Extreme Denial Page 4

  “Do you suppose Brian found the woman?” McKittrick’s voice deepened with concern.

  “I doubt it. There wasn’t an ambulance.” Decker sped onto another street.

  “You’re worried that he was furious enough to have killed her?”

  “No. What worries me is the reverse.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Her killing him,” Decker said. “Your son’s out of his depth. What’s worse, he isn’t humble enough to know it. These people are expert killers. They don’t just do their work well. They love it. It gave them a kick to toy with Brian, but if they ever thought he was a serious threat, he’d be dead in an instant. There might not be enough of him left to send home for a funeral.”

  McKittrick sat tensely straighten “How can we stop him?”

  Decker stared toward the rain past the flapping windshield wipers. “Your son likes to leave documents around his apartment—a list of his contacts and their addresses, for example.”

  “Dear God, are you telling me his tradecraft is that faulty?”

  “I get the feeling you haven’t been listening to me. Twenty-three people are dead, forty-three injured. That’s how faulty his tradecraft is.”

  “The list,” McKittrick said, agitated. “Why did you mention the list?”

  “Before I burned it, I memorized it,” Decker said. “Renata’s name and address were at the top. It’s logical for him to have gone there first. I think it’s also logical that he’ll go to every other address until he finds her.”

  “But if they’re really the terrorists, they won’t be at those addresses.”

  “Exactly.” Decker swerved around another corner. “They’re professionals. They wouldn’t have given Brian their real addresses. Renata probably used that apartment back there as an accommodation, part of the scam. But it doesn’t look like Brian figured that out. He’s too furious. He wants to get even. The people he terrorizes at those addresses won’t have the vaguest idea what’s going on. Maybe Renata counted on him to do this. Maybe it’s her final joke.”

  McKittrick’s tone was urgent. “Where’s the closest address on the list?”

  “Across the river. But I don’t see any point in going there. He’s got too big a head start.” Decker increased speed, his tires hissing on the wet pavement. “He might be at the third or fourth address by now. I’m going to skip to the farthest, then the second-farthest, go at them in reverse order and hope our paths cross.”

  14

  The rain increased. The only thing in our favor, Decker thought, is that it’s the middle of the night. There aren’t any traffic jams to slow us down.

  All the same, he had to concentrate to drive swiftly and yet safely on the slick pavement. His troubled sleep the previous night had not been sufficient to overcome his jet lag. Now his sense of sleep deprivation intensified, his eyes feeling scratchy, his forehead aching. He felt pressure behind his ears.

  Amazingly, especially given his age, McKittrick showed no signs of jet lag at all, his tall frame erect. He pointed. “What are those large buildings ahead?”

  “City University.” After pausing to check a map, Decker took a side street, then another, each more gloomy and narrow, trying to see the numbers on buildings squeezed together. He stopped before a doorway. “This is the address.”

  McKittrick stared through the window. “Everything’s quiet. No lights on. No police.”

  “Looks like he hasn’t been here.” A noise in the car made Decker whirl.

  McKittrick had his hand on the door latch. He was getting out, standing on the curb, only partially visible in the night and the rain.

  “What are you—”

  “It’s been quite a few years,” McKittrick said with dignity. “But I still remember how to conduct surveillance. Leave me here. Go to the next address.”

  “But—”

  “Perhaps my son is already here, or perhaps he’s on his way. Perhaps we’ll pass him without knowing it if we go to the next address. But this way, if I remain, at least this address is secure.”

  “I don’t think splitting up is a good idea,” Decker said.

  “If I were a man your age, would you argue about what I’m doing?”

  “ ... No.”

  “Then there you have it.” McKittrick started to close the door.

  “Wait,” Decker said.

  “I won’t let you talk me out of this.”

  “That’s not what I wanted. Here. You’d better take this. When I heard you were flying in, I had a package delivered to the office. I’ve been waiting to see if it was necessary to give it to you.”

  “A pistol?” McKittrick reacted with astonishment. “Do you honestly think I need a pistol to confront my son?”

  “I have a very bad feeling about what’s happening tonight.”

  “I refuse to—”

  “Take it, or I’m not leaving you here.”

  McKittrick studied him. His dark eyes intense, he accepted the weapon.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Decker said. “How will I find you?”

  “Drive slowly through this area. I’ll find you.” McKittrick shut the door, shoved the pistol beneath his suit coat, and walked away into the darkness. Only when the elderly man’s rain-haloed figure was no longer visible in the Fiat’s headlights did Decker drive onward.

  15

  It took Decker eight minutes to reach the next-to-last address on the list. Along the way, he debated what to do if there was no indication that Brian had been there. Stay, or go on to another address?

  What happened next settled the matter. Even from blocks away, Decker heard sirens wailing in the darkness. He saw a crimson glow above rain-obscured buildings. His stomach hard with apprehension, he steered the Fiat onto the street he wanted and braked immediately before the glaring lights of rumbling fire trucks and other emergency vehicles. Flames licked from the windows of an apartment building. Smoke billowed. As firemen aimed hoses toward the blaze, ambulance attendants ministered to survivors, draping blankets around them, giving them oxygen.

  Appalled, Decker got out of the Fiat, came close enough to determine that the fiery building was in fact the one he had come to check, then hurried through a gathering crowd back to the car, reversed direction, and sped away into the rain.

  His heart pounded. What the hell is happening? he thought. Was Brian trying to get even by setting fire to the buildings, hoping to trap the terrorists inside? Surely even someone so out of control as Brian would have realized that other people besides the terrorists would be injured—if the terrorists were injured at all, if they had been foolish enough to remain at the addresses they had given Brian.

  He has only one more address to go, Decker thought. Where I left his father. Driving urgently through the rain-filled night, Decker skidded and regained control of the Fiat. Near the university, he again took a side street, then another, feeling trapped in the narrow confines. The address where he had left McKittrick’s father was only a half block farther when Decker stomped his brake pedal, swerving, nearly hitting a tall, burly figure who suddenly appeared in the glare of his headlights. The figure was drenched, his face raised to the storm clouds; he was shaking his fists, screaming.

  The figure was Brian. Decker’s windows were closed. Only when he scrambled out of the Fiat, racing through puddles to restrain Brian, did he hear what Brian screamed.

  “Liars! Bastards!”

  Decker had left his headlights on, their illumination reflecting off the rain streaming down Brian’s face.

  “Cowards!”

  Lights came on in windows.

  “We have to get you off the street,” Decker said.

  “Fight me!” Brian screamed inexplicably toward the darkness.

  More lights came on.

  “FIGHT ME!”

  Cold rain soaked Decker’s hair and chilled his neck. “The police will be looking for you. You can’t stay here. I have to get you out of here.” He tugged Brian toward the car.<
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  Brian resisted. More windows became illuminated.

  “For God sake, come on,” Decker said. “Have you seen your father? I left him here.”

  “Bastards!”

  “Brian, listen to me. Have you seen your father?”

  Brian wrenched himself free of Decker’s grasp and once more shook his fists toward the sky. “You're afraid!”

  “What’s going on down there?” a man yelled in Italian from an upper apartment.

  Decker grabbed Brian. “With the commotion you’re making, your father couldn’t help but know you’re here. He should have joined us by now. Pay attention. I need to know if you’ve seen him.”

  At once a premonition chilled Decker. “Oh, Jesus, no. Brian. Your father. Has something happened to him?”

  When Brian didn’t respond, Decker slapped him, twisting his head, sending raindrops flying from Brian’s face.

  Brian looked shocked. The Fiat’s headlights reflected off his wild eyes.

  “Tell me where your father is!”

  Brian stumbled away.

  Apprehensive, Decker followed, seeing where Brian led him—to the address that Brian’s father had intended to watch. Even in the rainy gloom, Decker could see that the door was open.

  Trying to restrain his too-quick breathing, Decker withdrew his pistol from beneath his leather jacket. As Brian entered, Decker pushed him to a crouch and stooped to hurry after him, his eyes adjusting enough to the darkness to make him aware he was in a courtyard. He saw a wooden crate to his right and shoved Brian toward it. Kneeling on wet cobble-stones, Decker aimed over the crate, scanning indistinguishable objects, peering up toward the barely detectable railings of balconies to the right and left and straight ahead.

  “Brian, show me,” Decker whispered.

  For a moment, he wasn’t certain that Brian had heard. Then Brian shifted position, and Decker realized that Brian was pointing. As Decker’s vision adjusted even more to the darkness, he saw a disturbing patch of white in the far right corner.

  “Stay here,” he told Brian, and darted toward another crate. Aiming, he checked nervously around him, then hurried forward again, this time to what might have been an ancient well. His wet clothes clung to him, constricting his muscles. He was close enough to determine that the patch of white he had seen was hair—Jason McKittrick’s hair. The elderly man lay with his back propped against a wall, his arms at his sides, his chin on his chest.

  Decker glanced once more around him, then ran through the rain, reaching McKittrick, crouching beside him, feeling for a pulse. Despite the gloom, it was obvious that an area on the right breast of his gray suit coat was darker than the rain would have caused. Blood. Decker kept checking for a pulse, feeling McKittrick’s wrist, his neck, his chest.

  Inhaling with triumph, he found one.

  He whirled to aim at a sudden approaching figure.

  It was Brian, scrambling across the courtyard and collapsing next to his father, pressing his face against his father’s head. “Didn’t mean to.”

  “Help me,” Decker said. “We have to get him to the car.”

  “Didn’t know who he was.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t realize.”

  “What?”

  “Thought he was one of them.” Brian sobbed.

  “You did this?” Decker grabbed Brian, finding that he had a revolver in his jacket pocket.

  “I couldn’t help myself. He came out of the darkness.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I had to shoot.”

  “God help...”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I’m telling you, I—”

  “He isn’t dead!”

  In the darkness, Brian’s stunned look was barely discernible.

  “We have to get him to the car. We have to take him to the hospital. Grab his feet.”

  As Decker reached for McKittrick’s shoulder, a bumblebee seemed to buzz down past Decker’s head. A projectile whacked against the wall behind him.

  Flinching, Decker scurried toward the protection of a crate. The shot—from a sound-suppressed weapon—had come from above him. He aimed fiercely upward, blinking from the rain, unable to see a target in the darkness.

  “They won’t let you,” Brian said.

  “They?”

  “They’re here.”

  Decker’s heart felt squeezed as he realized why Brian had been yelling in the street. Not at the sky or God or the Furies.

  He’d been screaming at the terrorists.

  Brian remained in the open, beside his father.

  “Get over here,” Decker told him.

  “I’m safe.”

  “For God sake, get over here behind this crate.”

  “They won’t shoot me.”

  “Don’t talk crazy.”

  “Before you got here, Renata showed herself to me. She told me the best way to hurt me is to let me live.”

  “What?”

  “So I can suffer for the rest of my life, knowing I killed my father.”

  “But your shot didn’t kill him! He isn’t dead!”

  “He might as well be. Renata will never let us take him out of here. She hates me too much.” Brian pulled his revolver from his pocket. In the gloom, it seemed that he pointed it at himself.

  “Brian! No!”

  But instead of shooting himself, Brian surged to his feet, cursed, and disappeared into the darkness at the back of the courtyard.

  Amid the pelting rain, Decker—shocked—heard Brian’s footsteps charging up an exterior wooden staircase.

  “Brian, I warned you!” a woman shouted from above. The husky voice was Renata’s. “Don’t come after me!”

  Brian’s footsteps charged higher.

  Lights came on in balcony windows.

  “I gave you a chance!” Renata shouted. “Stay away, or I’ll do what I did at the other apartment buildings!”

  “You’re going to pay for making a fool of me!”

  Renata laughed. “You did it to yourself!”

  “You’re going to pay for my father!”

  “You did that yourself!”

  Brian’s footsteps pounded higher.

  “Don’t be an idiot!” Renata shouted. “The explosives have been set! I’ll press the detonator!”

  Brian’s urgent footsteps kept pounding on the stairs.

  Their rumble was overwhelmed by thunder, not from the storm but from an explosion whose blinding flash erupted out of an apartment on the fourth balcony at the back. The ear-stunning roar knocked Decker backward. As wreckage cascaded, the ferocity of the flames illuminated the courtyard.

  A movement to Decker’s left made him turn. A thin, dark-haired man in his early twenties, one of the brothers whom Decker had met at the cafe the night before, rose from behind garbage cans.

  Decker stiffened. They must be all around me, but in the dark, I didn’t know it!

  The young man hadn’t been prepared for Renata to detonate the bomb. Although he had a pistol, his attention was totally distracted by a scream on the other side of the courtyard. With wide-eyed dismay, the young man saw one of his brothers swatting at flames on his clothes and in his hair, which had been ignited by the falling, burning wreckage. The rain didn’t seem to affect the flames. The second brother kept screaming.

  Decker shot twice at the first brother, hitting his chest and head. As the gunman toppled, Decker pivoted and shot twice at the man in flames, dropping him, also. The gunshots were almost obscured by the crackle and roar of the fire as it spread from the fourth balcony.

  More wreckage fell. Crouching behind the crate, Decker scanned the area in search of more targets. Brian. Where was Brian? Decker’s peripheral vision detected motion in the far left corner of the courtyard, near the door that he and Brian had come through.

  But the movement wasn’t Brian. The tall, slim, sensuous figure that emerged from the shadows of another st
airway was Renata. Holding a pistol equipped with a sound suppressor, she shot repeatedly toward the courtyard, all the while running toward the open doorway. The muffled shots, normally no louder than a fist against a pillow, were totally silent because of the roaring chaos of the blaze.

  Behind the crate, Decker sprawled on the wet cobblestones and squirmed forward on his elbows and knees. He reached the side of the crate, caught a glimpse of Renata nearing the exit, aimed through the rain, and shot twice more. His first bullet struck the wall behind her. His second hit her in the throat. She clutched her windpipe, blood spewing. Her throat would squeeze shut. Death from asphyxiation would occur in less than three minutes.

  Despite the din of the flames, Decker heard a scream of anguish. One of Renata’s brothers showed himself, racing from the open stairway, shooting toward the courtyard, grabbing Renata where she had fallen, dragging her closer to the open doorway. At once he shot again, but not at Decker, instead toward the stairwell at the back of the courtyard, as if protecting himself from bullets that came from that direction. As Decker aimed, the last brother appeared, shot repeatedly in Decker’s direction, and helped to get his sister into the street and out of view. Decker emptied his pistol, hastily ejected its magazine, and inserted a full one. By then, the terrorists were gone.

  Sweat mixed with rain on his face. He shuddered, spun in case there were other targets, and saw Brian jump down the last few steps of the open stairway at the back of the courtyard.

  Brian clutched his revolver, his hand shaking.

  “We have to get out of here!” Decker yelled.

  No more than a minute had passed since the explosion. People wearing pajamas and sometimes less were charging onto the balconies and down outdoor stairways to get away from the fire.

  Decker avoided a chunk of flaming wreckage and rushed to Brian, who had an arm around his father, lifting him.

  “I can feel him breathe!” Brian said.

  “Give me his legs.”

  Decker heard people rushing in panic down the stairs as he and Brian carried McKittrick across the courtyard toward the open doorway.

  “Wait,” Decker said. He set down McKittrick’s legs and aimed cautiously out toward the street. He saw a car speed away from the curb, its red taillights becoming rapidly smaller, the vehicle skidding through puddles, around a corner, disappearing.