Freezing

attention.’

‘But . . . but you were a forensic scientist. You were supposed to be helping people, not victimizing them. Why, for God’s sake, did you kill that woman?’

He shook his head. ‘Still such an idealist, aren’t you, Jayne? Let me tell you the truth about these victims you put on such a high pedestal. The cases we got at the Bureau were all about stupidity. The vics were stupid to get themselves into a situation where they were killed and the killers were stupid enough to leave behind trace. After a few months of scraping dried shit out of people’s underwear after they’d voided their bowels, I knew the world was a better place without people like them but I had no intention of being caught getting rid of ’em.’

Jayne gazed up at him in wonder, forcing herself to skip over his obviously willful misunderstanding of the way bowels can sometimes relax upon death, leaving feces free to flow into anyone’s underwear, regardless of their IQ. ‘You’re saying that you think some people deserve to die? You think that young woman in Kigali deserved to die?’

‘I’m saying I don’t want stupid people in the gene pool.’

Jayne almost spluttered. ‘Who the hell are you to say who’s stupid?’

Gene pulled a ball of twine from his bag as he spoke, leaving the grenade inside the bag. ‘Hey, I give people the opportunity to make a choice: go with an instinct for survival or go with the social fiction of Trust in Others. If they can’t make the choice to survive, they shouldn’t be allowed to live, let alone reproduce. It’s the same choice our ancestors had when they came face-to-face with a lion in the savannah. I give them that choice, they usually make the wrong one and I get to clean up while I simultaneously drag Houston down.’ He flashed a grin at her. ‘Who said men can’t multitask?’

Jayne pictured Eleanor Patterson meeting a man like this when she was at her most vulnerable. Gene was justifying his murders with some kind of perversion of evolutionary biology when, really, he had victimized women, first out of career frustration and then out of misplaced revenge. But his reasons didn’t change anything. She couldn’t fake a plaintive tone any longer; Gene was deeply wrong and he needed to know it.

‘You haven’t been giving people choices, you’ve been giving them bait-and-switch. All you’ve done, Gene, is betray people’s trust.’

He put a loop of twine through the pin on the grenade and then stood up, towering over her as he placed a foot on either side of her waist. ‘You and Steelie have always had a way of sounding holier-than-thou.’

He dropped down on to her, trapping her with a knee on each side of her waist. ‘We’ve talked enough. You’re going to lay here in this bathroom, Jayne, the lure on a hook for Houston, and when he comes through that door looking for you – and I know he will because he likes the chase and you’ve been giving him one hell of a chase for quite a while now. Unh-unh, don’t try to deny it. Now he’s going to walk in and trip the line to this grenade I got specially for you.’

He leaned down toward her face. ‘I lied when I said I hadn’t kept up with where you went after Kigali. I heard about Kosovo and the mine your team blew, so you should enjoy this. You’ll get to watch Houston and Steelie bite it. You’ll probably survive it with a few limbs intact. Now, you start the show by calling Lover Boy to reel him in. If you tip him off to the grenade, I pull the pin the second the words come out of your mouth. You don’t mind if I frisk you now, do you?’ He began going through her pockets.

Jayne panicked. She didn’t want to die and she knew Scott wouldn’t be the one to come through that door. It would be the FBI driver. Another innocent, just like Benni in Kosovo; there because she was there. She had to stop this. Gene had located her phone and rocked back as he held it aloft, compressing her tailbone against the tile floor. And suddenly all the fear and pain mixed with his weight on her hips to trigger an old, old memory – she’d been young, on a mat, in a class, being taught – defend yourself.

She screamed with all her might and Gene reacted just as she’d hoped, lunging to push the gag back into her mouth, his weight now forward and, crucially, off her hips. Using strength she didn’t know she had left, she thrust her hips up as hard and high as she could, sending him head-first toward the cold, hard toilet bowl, shutting her eyes a millisecond before his knees smashed into her face.

Scott attempted to be patient as he watched Angie from the doorway of her office.

When she finally slammed down her phone, she shouted, ‘We got it! Guys, we got it.’ She looked up at Scott in triumph.

He felt warmth spread across his chest and went to her, his hand up for a high five. She hit it and merged it into a down low, followed by one of their old handgrips.

Eric popped his head in from the hallway. ‘You got the location?’

‘Not yet,’ she replied, breaking free from Scott and grabbing an FBI windbreaker from the back of her chair. ‘It’s in Northeast. We can go mobile and I’ll keep in cell phone contact for them to give us the one hundred-foot radius.’

‘OK, I got the warrant underway, so I’m coming with you.’

Mark was out of his seat. ‘I’m driving.’

The four agents ran down the stairs and out the back of the building to the motor pool. Mark shouted, ‘Four- eight-six’ and the others diverted course to the black Suburban with the corresponding license plate. ‘It’s got the flak jackets and shotguns.’

Within seconds, Mark had reversed out of the parking space and activated the red and blue flashers in the front and rear windows. They entered the roadway at speed.

Angie’s cell phone rang and she listened, then said, ‘OK, head southeast. We’re keeping the line open.’

Mark swerved around a double-parked delivery truck and then braked hard as a taxi veered into their lane. ‘Come on!’

Angie’s voice came loud. ‘We got him! Last ping is from near Eden and Forty-Fifth. We’re almost there.’

Mark slowed as they approached that intersection and turned off the lights. He halted at the corner so they could scan the cross street and take in the buildings.

Scott looked out the front window, saw the motel across the street, dismissed it, and then did a double-take. ‘Holy shit!’

Mark followed his gaze, and then threw the vehicle into reverse, parking it out of sight from the motel. Scott dialed a number on his phone as the other agents jumped out and opened the rear doors.

Scott joined them a moment later, his phone still in his hand. ‘This is the motel where Travel put Jayne and Steelie last night. Carter’s here, in the parking lot. He arrived early to pick them up, was able to hear water running, assumed someone was bathing, so was waiting until the appointed time to go back and knock.’

Eric cut in, ‘King’s got to be in there with them; no way one of ’em’s having a bath when they’re due to leave.’

Scott nodded. ‘Get your gear on. We’re going in on the presumption that he is armed. We are not waiting for further backup. Got it?’

The others assented and they ran to the building, splitting into two pairs to take the separate exterior staircases up to the second floor. They positioned themselves on either side of Jayne and Steelie’s door, guns drawn as Mark held a small battering ram. Scott nodded at him and he rammed the door. It slammed open with a crack and they all shouted, ‘Federal Agents! Drop your weapon!!’

They were met with silence so they charged the room.

Scott saw Eric rush to the bed, where Steelie was on the floor against the wall, but his eyes were taking in the emptiness of the rest of the room. He felt rising panic as he imagined King taking Jayne away with him. Then he heard a shout from his left.

‘Call a medic!’

He spun around and Angie’s concerned expression gave him a stab of worry. He pushed past Mark to get to Angie in the bathroom doorway, then heard a squelching noise and looked down. The threshold was soaking; his eyes followed a film of bloody water across the floor. He saw two bodies by the toilet: a man collapsed around the toilet, his knees obscuring the head of someone contorted underneath. Jayne. Scott figured the water was coming from the overflowing bath. That left the blood. He desperately hoped none of it was coming from her. He stepped into the room and got down on his knees. He was going to get her out.

THIRTY-TWO