“I can’t believe this,” Bradley muttered, his eyes roaming the area, trying to catch a glimpse of Lauren. He continued on down the street, circled back, and made another pass.
Where the hell
is
she?
He stood there on the street corner, rubbing the knuckles of his left hand against the stubble on his cheek. Nothing was simple anymore, it seemed. As the days had passed, Bradley had found that he’d committed the ultimate sin: he had grown attached to Lauren. His goals were still the same, but the methods by which he had to go about accomplishing them had changed. He knew firsthand that relationships introduced unwanted and unnecessary complications. He cursed himself for becoming involved with her. For allowing himself to care.
He took a few moments to prioritize his needs, then headed for the antiques shop down the street.
Harper Payne was frozen. Not so much by the cold, but by what he had just witnessed. Moments ago, he had watched Lauren as she walked down the street, headed for their meeting place. His heart had seemed to rise in his chest, and he found it difficult to breathe. He knew her walk, the blue jacket she was wearing. He remembered.
Now, he looked down at Waller and Haviland, who were standing over the body of the man he had paid $25—with the promise of 25 more—to meet with Lauren and give her a message, a message designed to have her get back in her car and drive another few blocks to a different meeting area. It was an extra step, a security measure to make sure she wasn’t being followed by one of Knox’s men.
His decoy, dressed in a baseball hat and blue windbreaker, had waited in the doorway of a music store down the block. Payne had caught the man’s gaze and waved a white handkerchief in front of the window. His contact then nodded, acknowledging the signal, and headed off toward Lauren. The rest ended in disaster.
As Payne’s gaze remained transfixed on the street below, he thought of Lauren. He had come so close, and yet he had nothing to show for it. He had watched, helplessly, as the three men had made their way down George Street. The glimpse of a blue jacket bobbing up and down amongst them could have been his imagination—it was getting dark and it was difficult to see, let alone make out colors—but it could also have been Lauren. Now, he could only hope that she was somewhere safe.
At the moment, however, if he was to hold out any hope of helping her—and himself—he had to deal with two much more pressing issues. And they were standing thirty feet below him.
“Ideas?” Haviland asked.
Waller glanced up and down the street. The small crowd of people—tourists, locals, shop owners—were inching closer, drawn by the sight of two men lying in puddles of blood. “Whatever we do, it’s gotta be fast. If we let Payne give us the slip again, Knox will have our asses.”
“Agreed.”
“We’ve got two problems,” Waller said in a low voice. “First one is the armed skel who’s prowling the streets. That DOD guy, Ramirez, said he and his partner were expecting Scarponi to be here. If that’s the case, whoever took out Sean McCracken and Ramirez’s partner is one of Scarponi’s men. Given what just went down here, my bet is he’s looking for Harper. They probably saw this guy approaching Lauren Chambers, assumed it was Harper, and took him out.”
“So we get to Harper before he does.”
“That’s problem number two. Bagging Harper is going to be up to us,” Waller said. “Backup units are off in pursuit of the three skels. Hopefully, Harper’s still up in that church tower. But if we both leave the body and he’s watching us, he’ll know something’s up and he’ll take off. If there’s a back entrance, we’ll never get to him in time.”
“So I’ll go in and flush him out,” Haviland said.
“I should go, I know how he thinks. You stay here and make sure he doesn’t come out as I go in. You can join me when I have visual.”
“After all that’s happened, you sure this isn’t personal? Between you and Harper, I mean.”
“And what if it is?” Waller asked, locking eyes with his partner.
Haviland shook his head. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Jon.”
That makes two of us.
Waller backed off and headed across the street toward the cemetery to the left of the church, just in case Payne was still watching.
Once out of sight from the church’s tower, Waller ran toward the building and threw his back up against the eggshell-colored brick facade. He inched along its exterior and eased the left entrance door open.
With his back against the wall, he rolled inside, gun out in front of him. He quietly pulled the door shut behind him and stood there, frozen in place, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness.
Seconds passed. Waller used the time to listen to his surroundings. Voices in the distance—children’s voices. Not a good sign, not when there were guns around.
Damn you, Harper. Stop this game. Before anyone else gets hurt.
As his vision improved, he quickly surveyed the layout of the floor. Across the lobby to his right, the staircase that led downstairs to the basement was barely visible. Now that he had a look at the interior, he realized he could use Haviland’s help. He brought the lapel mike up to his mouth and signaled his partner. “Come in the east entrance, to the right of the building,” he whispered. He informed Haviland about the children, and then began ascending the spiral steps that led to the second, third, and fourth levels of the church, including the bell tower.
As he neared the second floor, he tucked his chin down toward his collar. “Scott—”
Just then, he heard a door open above him, in the east wing of the church. Waller dropped to his knees and held his breath. He was a little more than halfway up to the second landing. Suddenly, Haviland’s voice began crackling in his earpiece, which sounded to him as if it were being broadcast over a loudspeaker system. He grabbed the plug and yanked it from the receiver on his belt, immediately cutting off the transmission.
A few seconds later, he reinserted the plug and pulled the mike to his lips. “Shh,” he said, hoping that Haviland would get the hint and realize that Payne was now only ten to twenty feet away from him.
The cries of an ambulance were approaching, getting louder with each passing second... no doubt on its way to tend to the two downed bodies. Suddenly, the wails reached a climax—then stopped abruptly. Two doors slammed shut, followed by the arrival of two additional police cars charged with cordoning off the crime scene the paramedics were about to trample through.
Beyond all the extraneous noise, Payne’s ears picked up the sound of someone in the stairwell. He descended the steps to the second floor and waited for a few seconds, the high-impact-plastic handle of the Glock suddenly feeling warm and reassuring in the palm of his hand. He moved through the doorway into the horseshoe-shaped balcony that overlooked the rows of pews and ornate altar below. Loud creaking in the worn, century-old wooden floorboards was like a loudspeaker announcing his location. He grimaced with each step, realizing that he had to get out of there as quickly as possible.
As he attempted to climb behind a piano that was blocking the path connecting the east and west wings, he suddenly heard the metallic click of a bullet being chambered. He stopped and dropped down at the end of the piano.
“It’s over, Harper. Move away from the piano and drop your weapon.”
Payne stood so he could get a look at where Waller was in relation to his potential escape routes. “I’m not going with you, Jon.”
“It’s not up to you.”
“I think it is.” Payne backed to his right. He was moving toward the three-deep rows of benches that extended forty feet from the near wall of the church—the side that overlooked Princess Anne Street—to the far wall, where the altar was located.
Waller was standing in front of the first row of benches on the opposite side of the balcony from Payne, behind a white wrought-iron railing that overlooked the first floor of pews. Waller’s Glock was clasped in his hands at chest level, pointed at his colleague and prisoner. For a long second the two men just stood there, staring at each other.
“You’re not going to shoot me, Jon. I’m worth too much to you. Knox would have your creds in a second.”
“You
have my credentials, Harp. You took them from me, remember?”
Payne’s eyes roamed the area, looking for the easiest way out. But there was none. “Now you know how I feel. I took your identity from you just like mine was taken from me.” Payne heard a noise coming from the far wall. “Where’s Scott?”
“I’ve tried to give you your identity back. You’re forgetting that.”
“Then why’d you try to keep me from my wife? I know what you were up to—”
Just then, Haviland appeared twenty feet to his right. “Stop right there, Scott,” Payne said, twisting his head from Waller to Haviland and back to Waller. This was not good. He couldn’t simultaneously watch two adversaries standing at ninety degrees to one other. “Both of you, drop your guns. Now!”
“I got ripped a new asshole for surrendering my weapon to you the last time,” Waller said. “You’re not getting it again.”
“Why don’t you just come with us,” Haviland said. “We’ll sit down, talk it out. Can’t do that with guns pointed at each other.”
Payne backed toward the door that was now fifteen feet away, the one that led down the stairs to the front of the building. But even if he made it to the doorway and down the steps, Waller would only be a few steps behind, as an identical door and staircase was on the west side of the building. And the steps spilled out into the same ground-floor lobby.
As Payne stepped back, the creaking floorboards echoed in the empty church. “I’d rather go it alone,” he said as he reached the door. He turned the knob and gave it a shove.
“Harper—”
But before Haviland could finish his sentence, Payne disappeared into the dark spiral stairwell.
Payne heard the quick, creaking footsteps of Waller and Haviland following behind as he ran down the stairs in the dim light, the small flower-shaped windows letting in what little light was coming from the streetlamps. He hit the lobby on the run, slammed through the front door, and jumped down the steps.
And came face-to-face with Scott Haviland.
How’d he get out here so fast?
But in the instant the question popped into his head, it became a moot point as Payne dropped his head and left shoulder and plowed into Haviland’s abdomen with the skill of a running back. Despite his stocky build, the shocked agent was lifted off the ground and sent sprawling backward to the concrete.
Haviland let out an agonizing groan as his back hit the pavement, his Glock flying from his hand and landing a dozen feet away. Payne scooped it up on the run as if it were a fumbled football and headed down George Street, sprinting as fast as possible with a bum leg. His destination was not an end zone, but continued freedom—and another chance to link up with his wife.
As he ran by the National Bank of Fredericksburg, he slowed a bit, half-limping and half-running past a parking lot and a few brick houses. He cut right onto Charles and noticed the iron-gated entrance to the Masonic Cemetery diagonally ahead of him.
With the descending darkness and large-canopied maple and cedar trees blocking the light from the nearby streetlamps, the headstones would provide adequate cover from his pursuers.
He darted out into the street—but heard footsteps approaching from behind. He spun around, the Glock still in his hand, expecting to see Waller.
But in the dark street, he could only glimpse the vague silhouette of a man, a spark issuing from his weapon. In the split second that followed, Payne became aware of a burning sensation as he gulped a mouthful of cold air.
The intense, close-range explosion suddenly registered in his ears, ringing longer than the actual gunshot and continuing until he hit the pavement and lost consciousness.
Jonathan Waller had run right by his partner, who was writhing in pain on the sidewalk and simultaneously trying to catch his breath. Waller sprinted up the street and heard the discharge of a handgun in the middle of the intersection of George and Charles Streets, twenty-five yards ahead of him. Boom, boom, boom. Three shots.
And suddenly Waller’s heart was in his throat. There was simply no other way of describing his fear at that instant—a pulsing, choking fullness that prevented him from breathing.
As he came running around the corner onto Charles, his eyes immediately locked on the police officer crouched next to a body that was laid out face up near the Masonic Cemetery’s front entrance. The torso was on the blacktop, the head against the curb.
In the darkness it was difficult for Waller to see. He held out hope that the victim who was sprawled across the road was the leather-jacketed man he had wounded only a short time ago. But if it wasn’t the perp, the alternative was too painful to consider. As he approached, he saw a Glock forty caliber handgun lying in the street.
At that moment, his heart, having appeared to drop down out of his throat, lost its rhythm for a second. A mere flutter in his chest.
Despite the cold air, Waller instantly began to sweat and suddenly became aware of how truly exhausted he was. And as he stood now in front of the fallen man, he heard the officer calling for an ambulance over his two-way.
That’s when he finally gathered the nerve to look at the victim, when he saw the face of Harper Payne.
For the first time in his life, Jonathan Waller was frozen, unable to think, unsure of what to do.
“He had the gun in his hand and he turned toward me with it, it looked like he was bringing it up to fire...”
The cop’s voice was somewhere in the background, in some far-off place, where Jonathan Waller wished he could be.
Away from here.
Anywhere
but here.
Scott Haviland’s ribs were aching something fierce, and every breath reminded him of the blow he had taken moments before. With his left hand strapped across his torso as if holding his chest would lessen the pain, he came limping up to Charles Street and tried to size up the scene with one quick glance at the dark roadway, which was now illuminated by a quarter moon poking through the thick cloud cover. His eyes darted from one figure to another: perp on the ground, cop barking into his two-way, partner standing over the body.