Elaine Rocka glared at them when Chloe had suggested she undergo a few sessions herself, saying her only regret was that the ghost hadn’t castrated Scheafer before killing him. She’d turned her eyes cuttingly on Bear, Roger and Bwana when she heard their attempts to suppress their laughter and had smiled softly when they couldn’t hold back their guffaws.
The cops had matched the bloodstains in the abandoned site where Chloe and Tony had been taken, to Shattner, and had recovered Shattner’s body from the river.
Elaine Rocka didn’t want the children to witness Shattner’s burial. Broker had agreed with her.
He had hatched a plan that would bestow honor on Shattner.
Broker, Bear and Chloe spent an hour with Commissioner Forzini, with Broker and Chloe articulating their plea while Bear sat silent, glowering at him. Forzini heard them out patiently, without interrupting, and when Chloe had finished, he turned over a sheet of paper on his desk and presented it to them.
‘I authorized it last night,’ he said simply. They left, embarrassed.
‘You still dislike cops?’ Chloe teased Broker when they left.
‘Well, maybe not all,’ he reluctantly agreed.
They hadn’t yet told the kids the role their dad had played.
Elaine Rocka agreed with them that a formal occasion had to be made of it, one that stayed in their minds forever, a memory that would fill them with sunbursts of joy and pride whenever they remembered their father.
Clare avoided meeting them, knowing what they were after, ignoring Broker’s calls and messages; she finally gave in when he showed no signs of letting up even after a month.
They stood in her anonymous office, ignoring her gesture at the seats before them. ‘Who is he?’ Broker repeated again.
‘I didn’t send anyone to shadow you or protect your backs,’ she said truthfully.
They digested that, and Broker saw through it first. ‘That’s not what we asked. You know who he is. We too deserve to know who this ghost is.’
‘I don’t know who he is,’ she replied, the faintest emphasis on the word.
Chloe pounced on it immediately.
‘You can make a good guess, though, right?’
Clare had her game face on, which cracked finally when Bwana said with a straight face, ‘We might have a job for him.’
She laughed and sat smiling at them, a strange expression on her face, letting the silence build, looking at Broker and Bwana the longest. Something in her gaze and posture sparked the air, electrons and protons buzzed furiously and silently.
‘You know him well. Very well.’
Broker stared at her dumbly, then at Bwana, seeing the same uncomprehending expression in the other’s eyes, and felt the flutter deep in his belly, a lightness in his head. He shook his head as if awaking from a deep sleep, looked across at Bear, Chloe and Roger, and saw the same disbelief warring with lurking hope.
‘Zeb?’ he whispered, forcing the words through a dry throat.
‘But how?’ he asked stupidly as her smile grew broader.
He flashed back to the night they’d mounted the rescue.
Carsten Holt was holed up in a three-storied house in New Jersey, with five of his hoods and the two hostages.
Two hoods were patrolling the top floor; two, the ground floor; and Holt and another hitter were watching over Lauren and Rory Balthazar on the middle floor.
Broker and Zeb decided to counterattack at night, just the two of them against six hard mercenaries.
Zeb would enter the house through a skylight in the roof, take out the two on the top floor, and go down to the middle floor, where he’d deal with Holt and rescue the hostages. Broker would take out the rest of the hoods using a long gun from across the street in front of the house. The sentries passed in front of windows, frequently — hence the long gun.
The plan worked perfectly. Up to a point.
Zeb dispatched the two hoods at the top and crept down to the hostage room.
He waited for the sentry’s blind spot, and when it arrived, entered the hostage room, his Glock high and ready — and got the drop on Holt.
The plan fell apart then.
A door behind Holt opened, and a seventh gunman entered the room, firing at Zeb. He had to compensate for Zeb’s position, who had crouched, and his first shot missed.
Zeb’s didn’t. Zeb double-tapped him, and his third shot creased Holt’s right shoulder.
Holt dropped his gun, but his hand blurred behind his back and a knife split the air and buried deep in Zeb’s shoulder, his gun clattering to the floor.
Holt charged at Zeb with another blade, Zeb parried, attacked and in the thrust and counterthrust, he dislocated Holt’s right knee with a spinning kick.
Holt fell down heavily, but reached behind to grab a chair and hurled it at Zeb.
Zeb ducked, and as he was straightening, a steel band encircled his neck and a knife pierced deep in his ribs, searching for his heart.
The second hitter on the middle floor, who’d eluded Broker’s sniping gun.
His brain went into autopilot, shutting down all nonessential systems in his body. He tried to pull away the hand choking him, but it was iron, cutting off his air, the knife going even deeper.
Through the fog creeping in his mind, he heard Holt laughing as he lay a few feet away.
Rage. Zeb welcomed it, stoked it, grew it into a ball of fire and hurled it deep inside, spreading through his body, reaching his extremities.
He moved toward his assailant, pushing the knife deeper into himself, trapping the assailant’s knife hand between their bodies.
He twisted and grasped the knife hand with his right, squeezed, that ball of fire swirling in his wrist, squeezed and squeezed till the assailant cried hoarsely as his wrist snapped.
Zeb twisted to his left, sought and found the assailant’s throat with his right hand and hurled himself back, dragging the assailant over and on top of him, his hand a vice crushing the assailant’s neck. He ignored the hood’s blows on his body, blanked out the knife going deeper in him during the struggle. Everything dissolved but for his hand around the hood’s throat, squeezing till the hood’s thrashing slowed and then stopped.
Holt lurched to his feet, picked up Zeb’s gun and stood swaying over Zeb, watching him, listening to his harsh breathing.
‘I wonder if you’re worth a bullet now. Looks like you’ll be at the pearly gates soon enough.’
Zeb whispered something.
‘Praying? Shall I administer the last rites?’ He lifted Zeb’s gun.
The shot was muffled and could’ve been mistaken for a car misfiring. Except that the shot was in the room, and there was no mistaking the red, ugly hole in Holt’s body.
Holt looked down stupidly, and Zeb fired again from beneath the dead gunman lying across him, through the gunman’s body, using the gunman’s waist gun that he had grabbed when falling backward.
His exertion had cost him all his life force, though; Broker saw it the moment he entered the hostage room and met Zeb’s eyes. He saw the knowledge in Zeb’s eyes.
He gripped Zeb’s hand, not letting go even when the medics came, working desperately to revive him, ignoring Broker’s screams and curses as he exhorted them to work harder, to do something, do anything to bring his friend back.