The Shop

brakes, shot forward again, slewing right and left like a slalom skier. At the boathouse he rolled out, rolled all the way into the brush. Crawled to the shelter of the boathouse and peered out the small back window, checking to see if anyone was around. That was when he saw the Carolina skiff pulled up into the reeds on the shoreline.

The cameras were out. Everything was out. It was the storm. Jolie hoped it was the storm. She listened, waited for the generator to kick in. Twenty seconds. Everything was dark. It was gloomy outside, the rain coming down hard, but in this shed it was very, very dark. Jolie rummaged around for the walkie- talkie.

A loud sputtering sound rent the heavily laden air. A cough, and the stench of gasoline. The lights flickered on. Automatically, she looked at the camera screens. Saw movement—two figures near the boathouse.

Just before the lights went out for a second time.

Jolie couldn’t find the walkie-talkie. It had to be right near her. Her hand scoured the desktop. She needed to be able to communicate with Cyril. She could see the shapes of things in the gloom. Her fingers landed on the walkie-talkie, but she knocked it to the floor.

Reached down, feeling around her chair.

Hands running down the heavy links of the chain to the padlock.

Her fingers nudging the padlock as she fished around for the walkie-talkie.

Something sharp protruded from the lock. The key.

Relief poured over her, warm and welcoming. Followed by gratitude—Stockholm syndrome again. But the exhilaration of this moment was too great. Tears seeped from her eyes. He’d given her an out. He’d given her a chance to get away, or to go and protect her family.

Protect her family. Whatever their flaws, whatever they had done in the past, they were her responsibility now. They belonged to her, and she would see them through.

She held the chain, let it down to the floor quietly. She didn’t want to attract anyone to this building. Jolie debated turning on one of the flashlights, but decided against it. She felt around for the gear bag with the arsenal Cyril had brought with him. She took a knife along with its scabbard and hitched it to her belt. She strapped her own Walther PPK to her ankle. She pulled on a dark windbreaker, took another .45 and stuck it in one pocket, and put the walkie-talkie in the other. She emptied the gear bag of everything but the remaining weapons and added three Maglites. Took one of the sound suppressors and screwed it onto a Heckler & Koch .45 semiautomatic. Time to go.

Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom. There was nobody in the doorway. Jolie wished she had power, wished she could watch the cameras, but they were useless to her now.

She remained crouched—a smaller target—and followed the wall to the doorway. Worried. Wondered if the men coming for them had FLIR scopes. Any minute, she could be dead before she heard the crash of the bullet—

Couldn’t think like that. And in fact, she encountered no one. The shifting wind blew the rain against her back and then into her face, needles that were warm but somehow chilling, water trickling down her neck, but the windbreaker was good. She kept to the sides of the buildings, concealing herself wherever she could by bushes or trees, duck-walking where there was empty space.

She reached the octagon house and leaned against the side of the building away from the beach, away from the boat in the inlet. She’d have to work her way around to the basement entrance.

She heard something coming from the kitchen area directly in front of her—chains jingling, a ticking sound on the brick.

Small shapes, larger shapes, emerged from the gloom and into the blowing wind, coming through the mist toward her.

The dogs. They didn’t bark. They wriggled, they panted, they surrounded her.

They followed her as she made her slow half circuit of the octagon house.

Worried they would attract attention, she moved faster.

She reached the steps. Followed by the dogs, she went down into the darkness.

60

Maybe she should have used a flashlight. Creeping her way through the gloom, dogs at her heels, Jolie aimed for a slit of light ground-level in the approximate direction of her grandfather’s room. Their generator was still working. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly, and she made out the heavy piece of furniture—a dresser—barricading them in.

She pushed away the dresser and opened the door.

Five pairs of eyes stared at her. Like a snapshot. Four of Cyril’s captives sitting on the floor against the wall. Kay with Zoe, Riley next to her by a body’s-width distance and still snuggled up close to her father. All of them stunned, except for Granddad in his hospital bed, sheet pulled up to his chin. His expression was vague—Jolie got the strong impression he’d gone back to wherever he’d come from.

For a moment there was silence. Jolie could smell the fear in the room and the undercurrent of desperation.

Then Riley said, “It figures that you would be okay!”

Jolie walked over to Riley and said, “Be quiet.”

“You can’t—”

“Riley, you might have a problem with me, but now is not the time. There are people out there who are trying to kill us. You need to listen to me like your life depends on it, and do exactly as I say. I am not kidding you about this. Do we understand each other?”

Riley stared at her, open-mouthed.

“Good.” Jolie leaned down and sawed through the tape binding Riley’s hands with her knife.

Jolie went around the room, cutting her family’s bonds. Her family. She wished she could come up with another description of the people in that room. Other than Kay and Zoe, these people were nothing to her. But face it: they were linked to her by blood—she had to help them. When she came to Franklin, she said, “How did he get you to give that statement to the press?”

“He said he’d kill Riley.”

“Do you know what his plans are?”

“He wants to lure someone here.”

“Who?”

“Mike Cardamone.”

“Did you know about the teams?”

“Teams?”

Jolie stepped into his space, and he stepped back. “Frank, this is not the time to play games. Do you know about the teams?”

“Yes! Yes…but I didn’t run them. That was Mike’s thing, not mine. I told him it was crazy.”

“How many teams?”

“Two. It was a small part of the business.”

“How many to a team?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What kind of guys are they?”

“When it comes to something like this,” he said, “they’re the very best.”

Jolie hustled them out of the room. She could hear a helicopter now, overhead, hovering. Not only that, but she heard automatic fire. That sobered up everyone in a hurry.

It took a while to get the old man to understand what she wanted. They had to pull along a portable oxygen tank. Jolie didn’t know what a stray bullet might do, but she couldn’t leave him behind.

He argued with her and quickly escalated to shouting. Jolie took hold of his shoulders and leveled her gaze at him. “Senator, please listen to me. You have to be quiet. I know you can do it. There are people coming to kill us,