Storming Heaven (42 page)

The pilot looked more than happy to oblige and moved slowly but efficiently from the cramped space of the cockpit and past Beamon, all the while keeping his hands as high as the low ceiling would allow. He took a seat in one of the plush leather seats facing Beamon and looked up to see if there were any more instructions for him to follow.

Beamon couldn’t think of any, unless there was
a coffee pot somewhere, and there didn’t seem to be. He leaned his back against the uncomfortably curved wall next to the door leading outside and looked down at his hands. They’d turned bright white from the cold and felt completely lifeless. He pressed his index finger gently against the trigger of his revolver. The finger still worked, but the frozen skin covering it didn’t register the increased pressure. He’d have to be careful of that.

“Isn’t there a heater in here?”

The pilot shook his head. “Not until I start the plane.”

Beamon frowned and tucked his left hand into his armpit, accomplishing nothing but to wring a little more water from the sweatshirt and start it running down his side.

The rain had died down a bit, but the wind was still gusting through the door and sending a cold mist washing over him every few seconds. He struggled to keep his teeth from chattering and hoped things would move quickly. Of course, they didn’t.

He ended up spending the next hour trying to fight off the effects of the cold and wondering what the hell he was going to do if he was wrong and a bunch of church executives showed up with their wives and kids for a quick beach trip.

Beamon pressed himself a little closer to the wall when the dim red glow coming through the door wavered and then began to fade into a set of approaching headlights. He gave the pilot a quick glance that said “stay quiet” and poked his head around the corner of the door. Another Taurus. The church must get a bulk discount on those things.

The car stopped maybe twenty feet from the plane and both driver and passenger immediately
jumped out. They had their backs to him, so he stepped fully into the doorway and watched as they opened the back door of the Ford and began to pull something out.

Even from behind, they were both easily recognizable. The small woman by her severe haircut and the bandage wound around her right thumb, and the man by the thick mustache, the tips of which were visible when his head moved. Beamon had hoped Gregory Sines wouldn’t make an appearance tonight. He looked like the kind of man who would be hard to control in a situation like this.

Beamon smiled and let out a long, quiet breath as the headlights reflecting off the plane illuminated a white-blonde head of hair.

He realized that he really hadn’t expected this moment to ever come. The slow burn he’d been feeling in his stomach had been the unfamiliar sensation of defeat, and he recognized now that his recent actions had been governed more by the desire to go down swinging than anything else. He had to admit, though, that it made this moment that much sweeter.

Sara and Sines draped the arms of their cargo across their necks and turned toward the plane heads down, searching for any remaining patches of ice on the asphalt.

From where he was standing, Jennifer looked to be completely unconscious; her body was limp and the toes of her bare feet dragged across the tarmac as she was carried across it. He couldn’t see her face, but the skin on her arms looked as white as his—no trace remained of the athletic glow so evident in her photographs.

“Shit!” Beamon said in surprise as he threw a
hand out to keep himself from rolling down the stairs. He twisted hard to the right, keeping his eyes on Sines, who had looked up just as Beamon was hit from behind by the pilot.

The man managed to get an arm around Beamon’s neck but wasn’t able to lock it off. Beamon twisted again and threw an elbow as Sines reached behind him for what no doubt was going to be a really big gun.

The pilot’s arm slid off the wet skin of his neck and he stuck a foot out just in time to trip the man and send him pitching out the door head first.

“Stop!” Beamon yelled over the sound of the rain and the pilot’s head connecting with the ground.

Despite his warning and the fact that his gun was already at waist-level, Sines’s hand disappeared beneath his jacket and was now starting to come back out. Fast.

Beamon waited as long as he dared, but when the butt of Sines’s gun became visible, he squeezed the trigger.

The round hit Sines dead center, as Beamon knew it would—hell, there was probably only fifteen feet between them. Sines jerked back and fell, but somehow managed to land in a sitting position and retain control of his gun hand. Sara dove to the ground, leaving Jennifer to fall face first to the asphalt.

Beamon fired another round, this time without giving it much thought. Sines was already dead. It just hadn’t registered with him yet.

Beamon ran down the stairs as Sines fell to his back for the last time and caught Sara by the collar before she could make it to her feet.

“Let
go of me, you sonofabitch!” she screamed as he dragged her toward the plane and handcuffed her to the bar that supported the stairs.

Beamon stepped away from her and looked down at the pilot’s motionless body. “Stupid asshole,” he said, quietly reprimanding himself. Watching his life come crashing down around his ears was fucking up his judgment. Eleven million members and what, the church is going to use a Mormon to transport a kidnapped girl?

The pilot looked like he’d probably wake up with nothing more than a baseball-sized knot on his head, but he couldn’t say the same for Sines—he was just going to lie there staring up into the rain. Beamon didn’t feel a great deal of remorse over Sines’s demise; what concerned him was
why
the man was dead. It was because he was allowing lapses in his concentration and getting sloppy.

Sara lunged at him, her unwounded hand twisting into something that resembled a claw. The motion brought Beamon back to the present and he watched her body jerk to a stop as the handcuff around her wrist went taut.

“Be careful you don’t hurt yourself now,” Beamon said, scooping Jennifer up from the puddle she’d landed in and cradling her in his arms. He could feel the warmth of her body seeping into his chest as he pulled her to him.

“Take these off me!” Sara screamed. “You
will not
do this!”

“Looks like I already did.”

She grabbed the chain between the handcuffs and pulled mightily but pointlessly against them. Blood had started to flow from her wrist and was mixing with the rain to run pale pink down her hand.

“It’s just you and me now, Sara. None of your lackeys are around to accuse me of child molestation or alcoholism. No computers to fuck up my credit cards. It looks like your God’s abandoned you and come over to my side, doesn’t it?”

She suddenly froze and looked up at him, a forced calm registering on her face. “Put her down, Mr. Beamon. It isn’t worth it. If you take her I’ll destroy you and everyone you’ve ever known.”

Beamon flipped Jennifer over his shoulder, drew his gun, and aimed it at Sara’s head.

“No!” she cried, throwing her hands in front of her face and shrinking back as far as the handcuffs would allow. Beamon kept the gun trained on her as she crouched down and averted her eyes toward the pavement, stoking his anger until he couldn’t feel anything else—not the cold, not the weight of Jennifer on his shoulder. Nothing.

He knew he should do it—she would come after him and the girl with everything she had. He should do it for Jennifer, for Goldman, for himself.

But he’d already gone far enough across the line. He took a deep breath and holstered his gun. “You don’t look like much when you’re not surrounded by your church.” Beamon patted the unconscious girl on the backs of her legs. “Thanks for screwing up and letting me get Jennifer back. I reckon she’ll go a long way to straightening out my life.”

The desperation in Sara’s voice warmed Beamon’s heart as he started walking back to his car. “You talked about five million dollars last time we met, Mr. Beamon. What if it was ten? Twenty?”

Beamon paused and turned around so he could enjoy the full effect of Sara’s panic.

“Twenty million? Is that the number?” She pointed to Sines’s body. “No one has to ever know about this.”

She smoothed the damp folds in her dark suit and raised herself to her full height. “You don’t have anywhere to take her anyway, do you? Who can you trust? The FBI? I think you know better than that.”

He took a backward step away from her.

“Wait,” she said in a tone that would have been appropriate for talking a jumper out of leaping from a tall building. “You’ve proven what you can do—I have a hundred times the resources you do and you beat me. You beat me. Now put her down and unlock these handcuffs. Do that, and whatever you want is yours.”

Flattery, no less. He really would have liked to stick around and let her kiss his ass some more, but it was about time to get the hell out of there. The pilot was starting to twitch and somebody at the tower had to have heard the shots. They were probably up there trying to decide which one of them would get to brave the rain.

Beamon turned and started for his car.

“Stop! Wait!”

He quickened his pace.

“You’ll never get out of this,” Sara screamed. The calm, persuasive tone she’d been trying to ply him with was gone. “You’re alone now—we put the old man out of his misery and that little fanatic can’t help you anymore.”

Beamon slowed and finally stopped, still within earshot.

“How could you have left her alone like that? A helpless woman in a wheelchair. How was she supposed to defend herself?”

T
HERE WAS NOTHING THE FIREFIGHTERS
could do at this point—other than make sure the blaze didn’t spread to the other homes in the neighborhood. Even the sheets of rain lashing the house could do little to contain the jets of flame gusting from the broken windows and into the dark night.

Beamon parked almost a block and a half away from the bonfire that a few hours ago had been Ernestine Waverly’s house, not wanting to be spotted by the men who had set it. He looked over at Jennifer, whose only movement for the last hour had been prompted by the rocking of the car. Her head was propped against the window and her mouth was open, though Beamon had to concentrate to hear her breathe.

He checked her seatbelt again for no particular reason, then leaned forward and rested his head against the steering wheel. “We got her, Ernie,” he said quietly. “We won.”

When he looked out the windshield again, the chance of the fire spreading seemed pretty remote. The firefighters had abandoned their vigil over the other houses in the neighborhood and were moving through the small knot of rain-slickered people who had braved the elements to see the little house consumed.

He flipped his headlights back on—not that they were necessary, the glow from the fire had lit up the entire neighborhood—and put the car in reverse.

She was dead, he knew; all he could hope for now was that it had been quick. He tried to convince himself of it, but he knew that he was lying to himself. Sara’s Guardians would have undoubtedly wanted to know were he was and what he was up to.

Either she hadn’t told them at all or she’d held out long enough that they hadn’t had time to make it to the airport. Thank God there had never been a reason to tell her where Goldman’s apartment was.

That was it. The last of his patched-together team was dead. And once again, it was his fault. He’d been able to stave off the feeling of guilt about Goldman—at least temporarily. The old man had known what he was doing. Hell, he’d probably been breathing longer than he should have or wanted to.

Ernie was another story. He should have cut loose from her a long time ago. But he hadn’t. He’d been blinded, as he had been a hundred times before, by the problem. Solving it, beating his opponent, proving management wrong. Those things had become everything to him. He’d used her and left her to the wolves.

As the glow in his rearview mirror faded, Beamon couldn’t help thinking about Ernie’s God and her unshakable faith. He’d never believed. He’d never really wanted to. There was something about the concept of a Supreme Being that made him uncomfortable. It robbed the universe of the free will and chaos that made it so interesting. And for that, all you got was an eternity of peace and tranquility. He’d always thought it was a bad trade, making
life just a pointless, painful blink of an eye in an eternity of bliss.

For the first time, though, he actually hoped he was wrong and Ernie and the others like her were right. He hoped that in death Ernie would find what she had been looking for in life.

B
EAMON PULLED HIS SHOTGUN OUT OF THE
back seat and leaned it against the side of the car. He looked around him at the rundown apartment complex that had become his new home, but didn’t see any movement. Other than the muffled sound of yet another pre-coitus spat coming from the apartment next to his, the complex was silent.

Fortunately, it was also pretty dark. Most of the bulbs in the parking area’s floodlights were burned out and none of the residents seemed interested in paying for the power necessary to keep their carriage lights on.

Beamon pulled Jennifer’s limp body from the car and slung her over his shoulder. He looked around him one more time before picking up the shotgun and beginning across the icy walkway toward Goldman’s apartment.

The snow in front of his door had been washed away by the rain, making it impossible to look for telltale footprints. The curtains were still closed and it looked to be dark inside the apartment, but that didn’t mean a hell of a lot. He unlocked the door, took a deep breath, and pushed it open with the barrel of the shotgun.

Empty.

No doubt thanks to the seemingly endless supply of phony IDs under which jack Goldman had transacted nearly all his business.

Beamon kicked a couple of boxes off the sofa and dropped Jennifer onto it, then fell into a chair and turned on the
TV.
Unscrewing the cap from what was left of the bottle of bourbon next to him with one hand, he flipped to a local station with the other. Ten more minutes until the eleven o’clock news.