life.
The man with my life in his hands backs them all the way to the ground floor, to the rear fire exit. He swings me around like a rag doll and puts his back to the door.
Jack and Naomi are only a few yards away, still armed. Jack is still trying to find a shot that won’t risk killing me, too, but he looks discouraged.
“You’re good folks, I can tell that,” says the man who has the gun to my head, sounding oddly jovial. “You know why? Because you chose life.”
“What do you want?” Naomi says. “Why go to all the trouble of breaking into the residence?”
I can feel him laughing inside, which is nearly as terrifying as the gun under by chin. “It wasn’t any trouble,” he says. “I thought New Mommy might be visiting and I wanted to give her my regards.”
“New Mommy?” Naomi asks, puzzled.
“The skinny bitch with the two-by-four. She’s not here, obviously, but I’ll find her. Bet on it.”
He pushes backward through the door, carrying me out into the night.
It’s not like I think about death a lot. Not my own death. That stays buried away in the back of my mind, a dark little shape to be taken out and examined as rarely as possible. We’re all short-timers with specific but unknown-to-us expiration dates, we know that even as children, so what’s the point of dwelling on the fact of our own mortality? Bummer, man. But when I do have occasion to contemplate the end of me, I figure I won’t go easy. Not the type. I’ll be one of those who rage against the oncoming light, fighting to stay behind.
Or so I thought. As it turned out in this particular circumstance, in the arms of death himself, I was strangely docile. A voice inside was saying, this is it, you’ve come to the last moment of your life, try to be calm because the last thing you want-your very last desire-is to leave without your dignity intact. Don’t let fear turn you into something less than you are. Don’t let your last moment be one of terror.
So when the steel god of death tosses me aside and slips away, into the shadows, I remain where discarded, as numb as if I’d been wrapped in cotton batting.
Jack finds me a block from the residence. I’m sitting on the curb hugging my knees to my chin without a thought in my head. Just being.
“Alice, I’m so sorry.”
A moment passes before I can speak. Several moments. “You did the right thing,” I finally manage to say. “I’m alive.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Daybreak finds Gatling in his home office in New Castle, setting up the operation at a discreet remove. Using third and fourth parties, none of whom have known connections to GSG, or to him personally. The operation is fraught with risk-they always are-but he finds himself responding to the challenge. In days of old a good cavalry officer rode to the sound of gunfire. Something of that remains, although in his particular case, given all of his powers and connections, the gunfire is likely to be in the form of a subpoena, rather than a hail of lead. As to the real thing, he’s been there, thank you very much. He knows what it is to melt himself into a mountainside as enemy snipers rain fire, bullets fragmenting inches from his head, and, all things considered, he prefers the current situation.
Having determined that a charter jet will be touching down within the hour, and that a fuel truck will be standing by at precisely the right moment, Taylor Gatling, Jr., grants himself a five-minute juice break. The hand- squeezed OJ is chilled to his preferred temperature, waiting on the shelf in the fridge under the office bar. He’s bending over to fetch it when the door opens. A door he distinctly recalls locking. He freezes in position, the most vulnerable parts of his body crouching behind the thickness of the bar, and then relaxes and stands up when he sees who it is.
“You’re kind of cute when you’re bending over,” Kidder says.
“Don’t you ever knock?”
Kidder holds up an electric lock-pick gun and pulls the trigger, making it spin. “Amazing little gizmos,” he says. “Only thing that stops ’em is a keyless dead bolt. The only thing more effective is a fifty-caliber bullet.”
“You’re late,” Gatling says.
Kidder shrugs, and Gatling notes that he seems not the least concerned with any timetable. Idiot. He’s still wearing the wool cap, which Gatling suspects has scabbed to the back of his head. His eyes, always weirdly blank somehow, have gone seriously strange. Sign of a concussed skull, perhaps. Not a concern, long term, because, frankly, the man’s time is just about up. Gatling hasn’t arrived at the precise scenario, there are a couple of interesting options, but this particular threat is getting his ticket punched in the next forty-eight hours. After an enhanced interrogation has revealed whatever pathetic backup plans the nutball’s put in place. In the interest of containment, Gatling will have to take charge of the interrogation himself, but that’s not a problem, he has the skill set. Been there, done that.
“You’re sweating and you stink,” Gatling says.
“I love you, too.”
“Not that you appear to care, but your mess has been cleaned up. Even if the woman goes to the authorities with some wild tale there will be no proof, no evidence. Her mental history will make any investigation unlikely.”
“What are you saying?” Kidder says with a sly grin. “You finally offed the little brat?”
Gatling looks repulsed by the suggestion. “Of course not. We’re not baby-killers. Not on purpose, anyhow. No, no, the flight has been arranged. He’s going back to China, where he will be hidden in plain sight. There are thousands of families eager to adopt. He’ll be given to some nice, hardworking peasant family in a remote province on the mainland.”
“Oh yeah? I heard half-breeds end up in state orphanages. Nobody wants ’em.”
Gatling shrugs, “Whatever happens, it will no longer be our responsibility.”
“Out of sight, out of mind, eh? I like the way your brain works, Cap. Always have. But you’re dreaming if you think New Mommy is going away.”
“Who?”
“That chick you hired to nurse the brat.”
“I told you, with her mental history no one will believe her.”
“So that’s why you picked her? On account of her medical record?”
“You know I did.” Gatling doesn’t like where this is going. He shouldn’t have to discuss tactics with a grunt.
“Just so you know-I wouldn’t want to keep you out of the loop, Cap, no sir, that’s not my style-I dropped by the Nantz house to check on New Mommy. Figured she might go there.”
For a long, stunning moment Gatling is at a loss for words. “You
“Aside from anything else, the bitch knows what I look like. I can’t have positive IDs walking around in the world.”
That’s not entirely true, nor his reason for invading the Back Bay residence. It’s more that he can’t let a woman get the better of him; the thought is insufferable, and makes the wounded back of his skull pulse with anger. As a matter of fact, not to be shared with his boss, he didn’t enter the Nantz residence in disguise and there are now at least three more people who have a pretty good idea what he looks like. He’s thinking, once he extracts sufficient funds from Gatling, that a little face surgery may be in order. He’s always wanted to look like George Clooney-why not?
“I don’t know what to say,” Gatling says carefully, hiding his own spike of anger.
“Done and dusted, nobody home.”
“So they don’t know you gained access?”
