Ransom Beach (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 2) (22 page)

The kitchen, the kitchen, I thought—where is it? I'd been in several catering halls and never had a sense of where the food actually came from—doors would suddenly open and a stream of waiters would enter with trays of rubber chicken hoisted high on their shoulders. Where was the kitchen and why hadn't the kidnappers appeared? The hair on the back of my neck rose and my face began to tingle beneath the many layers of makeup. It felt like I was wearing mud.

I almost reached for the LDA but I fought the impulse, letting my arm drop back to my side. I advanced toward the TV.

I'd never seen Manny in the flesh and wasn't sure I was seeing him now. Was this a live feed or a videotape? Was he in the building or not? I took a moment to study him. His right hand was darting back and forth sporadically. Hypergraphia, the word came to mind. I remembered it from my initial meeting with Ambler. It described a psychological condition where an individual writes continuously. Is that what Manny was doing? He had no paper and pen but I'm not sure that mattered to him. Was he scribing another quatrain, perhaps one of the lost ones that The Faith had invested so much energy to obtain? A miracle lost, written upon the air.

The Manny I now saw had a tortured expression, natural considering the circumstances. I wondered how much he understood. Did he know how others saw him or the value they attached to his frenzied scribbling? Did he understand that he had been kidnapped? Did he have a sense that
Celia
Thorne and the authorities were trying desperately to recover him? Or was it all a blank slate? Did he live each
day
only to forget while he slept? Scream, Manny scream, let me know where you are. I wanted to infuse my will into him. I monitored his image a few more seconds. Nothing changed.

I began looking around. The lighting was impossible, barely enough to see where I was going. Stephanie Chalice would have pulled out her Maglite but
Celia
Thorne was forced to stumble around in the dark. I didn't like it, I didn't like it at all, the silence, the darkness—the setup stunk.

The closed circuit TV threw off a little light, just enough so that I could see that the kidnappers had made additional use of their broad tipped marker. A white door had been scrawled upon. I approached and read the inscription: Drop the money here. Manny is down the stairs. I opened the door. Beyond it was a staircase to the basement. A single low voltage bulb illuminated the steps.

I dropped the bag immediately, not because I had been instructed to but because it was a hindrance. Something bad was about to go down. As I said, I didn't know where the kitchen was located, but I knew it wasn't located in the basement, down a narrow set of stairs. I needed quick access to the LDA. "No lights," I said so that Lido and Ambler would know what I was up against. "Heading down the stairs to the basement—not good."

Moira
waited in the dark, kneeling behind an old utility cart with her gun resting upon it, aimed at the opening to the stairwell. She had been in the dark for an hour and her eyes were now perfectly accustomed. As she came down the stairs, Thorne would be backlit by the single bulb in the stairwell—an easy shot, like aiming at an eclipse, all she had to do was fire into the darkness.

Moira
would not miss. She never did. It was one of those things she picked up naturally—had a feel for it. She had envisioned it for days, firing the bullet into Thorne, the mortal scream, and then stepping over her lifeless body as she raced up the stairs for the bag of cash. She had planned on killing Thorne from the very beginning, from the first time she'd seen her image in the newspaper. She'd made a collection of clippings of Thorne at social functions and had grown to detest her. She'd grimace every time she'd see one of Thorne's ads. "Behind every beautiful face is an ugly old witch," she would say aloud. She detested Thorne's wealth and lived for the day that she would take it from her. The old bitch had the stink of money, an
odor Moira
had detested since her childhood.

She had gone to bed dreaming about it. Five million dollars, more money than she ever thought she'd possess. Now it was just the beginning. The early years of her life had been a travesty. The ones to follow would be different. She would make absolutely certain of it. It was time for the ugly old witch to die.

"Let's go in," Lido said. "It's a setup. She's in the pitch black, Herb. I don't like it."

Ambler stared through the windshield, a frown mired on his face. "Neither do I." He was focused, trying to determine if waiting would bring any benefit. "We don't know if Manny's in imminent danger. Is he there? Is there a gun pointed at his head?"

"I'm worried that there might be a gun pointed at Stephanie's head. Let's move."

"Agreed. Ransom Beach my ass." Ambler cranked the engine and picked up his radio to broadcast his decision. Just then, he saw the headlights on the white van turn on. "What the hell's going on now?"

They watched as the van pulled away from the curb and traveled roughly two blocks to the catering hall's parking lot.

"Hold?" Ambler asked.

"No, We don't know that the van's movement has anything to do with the activity in the catering hall. They're probably ready to make a move on the kidnappers. I say we go in now!"

"Good by me," Ambler said. He picked up his radio. "We're going in, people. Use caution—I want zero fatalities, got that?"

One of Ambler's men commented back, "Copy that, no fatalities."

Ambler nodded to Lido and slammed on the gas pedal, spinning the car's wheels as he pulled out.

A television is a pretty handy gadget. It can be used to entertain and teach, but to the best of my knowledge it had never been used in the fashion that I was about to use it now. There was the slightest possibility that Manny was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs and that my next actions would cause him great harm. Everything I knew about this case told me he wasn't. I thought about Helen Gillette lying dead in the morgue, her brainstem severed by a steak knife. My every instinct told me that the only thing waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs was a bullet and an eternity in heaven with my dad admonishing me for making such a stupid mistake. He'd taught me many things, the most important of which was to follow my own instincts above all else. I had already disconnected the TV's power and cable hookup. It was a thirteen-inch, less than twenty pounds. I lifted it over my head and hurled it down the stairs. It hit the steps about two thirds of the way down, bounded slightly in the air, and took a bullet in the glass screen before collapsing lifelessly onto the basement floor.

I pulled my LDA and was about to bound down the stairs when the wall on my right exploded. I covered up and dropped to the floor.

Carl heard the van's engine rev. At the same time, he felt a deep pain at the base of his skull. He attempted to touch the spot but found that his arms wouldn't move. They were fixed in front of him, extended from the shoulders out, somehow bound at the wrists. He was confused, more so, he was completely befuddled, until his eyes flittered open. He couldn't understand what he was doing in the driver's seat, but all at once the pieces started to fall into place. The world was closing in around him—the van's glass and steel, mixing with cement and cinderblock. It was all piling down on top of him, crushing the van, crushing him, the steel buckling and entombing him. He tried to cover his head but his wrists were bound to the steering wheel. He had regained consciousness just in time to see his life end.

I slithered across the floor like a darting snake, just in time to avoid the van that came crashing through the wall. Shattering debris was flying everywhere. Before I could recover, two men squeezed into the building through a space the van had created in the wall. They were large wooly men covered in dust and debris. One of them looked like Dr. Zaius, not the one from Charlton Heston's tongue-in-cheek Planet of the Apes, but from Tim Burton's version, the scary one. These brutish men had their guns drawn as they marched through the cloud of dust created by the decimated wall. The first one was coming at me, his gun drawn, ready to fire. I rolled across the floor, pulling the LDA from my coat. I came up on one knee, off balance, and pumped a round at him. I caught him in the shoulder, not the spot I had aimed for but good enough to do the job. The hit did not knock him down, but I had stunned him—he dropped his gun. I was already swinging my gun towards the second man, but it was too late. I heard the sound of a discharging weapon and braced for the impact.

It never came.

I heard a shell casing clatter to the ground. The second man staggered and collapsed, clearing my line of sight. Lido was framed in the opening between the crashed van and the wall, his automatic aimed at where the fallen man had been standing.

Lido rushed over to me. Ambler came through the wall behind him, followed by the troops.

"You okay?" Lido asked.

I nodded. I wanted to stroke his cheek, anything for a little physical contact, but now was not the time. All hell was breaking loose.

I jumped to my feet. Lido looked at me for direction. I pointed toward the staircase leading to the basement. That was all Lido needed to know. We moved cautiously down the staircase, guns drawn, sliding with our backs pressed up against the staircase wall.

I was pressed against the wall at the base of the steps, peeking into the basement. There wasn't much to see. The basement was dark. It was mostly empty except for a few old things the auctioneers had been unable to sell off. At the far end an exit door was agape.

My shooter had fled.

I raced across the basement to the open door. Lido was behind me. I emerged carefully into the night. The rear of the building was deserted, a vast field of weeds and debris. At that moment, the heavens opened up. I looked up as a torrent of rain poured down on my face—I could feel the thick makeup moisten and slide. It felt disgusting, as if I was shedding my skin. I helped it along, wiping my hand over my cheek, dragging the makeup off my face.

Ambler came through the door. He looked at me for information.

"Someone took a shot at me. They escaped through this door."

Ambler nodded and then he and Lido began running through the field. There was a road behind it. No doubt an escape vehicle had been parked there but it was long gone.

I turned and raced back into the building, through the basement, leaping over the small shattered TV that had taken one for me in the line of duty—back up the stairs to the main level.

One of Ambler's men was standing at the top of the staircase holding a searchlight. I snatched it out of his hand and set off to find the kitchen.

While outside I had noticed that a section of the building jutted out into the rear yard. The roof above that section of the building had large vents on it. I followed my hunch and soon found a pair of swinging doors that led to the kitchen. It was pitch black. I began exploring it carefully. The flashlight beam came across the large industrial oven I had seen. It had been behind Manny on the closed-circuit TV screen. The utility table was in front of it. This was where Manny had been. I still didn't know if he had been there that evening or if he had been taped earlier. In either case, he was not there now. My heart sank as I continued to search the kitchen, the beam of my flashlight probing every corner and crevice.

In the corner of the room was the closed-circuit camera the kidnappers had set up to broadcast Manny's presence to the TV monitor on the main level. The power light was still on. Manny had been there after all.

I don't know why I felt excited as I bounded out of the kitchen. The mission had failed miserably. We had failed at our attempt to recover Manny. None of us thought he'd actually be there, but he was, he had been. I found it hard to believe that the kidnappers had actually planned to make the exchange. Why? Yes, five million US was nothing to sneeze at, but there was so much more. Were we giving them too much credit? Don't you just hate it when the perp isn't bright enough to see the big picture? It wasn't rocket science.

I had another premonition as I looked about on the main level. A hunch I would follow up on as soon as I caught my breath, when I had sufficient time to indulge an unusual idea. The thought rose and then disappeared into a recess in my mind as I looked around the crime scene. The place was bedlam.

The room was now filled with law enforcement personnel. Lido had taken out one of the Neanderthals with a single shot. He was still on the floor near the van. The rain was being driven into the ruptured building by a fierce wind. I approached the body and looked down at his corpse. It looked like a beached whale. The deceased's name was Nicholas Nesos. One of the officers had gone through his pockets and left his wallet opened on his chest. The photo on his driver's license was poor quality, overexposed, which had bleached away much of his facial features. The real Nesos was a brute. My best guess was that he was six-foot-four and weighed in at two-seventy. His jet black hair was long. Nesos had done a haphazard job of pulling it back into a ponytail. Long strands had come loose and were draped across his face. Nesos was about to end my life when Lido ended his. My beau was in for a very special treat when we got home, a treat worthy of a life saving deed if you know what I mean. I think you do.

Dr. Zaius
was on
a
stretcher on his way out to the bus. His shoulder was bandaged where my bullet had tapped him. He was grimacing in pain. He too would've ended my life if I hadn't hit him first. I wanted to grab the paramedics and instruct them not to administer any pain meds. A big brute like that—I'm sure he could deal with a little pain.

The body count was up to two. Carl was dead behind the wheel of the van. The van's front end was wrapped around him like a blanket around a newborn baby. The fire department was on its way—it was going to take the Jaws of Life to open that tin can. Poor, poor, Carl, he was another casualty of religious overzealousness. Who would fight for The Faith? Who would combat the sinners? Who would prune
Celia
Thorne's orchids? It was a big loss all around.