Cut and Run (32 page)

“You said you'd get me a doctor,” Paolo said. He delicately touched the skin near his eye, then withdrew his hand.

Philippe reached up under his coat and pulled the .22 out from the small of his back. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it was loaded with live rounds and was accurate. He remained out of reach of Paolo, knowing his fast reaction time. He did not provoke him, did not aim the gun directly at Paolo, but its presence said it all.

“Empty your pockets.”

“Sure.” Paolo, confused but not about to object, did as he was told. He placed several credit cards and some bills and change on the edge of the desk. The stub of a pencil. A small pocket watch with a badly scratched face. His cell phone.

“Behind your belt.”

“You said my pockets.”

“Everything.”

“Whatever.” Paolo slipped the razor blade out from behind his belt and placed it on the desk. He kept it within reach, his eye on the gun in Philippe's lap.

“Show me the phone.”

Paolo took the phone off the desk. It was a clamshell design, not powered up, its small screen dark. This didn't fit with what Philippe had just been told.

“Turn it on.”

“But . . .” Paolo said. “I mean, think about it. If they have a lock on me, they'll pull a location. Why risk that?”

Philippe reached forward and swiped the phone out of the man's hands, knocking it across the room. The battery came loose as the phone hit the floor. “When and where did they get to you?”

“What the fuck?”

Now Philippe aimed the gun directly at him. “When . . . and where?”

“How about
who
?”

“You needed a doctor,” Philippe said. “I can understand that.”

Paolo turned the injured side of his face toward Philippe. “Does this
look
like I've seen a doctor? What's going on here?”

“The more you stall, the more you piss me off.” He made a point of the weapon. “Never piss off—”

“—the guy holding the gun.” Paolo knew Philippe's inside jokes better than his teacher knew them. “I've had no contact with them. You hear me? None! They did
not
turn me.” He said earnestly, “Don't you get it? All I want . . . all I want
more than anything
is to do this job for you. This woman . . . she did this to me.” He touched his face again. “It's my turn.”

“What did you do with her cell phone?”

“I never had her cell phone. If I did, she'd be dead, and I'd be offering it as proof.”

Philippe had trained the man well: He showed no signs of breaking even under the threat of the gun.

“Let me help fill in some of the blanks,” Paolo offered.

“That's the idea.”

He extended his arms. “Are you going to do this or not?”

Philippe lowered the gun. Paolo might have hidden her cell phone in the Mercedes, so that it wouldn't be found on his person. But a second explanation presented itself, however improbable. “If it's not a plant, then it's her. She's here. Could you have been followed?”

“No way.”

“Could the girl have signaled someone, gotten word to someone?”

“Impossible.”

“Because if she's here, you have to tell me how she found us, you see?” Philippe talked to himself, working this out. “One of our guys could have given us up, I suppose.” He answered Paolo's puzzled expression: “We suffered a setback last night in Florida. It was messy. Two of our guys and the professor. The phone could be her and this marshal, I suppose.” He considered this further. “Might even be intentional on their part. Or just plain reckless. We'd be stupid not to find out—to pass up the opportunity, if that's what this is.”

“If she's on this property, I owe her,” Paolo said. “Cut me in on this.”

“Your face? Your eye?”

“Can wait.”

“Collect your things,” Philippe said. “Hurry.”

Paolo scooped his belongings off the desk and jammed them into his pockets. All but the razor, which he delicately returned to its hiding place behind his belt buckle.

Philippe's hand shook slightly as he returned the .22 to the small of his back. On this, of all nights . . .

“If she's stupid enough to show up at the house, I'll call you. We've got it locked down tight for the meeting. One marshal and a witness are not going to present much of a problem. You back up the bunkhouse, just in case this marshal's luck holds out a little longer.”

“Consider it done.”

Philippe debated calling off the auction, but to do so would be a sign of weakness. He had ten men; Ricardo, another six to ten. If possible, they would sweep the property one more time before the meeting. He could put off canceling until then. If they caught and killed Hope Stevens in the process—the only remaining living witness who could give them all jail time—he'd have a major announcement with which to open the auction. This might help him to cover that he had only a partial list: eight hundred witnesses and their three thousand dependents. And it'd be a major public victory for him personally.

“Did you say something?” Paolo stood at the door to the study.

Had he? He wasn't sure.

“The bunkhouse,” he said, then watched as Paolo walked briskly away. A man on a mission.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Larson moved before the double-wide's motion-sensitive
lights switched off because after that, if he approached the building, the sensors would bring the lights back on. Although the windows were blacked out, he couldn't rule out a visual or audible alert connected to the lights on the inside.

He worked around the near side of the building past four plastic trash cans, some discarded truck tires, and pieces of plywood used for target practice. Wedged between the trash cans were the cardboard and Styrofoam from packaging that had contained a microwave oven.

The double-wide was a glorified shoebox with a flat roof that extended in short eaves on every side. Larson followed with his eyes a black wire that attached to a video splitter under the nearest eave. Next to the cable wire ran a power line extending from the same pole.

To crash through the door and attempt a rescue was not going to help anyone. Even if he reached Penny—doubtful—they'd never make it off the property. He had to get inside quietly, and sneak off the property with a five-year-old in tow. Possibly Markowitz's grandson as well. Might as well throw in a tap-dancing elephant.

Where were Stubby and Hamp?

Larson found a stout branch to use as a club, preparing to carry out his developing plan. He then crept to the back of the structure and placed his ear to the glass, hearing only the low rumble of television and nothing more. No small voices. No kids crying.

The front floodlights clicked off. But because of his continuing movement, the back lights remained on. He wondered if this gave him away.

He leaned the wooden club against the trunk of the tree nearest the structure and climbed quickly. Several of the evergreen's stout branches hung over the building's sloped roof. Larson reached five branches up and then worked his way out along the thickest of these to where he could make the transfer from tree to roof. The back lights now went dark, leaving Larson literally out on a limb over the roof in the pitch black.

He could sense that the limb he stood on was taxed by his weight. It sagged too low, bent too far. Somewhere just below and to his left was the edge of the roof. One last step was all he needed. But if he jumped in the dark, it would make for a loud landing.

Slowly his eyes adjusted. First, geometric shapes. Then, the branch. The roof, directly below. The roof's edge.

Larson slid his left foot out and stepped off. On the roof now, he moved like a ballerina toward the eave and lay on his stomach. He reached under the eave and fished around until he found where the cable was attached. He unscrewed the cable from the splitter but only partially removed it.

Inside, the television had either lost its picture or gone extremely fuzzy. That would be significant. Larson knew protection work. Live by the tube, die by the boob tube.

The darkness left nothing but shifting shapes and made the going difficult as he worked his way over the edge of the roof. He squatted, prepared to jump.

He could hear grumbling and bumps from inside. He waited.

When the front floodlights popped on, Larson let himself drop to the carpet of spongy pine needles.

A male voice complained loudly to the others inside. “Where's the fucking cable again?”

Larson grabbed the club like a bat and stepped up to the plate.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

DELMONICO'S
DELIVERS

Hope read the name on the back of the panel truck
, her patience draining. She stabbed the small keys on the BlackBerry, spelling out:

caterer? @ gate

and sent the message to Larson.

She'd not returned to the van as Lars had asked. The next time she saw Penny, she'd throw herself onto the road if necessary. She was too close now to go sit with
the boys
while they played with her life. She'd been through too many months of such treatment. That part of her life was over.

The panel truck was kept waiting while the gate guard, dressed head to toe in black, circled it. Finally arriving at the back, he rolled open the back door and shined a flashlight inside. Hope was prepared for a team of military operatives to storm out, take down the guard, and open the gate. Instead, the powerful flashlight beam found stacked plastic boxes, collapsible tables, flats with serving trays, and bags of ice. His inspection concluded, the guard pulled the rolling door back down. In his haste, he did not secure it, and as he rounded toward the gate, the back door bounced open, first a crack, then a foot or more.

Hope looked left and right.
Nothing
.

With Penny inside the compound and this truck her best chance at getting inside, she slipped out of the bushes, used the truck to screen her from the gatehouse, and sprinted across the road. She reached the truck's partially open back door before the gate had fully opened.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

The guard rounded the corner, looking up toward the eave
, straining to follow the thin black TV cable.

Larson, both hands gripping the broken stick like a Louisville Slugger, stepped into the swing and put the man's unsuspecting forehead into the nosebleeds. The guard fell on his back with a
whomph
of released air, clearly unconscious before he landed.

Larson considered tying him up, gagging him, but feared he had no time. If he could bag all three guards, then he'd return to this one. He rolled the man onto his side, so he wouldn't drown in his own vomit, and left him.

With no choice but to risk it, he entered the glare and hurried up the wobbly front steps. He thumped an elbow onto the door and said in a gruff, intentionally muffled voice, “Hey, help me out here . . .”

As the door came open, he thrust the broken limb like a battering ram into the gut of the guard, connecting just below the
V
of the rib cage. He stepped inside, past the one staggering back, and clipped the skull of the next, who, at that moment, had been kneeling in front of the TV, his back to the door. The one behind him went for a gun.

Larson broke the man's wrist with the stick and, as he cried out, dimmed his lights by breaking his jaw. The guard's eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped. Out cold.

Sweating profusely now, Larson surveyed the fallen. He kicked the door shut, and breathed for what felt like the first time. He rounded up weapons and pocketed their magazines.

He'd bought himself a few minutes at most.

The guard with the broken wrist moaned himself awake, grabbing at his flapping hand. Larson raised the club above his head and lowered it like a camper going after a snake.

The shabby interior reeked of years of cigarettes and beer. It reminded Larson of a crappy college dorm lounge. A Formica galley kitchen offered a two-burner stovetop, a microwave, and a fridge under tube lighting. The building's modular design left the kitchen and living room at one end, a bath, and two other doors off a narrow hallway lit by an overhead fixture missing at least one bulb. Larson's heart remained in his throat as he carried the bloodied club with him down the hall. The doors seemed to stretch farther away the more he walked.

He threw the first open, club hoisted and ready.

Two sets of bunk beds, complete with sheets and wool Pendletons. Signs of bachelor life: Ashtrays that needed emptying. Copies of men's magazines with cover shots of bare-breasted starlets. Soiled laundry in a far corner, looking like an animal's nest.

Clear.

He hurried to the second room, threw this door open, expecting either the fourth guard or the expectant eyes of the two kids. Another bunk room, not dissimilar to the first.

No kids.

He tried to wrap his mind around all this. The speed with which the two guards had fled the main lodge had convinced him they'd taken the bait of Hope's phone coming online.

The most pressing thing now was to buy himself time to find the children. He could bind and gag all three guards, leave the one out back, perhaps behind the trash bins, the other two here in the bunkhouse.

He felt a rumble in his legs and knew it to be a vehicle. He switched off all the interior lights and cracked open the front door in time to see only the back of a panel truck up at the top of the hill, rounding the north corner of the lodge. He couldn't make out its writing on the back from here.

He shut the door, set down the club, and grabbed for Hope's mobile.

caterer? @ gate

Party time or a Trojan horse, courtesy of Rotem? Something was wrong: Hope should have been supplying him with more information than this.