Nick of Time (33 page)

Carter saw from Darla's expression that she was beginning to see the same picture as he. “If it were true, he'd have shot you,” Carter said, modulating his voice to something as close to soothing as he could muster with his guts seizing. “He left that magazine for you to find, Deputy. He wants you to think that he reloaded.”

“I swear to God I'll kill you!” Jeremy screamed.

“He was never about killing anybody,” Carter said. “Certainly not you or me. He could have killed me with his first shot if that's what he'd wanted to do.”

Darla scowled. “But the sheriff . . .”

“Pure anger. Frustration. Terrible dumb luck.” Carter let the words hang in the air. He turned his eyes toward Jeremy. “That's right, isn't it, son? You never did want to kill anyone, did you?”

Jeremy was trapped and he knew it. His face sagged and his shoulders slumped. With the pistol still in his fist, he covered his face with his hands and sobbed, “Please kill me. Just kill me, please . . .” His words disappeared in noises of pure anguish.

“Oh, my God,” Darla breathed. “He wanted me to kill him.” Jeremy didn't resist as she cuffed his hands behind his back.

Carter said, “Maybe that was the plan the whole time when he left the house to go charging into the woods. Maybe he just wanted a quiet place to kill himself.”

“So when he shot at me, he assumed that I would shoot back.”

“Suicide by cop.”

“Have a seat,” Darla said as she assisted her young prisoner to the ground. After he was in place, she backpedaled a few steps and sat down on a dead fall. She looked . . . stunned.

“I didn't figure it out till the very end,” Carter said, as if to soften the blow. “Are you okay?”

She indicated yes, but a part of her seemed not yet to have recovered from the shock.

“Can you help me get the word out about Nicki? The clock's ticking, and—”

Darla's eyes grew huge as she remembered. “I forgot to tell you,” she said. “It was the reason I first came to the house looking for you. I know where she is.”

Chapter Thirty-four

T
he pain in Brad's belly was a red-hot corset, ever tightening its grip. His head swam from the blood loss, and the energy consumed simply by pacing the front room left him sweaty and exhausted. Fever raged inside him. He could feel it building like a bonfire deep in his gut and his head, and the hotter it grew, the more aware he became of the steady ache of the bullet wound.

So where the hell were the cops? In his mind, he saw them surrounding the house, gathering for the assault. The drapes were pulled and the doors were locked. Beyond that, Brad couldn't think of another thing to do.

He was resigned to dying. He only hoped they'd take him out with a head shot. That was the preference of snipers, he knew. In a perfect world, snipers loved the spot over their targets' right eyebrow. An instant kill, even if it left a hell of a mess. It surprised him that the thought of never seeing another dawn brought him such a sense of peace.

Then again, maybe it wasn't so surprising. He'd seen plenty of dawns as it was, and of those he'd witnessed, precious few were the stuff of poetry. Too many mornings had bloomed sunless for him, with a view of a concrete wall. Even more had begun in homes of strangers who seemed more afraid of him than he was of them.

In the silence of the front room, he'd twice assumed Nicki to be asleep, but both times when he looked at her, she was able to offer a wan smile. “Why don't you sit down?” she asked.

“Because it hurts too much to get up again.” He shook his head. “Hell of a getaway I arranged, isn't it?”

“It's been different,” she said. She let a moment pass before asking, “So, what happens when they come to the door?”

“You stay low,” he said. “The rest is up to them.”

“Is there a way in the world that we can win?”

Brad looked at her and winced against a stab of pain. “By leaving now,” he said. “I was hoping for a tidal wave or an asteroid hit to distract them, but the chances really aren't in our favor.”

She didn't laugh.

“You sure you don't want a gun?” Brad asked, offering her the .22 from his waistband. The grip was smeared with blood now.

Nicki waved him off. “I won't leave, but I won't shoot, either.”

“Can I ask a question?” Gramma asked from across the room.

Brad started to say no, but Nicki answered first. “Sure,” she said.

“How did you end up with him?” Gramma said. “You're not violent. You're clearly sick. Did he brainwash you or something?”

Nicki took her time analyzing the vibes she was getting from Gramma. The hardness that had defined the old woman a few minutes ago was gone now. In its place was the look of a concerned grandmother. “We're just old friends,” Nicki said. “I know you don't believe it, but we haven't done anything to deserve all of this.” She paused as she heard her own words, then blushed. “Well, you know. Until this, with you and Scotty. He's not going to hurt you. You saw that he couldn't hurt your grandson.”

The concern deepened in Gramma's eyes. “You know you can't get out of this alive, don't you?”

Brad and Nicki shared a look. “Neither one of us had much left to live for anyway,” Brad said.

Everyone jumped when the phone rang. Brad shot a look to Gramma, who shrugged.

Brad picked up the receiver on the third ring and brought it to his ear. “Hello?” His tone betrayed nothing. It was nearly cheerful, in fact, as if he owned the place and this were any other day.

The voice on the other end, however, was all business. “Brad Ward?”

Brad made his voice just as serious. “Who's asking?”

“This is Commander Maury Donnelly with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. I want you to release your hostage and surrender yourselves before more people get hurt.”

Brad arched his eyebrows. “Well, I want world peace. Who do you think will get their wish first?”

“What's the condition of the people in there?”

“Everybody's healthy and happy,” Brad said.

“I heard reports that your companion, Nicolette Janssen, is very ill and that you've been shot.”

The guy was fishing for information. Clearly, they'd talked to Scotty, and now they were weighing the wisdom of believing a twelve-year-old. “It's amazing how those rumors get started, isn't it?” he said.

“Is it true or isn't it?” Donnelly pressed.

“Why don't you come on up to the front door and find out?”

“We will,” Donnelly said. “Sooner or later, that's exactly what's going to happen. You can't possibly win this.”

Brad laughed. “Dude, where did you get your hostage negotiation training, correspondence school? You're supposed to be telling me how we can work this out. You know, you and me. You're supposed to tell me how I can trust you. And don't forget the part where everybody else out there has an itchy trigger finger, but you can keep them calm if I just step out and give myself up.”

“Sounds like you've been here before,” the cop said.

“You know I have,” Brad said. “Last time, I did it your way and really didn't like the outcome. This time around, I'm going for something different.”

“And what is that?”

“You don't want to know.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Brad enjoyed this game too much sometimes. “I guess you're right. My bad. How's this: I don't want to tell you.”

“Don't be foolish, Brad,” For the first time, Brad could hear anger in the cop's voice. “You're talking suicide. There's no need for violence.”

“I couldn't agree more. Just stay the hell away, and there won't be any.”

“Listen, Brad—”

“No,
you
listen, Maury. Let's understand each other, okay? I don't have any demands, at least not yet. I don't want a million dollars or a helicopter or the release of terrorists. All I want is a few unmolested hours to think things through. Do you think you can arrange that?”

The cop fell silent for long enough for Brad to wonder if he'd hung up. When he spoke, he sounded sad. “We're not going to let you leave, son,” he said. “You have to understand that. One way or another, we're going to win.”

“You go ahead and think that,” Brad taunted. “What would be the fun of getting away if you
let
me do it? I'd rather escape out from under your nose, like I did back in prison. In the meantime, if I see any face I don't recognize, I'm going to shoot it.”

“Are you telling—”

“Have a nice day.” Brad hung up the phone and yanked the plug from the wall. That should keep them guessing. There was no escape plan, of course. But if he understood anything about cops, it was the fact that they were born paranoid and stayed that way. If they
thought
he had a plan, it could only work to his benefit.

“What kind of foolishness was that?” Gramma asked. “Are you
trying
to die?”

“I'm not trying to, no,” he said. “But I'm not afraid of it, either.”

“I am,” she said. “It's the thing I worry about most. I've watched two husbands, a daughter, and a son-in-law all die, and I'm all that Scotty has left.”

The honesty of her words caught him unprepared, and the hardness of his façade faltered. “Then keep your head down when the shooting starts,” he said.

“Brad,” Nicki said. He could hear her breathing now, the rattling moisture in the deepest reaches of her lungs. “Let her go,” she said.

He refused. “Can't do it. Won't. If I do that, there's nothing to keep the cops from blowing the house off of its foundation.”

“She doesn't deserve this,” Nicki said.

For the second time in thirty seconds, Brad felt a pang of real emotion. It thickened his throat and prompted him to turn away from both of them. “I don't deserve this, either,” he said.

* * *

The kitchen of the Mellings' house looked more like a war room than a place to cook and eat. Scotty could tell from the looks he was getting that some of the cops didn't think he belonged there. He tried to remain as invisible as he could, even as he tried not to miss anything.

That first cop—the one he'd run into on the beach—had asked him a zillion questions before handing him off to the ambulance guys, but then, before the ambulance itself had gotten very far at all, somebody had called on the radio and told them to stop. They'd sat there for the longest time. After the EMTs put a bandage on his head, no one seemed to know what to do, so they passed the time by taking his blood pressure every other second, and by talking about everything except what was happening with Gramma.

Finally, a stream of cop cars swarmed onto the beach, and after some discussion he couldn't understand through the walls of the ambulance, a big cop with a gold badge and eagles on his collar climbed into the back and asked Scotty whether he thought he'd be up to helping the police capture the people who'd hurt him. Scotty had jumped at the chance almost before the cop had finished asking the question.

The cop's name was Maury Donnelly, but all the other cops who toadied up to him called him Commander. Scotty avoided calling him anything at all. Either way, Commander Donnelly seemed not to like anyone very much, but was nice enough to him as he explained how much Scotty could help by drawing them a map of what the inside of Gramma's house looked like.

Scotty wasn't there when they'd asked the Mellings to let them use their kitchen as a command post, but he would have loved to see it. Everybody knew that Mr. Melling brewed his own booze and grew pot under lamps in the shed out back. He must have shit his pants when he saw the cops gathering outside. In his mind, Scotty could see them all scampering to hide evidence. Trying to help them out a little, Scotty had even put a magazine over a pipe they'd forgotten to put away. He wasn't completely sure, but he'd have sworn that Commander Donnelly saw him do it, and the little smile he'd sent told Scotty that the cops weren't interested in drugs and alcohol today.

They brought Scotty into the kitchen and sat him down at the table with a piece of paper and a pencil. They asked him to draw a layout of his Gramma's house. He'd given it his best effort, but he'd never been any good at drawing pictures. After one abortive effort, they all decided to let him talk them through the layout of the house. While he described things, a cop whose name he didn't catch drew the lines on the page. The front door was here; the kitchen was there; that sort of thing. When he finished, they'd thanked him and started talking in their radios, telling people what to do.

A few minutes ago, Kathy Melling had brought him a T-shirt from her father's drawer to replace the one that the EMTs had cut off in the ambulance. It was a zillion sizes too big, and sported the silhouette of a naked woman, but Scotty was grateful for the effort. The Mellings had a window air conditioner in their kitchen, and even with all the people in the room, he was getting pretty chilly sitting in front of it.

“Hey, Scotty, can you come here?” It was Commander Donnelly, beckoning him to the table. “Make a hole for the boy,” he said to the rest of his cops.

Five of them were gathered around the drawing of the house Scotty had dictated before.

“How sure are you about the placement of the furniture?” Donnelly asked.

Scotty thought it was a weird question. “Pretty sure.”

“That's not good enough. I need you to be
sure.
” So much for Mr. Nice.

Scotty leaned farther into the table and looked more closely. “What do you need to know?”

“Tell us about the floor coverings,” said one cop.

Responding to Scotty's look of confusion, Donnelly said, “Are there rugs or carpets on the floor?”

“There's a rug in the living room. On the floor.”

“How big?”

“I don't know.” Who paid attention to how big rugs were?

“Does it cover the whole floor?” Donnelly asked. “Or just the center?”

“Just the center, I guess.”

“Think hard now, son. This is important. How much plain floor—floor without carpeting—is there around the outside?”

Scotty was tempted to say he didn't know, but stopped himself. He wanted to be as helpful as he could. He'd played with his soldiers on that floor a thousand times, lain on it watching television. Why couldn't he remember—

Wait a second. He could too remember. He pointed to the drawing. “The TV is on the floor. Just the floor. And about this far behind the edge of the rug.” He indicated a distance of about three inches with his thumb and forefinger.

“And you think it's that way all the way around the living room?” Donnelly pressed. “Say, three feet of rug-free floor on all sides?”

Scotty closed his eyes to remember. “Yeah, about this far.” This time, he used both hands to show a distance of about thirty-six inches.

“At
least
two feet,” Donnelly proclaimed, turning back to the other cops.

“What are you going to do?” Scotty asked.

They weren't paying attention to him anymore.

Donnelly turned to the cop who'd first encountered Scotty on the beach. “And you're sure there's a crawl space underneath?”

Matt Hayes looked solemn. “Absolutely certain,” he said.

“You realize the risk you're taking, right?” Donnelly asked. “If Ward hears you under there, he's likely to start shooting. If he fires through the floor, you're screwed.”

“You're not going under the house, are you?” Scotty gasped. The thought of it horrified him.