Reflex (27 page)

Back at the mansion Hyacinth had said, "He's just a pilot. He doesn't know anything about us, or you. You tell him anything and I'll have to kill him and get another pilot."

Frank worked for International Aid. He'd been loaned to them at the request of Mr. Simons, a favor bought from the board of trustees by a very large donation.

"I didn't realize the weather was so bad," Hyacinth said.

Frank said, "Not a big deal. These are just the usual afternoon thunderstorms lasting a bit late. The MET forecast is clear after midnight."

"Is that when you want to go?"

"Oh-one-hundred."

Hyacinth looked at her watch. "What's local time?"

He looked at her, clearly puzzled. "It's seventeen twenty-eight. Didn't you change your watch on the flight?"

Hyacinth began setting the local time into her wristwatch. "No."

Frank asked, "How long were you at the terminal?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

He held up his hands, placating. "Sorry. None of my business, but, what with the weather, every international flight in the last five hours was diverted into Abuja."

"Ah," said Hyacinth. "Well we didn't come by that, um, mode of transport. We'll be back at oh-oh-thirty, for the flight, all right?"

"You want the car and the guards? We didn't book them for a trip into town but they'll be glad of the work."

"Where do you get them?" Hyacinth asked. "Is there an agency?"

He laughed. "You might say that. They're National Police. Approximately half the force in Lagos is on hire as bodyguards while the other half runs vehicle checkpoints to scam 'let me go' money out of people with improper papers."

Hyacinth made a silent "Oh" with her mouth. "Don't worry about the car or the guards. We'll make our own way."

"I wouldn't go into town without them," Frank said.

Davy didn't blame him for being worried. It was fourteen miles into Lagos proper, not that the city hadn't spread out to the airport—there were more people in the area than in Los Angeles.

Hyacinth shook her head. "We won't."

She left the office and walked along the row of the doors, toward the aircraft. Frank was staring at them from the doorway, but she ignored his comment, "There's no exit back that way."

Hyacinth turned, and when she turned to pass behind the larger of the three helicopters she glanced back at Davy. "Okay?"

"Let me get my bearings." Davy took a deep breath of tropical flowers, aviation fuel, and distant smell of rotting trash. "Okay."

He picked her up from behind and she deliberately rubbed her butt against his hips. He jumped back to the square—the room in the mansion—and pushed her away, blinking in the better lighting.

She stumbled forward to regain her balance then turned, looking down at his crotch. "Do you have something in your pocket?"

He jumped past her, to the door, and opened it. "We should both get some rest if we're going back in three hours."

She raised her eyebrows and sauntered toward him. "We could lie down for a while, sure."

He considered jumping her downstairs to the dining room and immediately returning to the room alone, but there was no lock on the door. He sighed. "Leave me be." After several beats he added, "Please."

She lifted a hand and put it on his chest, just over the scar, and smoothed Davy's shirt with her fingertips.

"Or I'll jump you back to Lagos and leave you to wait in the airport terminal."

This got to her. "You can't. The keys aren't on."

He shook his head. "You're lying. You haven't communicated with your team. You didn't hear the weather report until I did. You couldn't have planned it in advance. There were too many dynamic factors."

"You're right. I better see to that." She took a cell phone from her bag and pushed a button. "Excuse me."

She left.

Davy thought about jumping back to Nigeria, before she had a chance to communicate with her team, but what good would it do? As soon as she reached them, they'd shut down the keys and he'd be forced back here.

Wait.

Millie's cheek, where it had rested on the stone, was numb, and there was a pool of saliva sticking to her chin.

Gross.
She wiped it with her sleeve and checked her watch. She'd been down for ten minutes, but she doubted she would've woken up at all, if she were still in the condo. The numbness in her cheek was wearing off and with it came a stinging. She checked her face in the mirror by the bed and found she'd scraped her cheek when she'd passed out.

Life is
entirely
too interesting.

She threw on clean jeans and a dark tee-shirt, running shoes without socks, and Davy's dark leather jacket. Then she grabbed the binoculars and jumped to Stillwater but not the condo. She appeared in the city park a block from her place, next to the merry-go-round. A streetlight shining on the playground equipment cast stark, elongated shadows across the dead grass and dirt.

She stood still for a moment, listening, panning her head slowly. A dog walked briskly by on the street, anointed the base of a signal light, then trotted on. She heard cars on adjoining streets and saw their distant headlights reflecting off buildings.

She went into the stand of trees that bordered the park and moved down the chainlink fence that separated the park from a convenience store and the back end of the subdivision that contained her condo. She jumped to the other side of the fence and then to the roof of the gas station. An extra-large façade on the front of the building was lit by the bright lights and illuminated signs over the pumps and, as a result, cast a deep shadow across the gravel and tar roof. Millie put the binoculars to her eyes and studied the two sides of the condo visible to her.

She could make out the entrance to the parking garage, but not the main walk-in entrance. A minivan arrived as she watched but she recognized it as one of the families from the first floor.

She thought about the gas in the condo.
What could they have used?
There were the gaseous anesthetics but she didn't know much about them.
Except many of them depress respiration. Rather dangerous thing to administer
without
careful attention.
Hopefully there were people close at hand and some sort of motion sensors.

How did they tape the inside of the door and get out of the apartment?
The apartment was moderately airtight. Sheetrock walls and ceiling with taped joints, plywood floor covered in carpet or tile. Davy had used expanded foam at the wet wall where the pipes entered the dwelling in an effort to keep the neighbors' cockroach problem from becoming theirs. So, that left the door to the hall, the windows, the fireplace, and the balcony's sliding door. The windows were tight, double-paned, with rubber seals.

She nodded to herself.
The patio door.
The sliding door had a good seal—they made sure all the windows were shut, sealed the front door and fireplace, and left by the balcony.

She jumped back into the trees and went wide around the block. There was a tree two streets away from her patio that she'd always been curious about. She'd seen a girl and a smaller boy playing in it after the leaves fell. While the leaves were still up, it was screened, but now, the leaves were just budding. She found the appropriate yard and, after several attempts, jumped into the tree, from lower branch to upper branch, and finally climbing over the low railing onto the small wooden platform.

Squatting down, her back braced against the trunk, she thought she could avoid silhouetting herself against the city lights, at least as seen from the condo. She focused the field glasses on the apartment and frowned. The curtains were drawn and there didn't seem to be any lights behind them. She sighed and wondered if they'd even known their trap was sprung.

If I had left that trap I would be monitoring the place with low-light video.

Maybe they didn't need to come check it.

There was a flicker of darkness—not light, but as if the white curtains had shifted slightly. Millie thought she'd imagined it but then she saw it again, the swirl of the curtain pushed aside, then a figure moved between the curtain and the glass door. The reflection on the door changed slightly as the door slid quickly open and shut. There wasn't much light on the balcony but Millie could tell the figure wore a full face respirator, like the ones used by firefighters, complete with a backpack-slung air tank.

For one second she thought the person might
be
a local fire fighter, perhaps from the city HazMat team.
Right. Where are the lights? The trucks? The crowd of onlookers being held back by police?

The figure pushed his mask up onto the top of his head, the supply hose jutting forward and down like the trunk of an elephant trumpeting. As the figure peered over the rail, looking down, and swiveled its head left and right, the light from the corner street lamp shined on his face.

Millie blinked, surprised.
What is
he
doing here?
It was the Monk, Padgett, who'd shot an FBI agent while escaping from the site of Millie's attempted kidnapping.
Well, it's not D.C. The FBI are probably not combing
this
vicinity as vigorously.

Her mouth felt odd and she realized she had pulled her lips back from her teeth which were grinding together. She couldn't help thinking of the day Padgett had harried her through the National Gallery.

She expected him to climb down, to drop onto the grass below, but instead, Padgett reached up, to climb toward the balcony above—the third floor. He was struggling a bit and she thought it was the SCBA pack.

Perhaps he will fall,
she thought with a slight degree of hope. She pursed her lips and studied the dwelling above. There wasn't anyone else on that balcony and the door was shut completely.
Perhaps he could be
made
to fall.

It took Padgett several tries to swing his leg up to the edge of the third floor balcony. He pulled himself up and had just achieved a standing position, feet on the lip of the balcony, hands on the railing, when Millie appeared on the balcony and yelled in his face.

Padgett recoiled, a natural enough reaction when one is suddenly confronted with a figure and noise appearing before your face out of nothing, but he probably wouldn't have fallen if not for the weight of the SCBA pack. He twisted as he lost his grip on the railing, and Millie, suddenly conscious of the consequences of Padgett landing on his back, the air tank beneath his spine, felt her stomach lurch.

Fortunately Padgett twisted in midair, managing to face outward and remain upright, but the sound of his impact with the ground was bad enough.

She turned and glanced into the condo through the sliding glass door. There was a glow against the wall, like the light from a TV or computer screen, but there didn't seem to be anyone else within.
If he had a partner, they would've helped him up, wouldn't they?

She jumped to the ground, her way, Davy's way—
not
Padgett's way. It was dark below, for the distant streetlight that had lit the balcony above was blocked at ground level by a tall evergreen hedge.

Though Padgett had avoided landing
on
the air tank, its weight had slammed him to the ground. His mouth gaped as he strained to breathe, but he wasn't getting any air. She felt enormous guilt wash over her and hoped he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. She pictured broken ribs puncturing a lung or a crushed trachea blocking his airway.

She hovered, wondering how to get him breathing, when his eyes focused on her. Still gape-mouthed, his right hand clawed across his stomach to where a gun hung in a clip-on cross-draw holster. The memory of the FBI agent he'd shot came as she stepped forward and kicked at the reaching hand. She missed, but the toe of her sneaker caught him in the stomach and the gun, half out of the holster, fell to the ground as he doubled over.

Besides knocking the gun out of his hands, the kick in the stomach had apparently jump-started his diaphragm. Padgett's fish-like gaping had gone to a labored, asthmatic wheezing that did seem to be moving air in and out of his lungs. Millie darted forward and scooped up the gun, a blocky automatic, then stepped well back out of range. She looked at it and shuddered. She didn't even know where the safety was or whether it was cocked or chambered.

I can always hit him over the head with it.
She looked back at Padgett. Her eyes were adjusting and she made out a pair of handcuffs in a loop on his belt. Hoping again that there weren't broken ribs, she walked around him and pushed him flat onto his face, leaning down onto the airtank. He tried to struggle back over and she pressed the muzzle of the gun into the back of his head.

"Don't be stupid, Mr. Padgett." She wasn't going to tell him that her finger was nowhere near the trigger.

He froze at the gun's touch and she fished the handcuffs from below his hip. These, at least, she knew how to work. She'd done an internship during college at the county jail—psychiatric evaluations on incoming prisoners. They hadn't been responsible for handling cuffs but the guards had shown them what to do in an emergency and had let them play with the cuffs. Once she had both of his wrists secured behind Padgett's back she double-locked them with the key she'd found in his pocket.

She still didn't feel in control, though. The man probably knew a dozen ways to turn the tables on her, handcuffs and all, so she snaked his belt out of his pants and hog-tied his ankles.

That's better.

She was surprised that they hadn't been disturbed by a neighbor coming to see what the noises had been about—either her scream or the sound of Padgett hitting the ground. The nearest condo's windows were lit, but through the closed window she could hear a television blaring.
Ah.

Still, they could be interrupted at any minute.

She took the air tank off of him. She had to unthread the shoulder straps completely because of the handcuffs but was able to unbuckle the waist belt. She jumped it to the Aerie and put the tank and facemask on the bed. After a few seconds' thought, she put the gun on top of the propane refrigerator.