Nick of Time (37 page)

“We're close,” he rasped. “Hang in there. We're close.”

Without the friction of the carpet, it was easier going. He dragged her to the back door and smiled. Just a few feet separated them now from a breath of air. They'd step outside, and the miserably thick summer air would taste like honey. Like life.

He reached up, turned the knob, and pulled.

Shit! The key was on top of the goddamn refrigerator.

* * *

Carter couldn't take it anymore. Nobody even noticed when he strode out of the Mellings' kitchen and into the night. The rain had stopped. Overhead, the moon was trying to force its way through the clouds.

Disoriented at first, Carter stepped down off the tiny stoop into the lumpy assortment of sand and grass that masqueraded for a lawn in this part of the world, and walked a half-dozen paces to the left. As soon as he cleared the side of the Mellings' house, there was no missing the scene of the standoff.

In the distance lay a patch of light brighter than noon, projecting up toward the heavens from behind a dune. In the center of the shaft of light, a plume of black smoke climbed toward the sky. “Oh, my God,” he breathed.

“They won't let you go down there,” said a voice from the darkness to his right.

Carter turned to see an old woman and a young boy sitting together in the sand. They were just silhouettes, but he could make out enough detail to see that the boy had a bandage on his head.

“It's my house and they wouldn't let me go,” the boy clarified.

Carter felt an inexplicable rush of emotion as he saw these two. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“Are you Carter Janssen?” the old woman asked.

“I am.”

“Then I have something very sad to tell you. That's a very mixed-up boy in there, that Brad. He's going to die tonight.”

Carter felt a cold fist grip his insides.
Please just let him die alone,
he didn't say.

“I'm June Parker, by the way.” She reached around the boy to extend her hand. “This is my grandson, Scotty Boyd.”

Carter shook the woman's hand and then Scotty's.

She continued, “Before he released me, that Brad told me to tell you something when I saw you. He said that his guts were yours to do with what you want. He said he wanted them to go to Nicki, and that I'd have to be a witness to make that happen. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes, it does.” Carter felt like a ghoul.

“There's something else,” Gramma said. “He said that nothing comes for free. That you owe him a favor.”

Carter waved her off. “Not now. Tell me about it later.”

“No, it has to be now,” she insisted. “He said it was very important, and if I don't pass it along now, I'll forget some details.”

Carter sighed. He didn't want this. He didn't need this. But he listened.

It took less than a minute.

* * *

The smoke in the kitchen had banked down to less than four feet above the floor. Against the backdrop of the white light outside, the smoke layer might as well have been constructed with a straight edge, so sharp was the dividing line between life and death. With the smoke came unbelievable heat as the ravenous flames burned through the flimsy kitchen door and raced along the ceiling, consuming everything in their path.

Somewhere in that inferno lay the key to the dead bolt, placed so diligently and proudly on top of the refrigerator.

Keeping his head as low as he could, Brad slapped around the top of the refrigerator, hoping to feel the key. It had to be there somewhere. It
had
to be.

And there it was, farther back than he'd thought, and as his fingertip hit it, he could just barely make out the sound of the key sliding across the top of the fridge toward the back. “No!” he shouted, but there was nothing to do. He heard the unmistakable sound of the key falling off the far edge of the refrigerator, tumbling down through the tubing and wiring before coming to rest on the floor.

Brad hammered the refrigerator door with his fist. “Goddammit!”

“Brad?” Nicki rasped.

“Right here.” He joined Nicki on the floor near the door. Across the room, all of ten feet away, the entire doorjamb leading to the living room seethed with fire.

“A window,” Nicki said. She tried to raise herself to a sitting position.

“Bars, remember?” To keep out home invaders, he thought wryly. Or maybe just to ensure they never left alive.

Think,
Brad told himself. There was always a way. The thought of breaking down the door was too much to contemplate, not only because of the agony, but because of the futility of it. He remembered the size of the dead bolt, the sturdiness of the door. That wasn't even in play.

And the chances of rescue were zip.
If I see a face I'll shoot it
. Great call there. So, what was the choice? Surely, there had to be something.

Of course! But he'd left it on the floor in the other room.

Chapter Thirty-nine

P
ressing himself into the unyielding floor in an effort to get away from the searing heat of the fire that roiled above him, Brad crawled back through the flaming doorjamb, out into the living room. He needed his pistol.

Before the fire had started, the distance between the kitchen and the front room had seemed like nothing at all, just a few feet. But now, as he felt the skin on his back wrinkling like old parchment, and the stench of burning hair mixed with the rest of the horrific olfactory assaults, it felt as if he were crawling the length of a swimming pool.

Please let it be there,
he prayed. As if it could have wandered off on its own.

There it was, right where he thought, and thank God for it. Seconds meant everything in this heat. His clock had ticked down to nothing, and he still had to make it back to the kitchen. The pain of the fire on his back eclipsed the pain of his bullet wound.

The terror of burning to death had eclipsed his fear of living.

* * *

Nicki was dying. Of this, she was one hundred percent certain. And as she watched Brad crawl back into the inferno that was the living room, she knew that she would die alone. Even as the panic welled up, she realized the bitter irony in the prayer she offered up to God to allow her to die of asphyxia before the fire could get to her.

For the past nine months, ever since she'd first gotten her terrible prognosis, she'd dreaded the slow suffocation that would eventually take her. Now, as she lay on her back, helpless to move, watching the fire roll across the ceiling of the kitchen, she saw suffocation as a fine alternative to immolation.

Once Brad disappeared back into the burning living room, Nicki started counting. She arbitrarily decided that twenty seconds was all the time he could have in there and survive. She counted aloud, so Brad could hear her and zero in on the sound of her voice. “One and two and three and four and . . .” Ten to get in, ten to get out. Anyone can do anything, she figured, for ten seconds.

When she got to twelve, she started to worry for real. At eighteen, she knew it was over. Brad was dead, had to be. Incinerated in his effort to save her. Despite that, she found herself awash in an odd sense of calm. Even if she could have mustered the strength or the wind for a scream, she wasn't sure that she'd have tried. Soon, they'd be dead together, forever. Maybe that was the whole purpose of this terrible trick God had played on them. The fire would speed their peaceful, eternal reunion in Heaven. And it would be Heaven, too. If she and Brad were together, how could it be anything but?

“Nicki! Are you still there?”

It was Brad! “I'm here!” she rasped. She could barely hear herself.

He touched her leg. “We're outta here.”

He had eight .40 caliber rounds in his gun, and there wasn't a lock in the world to resist that kind of attack. The smoke in the kitchen had banked down impossibly low, until the doorknob was the last thing visible before the air became a deadly cloud. “Cover your ears,” he said, and he took aim.

* * *

Matt Hayes saw the back door jump as the bullets ripped through the wood. In the sharpness of the floodlights, he could see every detail as chips of wood flew from the door and its jamb.

Next to him, Luis yelled into his radio, “Shots fired! Shots fired on side three. We're taking fire.”

“No, we're not,” Matt said, but his spotter wasn't listening. From what Matt could see, the perps were trying to shoot themselves out of an inferno.

* * *

Carter jumped as he heard five, then six, then seven sharp reports. “No,” he breathed. He took off, sprinting toward Nicki and Brad, leaving their victims behind.

* * *

Even in the reduced visibility, Brad could see the bullets chewing the woodwork around the doorknob. In the close confines of the tiny kitchen, the noise of the gunshots was stunning, each of them carrying a percussive force that he could feel in his chest. After the first two shots, his eardrums caved in to the assault and the shots became bolts of pain masked by a thick silence.

He'd deafened himself and he didn't care.

He fired seven shots before he kicked at the door with the sole of his foot. It flew open, and then was sucked closed again as the voracious blaze gulped at the new supply of fresh air and doubled in intensity. Brad dropped to the floor in a futile attempt to escape the excruciating heat.

He rolled to his back and kicked at the door again. This time, it stayed open. He grabbed Nicki's hand and pulled her toward the door. Just five or six feet more, and it would be all over.

* * *

Trooper Hayes watched the back door fly open not once, but twice. To his left, Luis announced on the radio that the perps were on their way out the back door, and down below, he could see assault team three readying for battle.

Matt gripped his rifle tighter to his shoulder and got ready.

Then, there they were: the boy dragging the girl, who might as well have been dead for all she was moving. And the boy had a gun.

“Freeze!” The chorus arose from eight armed men positioned all around the perimeter of the back of the house. “Put the gun down! Now! Drop that weapon, and get on the ground!”

At first, the boy didn't respond. He just stumbled out of the door and into the brightly lit night, dragging the girl behind him. Then he saw the police.

Through his ten-power scope, Matt could see the panic when it arrived on the boy's face.

“I said, put your weapon down!” someone yelled again.

Instead, the boy hoisted the girl up by her armpits as a shield and pressed his gun to her temple. The moment he denied a shot to the ground team, Matt Hayes knew that it would all come down to him.

And at that moment, he knew that the boy would die.

* * *

The air smelled and tasted even better than Brad had hoped. They'd made it! No other thought fluttered in his mind. He was alive, and Nicki was alive, and that was all that mattered.

Crouching in the doorway, still agonized by the radiating heat of the fire, he looked down at Nicki and gave her one of the smiles he knew she loved so much.

She didn't smile back. Instead, her face was all twisted in a mask of emotion. She looked as if she were shouting something at him, but he couldn't make out any words.

When he saw the cops, all the relief and all the happiness evaporated, leaving only the certainty that they were going to gun him down. Seeing the skirmish line in front of him, and the half-dozen rifle barrels pointed at his chest, he knew that he'd entered the final minute of his life. One way or the other, they were taking him down.

Confused, but oddly calm, his mind replayed the words of Carter Janssen. There really was a way to make this whole disaster something more meaningful. But with all those guns, he had to make sure they hit the right target.

“I'm sorry,” he said to Nicki, and then he hoisted her up by her armpits to use her as a human shield.

Leaving only a head shot.

* * *

Nicki couldn't move. Paralyzed by fear and unable to breathe, her screams sounded like moans, raspy, throaty, inaudible trifles that were swallowed by the cacophony of the fire and the confusion. When he smiled at her, clearly proud of himself for making the rescue, and relieved to be safe once again, she tried to manufacture words that would tell him to put his gun down. “The gun!” she rasped. “They'll see the gun! They'll shoot you!”

Brad didn't seem to get it.

And then he did. Nicki saw him reach a decision, saw his expression change when he settled on a plan. When he apologized and then hauled her up, she knew what the plan was.

“No! No, please don't!” Tapping a reservoir of strength somewhere deep in her soul, beyond the limits of her scorched and tortured lungs, she lashed out at him, kicking and wriggling and doing everything she could to make it impossible for the police to shoot. “Don't shoot!” she wheezed.

“Nicki, stop it!” Brad grunted. “Let me do this.”

She felt his grip slipping.

* * *

Trooper Hayes waited for an opportunity. The girl was screaming for mercy, screaming to get away from the asshole who held her, but in all her frantic movement, the sight picture became so scrambled that he couldn't take a shot.

“Take him out,” Luis whispered. “Jesus, take a shot.”

“I don't
have
a shot,” Matt hissed.

But then he did. Just like that, out of nowhere, the girl dropped out of the sight picture, and there was Brad Dougherty, a perfect target.

Matt centered the reticle and squeezed the trigger.

* * *

Nicki saw the bullet tear a hole in Brad's chest. He made a barking sound as he shuffled a little two-step backward before somebody unplugged the power cord that kept him standing and he sat down hard, his legs folding beneath him.

“Oh, shit,” he said, and he fell sideways onto her, his shoulders and head landing on her lap.

“Brad!” she cried. “Oh, my God, Brad!” His blood flowed hot and with impossible speed, soaking her legs and her shorts and her shirt as she hugged him tightly to her breast. “Don't die,” she begged.

Brad lifted his arms in an effort to return the embrace, but they didn't work. “It hurts, Nicki,” he said. “Oh, Jesus, it really hurts bad.” As he spoke, bloody bubbles formed at his nose and mouth. Nicki wiped them away, leaving crimson smears on his face.

Behind her, she was aware of a lot of shouting, and of people running toward her, but she didn't care what they were saying.

“I'm so sorry,” Brad said. “Please don't hate me.”

“I
love
you!” she sobbed. “I'll always love you.”

Somebody placed their hands on Nicki's shoulders and she shook them away. “Keep your hands off of me!” she shrieked. There, she'd found her voice again.

“You're under arrest,” the voice said, and hands gripped her forearms, trying to pull them behind her back. But they were slick with blood and the officer had a hard time keeping hold. In the background, she heard somebody discussing a helluva lung shot.

Nicki pulled Brad tighter. “Wait for me, okay?” she sobbed. “Promise you'll wait.”

Brad managed a smile. For just an instant, the mask of agony dissolved away and he shined brightly for her one more time.

Then the light in his eyes turned dark.

When they yanked Nicki to her feet, Brad spun away from her and landed face-first in the sand.