Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

"What'm I supposed to say to Bonner?"

Potter made an angry fist.

"I don't much care what you say to him," Budd said gruffly. "He's not included in -"

"Why not?"

Hesitate , Potter wrote.

Handy broke the interminable silence. "What aren't you fucking telling me?"

"Do you want a deal or not? You and Wilcox. It'll save you from lethal injection."

"I want a fucking helicopter and that's what I'm going to get. Tell Art that. Fuck you all."

"No, wait -"

Click.

Budd closed his eyes and rested the phone on the table. His hands shook fiercely.

"Excellent, Charlie." Potter clapped him on the back.

"Good job," Angie said, winking at him.

Budd looked up, perplexed. "Excellent? He's all pissed off. He hung up on me."

"No, he's just where we want him." LeBow typed up the incident in the log and noted the time. On the "Deceptions" side of the board he wrote, Federal plea bargain by "U.S. Attorney Budd" – Handy and Wilcox. Life sentences in lieu of death .

Budd stood up. "You think?"

"You planted the seeds. We'll have to see if they take." Potter caught Angie's eye and they exchanged a solemn glance. The negotiator made a point of looking away before Budd noticed.

"Five minutes and counting."

Dan Tremain had called the governor and together they had decided that the HRU rescue would go ahead as planned. Over the scrambled frequency he radioed this to his men.

Outrider One, Chuck Pfenninger, was in position near the command van, and Outrider Two, Joey Wilson, hidden behind the school bus, was prepared to lob the stun grenades through the front window. Alpha and Bravo teams were ready to make the dynamic entry through the northwest and southeast doors as planned.

Tremain was very confident. Although the HTs might be anticipating an attack through the one well-marked fire exit, they'd never expect the assault through the hidden southeast door.

In five minutes it would all be over.

Lou Handy stared down at the phone and felt it for the first time that day: doubt.

Son of a bitch.

"Where is he?" he snarled, looking through the slaughterhouse.

"Bonner? In with the girls," Wilcox answered. "Or eating. I don't know. What's up?"

"Something's funny going on." Handy paced back and forth. "I think maybe he cut a deal." He told Wilcox what the U.S. attorney had said.

"They're offering us a deal?"

"Some deal. Life in Leavenworth."

"Beats that little needle. The worst part is you piss. You know that? There's nothing you can do to stop it. I tell you, I'm going out, I don't want to piss my pants in front of everybody."

"Hey, homes." Handy dropped his head, gazed coolly at his partner. "We're getting out. Don't you forget it."

"Right, sure."

"I think that prick's been with 'em all along."

"Why?" Wilcox asked.

"Why the fuck you think? Money. Cut down his hard time."

Wilcox cast his eyes into the dim back of the slaughterhouse. "Sonny's an asshole but he wouldn't do that."

"He did a while back."

"What?"

"Give up somebody. A guy he did a job with."

"You knew that?" Wilcox asked, surprised.

"Sure, I knew that," Handy said angrily. "We needed him."

But how had Bonner gotten to the feds? Almost every minute of the big man's time was accounted for from the moment of the breakout.

Though not all of it, Handy now recalled. Bonner was the one who'd gone to pick up the car. After they'd gotten out of the prison Bonner had been gone for a half-hour while he picked up the wheels. Handy remembered thinking that it was taking him a long time and thinking, If he skips on us he's going to die real fucking slow.

Gone a half-hour to get a car eight blocks away. Plenty of time to call the feds.

"But he's a short-timer," Wilcox pointed out. Bonner's interstate transport sentence was four years.

"The kind," Handy countered, "they'd be most likely to cut a deal with. Feds never chop off sentences more'n a couple years.

Besides, Bonner had an incentive: sex offenders were the prisoners who most often woke up with glass shards shoved down their throat, or a tin-can-lid knife in their gut – or who didn't wake up at all.

Uncertainly Wilcox looked into the dim slaughterhouse. "Whatta you think?"

"I think we oughta talk to him."

They walked through the main room, over the rotting ramps the livestock had once ambled along, past the long tables where the animals had been cut apart, the rusting guillotines. The two men stood in the doorway of the killing room. Bonner wasn't there. They heard him standing not far away, pissing a solid stream into a well or sump pump.

Handy stared at the room – the older woman, lying curled into a ball. The gasping girl and the pretty girl. And then there was Melanie, who stared back with eyes that tried to be defiant but were just plain scared. Then he realized something.

"Where," Handy said softly, "are the little ones?"

He gazed at two empty pairs of black patent-leather shoes.

Wilcox spat out, "Son of a bitch." He ran into the hallway, following the tiny footprints in the dust.

Melanie put her arms around the girl with the asthma and cowered against the wall. Just then Bonner came around the corner and stopped. "Hey, buddy." He blinked uneasily, looking at Handy's face.

"Where are they, you fuck?"

"Who?"

"The little girls. The twins?"

"I -" Bonner recoiled. "I was watching 'em. All this time. I swear."

"All this time?"

"I took a piss is all. Look, Lou. They gotta be here someplace. We'll find 'em." The big man swallowed uneasily.

Handy glared at Bonner, who started toward Melanie, shouting, "Where the fuck are they?" He pulled his pistol from his pocket and walked up to her.

"Lou!" Wilcox was calling from the main room. "Jesus Christ."

"What?" Handy screamed, spinning around. "What the fuck is it?"

"We got a worse problem than that. Look here."

Handy hurried back to Wilcox, who was pointing at the TV.

"Holy Christ. Potter, that lying son of a bitch!"

On the screen: A newscast, showing the perfect telephoto image of the front and side of the slaughterhouse. The reporters had snuck through the police line and had set up the camera on something close and tall – maybe that old windmill just to the north. The camera was a little shaky but there was no doubt that they were looking at a fucking SWAT trooper at a front window – only twenty feet away from where Handy and Wilcox now stood.

"Is that more there?" Wilcox cried. He pointed to some bumps in a gully to the north of the slaughterhouse.

"Could be. Shit yes. Must be a dozen of them."

The newscaster said, "It looks like an assault could be imminent…"

Handy looked up at the fire door on the north side of the factory. They'd wedged it shut but he knew that explosive charges could take it down in seconds. He shouted to Bonner, "Get that scatter gun, we got a firefight."

"Shit." Bonner pulled the slide back on the Mossberg, let it snap back.

"The roof?" Wilcox asked.

Those were the only two ways a hostage rescue team could get in quickly – the side door and the roof. The loading dock was too far back. But as he stared at the ceiling he saw a thick network of ducts and vents and conveyors. Even if they blew through the roof itself they'd have to cut through those utility systems.

Handy glanced out over the field in front of the slaughterhouse. Aside from the trooper by the window – hidden from the police lines by the school bus – no other cops seemed to be approaching from that direction.

"They're coming through that side door there."

Handy moved slowly toward the window where the trooper was hiding. He gestured to Wilcox's gun. The lean man grinned and pulled his pistol from his belt, pulled the slide, chambering a round.