San Francisco Night (32 page)

“Now put your hands behind your necks. Quickly.”

The eight figures obeyed.

Nightingale looked over at Chen. “Keep them covered, Amy.”  He hurried over to the table and undid the chains binding the two children. He helped them sit up and lifted them down. He took off his robe and slipped it around them. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said. “Just sit down and wait, I’ve got some things I have to do, okay?”

The two children nodded solemnly and sat down with their backs to the marble table. Nightingale walked along the line of figures, pulling off their masks and throwing them on the floor. Speckman was there. And he recognized King and Brook. He went over to the figure he’d shot and pulled off her mask. It was Lucille Carr, her face contorted with pain.

Nightingale walked over to stand next to Chen. “Now, ladies and gentlemen. I want you to take your left foot and cross it over your right ankle. You’ll find it awkward but you can all do it.”

Nightingale watched as the Apostles did as they were told. “They’ll find it hard to catch you unawares in that position,” Nightingale told Chen. “If you see anyone move, shoot them.”

“Not a problem.”

“And you need to call the cavalry.”

Chen nodded and fished her cellphone out of her pocket with her left hand. She began to dial 911 but stopped on the third digit. “Then what?” she asked him.

“Then you’re the hero of the hour.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be long gone.”

“Gone where?”

“In the short term, over the cliff.  I’ll call Dragan and have him pick me up. Then Wainwright can get me the hell out of Dodge.”

“So that’s it? You’re going?”

“Amy, I don’t have any choice. You’re a cop, you have a reason for being here. I’m not and if I stay it’ll get…”

“Complicated?”

He grinned. “See, you do understand. You’ll be fine. Just keep them covered until the cops get here. Anyone messes around, just put a bullet in them. Every one of them is a killer and they would happily have murdered those kids.”

She looked at Lucille Carr, still writhing on the ground. Then at the body of Abaddon, slumped against the temple. “Jack, how the hell do I explain this?”

“Trust me, they’ll be so glad that you got the kids back safe and sound, no one’s going to be asking too many questions.”

She nodded at the gun in his hand. “Two guns?”

“Good point.” Nightingale went over to the man figure that Chen had shot and pulled off his mask. It was a middle-aged man in his fifties, gray haired and his cheeks flecked with broken veins.

“Oh my God,” gasped Chen.

“You know him?”

“He’s a Commander at the Golden Gate Division.”

“It explains the cops at your apartment,” said Nightingale. He checked for a pulse in the man’s neck, then when he was satisfied that he was dead he took the Beretta, wiped it clean on his raincoat and then pressed it into the dead man’s palm.

He looked over at the mirror. Something was there. Something big and covered and scales, something inhuman. As Nightingale stared at the mirror, whatever it was on the other side of the glass moved closer. A hideous maw opened and the glass rattled as it roared in anger and frustration. Nightingale took aim at the mirror and forced the corpse to pull the trigger. The gun exploded and the mirror shattered into a thousand shards.

He straightened up and pointed over at Romanos as he spoke to Chen. “You got in here just as they were bringing in the kids. You identified yourself as a police office and when they didn’t stop you shot her.” He pointed at the dead man on the floor. “This guy pulled the Berretta out and started firing. It’s not the most accurate of guns and in all the confusion his shots went wide. You shot him and he went down. You lined them all up and called it in.”

Chen nodded slowly. “You’re good at this,” she said.

“All they’ll care about is the kids,” said Nightingale. “Now make the call.”

As Chen finished dialing 911, Nightingale went over to the children and knelt down so that his head was level with theirs. They were hugging each other, obviously scared stiff. He smiled. “Kids, it’s going to be all right. The police will come and then you can go back to your parents. Can you wait right here until the police come?”

The two children nodded solemnly.

“There’s nothing to worry about, just stay right here. See that lady over there? The pretty lady with the gun?”

They both nodded, eyes wide.

“Well her name is Amy and she’s a policewoman. A detective. And she’s calling her friends and they’re going to rescue you.”

“Why did they want to hurt us?” asked Brett.

“They’re bad people, but they can’t hurt you any more, I promise.”

“Are you an angel?” asked Sharonda, her lower lip trembling. “I prayed for an angel to come and save us.”

Nightingale smiled. “No honey, I’m not an angel. But sometimes I help them out when they’re short-handed.” He stood up and ruffled her hair, then fist-bumped Brett. “It won’t be long, I promise. Then you’ll be back with your parents.”

He took a last look at Chen, decided there was nothing else he could say, so he gave her a small wave and headed through the door.

The Gulfstream leapt off the runway, its engines roaring, the acceleration so powerful that it felt as if Nightingale had been kicked in the back. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Dragan had taken Nightingale to a cheap motel and delivered him to the airport just as Wainwright’s plane came into land. The plane hadn’t even waited to turn off its engines or refuel. The door had folded down, Nightingale had got into the plane, and within minutes they had been taking off. Nightingale looked through the large window to his left. He caught a glimpse of Dragan standing by the side of his SUV, his eyes hidden behind impenetrable sunglasses, his arms folded across his massive chest. “Dragan’s a good guy,” said Nightingale.

“One of the best,” said Wainwright. He was holding a crystal tumbler of malt whiskey. Nightingale was nursing a coffee.  They were both strapped into huge white leather seats. The San Francisco Chronicle was on the table between them. There were three names on the byline of the main story. Nightingale raised his mug and silently toasted Karl Woods. It should have been his story, but the Apostles had put paid to that.

There were two large photographs of Brett Michaels and Sharonda Parker, reunited with their families. “POLICE RESCUE KIDNAPPED
KIDS
” was the headline.

Below them was a photograph of The Elms mansion, taken from a helicopter by the look of it. that showed more than a dozen police and emergency vehicles parked by the main building.

“What are the cops saying?” asked Nightingale.

“They’re giving all the credit to Amy Chen.”

“She deserves it.”

“Single-handedly found the kids and apprehended the culprits. Shot four of them, but the details on the shootings are vague at best. She’s a hero.”

“Amen to that.” Nightingale sipped his coffee.  “It’s going to get messy, you know that?”

“In what way?”

“The whole keeping Satanism under wraps thing.” He gestured at the newspaper. “This can’t be good for business.”

“It could have been a lot worse,” said Wainwright. “If they had managed to open the door for Bimoleth, that would have been difficult to explain away. But you stopped them in time, they’ll come out of it as a bunch of deluded pedophiles who were using black magic as a way of embellishing their activities.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m going to be spending a ton of money making sure that happens,” said Wainwright. “A lot of victims are going to start coming out of closets. There’ll be girls claiming that Speckman raped them when they were under age. Kids who will remember Lucille Carr being in the room when they were being abused.  A lot of nasty stuff is going to be found on their hard drives. The public are going to be more interested in that and they’ll soon forget the black candles and masks. All the Apostles are murderers Jack, and they were all involved in the abductions of the kids. They’re going to prison for a long time and being a pedophile in prison is a rough ride. I doubt any of them will be alive in two years.” He shrugged. “So all’s well that ends well.”

“And what about Bimoleth?”

“He stays in limbo.”

“Presumably he’ll try again.”

Wainwright shrugged. “The Grimoire went up in smoke. Abaddon is dead. He’ll find it difficult.”

“One thing for sure, if he ever does make it, he’ll come gunning for us.”

“Let’s cross that bridge if and when we come to it,” said Wainwright. He smiled. “For the moment, just be proud of the fact that you pulled it off.” He raised his whiskey glass in salute. “You thwarted a devil and you got away unscathed. There’s not many can say that.”

The plane pulled a slow bank to the east and then began to climb.

“Where are we going, Joshua?” asked Nightingale. He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

###

Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers, an eBook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider” Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. His eBooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US and he was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world. You can find out more from his website
www.stephenleather.com
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