Max cut in. “This isn’t about revenge, remember. It’s about kidnapping.”
Obviously not sure he was following her, Alec asked, “Logan’s kidnapping, you mean?”
“No. This time we’re the kidnappers.”
Alec raised an eyebrow. “Well, I guess that’s a step up from your last assignment — body-snatching.”
Max ignored that. “Our target is Lyman Cale’s majordomo, Franklin Bostock. He’s the key. Nothing happens within that compound without his approval. Stands to reason, he’s either a Familiar or in their pocket — he very likely sent those two snake-cult goons to kill that child.”
“And his mother,” Alec said.
Max shook her head. “The mother was just collateral damage.”
Mole said, “What you’re sayin’ is, don’t ice the Bostock dude.”
“Bingo,” Max said. “His sleazy self, we need alive.”
“You think?” Alec asked. “We’re hauling two stiffs around, already — what’s one more?”
Max didn’t know whether to be irritated by Alec or amused — Alec, the guy who always cut corners, who always looked for the angle, was suddenly the conservative of the group. A squeaky-clean Alec was somehow a frightening thought. She was about to give him some good-natured hell about it when her cell phone chirped in her pocket.
She pulled it out and punched a button. “Go for Max.”
“Do you have my son yet?”
Ames White.
As always, that voice sent a chill through her.
“Working on it,” she said. “We know where he is.”
“Clock’s ticking, 452. Only two days to go. You’re going to do the right thing, aren’t you?”
“Doing my best.”
“Not playing games? Why do I think you already have my son?”
“I’m not playing games. But I promise you, we will deliver him.”
Somehow, even though this was Ames White, it sickened her to lie to the boy’s parent — not lie, really, like Original Cindy said... a sin of omission, not commission — when the child lay bundled in a white-sheet shroud in the trunk of a nearby car.
“I want Ray to wake up Christmas morning in a brand new world,” White’s processed voice said confidently into her ear. “Make it happen, 452, and your friend Logan might live to see the new year, that brand new world... and we can put our differences behind us.”
What the hell did that mean, a “brand new world”?
“I’m cooperating, White. Working to make it happen.”
“I hope you are. Now, don’t screw this up, 452 — your friend is counting on you.”
“Let me talk to him.”
White laughed mirthlessly. “I will, when you let me talk to Ray.”
“Can’t right now.”
“Puts us in the same boat, doesn’t it? Well, then...”
Were they in the “same boat”? Was Logan dead — as dead as Ray White?
“If I don’t talk to Logan,” she said, “no deal.”
“Do you really think you’re in a position to negotiate, 452? I have to say, for all our differences, I do admire your confidence. You have a certain... presence.”
“Yeah, well. Girl’s gotta try.”
“Try this, 452 — like it or not, we’re both going to have to show a little faith here.”
“Faith?”
“Not an attribute either of us would ever likely be accused of having in abundance... but in this situation, it would seem required. Comes down to this: you hold up your end, and I’ll hold up mine.”
“Why is it I have trouble believing you’ll hold up your end?”
“Ah. That’s where the faith comes in.”
The phone clicked dead in her ear. She looked at it for a long moment, and resisted the urge to fling it against a tree.
“What was that about?” Alec asked.
“Just Ames White, busting my chops,” she said. “What else is new?”
“Does he know about Ray?”
“I don’t think so. I suppose it’s possible... evil bastard like White. But my reading of this is, he really does want his son back... may even ‘love’ him, in his sicko Ames White way.”
“I wouldn’t know much about parental love,” Alec said. “Hard to bond with a test tube.”
“I hear you,” she said. “But my gut says, White is a victim here, too — his son was murdered. And, dark as it may sound, that may be to our advantage.”
Mole chomped on the cigar, frowning. “How the hell...?”
“If we can convince White that the Familiars killed his boy, and sold him out, then it maybe takes the heat off us, gets us Logan back, and turns White against the cult.”
Alec snorted a laugh. “Oh, yeah — that would be a nice bonus. Get Logan back, and take down the snake cult.”
“I’m just sayin’ — he’s been betrayed, and I don’t think he knows it. White thinks we haven’t gotten to Ray yet, and has no idea that his son’s dead. On the other hand, if White finds out the boy’s dead before we can convince him it wasn’t our fault...”
Grim nods from both Alec and Mole completed the thought.
They got moving.
Mole stuffed the pistol back in his belt, Alec and Max helped a slightly groggy Joshua back into the car, and they made for Seattle, Max trying not to dwell on the bodies in the trunk.
At Three Tree Point, where security was lax, to say the least, they helped themselves to a motorboat — Max thought it might be the same one from her previous trip to Sunrise Island. The car with its trunkful of corpses was lying low in a dim corner of the parking lot. They would have the cover of darkness for their approach, but — true to the island’s name — they would arrive just as the sun peeked over the horizon. That didn’t make Max feel any better, but there was nothing to be done about it.
As they droned across Puget Sound, Max laid out a plan of action for taking the island. None of her crew questioned any of her strategy; no jokes, no doubts — a commando squad ready to serve their leader.
Again using a rubber raft, Max and her transgenic trio hit the beach just as the sky lightened in the east. Max was mildly surprised that no one was waiting for them at the shore. Using hand signals, she communicated that they should spread out and approach the house in pairs.
As usual, Joshua went with her to the left, while Mole accompanied Alec to the right. She knew the security force numbered at least twenty, and she hoped her assumption that only a handful of them were Familiars was correct. Twenty ordinaries would barely raise a sweat for either pair of transgenics; the Familiars, though, they might be another story...
Again, that brutal battle against White’s SWAT team on the second floor of Jam Pony popped into her mind, and she shook her head a little.
Twenty Familiars might be more than the four of them could handle.
She turned to glance at Joshua for reassurance as they made their way through the woods. The Big Fella held his nose in the air, sniffing. He pointed slightly ahead of them and to their left, then held up three fingers.
No sooner had Joshua made this gesture than a trio of Cale guards in their black TAC fatigues stepped into their path, automatic weapons leveled at the pair. No dogs tonight — except Joshua, of course. She noted that the three were paunchy, probable ordinaries.
Immediately, instinctively, she saw Bostock’s plan.
The first wave would be ordinaries, the Familiars staying close, protecting their leader and his treasure, that valuable vegetable, Lyman Cale.
As per plan, Max and Joshua raised their hands, giving off an aura of surrender. Almost imperceptibly, their captors relaxed...