Captives (7 page)

"Suddenly this does not seem so wise," Dim said.

"You think?" Far below, a sentry and his dog crossed the fenced-in parking lot. "That's why it's good. Sometimes all you have to do is be dumber than the enemy would ever guess."

"There is a certain ingenuity to it. We're such two-dimensional thinkers, aren't we?"

"The aliens aren't any better. Though they'll surprise you every now and then." Walt glanced up at the dark sky. "Well, we're not getting any younger."

Dim took a final look over the wall, then headed to the stairwell. The door clicked behind him.

A full 24 hours had passed since Walt had had the idea, which began life significantly less complicated. His first thought had been to use a bow. Classic Robin Hood shit. The sporting goods store had had a few, but all the arrows had been taken. On top of that, the only rope he trusted to hold his weight was heavy enough that he wasn't sure the arrow could make the trip across the buildings. While wandering around the dark store trying to find a single damn arrow to test out the plan, he'd seen the RC planes.

Their batteries had no juice, but they were rechargeable, and Dim knew a local with a solar setup. They'd arrived at the woman's house with a shopping cart full of airplane batteries and the promise that, in exchange for her help, she could have all the ones they didn't need. Most were dead for good and that was that, but a fraction proved to still hold a charge.

They only needed two. One for Walt, and one for Dim, who was going to be a block or two away flying a second plane. Because the fucking things were noisy as hell. Walt's little HALO incursion wouldn't be good for much if the buzz of the Zero's engine summoned every sentry on the premises up to the roof.

That's where Dim came in. Once Walt made landfall on the other building, Dim would scurry back to the roof and use the guide line tied to their end of the rope to lower it a few floors and allow Walt to slide back the other way, guitar in hand.

36 hours since she'd been taken. Back when he'd been working at the Manhattan bodega with a weekend of similar length, the span of time would have flashed by in a blink. Now, it felt like weeks. He didn't know how much longer his window would remain open. If this didn't work, he'd either have to kill his way in, or start cutting off Dim's knuckles.

An electric whine shot through the night. The racket climbed, distorted by the channels of the buildings until it was hard to tell whether it was around the corner or a half mile away. Far below, the sentry stopped and stared into the darkness. A second figure emerged from beneath an awning and joined the first man. They conferred, then moved around the corner in the direction of the noise.

Walt flipped the power on his control pad and backed away from the Zero. Its motor spun to life. He eased it forward, picking up steam, the finger-thick rope unspooling behind it. It was halfway across the roof and coming up fast on the opposite wall. Twenty feet from it, it wobbled, bounced, and lifted.

Walt swore in triumph and banked the plane back toward him to minimize the amount of rope trailing from its landing gear. This helped, but it cleared the wall's edge by bare inches. As it arced into the open space between the two buildings, it leveled, then began to lose altitude, dragged down by the rope. The next block over, Dim's plane burst into the sky, its engine helping mask the buzz of Walt's.

The Zero slogged forward, bleeding height. The grounds below remained empty, the tower windows dark. Walt thumbed back the stick, trying to gain altitude without stalling out. The dim rope stretched across the gap. The Zero slowed, sagging like an old drunk. Walt closed his eyes.

Leaves rustled. Twigs snapped. Across the way, the Zero finished its first and only flight by crashing into a thicket of shrubs. He shut off the engine and pulled the slack from the line. The rope wasn't attached to the plane itself—its frame was too fragile—but to an angled metal bar Walt had affixed to the back of its wings. As the line went taut between the two buildings, the bar snagged in the branches. Walt moved to the wall and fit a disembodied set of bike handlebars over the rope. After a last look below turned up nothing—Dim was still flitting around with his plane elsewhere, the buzz filtering through the streets—Walt swung his legs over the wall, hung on as tight as he could, and dropped.

He slid forward along the line. It drooped under his weight, though not as much as he'd been expecting—the steel handlebars glided along the slanted rope, splitting his momentum across two planes. He built speed, the homemade zip line bearing him straight for the garden. The rope hung a few feet above the edge of the iron fence. If he pulled his legs up to his body before landing, he'd clear it easily.

He whooshed high over the street, crossing above the dual-layered fence of the compound. Elsewhere, the other model plane was still whirring away like the engine of the world's least practical lawnmower. He was still gaining speed. The impact into the looming trees would not be pleasant.

The line went slack. With a sudden lurch, he dropped. He was fucked. A hundred feet of free-fall, then dashed across the parking lot like an ice cream topping. Nothing to be done about it.

Puzzlingly, rather than tailing away with him, the line was swinging forward, toward the side of the building. It hadn't come loose from the branches, but from the roof he'd taken the plunge from. He reached for the rope, snagging it between two fingers. The building's face loomed. A moment before impact, he tucked his chin, hunched his shoulders, and pulled his knees to his chest.

He whanged into the side like a fleshy wrecking ball. The breath burst from his lungs. He rebounded, gasping. Narrow balconies projected beneath him. He clung to the rope, taking in what air he could until his muscles relaxed enough to quit suffocating him. For the moment, the rope held fast. He had somehow hung on to the handlebars during all this. Rather than letting them drop with a clang, he clamped down on them with his chin and climbed hand over hand up the rope.

Twenty feet separated him from the iron fence enclosing the roof. This section of his climb was the worst and he nearly gutted himself on the fence's inward-curling prongs. He dropped to the other side and pulled up the rope as fast as he could.

With the evidence less evident, he hunkered down to catch his breath, rub his aching ribs, and take stock. Dim was still futzing around with the second plane. A woman was coming around the corner of the building with a dog in tow, but they were in no obvious hurry.

The roof smelled like wet dirt and budding plants. Walt ditched the handlebars in a planter and headed toward the shack in the center of the roof. In a welcome piece of luck, the door wasn't locked. Apparently the Forged Ones left the roof accessible in case someone had the urge for a midnight tomato.

The stairwell was pitch black. He closed the door and got out a lighter. At each turn of the stairs, he flicked on the wavering flame to make sure there was nothing ahead that could trip him, then switched it off and descended in darkness to the next landing.

In friendlier days, Dim had visited Liam often enough to know his room number. At the 18th floor, Walt exited the stairwell into a carpeted hallway. Moonlight penetrated the windows at each side of the hall, giving him just enough light to falsely believe he could read the room numbers if he got close enough. Instead, he had to use the lighter again, stopping at 1822.

If Liam wasn't in there—if he had moved rooms or was spending the night elsewhere—that was it. There was no backup plan. Walt would invoke the "good-faith effort clause" on Dim. If Dim denied him, he'd kidnap him at laser-point and drag him along to ensure he was telling the truth. Probably should have done that to begin with. It hadn't looked this complicated at the outset. Then again, it never did. Ought to know better by now.

He pressed his ear to the door. Heard nothing. Saw no light at its edges or the peephole. The door was locked. Walt glanced up and down the hallway and got out his laser. He leveled it at the knob.

A blue glow suffused the hallway. Metal drips hit the carpet with a sizzle. He circumscribed a circle around the stem of the knob. Once the circle was complete, he covered his hand in the tail of his shirt and wiggled the knob loose from the deadlatch. It thumped to the floor. A ribbon of smoke rose from the carpet. He toed the knob until it stood on its end, burnt side removed from contact.

With the interior workings of the lock exposed, he lased through the screw posts, waited for everything to cool down, then used a pen to push the interior knob free of the door. It landed on the carpet on the other side. He picked up the exterior knob, fit it back into place, and swung the door open.

Moonlight trickled through sheer curtains. He closed the door and hid the fallen knob beneath the stand next to the entry. Deep, regular breathing rasped from across the apartment. The foyer opened to a living room. A guitar leaned against the coffee table. Walt inspected it, but it lacked the scuffing and ragged hole Dim claimed the correct one bore between the sound hole and the bridge.

The adjoining office was a forest of guitar necks. He checked each one, but it wasn't there. Of course it wasn't. That would be too easy. He arrested a sigh and moved to the bedroom. The door was half open. The room smelled like old beer. It was unheated and two figures lay under a rumple of comforters. The guitar hanging from the wall drew his eye more strongly than if the woman had hopped up naked and started doing jumping jacks.

He lifted the instrument from its pegs and retreated from the room. At the front door, he thought better and slipped into the office, where he inserted the guitar into a hard case. He returned to the door, listened to their breathing, picked up the knob, and opened the latch.

With the line detached from the other building, there was no way for Walt to make a clean exit. There was only one way out: the front door. He hurried to the stairwell. The door clicked shut, sealing him in darkness. After years of this, he still couldn't shake the feeling that he'd reach the next landing and get tackled by a hissing zombie. He wondered if he'd ever get over that, or whether a teenagerhood full of such things had left a permanent stamp on his mind.

Footsteps approached from below. Walt exited at the next floor and waited for them to pass, then resumed his descent, checking the way forward with flicks of his lighter. While arranging a cover story, he wound up going a level too far and had to backtrack to the ground floor.

This opened to a dim hallway connected to the lobby, a carpeted expanse lit by candles. Homemade ones, judging by the greasy smell. Low voices drifted from the front.

"No idea," a woman said. "But can it be anything
good
?"

"Probably a lunatic," a man muttered.

A second man chuckled. "Anyone going to complain if I beat him up and take his toy?"

"Me," the woman said. "To Voss. This is your post, and if you abandon it, I will have your head."

"Christ, I'm kidding," he said, voice thick with bleeding pride. His next words sounded like a motto: "Nobody in, nobody out, no matter what."

The woman and the other man clicked across the lobby. Walt ducked behind a couch, careful not to bump his guitar case. The stairwell door creaked and smacked shut. Feet shuffled around the front desk.

Walt touched his pistol, then sighed inwardly. He crawled on hands and knees to an adjoining room filled with couches and end tables. Two candles burned from opposite walls. He brought one to the drapes along the front wall and held it there until the fabric smoldered and caught. Feeling highly pleased with himself, he exited and crept into a side room. As soon as the sentry at the desk came to check out the fire in the other room, Walt would creep out into the lobby and into the night.

From the wall, an emergency exit stared him straight in the eye.

The light of the fire was beginning to wash into the hall. Walt gritted his teeth and ran to the door. The old lock had been broken, but they'd replaced it with a padlock. He pressed his face to the grimy glass. The parking lot looked empty. He lasered through the padlock, set it aside, and stepped into the night.

Even if he had the patience for subtlety, he no longer had the time. A rusting pickup sat near the fences. He walked swiftly to it, putting it between him and the building, set down the guitar case, stripped off his jacket, and draped it over his gun hand. When he fired the laser, its glow was restricted to a tight blue circle.

He cut through the first fence, grabbed the guitar, and moved to the second. A man shouted from across the lot. Walt whirled. The man sprinted toward the front doors and began jabbering at the man inside. Walt slashed through the outer fence and walked toward the corner of the street as fast as he dared. From the tower, a dog barked rhythmically.

He turned the corner and ran toward the Arco station they'd arranged to meet at in case of disaster. As he entered the parking lot, he slowed to a jog. A burnt-out car rested near the pumps, its doors speckled with bullet holes. A silhouette rose behind it.

"You're alive?" Dim said. "Foolish question. Revise to a statement of relief. What happened?"

"I'll tell you on the way," Walt said. "Where are the bikes?"

Dim's eyes shifted to the case in Walt's hand. "You have the guitar."

"You can consummate the relationship after we're out of here. I kind of set the building on fire. I'd prefer to be gone before I have to hear the screams."

The man gave him a look, then jogged to the side of the building where he'd stashed the bikes. As they rode off, Walt kept the case with him, balancing it in his lap. The highway was a block away, but it was elevated and exposed, and Dim took a southbound surface street instead. Shouts carried through the night, fading fast. The road cut through blocks of apartments and shopping centers. Three miles later, a grassy park opened to the right. Dim turned from the road down a narrow paved path. Gravestones peeped from the overgrown grass.

The man swung down his kickstand and glanced behind them. "I believe that's far enough, don't you? Besides, they wouldn't dare attack us on sacred ground."