He took off in pursuit.
“Tillman, you need to answer me.” He was practically shouting into the radio. “There’s a cop coming down the street, and he may be headed right for you.”
But the only response Gideon heard was static.
Tillman entered the house and sprinted for the stairs, bounding up them two at a time. Verhoven followed him inside, carrying the guns, while Lorene hobbled in and secured the door behind them.
By the time Tillman reached the second floor, he saw Dr. Klotz at the far end of the hallway, carrying two small children into another bedroom.
The handle was locked. Tillman calmly inserted the pry bar in the door. It was a high-quality wooden door, but nothing special. He pried it off its hinges in three hard strokes, jerked the door open, and charged inside.
He found himself in the master bedroom. The bedcovers were disheveled. On the far wall, another door slammed shut. He studied it carefully. There was no handle, only a very thin crack around the perimeter of the door, which was painted the same flat ecru as the rest of the room. If he hadn’t seen the door slam shut, he would barely have noticed it.
It was a safe room, a panic room, whatever you wanted to call it.
Tillman looked at his watch. 5:34 AM. There was no reason to rush now. Verhoven had cut the phone and jammed the cell phone frequencies. There would be no 911 call.
He placed the radio back in his ear and heard Gideon’s desperate voice.
“Tillman, do you copy?”
“Gideon?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“There’s a cop outside. He’s walking up to the front door.”
Tillman told Gideon to stand down. He hustled back downstairs, where Verhoven was tending to Lorene on the couch. She was wincing and holding her side.
“Where are they?” Verhoven said.
“They got into the safe room. But we’ve got a bigger problem.”
Officer Leyland Millwood Jr., Prince William County Police badge number 3071, saw the aging black Honda parked on the street. It was the same car a neighbor had phoned in, complaining that it had been circling the block in the early morning hours. It looked out of place in a neighborhood where most of the cars were garaged, and most were new Audis, Volvos, and Acuras. Plus, there had been several break-ins reported over the last couple of months.
He parked his patrol car, climbed out, and put his hand on the hood of the Honda. It was warm. In this weather a car hood wouldn’t stay warm two minutes after you turned it off.
He surveyed the area with his flashlight. There were no lights on in the street, no signs of anything odd going on.
He considered what to do. He didn’t really want to scare some family by waking them up for nothing. But if a B and E was happening on his watch, he was damn well going to stop it. Leyland Millwood was a three-year veteran of the PW County force. He’d been driving around in the middle of the night rounding up drunks and giving speeding tickets to teenagers and stopping disabled veterans who’d forgotten to turn their lights on. He was ready to move on to something more exciting—possibly Special Investigations. A few good collars would get him noticed, and he would redeem them for a ticket out of this wilderness of boredom.
He approached the front door of the house and banged on it with the butt of his flashlight.
Verhoven’s eyes widened when he heard the banging on the front door. He turned and strode toward the front of the house, his AR-15 at loe wd gw ready. He looked a little panicky, like maybe he was itching to shoot somebody.
“Wait!” Tillman whispered sharply. “Just . . . wait. Don’t do anything.”
Tillman bounded to the door, pulled out his utility knife, and stabbed the wall. Behind the Sheetrock he found the back of the intercom unit that faced the outside of the building. Beneath it was a piece of armored conduit running down through the wall. He yanked the conduit free of the connector in the base of the intercom, then severed the wire inside it with one swift stroke of the knife. Then he looked through the window. A very young, pugnacious-looking cop stood on the front porch, looking warily at the front door.
“Another two seconds, that man up in the safe room would have been talking to the cop out there,” Tillman whispered.
“Who is it?” Verhoven said softly. His gun was now pointed directly at the door.
Tillman ignored his question, instead whispering, “Get Lorene’s clothes off. Everything but her bra and panties.”
“Why? What are you doing?”
“Just do what I tell you to do.”
Verhoven stood there, as if deciding what to do. He clearly didn’t like taking orders.
“Focus on her clothes. Let me call this play, okay?” Tillman tried to compress all the urgency he felt into his whispered voice. He couldn’t let Verhoven open the door. He’d have to stop him, effectively ending the operation he and Gideon had already put themselves on the line for.
Verhoven glared at him for a moment, before he finally relented. Verhoven was mostly bluff—and in his heart he probably knew it. They were deep into the weeds now, and Verhoven was smart enough to recognize that Tillman was better equipped to get them through this.
Tillman sprinted up the stairs two at a time, running to the bedroom, then dumping clothes from the chest of drawers onto the floor until he found a cotton nightgown. He bounded back down the stairs to find a drawn-looking and nearly naked Lorene Verhoven standing unsteadily in the middle of the room.
“Arms up,” he said.
She put her arms in the air, wincing at the pain in her side. As though he were dressing a child, he slid the nightgown down her arms and over her head. There was a small amount of blood weeping from the dressing on her flank.
There was more banging at the door.
“Perfect,” he said, mussing her hair so she looked as though she’d been roused from bed. “The guy out there is a cop. Go to the door, tell him you’re fine. Whatever you do, don’t let him in the house.”
She nodded, walked stiffly to the door. Tillman motioned to Verhoven to hide out of sight in the dining room. Verhoven retreated, his AR-15 aimed at the door.
“Be cool,” Tillman mouthed as Lorene neared the door.
She opened the door, looked out. “Yes?” she said.
“Officer Millwood, PW County, ma’am. Is everything okay?Rt="nd 21;
“Excuse me?”
“Is everything okay? A neighbor said there was a car circling the street, and now it’s parked outside your house.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Lorene scratched her head. “My husband went out to get some coffee. He knows I can’t be without it when I wake up.”
“You’re sure?”
“Look, I appreciate you’re doing your job. But my shift at the hospital starts in an hour, and I’d really like to enjoy that coffee and get myself ready.”
Officer Millwood stood there but made no move to leave. “I’m sorry if this sounds out of place, ma’am, but you don’t look well.”
“I’m just a little under the weather. But thank you for asking. Stay safe out there.” She closed the door and sagged against the wall, breathing hard. There was a bloody spot on her side about the size of a tangerine, seeping into the white cotton fabric of the nightgown.
Verhoven dropped his weapon and propped her up. “You did great, baby,” he said.
He kissed her forehead, but her eyes seemed to lose focus.
“Baby, I need to lie down now,” she mumbled.
“Of course you do.” He carried her across the living room, set her on the couch. Her face was misted with perspiration and her complexion had gone gray again.
“She needs fluids,” Tillman said.
Verhoven looked down at her bleakly, his eyes unfocused. His body sagged, like a marionette with its strings cut. Tillman had seen it happen many times before. A soldier during combat would run on adrenaline for hours, performing just fine—and then suddenly they’d just fall off a mental cliff.
“Jim,” Tillman said. “You with me? We’re making history here. Nothing this big every comes easily. Operations like this always get bad before they get good again.”