Steven James - The Knight

Cheyenne pocketed her cell. “Ari Ryman never came back to work after lunch today.”

I looked around Rachel’s Cafe again, trying to figure out where he might be.

He comes in here with Amy Lynn. He sent her the note: “Must needs we tell of others’ tears? Please, Mrs. Greer, have a heart.

– John.”

I spun. Faced Cheyenne. “Is Amy Lynn still at the safe house?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She tapped at her cell again.

I thanked Janie for her help, pocketed Tessa’s phone, and was turning to leave when Cheyenne exclaimed, “Amy Lynn left the safe house last night. The GPS for her Blackberry is at her home address, 7881 East 8th Avenue.”

“C’mon.” I ran for the door. “She’s next. The killer wants her to have a heart.”

Yes!

Amy Lynn finally managed to grab the hanger.

Frantically, she twisted the wire tip and went to work at the ropes.

We climbed into the car.

So many thoughts-I was furious at Tessa, determined to catch Ari, dreading what might have happened to Amy Lynn Greer and her husband.

No, Pat. In his note at Bryant’s house, the killer said he was going to tell the last three stories tonight, after you returned to Denver. So they might still be alive I fired up the engine. “Cheyenne, get some cars to the Greer house-”

“Already on it.” She had her phone to her ear.

And I squealed the car into the street.

Giovanni removed the shirt of the unconscious man and placed it beside him on the bed. Then he picked up the scalpel.

The candles flickered beside him.

He could hear Amy Lynn squirming in the closet, and he paused for a moment to listen to her. Carrying the scalpel, he crossed the room, opened the closet door, and found that she’d pulled half a dozen dresses onto the floor. She’d managed to get hold of a hanger and was trying to use the tip of the wire to work her hands free.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “Really, I am. That was a good idea. Keep working on that. I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you. Let’s see how far you get.”

He returned to the bed, positioned the scalpel’s blade against the man’s bare chest, and was just about to press down when he heard Detective Warren call for dispatch to send two squads to 7881 East 8th Avenue.

Giovanni stopped.

They’d found him. They were coming.

So.

He looked at the man on the bed, then at the blade in his hand.

A change of plans.

He set down the scalpel and went to remove Amy Lynn from the closet.

“Two squads are on their way to her house,” Cheyenne said. “Now, fill me in.”

In a handful of seconds I summarized the hypotheses that had led me to suspect Ari.

Cheyenne listened. Tracked with me, then shook her head. “But motive? What’s his motive?”

“We’ll ask him when we find him.”

So many sides of the cube to lock into place. It was hard to prioritize. I could think of at least four people we needed to call immediately.

I took us around a corner so fast I almost lost control. “Cheyenne, make some calls for me, OK?”

“Shoot.”

“Try to get a hold of Reggie and Amy Lynn. Tell her to report immediately to the FBI field office, not police headquarters. Her life’s in grave danger.”

I still couldn’t believe that Tessa had used my computer to email the FBI’s cybercrime division to look for her dad. She should have just asked me for help. Not gone behind my back.

I definitely needed to calm down before talking with her. Sort out what to say.

So I didn’t call her, but I did call dispatch. “Tell the officers who are watching the house to go inside, confiscate my computer, and stay with the girls.”

A slight hesitancy. “Yes, sir.”

I shot through a red light and merged onto I-25.

Amy Lynn lay in the trunk of her own car.

The man had freed her legs, but her hands were still tied behind her back. She was still gagged.

They were backing down the driveway.

She heard the garage door rattle shut, and as the car rolled into the street, in a moment of dark and ironic clarity, she realized that unless she somehow found a way to escape, she was going to end up as nothing more than a chapter in someone else’s book.

And it would be the story of a lifetime.

Hers.

The car accelerated.

She didn’t care if the gag and the sound of the engine stifled her cries, Amy Lynn kicked against the trunk’s latch as hard as she could.

And screamed.

Amy Lynn Greer wasn’t answering her cell, but Cheyenne did reach Reggie. They spoke for a few moments, then she filled me in: that morning, after discovering that Amy Lynn had left the house, he’d dropped his son off at day care and gone looking for her.

“He told me that he didn’t put out an APB on her because he wanted to find her himself, to protect her. That he was embarrassed he’d let her out of his sight.”

I smacked the steering wheel with my hand. “That’s just great.”

I accelerated. Slid into the left lane.

“This afternoon he got a GPS lock on her Blackberry. Apparently she placed a call to New York City while she was near Sebastian Taylor’s house, so he drove up there to look for her, but she was gone. About twenty minutes ago he received a text message from her that she was at home. He’s on his way there, but he’s still a good fifteen minutes out.”

We called Jake, filled him in; I thought of calling Kurt, but he was still in Breckenridge trying to salvage his marriage, so we gave a shout to his boss, Captain Terrell, instead. Cheyenne told him, “We think it’s Ari Ryman,” and something caught in my memory.

I began to mumble, “Ari… hurry… Ari… hurry.”

A couple seconds later, Cheyenne ended the call to Terrell and stared at me. “Are you all right?”

“He didn’t say ‘hurry.’”

She shook her head. “Who didn’t say hurry?”

“On Friday when Grant Sikora was dying, I told him the paramedics were coming and I asked him who’d gotten him the gun. He answered, ‘Hurry… You have to get… hurry…’”

She connected the dots: “You’re thinking he said, ‘Ari. You have to get Ari.’”

“I can’t be certain, but yes. I think he was giving me a name, not asking for help.”

“Considering everything we know now, that would make sense,”

Cheyenne said.

Yes, it would.

In fact, too much sense.

If Grant had said Ari’s name, that changed everything.

“Cheyenne, I want to see the work schedules from last week. We’re looking for anyone who’s had anything to do with this case.

Police officers, detectives, CSU members, also hospital staff and medical examiner’s personnel. Call Baptist Memorial and police headquarters; have human resources upload them to the online case files-”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I don’t want to jump to conclusions. I have a theory. I’m hoping I can prove myself wrong.” I flashed past two cars that had to be going at least seventy-five.

We would be at the Greer house in less than four minutes.

On the way to police headquarters, Giovanni radioed dispatch to requisition a task force helicopter and a pilot for Special Agent Bowers.

Almost no one else could have convinced them as quickly and easily as he did to clear the chopper. “Colonel Freeman is on call here at the station,” they told him. “He’ll be waiting for you on the helipad.”

“Thank you.”

End call.

Though Giovanni hadn’t expected things to play out quite like this, he’d planned for a number of contingencies and he was pre-pared: he had a police department ID badge with him so that he could enter the staff parking garage underneath headquarters. From there, he would take Amy Lynn up the service elevator to the he-lipad on the roof.