ahead. He stepped over the bodies and headed for the staircase.
He made his way up the stairs, holding his gun next to his cheek. His muscles were tensed beneath his clothes. 'Shut up, you little shit,' he heard as he reached the top step. A child whimpered softly. The noise came from the first room off the wide hallway.
Jade moved slowly toward the room, stepping quietly on the plush Chinese patterned rug. He paused beside the door frame and listened, carefully controlling the sound of his breathing.
'I know you're out there, asshole. Come in,' he heard.
Jade dropped to his stomach and peered around the bottom of the door frame. He could see Michael Trapp. He was backed into a corner, one arm locked around a six-year-old girl's neck in a half nelson, a gun pressed to her temple. She dangled in his arms like a rag doll, her button eyes wide with fear. To Trapp's right, two boys knelt side by side, facing the wall.
Jade had studied Trapp's profile inside and out. He was a ransomer who'd never been in a face-off, although he'd killed kids before. Now his partners were dead and he was scared shitless. But Jade knew he wouldn't fire right off the bat. He'd want to negotiate. That's what ransomers did.
Jade stood up and whirled around the corner, his gun pointed. The girl screamed and struggled in Trapp's grip.
'Drop the gun or so help me God I'll-'
Jade fired once and put a bullet right through his mouth. Blood splattered the white wall and the floral painting behind him. Trapp's knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor, the girl still clutched in his arm. She flailed to get out from under him, screaming at the top of her lungs. Finally gaining her feet, she ran to Jade, embracing him around his waist.
He placed his hands awkwardly on her shoulders, pushing her away. He walked over to the body to make sure it was dead, laying two fingers on the neck to check for a pulse. There was none. 'The real cops'll be here soon to take care of you,' he said over his shoulder. He glanced at the two boys. They were shaking badly, still facing the wall. 'You can get up now. He's dead.'
They didn't move.
Jade released the cartridge so it tapped his palm, then clicked it back into place. He'd collect a twenty- thousand-dollar reward for four days of tracking. Not bad for an FBI dropout. He smiled and ran his hand over the rough stubble on his chin. To his right, the boys continued to quiver. Behind him, the little girl sobbed loudly.
Jade pulled Trapp's wallet out of his pocket and double-checked the driver's license, a formality since he was already positive on the ID. Several hundred-dollar bills stuck out, and Jade pushed them all the way into the billfold and stuck the wallet back in Trapp's pocket. He rose and walked downstairs as he heard the black-and-whites racing up the street, their sirens screaming.
He stepped over the two bodies downstairs, giving Goatee a kick that knocked his head against the wall. Putting his gun in the back of his jeans, Jade stepped through the doorway into daylight. Recognizing him, the cops sighed in relief and lowered their guns.
'One of these days, I'm gonna beat you to it,' Lieutenant Hawkins said, fumbling over his beer belly to find his holster. Hawkins's eyes were as deeply brown as Jade's were green. He had a thick black mustache. They always have a mustache, Jade thought.
'I wouldn't count on it.'
'Trapp dead?'
'Yeah. And the kid.' Jade pointed with his gun at Dave's body, still sprawled out, reaching for the door. 'The commissioner gave me him to work with. Almost got me killed.'
'He break cover?'
'Yeah.' Jade shook his head. 'They never listen.'
Hawkins sighed, running a hand over the top of his head. 'Poor kid was just a rent-a-cop. Worked security at night to support his family.'
Jade's mouth tightened. 'You guys took long enough to get here. What, was there a cat stuck in a tree somewhere?'
'We didn't get the call till you'd already cornered them, then we came as fast as we could. You should've waited for us to back you.'
'I didn't have the luxury.'
Hawkins grimaced and glanced back at the house. Goatee's arm was visible in the doorway, lying in a pool of blood. Cops stepped over the bodies and headed inside to examine the scene. The sound of the boys weeping upstairs became softly audible.
'Jesus Christ, Marlow, you left the kids in there?' Hawkins asked in disbelief.
'Oh yeah, shit, that's right.'
''Oh yeah'? You leave three kids alone in a room with a corpse and that's the best you can do? 'Oh yeah'?' Hawkins scratched himself angrily.
'Look, Hawkins, I don't see baby-sitter anywhere in my job title.'
Hawkins gestured to a newly arrived paramedics team. 'You three-upstairs. Let's go.' He turned back to Jade, shaking his head. 'You bounty hunters are sick fucks.'
The paramedics rushed out carrying the kids. The children were sobbing freely now, all three of them. Jade looked down as they passed, studying the ground. 'I'm not a bounty hunter,' he said. 'I'm a tracker. It's an art.'
'A madness, Jade.' Hawkins wiped his mouth on his sleeve. 'A madness.'
Chapter 13
' Tracker ' was the term that Jade used to describe the new profession he had carved out for himself after resigning from the FBI. When he broke his second case, the media began referring to him as a 'TDer' or 'tracker and destroyer,' but the phrase was too strained for his style. His language, like his actions, was quick and efficient.
Being a tracker set Jade apart from the bumbling military Soldiers of Fortune and the trained dogs that the bail-and-loan companies sent out. He was the only one, and he worked alone.
Tracking didn't entail following a physical trail, it involved more subtle measures. Jade had learned that there was no straight line to a criminal's door. He began a case by going backward, studying a criminal's history-his motivations, his weaknesses. Once he got a profile, he could close in on him with the precision and determination of a shark circling its prey.
He said that he quit the feds because he couldn't stand the bullshit of hierarchy. But there was a truer, more difficult explanation: He didn't get along with people. And in general, they didn't get along with him either.
There were people in his life, of course, but they came and went as the weeks passed. He was always going somewhere else, always looking for something else. He was a hunter by trade, and hunters never stay in one place for very long.
Jade didn't like covering the same ground twice. And he didn't like the feeling that settled in once he stopped chasing. He pursued his prey with such fervor that it sometimes seemed he himself was fleeing from something. And it was true that he sometimes heard voices behind him, voices from his past. The singsong, manic voices of children spinning nursery rhymes in the hot summer air.
Eeni meenie minie moe, they sang, the notes of their song burning into his memory.
But eventually, after blisters, calluses form. They're much easier to live with.
When it came to himself, Jade didn't have time for complexity. Because he spent his days dredging society's murky waters, he had little energy for introspection. As a result, he viewed himself as fiercely independent, not isolated, as self-reliant, not difficult. It was easier that way.
Jade left the FBI after his rambunctious attitude landed him in trouble. He had upbraided the Head of Operations of the Hostage Negotiation Department for allowing a terrorist to escape. The incident came after the agents had been ordered to stand down because hostages were in the line of fire. So when Jade had seen his shot open up for a split second, he had forced himself to resist. The terrorist had escaped and had been taken down by another agent in Maryland the next week. There had been other casualties along the way.
