole different motive, but Belias was thinking that my police allergy was out of loyalty to Diana. He must know she didn’t want the cops involved. So he thought her reason was my reason.
“You want to become the biggest celebrity bar owner in the world—book deals, reality TV show, grosses in the millions, playing host to the rich and powerful? I can help make it happen. You just have to do a few favors for me now and then. And I think you could do them brilliantly.”
He was insane. Wasn’t he? What had he promised to the Marchbankses? The house around me was proof he could deliver.
“I could build you up, Sam. Build you up as high as Holly and Glenn. Make the world easier for you. Predictable, all in a good way. You just reek of potential. But sometimes”—he took a deep breath, almost of regret—“you have to break something before you build it. I would prefer not to break you too badly.”
“Something’s getting broken; it’s not me.” Where was the bald guy who
’d followed Belias into the den? I had to be ready for him to charge me from the foyer. But no sound, no indication he was there. He might be Belias’s bodyguard. He might stick close to the boss. Which would give me a chance.
“We just need to make a deal,” Belias said. “A pact. It’s the simplest thing in the world.”
He wanted me to keep talking to him, listening to his soul-selling babble. So do the unexpected.
“Fine, let’s deal,” I said as I stood and swung a chair and flung it, with all my strength, at the open doorway where Belias lurked, half-seen, just as he stepped forward to talk again.
I turned, hearing the crash of the chair into the doorway and hopefully into him.
“This is an unfortunate choice, Sam!” Belias yelled at me.
I stormed for the stairs instead of the front door. As I reached the mezzanine at the top of the curving stair, I glanced down and saw him, hurrying toward the front door. Followed by Holly. She held a fresh gun. They thought I bolted the house.
What a good, prepared mom. But where was the bald guy?
I knew once the front door was checked they’d see I hadn’t gone for the obvious route of escape across the yard. Probably one would head across the front yard, to be doubly sure, and the other would run back into the house to check the other exits.
Upstairs led to a long hallway. I hurried past the shut doors. I had to find a room that exited onto the less-steep section of the slate roof. I could let the three disperse across the lawn, scale down the side, take out whoever was closest to me, and run…
Behind me I heard a door open.
“Clever lad, you,” the bald man said. “You did what I would have done.” He stepped out into the hallway. No gun in hand, which surprised me.
I raised the gun.
“It’s empty,” he said. “Holly counted your shots and told me when I let her out of the panic room.” His accent was English. I’m not good enough to know which area he came from, but it wasn’t London. He was bigger than me, taller and wider, but also ten years older. It remained to be seen which of us would fight dirtier. Don’t bet against me.
“Maybe Holly’s bad at math.” I kept the gun centered on his chest.
“If I’m wrong, shoot me.”
I lowered the gun. He knew his stuff. I hate people like him.
“My partner wants to talk to you.”
“I don’t think I’m interested in his offer.”
“He wants to talk…but I find talking is overrated.” He took a step toward me. “Now, I don’t think his honeyed words are going to sway a lad like you. I think what sways a lad like you is knowing who’s the boss. And it’s not you.”
“It’s not me,” I agreed.
“Diana. Where is she, Sam? I’m going to ask once and then I’m going to hurt you a bit. Then I’ll ask again, and if you don’t tell, I’ll hurt you some more.”
“Goodness,” I said. “Please don’t hurt me. I wouldn’t like that.”
“Now, I’m not going to kill you. We don’t want that.”
“No, we don’t want that.”
“The hurting, though, will be an entirely fresh experience to a snot-nosed pup like yourself.”
I pretended to wipe my nose with the back of my hand.
The bald man crooked a smile at me. “I told you I’d just ask the once. That was the once.” He charged at me in the hallway, hands raised, certain of the power of his fists against my smaller frame.
For a big house the hallway was a little more narrow than you’d expect. They’d given the space to the rooms. I didn’t have a lot of room to dodge him so I didn’t try. He slammed into me, and instead of running, letting him catch me, I took the tackle and the clubbing punch to the jaw. It hurt. But I wrapped legs around his wide back and arms around his throat. I buried my face close to his shoulder. I was a starfish. He tried to slam me back against the wall. He did once.
My fingers dug for his carotid artery, trying to grip and pinch the flesh. Cut off the fuel to his brain. He felt my fingertips probing and he growled in realization, and he tried to slam me into the wall again as my two fingers closed hard around the arterial feed. But he staggered and missed the wall and we burst through a closed door.
It was Peter’s bedroom. The pile of action figures I’d noticed before lay on the floor, Star Wars and Star Trek characters and superheroes, mute witnesses to battle. We landed on Peter’s bed, with the Spider-Man covers. The bald man tried to pull free from me. I punched a fist into his face, once, twice, felt his lip tear against his teeth. I let him go because I didn’t want to be barnacled to him if Belias or Holly raced into the room and opened fire. They had to have heard the ruckus by now.
The bald man launched a series of sharp, sudden blows at me: face, solar plexus, throat. I blocked them and surprise creased his face. But when I threw a second blow, he dodged and powered a hard fist against my shoulder, and I landed by the action figures. I grabbed one, a bald superhero with green skin and a blue cape. But made of hard plastic.
You can do a lot of damage with a piece of hard plastic.
I jabbed it forward, like a dagger, and the superhero’s head caught the bald man close to his Adam’s apple. His face purpled with shock and pain. He clawed up at his throat, and where the tears tried to leak from his eyes, I stabbed with the action figure, left eye, right eye. He howled in rage, levering up an arm to protect his face. I pressed forward and then he shot a kick into my gut that sent me stumbling. I dropped my superhero, desperate to find another weapon.
He fell back against the wall, and then he grabbed a corkboard from above Peter’s bed and drove me back across the room with it. The metal edge of the board caught my throat and I hit the wall. Pain rocked my neck; he aimed just a bit low, catching more collarbone than larynx. But he couldn’t see so well after the blows to his eyes, and he pressed on the opposite side of the corkboard, not realizing he wasn’t crushing my throat.
I popped a fist through the cork, upending Peter’s perfect attendance certificate and his crayoned drawings of family. I hooked a thumb toward the bald man’s eye. He yanked his head back and eased up the pressure. I grabbed what was closest—a small Superman desk lamp—and heaved it into the side of his head. Superman shattered against his temple and he retreated one step, and then I spun and hammered a thundering kick into the bald man’s chest.
He went out Peter’s window with a shattering crash.
I glanced behind me. Holly in the doorway, gun raised, staring at the wreckage of her child’s room.
Our gaze met. She fired, her hand wavering. The bullet hissed past me and hit a Han Solo poster, and I was out the window.
The slate roof was steep here, and as I slid toward the bald man, I saw he’d managed an unsteady grip on the tiles. I slid toward him and kicked him again in the face, and he went loose, clambering for a grip as he slid toward the edge.
I was more nimble. I got to my feet and ran past the windows before Holly could shoot me.
I heard a muffled cry from the bald man. Maybe he’d gone over the edge. I didn’t look back.
I skittered to the other side of the roof with care, because the slate roof canted at a steep pitch. If I slipped and fell, I might well be dead, and if the fall didn’t kill me, then I’d be hurt and at their mercy. Belias and his bald partner would love that and the thought chilled me. I’d trained as a parkour runner—vaulting walls, running on edges, leaping—and my sense of balance was strong.
I could hear the bald man grunting, crying out for someone to get him a ladder.
I studied the drop—two stories, the side wall broken only by a pair of window ledges, and then another wider window, then a row of prickly hedges. I eased myself off the roof without hesitation. First lesson of parkour was how to fall, and there I’d had plenty of practice. In my head a clock ticked the seconds away.
My finger and toe tips caught the edge of the upper-story windowsill as I slid. It was not a silent descent. I held for just a moment—
> Six.
—until I could see and shift slightly, aiming my feet at the first-floor edging of brick about the lower window.
Five.
My left foot hit the window with the skill for which I am rightly famed. My right foot missed.
Four.
I tottered out into space, not even trying now to balance—I knew it was wasted effort; I aimed for the shrubs, trying to hit them to spread the energy of the fall.
Three.
I smashed down into the shrubs, a bright pain slicing along my ear. I rolled parkour-style to the soft green lawn, spreading the impact and energy from the fall from right shoulder across my back to the left hip to buttocks and my leg. Momentum carried me up onto the balls of my feet and I started to run.
Two.
The bullet impacted the window above me, a thump in the morning quiet. The glass was bulletproof. A momentary advantage for me.
I ran. I didn’t do parkour so much anymore, but I still was fast and I tore the opposite direction, heading the long way around the wings of the storybook house. I saw a line of tall, narrow pines along the edge of the Marchbankses’ property. I glanced back. The bald man was at the edge of the roof, laying flat above the gutter, pressing himself to the roof, trying to slide his way back toward the broken window.
I didn’t see Holly or Belias.
I glided up the greenery, thrust myself over the fence as the top of the branches above me exploded in a burst.
A bullet hit me.
I felt the projectile slam—ricocheting off a trunk or branch—and skim against the tender back of my neck. Hot finger between collar and skin. I fell, back onto the Marchbankses’ property, and I clambered to my feet and bolted down along the stone fence. I had to get out of the angle of the shot first and hope they weren’t each closing in on me, catching me between them.
