The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(132)

Conway moved Cameron forward with the muzzle of his gun against his temple and guided him toward the three men. The man in the suit approached them, and Madison steadied herself. He pulled off Cameron’s blindfold. Conway’s gun pressed against his skin, and Madison hoped Cameron wouldn’t do something idiotic because he thought he had nothing to lose.

Maybe he was strong enough in body and mind to stay still and bear it, strong enough to look Suit in the eye and not react. Cameron looked pale and weak, but he didn’t so much as blink, and for a surreal moment Madison felt proud to know him. Suit examined him and looked pleased with his condition. He replaced the blindfold.

Madison felt the adrenaline tremble through her arms and legs. By now Andrews should have had enough time to get into place. She slid out from behind the bushes, and the van gave her ten strides’ worth of cover. They didn’t see her as she slipped alongside the vehicle, heart slamming in her chest, stopped just before the driver’s window, and peeked through it and through the windshield, the metal of the bodywork cold against her skin.

Suit lifted the cell phone to his ear, and she made her move.

A shot in the air from the Glock .40 exploded like cannon fire in the open field, and Madison was out from behind the van.

“Down on the ground! Down on the ground! Police!”

Heads spinning toward her and Cameron recognizing her voice. Conway turning his body around fast and putting Cameron between them. One guard twisting to lift the MAC-10 and a shot cracking from the trees hitting him as if he was shoved hard in the back, and he was buckling forward. The other guard backing into the tail of the plane, his gun muzzle coming up, and Madison shooting him twice in the chest. The man sliding backward against the tail and Madison already swinging back. Shots fired from the plane doors shattering the windshield by her side, a tire bursting at the rear of the van, and her cheekbone stinging as she pulled back behind cover. Three quick rounds blasting from the trees toward the plane door, and Conway was on the ground, holding Cameron tightly, putting two rounds into the side of the van and two toward the trees. A bullet grazed Conway’s neck, another hit him in the back, and, behind him, the man in the suit lowered his revolver and crawled to get to Cameron, blindfolded and bound on the ground. The engine of the plane came to life, with Madison shouting above the racket, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Ears ringing, the air around her thick with cordite, she tried to catch her breath.

The man in the suit stood and dragged Cameron up with him, using his body as a shield between himself and Madison and the sniper. Conway was facedown and bleeding on the ground. Madison wanted to step over and kick the gun away from his hand, but she was locked on the man in the suit.

“Thanks for this—couldn’t have worked it out better myself,” the man said, and he started toward the plane’s door, pulling Cameron backward.

“No,” Madison said.

“Shoot him,” Cameron said. “Just shoot him.”

“Come on!” someone hollered from inside the plane.

“Shoot him,” Cameron said.

The man was calm: his soldiers might be lying dead a few feet away, but this was a much better outcome, since no money had changed hands.

“We’re leaving,” he said, and Madison knew it would be the last voice Cameron was ever going to hear if she didn’t do the right thing, strapped to a chair or hanging from a ceiling hook somewhere in a locked room. The voice that tells you it’s almost over but not quite.

Madison’s vision had shrunk to her two-handed grip, three dots aligned in the sights. “I can’t let you leave.”

“Yes, you can,” the man said, his revolver hard against Cameron’s temple.

Madison tried to find in herself the last shreds of stillness. The woods creaked around them, and a puff of breeze soothed her burning cheek.

All the time she would ever have was right now. It wasn’t about gunmetal; it never is. She was frayed with exhaustion and dread, and sanity seemed a lifetime away. It always comes down to the same question, over and over.

The man lifted his chin, a ferrety version of a human being, and narrowed his eyes for effect. “Time to fly.” There was a long trail of horror behind those words, years of basements and deals and prisoners begging to die.

Madison drained her voice of all that was good. “Let him go,” she said.

She sought and found the still core she needed and looked the man in the eye.

How far are you prepared to go?

Her voice cracked. “Do you trust me?” shesaid, and in her mind she started the Fibonacci sequence. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 . . .