Page 30 of Wrong Way

She turned and looked at him across the length of the building. He had his weapon up now and there was nowhere left for her to go. The entrance she had come through was behind him. The loading bay door she had hoped to use for her escape wasn't moving. The wall to her left was solid brick with no openings and the steel racks along the right side of the floor dead-ended at the building's corner.

She was cornered and she knew it. But her expression didn’t change at all.

Hahn slowed to a walk when he was thirty feet away, his weapon at center mass, his breathing still ragged from the run and the residual effects of the stun gun. His neck throbbed with a deep, bone-level ache that ran up into his jaw and down into his shoulder. He was going to feel that for days.

"Get on the ground," he said, drawing his Glock. "Hands behind your head."

She looked at him for a long moment, then at the door that hadn't opened, then back at him. Whatever calculation she had been running, she had reached the end of it. She lowered herself to the concrete floor and laced her fingers behind her head. She did it calmly, as if she honestly didn’t give a damn what happened to her. There was a coldness in her stare that made him uneasy.

Hahn kept his weapon on her with his right hand and reached into his jacket for his phone with his left. His hands had mostly stopped shaking but pulling up the Portsmouth PD dispatch number was still very difficult.

The dispatcher answered on the second ring and Hahn explained the situation. He felt in his bones that this was a big win…that Parsons was indeed one of Kane’s little minions. But as he relayed the information, that cold stare from Parsons kept boring into him and he wondered if he was missing something…if somehow, his so-called victory could also turn out to be a mistake.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The dinner trash was still on the conference room table when Miles called the number to Harold Gallagher’s home. Styrofoam containers, crumpled napkins, and mostly empty soda cups sat in the middle of it all in an accidental cluster near the center. Nobody had bothered to clear it in the excitement of this latest break. Miles set his phone face-up in the middle of the mess, placing it on speaker mode.

Kowalski stood with his arms crossed near the door, watching. Vic sat across from Miles with her laptop open to Owen Gallagher's DMV record, the photo pulled up small in the corner of the screen. She absently reached out for what remained of her soda and sipped from the straw.

The line rang four times before it was answered. The voice that greeted them was male, flat and slightly wary. It was the tone of a man who had picked up a number he didn't recognize.

“Hello?”

"Is this Harold Gallagher?" Miles said.

"Yes. Who's this?"

"My name is Miles Sterling. I'm a special agent with the FBI, working out of Austin on a case. I'm calling about your son, Owen. I want to assure you that he's not in any trouble, and we're not calling to alarm you. We just have a few questions we're hoping you can help us with."

There was a silence on the other end that lasted long enough to be uncomfortable. "What kind of questions? If he’s in trouble and in no harm, why the call?"

“We’re putting some pieces together for an active case. And if you could answer just a few questions for us, it would help tremendously.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said doubtfully. “What do you need?”

"When did you last have contact with Owen?" Miles asked

"Months ago. Why? What's he done?"

"Maybe nothing, sir. Like I said, right now…we’re just asking questions. Have you spoken with him recently? Phone calls, texts, anything like that?"

"No." The word was short and flat. "He doesn't reach out. I don't push it."

Vic leaned slightly forward. "Mr. Gallagher, this is Agent Sterling’s partner, Agent Stone. Can you tell us a little about Owen? What he's been like in recent years?"

There was another silence and this one felt heavy. When Harold Gallagher spoke again, his voice had taken on a different register, something lower and more contained. To Miles, it sounded as if he were choosing each word with deliberate effort. "He changed. After Rachel. I assume you know about her?”

“Yes, sir,” Miles said.

“Well, after she died, he became impossible to be around. He was just angry at everything, shutting everyone out. I tried to maintain a relationship with him, but he didn't want it. He blamed me. He blamed his mother, and she wasn’t even here. She passed away about ten years ago. He blamed anyone he could blame."

"What did he blame you for?" Vic said.

"For not stopping it." Gallagher's voice went tight. "As if I could have stopped it. As if any of us knew. She hid how bad it was. She was good at that. I’m ashamed to say I never had any idea she was struggling and…well, I’ll never know if I could have made any difference."

"I understand," Vic said. "I'm sorry."

"What's he done?" Gallagher said again. He wasn’t asking out of concern, Miles noticed. The question had an edge to it, the tone of a man who had been braced for bad news about his son for long enough that the bracing had become permanent.