Extreme Denial (38 page)

No response.

“Just keep focused on the million dollars, Brian. No one can prove how you got it. No one will want it back. It’s yours to spend once you drive away from here.”

“Provided you let me leave.”

“Provided
you
leave
Beth.
This conversation is pointless if you don’t prove to me she’s alive.
Let me talk to her”
Decker listened to the phone so hard that he didn’t hear the pelting of the rain. Then he couldn’t help hearing the thunder that rattled the glass of the phone booth and the greater thunder of his heart.

The phone made a sound as if it was being moved. “Steve?”

Decker’s knees felt weak. Despite all his determination, he now realized that he had not totally believed he would ever hear Beth’s voice again.

“Thank God,” Decker blurted.

“I can’t believe it’s you. How did—”

“I don’t have time to explain. Are you all right?”

“Scared to death. But they haven’t hurt me.” The voice was faint and weak, trembling with nervousness, but he couldn’t fail to recognize it. He recalled the first time Beth had spoken to him and how he had been reminded of wind chimes and champagne.

“I love you,” Decker said. “I’m going to get you out of there. How many people are with you?”

Abruptly the phone made a bumping sound, and McKittrick was talking. “So now you know she’s still alive. How am
I
going to get out of here alive?”

“Turn on the lights. Open the draperies.”

“
What?”

“Put Beth in plain sight at the window. Come out with the money. Get in the car. All the while, keep your pistol aimed at her. That way, you know I won’t try a move against you.”

“Until I’m on the street and I can’t see to shoot her anymore. Then you’ll try to kill me.”

“You’ve got to have faith,” Decker said.

“Bullshit.”

“Because
I
have faith. I’ll show you how much faith I really have. You know you’ll be safe after you leave Beth in the room because
I’ll
be with you in the car.
I’ll
be your hostage. Down the road, when you’re sure no one’s following, you can let me out, and we’ll be even.”

Silence again. Thunder.

“You’re joking,” McKittrick said.

“I’ve never been more serious.”

“How do you know I won’t kill you?”

“I don’t,” Decker said. “But if you do, I have friends who will hunt you down. I’m willing to gamble you want this to end here and now. I mean it, Brian. Give me Beth. Keep the money. You’ll never hear from me again.”

McKittrick didn’t speak for a while. Decker imagined him calculating.

With a muffled voice, McKittrick spoke to someone else in the motel room. “All right,” he said to Decker. “Give us five minutes. Then we’re coming out. I expect you to be waiting with your hands up at my car.”

“You’ve got a deal, Brian. But in case you’re tempted to go back on the bargain, just remember—someone else will be aiming at you.”

6

Mouth parched with fear, Decker hung up the phone and stepped out into the rain. His chill increased as he hurried across the street and into the motel’s dark parking lot, staying within shadows, concealing himself. At the back, he came up behind the Dumpster and, using a whisper that was muffled by the rain, explained to Esperanza the deal he had made. “You’re taking a hell of a risk,” Esperanza said.

“So what else is new?”

“
Cojones
, man.”

“He won’t kill me. He doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life running.”

“From your imaginary friends.”

“Well, I sort of thought
you’d
go after him if he killed me.”

“Yes.” Esperanza thought about it. “Yes, I would.”

The lights came on beyond the closed draperies in unit 19. “I can’t let him find a weapon on me. Here’s my pistol,” Decker said. “Don’t hesitate to shoot him if things go bad.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Esperanza said.

“When I tell you to, pick up that empty bottle by your feet and throw it toward the front of the motel. Throw it high so he doesn’t know where you are.”

Trying to avoid revealing where Esperanza was hiding, Decker crept back into the darkness and emerged from the shadows of a different area of the parking lot. With his hands up, he stepped through puddles toward the Pontiac in front of unit 19.

The draperies parted, like curtains in a theater. Decker’s body felt disturbingly out of rhythm when he saw what was revealed. Beth was tied to a chair, her mouth stuffed with a gag. Her blue-gray eyes looked wild with fright. Her hair was disheveled. Her oval face was tight, her high cheekbones pressing against skin made pale by fear. But then she saw him through the window, and Decker was moved by the affection that replaced the fear in her eyes, by the trusting way she looked at him. The relief she felt, her confidence in him, both were obvious. She had faith that he was the hero she had dreamed about when she was a child,
her
hero, that he would save her.

From the left, concealed by the cinder-block column between the window and the door, a person stretched out an arm, pointing a hand toward Beth’s temple. The hand held a cocked revolver.

Tensing, Decker heard a noise at the door, the lock being freed, the handle being turned. Light spilled from a narrow gap.

“Decker?” McKittrick didn’t show himself.

“I’m at your car—where I said I would be.”

The door came fully open. McKittrick stepped into view, the beefy shoulders of his thirtyish football player’s body silhouetted by the light. He looked a little more heavy in the chest than when Decker had last seen him. His blond hair was cut even shorter than Decker remembered, emphasizing his rugged, squared-off features. His eyes reminded Decker of a pig’s.

Aiming a pistol, McKittrick smiled. For a dismaying moment, Decker feared that McKittrick would shoot. But McKittrick stepped from the open door, grabbed Decker, and thrust him across the still-warm hood of the Pontiac.

“You’d better not be armed, old buddy.” McKittrick searched him roughly, all the while pressing the barrel of his pistol against the back of Decker’s neck.

“No weapon,” Decker said. “I made a deal. I’ll stick to it.” With his cheek pressed against the Pontiac’s wet hood, Decker was able to see sideways toward the illuminated window and the revolver aimed at Beth. He blinked repeatedly to clear his vision as cold rain pelted his face.

Beth squirmed in terror.

McKittrick stopped his rough search and stepped back. “My, my, my, you really did it. You gave yourself up to me. So sure of yourself. What makes you think I won’t shoot you in the head?”

“I told you—I’ve got backup.”

“Yeah, sure, right. From who? The FBI? This isn’t their style. From Langley? This doesn’t involve national security. Why would
they
care?”

“I have friends.”

“Hey, I’ve been
watching
you, remember? In Santa Fe, you don’t have
any
friends, none you would trust to back you up.”

“From the old days.”

“Like hell.”

“Make a noise,”
Decker called to Esperanza in the darkness.

McKittrick flinched as the empty bottle plummeted onto the pavement near the entrance to the motel. Glass shattered.

McKittrick scowled and continued to aim at Decker. “For all I know, that’s a wino you paid to throw that bottle.”

“The point is, you
don’t
know,” Decker said. “Why take the risk?”

“I’m going to be so damned happy to have you out of my life.”

For a panicked moment, Decker feared that McKittrick was going to pull the trigger.

Instead, McKittrick shouted toward the open door, “Let’s go!”

A figure appeared—of medium height, wearing an oversized black raincoat and a rubber rain hat, the wide brim of which drooped down and concealed the person’s features. Whoever it was had a suitcase in his left hand while he continued to aim the revolver at Beth in the window.

McKittrick opened the Pontiac’s back door so the man in the raincoat could throw the suitcase into the car. Only when the man got into the back did McKittrick open the Pontiac’s driver’s door and tell Decker to slide across. The man in back sat behind Decker and aimed at his head while McKittrick got behind the steering wheel, all the while aiming at Beth.

“Slick.” McKittrick chuckled. “No muss, no fuss. And now, old buddy, you get what you wanted.” His tone became sober. “We take you for a ride.”

McKittrick started the Pontiac, switched on its headlights, and went into reverse. The headlights blazed at Beth. Through the distortion of rain streaming down the windshield, Decker watched her trying to struggle against her ropes and turn her head to shield her eyes from the glare of the headlights. As the Pontiac continued backing up, she seemed to get smaller. McKittrick put the car into forward, steered, and pulled away from the motel unit. Grateful that Beth was safe but simultaneously feeling alone and hollow himself, Decker turned to catch his last glimpse of her struggling against the ropes that bound her to the chair. She stared with heartbreaking melancholy in his direction, afraid now for him.

“Who would have guessed?” McKittrick drove onto the gloomy street outside the motel and headed to the right. “A romantic.”

Decker didn’t say anything.

“She must really have gotten to you,” McKittrick said.

Decker still didn’t respond.

“Hey.” McKittrick took his eyes off the road and aimed his pistol at Decker’s face. “This is a goddamned conversation.”

“Yes,” Decker said. “She got to me.”

McKittrick muttered with contempt, then glanced back at the road. He studied his rearview mirror. “No headlights. Nobody’s following.”

“Did she know who I was when I first met her?” Decker asked.

“What?”

“Was she only using me for extra protection?”

“You’re something. All that pose about being a professional, about keeping control, and you ruin your life over a woman.”

“That’s not the way I look at it.”

“How the hell
do
you look at it?”

“I didn’t ruin my life,” Decker said. “I found it.”

“Not for long. You want to talk about ruined lives?” McKittrick snapped. “You ruined
mine.
If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still be working for the Agency. I would have been promoted. My father would have been proud of me. I wouldn’t have had to take this shit job with the Marshals Service, protecting gangsters.” McKittrick raised his voice. “I could still be in Rome!”

The man in the backseat said something—a gravelly, guttural statement that was too distorted for Decker to understand it. Decker had heard the puzzlingly grotesque voice before— when he listened outside McKittrick’s room. But there was something about it that made it naggingly familiar, as if he had heard it even earlier. McKittrick was obviously familiar with it and knew immediately what was being said.

“I
won’t
shut up!” McKittrick said. “I’m not giving anything away! He knows as well as I do, he couldn’t stand for me to be successful! He shouldn’t have interfered! If he’d let me do things
my
way, I would have been a hero!”

“Heroes don’t let themselves get mixed up with scum like Giordano.”

“Hey, since the good guys decided to kick me out, I thought I’d see how the
bad
guys treated me. A hell of a lot better, thank you very much. I’m beginning to think there’s not a whole lot of difference.” McKittrick laughed. “And the money is definitely an improvement.”

“But you turned against Giordano.”

“I finally realized there’s only one side in any of this— mine. And you’re on the
wrong
side. Now it’s payback time.” McKittrick held up an object. For a moment, Decker thought it was a weapon. Then he recognized the homing device. “I’m not as sloppy as you think. After you phoned, I kept asking myself, How did you find me? Back at the drop site, I threw the briefcase away, just in case it was bugged. But I never thought of the money itself. So I went through every bundle, and guess what I found in a hollow you cut out.” McKittrick pressed a button that lowered the driver’s window. Furious, he hurled the homing device into a ditch that he sped past. “So who’s the smart guy now? Whoever’s with you won’t be able to follow. You’re mine.”

McKittrick turned onto a side road, pulled onto the tree-lined shoulder, stopped, and shut off the Pontiac’s headlights. In the darkness, rain drummed on the roof. The rapid flapping of the windshield wipers was matched by the beat of Decker’s heart as lightning flashed and he saw McKittrick aiming a pistol at him.

“I can hide for quite a while on a million dollars,” McKittrick said. “But I don’t have to hide at all if you’re not chasing me.

McKittrick steadied his finger on the trigger.

“We had a bargain,” Decker said.

“Yeah, and I bet you meant to keep your end of it. Get out of the car.”

Decker’s tension increased.

“Get out of the car
, “ McKittrick repeated. “Do it. Open the door.”

Decker eased away from McKittrick, putting his hand on the passenger door. The moment he opened the latch and stepped out, McKittrick would shoot him, he knew. Frantic, he tried to think of a way to escape. He could attempt to distract McKittrick and get his hands on the pistol, but that still left the man in the backseat, who would fire the moment Decker made an aggressive move. I can dive for the ditch, he thought. In the night and the rain, they might not be able to get a good shot at me.

Muscles cramping, he eased the door open, praying, ready to scramble out.

“Does she really love you?” McKittrick asked. “Was she aware of who you were? Was she using you?”

“Yes, that’s what I want to know,” Decker said.

“Ask her.”

“What?”

“Go back and ask her.”

“What are you talking about?”

The smugness had returned to McKittrick’s voice. He was playing a game, but Decker couldn’t tell what the game was. “I’m keeping my part of the bargain. You’re free. Go back to Diana Scolari. Find out if she’s worth the price you were willing to pay.”