Third Strike (34 page)
My father paused, stepped back. His expression was carefully blank, but I saw the throb of veins pulsing at his temple and could only feel some minor relief that this was having an effect on him after all.
But not enough to make him stop.
“Why?” It was Sean who spoke, recovered enough for his tone to be as dispassionate as my father’s. “Why should we believe that a man who held out for three days against Afghani tribesmen would give us the truth so easily?”
“I am!” Collingwood yelped. “I am. I swear to God. Jesus. Why would I lie?”
“Because you know what would happen if she’s already dead?” Sean said, arms folded, head tilted slightly. “Why did you arrange a trap for us here, Collingwood? Not to arrest us, certainly. You tried misinformation, blackmail, threats, but they didn’t work, did they?”
He moved round in front of the government man, ducked so he could be sure of eye contact. “Richard loves his wife—enough to ruin himself for her. You counted on that. But you didn’t count on the fact that Charlie loves her parents too much to allow them to go down without a fight.” He straightened, looked down at the bowed head without emotion. “If you’d done your homework, you would have known you had to take out Charlie—and me—right at the start, instead of leaving us until last. And you’re foolishly still hoping you can come out of this on top, aren’t you? So, is Elizabeth alive or not?”
Collingwood lifted his head, pulled his lips back as much in a snarl as a smile. He’d bitten his tongue and the blood stained his teeth.
“I don’t know. Could be,” he said, panting. “We were waiting to see what we could get out of the girl before we killed the old lady. Hell, we were going to kill the whole fucking bunch of you, anyway. Medical research lab is always working with bodies. What’s a few more?”
My father had moved in again, to lean over his shoulder. I couldn’t see exactly where he had his hands, but from the set of his shoulders, I could guess.
“Don’t,” I said, finding my voice. It came up rusty. “Please don’t. We have what we need. We have the information. He’s finished. It’s over. You cross the line and there’s no coming back. Please, don’t do this to him—to yourself.”
My father twisted, flicking his eyes back to meet mine. Same color, same shape. Same blood between us, binding us together. What else had I sucked out from his genes? What would I, in my turn, pass on?
“Do you hear that, Mr. Collingwood?” he said softly. “My own daughter thinks I’ve become a monster. Well, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that, whatever I am, you helped create me.”
His arm, his hand, slid forwards. Collingwood threw his head back and his body jerked, horror and utter disbelief in his eyes in the split second before they rolled back in his head and he fainted.
My father carefully withdrew the knife and wiped the blade clean. He neatly folded it up and handed it back to Sean with an absent nod, like he’d just borrowed a handkerchief or a pen. He peeled off the gloves and dropped them on the floor. They were bloodied to the wrists.
“You may as well let him down,” he said, straightening his cuffs. “He won’t be going anywhere.”
In the corridor outside, Terry O’Loughlin was sitting next to the groggy security guard. She had both hands pressed over her ears and her eyes tight shut and she jumped when I staggered over and touched her shoulder.
“Is it … over?” she said, pale as winter. “Is he dead?”
“Yes, it’s over,” I said. “And no, he isn’t.”
But maybe he’ll wish he was.
My father paused and looked down at her. “Whereabouts on the second level is the research lab?” he said, and the clipped note was back with a vengeance.
She gathered those lethal legs underneath her and pushed to her feet. “I’ll show you,” she said, doggedly undaunted.
“Just tell us, Terry, and we’ll find it,” Sean said, his voice quiet. He jerked his head. “What started in there isn’t over.”
Her jaw hardened, just a little. “And I helped start it,” she said. “So I won’t shy away from seeing it end.”
Sean stared at her a moment longer, then nodded like she’d passed some kind of test. His eyes flicked to me. “And are
you
up to this, Charlie?” A challenge there, too.
you
up to this, Charlie?” A challenge there, too.
No.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, knowing he’d sense the lie but have no choice other than to run with it. And even as I spoke, Vondie’s words came back to me, cruel and bitter as a blade.
Keeping those kind of secrets will kill any relationship stone dead. You know that.
Sean moved in close, crowding me. “You’re suffering, Charlie,” he said tightly. “Do you think I can’t see it? If the damned Vicodin will help you get through this, just take it and don’t be so bloody stubborn.”
“I—.” I stepped back, still trembling but gaining steadily. “I’m fine,” I repeated.
He handed me the Glock he’d taken from Collingwood, watched me close my fist around it. I didn’t expect that a man of Collingwood’s experience would carry a weapon unready, but I brushed my index finger over the loaded chamber indicator anyway, just to be sure, dropped the magazine out to verify a full load, slapped it home again, and returned his stare, defiant. “Let’s just get this done.”
“All right.” He stepped back, his face shut down. “Okay, Terry, lead the way.”
She took us up a utility stairwell to the next floor, through a maze of corridors that all looked the same and went on for miles, past labs and huge soulless open-plan office spaces. The place had the sterile smell of air conditioning over new carpet and old sweat, laced with the thin pine scent of industrial cleaning fluid.
We moved as quietly as we could, Sean ahead, Terry directing him, my father behind her, seeming almost unaware of his immediate surroundings, me covering our rear, my limbs returning to me with every stride.
Working weekends was obviously not company policy at Storax. We encountered nobody, saw nothing except the empty cubes of office drones, containing cluttered desks and dead computer monitors. Did these people have any idea what the company that employed them had been working on? If the check arrived each month, did they care?
Terry halted. “The lab’s up ahead,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Through the next set of doors. On your left.”
“Good,” Sean said. “What’s the layout?”
Terry shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never had cause to go in there before. Maybe if I had …” She broke off, frowning.
“You’ve done more than enough, Terry,” Sean said. He smiled. It was the kind of smile that, when he directed it at me, had a tendency to make me go a little stupid. It seemed to have much the same effect on Terry. “You’d best stay here. I doubt they’ll let you close enough to punt their bollocks into their throats, in any case.”
“Excuse me?”
“He means you probably won’t get a chance to kick them in the balls,” I supplied as I came past her.
“No, I guess not,” she said, looking faintly embarrassed. “But I’ll stay close. I reckon, when this is over, you might just need a good lawyer. And I have a feeling I’ll be making a career move.”
I glanced at my father. “You should stay here, too,” I said abruptly. “We can’t protect you when we go in there. Trying may get us all killed.”
“I don’t expect you to protect me, Charlotte. I expect you to do your job,” my father said, coldly imperious.
I stared at him blankly for a moment before I saw the underlying thread of panic.
If you don’t save her now, how can I live with my part in this?
Was this acceptance at last? If so, why did it feel like it had all come too little, too late? And why did I feel he’d turned into someone whose approval was the last thing I wanted.
He nodded to Sean, a stiff jerk of the head. Sean nodded back. Then we were moving forwards, the pair of us, strides matching. I’d seen Sean kill and it hadn’t affected the way I felt about him. But seeing my father primed to do the same had sickened me to the soul. Ironic that it was probably a mirror image of how he felt about me.
I shut it out, shoved it down deep, and did the only thing I knew how to do well—prepared to kill two strangers without even knowing their names.
We went through the doors into the research lab totally in sync. Low left, and high right, angled so we were covering each other’s back.
As soon as we were through the door, we saw them. Buzz-cut and the limping pickup driver. I had the Glock up and sighted instantly, but the picture presented meant I did not fire. Neither of us did.
The lab was mostly white, lined with cupboards and workbenches, with half a dozen clearly delineated workstations. No clutter. Just mundane, like a particularly large kitchen that happens to have no appliances. It smelled of something sharp and acidic that I couldn’t place.
My mother was perched on one of the high stools that were slotted into each workstation. It had been dragged out into the center of the tiled floor and she sat very upright, with her knees together and, from the awkward set of her shoulders, her hands bound behind her back.
The man I’d christened Buzz-cut was standing to her right, which made him mine. He had a large-caliber silvered semiautomatic with the hammer back and the muzzle jammed into my mother’s ear, where it wasn’t going to come off target easily.
As soon as we’d come in, my mother’s eyes flew to mine and stayed there. She was terrified, but I saw the relief creep into them at the sight of us—at the sight of me. The situation was hopeless, impossible, but she saw us and for some reason I didn’t think I’d ever be able to fathom, it gave her hope.
The pickup driver was far right, splitting our field of fire. Sean’s Glock seemed to lock onto him of its own accord. The pickup driver also held a Glock. Without hesitation, he pointed it right back.
“Looks like we have a standoff,” Sean said. “Are you prepared to die here, gentlemen?”
“If we have to,” Buzz-cut said calmly.
“You must see this is not a winnable situation,” I said evenly. “From either side. You shoot, we shoot. People will die. What’s the point?”
He shrugged. “Surrender is not an option,” he said, and I saw the fierce pride in him. He skimmed eyes over me that were cold and flat. “You should know that, ma’am.”
So, he’d been a soldier, recognized like for like.
“O-kay, so, what happens now?” I said, allowing a hint of impatience to show. “We all wait here till we die of old age?”
Buzz-cut didn’t answer. Time bunched up around us, slow and heavy, as we waited for the first nerves to fail.
Then, suddenly, the door behind us punched open. Sean and I darted sideways, ready to meet a new threat, but it didn’t take a fraction of a second to know we were outgunned.
The six-man team that entered were dressed in SWAT black, armed with Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, utterly focused, and completely multilateral when it came to taking sides. They pointed weapons at all of us.
I tuned out the yell of commands to give ourselves up and get down on the ground, and kept the sights of the Glock lined up steady on Buzz-cut’s face. Until he lowered his weapon, I was damned if I was going to lower mine.
The pickup driver was the first to fold. But then, I suppose he had the freshest memory of what it meant to be shot. He came off target, letting the barrel rise as he brought both hands up. Very slowly, using only his finger and thumb, he laid the gun on the ground. When he straightened, his hands were already linked behind his head.
As soon as the pickup driver surrendered his gun, Sean snapped his aim across to Buzz-cut, nearly giving the two guys who were covering him heart failure. If they’d been any less well trained, less experienced, they probably would have taken him out right there and then.
The shouting died away. They must have known they were wasting their breath. I wondered how long it would be before the shooting started.
Then I heard more footsteps slightly behind me, to my right. Two sets. Not the harsh dull clatter of boots on tile, but the lighter tread of good shoes with leather soles. I didn’t take my eyes away from Buzz-cut, even when I saw the way he stiffened at the new arrivals.
“Sean, Charlie,” Parker Armstrong said in a calm and reasonable voice. “Please lower your weapons.”
The surprise was such that, for a moment, neither of us moved.
“In case it’s escaped your attention, Parker,” I said, without turning, talking through gritted teeth to avoid moving my jaw and unsettling my aim, “the guy over there has a gun to the head of a hostage.”
I had to think of her in those terms. Depersonalize it. It was the only way I could function.
“It hadn’t,” Parker said, and his voice was dry now, “but I need you to trust me on this.”
There came a silence into which I swear I could hear the beat of my own heart.
“If he pulls the trigger,” Sean said in that pleasantly lethal tone I knew so well, “I will kill him, regardless.”
“And if you don’t, I’ll kill him for you,” Parker said, diamond hard and just as polished. “But it won’t come to that. We
will
work this out. Stand down, both of you.”
will
work this out. Stand down, both of you.”
Sean let out his breath on a long hiss, then relaxed out of a shooter’s stance. With a feeling of hollow regret, I did the same. The nearest man in black held out his hand for the Glock. I stared him down and kept it in my hand, letting it hang alongside my leg with my finger outside the guard. He saw the blood in my eye, shrugged, and didn’t make an issue of it.
Across the room, my mother’s lids fluttered closed, like she was praying. I couldn’t bear to watch, glanced towards Parker instead and saw my boss was back in his usual sobersuited office attire. He looked tired, the lines on his face more deeply etched than when I’d last seen him in the rest stop south of Boston, only days ago.
He acknowledged our capitulation with no more than the twitch of his facial muscles, but a little of the tension went out of his shoulders. He’d staked his reputation on being able to control us, I realized, and more besides.
Parker threw a look to the man who was standing silently alongside him.
I’ve played my part. Now you play yours.
I’ve played my part. Now you play yours.
The other man was older, someone I’d never seen before, with a silver mustache and cold, cold eyes. He, too, was wearing a somber suit, with a bland tie and spit-polished shoes, but he was military through to his bones. He accepted Parker’s unspoken challenge without a flicker, and lifted his chin, letting his voice carry over to Buzz-cut.
“You too, son,” he said, low and slow like tires on a gravel road. “Stand down, now.”
Buzz-cut braced, like he had to force himself not to come to attention.
“Sir, I am acting under direct orders from Mr. Collingwood—”
“Mr. Collingwood is no longer … fit for duty,” the man said, slicing him off. He let his eyes trail briefly over me and there was nothing in them. It was like being gazed at by a snake. “He has been relieved.”
A faint flush appeared across Buzz-cut’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, sir, but my orders still stand. Mr. Collingwood was very clear on that.”
You had to admire his guts, if nothing else. Six men pointing guns at him and he never flinched, never wavered. Easy to see why Collingwood had chosen this man to do his dirty work.
My mother’s eyes were still closed. As I watched, a single tear broke loose from the confines of her right eye and trickled slowly down her cheek.
“Son,” the man with the gray mustache said, with ominous quiet that was more effective than any parade-ground bark, “you know who I am, don’t you?”
Buzz-cut paled visibly. “Yessir!” he said. And still he didn’t lift the gun away from my mother’s head.
I caught a slight movement behind Parker. My father and Terry O’Loughlin had moved into the doorway of the lab. They would have been told to stay back, I knew, but could no more obey that command than voluntarily stop breathing. The man with the mustache ignored them both.
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