The Tin Man (40 page)

“I think so,” the angel said.

“Is she going to wake up?” The familiar voice again.

“Probably,” the angel replied.

“How soon? I need her to do something for me, if she’s able.”

She knew the voice now.
It belonged to Alex Buchanan, her one-legged tin soldier. But was he dead or alive?

She tried to speak his name, but her voice was so weak
it came out as a murmur. Soft fingers swept over her face.

“
Thea? Can you hear me?”

“
Alex?”

Her voice
was more audible now.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “You had a close call, but you’re going to be all right.”

Her eyelids fluttered
open. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes dark with worry. It was the most beautiful sight she had ever beheld.

“Hi,” she whispered
through the oxygen mask.

“Hi, yourself,” he said with that
beguiling Scottish burr of his.

She lifted a hand to his face. Her arm felt like lead, his face like rough sandpaper.
She looked at the other face hovering over her. The dark-blue uniform told her it belonged not to the Angel of Death, but a paramedic.

Returning her eyes to Buchanan, she said, “You need me to do something for you?”

The smile he offered her was tremulous. “Do you feel up to making a call? I’ve already entered the number.”

He held out a cell phone, which she took
. “Who am I calling?”

“
Glenda,” he said. “All you need to tell her is that the story’s legit. Then hand me back the phone and I’ll take it from there.”

She felt too out of it to understand what he was saying.
She could feel the dark clouds moving in again. In another minute, she’d be out. She pressed the “send” button and put the phone to her ear. Glenda answered after the second ring.

“It’s
Thea,” she said weakly.

“
Thea? My God. Where are you? You sound awful. Are you all right?”

Th
ere was no time to explain. She was fading fast.

“
You’ve got to run the story.”

As her head lolled to the side,
he took the phone from her hand.

“
Glenda, hello, it’s Alex Buchanan,” she vaguely heard him say. “Do you know who I am?”

* * * *

Gut smoldering with stuffed-down rage, Buchanan climbed into the FBI’s big black Escalade. It was past nine o’clock now and dark. A few minutes ago, the paramedics had left with Thea, who had slipped back into a coma. He would have ridden along, but unfinished business demanded his attention. In the ambulance, in a moment of lucidity, she had told him about the call Georgi received from Sterling. She also told him about his brother. He could still hear her words, zinging around inside his head like a bullet:
He hung him strappado, raped him with objects, and sliced him up with a box-cutter.

“And surely the murder of my brother is reason enough to arrest that
sick SOB,” he was telling Hamilton now, shaking with rage.

Hamilton, agreeing that it was, t
elephoned the airport, learning that the control tower had just received a request for runway clearance from a pilot for Golden Age Media.

“Sounds to me like he might be planning a direct attack on
Uncle Daddy,” Hamilton said.

The Cadillac was moving now
, heading south on Fourteenth Street toward the Potomac. Buchanan’s gut was churning as he stared out through the smoky glass into the darkness. Monolithic government buildings zoomed past. Treasury. Commerce. Fitting tributes to a nation now ruled by corporate greed run amok. On the seat beside him, Jack Hamilton was wringing his hands in troubled silence. Finally, the attorney looked up, meeting the journalist’s eyes.

“I know I’ve got no right,”
Hamilton said, straining, “but I trust your intentions…with regard to my daughter…are, em, honorable?”

T
ingling heat filled Buchanan’s chest. To tell the truth, he’d been so intent on staying alive in the present, he hadn’t given the future much thought. “As honorable as they can be under the circumstances.”

Hamilton arched an inquisitive brow.
“What circumstances would those be?”

“
I’m just saying.” Buchanan shrugged and returned his attention to the passing cityscape. “It’s been one helluva week.”

* * * *

Glenda Northam, beyond astonished, depressed the hang-up button, but held onto the receiver. Not only had Alex Buchanan just confirmed that the story was legit, he’d also dictated a few additional paragraphs—paragraphs implicating Robert Sterling, the illegitimate son of Milo Osbourne and his sister, as the Zorro killer. Apparently, his arrest by the D.C. police was imminent.

Still clutching the receiver, she looked out her office window toward the newsroom. Through the slats in the mini-blinds, she could see the clock on the wall. It was 7:15 p.m.
—more than two hours past deadline. There were still a few stragglers in the maze of cluttered cubicles, but for the most part, her crew had gone home for the night.

What was she going to do? By now, tomorrow’s edition would already be on press. She took a deep breath and blew it out. Her heart was pounding and her intestines felt like macramé. Gathering her resolve, she punched in the three-digit extension. The phone rang several times before somebody answered.

“Press room,” a man shouted over the background thunder. 

“This is Glenda
Northam in the newsroom,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the presses. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Mac, the foreman.”

The sound coming through the receiver was so deafening, Glenda had to hold it away from her ear. “Well, Mac,” she began, clearing her throat. “After more than forty years in the newspaper business, I’ve never had occasion to say this, but here goes: Stop the presses!”

* * * *

Milo Osbourne, sweating bullets, stood in the doorway of his BBJ, gaze shifting between the tarmac and his wristwatch. It was 10:25 p.m. What in the name of God was keeping the Prince? If he wasn’t there in the next five minutes, they were going to lose their runway position.

Osbourne
took a breath to calm his nerves, reflecting with satisfaction on the successes of the past few hours. The takeover had been thwarted, the deal with Babylon had been approved, those prying journalists had been eliminated, and the recording of Connolly’s interview was now safely in the Prince’s possession. At least he hoped it was. Everything appeared to be proceeding according to plan—with the notable exception of Zahhak’s aggravating tardiness.

When he saw
the Bentley barreling toward the plane, his heart jolted. Was it the Prince? The car came to a stop at the bottom of the airstairs, but nobody got out, making him fume. Finally, after an interminable delay, the rear door swung open and a man sporting a classic black trench stepped onto the tarmac. He was too slim to be the Prince, so who was he? He strained to get a better look at the face. And then, he saw. It was Robert Sterling, the Black Knight.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he called down to
the hubristic punk.

Sterling looked up at him, but didn’t answer. T
here was a black leather laptop case hanging from his shoulder. He began ascending the stairs, feeding Osbourne’s rage. When he was halfway to the top, the Bentley’s front doors popped open. Osbourne watched with a mixture of fury and fear as two men in tan suits jumped out. What the hell?

“Why are
you here? What do you want?”

“The
Prince won’t be coming.”

Rage spiking,
Osbourne demanded, “And why not?”

“Because he’s dead
,” Sterling said coldly. “And so are you.”

“Are you mad?” he demanded, even as a shiver of terror crept up his spine.

“If I am,
” Sterling hissed, “it’s because of you.”

Osbourne
was petrified, but still incredulous.

“Because of me?
I don’t even know you.”

“That’s the problem,”
Sterling said, pulling a gun out of his coat pocket.

Osbourne
backed away, looking from the gun to the man’s ice-blue eyes. The feeling of recognition niggled again. And then it hit him, like a bullet between the eyes. The eyes were a mirror of his own. His sister never got the abortion he’d arranged.

“She lied to me,” he stammered,
struggling to spew the truth in the desperate hope it might save his life. “I didn’t know. If I had, I would have taken care of you. You must believe me.”

“You’re
the liar,” Sterling snarled, face twisting in hatred as he stepped closer.

Osbourne
’s heart slammed against his ribs so hard he feared it might break his age-brittle bones. “Is that why you went after Global? To get revenge?”

Sterling
nodded, stepping closer.

“Don’t do this, I’m begging you,”
Osbourne said, back bumping the wall. “I’ll make you a wealthy man. Give you anything you want—money, shares, an inheritance, just please, let me live.”

“
You don’t deserve to live.”

Osbourne
heard something then. Squealing tires, out on the tarmac. Glancing out the hatch, he saw a black SUV barreling toward the plane. Was it the Prince? Had Sterling lied about killing him? Just as he opened his mouth to speak, something in his chest kicked like a mule. His breath left him suddenly. He gasped and choked, tugging at the knot in his tie as the SUV screeched to a stop right in front of the airplane’s nose.

“This is the FBI
,” a voice boomed from a microphone on the vehicle, “come out of the aircraft with your hands in the air.”

It felt as if t
ime moved in slow motion, then everything started to spin. The mule kicked again, even harder this time. Searing pain shot down his left arm. Gasping, he clutched his chest just as his legs went out from under him. The next thing he knew, he was tumbling head over heels down the airstairs.

* * * *

Buchanan watched in mute shock as Robert Sterling and his twin thugs charged down the airplane stairs, hurdling over Milo Osbourne, who now lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom. Jumping into the Bentley, they peeled away in a squealing burst of white smoke.

“Punch it,”
Hamilton bellowed, pointing between the seats, “they’ve got nowhere to go!”

The Cadillac lurched forward, throwing
Buchanan back against the seat. He gripped the door handle, keeping his eyes on the tarmac—roughly the length of an American football field. On the left was a row of abutting hangars; on the right, a parking lot full of private planes. The Bentley was still a fair distance ahead, but they were gaining.

The driv
er, an agent named Crawford, reached up to his visor and took down a microphone. His amplified voice squawked, “Stop or we’ll be forced to use our weapons!”

The
Bentley sped on.

Crawford
replaced the microphone.

The agent riding shotgun lowered his window.
His gun discharged with a deafening crack, hitting the Bentley’s left rear tire, which exploded with a bang. The limo swerved and the rear began to fishtail. With a sudden veer, it screeched to a halt. The back doors swung open. The twins dropped behind them and started blasting. Bullets sprayed the tarmac, zinging and popping as they struck the Escalade. Crawford slammed on the brakes. As the Cadillac skidded to a stop, Buchanan smashed against the front seat before taking cover as the agents opened fire.

“There he goes,”
Hamilton screamed over the deafening melee.  

Buchanan
raised his head just enough to look out. Sure enough, Sterling, carrying a shoulder bag, was hauling ass down the tarmac toward the terminal. Rage reared and took him over. Sterling was getting away. And he couldn’t let that happen. Not after the terrible things he’d done to Kenny and Thea.

Flinging
open the door, he jumped out and started humping down the tarmac in pursuit.

* * * *

Sterling stumbled in a pothole and nearly went down. Buchanan, hot on his heels, pounced, tackling him to the pavement. They landed hard. Sterling rolled and Buchanan came down hard on his chest, seeing red as he thought of his brother.

“This
one’s for Kenny,” he bellowed, smashing his fist into Sterling’s nose. Wham. As blood gushed from Sterling’s nostrils, Buchanan landed more blows. Wham, wham, wham. “And that’s for Thea.” Wham, wham. “And that’s for her grandfather and for squeezing my balls.”