A Welcome Grave

they want.”

“This is someone else’s life, Lincoln. This is Amy. You want responsibility for the way this works out? You want to go into this alone?”

I could feel the Glock against my back, a hard lump in its holster. The press of it teased and tormented me. I wanted to feel the weight of the gun in my hand, pull the trigger, and watch bullets explode out of the barrel and bury themselves in . . . who?

“It wasn’t Doran,” I said.

“On the phone?”

“Yeah. It was his partner, but not Doran.”

“We don’t even know who he is,” Joe said. “We don’t know who he is or where he is, and we don’t have the time to look. We can get the FBI hostage people involved, have them ready when Karen’s contacted, try to negotiate.”

“Cops screw this up, and Amy . . .” I didn’t say and Amy dies. I wasn’t ready to put it that coldly and bluntly, not about her. It was that cold, though. That cold and that real.

“We screw this up, and it works out different?”

“I need to talk to Karen,” I said. “That’s where we start. They’re going to contact her, and she needs to know what’s changed before that happens. Needs to know that there’s another life at stake.”

“Will you ask her to pay?”

I didn’t answer.

“Lincoln?”

“I don’t know. It’s easier to get money back than a human life, and Karen will understand that.”

“They own you,” he said. “You understand that? They’ve spent days laying the framework to show you’re the one going after Karen, and now they’ve convinced you to actually do that. If you pressure her into paying, do you think that’ll be the end? That Amy walks out unharmed and you sit down and explain the thing to Targent and it’s all over? That won’t happen. They’ll have another play, one that finishes you off.”

“We need to give them the image that things are moving the way they want. That buys us time.”

“Time to do what? We don’t have the first idea how to find these guys.”

“I want to talk to her, Joe. They’re going to contact her, and when they do, she needs to understand the situation.”

“We go over there and find out they’ve got a cop watching her place, you’re done. They’ll arrest you for violating that protective order, and you’ll have to try to explain this from jail.”

“I’m going to try,” I said. “Now do you want to drive me, or should I find a car?”

Joe’s face was anguished. He wanted to go through the proper channels, wanted desperately to get the cops and the FBI involved, approach this the way he would tell anyone else to if it weren’t Amy, if it weren’t someone he knew and cared about deeply. Wanting that didn’t mean he could ignore my point, though. He knew the risks on both sides.

“I’ll take you over there, but you’ve got to promise me you aren’t ruling out help, not yet. This is a hostage situation, Lincoln. Okay? We’re not ready to deal with this, not alone. If you’re hoping Karen will pay and we’ll just play it straight up, that’s one thing. But if she won’t, I’m not going to go along with you. We’ll need help, need the best team the police can get out there.”

“Let’s make that decision after we talk to Karen.”

He didn’t like that, but he was kept from responding when my phone began to ring again. In the second before I got it out of my pocket I think we were both sure it would be Doran or his partner. This time the number wasn’t blocked, though.

“Targent,” I said.

“You could answer. Tell him what’s happening.”

“Not yet.”

“He might know something. Why call so early unless—”

“Not yet, Joe. I want to see Karen.”

The long driveway was a problem. We drove the street twice, down and back, and saw no sign of a surveillance team. The driveway was hidden, though, blocked by the trees. If a cop was in the house, we wouldn’t see his car until we were all the way up the drive.

“I don’t think they’d leave someone with her around the clock,” I said. “Twenty-four-hour protection isn’t something CPD does often, and now that she’s agreed to cut me off, they’ll have less reason to watch.”

“Hope you’re right.” He was approaching the driveway again, at slow speed.

“Make the turn,” I said.

He took the driveway, and we rounded the bend and passed through the trees, and the house came into view. No car, no evidence of police. They could have left one guy inside and driven away, but I trusted my instinct. Without a hostage involved—and nobody else knew there was one—Karen’s situation wouldn’t have been elevated to that sort of police coverage. Not yet.

Joe parked, and I got out of the car fast and went up the steps. The protective order was Targent’s idea, but that didn’t mean Karen wouldn’t take it seriously and call the police when she saw me. I was already knocking on the door when Joe got out of the car. The ornate windowpane beside the door gave a distorted view into the house, but through it I saw Karen approaching. She had the cordless phone in her hand.

“Shit,” I said softly, and then louder, “Karen, it’s Lincoln. You’ve got to talk to me for a few minutes.”

She stopped short a few feet from the door, but she didn’t lift the phone.

“No, Lincoln. You can’t be here. I’m supposed to call the police if I even hear from you. Please leave.”

“They’ve kidnapped another woman,” I said. “It’s bigger than either of us now, Karen. You’ve got to let us in and talk about this.”

While I watched, she took another step back from the door, deeper into the hallway.

“I can’t do that. You need to talk to the police, not me.”

“Karen!”

“Leave now, Lincoln. I’m calling.”

She lifted the phone and turned it so she could see the numbers to dial, and when she did I acted without pause for thought. I stepped back and lifted my foot and drove my heel into the center of the door with everything I had, splintered the wood in the frame and busted the spring lock but didn’t get past the dead bolt. She screamed when I did it, and then I kicked again, and this time the dead bolt failed, tore out of its hasp, and I was across the threshold and into the house as the alarm began to shriek and Karen turned to run.

I caught her at the end of the hallway, grabbed the phone and took it out of her hand, and wrapped one arm around her waist and held her against me so she couldn’t run. Joe stepped through the door then, and when I turned back and got a half-second glance at his face I felt like I was no longer myself. His expression was a mirror image of what he saw before him: I’d just kicked in a door to run down a woman who had a protective order against me, to stop her from calling the police. It was something he’d seen in nightmare situations of domestic violence, and now it was his partner.

“They kidnapped Amy Ambrose,” I said, holding Karen tight against me as she tried to twist her way free. She was facing me, and the suspicion in her face that I’d seen when we were with Targent had been vanquished, replaced by terror. She was petrified of me. The look hit me harder than any of her physical struggles, and I loosened my grip and she stepped free and ran into the living room. I watched her go, then looked back at Joe standing in front of the shattered door, and I wondered what had happened to my life.

“Turn that off,” I said. The alarm was still wailing, and soon it would summon police. Karen was standing in the middle of the living room, watching warily, waiting for me to move. “Turn it off and listen, Karen. Then call the police if you want to. But give me five minutes. The same people who killed your husband have an innocent woman now. You have to listen to me.”

“Please,” Joe said behind me, and her eyes went to him and found reassurance. She hesitated only a moment and then moved back down the hall—making a wide circle past me—and found the alarm box, punched buttons until it went quiet.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Karen, I’m sorry. But they’ve taken a woman who has nothing to do with this, taken her because she matters to me. This is how they intend to get their money.”