Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

Vince came out of the room, looked over at the table supporting the computers and tax files. A landline phone was sitting on it. Vince walked over, picked up the handset, put it to his ear, then hung it back up.

“Dial tone,” he said.

“So?” Reggie said.

I knew what he was getting at. “Jane would have called,” I said.

Vince glanced my way. “Yeah. If she’d got loose, she’d have called my cell, let me know.”

“Maybe not,” Reggie argued. “More likely, she was scared, wanted to get out of here as fast as she could. She didn’t want to take the time to do it.”

Vince raised his arm, aimed the gun at Reggie’s head. “Bullshit. You’ve got five seconds to find out where she’s gone.”

She didn’t blink. “How the fuck am I supposed to know? When I left, she was here.”

“Four seconds.”

“You remind me of my father,” she said coldly. “May he continue to burn in hell.”

“Three seconds.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Wyatt shouted. “It has to be Logan and Joseph.”

Reggie looked at him. “They went to the hospital.”

Wyatt looked at Vince. “I’ll call him. I’ll find out. Just put the fucking gun down.”

“Before you call,” Vince said, “here’s what you’re going to say.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“Say there’s been a hitch. Tell them I’m ready to hand over the money, but not until I see Jane. Not talk to her on the phone. See her.”

“I don’t even — I don’t even know for sure they’ve got her,” he protested.

“I’m going to shoot your wife in the head,” Vince said.

I had no doubt. He’d been hanging on by his fingernails for too long. Part of me wondered whether Vince just wanted to kill somebody. Didn’t matter who.

“Wait wait wait,” Wyatt said. He reached for the landline phone, entered a number.

“It’s ringing,” he said. “It’s still ringing. Just stop pointing that gun at my — Logan! Logan, is that you? Where—? No, I don’t have the money yet but we almost — Just shut up for a second! Where are you? We just got back to the house and the girl’s gone... Why did you do that...? He didn’t go to the hospital? Is he a total idiot? Yeah, okay, we agree, he is... You have to bring her back... He can’t do that! Are you hearing me? I know he’s pissed, but you can’t let him do that. We don’t get the money until he sees the girl... Yeah, okay, we’ll talk about that after.”

Vince whispered to Reggie, “Get on the phone and tell them to get back. I get the feeling you’re the one everyone takes orders from.”

She glared at him, then took the receiver from her husband and said sharply, “Logan! You and your brother better be back here in five minutes with that girl or your share is fuck all! You got that? Nothing! You get nothing. Not fifty percent, not twenty-five, not ten. Nothing.” She waited while this sunk in with Logan. Reggie put her other hand over the phone and said to Vince, “He’s talking to his brother. He just has to — Yeah, I’m here.”

Back on with Logan. “The plan? Get your ass back here with her. By then we’ll have worked out how we’re going to show her off. Maybe a video thing with my phone. Don’t you worry about that.” She listened for another second, then lowered her arm. The call was over.

“He’ll do it,” she said to the rest of us.

Vince asked, “Where are they now?”

“About ten miles north. They were heading up toward Naugatuck, the state forest.”

“They were going to execute her in the woods,” Vince said.

Reggie’s eyes had gone dead. “Yeah.” She swallowed. “But we stopped that. They did that without my say-so. That was not supposed to happen.”

“Not this soon, you mean.”

She had no comment. Maybe she knew lying was pointless now.

I’d been feeling uneasy since Grace’s call to me the night before, and could barely get my head around all the things that had happened since. But right now, at this moment, even though Vince and I had the upper hand, I felt myself in a darker place than any I’d been in up to now.

I needed to know how this was going to end. Vince was a man with little left to lose. I was on board with getting Jane back here, but then what? Assuming Vince got her safely released, what was the next step? What was he going to do with Wyatt and Reggie? With this Logan and his brother, Joseph, who I’d yet to set eyes on?

The clock was ticking toward a bloodbath.

“Vince,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

My eyes went to the other two, then back to him. He got the message. He said to Reggie and Wyatt, “Lie down.”

“What?”

“Both of you. Get down on the floor, facedown — not too close to each other — and spread your arms and legs out, like you’re starfish.”

After our two hostages did as they were told, he said to me, “What?”

I drew him back toward the door of the bedroom where Jane had been held, far enough away that if I whispered, they wouldn’t hear me.

“How does this end?” I asked.

“We get Jane back.”

“Yeah, of course. But after that. What happens then?”

His eyes bored into mine. “I guess we’ll see.”

“I can’t be part of that,” I said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. It won’t be enough to get Jane back. You’re going to want revenge.”

“Justice,” he corrected me.

“You can’t kill four people.”

“They were planning to kill me and Jane. And rip me off for everything I had. You think I should just send them to bed without a story?”

I gave my head a short, adamant shake. Even considering this pair had murdered the teachers, I wasn’t about to take on the job of being their judge, jury, and executioner. Maybe, once this was over, there’d be a way to point the cops in their direction. An anonymous call, something.

“I can’t be part of anything like that,” I said. “If you want to hunt these people down later and put bullets in their heads, that’s your business, but it’s not happening while I’m here.”

“I could just shoot you, too.”

Maybe I was naive. Maybe I was a total fool. But I didn’t believe he would do that to me.

“Right now, you need me. Unless you think you can handle these two, and the other two who are on their way, and can get out of here alive with Jane. But if you’re just going to lay waste to the lot of them, I’m out. I’m walking. And I wish you the best.”

He ground his teeth together. “I can’t predict how things will go down.”

“But you can tell me what your intentions are.”

He shot me a look. “You really do talk like a fucking English teacher.”

“I have to know, Vince.”

“Jesus, what the hell am I supposed to do? Let them walk? What kind of message does that send?”

“What have you got left? Your guys, they’re either dead or on the run. Your business is fucked. On top of that, you’re sick. I can see it. Any fool can see it. What’s the point in upping the body count at this point?”

I could tell from his expression he didn’t like being spoken to this way, but I wasn’t done. “What about Jane? You kill everyone involved in this, you’ll never see her again. You’ll get caught. Connecticut may not have the death penalty anymore, but you’ll die in jail. You’ll spend the rest of your life there.”

“Not all that much of it left.”

“Still, how’s that help Jane? And what’ll it do to her, to know she’s the reason you executed four people? How do you expect her to live with that? What if these assholes have got family, people loyal to them, and they go after Jane to settle the score when they can’t get to you in prison?”