Redemption Road(139)

The warden looked at his watch and, before he stood, gave a wink Elizabeth would never forget. Craning her neck, she saw three men at the door, one watching the children. Elizabeth caught Channing’s eye, and the guard—seeing it—put his gun to Channing’s head. “Everybody just stay calm,” he said.

But, that was not possible.

It was not even close.

*

When the church appeared on the hill, it was more to Adrian than glass and stone and iron. It was the past, his youth, his undying regret. He’d hoped to be married there, and to start a life with the woman he should have married all along. The building was old, and solid. He’d liked the feel of it and the permanence, the reverend’s message of birth and hope and forgiveness. He’d thought of it often as his marriage failed. At times he’d driven to the church and simply watched it on the hill, thinking, If I am honest at last …

Instead, he’d gone to trial for Julia’s murder and never spoken of regret or redemption. He spent thirteen years dreaming of the life he’d lost, and when the church rose tall in those dreams, he saw Julia die alone and pleading; and it wasn’t God she called for, or her husband. The name on her lips was his, night after night. She was afraid and dying, yet he was never there but in the dreams. When next the nightmares came, would he see his wife, as well? Or Liz? The thought was unbearable so he made a promise as the road fell away and gravel shifted beneath the tires.

Whatever it takes.

Never again.

Cresting the hill, he saw men in the door and parked cars. He stopped twenty feet from the granite steps. The warden stood outside the door with Olivet and Jacks. Woods would be there, too, probably with Liz. Adrian killed the engine and put the key in his pocket. The air outside was warm.

“You should have run and kept running.”

The warden stepped out, his shoes scraping granite. The trees above his head were dark and heavy.

“Maybe I should have killed you. First day out. First night.”

“You don’t have the balls.”

“Maybe you underestimate me. Maybe you always have.”

“That implies you had secrets to keep, and that you kept them. I find that hard to believe.”

Adrian fished a gold coin from his pocket and tossed it so it rang on the steps. The warden kept an eye on Adrian and picked it up, tilting it. “You could buy the same in any pawnshop.”

Adrian flung another dozen coins.

“So, it’s true.” The warden didn’t stoop that time. He smoothed a thumb across the coin; showed it to Jacks. “How many?”

“Five thousand. They’re yours if you let her go.”

The warden studied Adrian with new eyes. Respect was there, and even a little fear. All that time, unbroken. All that pain. “There’s still the matter of William Preston.”

“It’s six million dollars,” Adrian said. And that was the only truth that mattered. He saw it in the warden’s face, and in the way Jacks shifted his feet. Friendship was fine, but the money came first.

“Do you have it with you?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“How do you propose to do this?”

“If Liz is okay, I’ll take you to the gold. She stays behind.”

“If I say no?”

“You can torture me again, for all the good it’ll do.”

“Maybe I’ll torture her, instead.”

“Death is death,” Adrian said. “We all win or none of us do.”

The warden rubbed his chin, thinking. “And when she tells her story about what happened here?”

“Do you love your wife?”

“Not so much.”

“It’s six million dollars. Untraceable. You can put it in the trunk and go anywhere. Tomorrow morning you start a whole new life.”

The warden smiled, and it made Adrian nervous. “I don’t think Detective Black would accept the idea of her torture as lightly as you.”

“She wouldn’t have called me unless she’d thought it through.”

“Perhaps, she thought you’d come in, guns blazing.”

“I’m nobody’s hero. She knows that.”

The warden ran the same thumb across the coin. “Jacks is going to pat you down.” He gestured, and Jacks took the stairs.

The pat-down was rough and thorough. “He’s clean.”

“All right, then.” The warden picked up the other coins, bounced them in his palm so they rattled and clinked. “Let’s go inside and talk this thing out.”

Adrian followed the warden and felt Olivet and Jacks close up behind. He had no confidence his plan would work, but it was all he had: gold and men’s greed and his own readiness to die. He knew the warden, though. He was pushing sixty, tired of his job. Six million was a lot of money. Adrian thought the plan had a shot.

That disappeared when he saw the kids.

Before that moment, it was all or nothing. The plan worked or it did not. If Elizabeth died, he’d die with her. There’d been acceptance in that, and a kind of difficult peace. Liz made her choices. He made his.

That had nothing to do with the kids.

They huddled beneath the altar, not just frightened, but wounded. He knew Gideon, of course, who was as close as anything alive to the woman Adrian had loved with all his heart. The girl would be the one from the papers, Channing. A man was dead on the floor. Elizabeth’s father, he thought. The other man was Beckett, who was dead or close to it. Elizabeth was secured to a pew on the front row. “I want her free. Right now.”