Toni was terrified.
Dear God, don’t let anything happen to my baby!
Junior thought he could hear somebody talking, low and quiet, and he crept along the wall toward the sound, his left hand coming up to grip his right, holding the revolver in a double-grip. He kept the gun pointed at about a forty-five-degree angle in front of him, toward the floor. It was easier to bring it up and target than it was to bring it down from a barrel-up position, like a lot of cops and military guys did it.
He passed a couple of rooms with doors open, peeked in quickly, and didn’t see anybody.
He got to the end of the hall, where there was a closed door. He tried the knob quietly…
Locked.
He put his ear against the door, but the voice — if that’s what it had been — had gone quiet. He couldn’t hear a thing. He was sure somebody was in the room, though. Sure of it.
Junior sweated, despite the air-conditioning. He stood there for a long time, thinking about it.
Should he back off, go around and look in the window? Assuming there wasn’t a blind or curtain over it that wouldn’t let him see anything. Should he demand that whoever was inside come out? That might not be a good idea. They could be standing there holding a phone with the police emergency number already dialed. That could even be what he’d heard — somebody calling the police, who could even now be on their way here.
Or maybe it was the mama in there, holding her granddaddy’s old pump shotgun, ready to shred anything that came through the door.
He shook his head. Too many questions with no way to answer them unless he moved. No, if somebody was in the room, no point in giving them any warning, any time to do anything. Best thing was to kick the door open, jump in, and catch them off guard. People got spooked by loud noises and movement, distracted by yelling things like, “How’s your sister?” They got overwhelmed by too much coming at them at once, every time.
He took a deep breath, let a little of it out, and gathered himself. It was an interior door, hollow-core, with a snap-button lock. No problem.
Ames had opened a bottle of very good red wine when the jet had lifted, and it had breathed enough by now. Some wines didn’t travel very well, and the lower pressure in the cabin wasn’t good for wine in general, but he didn’t care. He would have a glass or two, and if the rest of it didn’t keep, what was a couple hundred bucks, given his income? Plenty more where that came from. He had dozens of cases of good stuff at the hideout in Texas.
He poured the wine and swirled it around in his glass, and thought about the lobbyist, Cory Skye. He hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days and wondered where she was, and how she was doing in her pursuit of Net Force’s commander.
He inhaled the sharp scent, then took a slow sip from the glass. Ah.
Junior leaned into the kick, hit the door hard, and was happy to see it pop open, showing a bedroom. He leaped in—
He caught movement to his left, twisted, and saw several things at once:
There was a bathroom, and in it, crouched down under a sink, was the boy he’d come to collect.
There was also a skinny black kid — he’d been right about that! — standing in front of the door, partially blocking it.
There was a long-barreled target pistol in the skinny kid’s hand, pointing at the rug—
Gun!
Junior swung his revolver around. Driven by years of practice, made smooth by countless repetitions, he moved like oil on polished steel, no hesitation, no jerkiness, no roughness.
Turn. Index. Target—
He lined up on the black kid’s head, ready to squeeze off the first round…
The long-barreled gun in the kid’s hand blurred.
Jesus! How fast was that?
He didn’t have time to wonder very long. Before his finger was halfway through the trigger squeeze, there was fire and noise, but it cut off—
— Junior’s mind stopped dead. His last thought was:
How could—?
The D.C. cops were there, but they had established a perimeter, nobody had gone inside. Toni and Alex were out of the copter and almost to the front door, despite the cops yelling at them to stay back. It was going to take more than police to stop Toni getting to her child—
There came the horrible crack of a small-caliber gunshot.
Toni screamed something wordless and primal, a cry for her mate’s help, but it wasn’t necessary — Alex was moving. He hit the door with his shoulder, slammed it open against the wall, hard enough to break the doorstop, never slowing—
She ran down the hall, Alex a step ahead of her, both of them yelling—
The baby!
Heedless of guns, they ran into the bedroom—
— and almost tripped over the body of a man lying face-up on the floor, a stubby gun clutched in his hand. He had been hit in the forehead. Right between the eyes.
Boudreaux!
To her left, Tyrone stood, Alex clutched in one arm on his hip, the other hand holding a sleek pistol which was now pointed at the floor.
“H-H-He k-ki-kicked in the d-d-door, Mrs. Michaels! He had a g-g-gun!”
“Mama!” Alex said. He smiled and held out his arms to her, happy to see her. He wasn’t crying. Didn’t even seem particularly upset.
She took the boy, a sense of relief flooding her like a tsunami.
“I–I-I—” Tyrone was sobbing too hard to get anything else out.
Tyrone and his target pistol. He had saved them from the killer.
Amazing.
Alex squatted on the floor next to the downed man. “Dead,” he said.
“It’s okay, Tyrone,” Toni said. “You did the right thing. It’s okay.” She reached out and encircled him with her free arm, pulling him close. “Thank you.”
Those two little words were so inadequate, but she saw Tyrone nod. Then she turned and looked back at the man by her bed and her husband. This was the second time Death had come to her house to visit. She shook her head. It was going to be the last. She wasn’t going to stay here and put her child at risk anymore. She would have to make Alex understand that. It was time to leave this town.
Alex was nodding, and she knew it was because he had read her mind. Their son was safe. And they were going to keep him that way, whatever it took.
37
Toni was at home with their son. Nadine Howard had come and collected Tyrone. The boy was shaken, but he seemed okay otherwise. John Howard had gone home, seen to his boy, and now was back.
The police had gotten their forensics people in and out, and the coroner had hauled the body away. It was late, almost seven P.M., but Michaels was at the office, and neither Jay nor John Howard had any plans to go home.
Michaels had been profuse in his gratitude to Tyrone, and in telling Howard how much he owed them. Howard had been rattled and worried for his son, but under it, a glimmer of pride showed through. In the face of deadly danger, his son had stepped up. Against a man who was a killer, Tyrone had prevailed. It was not every man who could have done it, and for a teenager untrained in violence, it was even more impressive.
But now, everybody in this room was frustrated and angry.
“No ID on the call?” Michaels said.
“No, boss,” Jay said. “But we did get a location. We backwalked it to a cell tower in Tennessee.”
Michaels shook his head. “Who is in Tennessee?”
“Nobody we’re concerned with. But our boy Ames hopped on his private jet this morning, flight plans filed for Texas. At the time of the call to your virgil, given the jet’s cruising speed and path, it would have been somewhere over Tennessee.”