Authors: J. A. Konrath
I
STEPPED ONTO VAN BUREN,
walking out of the Metropolitan Correctional Center having just been given back my personal belongings. The night in lockup had flown by—I’d actually slept pretty well—and the morning was taken up by the bond hearing at the Northern District court house. My professional record, ties to the community, and the fact that obstruction of justice isn’t really that big a charge meant I walked with only a ten-thousand-dollar bond.
The day was cool, almost cold. I walked around the block, checking for tails of the Feebie variety—I got the impression Special Agent Dailey thought I knew more about Phin’s and Alex’s whereabouts than I actually did.
No Feds were following me. But I did notice a Ford Bronco without a front windshield. I walked up to him. Time to bury this par tic u lar hatchet.
“Need a ride?” Phin asked.
“You know that large oppressive building behind me is a federal prison, right?”
“Yeah. Harry told me you were doing time. Is it like those old Roger Corman movies?”
“Exactly the same. I took a shower in slow motion, then fought off the advances of a big-breasted lesbian warden.”
“Sounds hot.”
“Can you take me home?”
He nodded, and I climbed in. Phin and I had some unresolved issues, and now that Alex was off my mind I actually had a clear head. We were wrong for each other, for a million different reasons. I was mentally preparing the “let’s still be friends” speech when he launched into a speech of his own.
“I never said thanks that you covered for me. You could have turned me in. I’m a thief, and an addict, and I don’t deserve your friendship. Especially since I want more than just friendship. So it’s probably best we don’t see each other anymore.”
I wasn’t sure how to reply to that. While I didn’t want Phin as a boyfriend, I didn’t want him out of my life.
He pulled into traffic, and I found it hard to talk with the wind blowing straight into my face. I had to wait until we reached a stoplight, ready to argue with him, to make a case for friendship. But my mouth said something else.
“You’ve always been there for me, Phin. I call, you come. Thank you. It means a lot. And if you think we should go our separate ways, that hurts, but I’ll respect that.”
Phin nodded. I felt my chest get tight, my eyes well up. But this was for the best. I didn’t love this man. I couldn’t ever love this man.
Then why did this feel like the totally wrong thing to do?
My phone rang. I dug it out of my purse, answered.
No response. I looked at the screen, saw I had a text message.
THIS IS HARRY. HE’S YOUR BROTHER.
Oh shit.
“Phin, when was the last time you talked to Harry?”
“This morning. Why?”
“Alex has him.”
A picture came next, McGlade duct-taped to a chair, his face bleeding, his eyes desperate. Then the phone rang again. I answered.
“Hello, Jack. Harry just told me some nonsense about you quitting. Did I give you permission to quit?”
The wind howled in my face. I put my finger in my ear to drown out the noise.
“Where is he, Alex?”
“He’s with me. We’re reliving old times. Right, Harry?”
A crackling sound, followed by a howl. Every muscle in my body tensed up.
“What do you want, Alex?”
“A showdown, Jack. Just you and me. No cops. No Feds. No special forces yahoos swooping in on helicopters. I’ve got enough explosives to level a city block, and if I even suspect that you’re not alone, I press a little button and you get to bury what’s left of your brother in a matchbox.”
“Don’t come, Jackie!” Harry yelled in the background. “I got this bitch right where I want her!”
Another crackle, and another howl. I guessed Alex was using a stun gun on him.
“I’m just west of O’Hare,” Alex said. “Be here in twenty minutes. For every minute you’re late, Harry loses a finger.”
“I got a finger for you right here!” Harry yelled. The yell became a scream when she juiced him again.
“Twenty minutes, Jack.”
“I don’t have a car. You remember what happened to my car.”
“Where’s your buddy Phin?”
“He’s out of the picture.”
“That’s your problem. Twenty minutes.”
I turned to Phin. “Remember what I just said about going our separate ways?”
“Where is he?”
“O’Hare. We have twenty minutes.”
Phin jammed on the gas. I buckled up. Calling for reinforcements seemed like the right thing to do. If I did, Harry was dead, but he was probably dead anyway. So were Phin and me. The only way to win this was to call in the troops and nuke her.
I dialed 9 and 1 and then stopped.
“Do you still have the rifles?” I yelled at Phin over the wind.
“In back!”
“The radio?”
“Yeah!”
He hit the horn, blowing through a red light, causing a car to swerve and smash into a bus. Alex didn’t know Phin was with me. Maybe Harry had a chance to make it through this after all. A slight chance, but better than none at all. Much as I didn’t like the guy, and much as I hated the thought that there was a remotely small possibility we were related, I had to try to save him. He’d do the same for me.
It’s what any brother and sister would do.
Phin found the expressway, riding the shoulder and passing cars while squinting against the wind. I figured our best shot was setting up Phin someplace elevated, far enough away that she wouldn’t see him. We’d never finished zeroing out his scope, but hopefully he’d learned enough in our brief tutorial that he’d be able to compensate.
If not, Harry and I were dead.
And, surprisingly, I realized I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live a long, happy, fruitful life, as something other than a cop. I wasn’t sure what yet. While lying in my holding cell, I actually toyed with the idea of opening up a bar, maybe with some pool tables. With a name like Jack Daniels, how could it lose?
But now I could lose. I could lose a future I never even dreamed I could have. And I was scared.
I tucked my head down and turned away from the wind screaming in at us, blowing my hair into Medusa snakes. If there was the possibility I might be killed, I needed to make a call first. I hit speed dial. She picked up on the third ring.
“Mom?”
“Jacqueline! You’ve got to come on a cruise with us! We’re having a fabulous time!”
Mom sounded loaded. Happy, but loaded.
“Mom, I want to tell you something. Something important.”
“Is it about your father? We bumped into each other at bingo. He told me he was gay. Can you believe it? I married a homo!” Mom laughed. “He never told me all of these years because he didn’t want to hurt me. What a sweet man. We’ve been having such a wonderful time together. Did you know he was at your wedding?”
“Yes, Mom. Glad you two made up.”
“There’s a senior social to night. We’re going to cruise men together. I’m letting him do my hair. He used to do that back when we were married. How could I have not guessed he was gay?”
“Is Dad there?”
“He just went to the bathroom. I wonder which one. You think it was the men’s or the women’s? We’re having such fun! They make a drink called a cherry bomb. We’ve been drinking them all morning. I wish you were here with us. The whole family together again. We simply must go on a cruise when I get back, if my liver is still working.”
More giggles. I closed my eyes. Last goodbyes were really goddamn hard.
“Mom, I need you to tell Dad that I love him. It’s important that he hears that. Okay?”
“I will, Jacqueline, but don’t you think you should tell him yourself? He told me you hadn’t said that yet.”
“I need you to tell him, Mom. And I love you too. And I…I want to thank you.”
“Thank me? What in heavens for?”
I choked up a little bit, then got it under control. “For raising me. For loving me. For being my hero. You’re one of the best people I’ve ever met, and it’s been such an honor being your daughter.”
“You’re such a sweetheart. Have you been drinking too?”
“Just know that I love you, okay?”
“Okay, honey. My phone is dying, so I’ll call you later to night. If I don’t call, it means I’m getting lucky. Bye-bye.”
“Mom?”
The phone went dead.
I closed my eyes, letting the wind blow away the tears on my cheeks.
Then I reached into the backseat to check the rifles.
“
H
EY
!
NORMA BATES
! You’re the one who needs to cover up her face, not me.”
Alex sets down the blasting cap, walks to Harry—taped to his computer chair with a red velour pillowcase over his head—and punches where she thinks his nose is. His head snaps back and he makes a satisfying grunt.
“I thought we were clear, Harry. Every time you talk, I hit you.”
“If I answer, are you going to hit me again?”
Alex sighs. She has a good reason for keeping McGlade in the dark, but realizes she should have gagged him first.
“This pillowcase smells like monkey pee,” Harry says.
“Jesus, McGlade, do I have to cut out your tongue?”
“If you did, I could still make sounds with my throat. See?
Wooooaaaaaaaaaoooooo!
”
Harry continues to moan like a ghost, and Alex questions whether it isn’t better to simply kill him right now. Instead, she finishes hooking up the detonator and then gives Harry another punch in the face.
“If I take off your hood, will you shut the hell up?”
“I can’t make any promises. Your face is pretty frightening. I may scream.”
“You’re going to scream anyway,” Alex says, yanking off his hood.
McGlade opens his mouth, no doubt to make some smart-assed comment, but instead his eyes begin to wander around the RV. Alex has used every last bit of Lance’s explosives decorating the interior. It’s sort of like Christmas, except with dynamite, det cord, and PENO instead of tinsel, ornaments, and colored lights.
“Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ,” Harry says.
“Impressed?”
“No. I just forgot how ugly you are.”
Alex gives Harry’s cheek a not-too-gentle pinch.
“Don’t worry, Harry. You’re not going to die here. This is all for Jack. I’m taking you with me. We’re going to spend some real quality time together before I punch your clock.”
“I’ve got a question for you, Alex. And I’d really appreciate an honest answer.”
Alex waits.
“You’re a chick,” he says. “Do red velour sheets make you hot?”
Alex swings a leg over Harry, straddles his lap.
“Do you know what will make me hot, Harry? Using some pliers to peel all the skin off of your face.”
“But what about the sheets? They match those hooker boots you’re wearing.”
Alex gives Harry a peck on the forehead, then climbs off. His stupid jokes don’t bother her. He’s scared out of his mind, trying to use humor to cope. Once she starts drawing some serious blood, the joking will be replaced by begging. She was more impressed by how he found her than his current bravado. Tracking the cell phones through the SIM cards and a Bluetooth signal was clever. As soon as he told her, after a liberal application of the stun gun, she switched off her Bluetooth and call forwarding. Alex doesn’t want Jack to find her before she’s all set up.
She turns, going to check the bedroom one more time. That’s where the second Claymore is. But before she gets two steps away McGlade tilts his chair over, falling onto his side. He reaches out an arm—his fake hand had apparently been able to break through the duct tape—and hits the release button on the monkey’s cage door.
“Get her, Slappy! Like I trained you!”
McGlade points at Alex. The monkey leaps out of the cage, screeching like a hellspawn. Then he runs right past Alex, jumps through the side window, and tears down the street, disappearing into the distance.
Harry frowns. “There’s six hundred bucks shot to hell.”
“I think you paid too much.”
“It was him, or a gibbon with just one limb.”
“The gibbon couldn’t have run away.”
“Point taken.”
Alex checks her watch. Almost time to call. She hopes Jack is late, because Alex feels a little jumpy, and severing a few of Harry’s fingers would help take the edge off. She unclips her folder knife, thumbs open the blade.
“I’m sorry, Harry. I don’t have my blowtorch handy this time. So it looks like we’re going to get blood all over your carpeting.”
“It was pretty much ruined anyway.” Harry’s voice is an octave higher. The fear is taking over.
“Which one should we start with? The thumb?”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t you take that knife and jam it right up your—Slappy! I knew you’d come back, buddy!”
Alex checks the window, and sure enough, the monkey is perched there, teeth bared. He slaps himself in the head a few times, giving Alex a pretty good idea of how he got his name.
“Attack, Slappy! Attack!”
Slappy hops into the RV, screeches at Alex, then runs into his cage and grabs the sweater. Two seconds later he’s out the window again, dragging it behind him and running off into the distance.
“You really should have went with the gibbon,” Alex says, closing and locking the window.
Then she fishes out her cell phone to call Jack.
“
I
T’S AN ABANDONED LOT
,” Alex said.
“On Old Higgins Road, just northwest of the airport. Look for the recreational vehicle.”
Old Higgins,
I mouthed at Phin. Into the phone I said, “I want to speak to Harry.”
“He’s busy bleeding right now.”
“Put him on, or this isn’t gonna happen.”
A pause, then,
“The whole place is wired to blow, Jackie. Get the hell away from—”
Another zapping sound, and McGlade crying out. The poor bastard.
“Two minutes,”
Alex said, then hung up.
We made it to Old Higgins in ninety seconds, while I fussed with the walkie-talkies. The area resembled a war zone: crumbling buildings, overgrown lots, cracked concrete. Through some tall weeds, about a thousand yards away, I saw the Crimebago, as out of place as a beached whale.
Phin hit the brakes. I tried to find the words, tried to tell him that maybe I was wrong about us after all, maybe we should be together, but I wimped out and instead said, “Your last shots were too high. Aim lower. And compensate a little for bullet drop. It’s a much longer distance than you’ve tried before. Remember you’ve only got four shots. Wait for my signal.”
“What’s the signal?”
I considered it. “When I say
Latham
, let her have it.”
Phin nodded. His face looked pained.
“Be careful,” he said.
“You too.”
We stared at each other for a few more seconds. I shivered. Not from the cold. From fear.
Phin clipped the walkie-talking to his front pocket and reached for the door handle, ready to climb out of the truck.
Dammit, Jack. Say something.
“You know,” I managed to sputter, “a little while ago, I was going to try to talk you into still staying friends.”
Phin turned, looked at me.
“Is that how you feel now?”
“No. Now the only thing I want in the whole damn world is for you to kiss me like you mean it.”
He leaned over, his lips finding mine, his tongue finding mine.
I was sure he meant every second of it.
“Don’t die on me, Jack.”
I smiled at him, my eyes glassy. “Just try not to shoot me.”
He grabbed his rifle and climbed out of the truck, blending into the weeds. I crawled over to the driver’s seat, shifted gears, punched the gas, and headed for what ever hell Alex had in store.
I parked a dozen yards away. McGlade was in the parking lot outside the Crimebago, next to the side door, taped to his computer chair. Alex crouched behind him. She had a gun in one hand, holding it to Harry’s temple. The other held some sort of detonator, the wire trailing from it and into the open side door of the RV.
I made sure the radio was on, the talk button depressed, and hung it under my armpit, clipping it to my sports bra. The sweatshirt was loose enough that you couldn’t tell it was there. I hoped. Then I grabbed my gun and climbed out of the truck.
“Hold it! Drop the gun! Hands over your head!”
I let the gun clatter to the pavement.
“Raise your hands, turn in a full circle!”
I complied, searching for Phin when I faced his way. I didn’t see him. And then I had a really bad thought—did he grab the right rifle? If he took mine by mistake, the sights would be way off because they’d been configured for me. And with his bad elbow…
“Walk toward me slowly, Jack, keeping your hands raised.”
Her gun had switched from pointing at Harry to pointing at me. Right at my heart. Alex liked the chest shot. I felt a cold, dead spot where the bullet would hit if she pulled the trigger. It made me want to run into a corner, curl up fetal, and suck my thumb. I managed to get my legs moving, even though they felt like wet noodles.
“Stop there.”
She made me halt ten feet in front of her. Alex was an excellent marksperson, and at this distance she might as well have been holding the gun directly up my nose. She wouldn’t miss. Even if Phin fired on her. My only chance was if his first shot was a kill shot.
I didn’t hold out much hope for that. This plan was looking worse and worse. It would have been smarter to just drive up really fast and run her over.
“Let Harry go,” I said, with a lot more strength than I felt.
“I’m going to.”
“You’re going to?” Harry said. “My ass.”
Alex patted him on the head. “Don’t worry. I’ll come back for you eventually. But Jack and I are going to go away for a while. I’ll send you some pictures. Maybe you’ll even be able to recognize her, under all of the blood.”
I shook my head slowly, my eyes fixed on her gun. “I’m not going with you, Alex.”
“Yes you are. You’ll do what ever I tell you to do. You’ve given up, Jack. You’re a shell of your former self. I knew that when I saw you at Latham’s funeral.”
I tensed, waiting for the shot. It didn’t come. Was I in Phin’s line of fire? Or did he know that was Alex talking, not me?
Was the walkie-talkie even working?
Jesus, this plan sucked.
“Even if you kill both of us, I’m not going anywhere with you, Alex.”
“You can walk over here, Lieutenant. Or I can shoot out both your knees and drag you over here.”
“No you won’t,” I said. And the fear washed away, being replaced by cold, hard anger. “This is for
Latham
.”
The shot came from my left, plugging into the Crimebago only inches above Alex’s head. She reacted instantly, ducking down and diving inside through the door.
Phin fired again, his shot aimed at where she disappeared.
Save your last two,
I thought, willing him to hear. Then, in a crouch, I ran toward Harry.
Phin fired again, apparently not hearing my telepathic message, his shot pinging into the side of the RV.
“Stop firing, you knucklehead!” Harry screamed. “The whole thing is one big bomb!”
I grabbed Harry’s chair—which thankfully was on coasters—and began to pull him back toward the Bronco. My thanks were short-lived. The parking lot surface was rough, uneven, covered in gravel. It would have been easier tugging him through mud.
“Dammit, sis, pull!”
“I’m pulling, McGlade! There are rocks stuck in the wheels.”
We’d only gotten halfway to the truck when gunfire erupted, coming from the RV. Bits of asphalt flew up from the ground, peppering my legs, making me fall. It felt like being hit with a birdshot. I clawed my way back to my feet, calves bleeding, and dragged McGlade another few steps.
“Try pushing me!” Harry ordered.
I thought about telling him to shut up, but every ounce of energy I had was being expended trying to get him away from the bomb. One of the coasters snapped off, forcing him off balance and making him tip onto his side. I let go, pitching forward, my legs screaming at me. I crawled back to Harry, meeting his eyes.
“Come on, Jackie. You can do it. We have to get farther away.” He grinned at me. “I ain’t heavy. I’m your brother.”
I thought—absurdly, considering the situation—that Harry had kind of a nice smile.
Then the Crimebago exploded, tossing us through the air like rag dolls.