Deadlock

  His boy was screaming in terror.

  Page looked across the open space at Hutch. He held an index finger up to pursed lips: shhh.

  “What do you want!” Hutch screamed into the window.

  Page beckoned to him.

  Hutch found Logan again, just as Page snapped off the light. Darkness blotted his son from view. Hutch kept his eyes on the spot where he knew Logan was, the way lifeguards were taught to keep their eyes locked on the place a drowning victim was last seen.

  Page had not simply tossed the boy to his death in front of Hutch. He wanted to talk. Or get Hutch closer, then kill them both. Either way, it bought them time. As long as Hutch was breathing they stood a chance, however slim, to get out of this alive.

  Shhh, Page had instructed. Shhh. Why did that tighten Hutch’s stomach?

  He was pretty sure Page’s “be quiet” gesture had meant Don’t call the cops. The last thing Page would want was to be caught here with a kidnapped boy. Most likely he was still playing games, trying to make Hutch believe he was there for an exchange: Logan for Hutch’s silence. They both knew, however, it would never play out like that—not with Page murdering Larry, not with Page’s cold, black heart.

  Still, if it meant Hutch getting closer to Page, to Logan, then he would act his part. And who knew what Page would do if he thought Hutch was setting him up, trapping him in?

  But Joanne had seen Larry. No way she wouldn’t have grabbed the first phone she’d seen. If she hadn’t already made the call, Hutch would consider it a miracle.

  He pushed away from the window and ran to the door. “Joanne! Joanne!”

  He started into Cubicle City, then ducked back into Larry’s office. He grabbed the bow bag off the desk. Halfway to the elevator, he called for her again. No response. She was gone. He pictured her wringing her hands and telling her story between sobs to a knot of security guards as they waited for the DPD to respond.

  What would Page do if he saw flashing lights? Would he take the time to get Logan down? Would he take him back to Washington with him, try again another day? Would he leave Logan dangling there for Hutch to rescue? Hutch didn’t have many answers, but he knew this: if Page ever allowed Hutch to embrace his son again, this side of heaven, it would be on his terms.

  And that just wouldn’t do. Not in Hutch’s book.

  SIXTY-TWO

  Hutch ran past the elevators. He noticed the floor indicators above the doors. The lifts that were not already on the first floor were heading for it. Standard procedure in an emergency: building security called all the elevators to the first floor and locked them down. They’d also lower and disable any parking garage gates in place. Laura had gotten out just in time.

  Hutch pushed through the door into the stairwell and started down. Several floors below, a door crashed open. Shoes pounded up the stairs. Hutch gazed between the rails down the center of the staircase, but saw only a shadow gliding along with the staccato beat.

  “Michael?” he called.

  The person kept coming.

  Hutch propped his foot on a low railing, rested the bag on his thigh, and opened it up. He rummaged through it and found what he wanted. He had the bow, which he’d re-strung at the hotel, partially out when the quiver snagged on something. He shook the bow in vain, then released his grip on the bag to fish his hand inside.

  “Freeze!”

  A building security guard stood on the landing directly below, waving a revolver at him. He was huffing for breath, but wide-eyed, full of adrenaline.

  “Someone shot at us from across the street,” Hutch said. “He’s holding my boy hostage. I need to get over there. He has my son!”

  “What’s that?” the guard said.

  “A bow . . . arrows. I’m a hunter. It’s the only weapon I have. Listen—”

  “No, you listen.” The guard’s facial muscles tightened. “Let go of that bow, slip your hand out of the bag—slowly!—and let the bag and bow and whatever else is in there just fall off your leg. Is that clear?”

  “Officer, you don’t understand. The man across the street has kidnapped my son. He killed Larry Waters. My name is John Hutchinson, I’m a columnist here.”

  “We’re not having this conversation until you drop the—”

  If a bull had ripped the fourth-floor door out of the jamb with its horns and flung it aside, it couldn’t have startled Hutch more—or appeared more indomitably forceful—than Michael bursting through and tackling the guard. The pistol fired, zinging off the concrete underside of higher steps above Hutch’s head. The bag slipped off his leg and bounced down the stairs. Michael sat on the guard’s chest, beating him in the head with both fists. The guard weakly struck Michael in the arm and side with his gun.

  “Michael,” Hutch said. “Stop!”

  The boy was wild, screaming. Out of his wailing rage, a single word began to take form: “No . . . no . . . no . . . no . . . !”

  Hutch descended to the landing. He seized Michael’s collar and arm, and tugged.

  Michael’s knees squeezed the guard’s torso, holding him in place.

  Hutch pulled again. The boy fell sideways, jerked his arm out of Hutch’s grasp, pushed at Hutch.

  “Leave me alone!” Michael said. “It’s not real, don’t you understand?”

  “Get off him, Michael,” Hutch said. He got two fistfuls of Michael’s shirt and yanked him off the man.

  The guard kicked his legs away from Michael. He pushed himself into a sitting position and fumbled with the gun, trying to get a better grip on it.

  Michael cried out and spun around. One hand clutched the guard’s gun; the other arm wrapped around the man’s head. Together, the two tumbled down the flight of stairs. Michael’s leg slipped between the concrete steps and metal railing. As he continued to descend, tangled with the guard, his leg twisted, wedged, and snapped—Hutch heard it over the scuffling and grunting. It slipped free, and the men rolled the rest of the way down.

  The guard sprawled facedown on the next landing. Michael scrambled for the pistol, got it, and held it to the motionless guard’s head.

  “Michael, don’t!” Hutch said.

  The guard’s back rose and fell. He was alive, for now.

  Michael sat, his back pressed against the wall. His legs stretched out before him. The right leg was broken. A jagged tip of his tibia protruded from a rip in his jeans. Blood soaked his pants.

  “You’re hurt,” Hutch said, aware that he meant Michael’s injuries extended much deeper than the shattered bone.

  Michael squeezed his eyelids tight. He crossed his arms over his head. He groaned.

  Hutch thought it wasn’t his leg Michael agonized over. He didn’t even seem aware of it. Hutch took a step down.

  “No!” Michael said. He pointed the gun at Hutch. “Stay away! I don’t know . . .” Tears streamed out. His frown was more pronounced than Dionysus’s tragic mask. His bottom lip quivered. His proclamation poured out with all the agony and sorrow of a parent who has lost a child: “I don’t know what’s real anymore!”

  “I’m real, Michael,” Hutch said. “He’s real. You’re real.” He held out his palms. “We can get you help. Let me have the gun.”

  Michael pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the wall beside Hutch’s face. Bits of concrete stung his cheek.

  Hutch said, “Wait . . .”

  Michael fired again, one shot after another. Thunder clapped in the confined space with each trigger-pull. The bullets ricocheted in the stairwell. Then the hammer fell on spent cartridges. Click, click, click. He gazed up at Hutch. He looked younger than Logan, younger than Dillon. He was a little boy who needed someone to tell him how the world worked, which monsters were real and which had no teeth. Hutch wondered if he would have done any better, with someone turning stone into sand under his feet, bending even the most fundamental laws of the universe. Waking up to find you’d only dreamed of reality.

  Hutch whispered, “You’re going to be all right. I’ll do what I can t
o help. I promise.”

  Only I can’t do it now, he thought. He’d already lost too much precious time.

  The part of the guard’s belt he could see held no extra ammo, no speed-reload pouches or bullet loops. But half the belt was out of sight. Hutch couldn’t leave Michael with the gun if bullets were within his reach. Not in the kid’s state. He stepped down, and Michael resolved the issue for him. He yelled and threw the revolver at Hutch. It clattered on the landing and slid into a wall. Hutch picked it up. He retrieved the bow bag and dropped the gun inside.

  Below, another door banged opened. More feet pounded up the stairs—a whole shoe store of them.

  SIXTY-THREE

  With the way below blocked by guards or cops or both, Hutch went up. He took the stairs three at a time. He pulled open a door and found himself back where he had started, the fifth floor. Sirens grew louder, winding down as a cruiser screeched up to the building. Hutch ran into Larry’s office. Page was gone from the terrace. In the street below, off to Hutch’s left, two cruisers had parked at the corner of the building, in front of the main entrance. Directly below, a twenty-foot swath of grass ran the length of the facade, separating the building from the sidewalk.

  He lifted his gaze. A faint luminance touched Logan’s body. It was enough for Hutch to see only that the boy was still dangling from the platform. His toes balanced on the ledge, keeping him angled horribly over the empty space.

  Page stepped from a shadowy corner of the terrace. He looked over the balustrade at the cop cars below. His head lifted, and he leveled his eyes at Hutch. He shook his head. He turned Logan’s way before striding toward the restaurant’s glass doors. He pulled on his helmet and entered.

  “No!” Hutch yelled.

  Hutch stood no chance at all of beating the man to Logan. If he called 9-1-1 and used magic words that convinced the operator on the first crack that a crime was taking place on the roof, Page would still have time to kill Logan and get away.

  There was no time to think, only to act.

  He grabbed Larry’s chair and swung it into the cracked window. The glass buckled. A hundred cracks fanned out from the bullethole and the chair’s point of impact. He pulled back and heaved it at the window. It crashed through, plunging down to the street in a glittering, spiraling ballet troupe of glass shards. Cold wind blew in, whipping papers off the floor. Hutch kicked and elbowed the glass fangs still clinging to the frame. He dropped the bow bag onto the desk and worked the bow out of it. He returned to the window.

  No good, he thought. The distance to the opposite roof was a shoot-able fifty, fifty-five yards. It was ten yards farther than his comfortable shooting distance, but he had practiced at greater ranges. What he didn’t like was the angle. Shooting down or up always presented special challenges. It changed the dynamics of the arrow’s velocity and drop. Unless an archer regularly practiced incline shooting, which he hadn’t, accuracy could not be assured. Worse, in this case, was his lack of a vantage point. He could not see the roof’s door, or the path Page would take to Logan. His target would have to be at the junction of the roof’s edge and the window cleaning unit. By then, however, Page would be seconds away from shooting Logan or releasing the rope. Hutch would have one shot—if that.

  Without giving himself time to analyze, plan, or rethink his options, Hutch slipped the bow and bag over his head and stepped out of the window. He clung to the frame and felt with his feet for the ledge he believed was there. The building had been designed with horizontal lines in mind. The facade gave the subtle impression that the floors were stacked one upon the other. There had to be a ledge—didn’t there?

  But Hutch’s toes slid over only smooth surface of the facade. Then he felt it against his shin. Higher than he’d expected; his feet had arced past it on his way out. He got his feet on it—all three or four inches of it—and stood. He would not have to venture far. In fact, he could almost reach the building’s cosmetic scaffold without releasing his grip on the window frame. But not quite: his outstretched fingers came short of the crossbeams, a foot, maybe more.

  Don’t think! Do!

  He leaped. One hand, then the other gripped the balcony. His body swung under the brace. His foot hit a Plexiglas panel, almost jarring his hands loose. As he pendulumed back, he worked his fingers for a better grip. He pulled himself up, feeling the burn in his arms. Could be that exercising to relieve his frustration would prove to be one of the few benefits of his obsession with Brendan Page.

  No, he thought. There were no benefits. Nothing. He would have gladly become a fat mushroom, swigging beer and channel surfing, if he could take it all back, if Laura and the kids had never seen an Outis soldier, if Logan at that moment could be playing Halo on the Xbox and razzing Dillon and not be hanging over a hundred-foot drop.

  He continued to climb, sloppily, hastily, until the other building’s roof came into view. He was positioned slightly above it—not enough of an incline to worry about. Here he could see the roof’s door, faintly outlined by the light behind it. It was ten yards from the edge of the roof, but more in line with the scaffold than the window cleaning platform was to Larry’s window: the distance was about the same.

  He draped the hockey bag, and the ballistic vest inside it, on a brace. He threw a leg over it and sat. He hooked an elbow around a vertical beam. Wiggling, he assessed his stability. Not bad, not so very different from balancing on a tree limb, waiting for an elk to pass.

  He slipped the bow off his back. He selected an arrow from the quiver and nocked it onto the string. All of his arrows were graphite, which provided the most consistency from arrow to arrow.

  Consistency was key to instinctive shooting: the hunter needed to practice the same style of shooting—placement of hand on the bow and fingers on the string, the position of his eyes in relation to the bow and arrow, the point in his draw where he released the string. In the field these habits kicked in, allowing him to shoot quickly and accurately without having to think about it.

  But that worked only when one could count on the bow and arrows performing the same way every time as well. Hutch had inserted metal tubes into his arrows, giving them more weight and rigidity. Otherwise they would wobble in flight, under the power of his bow’s sixty-pound draw weight.

  The cold bristled against his skin. His fingers felt it down to the bone. He saw Larry’s blood on them. He wanted to spit on them and wipe the traces of his friend’s death away. He didn’t dare take the time. But he did lean close to blow into his hands. So much of bow shooting depended on the sensitivity and dexterity of the archer’s fingers. The slightest tremble or early release would send the arrow off target. Positioning the fingertips even a millimeter away from their usual position on the string would affect the timing of the release and the way the string slid off his skin. A hair’s-breadth variance, when compounded by distance, could translate into his missing his mark by several feet. The effect of wind on an arrow’s flight would be even worse. It would be especially so between buildings, where the breeze funneled through in sporadic gusts.

  If he dwelt too long on all the factors working against him, he’d be tempted to give up. Instead, he plucked the string back and let the arrow fly.

  Against the shadows’ multihued grays and blacks, he lost sight of it. He saw it break against the bricks just below the lip of the parapet. It had dropped five feet and drifted right by the same amount. He had aimed for the door, but the arrow had not come anywhere close to it. Had the shot been directed at Page, the man likely would have been completely unaware of it.

  Kentucky windage was a term used to describe adjusting your aim to compensate for the weather’s influence on an arrow. It usually worked for light breezes that stole a few inches of accuracy. Five feet? No way.

  A shadow broke the thread of light outlining the roof’s door.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Hutch nocked another arrow and set his aim high and to the left—too high and too left, he knew.

  When the d
oor didn’t open, he wondered if the shadow had been a trick of his eyes, or if Page was waiting on the other side. Would he come out, running straight for Logan? Slip out and around the stairwell shelter, to approach Logan circuitously, denying Hutch a shot? Or was he marshaling more soldiers to storm the roof?

  Risking his chance, but feeling that accuracy was more crucial than timing, Hutch disengaged the arrow from the string. He pressed the tip of the bow’s lower limb into the top of his foot. He pulled the upper limb down, arcing the bow and loosening the string. He worked the loop of the string out of the notches that held it in place. He twisted the string between his fingertips, tightening it, then slipped the loop back into place. The length of the string from limb to limb was now just a little shorter. It was more taut, which would result in a heavier draw weight. And that, Hutch thought, with some hopeful satisfaction, meant more power.

  In the span of seven seconds, he re-nocked the arrow and shot it at the door. It thunked into the door frame, waist-high. He looked at the back of his knuckles. They had been sliced open by the tip of the arrow. It was a broadhead, two triangular razors that fit together to form a lethal, pointed plus sign. Shortening the string made the bow arc more, which lengthened the distance between the draw point and the arrow rest. It required longer arrows, a luxury he didn’t have.

  As he pulled another arrow from the quiver, the light around the door darkened again. Hutch nocked the arrow and adjusted his aim. He pulled back on the string, just half an inch, enough to feel its tautness on his fingertips. The door opened, and Hutch stopped himself from pulling the string back and letting the arrow fly. It was like reversing a jump in midair. His muscles were ready. They were trained to shoot as habitually, as quickly, as the blink of an eye.

  But the doorway was empty. Page’s helmet broke into the lighted rectangle and disappeared again.