“Glad you think so.” Caroline’s tone was sour. “I’d probably think so, too, if it wasn’t my butt on the line here.”
Dixon gave her a look, said, “Let’s go,” and herded her toward where Bayard stood, surrounded by another circle of cops. They were about halfway there when Dixon exclaimed, “Hell, the lights in the library are off. The SOB’s turned the lights off.”
Looking toward the mansion, Caroline saw the same thing: the library windows, which earlier had emitted a faint yellow glow through the curtains, were now as dark as the night sky.
“Maybe he’s trying to make it harder for a sniper to hit him,” she said.
Dixon grimaced disdainfully. “They’ve got night vision capabilities.”
She had actually known that, and presumably Ware did, too.
“He doesn’t want us to be able to follow him on camera,” she guessed.
Dixon grunted. Translation: maybe.
As they neared the group surrounding Bayard, Caroline saw that TV crews from CNN and a couple of local channels were setting up in the street so they had an unimpeded view of the action. If the world wasn’t already watching, it would be soon. The knowledge ratcheted up the tension she was feeling to a whole new level. Dragging her eyes away, she looked toward Bayard, and was surprised to see that the kid was wearing a blindfold. Somebody had dug up a blue bandanna from somewhere and tied it around his eyes. Caroline looked at Lagasse, the Special Operations head who had been part of the group surrounding Bayard and who had just walked back to join her, Dixon, and Wasserman.
“We’ve got Bayard in a blindfold?” she asked disbelievingly.
“That’s to keep him from seeing the operatives we have in place outside and reporting on our capabilities to Ware when he reaches him,” Lagasse explained. “For our purposes, the less Ware knows, the better.”
“If our plan works, Bayard won’t have time to tell Ware anything.” There was satisfaction in Dixon’s tone.
“It ever occur to you that you’re sending me into ground zero here?” Caroline groused. “You could try to sound less excited about it.”
“You’re the one that he wants. That means you’re the only one who can do this, Wallace.” Sweeping a look over the mansion, Dixon stopped walking abruptly. “The whole house has gone dark,” he said.
Stopping, too, and glancing in that direction, Caroline saw that he was right: where before the mansion had blazed with light from within, now every window that she could see was shiny black. Her stomach fluttered as she considered the possibilities: was this part of the plan?
Echoing her thoughts, Dixon frowned at Lagasse and asked, “Did we do that? Because I don’t see how the hell Ware could.”
Lagasse was frowning, too. “A panel controlling the house functions, including the lights and the security system, is located in the library. We saw it on the house plans. Apparently Ware’s found it,” Lagasse said. “If he thinks turning the lights off is going to help him, he’s wrong.”
“Let’s get this show on the road.” Dixon’s expression had turned grim. “That bastard’s had things his own way long enough. Ready, Wallace?”
Moments later, Caroline had a hand around Hollis Bayard’s elbow as she half propelled, half led him down the driveway toward the mansion. Her adrenaline was flowing now, making it easier to ignore her misgivings. Although any way she looked at it, the chances that this would go wrong were way higher than the possibility that it would go right.
Consider the best-case scenario: Police save hostages. Bad guy taken out. That was how this was supposed to play out. That was the story her superiors wanted the TV cameras to cover.
The alternative—rogue cop blows mansion and everyone in it sky-high—was something she didn’t even like to think about.
“Fuck it.” Bayard stumbled as they reached the place where the stone pavers of the sidewalk joined the asphalt driveway, and Caroline’s hand tightened on his arm. He’d been holding himself stiffly, and his steps had been on the slow and uncertain side, since they’d moved away from the group around the squad car. Not that that was surprising. Walking when he couldn’t see a thing, with his hands cuffed behind his back, knowing that dozens of pairs of eyes and just as many weapons were tracking his every step, had to be unnerving.
“Careful,” she said.
She understood the necessity for the blindfold, but that didn’t make it any easier to steer him toward the wide stone steps that led to the palatial front door. Through his ratty sweatshirt, she could feel the wiry strength of his arm and the nervous heat of his body. He was also breathing way too hard for the amount of exertion he was putting forth. Fear and distrust practically oozed from his pores.
“This is bullshit,” Bayard said angrily after he stumbled again, for what must have been the third or fourth time. As he caught himself and straightened up he added, “Look, I don’t care what they’re saying, I didn’t have no dope on me. I didn’t do
nothing
. Them cops had no business arresting me. I got rights. And speaking of rights, I don’t think no damned police turds have the right to blindfold me, either.”
“We don’t have much farther to go.” The last thing she wanted to do was have a debate with him on the merits of his arrest. Her chest was already tight with anxiety, and her nerves were starting to fray. Having lost her hold on him when he’d stumbled this last time, Caroline curled a hand around his elbow again, gripping it with grim determination. The kid tried to jerk away, but she hung on. She was supremely conscious of the gazes of everybody they’d just left behind burning into her back. Dixon and company were watching every step she and Bayard took, and much as she tried not to let the knowledge bother her, it did. If the kid decided to do something stupid like, say, pull free and take off running, it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“They set me up,” he said. “Them drugs they found? Fucking cop
planted
them.”
That claim had been made so often by so many that Caroline scarcely heard it, and gave it no credence whatsoever.
“When this is over, I’ll see that it gets looked into,” she replied.
“That’s bullshit, too.” He stopped walking and turned his head as if to look at her, although of course he couldn’t see her. “You don’t give a shit, and we both know it.”
“I give a shit.” Tightening her hand on his arm, she urged him on. By this time it was about 1:20 a.m., but the klieg lights made it look like midday.
“They took my brother,” Bayard said. “He’s thirteen damned years old. A little kid.”
“Ant?” she hazarded a guess, trying to push from her mind the close presence of Wasserman, who was following them through the yard on a roughly parallel course, carrying the tabletlike monitor that would allow him to see if and when she managed to deactivate Ware’s deadman switch.
“That’s right. If they fucking hurt him—”
“Who are we talking about? Who do you think would hurt your brother?”
“The fucking cops.” He said it like she was an idiot for asking.
“No police officer is going to hurt your little brother,” she replied firmly.
“Are you for real? What do you think they took him for?”
She couldn’t help it: her heart was racing. She could see Wasserman out of the corner of her eye, an inescapable reminder of how badly this could end. “I have no idea.”
“And you don’t care, do you?” Bayard sounded bitter.
“I care. I do care. Of course I care. It’s just that right now I’m more concerned with getting this hostage situation resolved without anybody getting killed,” Caroline said, willing herself to ignore Wasserman. “But once it’s over, I will look into your brother’s situation as well as yours, I promise.”
If we’re both still alive.
Of course, she didn’t say it aloud. Bayard seemed totally oblivious to the danger he was walking into by joining forces with an armed man with a bomb, and she didn’t feel like this was the moment to point that out.
“Golly gee, Ms. Cop, now I feel all better.”
Caroline thought it better not to play into that bit of sarcasm, and Bayard lapsed momentarily into silence as they negotiated a curve in the sidewalk.
“What’s going to happen once we get inside that big-ass house, anyway?” Bayard asked. “You ain’t got some nasty surprise planned for me in there, do you? Like somebody waiting to blow a hole through my brains?”
That’s
what you’re worried about?
Again, she didn’t say it aloud. “No surprises. I’m going to take you to Detective Ware.”
“Then what? Is that when we’re gonna get whacked?” Bayard’s tone was truculent. But the way he hunched his shoulders as he asked the question told her how vulnerable he felt.
“You’re not going to get whacked.” While one portion of her mind was busy worrying over various ways the coming confrontation with Ware might play out, Caroline experienced a reluctant welling of sympathy for Bayard. No matter what the kid had or hadn’t done, he was just that, a kid. He was clearly scared to death, and with good reason. If they didn’t get blown up, or shot, prison, possibly years in prison, loomed in his future. Clearly he wasn’t all bad, if he was concerned about his little brother. His fears on that score were completely paranoid, of course. Maybe there were mental issues that could be addressed, which might influence a judge to look more leniently at his case? But that was an avenue to possibly be explored later if they both survived the night.
They were nearly at the end of the walk. As the house loomed, her stomach dropped toward her toes. Bucking up, she said to Bayard, “Maybe another six feet and we’ll be at the steps. We go up the steps, across the veranda, and then we’re at the door. As soon as we’re inside, I can take the blindfold off.”
His head slewed in her direction. “What about the cuffs?”
“We’re coming to the first step. It’s shallow: about six inches high. Step up,” Caroline directed without answering his question, because the truth was that she wasn’t going to take off his handcuffs. During their short walk to the house, it had occurred to her that if gunfire were to erupt, Bayard actually would be better off in handcuffs: nobody would be left in any doubt that he wasn’t in a position to fire a weapon and didn’t pose a threat. Thus no one would have any reason to shoot him.
As she and Bayard gained the top of the stairs and made their way across the wide front porch, her mouth went dry and her pulse raced as she faced the fact that the moment she had been dreading was almost at hand.
By the time they reached the front door, Caroline was sweating. She had butterflies in her stomach. Her chest was tight with anxiety.
Possible scenarios for what might happen once she pressed the button chased themselves around and around in her mind as unproductively as a dog after its tail. Then a radical thought occurred as she turned the knob and pushed: what would happen if she
didn’t
press the button? The massive oak panel swung inward with scarcely more than a
whoosh
.
Of course the door on a multimillion-dollar mansion wouldn’t squeak.
For a moment she stood there staring into the darkness of the vast front hall while her heart picked up the pace until it was knocking against her ribs.
She could feel the whisper of air-conditioning on her face. An elusive, sweetish scent—potpourri? some kind of fancy furniture polish?—drifted out along with the cold air. Various small sounds—a hum, a creak, a rattle—from inside the house added up to an uneasy silence. Some fifteen feet beyond the open door, in the center of the hall, stood a large round table with a towering floral arrangement on it: the wedge of uncertain light spilling across the hall from outside revealed a massive pyramid of red poinsettias and white amaryllis. Caroline realized that the flowers were the source of the scent.
They smell like a funeral
. The thought made her shiver.
Detach. Focus. Breathe.
“Yo, Ms. Cop, you get turned to stone or something?” Bayard asked. Then, in a tone that was slightly more uneasy, he added, “You still there?”
“Everything’s fine.” Pulling Bayard along with her, she took a resolute step inside and locked the door. The hall was not pitch dark, she was glad to discover as she turned back toward Bayard—a combination of moonlight and the outside lights streamed through the fanlight above the door—but it was dark enough so that she removed her cap and stuck it into her pocket to take advantage of every bit of night vision she could muster. Dark enough so that she was glad of the flashlight as she aimed it at Bayard. “I’m—”
She never got to finish what she was going to say: just as her flashlight found Bayard, somebody grabbed her hard from behind.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
E
VEN AS HE GRABBED HER,
Reed inhaled the sweet, feminine scent of her shampoo and impartially cursed God, the Devil, and Fate, just in case he and the whole damned city of New Orleans were wrong about the existence of the first two, which was starting to seem increasingly likely in a world that just kept getting more and more unrecognizable.
If he hadn’t had the foresight to clap his hand over Caroline’s mouth the second he laid his hands on her, her scream would have wakened the dead. It would almost certainly have carried beyond the walls of the house, and possibly precipitated the very confrontation with the battalion of cops ranged outside—a number of whom he was now convinced actively wanted him dead—that he was doing his utmost to avoid. As he yanked her back against him, clamping her arms to her sides and covering her mouth, she let loose with a shriek that, muffled by his hand, came out sounding more like a squeal, and dropped her flashlight. The thing hit the marble with a crash, and went rolling away, throwing off bumpy stripes of light against the pillars and walls while she fought like a wild animal to get free.
Like him, she was a cop, fit and well trained. Still wasn’t happening: in hand-to-hand combat, as in some other things he could think of, size really did matter. He was way bigger, stronger, better trained—and tonight he had too much to lose.
“Stop fighting, Caroline,” he said in her ear as he did his best to contain her without letting either of them get hurt. She recognized his voice instantly. He could tell, because she quit struggling just as quickly as that. She hung in his arms, tense and panting.