B007GFGTIY EBOK (12 page)

Amateur.

He pressed on the doorbell again and didn’t take his thumb off the button. The bell chime ran through its tune only to repeat it again and again. After its fifth cycle, the chime sounded like it was in pain.

“Mr. Bellis, please open the door. Don’t make me break it in.”

Santiago heard shuffling from inside. He stepped to one side of the door. If Bellis had dug himself in with a weapon, he didn’t want to be in the line of fire. He unsnapped the clasp on his holster.

Damn it. He should have checked to see if Bellis was a licensed holder. He waited for the door to open.

It opened as far as the security chain allowed. A woman peered at him through the narrow gap.

“Mrs. Bellis?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Bellis, could you let me in? I need to speak to your husband.”

“He’s not here.”

“I know he’s here. His car’s here, Mrs. Bellis.”

“He doesn’t want to speak to you.”

“Mrs. Bellis, your husband doesn’t have a choice. I need to speak to him and it has to be now. This is official business.”

The guy was hiding out. Why? Had Hayden been right about Bellis? Santiago hoped to God Hayden was wrong. A flutter of nerves crept into him. He couldn’t let it show and he put on his game face for Mrs. Bellis.

“Mrs. Bellis, I need to come in,” he said after she made no move to open the door.

She thought long and hard before nodding.

An explosion made Santiago and Mrs. Bellis jump, bringing an end to his speculation. He recognized the noise as a shotgun blast.

“Oh my God, Trevor!” Mrs. Bellis said in a whisper.

“Mrs. Bellis, let me in now.”

Cracks appeared in her fragile shell. Tremors set in and the tears flowed.

“Mrs. Bellis.”

But she was lost in a nightmare.

“Stand back from the door, ma’am. I’m coming in.”

The woman disappeared from sight and he gave her a couple of seconds to get out of the way for good measure. He slammed a well-placed heel on the door, just below the handle. The door went flying inward. He rushed into the entrance hall and found Mrs. Bellis transfixed with her hands to her mouth, staring at the staircase.

“Is he up there?”

Mrs. Bellis said nothing.

Santiago knew it was pointless and left her to her fears. He called for backup with the express instructions that all units were to come in silent and to approach only on his command. He didn’t want to escalate the fear level. He would have liked Mrs. Bellis to help him. A familiar voice might pacify Bellis. Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen. He’d have to make do until backup arrived.

He bounded up the stairs two at a time and stopped when he reached the landing. The house was deep and a narrow hallway stretched out in front of him. Six closed doors faced him—three to his right, two to his left and one at the end of the narrow corridor. It was Russian roulette with doors, and one room was loaded with an armed and desperate man.

The shotgun blast could mean this confrontation was over, but Santiago knew better than to make any assumptions. Bellis wouldn’t be the first desperate man to lure a cop in with a dummy shot. Santiago put his faith in physical evidence. If he couldn’t touch or see it, he didn’t believe it. Even if Bellis had shot himself, he might still be alive and want to take someone with him. No, if Santiago expected to take his wife out to dinner tonight, he couldn’t believe anything until he saw it with his own two eyes.

He unholstered his weapon and aimed down the corridor. He shifted to a position that took him out of the direct line of fire of any door.

“Mr. Bellis, it’s Detective Santiago. I need you to come out with your hands up. Can you do that?”

He got no answer beyond Mrs. Bellis’s sobs. He repeated his request and still got no reply.

Life is never easy
.

He came out of his cover and went to the closest doorway to his right. He gripped the doorknob and pressed his automatic against the door. He did his best to keep his body flat against the wall, but if Bellis was listening for him to open the door from another room, he could take him out. The sweat on Santiago’s palms made the doorknob slippery in his grasp, but it was nothing compared to the sweat trickling down his forehead. He didn’t dare wipe it away, not until he cleared the room.

He took a deep breath and released it, then took a second breath and held it. Slowly exhaling, he mumbled under his breath, “One, two, three.” In a single, fluid action, he twisted the knob and threw the door back, sending it crashing into the wall. He dropped to a shooter’s stance, ready to return fire.

Nothing happened. The door swung open on a guest bathroom. He ventured inside and cleared the room.

“One down, five to go,” he murmured. If Bellis didn’t get him, the stress would.

This business was far too hot for his sport jacket. He slipped it off and the cool of the house chilled the sweat on his back. It almost felt like bliss.

He hung the jacket over the bathtub and edged over to the door opposite the bathroom. As before, he prepared himself and flung it back.

Nothing.

He knew where this was leading.

Systematically, he worked his way down the corridor, going from door to door. He flung back the doors on the third, fourth, and fifth rooms without finding Bellis inside. This should have been comforting. None of the first five rooms contained a crazed gunman. But it was only putting off the inevitable. One of them had to. And it had to be the last.

He should have known the room at the end of the corridor was going to be the one Bellis was hiding in. It was the room overlooking the bay. It would be a favorite room. People liked the familiar. The comfortable.

The last door came with an added problem. The corridor wasn’t much wider than the doorway. It didn’t give Santiago any cover to hide himself. He couldn’t rely on drywall and insulation to protect him. He didn’t even have the luxury of an open doorway nearby to dive into for cover. If Bellis opened fire, he was taking it in the face.

Backup would feel real nice about now.

He could finesse the situation. His idea wasn’t great, but it might be enough.

Santiago repeated his breathing exercise while gripping the doorknob. He flung the door open and immediately threw himself onto the ground in the vain hope of avoiding a shotgun blast.

Santiago aimed his pistol at Bellis, but he needn’t have bothered. The CEO was in the room—in body, but not in spirit.

Bellis sat at his desk, kitty-corner to the picture window that ran the width of the house. What remained of his head lolled back. The shocked look draped across his face made him look even more gaunt than normal. His features screamed that he knew what he was doing, but wasn’t prepared for the pain.

Trevor Bellis had placed a double-barreled shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. Blood, bone, and brain matter covered the study walls. Buckshot had embedded itself into some of the volumes on the bookshelf. The shotgun lay at his feet.

Santiago stood up. He fought his gag reflex when he got his second view of the dead man. He closed the door for Mrs. Bellis’s sake, went to the window, and swung open the door leading onto the deck. He wanted to wash the stink of cordite and blood out of the air. He stepped onto the deck and surveyed the boats on the bay and tourists lining the streets in Sausalito on a glorious Saturday afternoon. What would make a guy give up on all this?

Santiago returned to the room. He didn’t want to go near Bellis’s corpse, but he needed to see the blood-speckled handwritten note in front of the CEO.

He developed tunnel vision. He saw only the note and not the gaping hole in the top of Bellis’s head. With a handkerchief, he picked up the note, then turned his back on the body.

“Penny, I’m sorry. Please forgive me for what I’ve done, but I can’t live with the consequences of my actions. I love you more than I can express. Love, Trevor.”

His cell burst into life. Santiago answered it on the deck. “Rice, get over to Bellis’s house, now. Is Duke with you?”

“Yes.”

“Get rid of him. Tell him I want to see him tomorrow in my office, at his convenience. I think we’ve got our arsonist.”

B
eckerman called before coming up to Lockhart’s San Francisco condo. Lockhart left the door open for Beckerman to let himself in. They should have met in their office, but this was a cause for celebration and Lockhart preferred to celebrate in nicer surroundings.

Lockhart’s condo was for entertaining clients. He used the place to put stars in the eyes of people he wanted to use. A few times, he’d used it to trap people when money wasn’t enough of a temptation. The bedrooms had caught more than a few people doing things they wouldn’t want the world to know about.

His wife, Laura, knew about the condo, but also knew well enough never to come here. As long as she had the house in Half Moon Bay and the beach house in Hawaii, she forgot the condo existed.

The front door closed with a snap, and Lockhart met Beckerman in the foyer. Beckerman was in disguise, of sorts. Casually dressed in jeans and an expensive sport jacket, he looked like the kind of guy who would visit a person like Lockhart. No one would pay him any mind.

Lockhart didn’t have to ask if Beckerman had been successful. He was carrying a plastic drawing tube over his shoulder and Lockhart had heard about the catastrophic fire on the lunchtime news.

“You did well.”

Beckerman’s expression showed little satisfaction. Something was clearly eating him. Lockhart waited for his enforcer to get it off his chest.

“The body count is getting high,” Beckerman said.

Lockhart tensed. He had seen this coming. Beckerman was a trained killer, but he wasn’t a machine. He’d killed eleven people this morning and six more in the previous two weeks. It was bound to have an effect. Still, Lockhart could do without his crisis of faith. “Is that a problem?”

“No. All deaths so far have been necessary kills.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“We knew people would die but not this many.”

“That’s not true. Your contingency plan included a scorched-earth policy if certain situations arose, and they did. No one’s death has been authorized on a whim.”

The fire was regrettable, but unavoidable. It was Chaudhary’s fault. No one was supposed to die at MDE. It wasn’t necessary. They didn’t know what they were working on, and it was only one corner of the big picture. But Chaudhary had seen more than he should have and guessed the rest. Lockhart eliminated Chaudhary, but he’d been too late. Chaudhary had gone viral, infecting Shane Fallon. There was only one remedy for Fallon after that. It wasn’t until Fallon’s death that it became obvious that all of them had to die. A piecemeal approach would have been nice but it risked too many others finding out. It was better to stamp out the virus. The fire would draw attention. Fingers would be pointed—but at whom? No one was left to point fingers at. After a shaky couple of weeks, everything was back on track.

“Bellis is dead,” Beckerman said.

“I know. It just made the news. It’s for the best. He was becoming a liability.”

Bellis’s suicide hadn’t surprised him. Not after their dinner meeting the night before. Lockhart had made a real date of it. He’d wined and dined Bellis at an exclusive restaurant in the city, then taken him back to his condo and hit him with the project’s true aims. It really was like a date. He’d bought his date dinner and he expected him to make good on his side of the arrangement. Except after Lockhart explained what Bellis’s firm was designing, Bellis didn’t like his side of the arrangement. As the realization sank in, he broke apart at the seams.

“Don’t look so glum, Trevor. Think about the money you’ll be getting.”

“But it’s blood money.”

“There’s only one way of dealing with blood money and that’s to spend it. You buy a second home, a boat, a big car. Splash out on your wife and get her a diamond necklace or finance a mistress. You make it disappear by turning it into something else.”

But Bellis showed Lockhart he had been wrong about blood money. There was a second way of dealing with it. You let it taint you. You let every red-stained dollar bill eat you up until there was nothing left and the only way out was by eating a shotgun. That was Bellis’s method. It wasn’t his.

Lockhart wondered if Bellis had thought his suicide would halt the operation. It wouldn’t. Bellis had actually helped divert suspicion away from Lockhart. An entire building of people dies as the result of arson. The firm’s owner is found dead, killed by his own hand. It was a gift tailor-made for the police.

Lockhart watched Beckerman absorb his explanation. He didn’t like how this meeting had stalled on the condo’s threshold. It was time to bring Beckerman back on track. “Look, Maurice, you’ve only done what needed to be done. Now let’s see what we’ve got.”

He led Beckerman into the large living room and climbed the three steps to the marble floor leading out to the balcony. A view of the city’s skyline and bay filled the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Hayden Duke didn’t die in the fire,” Beckerman said. “He arrived late.”

Beckerman didn’t have to elucidate any further. Hayden should have died with the others in the fire, but fortune had smiled on him. The question now was whether to make Hayden part of a mop-up exercise.

“How much do he and Fallon’s sister know?” Lockhart asked.

“Little to nothing. They have suspicions, but nothing concrete.”

Lockhart mused. Hayden wasn’t as much of a problem as Fallon’s sister. Her death would set off alarm bells. She couldn’t die out in the open like her brother. She’d have to disappear. The world would have to believe she had started a new life somewhere. Hayden would make for a fitting partner to join her. While all that could be arranged, it would take time. It was something to have on the back burner.

“You’re sure they know nothing?”

Beckerman nodded.

“Then maintain surveillance on them. Let them be a test of our defenses. If they start to break through, then we’ll wrap them up.”

“We do have one other personnel problem,” Beckerman said. “I eliminated eleven people at MDE. Bellis’s HR records show the technical team consisted of twelve.”

Lockhart felt the fizz of irritation in the pit of his stomach. The operation was progressing well, but there seemed to be a never-ending string of complications. Chaudhary’s interference had jinxed affairs. Now he understood some of Beckerman’s melancholy. It seemed liked the killing would never end. “Who’s missing?”

“Malcolm Fuller.”

“Find him. I want a threat analysis.”

“Of course.”

Beckerman emptied out the drawing tube’s contents onto the glass dining table. Lockhart smoothed out the drawings with his hands and studied what lay before him. He pointed at the wet bar. “Fix yourself a drink, Maurice.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Typical of Beckerman, Lockhart thought: never off the clock.

He returned his focus to the drawings. The design was complete. Production could begin. A flush of success flowed into him but came to an abrupt halt. He pulled out a chair and dropped into it.

Production signified not only a new phase in the project’s completion but also a point of no return. At this very moment, he had the power to change events. Plans could be burned. Computer files deleted. And he could walk away. He’d piss off some powerful clients, but they knew the risk of failure associated with this project. They’d bark but they wouldn’t bite. They needed him too much. If he pushed forward, there would be no going back.

“We don’t have to do this,” Beckerman said.

Obviously, Beckerman had detected the somber mood that had descended over Lockhart. Lockhart wondered whether he had had the same thoughts. It would have worried him if he hadn’t. He didn’t want a thoughtless drone working for him.

“No, we started this and we’ll finish it.”

Lockhart expected resistance from Beckerman but didn’t get it. Instead he nodded his understanding.

Lockhart smiled. Beckerman, ever the loyal solider, he thought. The man would follow him through the gates of hell if he ordered it.

“I think you should go now. They’ll be here soon and I don’t want them seeing you. I’ll need you to watch my back at some point and I don’t want them recognizing you.”

Beckerman nodded and Lockhart saw him out. Lockhart dropped his smile as soon as he closed the door.

Loyalty. Beckerman understood it. Lockhart’s father did too, but he was a soldier just like Beckerman. Richard Lockhart had instilled the values of loyalty, honor, and sacrifice in his son. It was a shame others didn’t hold the same values he did. Lockhart’s father stuck to his beliefs even when those he served betrayed him.

Richard Lockhart had been a career soldier, making it to the rank of colonel. Even when he retired, he didn’t stop being a soldier. He ensured those who needed the means to defend themselves got what they needed. He never stepped outside government policy. He believed what they believed and played by their playbook. But not all policy is good policy, and when it doesn’t work, a scapegoat is needed. One was needed in Panama and Richard Lockhart stepped up. The United States labeled him a criminal and he stood like the loyal solider he was, and said he was guilty of crimes. He never mentioned that the Department of State had sent him there to make the deal. He died in federal prison eighteen months later, loyal to his last breath. The only people who knew the truth were Richard Lockhart’s direct superiors and his son.

Lockhart lost his belief in loyalty the day his father died in prison. He went over to the mantel and picked up the framed photo of his father. Richard Lockhart was a good man. A better man than his son. But Lockhart wouldn’t go down the way his father had. He placed the picture of his father next to the plans. Yes, he’d reached a turning point. A person with loyalty to his country would turn back. He was loyal to himself and others who were loyal to him, but he wouldn’t be turning back. He’d be pressing forward.

His cell phone rang. His visitors had arrived. Lockhart checked his watch. They were right on time.

“I’ll be right down.” He rode the elevator to the reception area and collected his clients. On the ride up, he said, “Good news, gentlemen. We can start manufacturing.”