Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

"It's not cut. But it's all black. What's that all about?"

"Might be broken."

He didn't respond, didn't seem sympathetic. It was as if her pain was meaningless to him. As if he couldn't understand that a human being might be suffering. His concern was just an excuse to touch her.

She extended her leg farther, her muscles quivering from the effort of elevating the limb. Her foot touched Garrett's body near his groin.

His eyelids lowered. His breathing was fast.

Lydia swallowed.

He moved her foot. It brushed against his penis through the wet cloth. He was hard as the wooden paddle of the waterwheel that she'd smacked trying to escape.

Garrett slid his hand farther up her leg. She felt his nails snag her pantyhose.

No…

Yes…

Then he froze.

His head tilted back and his nostrils flared. He inhaled deeply. Twice.

Lydia sniffed the air too. A sour smell. It took a moment before she recognized it. Ammonia.

"Shit," he whispered, eyes wide with horror. "How'd they get here this fast?"

"What?" she asked.

He leapt up. "The trap! They've tripped it! They'll be here in ten minutes! How the fuck d'they get here so fast?" He leaned into her face and she'd never seen so much anger and hatred in anyone's eyes. "You leave anything on the trail? Send 'em a message?"

She cringed, sure he was about to kill her. He seemed completely out of control. "No! I swear! I promise."

Garrett started toward her. Lydia shrank back but he walked past her quickly. He was frantic, ripping the material as he pulled his shirt and slacks off, his underwear, socks. She stared at his lean body, the substantial erection only slightly diminished. Naked, he ran to the corner of the room. There were some other clothes, folded, resting on the floor. He put these on. Shoes too.

Lydia lifted her head and looked out the window, through which the smell of the chemical was strong. So his trap hadn't been a bomb – he'd used the ammonia as a weapon itself; it had rained down on the search party, burning and blinding them.

Garrett continued, speaking almost in a whisper, "I have to get to Mary Beth."

"I can't walk," Lydia said, sobbing. "What are you going to do with me?"

He pulled the folding knife from the pocket of his pants. Opened it up with a loud click. Turned toward her.

"No, no, please…"

"You're hurt. Like, there's no way you can keep up with me."

Lydia stared at the blade. It was stained and nicked. Her breath came in short gasps.

Garrett walked closer. Lydia started to cry.

• • •

How had they gotten here so fast? Garrett Hanlon wondered again, jogging from the front door of the mill to the stream, the panic he felt so often prickling his heart the way the poison oak hurt his skin.

His enemies had covered the ground from Blackwater Landing to the mill in just a few hours. He was astonished; he'd thought it would take them at least a day, probably two, to find his trail. The boy looked toward the path leading from the quarry. No sign of them. He turned in the opposite direction and started slowly down another trail – this one led away from the quarry, downstream from the mill.

Clicking his nails, asking himself: How, how, how?

Relax , he told himself. There was plenty of time. After the ammonia bottle crashed down on the rocks the police would be moving slow as dung beetles on balls of shit, worried about other traps. In a few minutes he'd be in the bogs and they'd never be able to follow him. Even with dogs. He'd be with Mary Beth in eight hours. He -

Then Garrett stopped.

On the side of the path was a plastic water bottle, empty. It looked as if somebody had just dropped it. He sniffed the air, picked up the bottle, smelled the inside. Ammonia!

An image snapped into his mind: a fly stuck in a spider's web. He thought: Shit! They tricked me!

A woman's voice barked, "Hold it right there, Garrett." A pretty redheaded woman in jeans and a black T-shirt stepped out of the bushes. She was holding a pistol and pointing it directly at his chest. Her eyes went to the knife in his hand then back to his face.

"He's over here," the woman shouted. "I've got him."

Then her voice dropped and she looked into Garrett's eyes. "Do what I say and you won't get hurt. I want you to toss the knife away and lie down on the ground, face-first."

But the boy didn't lie down.

He merely stood still, slouching awkwardly, fingernail and thumbnail of his left hand clicking compulsively. He looked utterly scared and desperate.

Amelia Sachs glanced again at the stained knife, held firmly in his hand. She kept the sight of the Smith & Wesson on Garrett's chest.

Her eyes stung from the ammonia and the sweat. She wiped her face with her sleeve. "Garrett…" Speaking calmly. "Lie down. Nobody's going to hurt you if you do what we say."

She heard distant shouting. "I got Lydia," Ned Spoto called. "She's okay. Mary Beth's not here."

Lucy's voice was calling, "Where, Amelia?"

"On the path to the stream," Sachs shouted. "Throw the knife over there, Garrett. On the ground. Then lie down."

He stared at her cautiously. Red blotches on his skin, eyes wet.

"Come on, Garrett. There're four of us here. There's no way out."

"How?" he asked. "How'd you find me?" His voice was childlike, younger than most sixteen-year-olds'.

She didn't share with him that how they'd found the ammonia trap and the mill had been Lincoln Rhyme, of course. Just as they'd started down the center path at the crossroads in the woods the criminalist had called her. He'd said, "One of the feed-and-grain clerks Jim Bell talked to said that you don't see corn used as feed around here. He said it probably came from a gristmill and Jim knew about an abandoned one that'd burned last year. That'd explain the scorch marks."

Bell got on the phone and told the search party how to get to the mill. Then Rhyme had come back on and added, "I've got a thought about the ammonia too."

Rhyme had been reading Garrett's books and found an underlined passage about insects' using smells to communicate warnings. He'd decided that since the ammonia wasn't found in commercial explosives, like the kind used at the quarry, Garrett had possibly rigged some ammonia on a fishing-line tripwire. This was so that when the pursuers spilled it the boy could smell that they were close and could escape.

After they found the trap it'd been Sachs' idea to fill one of Ned's water bottles with ammonia, quietly surround the mill and pour the chemical on the ground outside the mill – to flush the boy.

And flush him it had.

But he still wasn't listening to her instructions. Garrett looked around and then studied her face, as if trying to decide if she really would shoot him.

He scratched at a rash on his face and wiped sweat, then adjusted his grip on the knife, looking right and left, eyes filling with despair and panic.

Afraid to startle him into running – or attacking her – Sachs tried to sound like a mother coercing her child to sleep. "Garrett, do what I'm asking. Everything'll be fine. Just do what I'm asking. Please."

• • •

"You got a shot? Take it," Mason Germain was whispering.

A hundred yards away from where that bitchy redhead from New York was confronting the killer, Mason and Nathan Groomer were on the crest of a bald hill.

Mason was standing. Nathan was prone on the hot ground. He'd sandbagged the Ruger on a low rise of helpful rocks and was concentrating on controlling his breathing, the way hunters of elks and geese and human beings are supposed to do before they shoot.

"Go on," Mason urged. "There's no wind. You got a clear view. Take the shot!"