Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(70)

Clyde grinned down at me from the roof. I ordered him to his belly, then it was my turn. I got a running start toward the drainpipe and jumped as high as I could. I gripped the pipe, planted my feet on the wall, then worked my way up.

At the top, I hauled myself onto the roof and dropped flat beside Clyde. Together we belly-crawled to the building’s single point of vulnerability.

An old double-hung window. It was set low in the wall and looked solid, the glass reinforced with wire mesh that obscured whatever lay on the other side.

We froze when a car drove by. Headlights swept the lower floor as a sports car raced past without slowing. It rounded the corner with a squeal of tires, and the sound of its engine faded into the distance.

The club remained quiet.

I removed a flat-head screwdriver from my kit, then rose to a crouch on one side of the window. The wind had died down, and the only sound was the gentle seesaw of crickets. I jammed the screwdriver between the sash and the sill. The window resisted for a moment, then slid up a quarter inch.

I paused, listening for any indication that our arrival had been noted. The building creaked in another gust of wind, then quieted.

The rest of the world stayed silent.

I wriggled my fingers in and raised the window, then reached in my pocket for the flashlight. I bent my knees and shone the beam into the room. The space was large, the floorboards clotted with debris. The beam caught a sleeping bag and a lantern. In one corner, someone had created a rudimentary kitchen out of a portable electric burner, a pan, and a stack of paper plates. To my immediate right stood an old filing cabinet. I played the light across the room, then leaned in and angled the flashlight down to make sure the floor was clear of anything that would hurt Clyde’s paws.

The filing cabinet crashed to the floor. Fingers gripped my wrist and jerked me forward. My head cracked against the sash as I was yanked through the window and thrown to the ground. My attacker spun toward the window and slammed it shut just as Clyde lunged for the space. My partner hit the reinforced glass and fell back. His barks rolled through the night.

The world was swimming. The flashlight beam ghosted in and out from somewhere nearby. I yanked my gun from the holster. Before I could bring it up, a sneakered foot stomped on my wrist. My fingers went numb, the weapon dropped, and my attacker kicked it away. I scrabbled for the second gun, but the man wrenched it free and sent it flying after the first.

One weapon, then the other, hit the wall.

He stepped back, and I glimpsed a man’s form, tall and lean. A flash of moonlight revealed his face. The same face, minus the dreads and the beard, I’d seen on the RTD recordings.

Mark Fadden. The Pushman.

Clyde kept barking.

I rolled to my side and scissored my legs, trying to catch Fadden’s ankles. But he sidestepped me and brought his hand up. He aimed a pistol at my head.

The flashlight winked out.

He said, “Be still.”

I froze. I heard the man back off a few steps. Outside, Clyde’s barks turned to growls.

“Where is Cohen?” I asked. “Let me see him.”

A faint clank. A battery-powered lantern flared on, filling the room with cold white light. Fadden squatted just out of my reach, his gun now aimed at my chest. He cocked his head and studied me as if I were something that had stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

I said, “If you hurt him any more, I will kill you.”

The look in his eyes was an abyss—deep and empty. Then he grinned, the expression holding the same dark vortex that hollowed his eyes. “I know you. You’re the girl with the intel. You’ve walked right into my parlor, my sweet little fly.”

I wondered how fast I could move, but decided he could shoot faster.

“What, not familiar with the poem? Here’s the best part.” He moved the muzzle in a tiny circle, as if scratching a line around my heart. “Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast. He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den, within his little parlor—but she ne’er came out again!”

I pulled up an image of Kane’s face just before Fadden shoved him in front of the train. Rage boiled and cleared my head. “You killed Jeremy Kane.”

“It’s what I do.”

Keep him talking. If he was talking to me, he wasn’t hurting Cohen. “Who gave the order?”

“Who’s holding the gun? I get to ask the questions. Now, I’m going to look outside. Move an inch, and I’ll take out your left kneecap. It’s also what I do.”

Keeping his gun on me, he rose from his squat and went to the window. Clyde threw himself against the glass, and Fadden jumped back.

“Bet I could train that dog,” he said.

“Let him in and see.”

“Or . . .” He hawked up phlegm, then turned his head to spit. “I could shoot him.”

I could see Fadden better now. He was tall and rangy in a way that suggested a rock climber or swimmer. His skull was shaved, his face all angles. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and on his inner arm were the star and crescent and two lines of Arabic script that I recognized from the RTD recordings. Part of the star had been erased, and the script was smeared—the tattoo was only surface ink. He’d added it to throw off the investigators.

Clyde disappeared from the window.

“The police are onto you, Fadden,” I said. “They know you killed Kane. But what they really want is the man who hired you. Let me go. Let the cop go. Cut a deal while you can. You hurt us, you’ll lose that chance.”