“Macintosh,” Javi yelled as he skidded to a stop at the bottom of the ramp. “Macintosh, stop. If you want to know what happened to your family—”
Maybe if Javi had said something else, it would have worked. If he’d told Macintosh his lost child was upstairs, it might have made a difference… or not.
Macintosh looked back once and then threw himself down and stretched his arm under a car. When he came up, he had a gun in his hand again and looked lost. His face was hollow and drawn under his matted hair.
“Get Galloway out of here.” Javi barked the order as he edged forward, gun raised.
The deputy with Galloway shoved her behind him and backed away from the scene.
“I tried,” Macintosh said. “I did everything they said. Except this. Everything. It never worked.”
Javi held his free hand out. “Macintosh, listen to me. You don’t want to do this. Give me the gun.”
Andrew blinked, and tears dripped down his face into his beard. “I don’t. I never did. All I wanted was my family. I told him that when he called, that I’d do anything to get them back, and he told me that he was glad—glad that I wanted something I could never get. I heard himshootthem, saw the bodies, smelled them. I know they’re gone, but when that man told me they were still alive… I believed him. So I told him I’d do anything, but I couldn’t. None of this was their fault. It was all mine.”
“We can help you, Andrew. We can find your children.”
“I never told anyone this. I was ashamed,” Andrew said placidly. “That man didn’t just want money. I could have gotten him more money. I could have begged, borrowed, or stolen it for my Jessie—myboys—but he wanted something else. He wanted me to kill myself. I said I’d do anything for my family, but I couldn’t do that. Not then.”
Andrew pushed the gun up under his chin and pulled the trigger in one smooth, confident motion. The sharp pop of the gunshot echoed off the concrete walls, and Andrew’s brains speckled the car behind him.
Javi gagged and took a step back. It had to have been instantaneous, but he could have sworn he saw a moment of relief bloom on Andrew’s face before his body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE COLORon the TV was off. Frome, posed in full uniform on the steps of the hospital, looked as though he’d just been spray-tanned. He mouthed something to the assembled press. The sound on the TV was turned too low to know what it was, but Cloister would put money on something reassuring and possibly a lie.
He reached up to switch it off—it was a replay anyhow since Frome had gone to the station an hour earlier—and turned back to the bed. Janet lay neat and tidy under the tightly tucked white sheets. There was a vase of flowers on the bedside table now—fat, force-grown roses that smelled thin and watery—and two untouched fashion magazines on the chair.
Professor Belford had gone to the hotel, the nurse had told him in a carefully neutral tone. She’d be back later. Janet hadn’t gotten better or worse. “Stable” was the best the nurse would offer, but that was apparently good enough for hope.
“I’m not even sure he’s your father,” Cloister said. His voice sounded too loud, too rough for the small, clean room. Too much time yelling at dogs and meth dealers, he supposed. But he recalled his mom’s rebuke to “remember your inside voice” from when he was a kid, so maybe it was just a Witte thing. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Or if you care. I just thought someone should tell you. No one’s seriously hurt. Except him, I guess. Tancredi was the worst, but the doctors don’t think there will be any nerve damage.”
Probably. If she was lucky.
Cloister paused and shifted uncomfortably in place as he tried not to think about the doctor’s careful equivocation. His boots squeaked on the polished floor. On the bed Janet didn’t give any sign she’d heard him, not even an eyelash flicker.
“You should probably know too that the working theory is that Andrew Macintosh was the one who attacked you the other night,” he said. “I don’t think he did, but it’s tidy, and I can’t prove otherwise yet. The gunshot that provided the distraction that let him get away was from one of our guns. Maybe someone saw that Macintosh had a knife, or they just twitched at the wrong moment, but no one has come forward to take the blame, so we don’t know. It would be a lot easier if you’d wake up and tell us what actually happened to you.”
He knew she wouldn’t. People didn’t come out of comas to be helpful. He still caught himself as he held his breath to give her the chance.
Nothing.
“That’s okay,” Cloister said. “We can do it the hard way.”
He left the light on as he walked out. If she did wake up, it shouldn’t be to the dark.
BOURNEVILLE HALFcrawled out of the window of the truck to greet him when he crossed the parking lot. She could tell that everyone was on edge, even if she didn’t know why. Cloister let her lick his face with her paws braced on his shoulders as he scratched under her cheeks and rubbed her ears.
“I know,” he said as he fussed over her. “But Javi’s fine. Tancredi will be.”
She snorted her opinion of that in his ear. Cloister supposed she could tell he didn’t entirely believe it. He turned his face into her neck, her thick fur rough against his face, and exhaled all the tension on a long, ragged sigh.
It wouldn’t have made a difference if he’d been there. They wouldn’t have sent him and Bon in to an established hostage situation. There was too much of a chance it would make the attacker panic. He would probably have been up at the cars asking the general public and the press to stay back from the perimeter while it went down.
Probably.
But that didn’t make him feel any better.
