Extreme Measures (18 page)

“So what do you say, Matt?” Stuart’s sneering question snapped Matt’s attention back to his face.

“I never liked you, Stuart. Or trusted you for that matter. So don’t think for one second I believe a word that comes out of your mouth, but I’ll play your game for now.”

“Agent.” The officer’s warning tone had Matt holding up one hand.

“I already know. Just continue searching the building and get the remaining occupants out.”

“No guns.” Stuart hadn’t taken a step forward, and he jutted his chin out with the challenge of his words.

Matt gave him the once over then lowered his weapon. “If you’d rather have an ass-kicking than a bullet, I’m all for that, too.” He jerked his head toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”

“Hey, what about me?” Chambers lumbered forward until an officer’s rifle poked him in the stomach. He glared at the intrusion. “I’m coming, too.”

Stuart lifted his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. “Sorry, Billy, but you’re not family.”

“What the hell? I didn’t come this far to go back to prison now.” Chambers tried moving, but the barrel of the rifle indented his gut further, forcing him to stop.

“If you’d prefer to leave here in a body bag, take another step,” the SWAT officer snapped. “I’m sure the warden at Attica could give a shit either way.”

Matt decided he liked that cop. “Take him out, guys, and by take him out, I mean escort him out of the building.”

Two of the team members chuckled, but all laughter stopped when Chambers swung his meaty hand, connecting with the side of the cop’s face. The snap echoed off the walls.

Matt gave Stuart a shove hard enough to plant him on his ass on the concrete floor and leveled his gun, but the rest of SWAT had already converged on the double-wide inmate, taking him down with grunts and curses.

Stuart took the opportunity to lunge, his arms going around Matt’s legs. The concrete loomed upwards, and Matt barely had a tenth of a second to twist so that only his shoulder connected with the unyielding surface.

Snatching his arms back, Stuart bounded to his feet and made a dash for the stairs. Matt saw the flash of a rifle and shouted, “Don’t shoot!” Back on his feet, he took the stairs two at a time, catching his ex-brother-in-law on the landing.

When Stuart whirled with his hand on the door knob, Matt stopped. “Guess you couldn’t wait for that ass-kicking, could you?” Every cell in his body hummed with anticipation, but he didn’t have time to do a proper job of beating Stuart to a bloody mess. God only knew what he’d done to Erin. At that moment, she could be dying.

He met Stuart’s gaze, saw the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “You weren’t really trying to escape.” When Stuart grinned, Matt’s hands clenched into fists. “Just a diversionary tactic, wasn’t it? Something to buy you a little more time until whatever you did to Erin took effect.”

Matt leaped, his forearm hitting Stuart across the throat as he took him to the corner. Eyes bulging, Stuart fought for breath.

“What have you done with Erin?”

Clawing against the arm obstructing his breathing, Stuart silently pleaded for release.

Matt eased the pressure marginally. The pounding of the blood in his ears made it difficult to hear. That, combined with his tenuous hold on self-control had him gritting his teeth, pushed to the edge of reason. “Where. Is. She?”

Stuart used the little oxygen provided to laugh. “Go ahead. Kill me. Come on. You know you want to. Oh, wait. You want to find Erin more.” His voice hardened. “Then we’re still playing by my rules, Mr. Agent Man. Now get the hell off me.”

No way was he taking this son-of-a-bitch back to Attica. Once Erin was safe, Matt had other plans for Stuart O’Malley, and he’d gladly hand over his badge afterwards.

Chapter Fourteen

Erin’s head bumped against the pipe in front of her. She’d had the key ring, had felt the coolness of the metal against her fingers. Then she’d lost the sensation in her hands, and the alarm had dropped with a quiet clatter to the floor. She might be able to reach it, but she couldn’t count on her hands working for her.

Maybe Stuart had been right. She was going to die here. Alone. Her body would be found within a few hours, but, by then, it would be too late. Too late for her to see Matt again. Too late to hear his voice, talk to him, hold him.

She cried quietly while her thoughts took her on a journey of their marriage, the first time they’d met—jogging in Central Park, and the last day she’d seen him in her attorney’s office. Mixed in among the memories were the good times—sleeping in late on the weekends, reading the paper in bed together, cooking dinner with each other, stopping in between trips to the refrigerator to kiss and laugh.

The bad times hadn’t really come until after Stuart had killed her parents. Sure, they’d fought before, but there’d never really been any lingering damage. Once Stuart had been arrested, Erin had lost all sense of reality, and instead of turning to Matt, she’d turned away from him, forgetting all those wonderful moments that had kept them married and happy.

Her chest tightened, and she tried to pull in a deep breath through her nose. But the oxygen seemed to be shrinking from the room. As she closed her eyes, she focused on Matt’s face and wondered if he would kill Stuart once they found her body.

Matt followed Stuart down a narrow passageway and around several corners, his gaze trained on his back, waiting for the escaped convict to make one wrong move. Matt had left his gun behind, but he didn’t need a weapon to snap the bastard’s neck.

Stuart paused and gave Matt a cheesy grin. He’d rubbed his hands along the walls and transferred the dirt to his face, giving him a grimy look that reminded Matt of old railroad workers. “Not too much further. Probably didn’t know this place is like a maze, huh?”

“Do I look like I care about that, Stuart?” Matt bit out each word. The tension had mounted within him, and his control slipped with each step. Knowing Erin might be around any corner was the only thing keeping Stuart alive.

With a shrug, Stuart turned back around. “You know this ain’t gonna end good, right?”

“That depends on whose point of view you’re in.” Matt didn’t see the loss of Stuart’s life as anything to get too worked up about. Might sound cold, but the bastard had brought nothing but trouble and pain to Erin. For that reason alone, Matt would be doing the world a service by taking him out.

“Didn’t remember you being such a smart-ass before.” Stuart made a noise that sounded like displeasure. “But one thing I did always like about you, and that was your love for my sister.”

“Don’t give me that line of bullshit, Stuart. You could care less about Erin.”

He stopped and turned again. “You didn’t let me finish. Your love for Erin is what I was counting on. See, love makes a man weak, makes him take his eyes off the bigger picture. Can even set him up for failure.”

Matt gave him a shove which caused Stuart to stumble. “Get your ass moving. If you stop again, you and I are going to have a problem.”

“Ain’t much you can do to me that God Himself ain’t already done.” Stuart resumed walking. “You’ll probably appreciate knowing I’m dying.”

“I don’t care enough about you to appreciate your death, Stuart. Once I find Erin and know she’s safe, you could drop dead at my feet, and I’d just step over you.”

The abrupt tightening of Stuart’s shoulders told Matt he’d sliced a nerve. “You’re a hateful son-of-a-bitch,” Stuart snarled back.

“I haven’t left a trail of bodies from New York to South Carolina. I think the general population would disagree with you.”

Stuart stopped again, and just as Matt took a step toward him, he lifted his hand and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Erin’s in there, and unless I miscalculated, she’s probably already too far gone for you to save her.”

Erin heard muffled voices, but she couldn’t raise her head, couldn’t speak. Were the people too far away? Had someone found her? She had to let them know she was alive, but the fuzziness inside her mind didn’t allow her to think, and her body refused to cooperate.

She managed to picture Matt’s face, saw his crooked smile, and the way his eyes warmed when they looked at her. With a low whisper, she mumbled his name. Masked by the shirt still in her mouth, the one word didn’t even sound intelligible.

Her body jerked, muscles spasming. In her mind, she saw Matt’s face again before the darkness that had been continually beckoning embraced her.

Running on instinct alone, Matt rammed into Stuart, taking him into the room where Erin was supposed to be. As they both crashed to the floor, he caught a glimpse of hands tied to a pipe, and his heart whispered his wife’s name.

Stuart grappled for the upper hand, his smiling face proving too much for Matt to tolerate. He popped his ex-brother-in-law with a right hook that had Stuart crying out from the pain. But all too soon, Stuart rebounded, rolling and scrambling to his feet in one awkward movement.

Blood dripped from his nose, but he didn’t bother to wipe it away. “You want to fight me or save your wife, Matt? You can’t do both.” Stuart lurched backwards.

Matt swung his gaze toward Erin’s slumped body. She hadn’t moved since they’d fallen into the room, and he couldn’t hear even the faintest hint of breath sounds. He didn’t want to think about the possibility she was too far gone for him to save.

Stuart took advantage of Matt’s distraction by stumbling towards the door, but instead of trying to escape through it, he pulled it shut then beat at the doorknob until Matt pulled him away.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Matt threw him to the ground and tried the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn, and his skin crawled. Stuart might not have planned this, but obviously prison had taught him to think fast on his feet.

Still lying on the concrete floor, Stuart began to chortle, the sound high-pitched, frenetic. “Bet you didn’t figure on dying right here with me and Erin, did you, Matt? I told you we were gonna have a family reunion. Guess you didn’t expect it to be in hell.”

Stuart took great pleasure watching Matt check the remainder of the room for any possible exit. He couldn’t contain his glee when his ex-brother-in-law finally realized they were trapped.

“Don’t worry, Matt. It’ll all be over soon.”

Matt came at him so fast he didn’t have time to pull away, snagging a handful of Stuart’s grimy t-shirt and yanking him forward until their noses were almost touching. “If you think I’m going to let my wife die today because of your twisted sense of equality, you left whatever brain cells you had back at Attica.”

“She’s probably already dead.” Stuart swiveled his head toward where his sister slumped. “It’s not anything you can fight. It’s hard when the enemy is invisible, isn’t it?”

Matt let him go, his face clearing.
Dammit.
He’d said too much. Matt had that look on his face, the one he’d seen many times before right before he solved an investigation.

“Invisible?” Circling the room, Matt looked up, his gaze sweeping from one end of the small room to the other.

“Just a figure of speech.” The attempt at distraction didn’t work.

“Now why don’t I believe that?”

No!
Matt couldn’t notice the vent. That wasn’t part of the plan. No one was supposed to leave here alive. A little panicked now, Stuart surged forward, planting himself squarely in front of Matt in a challenging manner.

Whatever step he took next would be a risk. Matt outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, most of that muscle. Stuart never figured he’d be able to best him in a fight, but a broken nose would be worth it if it meant salvaging his hastily formed plan.

Matt tried to side step him, but Stuart moved with him in an awkward tango. So Matt stopped moving, his eyes narrowing. “There’s something here you don’t want me to find, isn’t there?” His gaze lifted, trained just over Stuart’s right shoulder. “Something like a torn water heater vent?”

With a curse, Stuart planted his hands against Matt’s chest and shoved. “Give it up, Matt. I’m not letting you anywhere near that.” He only need a little time, and the only way he was going to be able to get it now was to fight for it.

“I was hoping you’d say that.” The gleam in Matt’s eyes told Stuart he was primed for a fight.

Stuart’s time in prison had honed his fighting skills, but most of that had been accompanied by a weapon of some sorts. Here, he was empty-handed, and he’d seen Matt’s hand-to-hand combat skills. The odds weren’t in his favor.

He slid a glance toward Erin, saw Matt follow his look. Then, with a shout of triumph, Stuart leaped across the distance. His hands curved around his sister’s neck, and he jerked his head up to send Matt a smug smile. “Now, if I was you, I’d back away from that water heater.”

Chapter Fifteen

Matt couldn’t take his eyes off Stuart’s hands around Erin’s neck, but he had to close that vent. His mind worked overtime, running through possible scenarios and quickly discarding each one.

Stuart wasn’t going to put the ace back up his sleeve, and brute force wouldn’t work. If Matt charged him, the dive could break Erin’s neck. And there was no way in hell he was taking the slightest chance with Erin’s life. Which left him with only one possible option.

“You know, Stuart, I find it hard to believe that you broke out of Attica just to kill Erin. You obviously had her before I found you. Yet, you didn’t kill her then.” Matt shook his head slowly, turning to give Stuart his full, undivided attention. “No, there has to be something more.”

“There’s nothing more.” Stuart thrust out his chin. “She’s the only reason I’m here.”

“Really?” Matt injected a note of disbelief into his voice, much like he would with a dim-witted suspect. “Then why didn’t you kill you when you had the chance?”

“Who says she’s not dead now?” Stuart had started to sweat, the drops of perspiration beading on his forehead.

“You wouldn’t be standing there with your hands around her neck if she was.”

Stuart shifted from one foot to the other. “Maybe. Maybe not, but you won’t do anything that might risk her life. Until you know for certain if she’s dead or alive, you’ll do exactly what I tell you to do.”