The Unwilling(119)

French believed that, too.

It didn’t help in the slightest.





45


Inside the bedroom, Sara rode emotion like the crest of an impossible wave. It lifted her, took her, and tossed her. She’d never been the angry person, the forceful personality. She’d gone along to get along. The easy friend. The laid-back neighbor. Only twice in her life had she lost complete control of her emotions, once on the day her parents kicked her out, and then again on the foggy, back-alley night she’d had the abortion. That was it, two times lost and out of control. This was the third, and after so much helplessness and fear, she stepped joyfully into the fire of pure, blind rage, screaming wordlessly as she tried to beat down the prison, the man, the wall she hated. When one chair came apart, she picked up another. Every chunk of drywall was pure adrenaline, the haze of dust like a drug.

Him. He. Whoever.

The rat in the walls.

The second chair shattered, and she could feel it out there, the tail end of her madness. Sheeted in sweat and fine, white dust, she picked up a length of jagged wood, thinking, Fuck this place, and fuck this guy. The screams were gone, but she stabbed at the Sheetrock, hoping the hard, sharp point would find something soft behind the wall.



* * *



Reece had no idea what to do. He’d chosen the girl for many reasons, one of which had been the easy compliance he’d seen in her approach to the world. He knew from bitter experience that women so lovely could be prone to disdain for men who looked and thought as Reece did. Sara had every quality he admired in a woman, the way she looked and moved, the soulful eyes and easy laugh. He’d followed her long enough to make sure, and everything he’d seen confirmed that first assessment.

She was compliant.

She could be taught.

Reece had never been so wrong in his life, and had no idea what to do with this rage machine tearing down his house. There was no saving this. His mind was already in transition. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d cut losses.

The question was how.

She’d broken through the drywall and was attacking the plywood underneath it. Given enough time, she might actually punch through.

He’d have to shoot her, he decided. No fun in that, but he had no desire to be stabbed, either.

With a strange shock, Reece realized that he was feeling something close to actual fear. He lived for control, and had none. She was pounding on the plywood, and if anything, the pounding was getting louder and harder.

Get the gun; kill the girl.

Yet his paralysis was total.

Boom.

She hit the plywood.

Boom.

It gave a little more.

A high-pitched laugh found its way past Reece’s lips, another disbelieving titter. Could it be any worse?

No, he thought. Not possible.

Two seconds later the alarm went off.



* * *



Schematics or not, the security system was too good for Jason to chance on his own. He had a fine memory and knack for tactical thinking, so keeping track of sensors and sight lines was far from impossible. But he didn’t like the odds of running half speed on unfamiliar ground, not against a man like Reece.

So he did need help.

What he’d said to Burklow was not an actual lie.

Jason arrived ten minutes before his father, and parked one street over, slinging his weapons, and working through a strip of forest where Reece’s property touched a neighbor’s. He made a quick recon along the perimeter wall, located the rear gate first, and then a good access point to scale the wall, and watch the front approach. Lying flat, and invisible in the darkness, he was there when his father arrived. He watched Burklow arrive, too; saw them huddle in the gloom between streetlamps.

Jason studied the sky in the east. Paling, at last. Barely perceptible. He turned his attention to the house and grounds, confirming his opinions on sight lines and sensors, then marking doors and windows, looking for problems and the most likely places for opportunity to arise. More light in the east, false dawn, a time Jason knew well. Soon, he thought; and then it happened: sirens in the morning stillness, a cavalry call, the sound of his father’s choice.



* * *



The alarm broke Reece’s paralysis, his thoughts suddenly quick and sharp. The girl wasn’t going anywhere, not for a while, at least. Somewhere was a larger threat. Reece hit the security monitors at full stride, eyes on the screens. It was a nightmare. Cameras at the gate showed a swarm of cops. Ten cars. A dozen. Three more rolled in as he watched.

Byrd, he thought. He’d told someone about the job, given someone the address in case he didn’t make it out. Now, Byrd was in the freezer with his two friends. Reece’s thoughts rolled over, logical and mechanical. The house was lost. Unfortunate, but not irretrievably so. Ownership was held by carefully layered corporate entities, none of which would trace back to Reece. Same with the cars, the utilities. He stored his financial information off-site for exactly this kind of circumstance. They’d collect his prints, of course, but Reece was not his real name, and he’d never been printed.

“Damn it!”

His control slipped, and he beat his fists on the console. The girl would live; he didn’t have time to kill her now. Guns were in the main house. There and back would take time. What about the boys? That required thought, but he had to think fast. If the cops were smart, they’d circle the entire block. Reece didn’t need to go through the front gate, but if they shut down the surrounding streets …