The Reviver (36 page)

The rage sent him running towards the car. A shout came from behind him, but the anger was all he knew. He ran, full stride, as hard as he’d run in his life. Then he froze.

Hannerman had seen him. He stood slowly from behind the car’s rear, eyes wide. A gun in his hand.

Another shout came from behind Jonah, but his mind had blanked, his legs unable to move. He suddenly understood where the rage had really come from. Daniel Harker, woken long enough to want to charge down the man who’d killed him.

The gun came up.

At once Jonah sensed something coming fast at him from his right; the gun fired; Jonah was shunted from the side; he heard the bullet whip past. The force of impact took him to the ground, over a low wall that ran alongside the road, into struggling greenery and rag-tag bushes.

He felt shaky with panic and started to stand. Another shot came, stone chipping from the wall, alarmingly close. He felt hands grab him and pull him down. He looked beside him.

It was Never Geary, panting, red-faced and
annoyed.
‘For fuck’s sake,
stay down.
’

Jonah said nothing. In his mind he could see the gunman running towards the wall, see him standing over them both with a wide bloody grin, shooting until their faces were pulp and gristle. Fear and adrenaline were making him shiver. He heard a car door open and shut. The sounds of distant sirens. Shouts coming closer. More shots fired. Tyres squealing.

Then Never slowly raised his head and looked over the wall.

‘You OK?’ came a man’s voice.

Holding up a hand, Never nodded, then thought to make sure about Jonah. ‘
Are
you?’ he asked. ‘You’ve got blood all over you. Check it’s not your own.’

Jonah ran a trembling hand over himself. ‘OK. I think.’

‘What the fuck was that?’ asked Never. ‘You went all Bruce Willis on me.’ He stood and gave his hand to Jonah, helping him up.

‘I don’t know. I just lost it. I didn’t know he had a gun. If I’d known…’ Even as he said it, he wondered if it would’ve made a difference to how he’d reacted. How
Daniel
had reacted. ‘Christ, Never, if you hadn’t come after me…’

‘You’re welcome. For the record, though, first I knew about the gun was when the fucker fired it.’ He smiled at Jonah, a pained smile. Jonah smiled back in relief. Then, in unison, their smiles failed, their thoughts synchronized. Jason. Pru. Sam.

*   *   *

Grim, they ran back to the rear of the hotel.

The area was filling as the hotel emptied, people desperate to see what had happened, both police and security struggling to marshal them back inside.

‘Jonah!’ It was Ray Johnson. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘Hannerman,’ Jonah said.

‘Hannerman’s dead,’ said Johnson. ‘I heard they’d identified his body.’

Jonah thought about the charred remains he’d seen after the catastrophic raid on the house, remembering Bob Crenner’s words that day:
The only thing even resembling a body is under that tarpaulin.
‘They were
wrong.
I don’t know who made the mistake, Detective, but they were
wrong.
’

The flow of people was moving against them now, as those around the back were being corralled to the main entrance.

‘You can’t go that way,’ called one of the security team, but Johnson showed his badge and they hurried past them all, emerging and seeing blood-soaked towels in a pile beside a small group. A man and a woman were kneeling beside Jason Shepperton, the name badges they wore identifying them as symposium attendees. Pru was standing six feet away. The sirens were growing louder. Help was on its way.

Jonah saw Sam sitting on a bench, alone, looking pale and distant, wrapped in a blanket that one of the staff must have given him, drying blood spattered across his face and on his sleeves. Jonah hurried over to him, while the others went to Pru and Jason.

‘Sam?’ Sam’s eyes looked towards him, lost. Something about the expression on his face scared Jonah. ‘Sam?’ Jonah turned his head, catching Never’s eye and calling him over.

‘Jason’s stable,’ said Never. ‘He’s badly cut, but they’ve managed to stem the blood flow, so they don’t think it’s life-threatening.’ He saw the look in Jonah’s eye. ‘What?’

‘Something’s wrong with Sam.’

Crouching beside Jonah, Never put his hand on Sam’s arm. ‘Sam? Talk to me.’ Sam’s eyes were glazed. ‘I think he’s in shock.’

Jonah took Sam’s hand, startled by how cold it felt, then pulled one side of the blanket away from his lap. He moaned at the sight. From Sam’s hip down to his knee, his jeans were drenched in fresh blood.

Looking close, Jonah spotted the small cut in the cloth of Sam’s jeans where the knife had entered, just above the hip. He looked up and saw two paramedics hurrying around the corner heading for Jason, but Never was already shouting to them for help.

*   *   *

Jonah and Never sat, restless and silent in the hospital general waiting area. The blood on Jonah’s clothes was long dried and starting to brown; two police officers were on guard by the entrance, another waiting by the operating theatre where they were working on Sam. Hannerman had not been found yet, the police presence a precaution. But Hannerman seemed a life away, almost an irrelevance, as Sam fought to survive.

Jason and Sam had been taken at once in the ambulance; Jonah and Never had followed after giving hurried statements to the detectives at the scene, Jonah keeping it simple, telling them that handling Daniel Harker’s revival had allowed him to recognize Hannerman.

It had fallen to Jonah to call Helen Deering, pain in his voice as he told Sam’s wife what had happened. Helen was in the surgery waiting room now, insisting on being left alone in spite of Jonah’s pleas.

Jason, meanwhile, was stable and awake upstairs. Jonah and Never had been to see him, police guard at the door, his girlfriend by the bed; he was as eager as the rest of them for news of Sam. His arms were bandaged, a total of eighty-seven stitches, without an artery nicked or a tendon severed, while Sam was close to death from a single wound. Jonah and Never had returned to the general waiting area and had been there ever since.

‘I’m going to go see Helen,’ said Never. ‘See if there’s any news.’

Alone, Jonah found himself thinking about standing frozen while a gun raised towards him; thinking about Sam, and how the last words they’d exchanged had been words of anger.

He had reached no conclusions by the time Never returned.

‘Nothing yet,’ said Never. ‘They’ll tell us as soon as they have anything.’

It was three hours before news came, and when it did it was Helen they saw approach, dismay on her face, bursting into tears as she reached them and embraced Jonah. He held her as her sobs shook them both. After a time, she managed to speak.

‘He’s out of surgery, but critical. They don’t know. They don’t know if he’ll pull through.’ It was all she could get out before the sobs took hold again.

*   *   *

Jonah was focused on the clock in the Emergency reception area. Six o’clock came and went and he watched each and every tick, the rate of time impossibly slow. Helen was beside him, head in hands, staring at the floor, taking a few moments before she went to the post-op area, where Sam was due to be taken shortly. Robert, their son, was on his way from Florida, and was expected to land before seven. Jonah would be glad when he got there, someone to provide the real support that he was failing to give.

It was just the two of them, Never having gone to get a round of coffee.

Helen sniffed gently, staring up at the clock Jonah was watching. ‘We do have it, you know.’

Jonah turned, puzzled. ‘What?’

‘If it came to the worst.’ Not moving her eyes from the clock. Her voice one-tone, curiously detached.

‘I don’t know what—’

‘Revival insurance.’

Jonah felt ice fill his soul.

‘He was always telling me not to expect too much,’ she said. ‘Premiums rise as you age, you see. Inevitably you can’t afford the best. And he had all his own people to compare against. He’s so proud of you all. Maybe a little biased.’ She looked at Jonah and chuckled, the jarring sound loaded with despair. ‘Eighty-three per cent. That’s the figure. Eighty-three per cent chance of successful revival. That’s their best-case scenario too. Like rolling a dice and hoping you don’t get a one. And they don’t try again if it fails, not with the insurance we have. You only get one chance at it.’ She looked at Jonah and tried to smile. ‘Sam often talked about the way you handled things, Jonah. About the care you’d take with a family and the effect that had on them.’

Jonah’s heart was pounding. Suddenly the room was airless.

Helen went on. ‘I know it’s not fair. I
know.
And I know he wouldn’t admit to it. But deep down Sam wouldn’t want anyone except you doing it.’

Jonah’s mind reeled. Helen’s tear-filled eyes were glued to his, the request clear enough. Jonah said all he could have said: ‘He’ll pull through, Helen. He’s strong.’

Helen Deering nodded without conviction. ‘I don’t have any right to ask, Jonah, but I can’t bear it. I can’t. Please. Promise me. If it comes to it. Let us say good-bye.’

With nowhere to hide, Jonah found himself nodding.

When Never returned with the coffee, Jonah excused himself and found a toilet, retching hard until his stomach was empty and he was spitting nothing but bile.

27

Ray Johnson’s day wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. When he’d tracked her down first thing that morning, the New York cop giving a presentation had turned out to be very cute indeed, but very married. Then all hell had broken loose. Thoughts of that buffet lunch were long gone.

Once Sam Deering had been taken to hospital, the conference was cleared; more officers were brought in to take witness statements, but with so many people there it was mostly a case of logging contact details and sending them home.

This wasn’t any of Ray’s business, not officially, but his connection to the case was obviously relevant and he felt a level of blame he couldn’t shake. He hadn’t been the one who’d signed Hannerman off as a corpse, but he’d seen Hannerman’s picture enough times and imagined it with the thin features Daniel Harker had described during his revival. With Hannerman presumed dead there was a chance those pictures hadn’t even made it to the briefings for the conference security teams, and even if they had, they’d have been considered peripheral.

Ray was one of a handful of people who could have recognized the man, and he hadn’t spotted him.

He made himself known to the detective in charge at the scene, one Earl Pellman, a weathered cop who looked old enough to be a grandfather but tough enough to one-punch most men to the floor. Ray told him he’d been on the Harker case; Pellman was already up to speed on that and what had followed. The assumption was that Hannerman had simply not been present at the police raid that had led to the inferno and had been working alone since, attempting one desperate, final act.

Whether the conference had been an intended target originally was unclear. If so, this was certainly not the well-planned attack that Harker’s kidnappers would have had in mind. If anything, it looked like Hannerman had been making it up as he went along.

‘Frankly,’ said Pellman, ‘I doubt he expected to escape.’

‘If there’s any way I can help, sir,’ said Ray. ‘I reckon I know Hannerman’s face better than anyone else here. And I know Miller and Geary. Makes it personal.’

Pellman looked at him for a moment. ‘Miller, huh? The reviver who tackled Hannerman, the one who identified him? I read his statement. Tell me, are all revivers that crazy?’

‘Not as far as I know, but I’d say they earn the right.’

‘Amen to that. Well, I tell you what. If you really want to help, I’d be a fool to say no. This is a situation we need to turn around before we all look like we couldn’t yank our own dicks unassisted, so I’m sending some of my people out to see if we can narrow down which way Hannerman went. We don’t even know if he drove out of Richmond or went to ground in the city. CCTV or eyeballs,
something
saw which way, and the sooner we know, the better. Tag along with one of them. If you know the man’s face so well, there might be some footage you can rule in or out.’

Ray thanked him, unsure if Pellman thought he could really be of any use, or just understood how Ray was feeling.

Eight detectives, four cars; Ray chose the one that was heading out north towards DC, partly because it was closer to home territory, and partly because the kidnappers had originally put down a false trail to the south of Harker’s home, all the way to Atlanta. When people put down false trails, they’d want it as far from themselves as possible. The opposite direction was sometimes the best place to start.

So north it was, Detective Ellen Pierce driving, her partner Dom Lloyd beside her, and Ray in back.

It was with darkness falling that a Fredericksburg Police cruiser spotted a car matching the description that had been put out; the plates differed, but those reported from the scene had proved to be false anyway, registered to a red Nissan. Hannerman may have changed them.

The officers had thought they’d seen apparent bullet holes, one in the driver’s door, perhaps two or more in the rear, not obvious against the black metalwork. They had called it in and followed at a distance until the vehicle had pulled into a 7-Eleven gas station on Lafayette Boulevard. The officers had driven past without slowing, turning out of sight up ahead and stopping where they could observe unseen.

When the call had come in, Pierce and Lloyd were closest and the first of the police officers to be notified; by the time Hannerman had pulled into the 7-Eleven, they were less than ten minutes away. They were instructed to pass by and confirm ID if possible, then join the cruiser and await backup.

As they passed the gas station, Ray saw a man come out and immediately light a cigarette. It was definitely Hannerman. That was why he’d stopped, Ray supposed. Just to buy cigarettes. Well, why not? He’d had a stressful day.

The gas station had no other customers, and the road wasn’t busy.