“They’re here,” Jack said, coming in the kitchen.
She heard them drive in the yard and looked out the kitchen window. There were two cars, an old Z28 Camaro and another one she could only identify as a customized mid-eighties Chevy. It had a custom paint job and rims and a landau top.
“Don’t go out there with a gun,” Jack said. “They might get the wrong idea. Give it to me or put it on the counter. Let’s not have any trouble, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay,” Kate said. She walked past him and moved through the main room and out the front door.
She watched Luke being lifted from the trunk of the Camaro and it made her mad, made her want to raise the gun and shoot them. She was conscious of the black guy who held a shotgun across his body like he was getting ready to shoot skeet. He was on her left about thirty feet away. Jack was to her right, half that distance, and Mullet, Luke and the girl straight ahead on the gravel drive.
Luke’s hands were cuffed behind his back like a criminal. They looked at each other, made eye contact and he tried to come toward her, but Mullet held him in place with a chain that was looped around the cuffs. She could see his face was bruised and he looked thin and weak standing there. “Luke, honey, are you okay?”
The girl aimed her pistol at Luke. She said, “He ain’t going to be, you don’t drop the automatic. I’ll shoot the little asshole and wouldn’t that be a shame after we’ve been so patient?”
They all looked familiar. Kate remembered Mullet, the creep from the bar, sitting across the table from her with his greasy hair and confident grin. She remembered him saying they’d probably see each other again because he knew they would, the kidnapping had been planned by then.
She remembered the girl too, thinking she and Mullet didn’t go together. It seemed even more apparent now, as Kate studied her in her black pointed-toe pumps and bootleg jeans, sweater hanging below her tweed fitted jacket, the outfit displaying a mix of fabrics embellished with beads-like she just walked out of an Anthropologie catalog.
The black guy looked familiar too. She remembered the cornrow hair and the gold warm-up and the letter D hanging from a heavy chain around his neck-anodized bling. She’d seen him somewhere before, she was sure of it. But where? It was his gold metalflake Chevy that jogged her memory. She remembered it from the gas station in Grayling. He was filling up next to her. Asked her for directions, which seemed odd now, if he was following her. She remembered seeing him at the house, too. He was the DTE man dressed in a blue uniform, checking the meter in the backyard.
Mullet said, “Jack, you tell your girl what we talked about, what we decided?”
Kate said, “No, Jack, I don’t believe you did.” She thought Jack would take charge of the situation, but he stood there looking like he wasn’t sure what to do or who he was siding with.
Jack said to Kate, “There’s only one way out of this, you’ve got to give me your gun.”
Jack stepped toward her and she raised the Beretta and aimed it at him.
He put his hands up and said, “Take it easy.”
The black guy said, “Yo, Jack, where the money at?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “She hid it somewhere.”
The black guy said, “He got one job to do, can’t even do that.”
Mullet said to Jack, “You better tell her what to do, or I will.” Mullet grinned at Kate, the grin mocking her-and in a flashback she saw the face of the skinny cop in Guatemala-looking at her the same way, underestimating her.
Kate held the Beretta at arm’s length down her right side. She’d shoot the black guy with the twelve-gauge first. Then go for the girl. She’d never get Mullet, though, with Luke standing in front of him. She said, “Let him go.”
“We let him go, you put the gun down,” the black guy said. “We cool? You give us something, we give you something-everybody happy.”
“What’re you asking her for?” the girl said. “You tell her.”
“Back nuba, simba,” the black guy said. “We negotiating.”
“Why don’t I just shoot her,” the girl said, “put an end to all this?” She extended her arm, aiming her gun at Kate.
“You hear this thug gangsta bitch?” he said to Mullet.
“You got the twelve-gauge,” the girl said, “you do it, then. Why we putting up with this?”
The black guy said, “Everybody be cool. We gonna make the transaction. Ain’t nobody gonna shoot nobody. We like family now.”
Kate said, “If you shoot me, how you going to find the money?”
“I was wondering the same thing,” the black guy said to Kate. “Let’s quit flambosting, chill this motherfucker. Give peace a chance.”
Mullet pressed the barrel of his gun, a big chrome-plated automatic, against Luke’s temple. He looked at Kate and said, “You got ten seconds-one… two…”
“Don’t worry,” the black guy said, “doubt he can count that high.”
“Mom,” Luke said, “just do what they want, will you?”
Mullet stopped counting.
Everyone turned and looked at him.
Kate dropped the Beretta.
The girl said, “Kick that little weenie gun over here.”
“Little man like Talleyrand,” the black guy said.
“What you talking about?” Mullet said, “Running your mouth, you never stop.”
“Talleyrand, Charles Maurice, motherfucker-French diplomat, homie a Napoléon.”
Teddy said, “Who?”
The black guy shook his head. “Man doesn’t know who Napoléon is.”
Kate knew, of all of them, he was the one to keep an eye on. Don’t be fooled by the street rap, the hip-hop cool, the fractured syntax-he was the smartest one by far, including Jack, who, instead of taking charge, waited to be told what to do like he was the hired help. What happened to him?
Mullet unlocked the handcuffs now and Luke ran to her and put his arms around her and held on tight and she could feel him tremble in her embrace.
The black guy grinned at her and said, “Now we making progress. Got the little man back, take me to the mon-ey.”
When Bill Wink heard the eyewitness account, he couldn’t help but think it was Kate. Joe Lamborne said she looked rich and then described her in perfect detail: a real knockout, five seven, a hundred and fifteen, blond hair, nice rack, looked about thirty-five.
If it wasn’t Kate McCall, she had a twin. The car she was driving sounded familiar too. Wasn’t her friend cruising around in a green Lexus? Sure, the one with the busted taillight. Bill remembered it parked in front of the market in Omena.
He didn’t say anything to Joe, who’d been suspended without pay, pending an investigation-or to his sergeant. The way he viewed it, Kate was in trouble and this was the perfect opportunity to help her and be a hero.
Of course, his first question was, why was she driving a stolen car? Bill’s mind wrestled with that one until he got a call from Johnny Crow, Johnny saying he saw the rich lady-you know, the one from the woods-she was picking up money, a lot of money, from the bank in Traverse.
Bill called the bank manager, Mr. Ken Calvert, who’d said Mrs. McCall had withdrawn a substantial amount of cash but bank-customer confidentiality prevented him from giving Bill any more information-even in his law enforcement capacity. Although Calvert said he could tell the deputy that he understood it was being used to consummate a real estate deal.
As far as Bill was concerned, it all pointed back to the kidnapping theory. He believed Luke was being held hostage somewhere, and Kate, he believed, was in trouble-needed his help, but was too afraid to contact him. He was pumped thinking about it, standing in front of the mirror in his bathroom getting dressed, looking at himself, his face with the confident grin. He was wearing his uniform pants and a white T-shirt. He turned sideways and flexed his right arm, the biceps rolling up, making a muscle. He looked strong. He was strong. He could bench-press 325 pounds. Do it five times.
He slipped on a Point Blank Pro Plus vest. It was their top-of-the-line body armor, designed to stop a.357 Magnum 158-grain round, a 240-grain.44 Magnum, and even a 148-grain.762 Nato round fired by an M16. Only thing it couldn’t handle was a 30.06. If one of the kidnappers had a big bore rifle he was out of luck, but he seriously doubted that would be the case.
He put his uniform shirt on over the vest, buttoned it and tucked it in his pants. He strapped his black leather Safariland duty belt around his waist. Fully loaded it weighed fourteen pounds and had everything he needed: his ASP tactical baton, two sets of handcuffs, two extra magazines for his Glock, flashlight, key keeper and pepper spay. The pepper spray had an aerosol projector for long-range deployments, which meant he could blind a perp from fifteen feet or more. He unhooked his holster and drew his Glock 21, pointed it at the mirror image of himself.
He’d cleaned the gun the night before, dipped a patch in solvent and passed a jag through the bore to loosen the fouling. The barrel was still dirty, so he did it again. Then he’d dipped a phosphor brush in solvent and scrubbed the forcing cones, ejectors and slides where a lot of powder residue had built up, working it until everything was nice and clean. He’d popped in the magazine, pulled back the slide and loaded a hollow point in the throat.
He looked at himself in the mirror again, nodded his approval and walked out of his trailer where the mud-splattered cruiser was parked. He made a mental note to get it washed. He was a Leelanau County sheriff ’s deputy, and as such, he had to portray a positive image.
He opened the trunk, took out his Hi-Standard Flite King twelve-gauge and loaded it with five Hevi-Shot Nitro Magnum shells. He closed the trunk, got in the car, put the shotgun on the floor-barrel pointing down. He forgot his hat and went inside to get it.
His stomach was nervous when he got back in the car. The full import of what he was about to do weighing on him now. Should he call for backup? He couldn’t say with absolute certainty that something was actually going to happen. It was all a hunch and if he was wrong, he’d look like a fool. But if he was right, then what?