Bait (50 page)

 

MADDIE'S STOMACH was cramping, and she was so frightened that she was light-headed. They were in his car, something big and black. She was pinned in the front passenger seat, her hands cuffed behind her back, the seat belt pulled tightly across her body to hold her in place. Behind them, her apartment building was fast receding into the distance. She had kept expecting the cavalry to show up—Gomez and Hendricks, or whoever was supposed to be staking out her building; Cynthia, having realized that she was gone; Sam, who was due back at the apartment any minute—
somebody. Anybody.
But nobody had come, and he'd taken her down the stairs and cuffed her and put her into the car and
she hadn't even resisted.
And the chance of rescue was growing more remote with every yard of pavement that passed beneath the wheels. He hung a left on Big Bend, and she went into shock as she faced the truth: She was on her own with a killer.

“What do you want with me?” she asked. The light from the streetlights flickered in and out of the car as it passed beneath them, and she was able to see him clearly. She hated to look—the terrible familiarity of his profile was enough to make her break out in a cold sweat—but she couldn't help herself. There was a horrible fascination to seeing this face out of her nightmare in the flesh again.

“I want that strongbox of Charlie's. And you're going to tell me where it is.”

Oh, God, nobody had ever called her dad Charlie but him
. ... It had been a way of cutting Charles Dolan down to size, of letting him know who was in charge. The lights and passing trees and buildings blurred as tears sprang to her eyes.

“I don't know.”

“We're going to find out, aren't we? Believe me, dollface, if you know, you'll end up telling me.” He sent her a mean little smile that sent an icy finger of fear sliding down her spine. “Actually, you're lucky I want it. You get to live a little longer. I would have whacked you right there in your kitchen if I hadn't. Last time we met, in your hotel room—'member that, baby? You fucking stabbed me in the leg, didn't you?—I didn't know about it. Nice of you to start calling up all your old friends and warning them about what you had.”

He sent her a look that made the hairs prickle to life on the back of her neck. He was going to make her pay for that pencil in the leg. He was going to hurt her—and then he was going to kill her. Maddie wanted to scream. She wanted to bang her head against the window in a futile attempt to attract attention, to smash it, to try to escape. She looked out the windows, hoping desperately to see a passing cop car. If she did she would—what? She couldn't reach the horn, the lights, the accelerator. She couldn't even roll down the window. And ...

“Oh, look,” Welsh said. “There goes your boyfriend's car. Want to talk to him, baby? How about we give him a call?”

Maddie looked, and sure enough, there went the Blazer, speeding in the opposite direction with Sam at the wheel. There was no mistaking Wynne's blond Brillo-pad curls shining in the glow of the streetlights.

“HE JIMMIED the security system.” Sam's blood raced. His heart pounded like a trip-hammer. He had just run up to the apartment, taking the stairs two at a time, ascertained that Maddie was not there and that the security system was still armed, and run down the back stairs to check the box outside the building. The system was designed so that if anyone tried to tamper with it, an alarm immediately sounded and a call was routed to the police. But it had been rigged with a double loop of wires that tricked the system into thinking it was still armed, even though it wasn't. Sam looked at it and felt bells go off in his head.

Not many people knew how to circumvent a system like that. He did, though. It was exactly the kind of rerouting legerdemain that he might have used himself if he wanted to break into a secure building.

He'd learned it from the FBI.

“He's a fed,” Sam said, trying to stay calm, trying not to think of what might be happening to Maddie at that very instant as he turned to look at Wynne and Gardner, who were behind him. Gardner was ashen with guilt, her usually confident demeanor shattered. Wynne was protective and grim at the same time. Sam spoke to Gardner. “Get on the computer, get on the phone, I don't care how you do it, but get me the names of the agents who worked in the Baltimore office seven years ago
now.
” Gardner nodded and started running toward her car. Sam looked at Wynne. “You stay here and take charge of things.”

The alert had already gone out to the St. Louis field office, to the local cops, to everybody Gardner could think of to call. Sam could already hear the sirens in the distance.

Sam had one foot on the stairs when his cell phone started to ring.

He froze, then dug in his pocket and pulled out the phone. He knew, he already knew, before he saw the ID window:
Error,
it said.

“McCabe,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady as icy terror flooded his veins. His gut clenched. He already knew what he was going to hear.

“Hey, asshole,” the digitally altered voice said. “Welcome back to the game.”

 

“THERE IS no game.” Maddie could hear Sam's voice clearly. It was strong and steady, and she yearned toward it, aching, willing him to feel her through the phone, to be able to somehow divine where she was.

“Sure there's a game,” Welsh said. His expression was gloating, triumphant, and Maddie hated him so much that she shook with it. He used to look at her like that, at her father like that. When he thought he had them under his thumb. “I took your little girlfriend. The tables are turned, my friend. You thought you were going to use her to trap me?” He gave a brutal little laugh. “Now I've got her. You come find her. You better hurry, though.”

“We can work something out,” Sam said, and Maddie thought his voice sounded hoarse. “If you don't kill her. A plea bargain for the others. Take the death penalty off the table, maybe.”

“Oh-ho.”
Welsh sounded delighted. He cast a glance at Maddie, clearly eager for her reaction and enjoying the fact that she was there to see him gloat. “Now you
are
playing. Just one problem, asshole. Why should I worry about a plea bargain when you're not going to catch me?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam said. “I am going to catch you. I'm close. Closer than you think. Right on your tail.”

This made Welsh frown and cast a quick, furtive look in the rearview mirror. For a moment, Maddie felt a wild rush of hope. But then Welsh's face cleared and his smirk returned.

“You're blowing smoke out your ass, dickhead. You're nowhere near catching me.”

“You're a fed,” Sam said.

Welsh stiffened. “Not even close.”

“Yeah, it's close. And I can get even closer. I got two names for you. Want to hear them?”

“More smoke.”

“Richard Shelton. Ken Welsh. Those ring a bell?”

Welsh cast Maddie a glance that made her shiver. He looked positively evil, driving through the night with his teeth clenched and his eyes hard and his cheeks flushed with growing rage.

“Remember, last time we talked, how I told you I was going to up the ante? Remember how I told you that next time I whacked someone, I was going to let you watch? Well, here's what your threats got you, asshole. I'm going to take your girlfriend here somewhere and shoot her. And I'm going to get it on videotape. Then I'm going to send it to you and let you watch.”

“Wait,” Sam said sharply, but Welsh wasn't listening. He held the phone in front of Maddie's face. She stared at it, heart racing, falling apart inside, wanting to scream, to cry, to beg. ...

“Say bye,” Welsh said to her.

“Sam,” Maddie said instead. And couldn't help it if her voice shook.

She heard a sound as though he inhaled.

Then Welsh disconnected.

 

“DID YOU get it? Did you get it?” Sam was sweating bullets. His heart was pounding as hard as if he'd just run for a hundred miles. For a moment, Maddie had been there, on the other end of the phone, and he'd wanted to reach down in there and pull her through it, to grab her, to save her—and he couldn't. The bastard had disconnected.

He was going to kill her. Sam had talked to him enough that he recognized the rising excitement in the sick bastard's voice, the escalating violence, the anticipation of causing pain, of causing fear.

He was getting all psyched up, like a predator toying with its prey before the kill.

Gardner was sitting beside him, in the front seat of her car in Maddie's parking lot, with the laptop she always kept in her car open on her lap. The screen glowed up at him, all digital lines and images.

Please,
he thought.
Please.

Gardner looked up at him, her face white.

“Not enough time,” she said.

 

“YOU,” WELSH SAID, looking at her with loathing. “You told him, didn't you? You gave him my name.”

“Yes,” Maddie said, hating him, not seeing any point in lying because he knew, and he was going to kill her anyway.

Welsh swore, his face dark and ugly now, his eyes cutting toward her with a viciousness that made her cringe. Then he backhanded her across the face, snapping her head back against the whiplash guard. The blow hurt, and she cried out.

“If I had killed you, that night in your hotel room, none of this would have happened. But I made a mistake, one damned lousy little mistake—who would have thought that there'd be two damned women staying there under the name Madeline Fitzgerald? What are the chances of that?—and look what happened. The whole thing. The whole thing's going to hell because of you.”

He backhanded her again. Maddie whimpered and cringed against the door.

Then, as her eyes watered and her vision blurred in reaction, she saw that the phone, which he'd dropped onto the console, had been knocked into her seat.

It rested between her butt and the seat back, and if she moved forward a little, just a little, it might drop behind her back.

She couldn't let him realize ...

“Why didn't you just leave me alone in the first place?” she asked, to cover what she was doing. “I wasn't bothering you. Leslie Dolan was in the past. I made a whole new life.”

Blinking to clear her vision, she tried wriggling forward just a little, and the phone did just what she had hoped: It slid behind her back. If she could just manage to pick it up ...

“Because I made a whole new life, too. I'm going places now, big places, and I can't have little pissant nobodies popping up out of the woodwork everytime I turn around. One day you might have seen me, recognized me, said something—and there it would all go. Same thing for the others, too. You are all part of my past that I want to keep in the past. Skeletons in my closet, and I'm cleaning the closet out.”

“I wouldn't have told on you,” she said, easing her cuffed hands sideways, touching the phone, fumbling with it. “I still won't, if you let me go.”

That was bullshit and she knew it, and knew he knew it too, but she wanted to keep him occupied so that he wouldn't realize what she was trying to do.

“Give it up.” He was breathing hard now, and she got the feeling that he was growing more agitated. Heart pounding, stomach churning, terrified that he might notice the phone was missing at any moment, she finally managed to pick up the phone. “I already got a plan for you. I think McCabe was bluffing. I think he just picked those names out of some little sob story you told him and used them to rattle me. There's no way he can find out who I am. Not if I get rid of you, and Thomas Kerry. Then it's all done. Except for McCabe, I mean. I meant to save him for last. But I don't think I will.”

His voice turned thoughtful, and he glanced at her. Maddie froze, feeling the blood pumping through her veins. Did he know what she was up to? Did he guess? She had one shot at this, and one shot only.

But he looked back out at the road again. “I'm going to kill you, then call him and tell him where you are. When he comes to find you, I'm going to kill him. He was going to use you as bait to catch me? Watch this: I'll use you as bait to kill him.”

Welsh had held the phone up to her face when he'd told her to say good-bye to Sam. She had stared at it, imagining Sam on the other end, trying to conjure him up through the phone—and that might stand her in good stead now. Clutching the phone, she concentrated, trying to visualize the arrangement of the buttons.

Her fingers slid over the buttons. She said a little prayer, then hit what she hoped was the redial button.

 

SAM WAS in the car with Gardner, driving her toward the hotel that they were using as a command post, when the phone rang again. He snatched it from the console where he'd placed it and looked at the ID window.

Error,
it said.

His heart stopped, the world receded, and when he flipped the phone open, he realized his fingers were shaking.

There was only one reason why the sick bastard would be calling him back, he feared.

He'd never considered himself a particularly religious man. But as he lifted the phone to his ear he found himself praying like he'd never prayed in his life.

“McCabe,” he said.

 

“YOU HATE HIM, don't you?” Maddie said, continuing the conversation. She had to keep him talking, had to keep talking to him, because it had occurred to her that if she'd been able to hear Sam's voice, Welsh would probably be able to hear it, too, and Sam would surely answer with his customary
McCabe
even if he said nothing else.