Max said to Ava, “He’s going to get you killed. You know that.”
Ava faked a yawn.
Max glanced out the window. A police car rolled up. Then another. Two officers ran behind the car to where David was.
Duvall saw the same thing. He smiled, opened the window, and picked up a rifle that was propped against the wall, just out of Max’s reach. He put Max in front of him, and leveled the rifle on the window ledge.
The two officers helped David up. David was okay, but he was unsteady. They were assisting him over to the cars.
Max knew exactly what Duvall was going to do.
“David!” she screamed. “Duck!”
Duvall fired the rifle, hitting one of the officers in the leg.
“Shit,” he muttered. He fired three more times as the wounded officer was pulled away from the danger area. “It seems your friend had on a vest, otherwise he would have been dead. I’ll go for the head shot next time.”
He then hit her with the gun. She fell to her knees, her arm that was handcuffed to the radiator twisting painfully.
“Go ahead and warn them as much as you want. I like hitting you.”
She seethed, but inside was relieved. David was safe. He was alive. He now knew Duvall was inside with a gun.
“All this because you were wrong.”
“Wrong about how to hurt you.”
“No. Wrong about what happened when Victor Tracy went to prison.”
Duvall was visibly surprised at her statement. He stepped back. “How did you figure it out?”
“Because I’m good at what I do.” She sat down, but Duvall pulled her back up. She cried out involuntarily at the pain in her shoulder.
“Hmm, looks like you dislocated your shoulder. I’ll bet it hurts.” He poked at it with the barrel of his rifle. “Too bad.”
“You were wrong about me. I never had an affair with Victor. I thought he was my father.”
“I’ve heard far sicker fantasies than girls who want to screw their dads.”
“You probably have considering who you surround yourself with.” She glared at Ava who was twisting her hair in her fingers.
“Ouch,” Ava said.
Max was in a room with two insane people.
“I didn’t turn Victor over to the authorities.”
“You don’t get it. Because you’re so damn selfish.”
“What? You want honesty? I’ll tell you exactly what happened. My mother had an affair with Victor while he was married to your mother. I’m sorry. My mother was a liar. She lived her life how she wanted. I came along and I don’t even think she knew who my father was. But she told me it was Victor, and I believed her. Until I forced him to take a paternity test.”
“You forced him by threatening to tell my mother he’d had an affair!”
“I didn’t tell her.”
“She knew. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t you. My mother is sweet, innocent, sickly her entire life. And Victor Tracy used her. He wanted her sweet innocence on his arm while he bilked millions from investors. He drove her to a nervous breakdown. And then, right after he met with you, he was arrested. And you didn’t have anything to do with that?”
“I didn’t.”
“You did! Everything was perfect for my mom until you walked into Victor’s life and did not leave!”
“You are so wrong I don’t even know how to begin. You’re as much a lunatic as your patients. Obviously, it runs in the family.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
Duvall screamed and coldcocked her with the butt of the rifle. She collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
* * *
Ava Raines’s house was surrounded, the residents on the street evacuated, and the street blocked off at both ends by the time Marco and Nick arrived. They were held back by the head of FBI SWAT.
“I’m Sam Shaw, SWAT team leader for Long Island. We have a situation, you’ll have to stand back.”
Marco showed his badge. “S.S.A. Lopez, this is Detective Santini. What’s the status?”
“We have a witness, David Kane, who states that a female is being held hostage in the attic of the house. There are two suspects, a male and a female, who Mr. Kane identified as Doctor Carter Duvall and Ms. Ava Raines.”
“Where is Kane?”
“He’s being treated by a field medic. But we have an active shooter up there. He shot one of the first responders. An ambulance is on its way, but we can’t bring the paramedics to the street. The shooter is in the attic and has a high, wide vantage point, which is why we’re staging this far out.”
“I need to talk to Kane. There’s more information you need to know.”
Shaw led Marco and Nick to a staging area outside of a direct line of sight to the house. David had no shirt on and a medic was bandaging his chest. He had a bandage on his arm and forehead as well.
The medic said, “He would have been dead if he wasn’t wearing a vest.”
David looked from Marco to Nick. “Duvall was hiding down the side of the house. Shot me as soon as I’d secured Max in the car and was about to get in the driver’s side, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten to her. I went out.”
“Head shot?”
“Hitting the concrete. The arm was just a graze. He was here the whole time. That bitch set us up.”
“No one knew she was involved,” Marco said. “She’d been seen as a victim. What’s the plan, Shaw? Can we breach the house? Send in gas? What?”
“We’re working through it. He hasn’t made any demands and no one is answering the phone inside. Mr. Kane informed us that there may be explosives.”
David said, “When I came to, I saw Ava setting up a trip wire at the front door. We have to assume they set up similar devices at all entrances.”
“What’s his endgame?” Nick said. “Negotiate for Max’s release?”
“He used Max as a shield when he fired on us,” David said. “I was behind the car and couldn’t move—didn’t want to let him know I was only wounded.”
“A cracked rib,” the medic said.
“Could have been worse,” David said. “We have to find a way to get inside.”
Shaw said, “This is my operation. Agent Lopez, I appreciate any insight you can give me on the suspect and the hostage, but this is my team and my call.”
“Understood,” Marco said. He put his hand on David’s shoulder. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have. As soon as you sent me the message, I should have assumed Duvall was there somewhere. My goal was to get Max out of the house.”
“I assigned a team to sit on Duvall and he gave them the slip. They were watching an empty house. If I knew he wasn’t there, I would have let you know.”
“What does he want?” Shaw said. “If we know that, we can figure this out.”
“He wants to hurt Max,” Nick said. “And I think he figured out another way to do it since his first plan backfired.”
“How’s that?” Shaw asked.
“David would have been dead if he hadn’t been wearing a vest. And now with Agent Lopez and I onsite, he’s going to try to take one of us out.”
“We won’t give him that chance.”
“He’ll wait until he snaps and kills Max,” Nick said.
“With her mouth, that will be sooner rather than later,” Marco said. “Duvall is a psycho and he’s already been party to more than a half-dozen murders. And what kind of person puts themselves in front of a serial killer like Ava Raines did? It was sheer luck the police arrested him with her in the trunk.”
“Unless it wasn’t luck,” David said. “It may have been part of their plan.”
Marco shook his head. “It’s one big fucking game and in the end, everyone dies.”
Nick said, “I have an idea.” He turned to Shaw. “With your approval.”
“Let me hear it.”
* * *
Max’s head ached. She turned, and the pain in her shoulder reminded her that it w
as dislocated, that her wrists were raw from where she was handcuffed to a radiator, and that two sociopaths wanted her dead.
“Get up,” Duvall said, pulling her to her feet. “I need you in the window so SWAT doesn’t get any ideas.”
“Your plan isn’t going to work,” she said, catching her breath. She looked outside. There were more SWAT vehicles, though no one was visible except far down the street. From this third-story window, Duvall had a vantage point where he could see well. He’d at least thought this out. “You’re not an idiot,” she continued. “You went through medical school. You must have some intelligence.”
“That’s your fatal flaw,” he said. “You presuppose that everyone wants to survive.”
“That’s not what I was talking about,” she said. “No one is going to put themselves in the line of fire.”
“I suppose not. But they will attempt to rescue you. Which means they’ll end up killing themselves and you in the process.”
She would have said, “And you, too,” but she believed for the first time that Duvall really didn’t care what happened to him or to Ava. And Ava? She was unreachable. She stared at Duvall as if he were the Second Coming of Christ, and it was clear that she’d sacrifice herself or kill for him.
Max had seen it before. When she and Sally had rescued Jane, one of the girls was so far gone over to the Butchers’ way of thinking that she preferred to die with them than return to her family. She might not have even known she had a family anymore. She was so brainwashed and manipulated, that she’d become just as dangerous as her abductors.
Ava wasn’t here against her will, she’d been broken long ago, and Duvall had molded her into a better psychopath.
Was that what he’d done with Adam Bachman and Cole Baker? Seen their darkness and made it his own? Made them believe that they were normal, that they could and should act on their darkest impulses?
“What do you think will happen to your mother when you’re dead?” Max said.
He flinched, just a bit. But he had his gun aimed out the window, waiting for a target.
“She’s in that beautiful sanitarium now, but what about when you can’t pay for it?”
“I have a trust set up for her. She’ll be taken care of for the rest of her life.”
“That trust will be tied up in legal fights from here to eternity.”
“Hardly. I’ve been prepaying for her care for years.” Duvall cocked his head, looked down the street as much as he could. He turned his gun and fired.
Max jumped, admonishing herself for reacting because it gave Duvall such pleasure.
“Winged him,” Duvall said. “The nice thing about you standing here with me, Maxine, is that they’re not going to shoot back.
From Max’s angle, she couldn’t see if he really did hit someone or not.
“So even though you now know I had nothing to do with turning Victor into the FBI, that I had nothing to do with him losing his money, that I had nothing to do with your mother’s … fragility,” she said cautiously, “you still want to punish me.”
“But you had everything to do with it. If you hadn’t come to Victor that day, my mother would never have found out about his affairs, she would never have tried to kill herself, she would never have lost her mind!”
Maybe it was true. Maybe Max unknowingly set up a chain of events that had far-reaching consequences. Her quest for the truth and everyone else be damned.
And in many other instances, Max would have believed that, because she did seek the truth, and she did believe that the truth was far better than a lie.
But this time … this was personal. This was her quest to find out who her father was. To find out what happened to her mother. To learn what happened when she was conceived, and why her mother roamed the country for ten years before leaving Max. That she’d gone to Victor wasn’t to punish him for infidelity—though she certainly hadn’t cared whether that truth was exposed. She’d gone to Victor to find the truth about herself and her mother.
All she’d uncovered were more of her mother’s lies.
“Your mother was the innocent victim,” Max said. “Do you think she’s the only woman to have ever been cheated on?”
“You don’t understand. She was delicate.”
“That’s exactly what Victor said, which is why I never told her. So if she found out, it wasn’t on me.”
“She found out because of you and the calls and letters to Victor. She told me how she was in physical pain because of the betrayal of her husband. How could he!”
“Why go after me? Why not go after him?”
“Because you were the catalyst. I’ve watched you for two years being the noble, honest Maxine Revere, putting truth on a pedestal and condemning lies. Exposing secrets not because it’s the right thing to do, but because you have the power to do it. Some secrets should never be revealed. Some lies are necessary to protect the people we care about. But you know everything, don’t you? You wreck lives and walk away because you have money and a self-righteous stick up your ass.
“The truth kills, Maxine. And it’s going to kill you.”
Without turning his head, he said, “Ava, it’s time. Good luck.”
“Thank you for everything, Doc.” Ava kissed his check, then left the attic.
“Time for what?”
“The catalyst so you can watch your friends die. They will come for you, and you’ll suffer until your last breath.”
* * *
Nick and Marco had donned SWAT gear and were working with Shaw and another guy, Bonner, to go in through the back of the house. They’d had to take the long way around to prevent Duvall from spotting their approach. But the layout of the house, and the lack of a window on the backside of the attic, enabled them to approach undetected.
“Have you confirmed there are trip wires in the doorways?” Shaw asked someone over his radio.
“Positive,” was the response. “Garage and front door confirmed. You have eyes on the rear.”
“Do you see the device?”
“Negative. Looks like a cylinder on both sides. Hold it—there’s movement on the second floor.”
Marco took out binoculars and looked up to the second floor of the ramshackle house. He didn’t see anyone. He looked down to the back door. It was closed, but there was a thin wire going from one side to the other.
“There’s a wire back here. I can’t see a device, but if it’s sensitive, it’ll detonate as soon as we open the door,” Marco said. “Any confirmation on the windows?”
“So far we can see no devices hooked up to any of the windows in our sight, but we can’t see into the house.”
Another voice came over the comm. “Movement on the staircase going from two to one; I repeat, movement, appears to be a single figure, moving from floor two to floor one.”
“ID?” Shaw asked.
“Negative. It’s a shadow. However, we still have a visual on the hostage in the attic. There is a gun barrel visible next to her, and a hand of one of the suspects. Two confirmed in the attic; one confirmed on the first floor.”
They waited. The windows in the back were covered and they couldn’t see any movement. They waited for five minutes before Shaw asked for an update.
“We’re ready,” he said, “but I need to know where all three people are.”
“We have heat signatures. The hostage and one suspect are in the attic; the second suspect appears to be in the basement, but the signature is fading. We’ve seen no movement on the first floor.”
“It’s now or never,” Nick said.
“I hope this works,” Marco said.
So did Nick.
Bonner and Marco crossed the small yard to the largest rear window. Marco stood watch while Bonner cut out the glass. It took several minutes. Then they had to carefully lower it so it didn’t break and alert the suspects.
Shaw asked the status.
“We lost one of the heat signatures. It went underground, to the basement, which cou
ld be blocking it. I can adjust—”
“No—keep visual of the hostage at all times.” Shaw glanced at Nick, then said to his team, “Widen the perimeter. One of them is going underground. Pull the maps, find out where.”
“Roger.”
“Duvall could be escaping,” Nick said. “We need to be doubly careful. He could have this entire house rigged.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
Bonner gestured with a thumbs-up that they were ready to go in, then he moved his hands rapidly back and forth and he and Marco ran back to where Nick and Shaw waited.
“What’s wrong?” Shaw demanded.
“Fire inside,” Bonner said.
As soon as he said it, smoke started to drift out the cut window.
Shaw demanded a status and was told two individuals remained in the attic.
“He’s burning the house down with Ava and Max in the attic?”
“No, he’s not,” Marco said and ran back to the window.
“Agent Lopez!” Shaw yelled.
Nick followed Marco.
Marco said, “You have a kid. I’ll do this.”
“We’ll do it. You need backup.”
Shaw and Bonner both followed them. “Lopez, this is a dumb move.”
“He’s going to kill her, and I’m not going to watch this house burn down with Max in it.”
“Fire is on their way,” Shaw said. “ETA six minutes.”
“We don’t have six minutes.”
Nick boosted Marco up into the window, and Shaw helped Nick and Bonner up. He then hoisted himself through. “Watch all doorways.”
The ground floor was quickly filling up with smoke; it was coming from the vents in the floor. This old house would burn fast. They didn’t have a lot of time.
Shaw gestured toward the back door. Two cylinders were attached to a thin wire that went outside the door. “I’ll defuse this door. Don’t use any others. Get her down ASAP.” He squatted and got to work.
Bonner stayed to protect Shaw while he worked, and Nick and Marco went as fast as they dared up the stairs toward the attic, looking carefully for trip wires or anything else that would kill them.
The smoke was rising, but no flames were visible. If the fire had been set in the basement, it would burn the foundation first, and then the supports, and the old house would collapse into itself.
Compulsion (Max Revere Novels Book 2) Page 38
