Forgive Me (42 page)

Angie screamed and rolled Gabriel onto his stomach, seeing for the first time the hole in his denim shirt, singed around the edges as though the fabric had been burnt. Blood gushed out the hole and spread across Gabriel’s denim shirt.

Angie pressed her hand against the wound, but blood pulsed through the cracks of her fingers. “Dad! Dad! Oh my God! Oh God!”

Her eyes were wide, breath shaky, body frozen from terror. She thought first about calling an ambulance, not what had caused her father to fall down bleeding. It took a moment for her fragmented thinking to gel into a sensible narrative—her father had been shot.

Movement in Angie’s periphery drew her attention to a male figure lurking in the doorway. He was tall and thin with a clean-shaven face and unsettling pale blue eyes. He must have entered through the patio door. He held in his hands a high-powered rifle with an attached scope and what appeared to be a suppressor screwed into the barrel. He had more guns holstered to a battle belt secured around his black tactical pants. A black long-sleeved combat shirt and black leather boots completed his ensemble. The man’s expression was a blank.

He stood five feet away, give or take, essentially point blank range. Without uttering a word, the intruder lifted his gun and took aim, not at Gabriel, but at Angie. A bullet was coming her way, and she gritted her teeth to brace for impact and the blackness to follow.
Would it hurt?
It was human nature to fear pain, same as it was to freeze in the face of one’s imminent death. The intruder’s aim was high, and Angie imagined the bullet would enter through the center of her skull.

Instead of a gunshot, Angie heard her father grunt loudly.

The man’s attention pivoted to Gabriel. What could have been a threat was nothing more than a bleeding man’s slow roll toward the office doorway. The man trained the barrel of the rifle away from Angie and onto Gabriel, who continued his deliberate roll toward his assailant, smearing in his wake a jagged trail of blood.

Angie knew what was coming. She understood somehow what her father had intended, and she had a choice to make. She could scream, cry out for her dad, and try to plead with this killer for mercy. Or she could use the precious few seconds he had given her to strike.

Bullets spit out the barrel of the rifle with the same whip crack sound—not silent, but not at all deafening. Three shots were fired, each chambered using the rifle’s bolt action. The bullets exploded Gabriel’s stomach, neck, and head in that order.

The killer quickly refocused his weapon away from the bloody remains of Gabriel DeRose and back onto Angie. But Angie was no longer in the same line of sight as before. She had gone onto her stomach and crawled toward the assailant while he was busy murdering her father.

Barely able to contain shock and horror, she’d managed to slither on her belly, traveling three feet at most. She had covered just enough distance. With her arms extended out front like giant antennae, she got to within reach of the killer’s ankles. She grabbed hold, her fingers digging hard into the pliable leather of his black boots, and pulled with all her strength. The attacker got off a shot as he fell, but the bullet struck the wall behind the office desk, sending bits of plaster and drywall shooting out in various directions.

The killer fell to the floor with a hard crash. Angie heard air explode from his lungs. She was on top of him in a flash, striking him in the throat with a well-timed and well-placed punch. He gurgled and wheezed after impact. She dared not strike again and scrambled to her feet, mouth open and twisted in a silent scream. Gaining traction and balance, she raced to the front door, the closest way out.

The knob wouldn’t turn, and no matter how hard she pushed and pulled, the door wouldn’t budge.
What was wrong?
The killer was groaning, getting back to his feet. No way to back track now.

Somehow the killer must have barricaded them inside. Angie figured he had done the same to the side entrance in the kitchen. She gave only a moment’s consideration to going out the kitchen window. She would have to break the glass, climb over the sink, push her way past the jagged shards to freedom. Too hard. Too much time. She imagined it would be the last act she would ever do. Angie made a different choice and rushed to the basement door in the middle of the kitchen.

She was headed downstairs, where her father used his elliptical.

And where he kept his guns.

CHAPTER 57

T
he Markovich search was at a standstill. Most everyone, including the team with the SOC (now with Cormack Donovan’s help) were fumbling about in the dark, and not making any progress whatsoever.

Bryce had had some success, though on a completely different front. His contact, Tim Wiley, who had provided him with information on Antonio Conti, worked out of headquarters and happened to be in the building on a Saturday, helping with the Markovich effort. Bryce stopped by Wiley’s office and asked him for a second favor. He needed a little digging into the DeRose identity.

After a couple minutes on his computer, Wiley looked at Bryce with a strange expression on his face. “What are you up to, Taggart?”

“Just . . . um, nothing really. Just . . . Timmy, help me out, will ya? And don’t ask any questions.”

“Yeah, okay,” Wiley said. “But you just pinpointed a second screwed up case with no explanation.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just like with Antonio Conti, only in reverse. I got the DeRose identity here all right—Gabriel, Kathleen, and Angie—but no clue who they were beforehand. There’s absolutely nothing in the case file to tell me.”

Bryce’s expression became strained. He gave Wiley the name
William Harrington
to search.

“Nope. Nothing there,” Wiley said. “Everything is a hornet’s nest with you. Who screwed up these damn case files so badly?”

Bryce was headed for the door. “That’s what I intend to find out.”

It felt good to breathe fresh air again. Bryce found his car in the crowded parking lot and got settled in the driver’s seat, figuring he’d head off to Alexandria once he got in touch with Angie. Another bit of unsettling news was headed her way. His call rang several times before going to voice mail. He called again and got the same result. Then he called Angie’s office and someone answered, a man whose voice sounded familiar.

“DeRose and Associates. How may I help you?”

“This is Bryce Taggart. I’m looking for Angie DeRose.”

“Hey Bryce, Mike Webb here. We did the job in Baltimore together. I work with Angie.”

“Of course. How are you?”

“Better than you, I think. Heard our boy Markovich did a vanishing act.”

“That he did,” Bryce said. “And a good one at that. Sorry to be in a rush, but is Angie around? It’s sort of urgent.”

“No sir,” Mike said. “Haven’t heard from her. I left a couple messages about a runaway case we’re working. It’s not like her to not to call us back. If you get in touch, could you tell her to give me a call?”

“Will do. Has anybody checked her apartment?” Bryce was headed there next.

“My partner, Bao, went over to her place, but she’s not at home. I’m sure she’s busy with her other investigation.”

“Which one? The photograph?”

“What else? It’s her obsession,” Mike said.

What Mike said gave Bryce an idea. As a law enforcement official, he had access to all sorts of information and could look up most anyone’s address. If Angie wanted to talk to someone about the photograph, who better than her father?

CHAPTER 58

R
aynor Sinclair scrambled to his feet, took an improper firing stance, and through blurred vision, got off a haphazard shot at nothing. Angie wasn’t in his sight anymore, and he didn’t know where she had gone.

The strike to his throat had dazed him. He believed she had only a few seconds head start, but a few seconds in that sort of foot race could translate into minutes. He wasn’t concerned about Angie getting out the front or side doors. He had stuck pennies wrapped in tape into the crack between the door and the jamb molding above and below the handle. It was a prank his brothers had pulled on him years ago, so Raynor knew from experience that the technique was extremely effective at locking someone inside. He scanned the backyard and saw no sign of her. He doubted she’d gone that way. The front door would have been his first and best choice. She was bright, exceedingly cunning, and had probably done as he would have.

The gun safe used an electronic lock from Titan, but Angie knew the code—a combination of her birthday and her parents’ anniversary. An adrenaline rush like no other held at bay any emotion or thought not connected to her survival. Her father was dead, murdered in front of her eyes in the most horrible way imaginable, but she would grieve for him later. Her focus was on picking a weapon.

Angie went with the Ruger. It was light, reliable. The basement had a concrete floor with rough-hewn stone walls. Even with the light on it was dark down there . . . and dank . . . and crammed full of boxes and bins of various sizes and materials. The basement had no windows or exits. Its main purpose was for storage.

The space had nooks, such as the crawlspace underneath the stairs, where her father stored cans of paint. On the wall next to the crawlspace was where her father kept his tools—a table saw, workbench, and plenty of wrenches, hammers, extension cords, and the like—all neatly arranged on a pegboard. The heating and cooling systems, hot water tank, and electrical panels were opposite the pegboard.

Angie gathered up the gun. She checked to make sure it was loaded—it was—and took an extra magazine just in case. She hesitated then decided to take the CZ 75 as a backup, stashing that weapon into the waistband of her jeans.

At the wall by the stairs, she flicked a switch, shut off the light, and plunged the room into complete darkness. She felt along the wall, careful not to knock down any of the tools, until she found the crawlspace under the stairs. Working quickly but quietly, she moved aside a tall cardboard box full of old coats, and climbed over a stack of paint cans without knocking any over. She pulled the box in front of her, sealing herself inside as if it were a tomb.

Raynor rounded the corner and aimed his rifle into the kitchen. He saw nobody there. The side door was closed and the window over the sink was intact. Perhaps she hid in a closet or food pantry? He checked both, but didn’t find her. There was another door in the kitchen he hadn’t checked, and when he opened that one, he smiled.

Behind it he found a set of stairs.

Angie gritted her teeth. Her heart raced in terror and sweat coated her skin. The room seemed to be spinning. A sound from above turned her blood to ice.

Footsteps.

Raynor used a switch at the top of the stairs to turn on the basement light. No reason for him to descend into darkness. He leaned his rifle—a Model 700 SPS Tactical from Remington, with a Vortex viper 6x24 scope and a suppressor from Dakota he had threaded himself—on the wall next to the basement door. The rifle had served its purpose well, and while the subsonic ammunition didn’t completely drown out the noise of the shot, it was enough for him to forgo ear protection. The usual thunderclap of the Remington was more like a car had backfired.

It had felt good in his hands, but since he wasn’t familiar with the layout of the basement, the rifle’s long barrel might prove a liability in a confined space. His original plan had been to use a tactical knife, a 12-inch fixed blade from Bowie, to cut Gabe and Angie’s throats. But the father might have armed himself as a precaution. Angie had progressed quite far with her investigation, and Gabriel had reason to be cautious.

As for Angie, she knew her way around guns, had a license to carry, and might also be armed.

Raynor liked his skills in close quarters combat, but he’d taken into account the two-on-one odds, plus the possibility of firearms in the mix, and decided the knife wasn’t the way to go. Better to use his rifle, take up position in the backyard, which offered plenty of tall trees to hide him from the neighbors and lots of windows for sighting his targets. His plan had worked stupendously, with one notable exception.

Angie.

He had been careless with her.

He would not be so thoughtless again.

The wooden stairs groaned under Raynor’s weight. It was quiet down there, but he knew his quarry was near. He could sense her the way he could that grouse on the day he murdered his father. He wouldn’t let Angie get the best of him again. He would anticipate her every move, same as he did that grouse.

In his hand, Raynor held a Glock 20 in 10mm auto—a massive piece of firepower, though without considerable recoil. He descended cautiously, surging forward, pausing frequently to scan the area for threats. Stairwells presented him with a unique tactical challenge, but his instincts told him Angie wasn’t waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

His instincts were right, and he stepped into an unfinished basement with a smooth floor, but rough walls. He saw no windows, nor any doors to the outside. The ductwork, electrical wiring, and pipes running overhead were all exposed. It was an open floor plan, with lots of boxes, and lots of places for her to hide. Which way should he go?