When the door opened, Franco said, “Did you take a leak?”
“Of course I did,” Kevin said, too defensively.
“Then flush the toilet, for God’s sake.”
With horror, Kevin realized he had completely forgotten about the facade. As he walked quickly to the toilet and pushed the handle, he told himself he couldn’t afford any more mistakes like that.
“Happy?” he said.
“Come on,” Franco said, pushing Kevin into the hall.
Kevin tried to walk casually down the hall, but the urge to run was strong. He had only a minute at most. At last, he opened the door to the room, slowly, to avoid a fast change in air pressure that might set off the explosive. Kevin cast his eyes downward, peering to see the dark spots on the floor. If he stepped on one of the circles, he might lose a foot. He turned without moving farther into the room and closed the door behind him. Franco gave him a funny look, probably wondering why he was doing it instead of letting Franco, but Kevin didn’t have time to worry about it.
When the door was closed, he heard the rattling of the lock. When it was silent again, Kevin took the super glue from beneath the sink and squirted it into the lock mechanism.
He went over to the chair and lifted it, carrying it to the door, always keeping an eye on the two purple dots on the floor. With the top of the chair wedged under the door knob, he placed it gently on the floor and shoved until it was held tightly in position. He glanced at the watch they’d let him keep. He only had seconds left. He needed to get to the window.
Hand towel and rag in hand, he moved the desk so that the top was even with the window. Luckily, the desk was light enough so that he could lift it without making noise. He sat up on the desk with his feet toward the window. Kevin waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. A loud bang echoed through the hallway, followed almost instantly by another, larger explosion. The concoction had worked exactly as planned. The mixture of ammonia and bleach had blown the bottle apart as it formed gas, setting off the ammonia triiodide contact explosive poured onto the shelf next to it, igniting the can of flammable oil and bursting the bottle of ammonia. If he was lucky, a fire was now raging in the bathroom.
His answer came a second later as an ear-splitting alarm sounded throughout the house, no doubt set off by the smoke detector. He heard the guard outside yell “Motherfuck!” and then race down the hall. Now was his chance. He hoped they were too distracted by the fire to worry about him.
Kevin held on to the desk and kicked at the window with both his feet. The glass shattered. Normally it would have set off the alarm, but the fire had already started it. As he had hoped, the fire alarm and the burglar alarm were one and the same.
The cross struts of the window splintered but held and the glass shards were caught by the screen on the other side. More shouting came from down the hall, but it didn’t sound like it was aimed at him. He concentrated on the struts, kicking them until they separated from the sturdy window pane. He cleaned the remaining shards sticking out of the window with the hand towel and rag wrapped around his hand.
With the glass shards out of the way, Kevin raised the screen and looked over the edge. No guards were in sight. Twenty feet below the window was a hedge about four feet high. To his left was the top of the portico covering the front porch. He had hoped there would be a car that he could take, but a quick scan of the parking lot to his far right revealed it to be empty.
Another shout down the hall. This time Kevin heard his name. Footsteps pounded toward the room. He began to climb out feet first.
The lock rattled.
“Hurry up!” someone said.
“I’m trying!” yelled Franco.
“Open it!”
“It won’t work!” said Franco. “That fucker did something to the lock.”
Kevin’s legs dangled over the side. He slid his waist across the edge and supported himself with his elbows.
“Forget about the goddam lock!”
The door shuddered as someone kicked it. It held, but several more would cave in the flimsy wood.
He had to jump now. As Kevin pushed off, another kick caused part of the frame to crack. Kevin saw the chair slide three inches toward the purple spots. Then he was freefalling.
If he hit a sturdy branch in the hedge, his ankle could be easily twisted or he could even break his leg. His butt came in contact with the hedge first, but the myriad tiny branches brought him to a gentle stop. The hedge’s sharp needles scraped him in dozens of places, but otherwise he was fine.
Above him, a third kick impacted the door in the room, immediately followed by twin explosions as the chair legs hit the ammonia triiodide.
“Holy shit!” Franco yelled. “He’s got a gun!”
Shots blasted into the room.
“What the hell are you doing?” screamed the other voice. “We can’t kill him!”
Their voices lowered, becoming inaudible to Kevin. He didn’t care. In a few seconds they’d realize that he was no longer in the room. He had to get to the forest before that happened.
He rolled off the top of the hedge and crouched on the ground with his back to the front porch, ready to sprint.
A chill gripped his stomach as he heard a voice behind him say, “Very good, Mr. Hamilton.”
He slowly turned to see David Lobec and Clayton Tarnwell standing on the porch twenty feet from him. They must have been there all along, shielded from the second story window by the portico. Kevin didn’t even consider running. Lobec had a pistol trained on him.
“Even in this light, Mr. Hamilton, I can assure you that I could hit you from this range. I can tell you from experience that getting shot in the leg is not pleasant.” He threw a sideways glance at Tarnwell. “Didn’t I tell you this would be amusing?”
CHAPTER 34
Franco, still huffing from his mad dash down the stairs, led Kevin up the front steps until he was facing Lobec and Tarnwell.
“When did you know?” Kevin asked as he was patted down by Franco.
Lobec smiled, and Kevin knew that he’d been set up.
“From the beginning?”
“He’s clean,” Franco said.
“I know that you are a resourceful man, Mr. Hamilton. You are not the type to sit back and wait for something to happen.”
Kevin looked at Tarnwell. “And the chemicals?”
Tarnwell nodded. “When you stopped up your toilet, David told me about this idea he had. I couldn’t resist. Being a chemist myself, I knew a few mixtures you could brew from what we left up there. You seem to know some yourself.”
“The key,” Lobec said, “was not to make the availability of the chemicals too obvious. We had to make reasonably sure you would find them while not tipping our hand.”
“And you just waited here until I climbed out the window.”
“We had arranged for all paths to lead you to this point, but we did not know exactly how you would get here. That would have spoiled the surprise.”
“We surely didn’t want that,” Tarnwell said.
At least Kevin had the satisfaction of causing serious damage to the expensive mansion. “Did you want me to destroy two rooms in your house?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m having the entire second floor refurbished next month. I just bought this place, and it doesn’t suit me. You could consider tonight the groundbreaking ceremony.”
“Glad I could help,” Kevin sneered.
“Now, Mr. Hamilton,” Lobec said, “as I stated earlier, any attempt on your part to escape would force me to have you restrained. Thankfully, you did not disappoint us.”