Kindred Intentions (2 page)

She advanced to the end of the corridor, where
it opened out to the entrance hall. If he were there, he would have no place to
hide. But that applied to her, too.

She turned the corner.

There was nobody. The reception was
unattended. She could see the police cars parked in front of the entrance, made
up by two sliding doors fitted in a glass wall, but no trace of her colleagues.
There was something utterly wrong with that situation.

Another noise, this time from the opposite
direction.

She turned around. A lift at the bottom of the
corridor jingled, the doors opened. But it was empty.

She turned around again and her gaze was
captured by the mouth of a silencer a few inches from her eyes. The dark,
mighty shape of the killer stood out against the dazzling sunlight coming from
the glass. She should have looked at his face. Nobody had seen it before. Even
if she was going to die shortly thereafter, she had a duty to see it. But she
couldn’t. She was irresistibly attracted by that dark hole, from which a bullet
would soon come, thus putting an end to her life.

She thought about her son Joseph. Dying
wouldn’t be so bad. She would see him again.

She lowered her weapon, resting her arm on her
hip, and dared to raise her eyes to meet his. They were gloomy, but veiled. His
face was beaded with sweat. She couldn’t see the determination she’d expected.
They were hesitant. She wasn’t his target, just collateral damage, an obstacle
to his escape. Maybe he would spare her.

“Drop your weapon!”

She spread her fingers and the gun fell to the
floor with a metal sound. That was the moment she thought to catch sight of a
movement, but she forced herself not to shift her eyes from those of her
adversary.

Another body shape pounced on his shoulders.
Amelia moved aside and the two of them ended up on the floor at her feet. The
killer struggled, while another man wearing a smart suit kept a hand on his
head and, with the other one, tried to block his arm still bearing a gun.

Astounded, she winced at each jerk of the two
opponents. Her saviour wasn’t one of her colleagues. She searched around for
her weapon, but couldn’t see it anywhere. It had to have ended up under the
killer. She slipped her hand into a pocket and pulled out the mobile phone.
“Where the fuck are you?”

“
Jennings
, damn it, where the fuck are
you
?”

What? How was it possible that they didn’t see
her on the surveillance system? “In the entrance hall, I need backup!”

The killer let out an enraged shriek and
charged his left elbow backward, hitting his assailant’s ribcage and forcing
him to loosen his grip. Then he started to crawl forward, kicking back. With a
groan, the other man bent over on one side, revealing his face.

Mike Connor?

“
Jennings
?”
Monroe
’s voice
was coming from afar, while a perplexed Amelia watched the scene occurring in
front of her. Yes, there was something damned wrong.

Blood stains on the floor were mingling with
prints. The killer was standing again and turning around. Mike had risen with
difficulty, leaning against the wall. The killer’s arm went up resolutely, but
he wasn’t aiming the gun against her. His eyes and his weapon were turned to
Mike, who in spite of the bad situation didn’t betray the slightest fear.

“Police! Drop the gun!”
Monroe
’s shout burst into the entrance
hall. Frenzied footsteps from the policemen travelled the distance to their
target.

The killer straightened his back, gnashed his
teeth. He looked away from Mike and gave a rapid glance to Amelia, then he
started running in the opposite direction with renewed strength, in spite of
all the blood he had lost.

Three officers reached her and Mike, and moved
past them, rushing in pursuit.

“What have I said to you,
Jennings
?”
Monroe
’s reproach shook Amelia out of her astonishment. Her chief was now
standing beside her.

“No hero stuff,” she replied, laconic, but she
didn’t even strive to look sorry. Instead, she kept staring at Mike.

The latter glanced back at her, while
massaging his chest. “You’re welcome,” he said.

Amelia was disoriented. “I beg your pardon?”

“In response to your thank you for saving your
life. The one you should’ve said to me.”

But the only word which had occurred to her
was ‘why?’

“I’m all right, take care of him,” Amelia
said, as she shooed away the attentions of a paramedic and addressed them to
Mike, who was now seated on the edge of an ambulance parked outside the
building hosting Goldberg & Associates.

However, the man was similarly reluctant to
let himself be checked and was exchanging a few words with another policeman,
who was taking his witness statement.

“How is it possible that you lost him?”
Monroe
exclaimed at his transceiver.

“At some point we lost sight of him …” There
was hesitation in the officer’s voice from the other side of the communication.
“And we could find him anymore.”

Amelia turned to the building. The killer
hadn’t exited from the main entrance; on the contrary, he had headed in the
opposite direction. The place was enormous. He could have hidden anywhere, but
he was wounded.

Monroe
cursed under
his breath. “Lock all exits,” he shouted at the officers listening. “We must
comb over this place floor by floor, room by room. He can’t have disappeared.
Check every single person you meet.”

“Sir, we don’t even know what he looks like.”

“But he is wounded; I doubt there are many
wounded men around in the offices, right?” The detective seemed about to
explode. He had been investigating that case for months and Amelia could
imagine how stressful this was to him.

She was feeling exhausted and disappointed as
well. For a moment she had thought she could catch him. She, a newbie who could
solve such a complicated case at a drop of a hat. How delusional. She had just
risked her own skin.

As she pondered on it, she couldn’t help but
look at Mike, who now seemed much less willing to talk to the officer who kept
asking him questions.

“I’ve seen him in the face very well.”

Monroe
rotated a gaze
full of expectation towards her. “And just when were you planning to tell me?”

“I …”

“Would you be able to recognise him?”

“Sure.”

“Then you must go up with the others.”

Amelia lowered her head. She was still
barefoot and had some grazes on her legs. She must have got them on the stairs.
She didn’t even recall scraping herself anywhere.

The man shook his hand. “Put something on
first.” Then he dismissed her with a disapproving gesture and resumed looking
at the transceiver. “Have you at least reached Goldberg?”

“He’s still barricaded in his panic room. He
said he won’t get out until we assure him there’s no danger.”

As she heard that last part of the
conversation between her chief and colleagues, Amelia snorted and turned to the
police van where she had dolled up for the interview just half an hour earlier.
Her uniform was still there, including her shoes. She would surely feel more at
ease once she had donned them again.

A thought popped into her head and she placed
a hand to her holster. She had lost her gun. She turned to tell
Monroe
about it, but he had already walked
away. Oh God, this time she had really got herself into trouble.

Dispirited, she headed for the van, which was
parked on the opposite side of the street. The driver in the car that had
stopped at the zebra crossing for her was now looking at her with a disgusted
air, to say the least. As an answer she showed him her identification badge
with one hand and the middle finger with the other.

She pulled the handle of the side hatch on the
police vehicle, but it didn’t seem to have any intention to move. All right,
now she had to go back and get the key. In that very moment a glare landed on
her eyes, making her turn. It was coming from the left rear-view mirror. The
window was half open. She smiled at herself. What use was it locking the van if
you left the window down?

She moved closer to the door and, standing on
tiptoe, inserted a hand through the narrow opening. Stretching her fingers as
much as possible, she reached the safety lock and unlocked it. She climbed on
the vehicle from the passenger’s side, and closed the door. She was about to
turn and go to the rear.

Again the dark hole of a silencer’s mouth.

“Move to the driver’s seat and start the
engine,” the killer said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

2

“Pull out your mobile phone,” the killer’s
voice ordered.

Amelia was driving slowly and kept repeating
to herself that her colleagues had certainly noticed the van had left, or they
would notice very soon.

“I said: pull out your mobile phone.”

She felt the cold metal of the weapon pushing
against the back of her head. “I don’t have it with me.” They could find her
thanks to the GPS.

The killer pushed harder. “Stop it with this
bullshit! Pull out the fucking phone or you’ll be dead in a second.”

“Okay, okay, don’t stress out.” She must not
give him the impression she was intimidated, or things would be worse. But most
of all, she must not be scared. She had to stay calm. Nothing bad would happen
to her. Fuck, she couldn’t even lie decently to herself.

“Come on!”

Amelia pull back her hand from the steering
wheel.

“Slowly, don’t play tricks,” her jailer
specified.

She reached out to the pocket in her jacket
and pulled out her mobile phone. Before showing it, it occurred to her that she
could start a call to the police headquarters, by using the quick dialling
function, but she let go. At the very least, she’d have to shift her gaze from
the road to guide her fingers on the touch screen. With the old mobile phone,
she could do that with her eyes shut, but not really with a smartphone.

She raised it beside her head, so that he
would see it.

“Throw it out of the window.”

And bye-bye, GPS.

Reluctantly, she stretched out her hand beyond
the glass and let it go. No harm done. The van was equipped with a satellite
antitheft system. They would track them down anyway.

“Pull over here.” The killer pushed his weapon
harder against her nape.

Now or never.

Amelia slammed on the brakes. The man was
hurled forward. Expecting that, she moved aside and grabbed his wrist. The gun
was now aimed at the windshield.

It went off and the shot stopped on the bulletproof
glass.

She felt herself being grabbed by her neck.
The last feeling that remained impressed in her memory was the pain when her
brow hit the steering wheel.

As soon as she woke up, she wasn’t sure she
was really awake at all. It was dark and she was dazed. Her head was aching
with intermittent stabs, which spread from her brow to her whole skull then
down to her neck. There was a deep background noise. She took some minutes to
realise it came from an engine and that the vibrations she felt were those
produced by a vehicle in constant motion. The stabs of pain were due to the
rhythmical hitting of her head on some surface.

She tried to stretch out, but her feet stopped
against something hard. She tried to turn, but in all directions her hands
touched an obstacle on which her fingers could slide freely. The texture
reminded her of a carpet; no, it was thinner, like the upholstery of a car.

She was in a boot.

She started kicking and shouting, but her
efforts seemed to have no effect. There was no noise or voice in response to
her complaints.

She resolved to calm down and analyse the
situation. She had finished the police academy not even one year earlier, and
amongst the many things they had taught her there were some scenarios similar
to the one she was experiencing now. She was still alive, she had no
significant wounds; first of all she had to figure out where she was.

She had understood she’d been locked up in the
boot of a vehicle. There was nothing like that in the van in which she had been
taken hostage, so she wasn’t there anymore. Considering the size, it wasn’t a
particularly small car. The only possibility that occurred to her was that the
killer had left his car at a certain distance from the law firm and that, once
he’d exited, he’d needed to reach it without being noticed. And a wounded man,
who might have difficulty walking, would certainly have stood out.

What she couldn’t yet understand was how he’d
exited the building undisturbed. He was trapped. But it was no use lingering on
that thought. Somehow he’d made it and apparently he hadn’t found anything
better than to take refuge inside the police van, where he had taken the first
opportunity to have someone give him a lift to his own vehicle.

And then it occurred to her: she wasn’t in a
traceable vehicle anymore. Perhaps nobody was even looking for her and, anyway,
they would hardly find her, now that she was shut in some car mixed in the urban
traffic of the morning, driven by a man whose face was unknown by anyone but
herself.

No, wait, the cameras must have filmed him
while he moved within the building. That certainty wavered almost immediately
as she recalled that
Monroe
, at
a certain point, hadn’t seen them anymore in the surveillance system. She was
ready to bet that his face wasn’t to be seen in any of the frames where he’d
appeared. On second thoughts, there was something else strange. The reception
had seemed to her oddly deserted for that time of the day. The man was a
professional, he was wearing the uniform of the security guards, he must had
planned that assault in every detail, including his escape, whether he’d
succeeded in reaching Goldberg or one of his partners or associates. Maybe he
had gained access to the surveillance information system, thus creating the
conditions that had allowed him to act undisturbed.

All that made sense. But why, once he’d
reached his car, had he taken her with him? Why hadn’t he just left her there?
Perhaps because she had seen him up close, but in this case he could have just
killed her. Perhaps he wanted to use her as commodity. He was wounded and not
yet in a safe place; she could prove to be useful.

Then she realised that the vibrations from the
car had become constant. How long had she been unconscious? They had entered a
dual carriageway and, considering that it was Tuesday morning, in order to be
travelling at such a regular pace, they had to be far from the city centre. At
least half an hour must have passed.

A spreading discomfort mixed with fear invaded
her. She felt so lonely, lonelier than she’d felt in a long while.

She perceived something sliding down her
temple, something liquid. She placed her fingers on her brow and found it
viscous. As she touched her right eyebrow, she felt a burning sensation. She
was bleeding, but it probably wasn’t something serious. She must not lose her
head now.
Focus
was the operative word.

She resumed feeling the inside of the boot.
She searched the surface above and beside her with her hands. She reached the
point where the hatch locked. She could feel the slot, but there was no way of
clicking it open.

She turned to the other side. Her hands were
touching a smooth, not particularly cold, surface, maybe plastic. It had to be
the rear of the backseat. She tried pushing a bit. She felt it slightly moving
away under the pressure of her fingers. She pressed harder and a thin chink of
light crept into the darkness of the boot. The seat was a tip-up one, and if
she had somehow succeeded in opening it, she could have got out and surprised
the driver from behind. Or maybe she could leave the car as soon as he had
stopped it or, at least, slowed down. She had nothing with which she could face
him and he was twice her size. The second solution was surely the most feasible
one.

Curling up, she could put herself to her
knees, keeping her chest and head bent forward. She planted her feet at the
back of the boot and opened her palms, placing them on the panel. Pushing both
with hands and feet, she moved it a bit more. Now she could see, through the
gap, the sun hitting the rear left door. She pushed with all her strength. It
wouldn’t give. Her sweating hands slipped and the gap closed again.

Bugger. She needed something to lever.

She resumed exploring the narrow space she was
in. Apparently she was the only thing in there. The rocking of the car together
with her fruitless efforts, and the heat, made her slightly nauseous. She let
herself slip to one side, exhausted.

No, she would get nowhere this way. She
wouldn’t be able to get out of there, unless someone opened the hatch. But what
would happen next? She took deep, fast breaths; she was trying to
hyperventilate in order to stifle her need to throw up. The last thing she
needed was to soil herself with her own vomit.

After a while she started feeling her head
empty and a sensation of cold, while the skin of her hands prickled, but at
least her nausea was disappearing. When she had the impression she was getting
better, she resumed thinking.

Yeah, what would happen next? She had to find
a way to defend herself, when the man opened the hatch. Maybe she could assault
him. She was a trained police officer, young, in good shape, heck, and he was
wounded.

She touched the pockets in her jacket, but she
already knew there was nothing useful in there. Her handbag had been left
somewhere on the floor in Goldberg’s waiting room. Her fingers perceived a
bulge caused by her gun holster, empty. The killer had her gun, too. She hadn’t
even been able to tell
Monroe
.
But who cared now? Were she still wearing her shoes, the heels would have been
a good improvised weapon.

Hell, it was worthless to think about what she
didn’t have; she had to focus on what she did have.

She couldn’t see a thing in the darkness and
so she tried to figure out what else could be found in a boot; maybe something
small that the killer had forgotten to remove before putting her in there.

The spare wheel. The jack!

She turned face down and again on her knees,
backing off with her butt. She was searching for something protruding from the
upholstery. There had to be a compartment down there; usually you didn’t notice
it when you opened the boot, but it had to be there. Her right index finger
outlined the edge of something. She placed both hands there and tried to lift
it. It didn’t resist her attempt. With a soft rip it detached from the floor of
the boot. It was fitted with a Velcro closing system. She rolled it up a bit so
as to create an opening where she could insert her hands. As she did so, they
found an empty space. A little further down and they touched the bottom.

No wheel, no jack.

Regardless, she kept moving them inside the
compartment. She could feel something in there. Some cloths, perhaps for
polishing the bodywork. They certainly weren’t the ideal weapon. Then the
knuckles of her left hand clashed with a hard, smooth, cold, cylindrical
object. A spray bottle?

There was no spare wheel, so it had to be a
compressed air bottle to temporarily inflate a flat tyre. So, it was something
a bit more useful. She could try to hit him on his head or spray the air on his
eyes. She shook it and heard a liquid sound, while its surface became colder.
It was full. Ah, no, it wasn’t exactly a spray. It appeared to have a valve. If
only she could see it better. Nevertheless, the top of it was sure to hurt if
planted inside an eye socket.

Okay, she owned a weapon now, more or less.
She just had to wait.

She closed the compartment and lay down on her
side. She would keep the bottle in her right hand, hidden from the killer’s
sight, when he’d opened the compartment. She would pretend to be disoriented, then
she would snap forward and strike him. Well, considering the situation, it was
a more than passable plan.

Only one question remained. How long would she
have to wait?

The rocking was still constant. The car was
travelling without accelerating or braking on an apparently straight road. Probably
a motorway. Where the hell was he taking her?

She hated that waiting combined with
uncertainty. It always reminded her of that day.

She had waited for hours in the hospital,
while Joseph was under the knife. Before entering the operating room, a surgeon
had tried to reassure her. She must not think the worst. He had survived the
accident. They would stop the internal bleeding. She must not lose hope. She
had wanted to believe those words, because they were the only thing left to
hold onto. Gavin, her husband, now ex-husband, had been sitting there, his head
in his hands. From time to time, he’d stared at her with a scornful air. He’d
made her feel even guiltier than she already felt. She had been behind the
wheel that day, yes, but it hadn’t been her fault. The traffic light had been
green and she had crossed the junction, confident that there was no danger. She
hadn’t even seen the other car arriving from the left, until she felt the
impact passing through her body, her neck bending, the airbag exploding,
hitting her in the face, while the world out there spun around. Then everything
had stopped, and when she’d opened her eyes, her first thought had been for her
son, just a two-year-old, fastened into the child seat, trapped on the seat
beside hers, facing backwards. The door was bent inwards and had reached the
side of the child seat. Her child had been screaming. For a moment she’d felt
relieved. He was crying, he was alive, perhaps he wasn’t hurt. But she had
perceived an unusual desperation in his hoarse shouting, until it’d stopped.