by Reid, Joseph
As I cruised slowly from 15th Place up to 20th, I still didn’t see anything abnormal. People driving home from work or dinner. Surfers trudging uphill with their boards, making me jealous. Lights starting to flick on against the onset of dusk.
Looping back to 18th, I triggered my garage door and pulled the Jeep in.
Max still lay on her side, eyes eerily open, and didn’t react, even when I pulled off the blanket. “C’mon, Max,” I said, “we’re here.” Slowly, she lowered her feet to the ground and started walking, as if in a trance. Grabbing her elbow with one hand, I shut the Jeep with the other, closed the garage door, and steered her inside.
Upstairs, I ushered her to the living area, where I spun the easy chair I normally use away from the windows and TV, back toward the coffee table and sofa. Max looked small as she sank into the plush leather seat.
I still couldn’t get her to make eye contact, but her jaw was trembling. “You cold?” I asked. “Hungry?”
She nodded slightly. I retrieved a knit blanket my godkids’ mother, Shirley, had sent two Christmases ago and wrapped it around Max’s shoulders, then beelined to the kitchen. I usually don’t keep much food in the house, but I found a package of ramen in the pantry, nuked it in the microwave, and brought the steaming liquid to her in a tall travel mug. Although it had to be seventy-five degrees out, the way she clutched the mug with both hands and slurped the soup, you’d have thought she’d just come in off the ski slopes.
“Take your time,” I said. “Sip that down.” After double-checking all the alarms and sensors, I sat on the couch across from her. Max’s cheeks regained some of their pink hue as she drained the mug, and her eyes began roving around the house.
Finally, they settled on me.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
I shrugged. “My job, remember?”
“The way they just pulled up at the curb and started shooting . . .” She pulled the blanket tighter around her and bit her bottom lip. Then her voice rose. “What was the FBI thinking, having us meet them outside?”
“I don’t think they had any clue we’d be walking into something like that.”
Max glared at me. “We could have been killed.” But as quickly as her temper flared, her expression softened, and you could tell she’d begun replaying the images in her mind. “All those people . . .”
Her eyes found the floor again and stayed there for what seemed like several minutes.
My stomach knotted as I struggled to think of something to say to fill the silence. I wanted to reach out, to comfort her somehow, but the truth was, together we’d witnessed the worst carnage I had ever seen in person. Despite all my training, other than one crazy woman in Dallas, I’d never shot anyone before; today, I’d taken down at least three of our pursuers. I wasn’t entirely sure why I wasn’t feeling something more, or how I was processing it. How, then, exactly, was I supposed to reassure her?
“Had you ever seen those men before?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Do you know why they’d want to hurt you? Or who might have hired them to do it?”
Max’s head rocked farther and farther to each side, more forcefully each time, until finally she threw it all the way back and a guttural noise sounded in her throat. “God, the FBI asked me all these same questions. I told them, I don’t know. I don’t know!”
Even with her eyes pointed at the ceiling, I could see them well up and tears start streaming down past her ears into her hair. Before I could say anything, though, she wiped them away with her arm and looked at me plaintively. “Is there someplace I can lie down? I just . . . my brain isn’t . . . I’m so tired.”
“I know,” I said. “But we can’t stay here long. There are a few things—”
“Please? I just need to close my eyes. Please?” Max’s voice cracked on the final word.
I checked the windows: the last remnants of daylight were still visible. Darkness would give us better cover. Plus, it would take me a little while to gather up what we needed.
Glancing back at Max, I saw her breathing had become ragged. With her head tilted, her shoulders slumped, she looked like she might crumble to pieces.
“Okay, c’mon.” I said. “You can sleep while I pack.”
Silently, she followed me back toward the kitchen and up the open staircase to the bedroom. I showed her the bathroom and offered her my one remaining clean T-shirt as a sleep shirt. After I retrieved a few things off the vanity, she closed herself in with her purse, which left me time to grab a small duffel from the closet and the three extra magazines I keep in my gun safe. One went into the pocket of my jeans, the other two into the bag.
I brought the duffel downstairs with my toiletries and returned before Max emerged from the bathroom. When she reappeared, the T-shirt hung nearly to her knees. That, plus her hair, now freed from the braid, made her look even smaller and younger than before. Her eyelids drooped, and she seemed almost to sleepwalk to the bed.
I wedged the little purse into one of the pockets of her hoodie and set it at the foot of the bed in case she got cold. Then I knelt by the side, tucking the covers around her. “I’ll wake you in an hour or two, but don’t worry. The alarms are all set, and I’ll be on guard downstairs. If anything bad happens, that light”—I pointed to the corner of the room, where I’d installed a red strobe—“will start to blink. If you see it, get up and get ready to move. But don’t make any noise. I’ll come for you. All right?”
Max nodded, her eyes already closed.
Back downstairs, I filled several water bottles and grabbed what few snacks I had in the pantry, then brought those and the duffel down to the garage. I stuffed some clean clothes from the dryer into the bag on top of the magazines and loaded everything into the Jeep. Without Max’s suitcases, she didn’t have anything beyond what she was already wearing, but we could pick her up something on the road. Thankfully, since I’d gassed up before flying to New York, I had nearly a full tank.
On my way back up, I hesitated at the landing where the half flight of stairs from the garage joins the half flight from the front door. Part of me said that there was little-to-no chance that the “gang”—I’d started referring to them that way in my mind for lack of a better term—could know about the house. After the break-in and the exposure of my identity to the press, I’d changed all the deeds and property paperwork so my name didn’t appear anywhere. You might be able to look it up historically, but that’d take some work.
Of course, the FBI’s plan to meet us at LAX should have been a much more closely guarded secret, and the gang had still managed to decipher that. I had to assume they could obtain my address, too.
The crazy woman had broken in by climbing up from the street onto the balconies, taking advantage of the fact I’d left the bedroom slider ajar. Now, in addition to always locking those doors and adding all the sensors and alarms, I’d fortified the edges of the balconies with those spike strips they use to discourage pigeons from landing. I figured the three-inch metal needles jutting out ought to make even the most deranged individual think twice about trying that route.
With the balconies as secure as they could be, though, this narrow staircase up to the main floor was the weakest link. I’d played around with some ideas for what to do if I ever needed to secure it—now seemed like the perfect time to try them out.
I plodded back down to the garage, a two-car space that I’d turned into a mini workshop where I could tinker. I’ve got a fully outfitted workbench down there, as well as a bunch of larger tools and equipment. At the bench, I flipped on the lamp, twisting its arm so the bulb pointed toward the staircase entrance. Then I grabbed a signal generator—a heavy, gray box the size of an old VCR—and lugged it upstairs, setting it just inside the door.
The next step required my stereo system, or at least its speakers, so I went to the living room to retrieve them.
When it comes to music, I have to admit that I’ve become another version of my dad, hunt
ing down the highest-quality components that generate the biggest, richest sound profile. Most people know that speakers are absolutely critical to a good system, but they tend to focus on the wrong things when picking them out. It’s really the frequency/response curve that determines whether you’re hearing pure sound or not. Although lots of people pick models that accentuate bass, going too far can muddy a song, almost blurring the notes together. If a speaker overemphasizes treble, though, music sounds shrill and harsh. Ideally, you want components with a flat frequency/response curve: they apply identical amounts of energy to every sound frequency, so the proper balance between high and low is maintained.
Although Neat Acoustics isn’t as well known in the States, I’d heard some of their speakers demoed at a conference in Brussels once and decided I needed a pair if I could ever afford them. When I bought the house, I settled on a pair of Ultimatum XL6s. Only three feet high, they use some neat engineering tricks to generate a much fuller frequency range than you’d expect. For example, each speaker contains an isobaric bass chamber, with two drivers lined up one behind the other inside the closed compartment. With the two woofers rigged so their cones move simultaneously, you can create the same bass sound in half the cabinet space.
Unfortunately, the trade-off for such a compact design is density, of which I was severely reminded as I lugged each of the seventy-five-pound, wood-paneled boxes from their pedestals over to the edge of the stairs.
The final piece I needed was an amp. I use a special vacuum-tube amp for my stereo, but I had a cheaper, solid-state one down in the workshop, so I went and retrieved it.
Using some books, I propped the back feet of the speakers so they pointed down the stairwell. Then I connected the speakers to the amp and plugged the signal generator into the amp’s RCA jack. Setting the buttons on the generator so it would produce a simple square wave pattern, I switched that box on while leaving the amplifier off. This way, I could trigger the whole system with the amp’s remote control.
Making sure I had that, the Sig, and my laptop by the couch, I circled the living area, dousing all the lights. Then I returned to the sofa and fired up my computer.
Since being removed from flight duty, my new title at the Air Marshal Service had become Tactical Law Enforcement Liaison and Principal Investigator. I decided if I was going to help get Max out of this mess, I’d better start living up to that and get to investigating. Max’s world was so totally different from mine, I had a lot of catching up to do.
I downloaded as much entertainment news as I could find on the Internet. Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Billboard, Rolling Stone, plus a bunch of the tabloids. Anything I could get my hands on referring to Max, I ran through the text-to-speech software and loaded it onto my audio player.
That done, I considered waking Max up to get going, but my eyelids felt heavy. I checked the on-screen clock: nearly midnight Pacific. No wonder, I’d been going since early eastern time. If we were going to put some real distance between us and the gang, a quick catnap might help me, too.
I set an alarm on my phone for thirty minutes and settled back on the couch. It was a little short for my body, so when I tried stretching across it, my legs ended up propped on the arm. Turning to one side, I pulled my knees up and managed to fit, but the seam between the two cushions dug into my waist. I folded Shirley’s blanket into a kind of cushion to fix that problem, then set my head back on the pillow.
I’d just gotten settled when the red strobe on the ceiling started blinking.
CHAPTER 4
My phone buzzed across the table, echoing the alarm. A text message said the front-door sensor had been compromised.
They were coming.
I bolted to my feet, deactivating the alarm on the phone before grabbing the Sig and the amp remote. As my adrenaline surged, I yanked the earpiece out of my ear and jammed it down into my pocket along with the phone: I wouldn’t need either one for a while. Stepping behind the speakers, I pointed the gun down the stairs and waited.
Human balance is controlled by semicircular canals in your ear. Three loops, each filled with a dense fluid, oriented at right angles to each other so they cover the three planes of movement: up/down, right/left, forward/back. As your body moves, the fluid inside the canals spins, pressing against tiny hairs that feed the motion back to your brain.
The system isn’t perfect. If you spin enough in one direction, the fluid gains momentum and keeps spinning after you stop. Your brain thinks the world is still turning, and you fall down, like kids in the izzy-dizzy relay races at school. The hairs inside the canals can also become overstimulated if you move repetitively for too long, giving you the sensation of still being on that boat or plane ride hours after it has ended.
But the canals have one other weakness. Because they’re inside the ear, they’re susceptible to sound waves. Something my team had accidentally discovered back in my former life as an engineer. We were testing audio players in the lab one day, and Tim Jennings, one of the techs, accidentally plugged his headphones into the wrong jack. Instead of the MP3 player, he connected to the signal generator, the box we used to create test signals. Rather than music, the earpieces bombarded him with a solid burst of sound waves: Tim fell right off his stool and landed squarely on his ass. Once we’d all finished laughing, he showed us what had happened.
My old mentor, Clarence, had still been in charge back then. He liked a good joke as much as anyone—his weakness, really—so we’d called him down to the lab and ambushed him with a blast from the speaker. He landed so hard, his glasses fell off his face, and no one had laughed more than he had.
I smiled at the memory of his delight over the juvenile use of our discovery. My setup on the stairs was exactly the same as the one we’d rigged up in the lab. Except ten times more powerful.
Thanks to the workbench lamp brightly backlighting the stairwell, I saw the intruders as darkened silhouettes. One, two, and then three shadows stepped into the narrow hallway, snapping me back to the moment.
They were edging forward carefully, quietly.
Signaling silently with their free hands while carrying some kind of submachine gun in their others.
With all the lights extinguished, I knew they could see nothing at the top of the stairs save the blackened rectangle of the doorway. Still, having them staring right at me was more than a bit unnerving.
As my pulse raced, I tried to keep my breathing from getting too choppy. I waited until the leader reached the halfway mark, then pressed “Power” on the remote.
Although no sound was audible, the pressure wave from the speakers jolted me.
Taking a half step back, I re-aimed as the three shadows dropped like pins struck by an invisible bowling ball. I fired two shots each at what looked like their heads, then retreated to the side of the doorway.
No return fire came.
Crouching, I spun back into the doorway and surveyed the stairs. None of the shadows moved.
Any sense of accomplishment faded immediately as my mind flashed outside. The gang wouldn’t have brought just three people to try and take down two. There’d be others, and they’d have heard my shots.
Leaving the speakers on, I sprinted for the staircase up to the bedroom. My right foot had just touched the bottom step when gunfire exploded through the living room windows.
I launched myself upward, taking three steps at a time, trying not to think about the shards of glass and metal hurtling around the room. I felt two hits, one in my shoulder, one in my thigh. The shoulder felt like no big deal—just a scrape, I hoped. But the thigh strike was solid: a strong, charley-horse punch right to the muscle.
Whatever it was, I could deal with it later. Assuming we got out of this mess.
Reaching the top of the stairs, I found the bed empty. I picked up Max’s hoodie and scanned the rest of the room.
No Max.
I called her name. Once. Twice.
That’s when my heart really started thundering, and the b
ottom dropped out from my stomach. Panicked sweat flashed across my skin.
Could they have already gotten her somehow? Had she run?
Bullets continued to careen from outside up into the bedroom, but less noisily now that all the glass had fallen to the floor. She’d been nowhere near the glass. No traces of blood.
“MAX!” I screamed it with every bit of breath I had.
The closet door was cracked a fraction of an inch. My brain scrambled to recall if it had been like that earlier, but before I could even finish the thought, my legs had me over there, and I was pulling it open.
Max lay on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest like before, rocking slightly and crying.
“We’ve gotta go.” I yanked her to her feet, ready to throw her over my shoulder if necessary, but her legs seemed stable beneath her.
The gunfire fell silent.
They’d be sending others in now. The speakers might slow them, but not for long.
There was only one way out: up.
I dragged Max to the far side of the bed and jumped as well as I could on the bad leg for a rope dangling from the ceiling. My fingers snagged it on the second try, and a folding ladder extended down behind it. I climbed up quickly, threw open the trapdoor, and led Max onto the house’s flat roof. As she was taking her final steps up, another burst of shots echoed from inside the house.
So much for my $15,000 speakers.
Searching downstairs wouldn’t take long—they’d be on us in a minute.
I flipped the trapdoor closed, but there was no bolt or lock on the outside, no way to secure it.
Dumb, dumb, dumb—I should have thought of that.
