R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning (22 page)

“Fuck you.”

“Nah, not this time, brother. I mean it. It’s me and you. I’m sorry for all this. I don’t understand it much more than you.”

“I doubt that. Tell it to the dead women.”

“Spencer Grant killed all those women, and he would have killed his own daughter if—”

“If?”

“Never mind. I never was any good at convincing you, was I?”

“We’re light years beyond those days, Jax.”

“We’re never beyond those days, Bobby.”

 “I’M SORRY about all this,” Amanda said from her desk, Melissa sitting in an extra chair in her cubicle.

“You’re Mac’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“And an FBI agent?”

“Yep, that, too.”

“I want to be an FBI agent.”

“I think that would be really cool,” Amanda said.

“Cool?”

“It’s an admirable endeavor,” Amanda said. “I’m sure you’d make an excellent one.”

“Mac saved my life.”

“He’s good at that.”

“Has he ever saved your life?”

“He saved me when he married me,” Amanda said, uncomfortable with the young woman’s fixation on Mac. Hostage and kidnap victims often developed feelings for their rescuers. The level and volatility of said feelings ranged vastly, depending on circumstances. Amanda couldn’t imagine many circumstances worse than what Melissa had endured.

“He loves you,” Melissa said flatly.

“He loves you, too, Melissa. He wouldn’t have left you with anyone else but me. That should tell you something.”

“What, that you’re this amazing policewoman and can protect me as well as him?”

“No. Because he trusts me with his life, so he trusts me with yours.”

Silence.

Meyer poked his head around the doorjamb. “Everything copacetic in here?”

“We’re good,” Amanda said. “There’s coffee so bad it’s a police cliché in the break room.”

“Already sampled,” Meyer said. He winked at Amanda. Situation diffused for the moment.

“So, Cambodia?” Amanda said to Meyer.

“What? Oh, yes. It was heartbreaking. So many lost.”

“Did you go with the church or the Red Cross.”

“Uh, both, actually.”

“Long flight?”

“Ghastly. And the Vatican knows not of Business Class.”

“Is that a straight flight to DIA or do you have to change planes on the coast?”

“LAX. Los Angeles. Thank the heavens
that
is a short hop to Denver. Comparatively speaking, of course.”

“Yeah, that’s not a bad trip,” Amanda said, poking around on her computer.

“Well, you ladies stay comfortable and safe. I must attend to my bladder. Coffee, as they say, is rented only.” Meyer scooted away and Amanda did something that made her sick inside:

She ran a background check on Father Meyer West.

I convinced Jax to give me Rule’s number. He knew my plan, or the idea behind it anyway. If we lost—and by “we” I didn’t just mean myself, Manny, and his group, but Amanda, Melissa, Meyer—everything good we’d ever known—a phone call to Rule wouldn’t matter one way or the other.

It was time to cross that line that could never be re-crossed. Not with things being the same, anyway.

“MacAulay,” Rule spat as he answered the phone.

“I have your puppet,” I said. “But I have the girl, too. Time to end it.”

Silence on the other end of the line. I continued.

“I’m sending you an address. It’s an abandoned parking garage in a run-down part of the city. I want to meet you there. You make my brother whole again—you give him back to me—and I’ll turn over Melissa Grant.”

“Bullshit.”

“If I see even one of your stooges, I turn around and Melissa goes into protective custody and Jax will never see the outside of state prison. I don’t know why you want her, clearly her father wants her, whatever you two have cooked up I no longer want my family to be a part of it. I don’t care if that betrays some worn-out history. I have a wife and three little girls. Even you can understand that. Give me back my brother and swear to me that you’ll leave the MacAulay name alone for good. No more or less than what you plan for anyone or anyplace else.”

More silence. This was not an offer he’d considered.

A betrayal.

“Send me the address.”

“Swear it to me.”

“I swear. I can give you your brother back to you, just as before. You swear you’ll give me the young woman and then stay out of my, business, shall we call it?”

“I swear.” A lie to a liar is no lie at all. “You meet us there in an hour.”

“If I see any police, you know I can add more bodies to the agenda,” Rule said.

“One hour and I will send you the address.”

“Send it now.”

“Trust is a fragile thing,” I said. “Let’s not create opportunity for a break so soon.”

“If you don’t trust me, this whole happenstance is a farce.”

“No, I just want time to get to the location. That’s it.”

“Fair enough. You’re up to something, but I’ll see to your conditions. Many a hand of poker has been lost by the surest of players.”

“One hour.”

I called Manny. “Are you in place?”

“Si, jefe.”

“Tell your people I have a small presence of personal police. Off the clock and of no threat whatsoever to them. Just the opposite, in fact. We’ll likely all be happy they’re with us.”

“No problem. The team here will understand. It won’t be the first time they’ve dealt with the
policía
on friendly terms.”

“Notwithstanding, everyone sticks to the plan.”

“Agreed, boss.”

Melissa had asked Amanda what she was doing and when she realized the agent was engrossed in her work, she decided to take a walk around the place. Not very impressive for the FBI, she thought. They always made things look more elaborate in the movies and on television, two of her very few outlets to the outside world as she grew up, though her father had taken his home education responsibilities seriously.

She had no idea why. He only intended on killing her, just like all those other young women. She’d known that for years and had actually come to accept it in a life’s destiny kind of way—just the way things were. Part of it was the constant fear. It became so natural to be afraid that she never really thought about leaving.

Only with budding maturity had her plan to escape evolved.

Melissa also did not know how to feel about her father’s alleged death. Part of her wanted to believe what the man named Jax had said. Part of her—the little girl inside—wanted her dad. She wanted him back whole, like the man she had fleeting memories of in her head.

She still could not move further down that path of memories, however. She knew what had happened to her mother and sister and she knew her father was the guilty party, just as he was guilty of murdering all those innocent women in Denver. It was different then, though; she then understood more of the truth; a truth that
sounded
more like a movie plot than reality.

If she clung to that bizarre possibility, however, it meant her father—her
real
father—had not committed those heinous acts. It meant something else had occupied his body. Melissa wondered if it was what they meant by an insanity defense.

“Surprise,” Father Meyer said as she walked around the corner into a darkened hallway in the trance of deep thought. She startled and jerked away, as if to flee.

“I’m sorry,” Meyer said, placing his hand on her shoulder to calm her.

“It’s okay,” Melissa said, more relaxed. “Amanda is too busy on her computer to talk.”

“Yes,” said Meyer. “That’s why I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“Well, she’s going to dig, and dig, and then dig some more. That’s what they do, the FBI. And she’s going to find out I was never in Cambodia.”

“You weren’t ever there?”

“She already knows I didn’t fly in from LAX. It was stupid of me, really.”

“What was stupid?”

“Leaving the tag on my suitcase. I’m afraid I’m not a very good criminal.”

“You’re not a criminal,” Melissa said, starting to tremble despite her confidence that this man was her friend. Mac’s friend. “You’re a priest.”

“She’s going to find that out, too. That I’m not a priest, I mean.”

“Are you even Mac’s cousin?”

“Oh,
that
I am,” he said, closing the space between them in an instant and clubbing her at the back of her skull.

Then nothing.