Blood Money

She shook her head, glowering at her husband.

“It wasn’t Sydney,” said Jack.

“No, of course not.”

“Thirty seconds ago I would have said it was Geoffrey. But now I know it wasn’t him, either. Right, Ellen?”

She didn’t answer.

Jack pressed on, his theory still gelling in his head. “I know what you meant, Ellen. But I want to hear it from you. What did you mean when you said you ‘did nothing’?”

Her voice shook, and it seemed to take every bit of her strength just to steady the gun. “I’ll bet Geoffrey didn’t tell you how it killed me that my own daughter was living the same life I’d lived. How much it killed me to know that Geoffrey was already working on Emma, making her so sexually aware that she even talked to the babysitter about it. Geoffrey didn’t tell you that, did he? That’s why I did nothing. She was next. I knew she was next.”

Did nothing. Jack needed to square that with what his forensic expert had told him about the cause of Emma’s death. There had to be more to what Ellen was saying, and suddenly it all made sense. “Tell me,” said Jack. “Tell me what happened when Emma fell in the pool.”

She didn’t answer right away, but the expression on her face told Jack that he had nailed it.

“Maybe I would have made a better decision,” she said through tears. “Maybe I would have been thinking more clearly if I hadn’t been drinking the way I do to get through every day of my life. But at that very moment, when I heard that splash in the swimming pool, I truly believed that this innocent little angel was better off dead!”

“You did nothing,” said Jack.

“I. . I did nothing,” she said, her voice shaking.

“That’s not true,” said Bennett. “Damn it, Ellen! It was Merselus!”

His continued defense of his wife made no sense to Jack, until Bennett’s words from the other day came back to him. In his own twisted way, Bennett was beating back adversity to “protect what was left of his family.”

This time, Ellen Bennett was having none of it.

“That’s just another lie, Geoffrey! Lies, lies, and more lies! Twenty-five years of living your lies!”

“Ellen, stop-”

The crack of a gunshot dropped Bennett where he stood. As Jack dived to the ground for cover, another shot rang out, then another, and another. Each shot hit its mark-three to Bennett’s chest, one to his belly, and the last two directly to the head. She kept squeezing the trigger even after the chamber was emptied. Crying and on the verge of hysterics, she threw the gun at Geoffrey. It hit him in the face, but he didn’t flinch. There was no reaction of any sort. She dropped to her knees, fell forward, and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

Jack rose slowly, but he didn’t move toward her. Ellen Bennett remained on the ground, wailing. Jack let her be, her husband’s lifeless body just a few feet away from her in the grass. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

'Go!” shouted Merselus as he yanked open the apartment door.

Three clean-through bullet holes in the chest-high door panels marked his response to the police officer’s knock. He was certain that at least one of those shots had hit the mark. The fact that there was no body to step over told him that the downed officer had been dragged to safety by his partner. Merselus kept Sydney directly in front of him, his human shield, as they exploded through the open doorway and into the night.

“Run, run, run!” He was pushing her from behind, almost faster than she could move her feet, and with each word he squeezed off another round in the direction of the patrol car for cover. There was no return fire, surely for fear of hitting the hostage. As they approached the car, Sydney tripped at the curb and fell hard onto the asphalt. Merselus fired two more rounds at the squad car as he flung open the car door. Then he lifted Sydney from the ground, using the bindings behind her back like a handle as he shoved her across the driver’s side and over to the passenger seat. Sydney crouched low, her head below the dashboard.

“Stay up!” he shouted, pulling her toward him on the seat. A hostage in the line of fire was his best shot at getting the police to hold their fire.

The car started quickly, and the engine revved as Merselus backed out of the parking spot so fast that Sydney lunged forward and banged her head on the radio. Merselus pulled her up, back into her shield position. The tires screeched and the car raced across the parking lot toward the main exit. He was almost to Miami Avenue when a lone police officer jumped into the path of his vehicle and assumed the marksman’s pose. Merselus jerked the wheel from left to right, putting the car in serpentine mode to prevent the cop from getting a clear shot at the driver. He accelerated enough to send a message that vehicular homicide wasn’t just a bluff. Sydney screamed as the speeding car bore down on the officer, but at the final moment the cop dived behind a parked car without firing a shot. The car fishtailed as they squealed out of the parking lot and turned onto Miami Avenue.

An ambulance raced toward them as they sped away. If it was for the old man in apartment 102, they were too late. If it was for Officer Knock-Knock, they might arrive in time.

“Just let me go, please,” said Sydney.

Merselus almost chuckled. “Yeah. Like that’s gonna happen.”

Chapter Sixty

The white sedan was a blur as it sped past the vacant warehouse on South Miami Avenue. The nearest law enforcement vehicle in the area was the FBI communications van, just two buildings downriver.

“Let’s go!” shouted Andie as she jumped into the passenger seat. She activated the siren and the blue police beacon on the dash. Her partner was behind the wheel. The van roared out of the parking lot, and the not-yet- buckled tech agent in the back of the van slammed into his wall of equipment as the van squealed around the corner.

“Shit, guys!” he said as he climbed up from the floor and into his seat.

Andie got on the radio, no time to apologize.

“In pursuit of late-model white Chevrolet sedan headed north on South Miami Avenue toward Flagler,” Andie said into the microphone. “Subject is armed and dangerous. Appears to have at least one adult female hostage with him. Identity unconfirmed, but possibly Sydney Bennett. Request perimeter control to block all arteries and expressway on-ramps east of I-95 between Northwest Eighth Street and Southwest Third Street. Raise all drawbridges between Northwest Fifth Street and Brickell Avenue.”

“Copy that,” came the reply.

Andie hung the mic in its cradle and then unbuckled her seat belt long enough to put on a Kevlar vest-just in case.

City blocks are short in downtown Miami, and the van raced through one intersection after another, the siren blaring. The western edge of downtown was definitely not a pedestrian area after midnight, especially on weekdays. Storefronts were dark, many of them barricaded with roll-down shutters of corrugated metal. Streets and sidewalks were empty, scarcely a parked or moving car in sight. North-south traffic signals were programmed for long green lights-not that a red light or anything else would have stopped Merselus.

Four blocks ahead of them, the Chevy made a sudden turn east on Flagler Street.

“I think we got him,” Andie’s partner said.

Unless Merselus planned to jump the curb and drive through Bayfront Park straight into the bay, he would have to go left or right at the T-shaped intersection at the east end of Flagler Street, taking Biscayne Boulevard either north or south. Just as Andie radioed for additional backup, the Chevy made a hard left turn into an empty