Torn (35 page)

“Something has happened to her,” Irene says. “She was always dangerous, but lately it’s gotten worse. I think she must be delusional. All of her Sixes have seen Noah, so why does she think she can make him disappear? Everybody already knows he’s here, she can’t just make him disappear. It doesn’t make sense.”

Shane goes into the bathroom, returns with a cold cloth. “You may need to have that cauterized,” he says. “This will help with the swelling.”

“I never wanted to do this,” she says, pleading with me. “You’ve got to believe me.”

Her nose may be broken, but there seems to be no way to stop her from babbling on, making her excuses. How her husband got in trouble with the Rulers for cheating on his share-in, and how Evangeline and her horrible boyfriend were about to ruin them—leave them virtually penniless, imagine!—and the only way out was to do what they demanded. Take the job in Humble, befriend the child, bring him to Conklin. She’d never known that the police chief would be killed in front of the children, or that the school would be blown up, honest! And she’d only agreed to continue as Noah’s tutor to make sure he was okay, blah blah blah.

“Let me get this right,” I say. “You’re given a choice—lose money or kidnap an innocent child—and you choose to kidnap the child?
That’s
your defense? That’s the best you can come up with?”

Noah, clinging to my neck, whispers, “She’s lying, Mom. She’s a liar, liar with her pants on fire.”

“I know that, sweetie. Hush now. It doesn’t matter. We don’t have to listen to her anymore. Not ever again.”

“No,” agrees Shane. “But she’s right about one thing. We do need to get out of here, and fast. If I’m not mistaken, the entire building, or most of it, has been evacuated.”

I’m really too busy comforting Noah to pay close attention to what he’s saying, but I can see from his expression that he’s very worried, that in his mind we’re still in immediate danger.

“You were yelling loud enough to rattle the walls,” he points out. “No security response? There’s only one explanation—nobody comes to see what’s going on because they’ve already left.”

“Evangeline is still here,” Irene says, talking around her clotted nose. “She and her Sixes. At the top level, in the private residence. They’re holding vigil for Arthur.”

“But the guards are gone,” Shane says, pondering. “Rats deserting the ship.”

He decides we can’t wait for the Hostage Rescue Team to breach the building. The fastest way out is the way we came in—through the tunnel.

“Follow me,” he urges. “No sneaking around, we’ll run for it.”

“Don’t leave me!” Irene begs, following us out the door, into the deserted hallway.

Shane is right. I was yelling to raise the dead, that should have attracted attention. And if the building has been abandoned by the security chief and his men, there has to be a reason.

“Mom?” says Noah, releasing his grip on my neck. “Put me down. We can run faster that way.”

Holding his hand, we run for the stairs. Shane in the lead, his long legs eating up the yards, and Irene whimpering and stumbling as she tries to keep up.

Part of me is frightened—who wouldn’t be?—but part of me can’t help noticing how fast Noah can run. He’s nimble and balanced, physically healthy. So they must have fed him okay. My mommy gut tells me he hasn’t been damaged beyond repair. Whatever else he’s been through, whatever mental traumas he’s suffered, we can deal with all that.

He clings to my hand, though, and won’t let go, as if he can’t bear to lose physical contact. I expect he’ll be back sleeping in my bedroom for a while, as he did after his father died. That’ll be okay. That’ll be fine. And if he doesn’t want to sleep in my bedroom, I just might move into his. For a little while. Just until I get used to the idea that he’s safe, that no one will come to take him away in the middle of the night.

Making plans, even as we run for our lives.

The custodian’s closet is just as we left it, door unlocked. Shane is the first inside, and he doesn’t even bother to flip on the lights, he drops to his knees, pushing away mops and buckets, searching the area of floor where the hatch had popped open.

“Got to be here somewhere,” he mutters. “A pressure switch.”

The lights come on. I assume it was Irene because I don’t even know where the switch is, and besides, Noah has climbed back into my arms and I quite literally have my hands full. But it isn’t Irene, she looks as startled as
me, and then in an instant her face drains white with fear. Not just fear—terror.

“Nobody move.”

Standing in the doorway is the handsome guy with the killer eyes. The man with the mustache. The man who stopped me on the stairs and let me go. The man they call Vash, which is short for something else, I can’t remember what, now, exactly. Doesn’t matter what his proper name is, he’s pointing a funny-looking gun at Shane, who remains on his knees in the middle of the crowded custodial closet. Looking, and this scares me, very spooked, if not exactly frightened.

“Nobody move,” Vash repeats with a humorless chuckle, as if applauding his own cleverness. “They say that in American westerns, yes? Okay, Mr. FBI man, you got gun in belt, I can see that. Pistol you stole from BK vehicle, you naughty boy. You think you draw fast like in westerns, blow bad guy away. No, no, no.”

“Go ahead, tase me,” Shane says, not making a move for the pistol. “See what happens this time.”

Vash laughs. “I already see. Two times, already. Third time, you pee pants for sure.”

“Maybe I learned how to take it. Maybe the third time, you’re the one who wets his pants.”

“Ha! Not possible. While you flop around, I take pistol you stole and shoot you,” Vash promises. “Bang, bang. Self-defense.”

What I want to do is put down Noah and grab a bucket and throw it in this horrible man’s smug, handsome face. But before I can think it through, Shane gives me a warning look and says, “Don’t. I’ll handle this.”

Which Vash thinks is very funny. “You handle? Big joke for big man. Where you going, huh? Escape into tunnel? I don’t think so. We find the entrance, toss in a little boom-boom, make part of tunnel collapse. Forget tunnel. Forget escape. You are safer right here, trust me.”

Shane snorts. “Trust me. From a war criminal? I’m guessing most of those who ever trusted you are dead.”

Vash shakes his head, disappointed. “I’m wishing I had time for this,” he says. “Could be lots of fun.”

“What’s your hurry?” Shane says.

Taunting Vash. Daring him to fire. Which doesn’t make sense, with Shane more or less helpless on the floor and Vash holding the Taser. I know enough from what I’ve seen on TV that getting hit with a Taser may not be fatal, but it does turn you into a nonfunctioning slab of twitching muscle.

Is he planning to sacrifice himself while Noah and I get away? But where can we go that Vash can’t find us? It doesn’t make sense.

“Is the place going to blow up?” Shane asks him, pushing. “Is that why you’re in a hurry to get away? Like you blew up the school?”

“Stupid penny man blows up school, not me.”

“So you knew Roland Penny. I’ll bet it was you that filled his head full of nonsense about ruling the world, and then pointed him in the right direction. Is that how you did it?”

“Never mind the penny man,” Vash says dismissively, no longer smiling. All business, and in a hurry, too. “You lie down! Everybody lie down! I put plastic ties on wrists, not too tight. Then I give myself up to FBI, okay? I explain everything. You be fine, don’t worry.”

Irene whimpers and collapses to her knees, holding out
her wrists like a child who knows she deserves to be punished. With one hand, cocky Vash whips a tie around her wrist, cinches it tight. “Good girl,” he says. “Lie facedown. Nothing bad happens, I promise.”

Eyes streaming, she obeys. Obviously convinced she’s about to be executed, but too frightened to resist.

Meanwhile Shane is staring at me with great intensity, as if trying to communicate something, though for the life of me I don’t know what. Has he changed his mind, does he want me to make a move, distract the man with the mustache? No, that’s not it. He wants me to stay where I am, he’ll make the first move. So we’re back to sacrificing himself to help us get away. Or else he has something else in mind entirely, something I can’t quite fathom, and I’m hoping that’s it, because I’ve run out of ideas.

“Out the front door, huh?” he says, sneering at Vash. “Give yourself up? Might work, if there’s nobody left to testify against you. What happened, did you and Evangeline break up? Did you decide to sacrifice her before she sacrifices you?”

“Facedown,” Vash insists, taking aim with the Taser. “Now.”

“Now would be good,” Shane says, standing up.

Vash’s eyes widen in surprise, but before Shane can reach for the pistol wedged into his belt, he fires the Taser.

It all happens so fast I can’t be sure what I’m seeing, but it looks like a couple of little wires attach themselves to Shane’s chest, and then his whole body begins to twitch and convulse in the most awful way.

I instinctively turn so Noah can’t see what’s going on, and then a truly astonishing thing happens.

Shane’s face is horribly distorted by the twitching muscles, but somehow he’s grinning like a maniac. His eyes, alive in the midst of quivering facial muscles, are triumphant. As if this is exactly what he planned.

Shane, through sheer force of will, does the impossible. The supposedly impossible. He regains enough control over his flailing limbs to tear the wires out of his chest. He then yanks the Taser out of his assailant’s hands, and with a roar takes the stunned security chief by the neck and smashes him into the wall like a rag doll, wham, wham, wham.

It’s all over in a few seconds. A moment later the semiconscious Vash is being cuffed with his own plastic ties, trussed up like a calf at a rodeo and pushed to the side of the closet.

Irene, staring with bugged-out eyes, says, “Wow.”

Wow is right. He’s amazing. Magnificent, really. The only reason I don’t applaud is because my son is squirming around, getting an eyeful.

“Who is the big man, Mommy?”

“He’s our new friend, sweetie.”

“I’m glad,” says Noah.

Me, too, I’m thinking. Me, too.

Shane isn’t done. He pops open the escape hatch, gives me a grin. “We better get a move on. Time’s a wasting.”

“He said he blew up the tunnel.”

“The man is a liar—it looks okay from here. We’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

He holds out his hand. I take it.

11. The Button Is Pressed

A temporary helicopter landing site has been set up in the parking lot of the Conklin Institute, and that’s where Maggie Drew lands, amidst a cloud of fine snow kicked up by the blades of the McDonnell Douglas 530, affectionately known as a ‘Little Bird.’

The affection is not shared by Maggie. She hates helicopters, and they hate her. It was a two-barf-bag trip from Denver International, and the crew is glad to see her go. They keep their snarky comments to themselves, however, when they realize Assistant Director Monica Bevins, the on-site commander herself, is waiting to personally assist the lame little puker out of the aircraft.

“Any news?” Maggie shouts over the whirr of the turbines.

“Lots of news,” Monica says, holding out an arm for her limping friend. “None of it good.”

“He hasn’t made contact?”

“Not since that call to you.”

Maggie hugs the much taller woman’s arm as they approach the black Suburban that will take them up the mountain, to the forward offensive position. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,” she admits. “I’ve been working up a profile for Arthur Conklin’s wife, Evangeline—she’s the leader of the more radical faction.”

“I know who she is, Mags. I downloaded your file on my BlackBerry.”

“Sorry. Didn’t know if you had time to read it.”

“I’m a multitasker. You know that.”

The doors lock as the driver accelerates out of the parking lot.

“So what’s the new angle?” Monica prompts.

“Oh! Sorry!” Maggie says, staring out the tinted window. “I’ve seen this place in photographs, but they don’t do it justice. Really spectacular.” She gives a worried sigh, makes a brave smile for her friend. “Okay. Back to Evangeline. Eva the Diva. The psych data is not exactly encouraging. Taking prior behavior patterns into account, and similar cults that depend on a single, charismatic individual, I think there’s a pretty good chance she’ll go off the deep end. She may trend into an apocalyptic scenario and not be able to see a way out.”

Monica nods. “With their leader dying and the factions struggling for power, we’ve been assuming the worst. Unfortunately it’s taking a lot longer to break their defenses than we anticipated. Can you believe they have weapons-grade blast shutters? Acetylene won’t cut the stuff. Had to send for a hi-temp plasma torch and even that’s slow as hell.”

“So we’ve no idea what’s happening in the Pinnacle.”

Monica nods. “Or the other building, the one they call the Bunker. Unfortunate name. Can’t help but think of Hitler. Speaking of apocalyptic scenarios.”