I nodded. I knew what was coming.”
“So, what’s going to happen here, is, I’m going to show you a series of photographs, and, what I’d like you to do, is identify any of the houses that look familiar. Or, if they all look familiar, then which look more familiar than others.”
I swallowed hard as he began to lay the pictures out in front of me on my mahogany desk. I recognized them all. I recognized them from years ago, to the day when I had seen Antoine looking at me from the living room, calling my name… I shuddered and turned away.
“It’s that one,” I said. “The blue one. It was white when it happened, but it’s definitely that one.”
“Are you sure, Mr. White? I need to remind you, we’re trusting you to a point here, and we’re trusting you a lot out of respect for Cassie and that Patrick didn’t believe you had masterminded all of this. But, if you try to trick us, any deals we discussed will be null.”
“I understand,” I said quickly. “Is that house still there? Is it occupied? Can we go now?” I stood, preparing to get my gear on.
“Slowly, Mr. White,” Julian said. “We have some set up to do around the house. We want to make sure that everyone involved can get in and get out safely. Do you know where Cassie is right now?”
I stopped. “Cassie is not to be a part of this,” I said. “I have some eyes on her; I believe she’s in central London doing some shopping today. She is not to be anywhere near this. She’s involved, and I’m out.” I stood behind my desk, my coat in my hand, showing Julian that, if that was the case, the plan ended here.
“I promise,” Julian said. “Cassie will not be involved. The last thing we want is a civilian involved, especially one who is so convinced that she has inside information. Both Patrick and I agreed on that. She’s strong, smart, and savvy, but, like I’m sure you know, she was unable to prevent herself from being abducted by an infidel. We can’t take the change of having extra people around who could put themselves, us, or your son, Antoine, in danger. So, rest assured, she will be safe.”
I relaxed, and I knew my relief was written all over my face. “Okay, then,” I said. “Tell me what I need to do.”
“Get your piece, your vest, and get something of your son’s that he will be able to use to identify you as his father. I’ve been amassing my men in a perimeter around the block since early this morning. Now that you’ve ID’ed the house, we’ll be able to close in quickly. With any luck at all, Mr. White, we’ll have your son in your arms by the end of the day.”
Cassie
I sat in the back of the car with Julian, feeling my heart pounding so loud in my chest I was convinced everyone in a three mile radius could hear it. I ducked down whenever I heard another car pass, not knowing if it was someone who lived in the neighborhood, or if it was someone related to Manuel Brown and the raid that was about to take place.
I had no idea, and I didn’t want to know, how everything was going to happen. Julian had told me that we would pull up into the back drive of the house, driving through an alley that separated one set of houses from another. The alley was blocked off, supposedly for construction, yet it was blocked for us.
There was another car parked out front with an undercover officer who was approximately my height and build, cruising up and down the street. Bait number one.
I hadn’t been in contact with Brad, but Julian had told me that he’d agreed with the plan, had agreed with me participating. I couldn’t believe how Julian had managed to convince Brad that I should be allowed to help, but I wasn’t going to question it too much. The whole point was, I was in the action. Brad was close by, and, with any luck at all, we would have Antoine back in Brad’s arms by the end of the day.
Julian was speaking into his phone. “Everyone is getting into position. The perimeter is nearly three miles long, so we’ll need to watch for civilians. Look for the signals. Don’t shoot until you’re absolutely sure of looking at. Do you hear me on that?”
There was a lot of static coming through Julian’s speaker, then several “Yes, Sir,” responses.
“Let me know when Mr. White and his car have approached.”
At the sound of Brad’s name, my nerves shot through my body. I must have made a noise, because Julian looked into the back seat. “Are you okay?” he asked. I nodded.
“Who’s driving the car with the UC?” I asked.
“One of our best,” Julian said. “Nothing is going to happen to her, either.”
There was the sound of a horn honking, a distinct pattern, and Julian cleared his throat, straightened up in his seat, and gripped the steering wheel. “Okay, here we go. Duck down, and when I tell you to get out of the car, get out of the car and stay low, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”
The horn honked again, and this time, rather than slowly rolling along the alley, Julian revved and gunned the engine. He squealed the tires and pulled into a driveway of a yellow house. I could see the blue house, our target, a few houses down.
“Now!” he called, and he opened his door, gun out. I opened the back door and rolled out, using the truck as protection as I came around to his side of the car. He made eye contact with me and he waved his gun at two cars parked in the alley, black with one light blue door, symbols of neutral cars to us. I nodded.
We crawled toward the back yard of the blue house. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to throw up, but I kept going. Suddenly, shots were fired. Everyone started yelling, and the door to one of the black and blue cars opened. Julian grabbed me by the back of my shirt and picked me up off the ground before I’d even realized what had happened. He stuffed us both into the back seat and ducked us down.
“What the fuck happened!” he yelled into his cell phone, using it like a walkie-talkie.
“Some random uniform drove by,” a man answered breathlessly. “Nearly shot the whole plan to shit, fucking ass.”
“What’s happening?” Julian screamed. I’d never seen him so angry; his face was cherry red, nearly to bursting, veins in his head and neck pulsing. This meant something more to him than it did to the other cops; it meant, for whatever reason, as much to him as it meant to Brad and me.
“It’s cool, Boss,” the other voice said. “There was no response from the blue house. Makes me wonder if maybe we got them on a day when there’s no one home. We might have gotten lucky and they just left Antoine in the basement while they went to conduct business.”
“Yeah, and maybe the Queen Mum is sitting in the dining room waiting to serve us tea and crumpets,” Julian sneered. “Stay with the plan. And, for fuck’s sake, I want this area cleared!” he roared. “Cleared! Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” the voice, chastised, clicked off of the phone.
“Fucking imbiciles,” Julian muttered. The man sitting in the driver’s seat said nothing; it was as though he was not even there. That had to have been by instruction.
Julian nodded, and the man opened the door automatically. Julian stepped out first, then I followed as best I could; my legs felt like jelly.
“This is the hard part,” he said. “We get from here to the back door, we send the signal, and we’re home free.”
I nodded. He looked at me and squeezed my hand. “Are you ready?”
I nodded again. He squeezed my hand, hard, then released it. I heard him slowly count, one, two, three, and then he reared back and kicked the back door open with his foot. It shattered, the wood splintering at the door jamb, and made a noise so loud I couldn’t believe a sleeping God wouldn’t have snapped awake. But, when the dust settled, there was no noise in the house. No noise at all.
I looked at Julian, not sure if that was good or bad. He shrugged and directed me to keep walking. Stick with the plan, no matter what.
We explored the main level of the house, looking for any signs of movement, any signs of a basement. There was commotion going on in the front of the house, on the front lawn. I tried to look through the windows to see if it was Brad, to see i
f he had managed to suss Manuel out of the house, see if that was what the gunfire was all about. There was action, and, suddenly, more gunfire. I dropped to the floor immediately, but Julian grabbed me and dragged me across the floor. I felt the splinters of the wooden floor jam into my jeans and sweatshirt, and I knew I’d be bloody later. But, those wounds were all fixable.
I scrambled with him toward a door that was open just a crack, a door with a glow of light coming from the opening.
This is it, Julian mouthed to me. I nodded and crawled toward the door, trying to keep one ear open on the commotion going on outside, waiting for the millisecond when everything would change, when the action would come off the street and move into the house.
We didn’t dare turn the basement light on, though the glow of what was coming was hardly enough to see by. Julian had a pencil flashlight that he used to add to the glow. He swung it from one side of the basement to the other. There was obvious evidence that this space had been lived in, and that it had been lived in by a child. Children’s sized clothes, books, and video games were strewn around the center of the room. In the corner, a dirty mattress without sheets lay in the corner. A few inches above the mattress, on the wall, chains had been drilled into the stone of the basement.
Chains that were empty now. There was no one here.
“There’s no one here,” I whispered, not even fully grasping the full danger we were in, not sure my brain had the capacity to grasp it.
“Wait,” Julian said, nodding toward two other closed doors near the mattress. “Stay there.” He walked slowly toward the door. A crash from above made us both wince, and Julian moved faster. He quickly flung open each door. Guns fell out of one, clattering on top of each other at a volume that would have woken the dead, echoing in the small basement. The other door had a padlock.
“Antoine!” Julian cried. “Antoine! Are you in there?” He motioned for me to come to the door and speak.
“Antoine, honey?” I whispered, my voice terrified. “I’m a friend of your daddy’s. Are you in there? We can get you out; we just need to know you’re in there, honey.”
“I’m going to shoot off the lock,” he said.
“They’ll hear us!” I said, pointing up.
“They already know we’re here,” he said. “It’s our only shot. Antoine, stand away from the door, do you hear me? I’m going to shoot it off! Stand back! One, two, three…”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice from behind us startled us both. We whirled around and there stood Mavin Toller. Thought now, I knew him as Manuel Brown. “You blow a hole in that door, and you blow us all to kingdom come.”
“Where’s the boy?” Julian asked.
“Oh he’s long gone,” Manuel said. “I can’t believe you thought you’d just be able to sneak in the back door and grab him. That is what you thought, didn’t you?” He smiled, or, what he meant to be a smile; a spreading of his lips to expose brown, broken teeth.
“Where’s Antoine?” I yelled. “And where’s Brad? What did you do with them?”
Julian held me back as I lunged toward Manuel. Manuel took a step back.
“Control her, Julian,” he said.
“Shut up,” Julian said, “or he’ll kill us both.” He whispered in my ear, tense, just as scared as I was.
“Yes, that’s right, calm her,” Manuel laughed. “Gorge!” he called upstairs. “Come down here and show our new friends some hospitality.” A large man came bumbling down the stairs, carrying rope, tape, and an AK-47.
“You’re too late,” Manuel said. “Once I caught word of your little plan, I moved Antoine to a safer location. He’s happier, there, actually. This will be a very nice place for the two of you to live out your final days.”
“Where’s Brad?” I asked.
“Mr. White is incapacitated for the time being, but, don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be on his way to find you soon. Hopefully, he’ll be able to find his way here in time.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Goodbye, Ms. Young. Goodbye, Agent Boran.” Manuel walked up the stairs and shut the door.
“What did he mean?” I asked Julian.
Julian frowned as Gorge began to tie us together with the ropes.
“He means, there’s a bomb.”
***
I stared at Julian; he stared grimly back at me. Manuel Brown’s words echoed in my mind. This will be a very nice place for the two of you to live out your final days. Hopefully, he’ll be able to find his way here in time. And Julian’s response to my confusion:
“He means, there’s a bomb.”
“You’re very smart,” Gorge said, sneering at Julian. “You must have been straight A student.” His accent was thick, but it wasn’t one I could place. I looked meaningfully at Julian, trying to figure out what our next step was. He wasn’t resisting Gorge tying us up, so I wasn’t resisting either, though, by my count, we should be resisting mightily. Gorge was huge, but surely, between the two of us, Julian and I could take him down.
I tugged on one of the ropes and locked eyes with Julian, trying to signal my thoughts.
“Hey!” Gorge said. “Stop that, you fucking bitch.”
Julian shook his head at me with the slightest movement. I began to mouth my objection, but he slid his eyes toward the door that had the padlock on it. It was the door we’d been ready to shoot open, thinking Antoine was behind it, until Manuel Brown had discovered us. Or, more correctly, Manuel Brown had let us know that he had discovered us.
I stopped. I let my body go slack to indicate I wasn’t going to put up any further resistance.
“That’s better,” Gorge said, picking up his pace with wrapping Julian and me together. By the time he was finished, Julian and I were bound together, face to face, with our hands tied behind our backs. I couldn’t see Julian’s hands, but mine were crossed at the wrists and, each time I tried to pull my wrists apart, like a Chinese finger trap, the ropes got tighter and dug into my arms.
“Stop pulling on the ropes,” Julian whispered as Gorge stepped back, looking at us with his AK-47 in hand. He nodded in satisfaction as he admired his work. Then, he began to walk up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” I yelled. “You can’t leave us here!”
“Bomb soon,” Gorge said. “I’m outta here.” He made the sign of the cross and nodded at us, as if he was giving a final blessing. Then, he walked up the stairs, his heavy frame making each step creak as he trudged up each one. When he reached the top of the stairs, I heard the door open and close. There was the sound of men’s voices, a barrage of them, and then another door slammed and the house was silent.
I looked up and into Julian’s face, less than two inches from my own. If I was taller, or if Julian was shorter, we would have been in a near lip lock.
“So, this is awkward,” I said. It was no time to be funny, I knew, but I couldn’t help at least trying. Why Gorge had bound us facing each other and not back to back, I had no idea. But, Julian knew exactly why he had done it that way.
“He bound us front to front so that he could manipulate the ropes in a certain way. If you pull your wrists tighter, the ropes on my wrists loosen slightly, enough to make me feel like I could maybe get loose—if I didn’t know better. The trick is, though, when I try to pull my hands free, the ropes will tighten harder on you. Hard enough to cut off the circulation to your hands, if I force it. If we trade and you try to get loose, the same thing will happen to me.”
I winced as he demonstrated. I could see his shoulders moving, and, as they did, my wrists began to burn and my hands pulsed with the blood pressure locking into them.
“I get it,” I said. “So, how do we get free? If they’re right and there’s a fucking bomb down here, we need to get the fuck out.”
“Agreed,” he said, but he didn’t move.
“Well?” I demanded.
He pulled his neck back and glared down at me, his chin jutting back. “Well what?” he said.
“Why do I have to have all the ideas here?”
“Do I really need to answer that?” I asked. “Aren’t you a fucking cop?”
He sighed. “Yes. And you’re a nosy journalist who had absolutely no business getting involved in this situation in the first place, and was, I believe, warned by at least three people to stay away and insisted on involving herself anyway.”
“And lucky for you,” I snapped, “or they probably would have shot you on the spot.”
Julian shook his head. I had him, and he knew it. The trouble was none of that mattered. I glanced at the padlocked door and a bolt of fear ran through me. He felt it, and his eyes softened.
“We can’t argue with each other,” he said. “We don’t have time, and it’s liable to get us killed. Did you happen to notice if Gorge had anything other than the rope in his hands at any time while he was tying us up?”
“I didn’t notice,” I said, knowing my voice was testier than I meant for it to be. “I was too busy, you know, being tied up.” I added, when I saw the look on his face, “Why?”
“It’s likely that the detonator for the bomb is in one of three places. It’s either on the padlock, like Manuel Brown suggested, or it could be on a remote control.”
“And the third option?” I asked, hearing dread in my voice. I knew where he was going.
“It’s also possible that he attached the detonator to one of us while he was tying us up. So that, if we did end up getting free, we would blow ourselves up in the process.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I could feel sweat dripping between my breasts. I looked at Julian’s temples and saw beads of sweat there as well. At once, I had the ludicrous thought that the bomb might be able to be set off by beads of sweat, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from bursting out laughing. “No, that’s not possible. We would have noticed.”
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