Five, Chapel thought. He’d been counting. Judging by the sounds of the gunshots, Stephen had a revolver. Which meant, most likely, he only had one shot left.
Assuming he hadn’t brought any reloads with him. And that he only had the one weapon. And that Chapel had, indeed, counted correctly. He’d been under stress when he was adding up shots.
Chapel needed another way out of this. “I can be very forgiving,” he said. “Listen, Stephen, you can still walk away.” Not very far, though. As soon as the cops caught up with him Stephen would be looking at a manslaughter charge, at the very least, for what he’d done to the cook. But Chapel didn’t figure it would help him if he said that out loud. “Is there a door in this room, leading outside?”
“There is.”
“You can just walk right through it. I won’t follow you, I promise.”
Another chuckle.
“No, seriously. You’ve got the gun, Stephen. I’m helpless here. Totally defenseless. You walk away and I’d be an idiot to chase you.”
Stephen was silent for a long time. “Stand up,” he said, finally. “Show me your hands.”
“Come on, Stephen, I’d be a real idiot to—”
“Do it or I’ll shoot you in the goddamn heart!”
Chapel slowly rose to his feet, just poking his head over the counter. Expecting the top of his skull to be blown off. He lifted his hands. His artificial hand first.
He saw Stephen standing not three feet away. The snub-nosed barrel of a big, nasty revolver was pointing right at Chapel’s chest. Stephen must have had some training, he realized, in how to shoot. He knew to go for center mass, rather than trying to shoot Chapel in the head.
“Okay,” Chapel said. “I did what you asked. Now—”
You couldn’t dodge a bullet. No human being was fast enough. Not at that range, certainly. So when Stephen fired his sixth and final shot, Chapel had nowhere to go.
14
Chapel had been shot before. More than once.
He remembered what it felt like, knew the incredible sharp pain of it, then the wave of nauseating numbness as the pain went away (temporarily), as the body went into denial and refused to believe it was injured.
He knew exactly what it felt like, but it still came as quite a shock. He’d been sure he could talk his way out of this, that Stephen would listen to reason. So for the first split second after the bullet entered his chest, he was mostly just surprised.
Then—slightly relieved.
Stephen could have shot him through the heart, like he’d said he would. He could have killed Chapel outright. Instead he’d shot Chapel low and to the right, well clear of his heart and lungs. The pain was still going to be unbearable, and he started bleeding out instantly, but he might just survive this.
“That’s just to slow you down,” Stephen said. “So you don’t come after me. You tell them—you tell them I could have killed you, but I didn’t. You tell them it was basically self-defense!”
“Tell… who?” Chapel wheezed.
“Your cop bosses, whoever.”
Chapel pressed his hand tightly against the wound. The blood poured through his fingers like water. “Not… a cop.”
But Stephen wasn’t there anymore to hear him. Chapel heard a creaking sound and felt cool air on his face. He looked up and saw a door to the outside flapping open. Stephen had run for it.
That was when a whole fresh wave of pain hit, and for a while Chapel could do nothing but lean against the counter and clamp his eyes shut and try not to scream.
Blood. He could hear his own blood dripping on the floor. Mixing with the blood of the cook. He had to do something about that, had to—
Pain interrupted anything like a clear thought. It drove everything else out of his had. God damn, it hurt. God—
With a shaking hand Chapel grabbed a towel off the counter and pushed it hard against the wound. The blood kept coming but it slowed. He pushed harder, using the pain, using the way every muscle in his body just wanted to tense up, the way he wanted to just curl into a ball on the floor.
He bit back the tears that rushed into his eyes. Bit back a shout of rage and agony.
He couldn’t let Favorov find him like this. His value as a hostage would only go up if he was wounded. Chapel pulled open drawer after drawer in the counter until he found what he was looking for—a roll of tape. It wasn’t duct tape, which he would have preferred, but just plain transparent packing tape. It didn’t matter. He forced his hands to steady, forced his vision to clear by sheer willpower, then he wrapped the tape around and around himself, holding the towel in place.
When that was done he gave himself a long moment to just lean against the counter and breathe. It took all the effort he had just to bring oxygen into his lungs and pump carbon dioxide back out. It helped if he closed his eyes…
“No,” he told himself out loud. “No!” He slammed the countertop with his right hand, slammed it again and again until he felt like he was regaining some control. Then he slowly turned around to face the swinging doors that led back into the house. If a small army of armed servants was about to arrive and take him captive, he could at least watch them do it.
That was when he noticed something he’d desperately wanted for a while now, ever since he’d been taken prisoner. Something that could make all the difference.
There was a telephone mounted on the kitchen wall.
15
Chapel stumbled over to the phone and reached for the handset with one bloodstained hand. Before picking it up he studied the buttons, noticing there were no numbers on the keypad. The keys connected the phone with other rooms in the house, but there seemed no way to get an outside line. Maybe Favorov didn’t want his cook making expensive calls while she was working. The phone was basically just an intercom system, and it shouldn’t allow him to communicate with the outside world.
Still. In his time working for Director Hollingshead, Chapel had come to expect miracles when it came to telecommunications. And a miracle was what he needed. He picked up the handset, at first saying nothing. There was no dial tone, no hiss of an unconnected line. Someone was listening.
“Angel?” he said.
He heard a series of clicks and then the sexiest, most welcome voice in the world answered him, though the connection was fuzzy and the volume was low. “Chapel! I’ve been trying to reach you for so long now. Please tell me you’re free and you’re all right.”
Chapel looked down at the seeping wound in his abdomen. “I’m free,” he said. “For the moment. I was able to get away from the guards. How are you able to access this line?” he asked. “It’s in-house only.”
“True—you can’t call out on this line, not if you’re a person. But it’s patched electronically into the house’s security system, and it needs to be able to contact the police or the fire department if there’s a problem. I’m piggybacking on a dedicated 911 connection, duplexing the signal through the voltage line so the call monitors don’t pick us up. Real old-school phone phreaking. It would be fun if I wasn’t so worried about you, baby.”
Chapel didn’t really care about the details. He had a far more important question. “Can anyone else in the house hear us? Say, if they pick up another handset?”
“I’m afraid so. This is the best I can manage for now—I could encrypt the signal so well the NSA couldn’t listen in, but that won’t stop anyone on the same line.”
Chapel nodded to himself. “I heard clicks on the line just before you picked up. I think we have to assume everything we say is being overheard. Well, there’s nothing for it. I need to deliver a sitrep and I very, very badly need some advice. I’m sure you know by now that Favorov tried to take me hostage, but I’m at large in the house now. I can’t leave the grounds—there’s at least a dozen men outside in the yard waiting for me to poke my head out the door. I’m wounded, though for now I’m still mobile.”