Top Ten (24 page)

She said nothing. Her own eyes were open. Her chest was beginning to heave against the back of his head.

His hand progressed, up the wide sleeve, over her elbow, his other hand on her now as well, diving up the other sleeve, to the soft skin of her biceps, gripping her there, pulling her, pulling her down. Down to him. He opened his eyes. She closed hers. Their faces nearing.

“Say stop,” he said again, and she said nothing.

So near now they were, so close, that the jolt of the phone ringing almost thrust them together. Mills shed the sheet draping him and jumped up from the chair, letting go his hold on her as he dashed past to the living room.

Ariel let her breath settle, let her thoughts settle, and came to the spot where she’d first waited for him. She watched him, saw him run a hand over his head, rub it approvingly as he hung up the phone.

He looked back to her. “I, uh... I’ve gotta make a call. Hold on.”

He dialed from memory and waited through three rings. “Yeah. Mills. Barker wants a meet?”

She let him conduct his ‘business’, standing back as he slipped into Mills DeVane’s skin again. He’d almost been in Teddy Donovan’s there a minute ago, and she didn’t know how to feel about that. Whether it was right or wrong. But she thought so very surely that for him it was a good thing, even in an abbreviated format. Which maybe was the best way it could be. The only way it should be.

“Did he say why?” Mills asked, listening as the person on the other end spoke. “How much?” Again he listened. “That’s all? Where’s he want it to go?” He nodded to himself. “Okay, so it’s short, right? ‘Cause I can’t be flying down to fucking Chile for him. I got things lined up.” A pause. “So that’s what he told you? He called you and told you this? That he just needs it run to Arizona? You’re sure?”

Ariel admired his technique. His immersion in the persona. How it stuck to him like a second skin. And she could understand now why he wanted to shed it so badly. It was too easy to be Mills DeVane. He was too good at it. If he didn’t get away from it, from the life that was not his, some of it might stick to him like scabs. Ones that if you picked at them, they’d leave scars.

He wanted to get out without scars, she could see now. And she wondered if he was going to be able to do that.

“Okay,” Mills said into the phone and looked at his watch. “I’ll be there.”

When he hung up she asked, “Be where?”

“One of my regulars has a quickie for me.”

Ariel stepped toward him, suspicious. “Did you talk to him?”

“No, but the go between we use did. It’s okay. I do this kind of thing all the time.”

“Right,” she said. “I have to go with you.”

He shook his head. “Not on something like this. Your face has been on TV. If one of my customers sees you anywhere near me and I don’t have cuffs on and a gun at my head, I’m a dead man.”

“I’m supposed to protect you.”

“I can’t be protected everywhere and still do what I’m supposed to do.”

He took his house keys from on top of the TV and grabbed the jacket she’d taken from him as she set about cutting his hair. He ran a hand over his head yet again and smiled at her. A smile that lingered.

“Thanks.”

“I wish you’d let me come with you.”

“No. Go stay somewhere decent. I won’t be back until tomorrow.”

He reached out and touched her arm. She folded them across her chest. There was something she wanted to say, but was it right?

“Be careful,” she told him.

“Always am,” Mills assured her, and then he was gone.

She went to the window and pulled back the drapes just a hair to watch him jog up the driveway and across the street toward a car parked at the curb. She noted its color and make and then let herself out the back, bounding down the rickety metal stairs and nearly hurdling the back fence to the park behind his apartment building. Across its narrow depth she ran to Shellmark Avenue. To her rental car parked across the street. She was in it and had it moving fast, making a quick U-turn and heading toward Springhill Road. Almost there she saw the car that Mills had been going for cross in front of her, heading north. She slowed, and waited, and then got into traffic a few hundred yards behind him, following him covertly as he drove north out of the city.

She was not the only one.

Twenty Five

Snatched

Ariel parked a block away, stopping when she saw Mills pulling into a lot behind a decrepit old building in Bainbridge, Georgia. Old letters atop the structure said Marsden Ho el. A somewhat newer sign near the entrance said Burke’s Gym.

She waited, slouching down behind the wheel where she’d stopped near a gas station, and saw him come around front from the lot a minute later. He looked carefully around, though not obviously, and entered the building. She looked at her watch to note the time.

And in that split second she missed another entrance into the building.

*   *   *

It was one of Barker Meeks’ favorite places to meet, and Mills could not for the life of him understand why. Coming up the stairs from the second to the third floor now, the smell of a dozen plus men sweating was hitting him like a pungent breeze. He wiped his nose and continued on up.

He never met Barker in the gym. Too many ears. Too many eyes. Their place was the old office on the back side of the building, far enough from earshot but close enough that you could hear the speed bags thumping and old crusty coaches telling their charges that they hit like little girls. Maybe it was the atmosphere that Barker liked. Because if it was the smell, then Mills was pretty sure Barker must have been sampling his own merchandise and blown whatever sense he’d had in his prominent nose.

Past the sound of pugilistic hopes and dreams Mills walked, to the door at the end of the hall. A light glowed inside through the frosted glass pane set into it. He knocked and opened it up and stepped inside and felt the large hand clamp over his mouth from behind.

“You must be Mills DeVane,” Michaelangelo said, the syringe of napoxcypherin coming out of his coat pocket. He popped the plastic guard off the needle as his creation-to-be struggled, forcing them both into the hallway. “You’ll be relaxed in a moment.”

Mills twisted against the incredibly strong hold the man—the maniac?—had on him, but he could not break free. Could do nothing but watch as a syringe came into view from the right and started down toward his neck.

Only the three fast gunshots and the wood splintering upon them both from bullets hitting the doorjamb saved Mills. The syringe dropped and Mills rolled further into the hall, coming to his side to see Lionel and Nita advancing toward him with guns drawn. He looked quickly back and saw the maniac disappearing down a long corridor that ended at the back stairwell.

A big hand grabbed him and lifted him up.

“Told you not to take any trips,” Lionel said, and started dragging him back toward the front of the building with Nita covering their rear.

*   *   *

Even from a block away the gunshots rang sharp in the thick air. Ariel sat straight behind the wheel and looked down the street to the Marsden Ho el. She saw men in shorts, some with their hands taped, spilling out of the building, and within a few seconds she saw Mills being dragged out the front entrance by a man with red hair and a woman openly wielding a gun.

She recognized them from what she’d read on Mills’s operation. They worked for Hoag. But why...

They were protecting him. They had followed him. Like she had. But what was the shooting? What was the...

“Oh shit,” she said in a surprisingly quiet voice, starting the car as she saw the large man trot out of the back lot and head up the street away from her. He wore dark clothing. A baseball hat. He was lean but powerful. She had stared at his picture for hours. Even from a block away she knew it was him.

She dropped the rental into gear and stomped the accelerator to the floor.

As she sped up the street she saw a van come at her and pass. The big man with red hair was at the wheel. The woman was next to him. Lionel Price and Nita Berry. Mills would be with them. In a strange way she thought he would be safe, and half watched in her rearview mirror as the van sped toward Highway 27 and made the turn to head south.

She, though, was not following. She had a target in mind. Straight ahead. Running up the sidewalk of the quiet southern town where rain was beginning to fall. Where a storm was blowing in.

She raced up the street and cut across the lanes to opposite side, bringing the rental to a screeching stop angled at the curb. She flung her door open with her knee and had her weapon out. She pointed it at him. He was thirty feet away. His face was a shadow. He was pitch from head to toe.

“FREEZE!”

People on the street who’d run this way from the commotion at the gym now scattered across the main drag through Bainbridge. Getting away from the lady in the rain pointing a gun at the big man standing under the awning of Fred’s Barber Shop.

“FBI! STOP!”

Michaelangelo did. Someone screamed. Ariel’s gaze ticked that way. He took advantage of her lapse.

When she saw him fully again he had a gun pointed at her.

She dropped and rolled as he fired. The windows of her rental shattered and sprayed her with tiny blocks of glass, some which cut her as she turned over and over through it, trying to make it to cover. More shots hit the street around her, chipping asphalt up to nick her face. That pissed her off and kicked her into survival mode, her roll stopping, her body going flat against the street and her weapon in both hands pointed right at—

He was not there. She hopped up, keeping her weapon in front, at the ready, and advanced toward where he had been. Through the barber shop window she saw a dark blur disappear deep inside and followed, moving in measured steps, a few at a time, covering the path she would take. Behind her she could hear screams, and sirens, but in front of her she heard nothing. Saw nothing.

Cautiously she advanced. Past the three barber chairs, an older man cowering beneath one, covering his head. Into a short hallway, unisex bathroom on one side, a little flip around sign on its door the signal as to who was inside. Skirt or Pants the choices there.

Ariel paused and kicked it open and saw the flashes before she could fire.

Three, four, five, bright and loud. Stunning her. Hitting her. Throwing her back against the wall. Sending her sliding to the ground, pain all about her chest, her hand empty, her weapon dropped. Gone.

She groaned and curled into a ball and saw a shadow pass over her as it moved fast out the back of the store.

Twenty Six

Next Steps

It had gone badly.

At home again after a less than planned commercial flight out of Dixie, sitting before his computer with not a thought of whores or needing them in his head, Michaelangelo stared at the newspaper article he’d retrieved concerning one Mr. Barker Meeks. He’d been acquitted of drug charges several times, but was strongly suspected of having ties to Mills DeVane. Well, that had been correct, but all that came later was not. It was all very wrong.

Whoever had shot at him in the hall as he was about to sedate his next creation had not been expected. So very obviously not expected. And he might want to know who they were some day so he might make bolas with their eyeballs.

But to think of them now was not what was needed. What was needed was to overcome his failure. Yes, he had failed. Why was a question he would ponder, he was sure, but not now.

It was time to move on. Time for the next step. A better step.

And he already had that planned. Already had it laid out. Printed out for perusal, all the information he would need. It was not the preferred avenue that he would take, as it might take time. More time than he wanted. But it was the best plan, considering...

A strange fellow indeed, this DeVane. No family that might be persuaded to offer direction to him, though now he suspected that the loved ones of his intended creations would be watched. Protected. So that would not do. Nor would a lawyer be of help, as there was no record of one recently representing the fugitive. Alas, though, the same story would apply to them, particularly after his visit upon Mr. Rhodes. He hadn’t thought the man’s intestines strong enough to suspend him from that tree, but they had not broken. Funny.

No, family nor friend—nor fellow partners in crime, it would now seem—would not be able to help him. But there seemed to be someone who might. Someone who would not be able to point him directly to his creation, but who would be able to tell him
about
him. That might be enough.

But might or not, he was going to find Mills DeVane. And he was going to do something special for him. To him. With him.

Oh yes.

*   *   *

The doctors were letting her go. Twenty four hours and about a mile of bandages around her bruised chest later, Ariel Grace was sprung.

She hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital at all, but passing out and all when the ambulance arrived had made that point moot. Five hits she’d taken. All five in the Kevlar vest beneath her homeless attire, as Mills had nearly called it.

One of the doctors had asked her if she was Irish.

Bureau people from Atlanta and Tallahassee had rushed to the hospital on hearing that a fellow agent was down, and she’d had to do some quick thinking and fancy talking to explain what she was doing there without compromising Mills. A song and dance about a lead one of her confidential informants from her Task Force Five days had given her, bringing her here, and darned if the old junkie hadn’t been right. A stroke of luck. A pile of hogwash. Take your pick.

Jaworski had called, and she’d told him she was fine. He was glad to hear she had gotten close to the ‘freak’, and wanted him now more than ever for putting one of his people in the hospital. He sounded good on the phone and told her to hurry back. More motel leads were due in soon. She said she’d be there as soon as she could.

Whenever that might be.

She got a definite answer to that wondering when she passed through the hospital’s main entrance en route to the Bureau car and driver waiting for her. He was standing outside the vehicle with a cell phone in his hand.