I told Daggett to get up.
“I can’t walk,” he said.
“You can limp. Get up, now, before I make it worse.”
We made him go first, my gun dug into his neck, my fist gripping a tight knot of his hair, the same way he’d handled Jenn. We went up the stairs, Victor behind me, Ryan behind him. I made Daggett open the door and we started down a long hallway that was carpeted and panelled in a dark wood. Soft light from wall sconces made it gleam.
“You killed Carol-Ann Meacham,” I said.
“Wasn’t she found in Franklin Park? I’d have to say it was muggers. Probably your African-American types.”
“The cops will find something to connect you,” I said.
“Like fuck.”
“What about Harinder Patel?” I asked.
Daggett said, “Who?”
“The Indian man who died on your table. Where’s the body?”
“On the advice of my lawyer, I-”
I pushed the gun barrel harder into his neck. “Cut the shit. You’re this close to dying.”
“We’re all close,” he said.
“Where is he?”
“Ashes to ashes, man.”
“What does that mean?”
“This place did cremations, that’s what it means. And the equipment still works.”
Shit. Poor Sammy. If Daggett was telling the truth, no body would ever be found. Sammy and his mother might have to wait years to have him declared officially dead and collect any insurance. But Jenn had to be my focus now. Only Jenn.
I had the layout pictured in my mind. This hallway led to the main foyer. From there we would turn left past the chapel to another hall where the two prep rooms were. One for extraction, one for transplantation. I listened for voices, footsteps, creaks in the floorboards as we moved as silently as we could over the carpet.
“You want your girl back, you’re going to have to let me go,” Daggett said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Just shoot him,” Victor said. “Kneecap him for real. Isn’t that what you Irish fuckers do?”
“Only as needed,” Daggett said.
“Where are the guards?” I asked.
“You’ll see soon enough.”
We came to the main foyer. It was just as Stayner had sketched it. The hall to the prep rooms on the left, through a wooden arch; across from us the hall that led to the employee offices; on our right the front entrance. Past Daggett’s head, near the entrance, I saw a man sitting in a chair tipped back against the wall, a shotgun across his lap. I pulled Daggett’s hair to bring him to a halt.
“Tell him to lay the gun down on the floor,” I hissed.
Daggett remained silent. I took the gun away from his neck and stuck the barrel behind his right knee. “Do it,” I said.
“Jimmy,” Daggett called.
Jimmy looked up, saw Daggett and brought the chair legs down with a thump and started to stand up. Ryan levelled his shotgun and told Jimmy to stop. Jimmy looked at Daggett, waiting to be told what to do.
“Put it down,” Daggett said.
“You sure?”
“The man has a gun on me, Jimmy. Put it down.”
Jimmy set his shotgun down on the floor. Victor picked it up and brought the butt down heavily on the side of Jimmy’s head. He slumped to the floor and lay there, not moving. Victor opened the breech, ejected the shells and pocketed them. Then he stood the shotgun against the wall, stepped back and broke it with a kick above the trigger guard.
“How many more men?” I asked Daggett.
“Too many for you.”
I kicked the back of his heel, one of the most painful spots in the body, and he yelped. “You’re not getting the feel of this,” I said. “How many?”
“Four.”
“All armed?”
“I fucking hope so.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
I kicked his other heel, harder than I’d done the first.
“Fucking quit that, man, I don’t know. For real. They’re supposed to walk around, make sure no one gets in.”
“Who’s with Jenn?”
“No one.”
“Which heel this time?”
“Okay, one guy.”
“The other three-call them. Tell them to come out here. Tell them to lay down their guns, just like Jimmy did.”
“If they see me in this situation, they might panic. Open fire.”
“You’ll be the first to die.”
“First, last, what’s the difference?”
“You sure you’re ready to find out?”
Daggett sighed somewhat theatrically and called out to his men: “Boys? Boys, this is Sean. Come on out here a minute.”
Silence. I could hear Victor breathing through his nose. Nothing else.
“Again,” I said. “Louder.”
He raised his voice and repeated the call. Seconds later, I heard footsteps coming from the corridor ahead. A big man who looked like he’d been sculpted from a block of granite came into the foyer, a shoulder holster over a black long-sleeved shirt and a mug of coffee in his drawing hand. Soon as he saw us, he dropped the mug and reached for his gun but Victor’s Uzi chattered first and the big man staggered back and fell.
“There goes your element of surprise,” Daggett said. He was listing to one side, keeping his weight off the ruined knee, breathing hard and looking pale.
“Call the others out.”
“After that racket? They don’t love me that much.”
“Tell them it was you shooting.”
“At what? A rat? Jesus, Geller, you’re fucking hopeless.”
“Call them.”
Sweat dripped off Daggett’s forehead and spattered on the hardwood floor. He shrugged. “Hey, Bren?” he called. “Joey? Where are you guys?”
“What was that shooting?” a man asked. We heard his voice down the corridor to our left but couldn’t see him. I jabbed my gun into Daggett’s spine.
“Me,” he said. “Shooting at a rat. You wouldn’t believe the fucking size of it, Bren. Thought it was Whitey Bulger himself.”
“Good one,” Bren said. The hall he was coming down wasn’t carpeted, and we heard his steps grow louder over hardwood. Ryan made eye contact with Victor and pointed to himself and his shotgun, and pointed him to the hallway across from us. Bren’s steps were measured as they approached the foyer. “You want a coffee, Sean?”
The words had just tailed off when he broke into a run and came charging in firing an automatic weapon of his own. Victor’s chest exploded in a shower of blood. Another gun boomed from the corridor Victor had been watching and blew out a piece of the wall just behind Ryan’s head. I pushed Daggett aside and returned fire there, five shots hitting nothing but wood and plaster. Ryan pounded two shotgun rounds into Bren, who dropped to his back, his gun clattering across the parquet floor. Daggett went for it-or made me think he was going for it. As I lunged to grab the back of his collar, he planted his good leg and whirled backwards, elbow first, and caught me with a vicious shot to the side of the head. I felt a wave of nausea surge up my throat, burning the tissue, as I reeled back. His act had fooled me; I thought he’d been too badly hurt to try anything.
“Jonah!” Ryan yelled.
“I’m okay. You get Joey. Daggett’s mine.”
Daggett staggered back down the corridor that led to the garage. I tried to fix him in my gunsight but my eyes were out of focus and the bullet only bit into the wooden arch. I took three steps to my left and fired again. A sconce on the wall shattered in a burst of glass. He kept running, hopping, zigzagging across the wide corridor, and then banged out the door that led to the loading dock.
Damn it. I hadn’t taken the gun off the guard there, Denny. If Daggett made it back there before I could stop him, he’d be armed again.
I dropped the Beretta in the bag and took out the Colt M4 and moved down the hall on unsteady feet. When I reached the door that led out to
the dock, I knelt down and blinked, trying to get my eyes to focus properly. I reached up and shook the handle. Two rounds tore through the wood of the bottom half. A third shattered the glass, raining shards down on my arm and neck. I stood up, stuck the M4 barrel through the broken glass and blindly fired three bursts. There was no cry of pain, no body dropping dead on the cement. Just uneven footsteps running out into the night. I opened the door wide enough to roll out onto the dock. Denny was still lying flat on his back. No gun in his belt. I swept my gun barrel left to right, making sure Daggett wasn’t hiding behind his car or Stayner’s Caddy. But he was gone. I went out after him, feeling the temperature drop as I exited the garage. I kept my back to the wall of the building, wondering which way he had gone. Left or right. Then I remembered the north-side door, the one with the crash bar, could be opened only from the inside. He could only have gone south.
As I eased around the corner, a shot rang out and bits of brick blew into my face, breaking skin and drawing beads of blood. I dropped down and elbow-crawled forward until I could reach around the corner with the M4 and fire off another burst. As the sound died away I heard a door close. He had gone back into the building. If I followed him, I’d be on his turf and on his terms. I’d seen drawings of the building but he knew it cold. He could ambush me a dozen different ways. I turned and went back into the garage instead, vaulted up onto the dock. Denny was lying on his back, breathing. I turned him onto his side, found some strapping and bound his hands behind him. Back inside, moving down the hallway toward the foyer, I stayed close to one wall, my finger on the trigger of the Colt. When I came to the open space, only silence greeted me. Victor, the big man and Brendan were dead. The one Victor had clubbed, Kelly, was dead too, his neck unnaturally loose when I felt for a pulse. There was no sign of Ryan or Joey.
That left me nowhere to go but the prep rooms. I started down the hall that led to the extension where they were housed, where undertakers had worked their magic over the years to prepare bodies for viewing. Though the funeral home had long been out of business, the air smelled different in this wing. There was a chemical taint to it, a hint of preservatives. Maybe if I breathed it in I’d live longer.
I listened for the sound of steps, of breathing, anything that might tell me if someone was lying in wait. There was no room for hesitation or error. If Daggett or one of his men crossed my field of vision I would blast away, and keep blasting until they were dead.
Even though I’m not a violent man.
Wait. A floorboard creaked ahead of me. Ahead and on the right. I stopped moving and crouched into the smallest possible target. The hall ended in a T. To the right was a storage room where supplies were kept, to the left the two prep rooms. On the right side, something came into view at eye level. The barrel of a shotgun. My breathing was loud and ragged in my ear. A few more inches of the barrel showed. I knew Daggett only had a pistol. So did Frank. Ryan or Joey? Both had shotguns. I tasted salt on my lip from the sweat that was beading there. I put a little pressure on the trigger and kept it there until I saw the stock of the shotgun.
A Mossberg.
I ran my tongue over my lips and hissed, “Ryan!”
The barrel stopped moving. I heard him whisper, “Jonah?”
I stood up slowly, heard a crack in my knee as a tendon stretched. “All clear,” I whispered back.
He came around the corner, raising the gun barrel toward the ceiling, and waved me over.
“Where’s Daggett?” he asked.
I shook my head. “He got away. And he’s got a gun.”
“Whose?”
“The guy I laid out on the dock.”
“Shit.”
“I fucked up. Forgot to frisk him.”
“Never mind that. It was all happening fast. We’ll get him.”
“And Joey?”
“I had to chase him into an office and shoot him in the back. First time I ever did that. All my years in the game, I never had to.”
“You okay?” I asked.
“Hey,” he said. “This is me, Geller. Not some rent-a-fuck you hire off the street. I won’t lose a minute’s sleep over any of them.”
“All right.”
“What about you? You took another shot to the head.”
“I’m good,” I lied. The truth was I felt unsteady, weak, more than a little nauseous. “Any sign of Jenn?”
“Not yet. I was about to check these rooms.”
“Daggett said she was in Prep Room B.”
“You believe him?”
“He had a gun on him when he said it.”
We moved together down the hall, Ryan going forward, me walking backwards, covering us against any action from the rear. When we got to Prep Room B, he whispered, “How do you want to do this?”
“Kick the door in and shoot anyone who isn’t Jenn.”
“You’re the karate kid,” he said. “As soon as you kick it, drop to the floor so you’re not in my line of fire.”
“Use your pistol,” I said. “It’s too close quarters for a shotgun.”
He set the shotgun down carefully, stock down, and took out his Glock and nodded. I lined myself up in front of the door handle. There was no additional lock on the door. I focused on the area where the strike plate would be, took a deep breath and launched a front kick. The door flew open and I hurled myself forward and saw Jenn down on the bed, her wrists and arms strapped to the frame, a gag in her mouth, her body twisting back and forth, her eyes wide with fear. A man with hair like a scrub brush was standing next to the bed, dropping a cellphone and going for a gun under his arm. Ryan shot him twice in the chest. He fell backwards on top of Jenn; I leapt forward and grabbed his bloody shirt front, yanked him off her and threw his body to the ground.
She was alive. Thank fucking God she was alive. I sat down on the narrow bed and undid the gag first and she cried out my name. I leaned down and put my arms around her and felt hot tears on my neck.
“We got you,” I said.
She tried to say something but her sobs became hiccups and I just held her, feeling her chest heaving and shaking. I felt tears well up in my eyes too.
“I knew you would,” she finally said.
“Ahem,” Ryan said.
She turned her head and saw him and broke out in a grin. “And you,” she said. “I hoped you’d mix in.”
“When don’t I?”
I got her wrists free while Ryan went back to the door and retrieved his shotgun, covering the hallway. “Did they hurt you?”
She sat up, her cheeks shiny with tears. She wiped them with one sleeve. “I don’t think so. Not much, anyway. Daggett slapped me a couple of times because of what I did to his friend. But then he said he wanted me healthy so he could use me. You heard what for. He brought me in here and this guy put a needle in my arm. That’s all I remember except for-”
“For what?”
“Weird dreams. Really weird. I mean, I … What time is it anyway? Is it still Saturday?”
“Monday,” I said. “Monday night.”
“Jesus.”
“When did you wake up?”
“I don’t know, maybe twenty minutes ago. Daggett’s friend, the one I hit with the car, he called a few minutes ago. He was on the way here.”
“Don’t worry about him.” I stood and held out my hand. “Can you stand up?”
She took my hand out and I pulled her up gently. I pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around her and held her tight again.
“My clothes are on the chair,” she said.
I kept my arm around her shoulder. She took a few steps and grimaced and then tears started to stream down her face again.
“What?” I said. “Honey, what?”
“It hurts,” she said. “My-down there-it hurts. Oh, God. Oh God, what did he do? Did he-what, the whole time I was here?”
She looked down at the man on the floor and kicked him hard in the head, the sheet coming off her and falling to the floor, just as David Fine
’s grey blanket had fallen to the sand on Plum Island. She threw her arms around me and I held her tight.
“Listen,” I said. “Daggett is in the building. On the loose. We have to go find him.”
“Wait,” she said.
We held each other another half minute. When I felt the panic subside, I let go of her and picked up the dead man’s gun-I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. Ryan and I turned our backs while she got dressed. Then I handed the gun to Jenn and said, “Stay here until we find Daggett.”
“No.”
“It’ll only be a few minutes.”
“I said no, Jonah. I’m not spending another second in this room.”
“You’ll be safer here.”
“I’m coming with you. Like it or not.”
Ryan put out his hand and said, “Let me see.”
She paused, then handed the gun to him. From its flat black surface, I guessed it was another Glock. He racked the slide and handed it back to her. “There’s no safety on this,” he said, “so keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot. And if you do fire it, keep pressure on the trigger and it’ll keep firing. You have enough rounds in there to do plenty of damage.”
“Good.”
Ryan went out first and knocked softly on the door to Prep Room A. “Frank?”
There was a moment of silence, then we heard steps and the doorknob turned. The door swung open and Frank stood there, his pistol levelled at us. His eyes took in the three of us. He said, “Where’s Victor?”
“He didn’t make it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Frank’s lips drew tight together and he looked down at the floor and shook his head. “Daggett get him?”
“No. One of his men.”
“Which one?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ryan said. “He’s dead too.”
Over his wide shoulders I saw Stayner and three other people in surgical masks, and Marc and Lesley McConnell. She was in a hospital gown whose sleeves came down to the elbows; below them I saw the angry fistulas bulging beneath her pale skin.
“It’s off, then,” McConnell said. “Lesley’s not getting her transplant tonight.”
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