The Recruiter, page 20
“Wrong,” Joey said. He walked over to Ghost, who pulled a second silencer from his jacket and handed it to my former friend. His gun hadn’t moved from next to Maggie’s head. I imagined rushing Ghost, ripping the gun from his hand and emptying it into him and Joey, laughing as their blood splattered my face.
“I’m more than just a loose end,” Joey said as he screwed the silencer into the barrel of my Glock with a gloved hand. “I’m the guy that’s going to testify about how you recruited me and Erica to come here and help you take out the guy who was investigating the human trafficking ring you and Leon were running.”
“What?” Robert said.
“It’s bullshit,” I replied, my eyes fixed on Joey.
“It’ll make for great headlines. The family angle will really sell it. How the same cop was engaged to your ex-wife, and in a fit of rage you took out her and both your kids before turning the gun on yourself.”
I could feel Robert next to me, his body tensed and ready to spring. He’d be dead before he made it two steps and he knew it, but a big part of him still wanted to try. I know because I felt the same exact way.
“I’m going to rip your fucking throat out,” Robert snarled, and Joey laughed.
“So what,” I snapped, “you’re going to shoot all of us, then put my prints on the gun? You’re not that kind of guy, Joe. You’re not a monster.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” He finished screwing the silencer into the Glock.
And handed it to Ghost.
“But he is,” he said.
Ghost stepped back from Maggie, lowered his other gun and lifted the Glock. My Glock. This time, it wasn’t just a threat. This time, he meant to pull the trigger. My daughter would be killed with my gun.
Maggie screamed, “Daddy!”
I made a sound that was supposed to be the word “No!” but wound up being something much more guttural, primal.
Denise cried out for Robert, who decided it was now or never and sprang toward Ghost, but Joey was standing in the way.
All that happened at the same time. None of us noticed the room fill with bright light or the roar of the engine coming fast from outside. When Erica drove her minivan through the front door and crashed it into the banister, though, that got everyone’s attention.
The explosion of wood and glass and other assorted debris—including a brass door knocker with the name Whitehead engraved on it—distracted Ghost just enough to alter his shot by an inch, give or take. Enough that the bullet grazed the top of Maggie’s head, carving a little gash in her scalp but doing most of its damage to the couch behind her.
Joey caught Robert’s charge and wrapped his arms around him, both of them stumbling into the antique end table against the back wall.
Ghost was a professional who never missed twice and quickly drew another bead on Maggie’s forehead. But Denise was a mother, and you don’t fuck with them either. I once watched her chop a five-foot long black snake in half with a shovel when it came out from under our backyard shed and went after Maggie, who was playing in her sandbox. She launched herself at Ghost’s knees and sent him to the ground, his second shot punching a hole in the ceiling.
I was on him before he could reset for a third try. If I was smart I would have grabbed Robert’s gun off the chair and ended it all right then, but I wasn’t thinking, just reacting. I landed on Ghost and immediately began hammering his ribs and midsection with my right fist, while my left pinned his hand holding the gun to the floor. Above me, Robert and Joey continued their brawl, destroying every piece of furniture in their path. They were in the dining room now, by the sounds of it, and one of them had just broken something glass over the other one’s head.
Beneath me, Ghost was finally starting to go limp. A few more blows and I’d make a move to take his gun with both hands. Before I got that far, I felt a sharp, hot pain in my right leg. I looked down and saw the handle of a knife sticking out of my rear upper thigh, just below my ass. Ghost had his hand wrapped around it and drove it in as far as it could go, the tip scraping against the edge of my femur. I screamed and dropped my elbow into his chest with all the force I could muster. I thought I heard something snap, hoping it was a rib, but I couldn’t be sure. Whatever it was, it hurt enough for him to let go of the knife but not the gun. I pulled the blade out and sat back on my knees, blood quickly soaking through my pants. I looked up in time to see Ghost lying on his side, his right hand still holding his gun.
That hand never made it off the floor, though. Erica stepped on it and fired two shots into his head. Ghost’s skull exploded, splattering brain and bone fragments onto the carpet Denise had installed sometime within the last ten years. I was breathing too hard to thank her, so I found her eyes and nodded instead.
As I tried to get my breath under control, I caught a strong, acrid stink of urine. Ethan, who was closest to me, stared at Ghost’s body, not blinking. His mouth hung open around its gag, and there was a dark stain spreading on the front of his sweatpants. When another shot echoed from the kitchen, followed by the thud of Joey’s body hitting the ground, he convulsed and began screaming. A high-pitched, frightening sound that I worried would tear his throat to shreds.
“Ethan!” I said, wrapping him in my arms. “It’s okay, bud. It’s okay.” I started to rock him like I did when he was a baby, but when he turned and saw my face, his screams turned even higher-pitched and faster. His hands were still tied behind his head so he had to wriggle his whole body in an ugly, awkward spasm to break free from my grip.
But when Robert came over and took him from me, cradling his neck into his shoulder, the screaming stopped and the spasms subsided. He felt safe.
And I no longer felt the knife wound in my leg. Watching Robert console my son hurt worse.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Maggie came to me, though, and that was something. While Robert soothed Ethan, and Denise, free of her bindings, surveyed the chaos I had brought into her home, my daughter came to me. She wrapped her arms around my neck as tightly as she had when she was a little girl, only this time she didn’t have to stretch. She tried to form words, asking me to make sense of everything that had happened, but her brain and her mouth weren’t on the same page, so she settled for squeezing me even tighter, trying to draw strength from what little I had. I hugged her back and was relieved that it felt so wonderfully natural. There was a van where the front door used to be, bullet holes in the ceiling, blood all around and two dead bodies on the floor, but with my eyes shut and my arms wrapped around my little girl, I could pretend none of it was real.
“Rick, the police will be here soon,” Erica said, obliterating the illusion.
I opened my eyes.
“We need to move,” I said, letting go of Maggie, which took more willpower than most things I’ve done in my life. Erica nodded and handed me back the gun Joey had taken.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Robert said. He came around the wall between the front room and the kitchen. Ethan was still in his arms, and he looked almost like himself again, except for the stain on his pants and the lingering stink of urine. Robert set him down and he turned to Denise, who was ready and waiting to lead him away so we could talk. She caught my eye, only for a second, but long enough to let me know the words Maggie couldn’t form would come much easier to her, and without anything as gentle as a hug to accompany them. For the moment, however, she was content to just be a mother, while Robert and I spoke.
Robert’s lip was split open and blood trickled from his nose, but otherwise he looked none the worse for wear after his scuffle with Joey. Impressive, considering Joey probably outweighed him by about thirty pounds. I was pretty sure the blood staining the back of his jacket wasn’t his, remnants of Erica’s handiwork.
“Robert, listen to me,” I said, lowering my voice so Maggie wouldn’t hear. She sensed the tension, however, and went over to be with her mom and brother. “This isn’t over. If we stick around here, none of us will make it to the end of the week.”
“Enough with the drama. You’ll be in a cell surrounded by cops and the four of us will be under twenty-four-hour protective surveillance.”
“Oh yeah? How did that work out tonight?”
The punch came quick and landed square on my chin. I took a step back to keep from falling over and a fresh wave of pain shot out from the hole in my leg. I reached down and felt my pants squelch, like wringing out a damp paper towel.
That was going to need tending to. Soon.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” I said, sliding my jaw back and forth to make sure it still worked. “But these people won’t stop until we’re dead. And not just the two of us, either.” I nodded toward Denise and the kids, huddled together on the couch by the window. “The entire Philly police force couldn’t stop them, not when they can just keep sending one hitter after another, after another, after another. Until the job’s done. And that’s assuming you can trust everyone around you.” I saw his arm cock back and stepped back preemptively. My leg screamed at me again, but I kept my hands held up next to my shoulders to show I didn’t want to fight.
“I know for a fact Interpol is compromised,” I explained, “and when I first met with the woman who hired me, she implied that she had people in other agencies as well. How big of a leap is it to assume that she has people in the Philly PD, too?”
“Rick,” Erica said. She had retrieved her duffel bag from the van and was anxious to get moving. We’d need another getaway car, though. Steam poured from beneath the hood of the van, which had crumpled up like a beer can on a frat boy’s forehead when it struck the banister. The windshield was spiderwebbed and useless, and judging by the way it demolished the railing and porch steps on its way to the door, the undercarriage had to be at least partially damaged.
The only remaining choice was Denise’s Chevy Traverse, with its third row of seating. Perfect for taxiing gaggles of kids to practice, the movies, and back from late-night parties. Normal family stuff. It should never be used to flee a crime scene under cover of darkness, but that’s where we were.
I needed to convince Robert, though. Otherwise Erica and I would be taking my car, just the two of us. Getting to it might not be easy, either, depending on how badly Robert insisted I stay.
I held my hand up to Erica and gave her a quick glance. She frowned and squeezed between the van and the jagged ruin of the wall to stand watch on the front porch, listening for the first faint wail of sirens. A crowd had already started to form across the street. Neighbors in pajamas and sweat clothes, gathering together to observe the wreckage at the Williams house.
Or maybe it was the Leap house now, if Denise had gone back to her maiden name. It wouldn’t be Baglioni. Not yet, anyway.
Nobody approached yet for a closer look, but I did hear a man’s voice shout out, “Is everybody okay in there?”
“Sorry,” Erica yelled back, in a more than passable American accent. “I swerved to miss a cat and just lost control.”
While doing 70 and forgetting how to use the brake, apparently.
“Did you call the police?” the man yelled back.
“Yeah, they’re on their way now.”
Maybe nobody had called the police yet, but I doubted it. A car crashes through your neighbor’s house, you dial 911. The police station wasn’t far away either, but it was almost 8:00 and in a small town like this, response time depended entirely on where the two or three patrol cars on duty were in relation to the scene. Still, best-case scenario we had five minutes. Probably less.
“Robert,” I said, amping up the diplomacy to 10. “I’m not saying anybody in your department is dirty. But even if they are clean, our odds are still better on the run. You can call your captain from the road and explain everything. Call your contact at the FBI, too. But we all stand a better chance as moving targets than as stationary ones.”
He bit the inside of his lower lip and turned away from me, but he didn’t say no. I was close to closing the deal. Just needed to seal it.
“Blame me,” I said, going for the Hail Mary. “Tell them I took you all at gunpoint, I don’t care. When this is over, I’ll turn myself in.”
We’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
He turned back. “And when will this all be over, Ben? Or Rick, or whatever the fuck your real name is. How many more dead bodies will it take?”
“I don’t know. But if we stay, there will be at least six new ones. I promise you that.”
“You can’t promise that. You don’t know that.”
“You really want to bet their lives on it?” I said, nodding toward the couch again. My leg was on fire. I was pretty sure Ghost had missed any major arteries, otherwise I’d be unconscious on the floor by now, but the bleeding hadn’t stopped and the wound would definitely require stitches. The crowd outside was getting antsier and, beneath the swelling rumble of gossip and cul-de-sac chatter, the inevitable sound of approaching sirens grew louder.
But I didn’t move. If I was leaving with more than just Erica, it needed to be Robert’s decision. Erica poked her head back in and, for the first time since I’d known her, she looked anxious. Robert considered her, then walked over to Denise and the kids.
“We gotta go, guys,” he said, ushering them up gently. I allowed myself to exhale. Denise covered the distance between us before I could take another breath.
The slap came hard. Followed by another. Then they came rapid fire, Denise’s manicured nails peeling skin off my face like carrot shavings.
“You son of a bitch!” she screamed as she hit. “These people knew you! They almost killed us because of you! Your children, Ben! They tried to kill your children!”
Maggie stood watching with Ethan attached to her side. Just an hour earlier she had probably been lying on her bed, talking on the phone with her friends. Or FaceTiming. Or maybe even texting with a boy. Things any other seventeen-year-old girl would be doing on a Tuesday night. Maybe Ethan was playing video games or watching the Sixers on TV while Denise cleaned up dinner. Their life was fine and boring and happy. Then it all got thrown into a blender. Because of me. I deserved everything she gave and I took it all.
“Mom!” Maggie said, trying to pull her away. Denise resisted at first so Maggie grabbed her shoulder again and tugged harder. “MOM!”
The second time worked and the assault ended. In the dim light, I didn’t even recognize the woman I’d fallen in love with back when we were two young, dumb college kids. Gone was the face I fantasized about via old pictures on my phone. In its place was the hardened look I’d seen on countless killers over the years.
“Denise,” Robert said, but it was all he got out before she spun on him.
“Why did you two walk in together?” Denise said, her words short and clipped. If she had a shovel, like that day with the snake in our backyard, there might be two of Robert right now. “Did you know he was back and not tell me? Who are these people? How do they know Ben? Someone please tell me what the hell is going on!”
“I’ll explain everything once we’re away from here,” I said tentatively, not wanting to spark a second attack. “I promise. But if we don’t go—right now—we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”
For a moment I thought the blows would start again. Then she looked at Robert, who simply nodded, and some of the fight left her. Reluctantly.
“We need to take your car,” I said. She walked past me into the kitchen to grab her keys off a hook above the counter as if I wasn’t even there.
“What will we tell the neighbors?” Robert asked, peering out the front window at the close to two dozen people congregating like groupies waiting for their favorite rock star to emerge from backstage.
“Tell them I’m your cousin and got hurt when the car crashed through the door, and you need to take me to the hospital.”
“Half those people still remember what you look like,” Denise said, as if explaining an exceptionally difficult math problem to an exceptionally stupid child.
“I’ll keep my head down.”
She made a face that expressed how little she thought of that solution but didn’t argue. We went one by one through the tight space between the van and the disfigured doorframe, hopped off the porch that no longer had working stairs, and piled into the Chevy. I had my arm wrapped around Robert’s shoulders and my head tucked low behind his jacket.
“Robert,” the same guy called out, “everybody okay?”
“Yeah,” he replied, not looking up. “Just need to get this guy to a hospital!”
“Who is he?”
“Cousin!”
There was a follow up question, but it was cut off as we slammed the Chevy’s doors shut. Robert sat behind the wheel, Denise next to him. Maggie and Ethan were in the middle row, while Erica and I crammed into the two seats in the very back. The windows were tinted, so I was able to gawk at the gawkers without them knowing as we drove away.
There was Don, whose daughter used to play with Maggie when their school closed on snow days. They’d build entire Frosty families on our front lawn, then come in for hot chocolate and Denise’s chocolate chip cookies, which were famous throughout the neighborhood. Vicki and Shane, whose once cute little puppy had grown into a full-sized Lab that stood obediently by their feet, despite all the commotion around it. Walt, our next-door neighbor, was nowhere to be seen, but he worked nights. Assuming he hadn’t been replaced in the last ten years by a new next-door neighbor. There were other faces I didn’t know, and more I thought I did but couldn’t be sure. Age, poor lighting, and a few quick seconds did not make for the best conditions to identify old acquaintances.
The sirens were louder as we turned the corner. No visible lights yet, but there would be soon. Robert zigzagged through a few side streets to get to the main road, doing his best to avoid any of the more likely routes the first responders would take to get to the house. When we turned left at the traffic light onto Woodlane Road, the sirens were behind us, buried somewhere in the neighborhood’s labyrinth.
