Her palms tingled.
'Open the laundry room.'
She braced herself for unendurable horror, then opened the slatted door.
Jamie was perched atop the washing machine, staring down at two black coils on the floor. It took Alex a moment to absorb the reality. The snakes were thick and short, with big triangular heads and pointed snouts.
'Aunt Alex!' Jamie cried, his eyes flashing. 'You came!'
She forced herself to grin as though everything were fine now. 'I sure did, buddy.' She turned back to Dr. Tarver and hissed,
Tarver chuckled. 'The boy's fine. See those cases?'
He'd gestured at two large waterproof cases on the safe side of the snakes. Pelicans, Alex thought. The kind of cases engineers used to haul expensive gear around the world. The larger case was bright yellow, the other white.
'I want you to carry them to the front of the house,' Tarver said. 'Move it.'
'I'll be back, Jamie,' she promised.
Jamie nodded with complete faith, but his eyes quickly returned to the snakes on the floor. The cases were almost too heavy for Alex to lift. As she backed out with them, she saw Dr. Tarver pick up a white croker sack with a drawstring and open it wide. Maybe he was going to bag the damned snakes for a while.
Realizing that Tarver had not followed her to the front room, she dropped the cases and rushed to Bill's gun cabinet. Behind those doors lay a wealth of firearms, but they were locked tight. She was trying to break them open when Tarver walked back into the room, dragging Jamie by one arm. Jamie screamed blue murder as he came, in the furious high-pitched voice of a ten-year-old boy. 'My aunt Alex is going to blow your goddamn head off, you big ape!'
Tarver smacked the boy on the side of his head, dropping him to the floor. Jamie's screaming ceased.
Tarver walked over to a bookshelf, reached up to a high one, and brought down an automatic pistol that Alex recognized as a Beretta from Bill's collection. Then he drew Alex's borrowed Sig-Sauer from the small of his back.
'Why are you doing this?' she asked. 'Why didn't you just take off when you had the chance?'
Tarver gave her a tight smile. 'I'm entering a new life today. Vanishing into another identity. And I would gladly have let you live to old age. But I'm afraid you have a clue to the road I'm taking to my new life. You may not know you have it, but you do. And if I let you live, you'll eventually remember.'
With the most casual of motions, Dr. Tarver half turned and shot Bill Fennell in the head with Alex's Sig.
She jumped back in shock, but she had no time to worry about Bill. Jamie was stirring on the floor. If he raised his head, he would see his father's ruined face. She lunged across the space between them and covered Jamie with her body.
'Perfect,' said Tarver. 'How's this sound? You couldn't live another minute with the idea that your nephew was under the power of your brother-in-law. You came to rescue him. Fennell resisted, so you shot him. Sadly, the boy was killed in the crossfire. I think the Bureau will want the investigation closed as quickly as possible.'
'Please,' Alex said to the emotionless face. 'Kill me, just let him live.'
Tarver shook his head. 'He can't survive to tell your friends at the Bureau that he had two strangers as overnight guests last night.'
She blinked in bewilderment. 'Two?'
'My brother Judah.'
Alex pondered this. 'Is that who's driving the truck? With the boat?'
Tarver smiled. 'A little makeup can do wonders. Good-bye, Alexandra. You led a merry chase.'
He switched the Beretta to his right hand, then stepped back, moving the gun left and right as though selecting a target appropriate to the intended fiction. An almost irresistible rush of instinct told Alex to lift Jamie as best she could and run. She knew she would accomplish nothing, but wasn't it better to die trying? The Beretta stabilized as Tarver settled on his final target. At least Jamie was unconscious for the end. Forcing her arms under him, she struggled to lift his sagging weight. No shot came.
Dr. Tarver had cocked his head as though straining to hear something above the sound of the storm outside. Alex found herself listening, too, first in vain, but then…the relentless slapping of rotor blades separated from the rain, and she knew that John Kaiser's glorious Bell 430 was dropping down over the house like the Air Cav descending on a besieged hamlet in Vietnam.
'Your plan won't work now, Doctor,' she said, summoning the calm equanimity of a hostage negotiator who has nothing personal at stake in a confrontation. 'You'll never sell that story now, no matter what you do. Your being here screws it all up.'
Tarver stepped forward and laid the pistol barrel against her forehead. Clearly, he was not convinced. If he shot her now, Alex realized, then somehow slipped away in the storm, his tale of domestic tragedy might still play at FBI headquarters. But time was his enemy, time and the men gathering outside.
The Beretta slammed into her face with blinding force. She collapsed onto Jamie. Pounding footsteps receded, then returned. Dr. Tarver jerked her to her feet. As her vision returned, she saw he was carrying a coil of rope and a roll of duct tape. His backpack lay at his feet.
'That's FBI SWAT out there,' Alex said. 'You don't have a prayer of getting away.'
Tarver cut a length of rope, bound Jamie's legs together, then tied him to the heavy leg of the nearby sofa. 'Tell me who's in charge.'
'I'm the negotiator. You talk to me.'
He hit her again, this time on the bridge of the nose. A river of blood gushed over her lips and chin. Coughing blood, she dug her cell phone from her pocket and handed it over. 'Speed dial four. John Kaiser.'
Dr. Tarver ripped off some duct tape and bound her wrists as though he did this every day. Then he put her phone in his pocket and pulled his own cell out of the other. He pressed one button and waited. Alex knelt and hugged Jamie as best she could. The slap of beating rotors had diminished, but she could still hear them from the rear of the house. Had Kaiser landed between the tennis courts and the infinity pool? She prayed that the SWAT agents were already dispersing across the grounds.
'Edward?' Tarver said into the phone. 'How close are you?…Ten minutes or less. Stay at altitude until I give you the final position…. Right.'
Now the doctor took out Alex's cell phone, opened the clamshell, and pressed a button. 'Is this Agent Kaiser?…Good. These are my demands. I want an FBI Suburban with its windows spray-painted black driven to the rear door of this house and left there. That's the side where your helicopter is. I want a Cessna Citation fully fueled and waiting at the Madison County Airport with one pilot and its engines running. An FBI pilot is acceptable. Don't attempt to block the driveway when we leave. Don't ask to exchange FBI agents for my hostages. The Suburban should be here in twenty minutes or less-Stop talking, Agent Kaiser, you have nothing to tell me…. No, I'm not going to make any threats. Listen very closely, and you'll see why. When the back door opens, do not fire. The Fennell boy will be in front of me. Remember, twenty minutes for the Suburban.'
Tarver hung up the phone and shoved it deep in his pocket. Then he picked up Bill Fennell's shotgun from behind the sofa and fired it into the floor.
Jamie cringed into Alex's chest when the weapon roared.
Tarver took hold of Bill's corpse by the ankles and dragged it toward the back of the house. Alex crawled to the sofa, shoved her bound hands under it, and lifted with all her strength. She heard the back door open, then a massive grunt, which told her that Tarver was trying to lift Bill Fennell's corpse, a nearly impossible feat with dead weight. 'Yank the rope loose!' she told Jamie. 'Hurry.'
She heard another grunt, this one like the sound of a shot-putter making a heroic heave, and then the back door slammed. Jamie had almost gotten the rope loose from the sofa leg when Tarver marched back into the room.
