He put a hand on my shoulder, leaving a sweat stain. 'You'll need us to mediate this situation with your wife. We're the only ones who have an angle in to Ridgeline. We can hurt them.'
'You already told me. You don't know how to contact them.'
'But when they emerge.' His words were adamant, compacted into hard little syllables. 'You need us in the mix. We can undo all this. You need me. Even if you could convince the cops to jump off your trail and onto theirs, you don't want law enforcement crashing into a hostage house. Not with operators of this caliber dug in. There'll be nothing left of your wife but a bloodstain.'
Through the clear walls, I could see the clock in the neighboring office--8:44 A.M.
Three hours and sixteen minutes until--
'No cops,' I said. 'No force.'
A puff of disbelief parted his lips. 'Then how?'
'I'll worry about that. You'd better worry about what to tell your higher-ups in Alexandria. And you'd better pick your words carefully--I've found Festman Gruber's corporate culture to be a bit unforgiving.'
I left him standing on the rug, a droop in that square posture. When I reached the door, his voice came over my shoulder. It sounded less vengeful than weary, resigned to the carnage to come. 'You are way out of your depth,' he said. 'You can't begin to imagine what kind of men these are. If you take them on alone, you might as well put the bullet in your wife's head yourself.'
My hand resting on the door lever, I closed my eyes, reliving that grainy feed that Ridgeline had sent to my cell phone at midnight. Ariana roughed up, screaming my name soundlessly. The thin line of blood at the edge of her mouth. What else had they done to her? What else were they doing to her right now? He was right, at least in part: I was way out of my depth. Was he also right about where this would all end?
I pushed out into the hall. The North Vector operators stood waiting. As we threaded through the glass labyrinth, workers rose from various workstations and watched us leave. At the elevators I looked back, but Reimer had turned the glass walls of his office opaque, a dark knot at the core, a symbol of my own quickening dread.
Chapter 57
I parked Don's Range Rover in a driveway at the end of a perfectly normal residential street in North Hollywood. I called 911 from my cell, told Dispatch I was ready to give myself up and seek their help for Ariana's recovery. I couldn't see any other choice, I said. Not with my wife held captive, due to be executed in fifty-three minutes.
Sitting, sweating, I watched the SWAT van roll up, then the black-and-whites, then Gable's sedan.
Leading with their submachine guns, the SWAT officers came fast and hard, closing on those tinted windows from all sides. A gloved hand yanked open the driver's door, and then MP5 barrels crammed the interior. But I wasn't there.
I was a mile and a half away, parked on a dirt overlook, watching through a military scope that seemed like something out of science fiction, with magnification suited to a NASA telescope. Can see the whites of birds' eyes, Kazakov had bragged.
I could even make out the address on the Post-it I'd adhered to the steering wheel. The address of the single-story clapboard two blocks up the slope from me.
I hustled back toward the boosted Dodge Neon that an anonymous friend of North Vector had helped arrange for me--Kazakov's final favor. North Vector wouldn't accompany me from here on out. Providing tech support to help take down a rival company was one thing. Saving my wife was another. Bullets, exposure, and liability--the risk of coming out on the wrong side of this one was too high.
But I had no choice.
I dialed my cell phone again, and my favorite paparazzo, fresh out of hiding, picked up.
'You in position?' I asked.
'Yup.' Joe Vente was wired, smacking his gum.
I'd called him last night, and in return for an after-the-fact exclusive if I lived to give it, he'd agreed to put out the word to his grapevine of colleagues. They'd get to the block just before I did and remain hidden until I arrived. I'd made clear to Joe: The timing had to be just right. I'd go to the house first, before the photographers made themselves known and before the cops arrived. I'd lay out the situation to DeWitt and Verrone, mention that the house was surrounded with recording equipment of every type and law enforcement of every stripe, then pray that would be enough of a deterrent to negotiate Ariana's and my way out of there.
'But,' Joe added, 'we've got a problem.'
The words knocked the breath out of me. Everything had to go like clockwork. If the Ridgeline crew caught wind of anything before I knocked on that door, they'd likely kill Ari and bolt.
Reimer's words floated back to me: If you take them on alone, you might as well put the bullet in your wife's head yourself.
If they hadn't put it there already.
'Problem?' Fear thinned my voice. 'What problem?'
'Big News caught the story. I don't know how they got onto it, but they're sending crews. And once crews show up, my ilk ain't gonna hold back. You know how we are.'
I was running toward the car. 'How the hell did that happen, Joe?'
'How's it always happen? Someone paid someone for a tip, probably. You're a cop killer, too, now, so this thing's bigger than the white Bronco. Patrick Davis and the Big Showdown.'
I jumped into the car, turned over the engine, and peeled out. On the passenger seat was the fat laptop of Jerry's signal analyzer, the pulse from Ariana's raincoat represented in oddly pretty amplitude waves. A handheld GPS unit was plugged in to the side, the blinking dot laid down on the street beyond the turn I could see just ahead through the dusty windshield.
'Hold everyone back,' I said. 'You told them it's dangerous? A hostage situation?'
'Of course, but look, the block is crawling. The natives are getting restless, inching in for a peek. It's only a matter of time before someone's spotted.'
I floored it, fishtailing on gravel. 'Any sign that you've been seen?'
'No, man. All the curtains are drawn. Silence.' A beat. 'Shit. Here we go. This thing just went live.'
'What hap--'
I screeched around the corner in time to see a news helicopter roar up over the ridge, blowing specks of dirt across my hood. Channel 2 News. Up ahead, paparazzi had gone on the move, shuffling from front yard to front yard, high-stepping hedges, and clutching cameras. A few news vans came gunning toward the house from the opposite direction. A second chopper joined the fray above the house. Way below I could hear the faint wail of sirens, the cavalry en route.
It was all going down too fast.
I could barely hear Joe above the commotion: '--movement at the windows. You'd better get here.'
'Do you see Ariana?'
'No . . . nothing. . . .'
Guys were running beside my car, snapping pictures of me. TV cameras up ahead, well back from the curb. Joe coming in and out in my ear. '. . . directional mike . . . hear them inside . . . freaking out . . .'
Confused reporters blended with the freelancers, swarming the car. A few houses away, I threw open the car door and shoved out, yelling, 'Stay away from the house! There are armed men inside.'
A ripple of panic. Shouting. Questions.
Their fear only compounded mine. What if they saw the cameras, killed Ariana, and shot their way out?
I sprinted forward, breaking from the throng, the numbers dwindling as I neared the house. Even paparazzi weren't eager to get in the line of fire. But a few had pushed out into the danger zone. A scrappy woman with hippie hair aimed a camera from behind a telephone pole. A guy in fingerless gloves crouched by the mailbox. His lens had rolled out into the driveway, but he looked too scared to go for it.
I confronted the house. Peeling cornflower blue paint, a broad porch, the rental sign still hammered into the front lawn. It seemed a fiction that the clapboard walls contained such menace inside. Then again, what did I expect? A dungeon with dripping pipes? This is where quiet horrors happened--every day in perfectly nice neighborhoods like this one, behind closed doors and cheery suburban facades.
To my right, Joe was bellied down in a stand of lavender, sneezing and pointing a directional mike, earpiece in, to pull sound vibrations off the front windows. I'd barely noticed him in my dash to the walk.
