Greg Iles - True Evil

Tarver hung up the phone and shoved it deep in his pocket. Then he picked up Bill Fennell's shotgun from behind the sofa and fired it into the floor.

Jamie cringed into Alex's chest when the weapon roared.

Tarver took hold of Bill's corpse by the ankles and dragged it toward the back of the house. Alex crawled to the sofa, shoved her bound hands under it, and lifted with all her strength. She heard the back door open, then a massive grunt, which told her that Tarver was trying to lift Bill Fennell's corpse, a nearly impossible feat with dead weight. "Yank the rope loose!" she told Jamie. "Hurry."

She heard another grunt, this one like the sound of a shot-putter making a heroic heave, and then the back door slammed. Jamie had almost gotten the rope loose from the sofa leg when Tarver marched back into the room. Alex shook her head, and Jamie lay back down.

"You see why I don't make threats?" Tarver said into her cell phone. "The boy's next, Kaiser. You have nineteen minutes."

Alex saw that he'd brought a bedsheet from the laundry room, one of Grace's five-hundred-thread-count Egyptians. Tarver shook it open, then took a pair of scissors from his back pocket and cut two holes like ghost's eyes near the center of the cream-colored sheet.

"What are you doing?" Jamie asked from the floor. "Making a Halloween costume?"

Tarver laughed. "That's right, boy. And it's going to scare the hell out of some people."

He bent and cut the rope that bound Jamie to the sofa leg, then cut a longer piece and tied Jamie to his own body by tying them both around their waists. He left less than three feet of slack between them.

"Please don't do this, Doctor," Alex begged. "Send Jamie outside. I'll go with you anywhere you want to go. I'll shield you all the way out."

She might as well have been talking to a statue.

"Put on my backpack," Tarver said to Alex, pointing at the blue Kelty on the floor.

"That's where the snakes are," Jamie said quietly.

"There's more than snakes in there," Tarver said, cutting the duct tape from Alex's wrists.

She hesitated, making sure the pack was fastened shut, then carefully shouldered it. The pack was heavy, but to her relief she felt no movement inside.

"Get ready to carry those cases," Tarver said, his eyes on the front door. "Both of them."

Alex suddenly realized that Tarver had made his demands only to put Kaiser and his men at the maximum tactical disadvantage. At this moment, they would be setting up interlocking fields of fire to cover the few feet of porch space between the back door and the spot where the FBI Suburban would pull up in fifteen minutes. They were rehearsing for a scene that would never be played. And they were doing it on the wrong side of the house.

Dr. Tarver picked up Jamie as easily as he would a sack of groceries, then pulled the king-size bedsheet over both of them. Alex could no longer tell where Dr. Tarver stopped and Jamie began.

"We're going to the boathouse," Tarver said in a slightly muffled voice. "Listen to me, Alex. If you drop those cases, I'll shoot him in the head. Tell her where the gun is, Jamie."

Alex saw a jerk under the sheet.

"Under my chin," answered the small voice.

"You walk ahead of us all the way. If you jump off the pier, I'll shoot him. I know there's damn little chance of you abandoning him, but people do crazy things under stress. Remember your gray-haired friend on the porch."

Alex would never forget him. She picked up the heavy cases.

As Dr. Tarver reached for the doorknob, Alex's cell phone rang beneath the sheet. She saw movement, then Tarver said, "I assume you're calling to tell me that everything I asked for is being done, so you don't need to talk. I'm watching the clock. Good-bye." He opened the door and gestured for Alex to exit first. "Straight to the boathouse. If you slow down, Jamie's gone."

Alex set off across the grass, marching into the teeth of the rain. She tried to make out SWAT agents among the shrubs and trees, but she saw none. She started to look back, but Dr. Tarver shouted, "Faster!"

She was almost jogging now. Kaiser had to be panicking; Eldon Tarver had turned the tactical situation inside out. Reinforcements could not have arrived yet, so Kaiser was limited to the agents he'd brought in the chopper. He'd probably posted one or two on this side of the house, no more. Right now, they would be describing the strange parade: a baggage-laden woman leading a ghost toward the lake.

She was on the pier now. The impact of her feet echoed up from the whitecaps beneath the wood, despite the hissing patter of the rain. Barring a mistake by a nervous sniper, they would all reach the boathouse alive. Dr. Tarver had already proved that he would kill without hesitation, and even if Kaiser believed one of his men had a decent shot, he wouldn't give the fire order. From his point of view, Dr. Tarver had nowhere to run. Fifty square miles of water might seem like a lot of running room to a man with a speedboat, but when you had a Bell 430 full of SWAT agents at your command, it was nothing.

"Move your ass!" Tarver shouted from behind her.

Alex heard her cell phone ringing faintly as she ran, but Dr. Tarver didn't answer. One of his earlier phrases replayed constantly in her mind: Stay at altitude until I give you the final position. Who could be coming to rescue Tarver by air? A foreign intelligence service? That would be an act of war.

"Open the door!" shouted Tarver.

She'd reached the boathouse. Alex pushed through the door into fetid darkness. The gleaming white Carrera had already been lowered into the water. It rolled on the waves that crashed under the mildewed walls.

"Load the cases into the stern!" shouted Tarver. "Go!"

Alex set down the larger Pelican and climbed carefully into the pitching speedboat. She stowed the white case back near the huge twin outboard motors.

"Now the other one!"

She climbed out and retrieved the yellow case. As she stowed it, she reflected on how well-planned this escape had been. They had ordered these watertight cases long ago, preparing for an eventuality just like this one. Even if the heavily laden Pelicans went into the water, they would float, and in yellow and white, they would be highly visible from the air.

"Move up into the bow," Dr. Tarver ordered, still under the sheet with Jamie.

Alex unslung the Kelty, then walked forward to the cushioned area where people usually sat to drink beer or sunbathe while others water-skied. A big hand shot out from beneath the sheet and jerked one of her wrists over the other.

"Hold them together!" Tarver shouted.

Two seconds later, he whipped a long strip of duct tape around her wrists. Once they were restrained, he used both hands and wrapped them so tightly that she feared they would go numb.

Her cell phone was ringing again.

This time Tarver answered. "Change of plan, Kaiser. I'm going for a cruise. If your chopper moves within three hundred meters of my boat, I'll kill the boy without hesitation."

Still under the bedsheet, Dr. Tarver got behind the wheel and cranked the Carrera's massive engines. The entire craft shook with their power. The bedsheet covered the throttle, and then the boat was moving forward, steadily gaining way as it moved out of the boathouse into the slashing rain.

The boat shuddered from the impact of waves against the bow, but as the engines gained power, the sharp craft began to leap from crest to crest. Alex tried to think clearly, but no hope came to her. Kaiser probably thought Tarver was making a fatal mistake. Alex knew better. There was a helicopter out here somewhere, waiting to swoop down and carry the doctor to freedom. She wanted to signal Kaiser-there had to be a sniper watching her through a scope-but Tarver was looking right past her through the eyeholes of his ghost costume.