Greg Iles - Third Degree

“Who are you talking to online?” she asked.

“Why do you think I’m talking to someone?”

“You’ve been typing and reading something. I figured it was e-mail. Or IMs. And you said before that someone told you to search for the letter. They just told you to look in the safe room, didn’t they?”

“Aren’t you the little detective.”

“I told you there was something else in the house. Somebody’s screwing with your head, Warren. Big-time.”

“We’ll see when we find out what it is, won’t we?”

I was right! Laurel thought anxiously. What the hell are we about to find? Just don’t let it be something I can’t explain-

He opened the closet that concealed the steel door of the safe room and told Laurel to turn her back to the door. After she did, he punched his new code into the child-protection key pad, which opened the steel door unless the master lock had been set from the inside. As Warren stepped into the metal room, a spark of excitement flashed through her. If she could get inside the safe room and somehow shove him out, then she could slam the door and lock it. With him outside, the kids would still be in danger, but there was a secure phone in the safe room, and she could use it to call Diane Rivers and stop her from bringing the kids home.

Laurel took a furtive step backward, instinctively realizing that this was the way to get into the safe room. Warren would be nervous that she was trying to break for the front door. As if on cue, he said, “That’s far enough. You come stand here, in the doorway.”

She shuffled forward like a reluctant prisoner. The air in the safe room was musty and stank of mildew. Warren began removing the canned goods stored on the shelves, grabbing shrink-wrapped packs of Bush’s baked beans and stacking them on the floor. Next came the bottled water. Laurel was ready to risk her life to get Warren out of there, but he outweighed her by sixty pounds, minimum. And that sixty pounds was almost all muscle. To complicate matters, her wrists were still taped together, and Warren was almost flush against the shelves on the back wall. How could she get behind him and shove him out the door?

She found her chance less than a foot away.

Where the reinforced wall met the steel door, a sharp piece of sheet metal protruded a half inch into the open doorway at shoulder level. It looked a lot like an old-fashioned razor blade, and she wasted no time testing it. As Warren cursed and dropped a six-pack of Dasani onto the pile behind him, she raised her arms and dragged the duct tape along the protruding metal. Warren paused at the ripping sound-which sounded like Velcro being unhooked-but by the time he turned, Laurel was holding her wrists together again.

He knelt before the deep shelves, then grunted in surprise.

Laurel picked up a heavy can of beans and drew it back as if to hurl it at his head. It seemed safer than moving close enough to hit him, but if she missed, he might shoot her out of simple reflex. Warren groaned in frustration. He was trying to pull something off the back of the bottom shelf. A white cardboard box. A banker’s box.

She sprang forward and drove the can down toward the base of his skull, aiming for the brain stem. With her children in danger, there was no point in half measures. Warren must have heard her approach, because he turned his head back and upward just as the can reached the end of its arc. Instead of knocking him into a vegetative coma, the flat of the can crashed into his neck and jaw.

He fell against the shelves, his eyes blank.

Laurel raised the can to deliver another blow, but Warren toppled sideways, out of reach. She darted forward, meaning to grab the gun from his waistband, but the light of awareness flashed in his eyes. She froze, aware that she had moved within his grasp, then whirled and lunged for the door.

The gun thundered like a cannon in the tiny room.

“DON’T TAKE ANOTHER STEP!” Warren screamed.

Laurel was too close to freedom to obey. She kept moving, and the pistol exploded again. A hole appeared in the foyer wall ahead of her. This image somehow penetrated the rush of panic driving her forward. She turned and saw Warren crawling through the door of the safe room with the pistol in his hand. She darted to her right, which carried her out of his line of sight and to the front door.

The door was bolted shut, but the key was in the lock. She was turning the key when a car horn sounded outside. Two quick blasts that told her Diane Rivers had just pulled to the end of the sidewalk with the kids. As the bolt clicked open, a shadow fell across the door. Laurel put her hand on the knob.

“Open that door, and I’ll kill you,” Warren said. “I’ll kill you with Grant and Beth watching.”

She gripped the brass knob with all her strength, willing herself to open the door. No way will he shoot me in front of them, she told herself. He’d spend the rest of his life in prison, and not one person would ever visit him. Not even his mother-

“And then I’ll shoot myself,” Warren said quietly.

Laurel froze, a thousand images from news stories she’d seen over the years playing in her mind. Murder-suicide! Distraught Dad barricades home and executes family! Stabs wife, strangles kids in their beds! Father crashes plane into mother-in-law’s house with children aboard! She let her hand fall from the knob.

Warren seized her by the neck and dragged her away from the door.

Kyle Auster gripped his office telephone with an almost bloodless hand. The man on the other end of it was Patrick Evans, executive assistant to the governor and Auster’s line into the Medicaid Fraud Office. Evans had opened the conversation with the warning “No names,” then explained that he was calling Auster from a pay phone. At Evans’s next words, Auster’s face went slack with fear.

“I don’t know what you said to Paul Biegler today, but he’s on his way down there with two other agents to chain your goddamn office shut. You are out of business, Kyle. For a while, anyway. It’s time to hire a good criminal lawyer.”

“But…but” was all Auster could sputter. “Today? Biegler said he was coming in the morning.”

Evans didn’t bother to respond to this evidence of idiocy. Auster heard traffic zooming by whatever pay phone Evans was using. He could see his old schoolmate standing by some shady downtown pay phone, watching every vagrant like a potential mugger.

“Patrick,” Auster said in a halting voice. “Isn’t there any way I can head this off?”

“I’m sorry, man. The ship has sailed. And…I’ve got to say this. Our relationship has to end at this point. I know we go back a long way, but I’m in a high-profile job. You’re a liability now. I can’t risk everything because we played ball together in high school.”

A big truck ground its gears in Auster’s ear. He felt as if Evans had just walked away from the roulette table, leaving him half a million down. “I’ve got to go,” Evans said. “Are we clear on that last? No calls to the governor’s office, not even from home, much less jail.”

Fear and indignation rose as one in Auster. “What about all the contributions I’ve given you guys? Hell, this year alone-”

“Wake up, Kyle. This is survival. Get a good lawyer. I’m out of here.”

The phone clicked in Auster’s hand. No more traffic sounds. Nothing but the hum of his air conditioner and the sound of a patient’s voice in the corridor outside. He felt the world collapsing around him, crushing him with its density. His allotted time as Kyle Auster, noted Athens Point physician, had shrunk to the time it would take Paul Biegler to cover the one hundred and twenty-six miles of road between Jackson and Athens Point. With traffic, that was about two and a quarter hours, but if Biegler really pushed it, he could do it in ninety minutes.