The Perfect Husband (42 page)

Houlihan's voice crackled again. “Sniper C, come in. Sniper C, come in.”

The radio was quiet.

“Sniper C?”

More silence. Tess and Quincy exchanged glances.

Houlihan's voice was strong. “Do we have visual of Sniper C?”

“This is Sniper B. I'm looking across the street now. I see Sniper A standing in the west corner. I do
not
see Sniper C in the east. I repeat, I do
not
see Sniper C in the east. Please confirm, Sniper A.”

“This is Sniper A. I don't have visual, sir. Requesting permission to check it out.”

“Permission denied,” Houlihan said flatly. “Hold your position. I'm calling in SWAT. I repeat, stay at your points, I'm calling in SWAT. We are now in status red. I repeat, status red.”

As Tess watched, Quincy calmly took out two extra clips of bullets and placed them on the table beside him. He raised his 9 millimeter and pointed it at the door. “Do you have a gun, Ms. Williams?”

“Yes.”

“Now is the time to take it out. Please remember, he's here to kill. There will be no negotiating on his part and there will be no leniency. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” she said. “I won't hesitate.”

“Good.”

“SIR, LET US take her. Sir, you have to let go now.”

J.T. stared at the man dully. He was wearing a paramedics uniform and holding a red medical kit. Behind him sirens whirled red and garish.

“I'm holding her together,” he said hoarsely, not relinquishing her.

“I know, sir,” the young man said gently. He could tell that the woman was dead. “That's our job now. Someone said you were a cop.”

Slowly the words penetrated. J.T. looked down at Marion. Her head lolled against his arm. The loss inside him was too great. He couldn't measure it. He couldn't put it into words. He couldn't feel it, because when he did, it would bring him to his knees.

He placed his baby sister in the paramedic's arms. “I have to go. Take good care of her for me, please. Just… please.”

He began to run.

Behind him the paramedic shouted at him to stop. He didn't listen.

The darkness in him had grown a voice. And now it screamed at the top of its lungs,
Kill Jim Beckett, kill Jim Beckett, kill Jim Beckett
.

He ran like a man possessed, and blood lust lit his eyes.

“SIR, SIR!” THE walkie-talkie blazed to life. “This is Team Omega. We have a hit on Hoxsey. I repeat, a woman is down on Hoxsey, same MO. Beckett is in the area!”

Tess put her head between her knees and started taking deep breaths. Quincy's radio seemed to dance with a hideous cacophony of reports.

“This is Team Alpha. Repeat, Team Alpha. We are on the roof, east corner. There is no sign of Sniper C—”

“This is Team Omega. Officer down, officer down. Repeat, Agent MacAllister is down—”

“Shit!” Quincy's fist hit the table. Tess jumped.

“Suspect is reportedly dressed as a security guard. Last seen headed north. We are in pursuit. Requesting full mobilization—”

“SWAT team has been mobilized. They are in transit—”

“Officer down, officer down! This is Team Alpha, from the east corner. We have found Sniper C. Dear God, sir, we have found Sniper C—” From the background there came the sound of retching. “Requesting backup, requesting immediate backup. He's on the roof. Shit, I think I see him. He's on the fucking roof! The roof, the roof!”

Over the airwaves Quincy and Tess heard the sound of men running.

“Hold positions, hold positions!” Houlihan screamed. “I said, hold your fucking positions!”

Gunfire exploded across the radio. The sound of a man's hoarse cry. “Difford. OhmyGod, ohmyGod! Jesus fucking Christ!”

Houlihan was now yelling at the top of his lungs.

“What is going on out there?” Tess cried.

“I don't know,” Quincy said.

His face had gone pale. His gaze settled on the ceiling.

J.T. ROUNDED THE corner. He heard shooting and drew his gun. He heard a man's cry. He was still too far away to see anything. He just heard the sound of all hell breaking loose. Three blocks to go, two.

THE DOORBELL RANG, followed by immediate pounding.

“Ms. Williams, open up. Detective Teitel, Massachusetts State Police. I've been sent to stand guard.”

“Stand back,” Quincy told Tess.

He didn't have to convince her. She clung to the wall, her .22 held before her in a shaky hand.

Quincy approached the door, keeping to the side. “I want to see your badge,” he called out.

“Okay.”

Quincy stepped up to the peephole.

The shotgun blew the door apart and hurled him across the room.

Screaming filled the room. It took Tess a moment to realize it was her own.

J.T. ROUNDED THE corner. Black-clad men swarmed the rooftop, screaming at the top of their lungs. Sirens split the air behind him. An ambulance roared toward him and he barely jumped out of the way.

He twisted his ankle and went down hard.

More gunfire split the neighborhood. A shotgun blast.

He staggered up and continued running.

Kill Jim Beckett. Kill Jim Beckett.

“HAY BALES, HAY bales!” Tess cried. She pointed her gun and tried to remember her stance.

Jim pointed his shotgun at Quincy, slumped on the floor.

“I'm going to kill you, Theresa,” he said calmly. “The question is, how many police officers will you take out with you?”

Tears streaming down her cheeks.
Don't hesitate. Don't hesitate
.

Quincy moaned. There was blood on his face, pieces of wood embedded in his skin. But she knew he was wearing a bulletproof vest, which would have spared him the worst.

Jim pumped the chamber.

J.T.'s form filled the doorway. Tess couldn't stop her gaze from flickering there. Jim turned and calmly pulled the trigger.

“No!”

The shotgun blast burst her eardrums. J.T. fell back onto the sidewalk. Down he went, arms splayed like a cartoon character's. Because the violence never ended. For her it just went on and on and on.

She pointed her gun, squeezing the trigger. Jim grabbed the .22 from her hand and pistol-whipped her hard. She fell to her knees, clutching her cheek.

“We do it my way.” Grabbing her arm, Jim dragged her upstairs.

Fresh blood stained his shoulder red. Had she hit him? She couldn't think anymore. Her cheek was on fire from the blow, and ringing filled her ears. The madman was winning. Jim had gotten control.

No! Goddammit, no!

She kicked out at the back of Jim's legs, aiming for his kneecap. He twisted away. She knitted her fingers of her free hand into a shovel and went after his kidneys. He slapped her across the face. She bit his shoulder, then tore into his ear.

“Fuck!” He flung her from him so hard, she hit the wall and fell to the floor. Even then she staggered up and aimed a kick toward his groin.

Fight, fight, fight
. She fought.

And Jim Beckett rose in front of her as an enraged beast. He threw aside the shotgun. He grabbed her shoulder and yanked her toward him. She hit his clavicle with the heel of her hand. He grunted with pain.

Then he wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed.

She fell to her knees. She struck out futilely. She thought she heard groaning downstairs and she struggled to buy time. She didn't want to die. White lights appeared in front of her gaze, but she refused to give in.

She'd fought too hard, come too far to fall to Jim now. She would win, goddammit. She would win.

Jim smiled cruelly. His hands tightened their grip.

J.T.'S CHEST WAS on fire. When he drew in a deep breath, his insides burned beneath his Kevlar vest. He was pretty sure he was dying. The stars looked too bright above him and the pavement was too cold beneath him.

He kept thinking he was supposed to ask for Merry Berry, then memory hit him hard.

He struggled upright. He heard the smack of flesh hitting flesh. He hated that sound. Tess…

Furious, he staggered to the shattered doorway, his left hand barely holding his ribs together. He grabbed the doorway for support, and wooden slivers drove into his palm.

He used the pain to anchor him.

The colonel had raised a son who could walk two miles on a broken ankle. That's a man. Be a man. Fight like a man.

He found the hunting knife strapped inside his cast and advanced for the stairs.

Sirens wailed behind him. Men were still screaming. Someone was yelling about the front door.

Let them all come. Let them all fucking come.

BECKETT SAW SOMEONE out of the corner of his eye. He dropped Tess and reached for the shotgun. He didn't see the knife hurtle through the air, until it drove through his shoulder.

He stared at it without comprehension. J.T. had arrived on the landing.

With a roar he charged.

He caught Beckett around the middle, and they went down with a crash. Something warm filled J.T.'s mouth. He opened his lips, and blood spilled down his cheek. The rusty flavor made him angrier.

Beckett fisted his hands and drove them into the small of J.T.'s back. J.T. got a fresh mouthful of bloody bile. He reared back and caught Beckett beneath the chin with his head. Then he reached up for the handle of his knife and gave it a twist.

Beckett staggered back with a sharp cry of pain. Vaguely J.T. was aware of the thick shadows beneath the man's eyes, the gaunt lines of his chin. Beckett had lost twenty pounds since his prison break, and he looked it.

He didn't feel it though. He felt only the heady thrum of adrenaline in his ears. The sirens, the screams, the noise. It fueled him.

He grabbed the baton he'd strapped inside his arm and started swinging.

J.T. leapt out of the way the first time. He rolled the second. The third swing cracked him on his already cracked ribs. The pain rocketed through him beyond description or color. He fell to his knees.

Above him the baton rose again. He could hear the whistle. Feel the draft.

He commanded his body to roll. One more time, closer to the stairs. His muscles took a long time responding.

The baton whistled down.

And the shotgun blast sent Beckett halfway across the second-story landing. Tess stood with the gun in her hands and the powder staining her cheeks. She pumped in another cartridge.

A low, wet groan escaped Jim's lips. As J.T. lay there, his eyes barely able to focus, he watched her walk over to him. There were no tears on her cheeks. No emotion in her eyes. Her face was pale, her face was calm. He thought of Marion as Tess pointed the shotgun at Jim's fallen body and pulled the trigger.

Through the haze of dissipating smoke, her brown eyes met his.

“It's over,” she whispered hoarsely, shotgun against her shoulder. “Massachusetts might not believe in the death penalty, but I do.”

Jim didn't move again. Tess let the gun slide to the floor. She cradled J.T.'s bloody head on her lap and waited for the police to make it up the stairs.

JUST SOUTH OF Lenox, the cop turned his wailing car into a gas station. A backup patrol car came to a screaming halt behind him.

The woman who was about to pay for her gas stared at them. The man who was unscrewing the gas cap of his Mercedes stopped. The two young kids who were out looking for a good time hunched down lower and wondered if they'd hidden the marijuana far enough beneath the seat.

The cops searched for the pay phone.

An older woman with a somber face and liver-spotted hands appeared from around the side. A little blond girl clung to her neck. She looked at the policemen somberly.

“Edith?” one of the officers asked.

She nodded and he approached the pair slowly, since the girl was obviously scared. The girl perfectly matched the posters all over the war room. He knew. For the last few nights, the officer had gone to bed so tense, he'd dreamed of that face.

“I want my mommy,” she whispered in a tiny voice.

“I know, sweetheart. You're Samantha Beckett, aren't you?”

She nodded slowly, her grip still tight around Edith's neck.

He gave her a reassuring smile. “It's okay. We're gonna take you to your mommy, Sam. We're gonna take you home.”

THE NEW ARRIVAL caused a bit of a stir. She stood in the doorway of the Nogales bar with the long, slender lines of a beautiful woman. Male heads turned instantly, some ancient instinct coming alert. Cue sticks halted before cue balls. Beer mugs paused before parted lips. Predatory gazes cut through the thick miasma of cigarette smoke and lingered on the simple white cotton dress that brushed down her figure and flirted with the tops of her knees.

She stepped into the bar.

Her steps did not invite interruption. She had a target and headed straight for it. Observant gazes plotted the trajectory and ran ahead of her to see who the lucky man was. The minute they figured it out, the gazes quickly hurried away.

If she could tame him, she was welcome to him. The rest of them had already learned to get out of his way — and they'd each learned that lesson the hard way.

He was hunched over a tumbler of amber liquid. His blue cotton shirt was rumpled and hung over faded jeans. His black hair had gone a long time without being cut. His lean cheeks were thick with unshaved whiskers.

Some of the women had found him handsome. He hadn't appeared to find them to be anything at all.

He came day in and day out. He drank. He played pool. Then he drank some more.

Now the mystery woman arrived beside him. She slid onto the ripped vinyl stool. She gazed at him quietly. He didn't look up.

She said matter-of-factly, “I love you.”

He raised bleary eyes. They were bloodshot and shadowed enough to indicate he hadn't slept in weeks. It had been a month since she'd last seen him. The police had brought her Sam. Beckett had been carted off to the hospital and pronounced DOA. J.T. and Quincy had been hospitalized for broken ribs, and in J.T.'s case a punctured lung. She'd visited the hospital every day for a week. He'd lie there silently the whole time, not responding to her voice or her presence. He'd looked half dead, and at times she wondered if he wished that he were.