The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (32 page)

Being unable to aim, I centered on what was
left of my strength and pressed the gun upward at an angle across
my chest until it met resistance.

The panicked voices of various stringed
instruments blended to a thick, disharmonious crescendo in my
ears…

For a brief instant I considered the fact
that my left arm was now completely numb, and I silently begged for
the resistance I found to be his arm and not my own. Then, tensing
my body, I pulled the trigger.

The muzzle flashed.

The explosion reported deafeningly in my
ear.

The spent shell ejected directly toward me
and transferred its searing heat to my cheek.

Thick blood spattered like heavy rain across
the side of my face.

The cold fingers snapped open.

Something thudded heavily against me and
fell away.

A tortured scream faded into the distance
below.

A single violin cried into the night, fading
with sorrowful purpose toward silence…

Everything went completely black.

I was on the verge of hyperventilating when I
opened my eyes. The torturous snippet of my life was well over one
year old, but it had impressed itself upon me with the clarity of
here and now. Each detail was as crisp and terrifying as it had
been then.

As it continued to replay in my head, I
fought to focus on the situation at the other end of the line.

“So I took your hand?” I retorted, finding a
morbid solace in having caused him harm. “I guess that’s one for
me, then.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Gant,” he
snarled.

“You were trying to strangle me, Eldon,” I
said. “Just exactly what did you expect me to do?”

“Accept your sentence,” he returned.

“I don’t accept the judgment of a
lunatic.”

“Whether you accept it or not, Gant, you
can’t deny your guilt. You have admitted it freely.”

“So why take her hand,” I asked, trying to
push past this point of contention. “Isn’t it mine that you
want?”

“Oh, Gant,” he replied. “You know what I want
from you.”

“So, why her then. Do you intend to torture
me by proxy?”

“Like I said, your sentence has been
pronounced,” he replied. “Don’t you remember?”

He was intent on reiterating my sentence,
most likely for those I am sure he knew were listening. It didn’t
matter what I said to him, he was going to bring it all back around
to this.

“I wasn’t paying that much attention to you,
Eldon,” I said with a note of impatience. “But I get the feeling
you want to remind me.”

His speech became measured and almost
theatrical. “By this our definitive sentence we drive you from the
ecclesiastical court, and abandon you to the power of the secular
court, that having you in its power now moderates its sentence of
death against you.”

“Yeah, sounds vaguely familiar,” I retorted.
“But let’s get back to reality here. What makes you think you’ll be
able to execute that sentence?”

“I almost did that night,” he answered. “Now
I’ll finish what I started.”

“Bullshit, Eldon,” I retorted. “You made a
feeble attempt and ended up losing a hand in the deal. And now
you’re hiding in an abandoned building that’s surrounded by police.
Give it up, there’s no chance.”

“Yes there is.”

“How so?”

“Because I have this woman, and you can’t
bear to lose her soul,” he stated without hesitation.

I steeled myself for what I was about to say
and tried to sound convincing. “You can have her. I’ll get
another.”

“No you won’t, Gant,” he said. “I know you
better than you think I do.”

“If you know me so damn well, then why don’t
you just tell me what you want and get it over with,” I
demanded.

“A deal,” he replied. “Your life for
her…”

The telephone made a grating, double click,
then fell silent.

“Eldon?” I queried into the handset.

My ear received only a thick silence in
reply, but it was different from the times before when he had hung
up on me. There were no clicks in the background and no empty
hollowness to echo back. This time the phone seemed to have
literally gone dead.

“He hung up or something,” I stated aloud,
looking at Ben and then Constance.

Ben took the phone from my hand then turned
and slid it almost gently into the cradle. As he did so, he slowly
relaxed his hold on me.

“He didn’t hang up,” Constance said
carefully.

Ben had turned back to face me, and he seemed
to be waiting for something. I glanced over at Constance; suddenly
perplexed by the way both of them were acting. “What’s going
on?”

“Now listen to me, Rowan,” she began,
maintaining her calm tone with an obvious degree of purpose.

“Oh Gods! What did you do now?!” My voice
inched up the scale as I felt my anger swell once again.

“Shut up and listen, Row,” Ben barked.

Something about the way his voice was edged
made me take immediate notice and fall quiet.

“The line was interrupted by the hostage
negotiation team,” Constance continued her explanation. “They are
taking over the contact with Porter.”

“What?” I shook my head in disbelief. “Why
now? I had him talking.”

“You did great,” she replied. “No one is
saying you didn’t, Rowan. However, where the rules of hostage
negotiation are concerned, they had already blurred the lines a
hell of a lot more than I’ve ever seen them do before. The only
reason they let him talk to you for so long was so they could
gather information and get SWAT into position.”

“Dammit!” I yelped. “If they try to go in
there again, he’s going to kill her!”

“They know, Rowan, they know.” She held up
her hands and motioned me to settle. “Believe me, that is the last
thing they want.”

“Well, he told me what he wants,” I returned.
“Me for her. Why don’t we…”

“Not happenin’, Row,” Ben announced in a
stern voice, verbally inserting a period into my sentence well
before I had planned to be finished with it. “Just forget that crap
right now.”

“That’s one of the reasons the line was
terminated when it was,” Constance told me, adding a shake of her
head. “He started to negotiate a deal with you, and that is
something the HNT is not going to let happen.”

“It’s one of the commandments in the hostage
negotiation bible, white man,” Ben told me. “Thou shalt not trade
one hostage for another. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

“So where does this leave us?” I demanded.
“He’s just going to escalate if they cut him off from me.”

“You don’t know that, Row,” Ben replied.

“The hell I don’t!” I said. “I’ve talked to
this sonofabitch more than any of you. I’d really appreciate it if
everyone would just stop telling me what I do and don’t know!”

“Rowan.” Felicity’s voice hit me at the same
time she slipped around Ben and came into my view. Her eyes were
damp with the tears she was fighting hard to contain. “Let them
handle it. Please?”

I leaned back and closed my eyes. My headache
was back, and it was hammering away with a vengeance, all the while
making sneak attacks on parts of my brain I didn’t know I had.
Something—or someone—was still knocking around at my ethereal
perimeter, relentlessly looking for a way in. My best friend was
willing to handcuff me to something stationary in order to keep me
out of a mess that, whether he liked it or not, I was already at
the center of. I couldn’t remember everything I had shouted at
Constance, but I was betting I owed her an apology. Finally, and
worst of all, my wife had every reason to believe that left
unchecked, I would make her a widow.

Actually, I take that back. The worst part
was that she was probably correct.

I don’t know if I had left anything out, but
the laundry list was already several items too long for me to be
comfortable with, so I was in no hurry to add to it. I knew for a
fact that I had definitely been on the receiving end of better days
than this, and I was longing for one of them right now.

I heaved out a sigh and reached up to massage
my temples. “Look, all of you, I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re not
exactly getting to see me at my best.”

“S’alright, Kemosabe,” Ben replied. “We know
you’re under a lotta pressure. That’s pretty much why I haven’t
decked your ass yet.”

“How fortunate for me,” I quipped.

“I’m thinkin’ maybe, yeah, it is,” he said
with a grin.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“We relax and wait for this to all be over,”
Constance advised. “Then you try your best to forget this day ever
happened.”

“You know I can’t do that,” I replied.

“We can try,” Felicity pleaded.

“Honey…” I reached for her, and she slipped
past Ben to melt into me. Her own energy was a chaotic turmoil, and
it blended easily with mine, leaving us both unbalanced and
preternaturally askew.

“It’s all but over, Rowan,” Ben offered.
“They’re gonna take this asshole down. No two ways about it. He’ll
go out in cuffs or a body bag. His choice.”

“I understand that,” I told him. “But what
about Star? What if SHE is the one who ends up in a body bag?”

“That’s why HNT has the ball now,” Constance
answered. “It is their job to keep that from happening.”

“But, they have to understand that I am who
he wants,” I returned in a matter-of-fact tone. “There’s no other
bargaining for them to do.”

“Believe me, Rowan, they know that,” she
assured me. “But that is simply not how things are done.”

Her phone chirped again. I had lost count of
the number of phone calls coming in and out of this apartment
throughout this evening, so this was just another to add on to the
pile.

“Mandalay,” she answered, speaking into the
device almost as soon as she flipped it open.

We all stood there, gathered in the
kitchenette as if seeking some type of comfort within our small
clutch. Safety in numbers, shared empathy, I don’t know. I couldn’t
tell if it was actually working or just feeding the tension.

The expectant silence grew, as our only
access to even her side of the conversation came in the form of
reflexive nods occasionally coupled with scattered “yes’s” and
“uh-huh’s.” After a trio of minutes, during which our edgy
anticipation swelled into a thick bubble around us, she finally
uttered something more than a monosyllabic response.

“Are you absolutely sure?” she asked whoever
was at the other end of the line, her features creasing into a
frown. “You want both of them? No, I’m sure he will be agreeable to
it. Okay. Thanks, bye.”

She closed the cover on the silver device and
clipped it back to her belt before looking at all of us. Then she
allowed her gaze to center on me.

“That was the HNT,” she said. “The lead
hostage negotiator wants us to bring you and Felicity to the
scene.”

A gelid rush of foreboding injected itself
directly into my heart and spread quickly through veins and
arteries with each successive beat. My entire body took on a
frightening chill. Hollowness filled my chest, and after a moment,
my brain pointed out that I wasn’t bothering to breathe. I released
my mental grip on the feeling of icy terror and allowed my
autonomic reflexes to continue once again unimpeded.

Even though I’m certain that my heart had
never actually stopped beating, I would swear that I felt it
stutter a bit as it seemed to restart.

I looked at Agent Mandalay and then slowly
shook my head. “Call him back and tell him I said no.”

“Do what?” Ben asked with confusion in his
voice.

“But, Rowan, I thought you…” Constance
began.

“Me, yes,” I cut her off. “Felicity, no way.
She’s not getting anywhere near that sick bastard.”

“Rowan…” Felicity brought her head up as she
spoke.

“Listen, Row, the scene is secure,” Ben
offered.

“I don’t care,” I returned. “What do they
want her there for anyway?”

“To interview,” Mandalay said. “The same
reason they want you.”

“Interview about what?”

“Porter,” she returned. “He called her today,
so she’s had direct contact with him as well. You need to
understand, Rowan, the HNT looks for every piece of information
they can possibly use. No matter how insignificant you may think it
seems, they want to know about it.”

“Fine. Then she can tell them everything he
said to her by phone if they want to know that badly,” I
asserted.

“Rowan,” Felicity interjected again. “You’ll
not be going without me then.”

“Honey, you know as well as I do what Porter
has done. I’m not willing to take the chance.”

“Aye, but I am.”

I shook my head vigorously. “No, Felicity, I
can’t accept that.”

“Rowan,” Mandalay began, “I can understand
your concern, but think about it. There are over two dozen police
officers on the scene, and that isn’t even counting FBI and SWAT.
Now, where else could Felicity be safer?”

“Right here as far as I’m concerned.”

“I’m going,” Felicity announced.

“No,” I stated in the most adamant tone I
could muster. “If they want me there, fine, but only me, not you.
Those are my terms, and they’re non-negotiable.”

Felicity had pulled back slightly and now
fixed me with an unforgiving stare as she piped up again. “Aye, but
they’re not yours to dictate, Rowan. If you are going then I am
going. Those are MY terms.”

“Felicity…”

“No,” she insisted, her glare hardening.
“Best you not argue with me on this because you won’t win.”

“But…”

“Aye,
Caorthann
, I said no.” The stern quality that
filled her voice when she cut me off was as much magickal as it was
earthbound, maybe even more so.

This time, her use of the Gaelic version of
my name was coupled with an undeniable energy. She meant to drive
home a point, and she did so with earnest. She was correct. I
couldn’t win, and continuing to argue was just a waste of time. My
desire to protect her was being trumped by her desire to protect
me. Any other cards I could play would only bring us to an
impasse.