Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

The decreasing pressure in Powell's chest reversed itself. So instead of a murder, they now had a kidnapping. "Get your guy to the station," he ordered. "And get Carstairs and his sketch pad down there."

"Carstairs won't be happy about being pulled in on a Sunday," Smith warned. "Especially not after coming in on Saturday, too."

"Tell him I'll buy him dinner," Powell growled. "Then put out an APB on Fierenzo's car and get a canvass going to see if you can find someone in the neighborhood who can fill in more of the picture. And don't let your witness walk until I get there."

"I won't," Smith promised. "See you."

Powell hung up the handset, and for a couple of seconds he glared blackly down at it. What the hell was happening out there, anyway?

"Jon?"

Powell looked up to see his wife Sandy standing in the doorway. "Sorry, honey, but I've got to go back in," he said with a sigh, reaching down and retrieving his shoes.

"Tommy?"

He nodded. "At least now it sounds like he's alive. Kidnapped, but alive."

"Be careful," Sandy said quietly. "If someone doesn't want him walking around, they might not want his partner doing it, either."

"Hey, don't worry," he assured her, pulling on his coat and turning to give her a quick but serious hug. "We're not on any cases right now that anybody would kill for."

"Sure," she said, clinging to the hug a bit longer than usual. "Just be careful."

"I will," he promised, kissing her. "I'll call if I'm going to be later than midnight."

His last image as he left the apartment was of her standing in the middle of the room watching him go. A cop's wife, with all the pain and hope and determination that came with that job.

The blood of thousands of New Yorkers, the mysterious Cyril had said. Could Fierenzo have been marked to be the first of those thousands?

Was Powell himself marked to be the second?

The floorboards were even softer than Caroline had hoped, and it took less than fifteen minutes for them to tear the first one away from the joists beneath it. After that, with the advantage of leverage, the job went quickly. Ten more minutes, and they had a hole big enough to fit through.

"I wish I had a flashlight," Roger said, peering down into the dankness. "On second thought, maybe I'm glad I can't see what's down there. All sorts of creepy crawlies, probably. Any idea how tough the skirting boards will be?"

"It shouldn't be bad," Caroline told him. "They're completely exposed to the weather, and this place obviously hasn't been maintained for decades. I'm guessing a good strong push will knock them right off their nails. Especially the ones by this corner—we know this part of the roof leaks."

"Good enough," Roger said, looking around. "Anything in here we want to take with us?"

This was it. Bracing herself, Caroline took the plunge. "Take anything you think you could use," she said. "You're going alone."

He jerked as if he'd been poked with a live wire. "What? Caroline—"

"Roger, it's the only way," she cut him off quickly, trying to keep her voice from shaking. If she let him argue, she might weaken and give in, and then they'd both be doomed. "No matter how loose the skirting boards are, you're not going to push them off without making at least a little noise. Besides, there are those Warriors on guard. Someone has to create a diversion to get them away from the car."

"So we make a diversion and jump them and just go out the door," he countered stubbornly.

"How?" she asked. "What kind of diversion?"

"I don't know," he snapped. "Maybe—well, maybe we start the rest of the kindling burning in the middle of the room and yell fire."

She shook her head. "It won't work. Even I would know better than to fall for that. They're not going to just charge in blindly and let us jump them."

"Then we yell fire, and when they open the door we charge them," Roger offered. "We leave together, or we don't leave at all."

"Then you condemn the Grays to death," she said. "If Nikolos has Melantha and can make her use her Gift, they won't have a chance."

"Maybe I don't care about the Grays," Roger snarled. "Maybe they deserve whatever they get."

"And the city?"

The muscles in his jaw tightened. "Fine," he growled. "But you go. I'll stay here and make the diversion."

"It won't work," she told him gently. "If they hear me shouting fire and see me jumping around in a panic, they'll assume you're somewhere waiting to jump them. All their attention will be inward, toward the inside of the cabin and the trap they're expecting you to spring. That should give you the chance to get behind them to the car. It won't play with you doing the jumping around and me supposedly in hiding."

"I can't just leave you here, Caroline," he said pleadingly, his voice shaking the way she was trying so hard to keep hers from doing.

"And besides," she went on, "before you get to the road, you'll have to drive through anyone who gets in your way. I'm not sure I could do that."

"You think I can?"

"If you don't, it'll all be a waste of effort." She looked at her watch. "And if we don't hurry, it'll be a waste anyway. Nikolos said they'd be bringing us up to the main house in an hour, and half that time is already gone."

"Maybe it'll be easier to escape from up there."

"No," Caroline said flatly. "If there's anyplace on this property they'll have kept maintained for appearances' sake, it'll be the main house. No flimsiness, no rot, and Greens all around. If you don't escape now, from this cabin, you're not going to escape at all."

Roger closed his eyes. "Caroline..."

"Please," she said. "For me?"

"But what if they—?"

"They won't," Caroline told him quickly, trying to chase the same terrifying thought away from her own mind. "If you get away, they won't dare hurt me. You'll know I'm here, and they'll know you know it."

He exhaled loudly, a sigh of defeat. "How will I know when to move?"

"You'll know," she assured him, feeling limp with relief. The last thing she wanted was to have Nikolos burst in on them while they were still standing here arguing. For once, Roger's tendency to back away from confrontations was proving useful. "Actually, that fire idea of yours sounds like the best way to go. I'll try to scream loudly enough to cover the sound of you breaking the skirting boards."

"But not loud enough to bring every Green within half a mile running to see what's wrong," he warned. Reaching over, he took her in his arms and gave her a lingering hug and kiss. "I love you, Caroline."

"I love you, too, Roger," she said, a lump forming in her throat. It had been a long time since he'd said that in a way that made her feel like he really meant it. "Be careful."

"You too." Taking another deep breath, he lowered himself into the crawl space.

Caroline crossed to the fireplace, her momentary relief that the argument was over replaced by fresh tension as she focused on the task at hand. Now she was actually going to have to go through with it.

She could only hope that she was right about them not killing her afterward.

The Warrior hadn't brought much kindling with the firewood, just a double handful of flat sticks and a half-inch stack of newspaper. But she'd used less than half of it making their original fire, and there should be enough left for what she had in mind. Separating the newspaper into individual sheets, she crumpled each one and made a loose pile of them near the fireplace. She'd heard once that perfume would burn, so she retrieved her purse and dumped the contents of her spray bottle onto one corner of the pile. Then she went to the wicker cabriolet chair Nikolos had been sitting in earlier and lugged it over to the fireplace, positioning it just over one edge of the newspaper.