“Dwight thinks you’re a cop,” Reese said. “He’s pretty sure of it.”
Is thinking I’m a cop good or bad?
More importantly, which answer would keep her alive a little longer until she could heal enough to fight back? She didn’t like the idea of dying inside this motel room. Hell, she didn’t like the idea of dying at all. At least, not yet. Not while Faith was still out there, somewhere…
“What do you think?” she asked him.
“I told him you couldn’t possibly be a cop.”
“You sound very sure of it,” she said, wondering if this was the right play. Was keeping him off-balance the correct move, or was it better to confirm his suspicions? Maybe it was the pounding in her head, but Allie found it difficult to think clearly.
Concentrate!
“I am,” he nodded. “I know cops. I’ve been around a lot of them, in a lot of places — cities, countries, continents. And you, my dear, are not one of them.”
He walked over to her. He was being very careful with his side, flinching whenever he moved or turned too quickly. Even reaching over and bringing a chair to sit down next to the bed made him wince noticeably.
“Which is why you’re still alive,” Reese said.
“Why’s that?”
“You’re not a cop, but you’re not a criminal, either. So what are you?”
“You seem to have all the answers. You tell me.”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Maybe I’m both.”
“Both?”
“A crooked cop. A cop and a criminal. I hear they actually exist.”
“They do,” he said, but then shook his head. “But you’re not that, either. I’ve been around criminals all my life. Small time, big time — all the other times in between. But you’re not one of them. I’m absolutely certain of that.”
“Apparently you know a lot more about me than I do.”
“Not true, but I’m getting there. You’re very interesting, Alice.”
“Did you find Juliet interesting, too?”
He smiled. “You mean, did we ever have a sexual relationship?”
“That’s not what I meant, but sure, let’s pull that thread.”
“No.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“She’s not my type.”
“Juliet is everyone’s type.”
“She’s Dwight’s, but I like my women more interesting. Like you, Alice.”
There’s that word again. Interesting. Well, I’ve been called worse.
“So what else do you know about me?” she asked.
“Not very much at all, Alice. Is your name even Alice?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a lie.”
“If you say so.”
“But I’ll call you Alice anyway. You look like an Alice.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure, why not. So tell me, Alice. Why are you here? At first I thought your goal was to save the girls, but if that were the case, you would have done it much sooner, well before Andy’s. You had so many chances before then.”
“Did it work?” she asked.
“Did what work?”
“The big rig. The girls…”
He nodded and gave her an almost amused smile. “It did.”
She sighed with relief and didn’t bother to hide it from Reese. She didn’t care if he knew; not anymore, anyway.
Thank God I did something right today.
Thank God…
“Job well done,” Reese said. “The girls are safe in police custody. All of them.”
He watched her closely, with that same intensity that was annoying and disturbing and more than a little unnerving. Okay, it was a lot unnerving.
“So the girls were important to you,” he said. “But they weren’t your priority. At least, not at first.”
For some reason, Reese was starting to drift in and out of her vision, and she swore he split off into two Reeses at one point, which prompted the amusing thought, Great. I can’t even kill one of him, now there are two?
“Before the truck stop, you were content to ride it out to the end with us,” he continued. “I had to ask myself why — what was so important that you were willing to risk losing the girls?”
He leaned slightly forward, as if to get an even better look at her, though she wasn’t sure how that would be possible given how close they already were. If she could move her arms, she would have been tempted to throw a few haymakers in his direction.
“So what was it, Alice? Was it to get to my employers? Were they your primary target? Am I close?”
She was doing her best to maintain her concentration, to force the two Reeses back into one, and failing miserably. If Reese noticed her waning focus, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat back in his chair and casually touched his side with one hand, over the spot where she had shot him.
Hurts, huh, asshole?
Reese looked down at his watch. “Dwight should be back soon.”
“Where did he go?”
“I told you, errands.”
“Does he know you’re about to fall off that chair?”
He gave her a wry look. “Yes, well, we’ve both seen better days, haven’t we?”
He was still talking when she glimpsed a shadow flitting across the curtained windows over his shoulder.
Dwight’s back, she thought, when Reese suddenly stood up and a Glock appeared as if by magic in his hand.
Or not?
Reese moved silently across the room, abandoning the chair for the wall between the windows and door. Almost at the exact moment Reese pressed his back against the ugly wallpaper, the doorknob turned slightly, as if someone on the other side was trying to see if it was locked. It wasn’t just locked; there was also a deadbolt and chain in place.
When she looked back to Reese, he was facing her with one finger held up to his lips. She sat up, wincing as every joint in her body seemed to pop and enough pain flooded her senses for two, maybe three people. But she kept going, pushing every bruised muscle and (broken?) bone, because the alternative was to lie in bed and do nothing, and there was no way in hell she was going to ignore the alarm bells going off inside her head. She might have been able to convince herself she was just being paranoid, that nothing bad was about to happen, except Reese clearly believed the same.
She swung her legs off the bed, biting back the tears and misery. There was something odd on Reese’s face as he watched her. If she weren’t too busy trying not to scream and pretending that every inch of her wasn’t hurting, she could almost believe he looked…impressed?
Go to hell, Reese, she wanted to tell him, but it was hard enough to breathe, never mind get the invective out.
Voices, coming from outside, whispering back and forth, just before a second (or was it the same one?) silhouetted figure appeared at the window to Reese’s left. With the bright parking lot lights behind him, the man (and it was a man, she was sure of it from the shoulders and frame) looked enormous, and he was holding something in his hand. The man turned slightly, giving her a good look at the barrel and the pistol grip underneath it.
Crash!
It had to have been a heavy boot, because the motel door smashed open and wood paneling along the frame snapped and splinters speared the darkened room. A figure — another man — blotted out the open doorway, gripping something short and black and metallic in its hands. The intruder was trying to reestablish his balance in the aftermath of the kick that had sent the door into the wall, the doorknob slamming hard enough to embed in the drywall.
The man took one step inside, his face becoming visible for the first time — he was in his thirties and had a mustache, his cheeks pockmarked with acne scars from his youth — and the thing in his hands was an MP5K—