The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (33 page)

I frowned and brushed my hand across the
lower half of my face then shifted my gaze back and forth between
Ben and Mandalay as I spoke. “Okay, but I want her as far removed
from this as possible.”

“Both of you will be,” Mandalay replied. “The
HNT is just going to be interviewing you, that’s all. So you
definitely won’t be in any line of fire.”

“I’ll get our coats,” Felicity announced,
pulling away from me and skirting around Ben as he shuffled to the
side.

“It’s gonna be okay, white man,” my friend
told me.

“I hope so,” I replied. “I don’t have a very
good feeling about this.”

“Twilight
Zone
?” he asked.

I centered on the anxious energy that was
using my spine as a multi-lane thoroughfare and felt the ache rise
inside my skull as my scalp tightened. “Yeah, definitely.”

Constance tried to assuage my obvious fear.
“It’s going to be okay.” She gave me a slight smile then looked
over to Ben. “We can take my car. Where’s your coat, Storm?”

“On the couch.” He gave a nod back toward the
living room. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she answered as she stepped
around him. “Just don’t get used to it.”

“Jeez, Mandalay, now you sound like my wife,”
he jibed over his shoulder.

Her voice filtered back to us. “I knew I
really liked Allison for some reason.”

Ben swiveled his head back and focused on me.
He stared at me in silence for a moment then jutted his chin toward
me in a quick gesture as he brought his hand up to gingerly smooth
back his hair.

“You seein’ somethin’?” he asked quietly.
“One of those visions?”

“No. Just feeling some stuff right now.”

He gave me a questioning look. “So can’t you
do some hocus-pocus or something?”

“I wish I could.”

“What about tossin’ some salt around?” he
asked. “I’ve seen you two do that. Ain’t that some kind of
protection thing?”

“Yes it is,” I replied. “But trust me, this
apartment has already been salted enough to give an elephant high
blood pressure.”

“So there’s nothing you can do?”

“Stay grounded,” I replied. “That’s about it,
I guess.”

“Well do that then,” he instructed. “So does
this have anything to do with all that floppin’ around you were
doin’ earlier?”

“I don’t know, Ben.” I reached up and began
massaging my scalp again. “Maybe. I still have no idea what that is
all about. All I can say is that something about this just feels
wrong. It’s almost like it’s a big puzzle, but there’s a crucial
piece missing that would bring it all together and let you see what
the picture is. Do you know what I mean?”

“Well, I don’t know about a puzzle, white
man,” he echoed. “It seems pretty straightforward to me.”

I shook my head. “No. There’s something hinky
about all of this.”

“Hinky how?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know.”

“You ain’t helping me here, Row.”

“That’s pretty much the theme of the day,
isn’t it?” I retorted. “I’m sorry. This is all just going pretty
fast, you know?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I know.”

I started to glance at my watch out of reflex
and realized that I hadn’t put it back on after my shower since it
had been shattered. I turned and looked over my shoulder at the
automatic coffeemaker. The digital display shimmered a five into a
six as I watched, displaying the time as 8:36.

“Is it really that late?” I asked aloud.

“Uh-huh,” Ben grunted. “Long day, huh? You
get much sleep earlier?”

“I got a few hours, I guess, but they weren’t
exactly quality.”

“Yeah, I figured as much. So, maybe all this
is just the exhaustion and stress.” He offered the second half of
his observation with a shrug.

“Maybe,” I verbally agreed, although in my
head, I doubted it. Then I gave him a serious stare. “Listen, I
need to ask you a favor.”

“What’s up?”

“Felicity,” I said. “I need to know she’s
going to be taken care of.”

“You’ll both be safe, white man,” he
reiterated. “We already told ya’ that.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I replied. “I mean
if something goes wrong.”

“You ain’t talkin about what I think…” He let
his voice trail off as he furrowed his brow.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “If something happens to
me, I need you to promise me that you’ll take care of
Felicity.”

“Nothing is gonna happen to you, Rowan.” He
informed me with absolute conviction in his voice while thrusting
his splayed hand at me for effect. “They’re just gonna interview
you.”

“But just in case.”

“Don’t be sayin’ this shit, Row,” he
demanded. “Because if you’re not gonna stick to the plan, you ain’t
goin’. Hear me?”

“Just promise me.”

“Awww, Jeez, Rowan,” he said. “Tell me you’re
going to play by the rules here.”

“Please, Ben?” I appealed. “I need you to do
this.”

“Okay, yeah,” he returned. “You know we would
anyway. You two are family to Allison and me. But, I’m tellin’ you
that nothing is gonna happen, and if you try to do something
stupid, I’ll cuff you to the bumper of a patrol car; AFTER I kick
your ass. Got me?”

“Yes, Ben, I understand.”

“I’m not kidding, Row.”

“Yeah. Me either.”

* * * * *

“Maybe I’m wrong here, but shouldn’t we have
some lights flashing and sirens blaring?” I asked.

We had just pulled out of the parking lot of
the apartment complex and onto the main drag with Constance behind
the wheel and Ben riding shotgun. Felicity and I were parked in the
back seat of the sedan, with me positioned behind Mandalay since
Ben’s seat was pushed back as far as it would go. My petite wife
had even shifted more toward center in order to have any legroom at
all.

We were belted in, and I had been fully
expecting a mad dash through the city as soon as we began moving.
Instead, Mandalay accelerated smoothly into traffic and joined the
ebb and flow with less urgency than would be attributed to a trip
to the local shopping mall.

“No big hurry,” she said over her shoulder.
“We’ll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“What do you mean no big hurry?” I repeated
the comment back to her, certain that I had misunderstood. “Did I
miss something here?”

“It’s all part of the ‘game’, Rowan,” she
explained. “The longer they drag this out, the better position they
will be in to negotiate.”

“Porter isn’t playing by their rule book,” I
insisted, trying to keep my emotions from assuming control and
forcing me to escalate as they had done before. “I think they might
want to consider a different strategy.”

“They know what they’re doin’, white man,”
Ben offered with a diagonal glance back at me. “It’s their
job.”

I sat back in the seat and grumbled. “I’m
telling you that they are wrong. This isn’t the same.”

“I know it’s hard,” Constance spoke again.
“But you really need to relax, Rowan. Hostage scenarios don’t
typically resolve in a matter of minutes. You are usually looking
at several hours. Sometimes even days.”

“Not this one.”

“If the situation changes, someone will
contact us,” Ben told me. “Unless that happens, there’s no reason
for a Code Three response. So just sit back and enjoy the ride.
You’re gonna be wishin’ for a little solitude once they start
grilling you. Trust me.”

I crossed my arms and shut my mouth. I
appeared to be locked into a no-win situation with everyone this
evening, so I decided not to press any harder. It would only serve
to get me riled up.

I hadn’t heard a peep out of Felicity, so I
looked over at her and saw that she was fidgeting with the memory
card on a professional-series digital camera. She never went
anywhere without at least some type of photographic device at her
disposal even if it was just the high-end point-and-shoot she
always kept in her purse.

I continued to watch as she stared intently
at the display on the back of the piece of equipment while expertly
stabbing at the controls with her thumbs.

She had once told me that looking at the
world from behind a lens made her feel safe. She could remain
detached while still seeing everything. Sometimes, by becoming one
with that intensity of focus, she would transition beyond the
frame. The camera would become a microscope for her third eye,
bringing into view things unseen in the physical realm.

As she switched the camera off and stuffed it
back into her equipment bag, I made a mental note to stay out of
the way if I noticed her looking through it anytime in the near
future.

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes into the trip, we were moving
along in what passed for the center lane of the highway. We had
actually been making good time considering the icy condition of the
roads and obscured dividing lines. Fortunately, traffic had been
light due to the weather and time of night.

That bit of luck seemed to be expended,
however. Up ahead of us, brake lights were suddenly beginning to
announce themselves in dusky pairs, and the congestion was rapidly
increasing.

I was pressed back into the seat, my face
tilted upward and my eyes inspecting the dark headliner for lack of
anything better to do. I felt the vehicle beginning to slow and
canted my head forward.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Sshhh,” Mandalay admonished as she reached
over and turned up the volume on the radio.

“…
And we have a report of a
multi-vehicle accident with injuries on eastbound Interstate
Forty-Four at Jefferson,” an announcer’s voice issued from the
speakers. “All lanes are shut down, so you might want to avoid that
area for the time being. Also, there are reports of black ice
on…”

“Friggin’ wonderful,” Ben proclaimed. “Guess
we better go ahead and exit pretty quick, or we’ll get caught up in
that mess.”

“That would probably be best,” Constance
agreed. “If we take the next exit, we could cut over and take
Market down to Memorial.”

“Yeah, sounds like a plan,” he replied.

Mandalay’s cell phone had begun to sing its
tune as Ben was answering her. She reached for it as she glanced
over her shoulder to make a quick visual check before changing
lanes. She canted the wheel and eased the sedan over to the right
and then flipped the device open and put it against her ear.

“This is Mandalay,” she said.

The swath of bright headlights that suddenly
illuminated the cabin of the vehicle seemed horribly out of place
to me. I squinted to block them out. I was still trying to wrap my
brain around why such intense light was coming at me from the
driver’s side of the car when the world as we knew it fell
apart.

The mournful shriek of metal against metal
filled my ears directly behind the explosive crunch of the other
car slamming into ours. I was tossed hard to the side, my arms
flailing in front of me as I reached for something to hold on to
but found only handfuls of air.

I heard Felicity screaming on my right as the
inertia was transferred to the rear end of our vehicle, causing it
to whip wildly around on an off-centered axis. The safety belt bit
into my shoulder and constricted around my waist as I strained
against it.

“Holy shit!” Ben’s voice boomed from the
front seat.

I caught a quick glimpse of Mandalay expertly
throwing hand over hand to veer the sedan into the direction of the
skid in an attempt to bring it back under control.

I threw my right arm up and across the
seatback, stretching it behind Felicity as we continued to pitch to
the right. Out of reflex, I hugged her tight and pulled my forearm
up around her head just as the other vehicle made a three-quarter
spin to clip us once again with its rear end.

The additional force of the second hit
propelled us again to the right, threading me straight out of my
safety harness as my wife and I hammered into the passenger side
door. My reflex had come just in time as my forearm took the brunt
of the strike instead of Felicity’s head.

A third crash sounded immediately on the
heels of the second, and I felt the car lift upward on its side as
sheet metal folded and groaned in protest.

Over the din, I heard Constance scream,
“Goddammit!”

I knew it couldn’t be good if she was using
expletives. I threw my other arm over my wife, covering her face as
Mandalay’s unsecured cell phone flew over the back of the seat and
ricocheted from my forehead. The tires were slipping across the icy
pavement, making the vehicle jump and jerk as their surfaces would
randomly achieve some modicum of traction, only to lose it in
almost the same instant. I was expecting to roll at any moment and
braced myself as best I could.

The unmistakable sound of glass shattering
ripped through the air, but I couldn’t identify where it was coming
from. I stayed low in the seat and held tight to Felicity as the
sedan thudded back down onto all four wheels, jolting us hard when
it bounced.

Momentum carried us along, and I could feel
that we were still languidly spinning. As we came upon the halfway
point, we found ourselves sliding backward down the highway,
headlamps from now oncoming vehicles casting harsh shadows within
the cabin.

A new crash sounded in the near distance, and
I pushed my head up to peer out the window just in time to see a
newly involved vehicle fishtail into the passenger side of our car
then bounce away into another.

We were thrown to the other side of the car,
and my hip impacted heavily against the door handle. Felicity’s
body crushed against mine, and the air forced its way out of my
lungs in a guttural huff.

The insane screech of metal on metal
continued to underscore every other noise as horns blared into the
cold night. I felt another thud, lighter this time, but still
enough to propel me back into the seat and toss me upward. My arm
was ripped away from Felicity, and her body followed mine as we
both returned to sitting positions.