Someone knocked at the door.
He shot Becky a concerned look. “You expecting someone?”
“I never expect anyone who knocks at my door. Including the one who turned out to be on the run from police.” When her little joke turned out to be not funny, she winced. “It’s usually Jehovah’s Witnesses, Girl Scouts, or—”
Her cell phone rang again.
“Jesus, when it rains it—”
Another knock. This one sounded more like a pound. “Federal officers. Open the door, Ms. Beckeman.”
David felt the blood drain from his head. “How did they find me?” He spoke at a whisper.
“Dammit, David,” Becky spat. “I told you this would happen.” She checked the number on the ringing phone and dumped it again. “Same number.” She plowed her fingers into her hair. “Oh, Christ, what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to ignore them,” David hissed. “You sure as hell can’t open the door.”
Another pounding. “Ms. Beckeman, this is your last chance. Open the door before we open it for you.”
“I have to, David.” Becky’s face was a panicked mask. Her cheeks were red even though her lips had turned pale. Tears balanced on her lower eyelids. “I cannot go to jail for you. I don’t mind helping, but I just can’t.” She started walking toward the door.
David launched himself from the sofa to get between her and the door. “Please don’t. Please just give me a chance.”
“To do what? You can’t run from here, David. You know, we have laws for a reason. Maybe if you just—”
The phone chirped again.
“God damn it,” she said. She pushed the connect button while she undid the bolt on the door. “What?”
“Don’t open the door,” a woman’s voice said. “No matter what you do, don’t—”
It was too late. The instant the knob turned, the door exploded open. It hit Becky hard in the face, sending her tumbling to the floor.
David recognized these men the instant he saw them. They were the men from the carousel last night.
Only now they carried guns.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
All semblance of fatigue evaporated when Jonathan’s feet hit the eleventh-floor landing and it was time to do business. He never looked behind as he shouldered open the stairwell door and stepped into the minimally carpeted hallway. One stride in, he heard someone bellowing a command to open the door.
“Step it up, Big Guy. This thing’s going down now.”
Boxers didn’t answer, and he didn’t need to. An impending fight was the perfect Boxers bait.
Tactical options spun through Jonathan’s mind as he quick-walked around the corner to the right, toward the source of the shouting and pounding. He wanted to avoid firearms because of the population density. An errant bullet fired in this cheap construction could travel through walls from the front of the building to the rear until it hit either a structural member or somebody’s body. Plus guns made a lot of noise and raised a lot of attention.
Not wanting to shoot brought with it a necessity not to draw fire from the opposing force. If he rushed the bad guys, they likely would panic and start firing. If he just strolled in, he might arrive too late. In this business, a microsecond too late meant forever as a corpse.
He slowed his gait, settled himself with a breath, and straightened the front of his suit, making sure that the coat was unbuttoned, but his .45 still concealed. He walked with purpose to the turn in the hall. He was a step or two away from the turn when he heard the stairwell door open and close, and Boxers’ heavy footsteps approaching from behind.
“I was gonna kick your ass if you started without me,” Big Guy said.
“Hey, if you stroll when others are running, you miss the good stuff.” Jonathan noted that for all the effort, Boxers wasn’t even breathing heavily. “Our guys are right up here.”
Scorpion and Big Guy turned the corner together, nearly in step. Jonathan saw the two guys in the suits braced against the wall on either side of a door six or seven apartments away. Both had pistols drawn — they looked like SIG Sauer P226s, but it was hard to tell from this distance — and they stood off to the side, as if preparing to dodge bullets fired through the door.
Boxers reached to his hip to draw his weapon, but Jonathan placed a hand on his forearm. Not yet.
The look he got in return was exactly the one he’d been expecting. Are you nuts?
It wasn’t the first time the question had been asked of Jonathan. Whoever these guys were, they hadn’t yet noticed their approach, and if they did and saw weapons—
The guys moved like lightning as they crashed the door open and slipped inside.
It was time to run.
They say everything happens in slow motion during moments of mortal terror, but for David Kirk, life became a freeze-frame, an impossibly distended moment in which the entire world reduced to the reality of the gun muzzle that seemed bigger than a railroad tunnel when it was pointed directly at his head.
He had some vague awareness that he was diving to the floor, but even as he fell, his eyes stayed focused on the big black circle that would launch the bullet that would kill him.
Becky had been in the midst of saying something about there being no escape, and the precise accuracy of the statement pissed him off. Maybe if she’d shown a little more positive—
More men charged the room, one of them a man like any other, though lean and powerful with piercing blue eyes that burned with anger. It was the other one, though, that triggered a new round of fear. The guy was huge. And he seemed to be enjoying himself.
In seconds, it was over.
Jonathan crossed the apartment’s threshold at a full run, and never slowed as he lowered his head and drove his shoulder hard into the middle of a gunman’s back. He heard something crack and worried for an instant that it might have been his own collarbone. As he saw the gunman’s weapon leave his hand and cartwheel through the air, he knew that he had earned them all a second or two — all the time necessary to settle what needed to be settled.
As he and his prey lunged forward toward the floor, Jonathan made an effort to drive the bad guy’s face into the edge of the coffee table, but they fell short, so he drove the face into the parquet floor. Teeth broke, blood spattered.
Jonathan used his driving momentum to roll to his feet, from which position he drove a savage kick to the gunman’s ear. The bad guy didn’t move.
Through his peripheral vision, Jonathan saw Boxers’ punch nearly rip the second would-be shooter’s head from his shoulders. The way the guy dropped, he might have been dead. Either way, the imminent threats had been neutralized.
“I’m clear,” Jonathan said, largely for Venice’s benefit on the far end of the radio.
“Clear,” Boxers echoed. Big Guy closed the apartment door.
Jonathan drew his .45 and pointed it at the chest of the man he assumed to be his Precious Cargo. “Are you David Kirk?” Behind him, Boxers drew down on the girl.
The kid threw his hands in the air. “Please don’t shoot me.”
“Please answer the question,” Jonathan countered. “Are you David Kirk?”
The kid’s face made snow look pink. “Y-yes. P-please don’t shoot.”
Without looking at the girl, Jonathan said, “And are you Becky Beckeman?”
She made a squeaking sound that sensible people would agree meant yes.
“Are either of you armed?” Jonathan asked.
“No,” David said, with such speed and emphasis that it had to be true.
“Becky, I need an answer from you, too.”
“No, of course not.” As if having a weapon at a moment like this would be a bad thing.