“We’ll do our best,” I shouted above the high-pitched screams of the audience, a shrill, near-ear-splitting dissonance. “And we’re right here, with you.”
Cassidy nodded, then turned and ran up the ramp onto the
stage. Her band was already in place, playing a pulsing, heavy beat, and she jumped in on cue. As frightened as she must have been, the kid was a trooper, fueled by the cries of her fans and the prospect of discovering a long-lost brother, even if he saw her only as his quarry.
On the stage, Cassidy joined the dancers and the backup singers, while I followed Germaine into the first black tent. Jake, the sound guy, manned the mixer. Earlier that afternoon, with his help, our computer guys had easily found the chip Peterson inserted in Atlanta. But we’d left it in place. For our plan to work, we needed Argus to believe he was the one in control.
I watched from the sidelines, hidden from the audience inside the sound tent as Cassidy performed on the stage. David stood beside me, as he had in Dallas. This time, however, we had more eyes than Argus, more than four hundred supplied by the two hundred officers, and we knew our prey’s identity, a decided advantage. After the first number, Cassidy ran down the ramp and into the tent, where Germaine and the dressers waited. They went into high gear, peeling off her clothes and wiggling her into her next costume, a pair of skintight jeans that settled around her hips and a flirty sweater with holes over a white tank top.
“No sign?” she asked, as Germaine ran a brush through her hair, and picked up a tube of lipstick to repair the damage.
“No sign,” I said. “We’re watching. You just do your act, and we’ll do the rest.”
“Okay,” she said, turning and quickly running back toward the stage where the dancers covered for her.
“Any reports?” David asked the captain on his walkie-talkie.
“Nothing,” the captain said. “We’re on full watch.”
On the stage, Cassidy was on top of her game, roiling her fans into a near frenzy. Even without her golden cocoon, the kid was a sight to behold, dancing and singing, a smile as wide as her face, her long blond hair flying about her.
The concert proceeded without a glitch, as if it were any other night. There was no stopping the young superstar, as she went from song to song, carrying her fans with her. They sang along, many reciting every word. In between each set, Cassie ran back to the dressers and searched my eyes for hope that we’d made a sighting and that we had the stalker we now believed was her disturbed brother in custody. David and I shook our heads, with no assurances to give her. For more than an hour, she performed as she had many times before, putting every ounce of energy into each song. In the stands, the tens of thousands of girls sang along, waving their arms in the air as they held tiny pink flashlights and glowing pinwheels, making the stadium swim with waves of light.
“The kid’s actually pretty good,” David said, during the final set. “I’m kind of getting into this.”
I gave him a sideways look and a smile. “Yeah, she is,” I agreed. “Just don’t start dancing. This isn’t the time.”
His eyes were focused on the audience, the stage, surveying the crowds, as we both had throughout the concert, but he laughed. “Seems to me we danced once, and I rather enjoyed it,” he said.
“Seems to me we did more than that once, and I enjoyed it, too.”
“Well, I do remember . . . ,” he said, with a devilishly broad grin. Whatever else he planned to say was lost as his smile locked in place. His eyes focused on something in the distance, and I tracked them to the figure of a man in the front row, a heavyset guy with unruly dark hair, running toward an aisle, where a low gate led to the arena floor. The object of our attention fussed with the gate, then jumped over it, and David lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes to get a closer look.
“Is that Peterson?” I asked.
Without answering, David bumped the captain on his walkie-talkie. “Section one-two-seven, first row, center, on the stadium floor and running,” he said.
“About time,” the captain said. “East center patrols move in. One-two-seven, center, on the ground and running.”
Dozens of officers swarmed out of the audience toward section 127, but then, suddenly, the stadium lights flickered, blinking on, off, on again, then off. Over the loudspeaker Argus’s voice came through loud and clear: “Cassidy, I’m here for you. I’m coming.”
Fans screamed, and Reliant Stadium went dark. The generator kicked in and emergency aisle lights shone a bright gold, but stadium center, where Cassidy stood in disbelief staring out into the crowd, remained shrouded in shadow.
“I’ll grab her,” I said. “Call Buckshot and get the limo.”
“He’s on his way,” David called out, pointing at headlights hurrying toward us.
As David rushed forward toward the suspect, I sprinted onstage, where Cassidy stood transfixed. In Dallas, the prospect of Argus claiming her had terrified her, but now she looked expectant, hopeful. I grabbed the kid by the arm, and urged her to follow, pulling her off the stage, but she resisted.
“He’s here,” she said. “My brother’s here. He said he’s coming. He won’t hurt me. I just need to tell him who I am.”
“No, Cassidy. You don’t know how he’ll react,” I screamed. “We’ll talk to him later, after they’ve got him. Now, follow me. Come on.”
The limo pulled up, and I yanked the door open, stuffed the kid in, and jumped in beside her. The engine wound and the limo took off, throwing a U-turn and heading back to the north entrance.
“I need to talk to Justin. I need to find him,” Cassidy cried out, reaching toward the door handle. Her hand got there before I could stop her, but the door didn’t open. “Let me out. I need to find him.”
I don’t know what, but something didn’t feel right. The glass privacy window, the one separating the rear of the limo from the
driver, was up. I looked at the back of the driver’s cowboy hat and thought of the last time I’d seen Buckshot, when he’d driven us into the stadium. A sense of dread flooded through me.
“This isn’t right,” I whispered.
“What?” Cassidy said. “What’s not right? Tell him to stop and unlock the damn door. I want to go back.”
“The black cowboy hat’s not right. Buckshot’s was regulation ranger, silver belly.”
The limo tore out of the stadium through the north entrance, just as I spotted a second black limo, one with Buckshot standing beside it, tires flattened. My fellow ranger had his shotgun out, aiming at us. He looked like he wanted to shoot, maybe at the tires, like nothing would have made him happier, but there were so many folks around, workers and cowboys and their families, rushing about, trying to get a glimpse at the chaos unfolding inside the stadium, that they blocked the shot. Unlike his renowned exploit with the rustler, this time Buckshot didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he ran toward a cowboy holding the reins of a horse, pushed the man aside, threw himself up onto the stallion, and took off in pursuit.
“Isn’t that our driver?” Cassidy asked, as we sped away from him, toward the gates at the edge of the parking lot. In the distance waited the freeway.
“Yeah,” I said.
At the wheel, the driver tramped on the gas pedal. Behind us, Buckshot urged the horse on, into a full gallop, like the limo careening around cars and folks on foot. But the limo was too fast and the horse had too much to overcome. Before long, Buckshot and his commandeered mount faded in the distance as the limo neared the parking-lot gate.
“We’re jumping. Get ready,” I said. I reached down, pulled up the locking pin on the door, and, as the limo slowed to take a sharp corner, grabbed the handle. It didn’t budge. I tried again, kicking a
the door with the thick heels on my cowboy boots, while the limo made a wide right turn out the gate and onto the freeway access road. Again, it stayed rigid, locked. No sense in a third try. No one could hear us scream. The film over the windows was so dark, no one could see us. We were trapped.
“Sarah, is it Justin? Where’s he taking us?” Cassidy asked in a small voice, a mixture of fear and excitement.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Can he hear us?” Cassidy whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably.”
Immediately, Cassidy pounded with both fists on the privacy window. “Justin,” she shouted. “You’re my brother. We figured this out. You’re my brother. That’s why you’re stalking me, because you don’t know, but you’re my brother.”
The limo sped through the darkness onto the 610 Loop, with no response from the driver. Cassidy pounded again, but this time her efforts were met by a scraping noise. As we watched, black metal shields rose up from inside the window wells. Cassidy clawed at one, pushing it down, but the metal was sharp, and she pulled away her fingers, bleeding. I grabbed my Colt .45 out of my holster and fired two rounds into a side window, as a sheet of black metal slowly slid up to cover it. The tempered glass shattered into thousands of irregular pieces with bullet holes at the center, but remained intact. I lay on my back and kicked with all the force I had, but before I could break through, the metal skin closed the gap.
I turned to shoot at the driver though the privacy window, but a metal shield covered that as well.
A voice came over a speaker, one I recognized as Justin Peterson’s. “Thank you for joining us, Lieutenant Armstrong,” he said. “I hardly recognized you at first, but it’s certainly an added bonus to have you here.”
“Justin,” Cassidy screamed. “Justin, you’re my brother. My brother.”
“There’s no use in attempting to escape,” he said, as if he couldn’t hear her. “I’ve had plenty of time to outfit this limo and, as I’m sure you realize by now, I’m rather good mechanically and with technology.”
“Mr. Peterson,” I shouted. “Pull over and talk to us. We can explain all this. It’s all a mistake.”
“So I suggest you sit back and relax,” he said, either not listening or choosing to ignore us. “The ride won’t take long, and I think you’ll both be impressed by what I have planned.”
C
assidy and I were entombed in the back of the limo, the doors locked and all the windows hidden behind metal shields. We drove for fifteen minutes or so, the teenager resting against me, leaning on me for support. She was terrified, and so was I. I had my gun in my right hand and my left arm over her narrow shoulders, when I felt the car make an abrupt right turn then drive down what felt like a series of steep ramps. We wove around for a few minutes, and then the car stopped, and Peterson turned the engine off. It was quiet, and we waited. Judging by the little I saw as we left the stadium and the relatively short distance he’d driven, I figured we were somewhere in downtown Houston, probably in an underground parking structure.
Most of the way, I’d told myself help was following, trailing us from the stadium. Now, looking at it logically, I figured, probably not. The kid in the front row, the one David spotted, had to be a decoy planted to draw attention. By then, Peterson had let the air out of Buckshot’s tires, which gave him plenty of time, once he killed the lights, to drive into the stadium before David and the captain
discovered they were chasing the wrong guy. By now, of course, they knew they’d been set up, but it was too late. We were gone. All Buckshot could tell them was that we’d pealed onto the freeway.
We were on our own.
“Lieutenant, I need your gun,” Peterson said. “There’s a small door on the right side, below the privacy window, that opens into a metal drawer. Put the gun in and close the door.”
“Like hell,” I whispered.
Again, silence, and we waited. Cassidy’s body shuddered, and I held her tighter.
“I haven’t heard the door open. I assume that means you’ve decided not to cooperate,” he said.
The girl had been silent, I figured too scared to speak, but this time, hearing her brother’s voice, she sat up and pounded at the metal-skinned privacy window. Tears ran down her cheeks, but her voice remained strong, determined. “Justin, it’s me, Cassidy, but my real name is Angie. I’m your sister,” she screamed. “Please, roll the window down. We need to talk. You’re my brother.”
Peterson continued on, in his calm, unconcerned tone.
“I need the gun, Lieutenant. While I’m prepared to wait for it, I don’t have unlimited time until your colleagues find us. So this is the situation,” he said. “Do as I instructed, please. Open the door, put the gun inside, and close the door. Or, don’t. And I’ll kill you both right here, right now, in the backseat of this limo, then simply walk away.”
“Sarah,” Cassidy pleaded. “Give him the gun, so we can talk to him. He’ll understand. Once he knows who I am, he wouldn’t hurt us.”
I put my index finger up to my lips and shushed her.
“Give me a minute,” I said. She looked uncertain, but nodded. I looked about the backseat, wondering how he planned to kill us. Then, the more I thought about it, I figured that wasn’t in the
cards. Considering the situation, he wanted us alive. He’d planned for too long to finish us off so unceremoniously. Why pursue Cas-sidy for months and then dispatch her before he had all his fun? At least, that was my best guess, one I was staking both our lives on. If Peterson wanted my gun, he’d have to come after it.
Cassidy sat so close to me, I felt her heart beating. I surveyed the headliner covering the inner roof and saw nothing. I inspected the privacy window area, acting like I was searching for the door. If Peterson wondered what I was doing, I hoped he’d think I was trying to comply. What I actually had in mind was finding the camera. There had to be a camera. He had to be watching us. He’d want to see us, to increase his enjoyment of our suffering. No fun without the visuals. I spotted a small grate in an indentation near the roof, took my jack-knife out of my pocket, and used a blade to pry it open. As I suspected, I looked directly into a camera lens. I raised my right leg and kicked with my gray lizard-skin boot, smashing the lens.
“Why did you do that?” Cassidy cried out. “He’ll think he has to hurt us.”
I shushed her again. I could tell it was a struggle for the kid. During our time together, she’d begun trusting me. But I knew she figured I was dead wrong, that if I just did as Peterson instructed, we could talk to him and clear the whole thing up. Sounded comforting, but I still had my doubts.