The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (23 page)

“What do you want from us?” Mr. Holland
asked. “Whatever you want, we’ll do it. Just give us back our
boy.”

Mrs. Holland sobbed heavily. Her husband
wrapped his arm around her. His thick jaw muscles clenched tight.
He was a large man, well built. His wife looked tall as well. The
pictures I’d seen of Bernard indicated that he was what you might
call a runt. Due to all the health issues, I supposed.

“Ten million dollars,” the man on the phone
said.

“T-t-ten million?” Mr. Holland said.

“We both know you have it,” the man said.

“By when?” Bridget said.

“Who is this?”

“Special Agent Dinapoli.”

“Hello Special Agent. Is Detective Tanner
there?”

She looked up at me and nodded.

“I’m here, Roy” I said.

“Ten million dollars, noon, Lincoln Memorial.
And Detective Tanner, don’t you ever call me Roy again. Got
it?”

“That’s only two hours from now,” Bridget
said, not allowing time for me to respond.

“I know,” the man said.

“I can’t get that kind of money together in
two hours,” Mr. Holland said.

“You can, and you will. Because if Detective
Tanner isn’t at the Lincoln Memorial by noon with a bag filled with
ten million dollars, I’ll start chopping digits off of this little
boy. One finger per hour. Don’t comply within ten hours, then he
loses a hand. Then the other. Then we begin with the toes. In
twenty-four hours he’ll have no hands or feet. I guess I could be
nice and bypass cutting the fingers and toes off, but what fun
would that be?”

Mr. Holland shouted, “If I get my hands on
you I’ll rip your head off your shoulders.”

The guy didn’t hear it, though. He’d already
hung up. Dial tone filled the air. Bridget ended the call. The
phone rang again a few seconds later.

“Does everyone there understand?” the guy
said.

“We’ve got it,” Bridget said.

“Good. Now, Detective, I’ll see you at noon.
You had better be unarmed and alone, or you and the boy will
pay.”

The line went dead again. The room remained
silent for a few seconds. I glanced down at my watch.

“We’d better get going if we’re going to make
it in time.”

Bridget rose. “Travel by car is too risky.
I-95 is a mess all times of the day. We might not make it in two
hours.”

“What do you suggest?”

She pulled out her phone. “Helicopter.”

The Feds went into action, the three of them
focusing on separate tasks. Bridget arranged for the helicopter and
transportation for me once we landed. Vinson arranged for the ten
million to be made available and waiting for us when the chopper
landed. Braden got on the phone with the D.C. branch and set up a
secure perimeter. The Hollands didn’t want this last thing. They
felt that the FBI was taking a risk with their son’s life. In
between calls, Bridget assured them it was only to make sure
everything went smoothly. They’d only move in if something were to
happen to me. When she told them that Bernard would be safer with
them around, they relented.

I hated helicopters. Took a ride in one on my
honeymoon and hadn’t been near one since. It wasn’t flying. Planes
I could handle. Helicopters just gave me the shakes. I placed them
right up there with snakes and spiders.

“You okay, Mitch?” Bridget said.

I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be all right.”

“Remember, you’re doing this for the
kid.”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it?”

She’d think I was a coward if I told her. I
shook my head. “Nothing.”

“All right, then. The chopper will be here in
a couple minutes.”

“Here?”

“Yup. Going to land right down the street.
We’ll be in D.C. in forty-five minutes.”

“We?”

“I’m going with you. At least until we land.
You’ll be on your own after that.”

“Unarmed and alone.”

She gave me a thin smile. I wanted to lean in
and kiss her. The look she gave me told me that she wanted the
same. We stood there for a moment, forgetting the reality of the
situation.

“I don’t know if we’ll have the money in
time,” Vinson said.

Bridget’s eyes flicked back and forth, then
she turned around. “Then we do whatever it takes to get it. I don’t
care if the FBI has to break open the vault. The Hollands have the
money. It’s their money. Securing it should not be a problem. Get
someone on the phone and let me talk to them.”

I left the kitchen and walked through the
house to the front door. Townsend and his guys stood in the
driveway. They glanced my way when I stepped outside.

“How’s it feel?” I asked.

“How’s what feel?”

“Having your case pulled out from underneath
you?”

“Eat me, Tanner,” Townsend said. “You might
as well extend this little ride as long as you can, ‘cause as soon
as this is over, so’s your career. The Chief is gonna bust your ass
down to the Philadelphia Parking Authority. Hell, that might be too
good for you. You ought to be mopping up the floors in a triple-X
theater.”

“I don’t need to see any more footage of your
wife, Townsend.”

The guy smiled at me, then took a swing. I
started boxing at the age of ten. To this day I still sparred
monthly. Now, Townsend was fast for an old guy, but not fast
enough. I dodged his wide right hook and drove my fist into his
solar plexus. He bowed over and fell to his knees.

“Anyone else want some of this?” I said.

His guys shook their heads, then moved to
Townsend’s side to help him to his feet.

“What happened here?”

I looked back and saw Bridget approaching. “I
think he had a bad sausage or something.”

She nodded while looking at me out of the
corner of her eye. Then she turned her head and pointed. “There’s
our ride.”

The helicopter approached, growing larger by
the second. It landed down the street in the middle of a wide oval
court. I followed Bridget to her car. She started it, threw it into
drive and pressed the accelerator to the floor. We covered the
short distance in a couple seconds. The tires squealed as she
slammed on the brakes. Bridget threw open her door and jumped out
of the car a second after she put it in park. She’d left it running
in the middle of the street. I didn’t bother to pull the keys
out.

I caught up to her and shouted, “Who else is
coming?”

She shook her head. “Just us.”

“His parents aren’t going?”

“Another chopper’s coming for them.”

It was too loud to talk inside the
helicopter, so I spent most of my time staring out the window at
the expanse of forest below. Occasionally, Bridget and I would look
at each other at the same time. While our voices couldn’t be heard,
our eyes said plenty to one another. If things went well today,
perhaps we’d have the chance to explore each other the remainder of
the month. Maybe with some persuading, she’d agree. At the same
time, I had a feeling today might be the last time we ever saw each
other.

Forty-two minutes after we left the
Hollands’s neighborhood, we entered D.C. airspace. Three minutes
after that, we set down at the Pentagon on a helicopter landing pad
just north of the main building. I wanted to check a news site on
my cell phone to find out if hell had actually froze over.

Once we were far enough away from the
helicopter that I didn’t have to yell to be heard, I asked her,
“Why not the FBI building? Wouldn’t that have been closer?”

She looked over at me and nodded, never
breaking stride. “And if they’re watching it, they would have seen
us. Chances of them watching the Pentagon are slimmer.”

“Where are we going now?”

She pointed across Washington Blvd. toward
Arlington National Cemetery. “Come on, we need to hurry.”

I glanced at my watch. We had over an hour
for me to get the money and then get to the Lincoln Memorial. If
memory served me right, that was only a half-mile away.

We waited a moment for traffic to pass.
Bridget’s hand grazed past mine. My head turned toward her. She was
already looking at me.

“Promise you’ll buy me a drink after all this
is over, Mitch.”

I nodded. “Promise.”

She grabbed my hand and stepped into the
street. We jogged across, left the road behind and hopped a fence.
To the left were a couple maintenance or facility buildings. A dark
sedan was parked there. A man I didn’t recognize leaned against the
back of it.

“You got it?” Bridget asked the guy. She
didn’t introduce us.

The man nodded, turned and opened the trunk.
He pulled out a dark bag and unzipped it.

“So that’s what ten million in cash looks
like,” I said.

The guy said nothing. He handed the bag to
Bridget, then left us.

“Why’d we have to come over here for this?” I
asked.

“For the family,” she said. “Felt it best
that you not have to see them before this goes down.”

“Why?”

“Heroics.” She glanced over at the rows of
white tombstones. Her eyes watered over. At first, I thought it
might be the wind, but it blew against the backs of our heads.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I like to think that my dad’s out
there.”

“Was he military?”

“My grandmother said he was a Navy SEAL.
Killed in action.”

“You ever meet him?”

She shook her head. “Never.”

“Perhaps he is out there,” I said. “He’d sure
be proud of you today.”

She looked up and smiled. “Thanks, Mitch.”
She stared at me for a long minute until the engine of the sedan
behind her started. “Okay, let’s get you on your way.”

We walked back the way we came, crossing the
street together. There, we split up. She headed toward the Pentagon
entrance. I headed north toward the Arlington Memorial Bridge. All
in all, it wasn’t a bad day to be out for a walk. If you forgot
about the whole kidnapping and ransom thing, it’d be a good way to
clear your head. Only problem with that was I couldn’t easily
forget.

After crossing the bridge, I stood behind the
Lincoln Memorial. I checked my watch. Still had about thirty
minutes until it was time to make the exchange. So I walked around
the circle, then up and down the length of the reflecting pool. The
crowd wasn’t too thick, but I expected that to change over the next
half hour as lunchtime drew near. Worked out better for the bad
guys this way. Maybe me, too, depending on how they planned to work
the release of the boy.

I stood at the edge of the reflecting pool
with the water behind me, watching old Abe. The President loomed
large, sitting in his chair, watching over his small section of
D.C. I wondered what he’d think of this situation. What would he
do? Could he exercise the restraint that I’d be forced to use in
the very near future? Standing face to face with a killer and a
child abductor, could Lincoln hand over ten million dollars in
exchange for a life, knowing that he might never catch the men
responsible?

It didn’t matter what Lincoln would do. I was
the one who had to shovel that crow.

My trained eyes scanned the faces in the
crowd. There were at least four classes of kids on a field trip
milling about in addition to the regular tourists making their
pilgrimage to the nation’s capital.

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced
around to make sure no one watched me. Then I looked at the message
from Bridget.

Don’t forget, you owe me a drink.

I figured that was her not so subtle way of
telling me to keep my cool. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t play
hero. Hand over the money, collect the kid.

I glanced at my watch. Five minutes to go. I
cut through the thickening crowd and started up the stairs to the
memorial. I reached the top and stopped in front of giant Abe.

“Tanner,” a voice called out.

I looked to my right. Roy Miller-Michael
Lipsky stood at the end of the platform, leaning against the last
column. I glanced over my shoulder, then down the stairs. No one
caught my eye. I didn’t expect anyone to. These guys hadn’t gone
through all this trouble only to blow it by all showing up at the
same place. But I didn’t see the kid, either. And that was a
problem.

I held the bag tight in both hands as I
approached. The guy pushed off the column and took a few steps
toward me.

“That the money?” he asked.

I nodded. “Where’s the kid?”

“Hand over the money.”

“Not until I see the kid.”

“You don’t hand that money over, both kids
die.”

I was faced with a terrible decision that
only had three options as I saw it. One, back away with the money
and potentially seal Bernard’s and the girl’s fate. Two, step
forward and attack Roy Miller-Michael Lipsky. I liked this option.
A lot. I wished I had done it a few days earlier. The problem with
it now was that it would also seal young Bernard and the girl’s
fate. The last option involved me handing over ten million dollars
and depending on a kidnapping murderer to honor his end of the
deal.

“I see you’re having trouble with this,” he
said, reaching into his pocket. “Let me help.”

My first instinct was to reach for my pistol,
only I had left it behind with Bridget. It turned out he wasn’t
reaching for a weapon. Instead, he pulled out a cell phone and
placed a call, putting the phone on speaker, for my benefit I
presumed.

“Yeah, you got the money?” I figured the guy
talking on the other end of the line was Brad McCree.

“I’m here with the good detective right now,”
Roy-Michael said.

“Detective, can you hear me?” McCree
asked.

“I hear you,” I said.

“Hand over the money, if you haven’t already,
and allow Mr. Lipsky to leave untouched and unharmed. He’s going to
remain on the phone with me, updating me with his every movement
and every single thing he sees and hears. If at any time he shouts
out in pain, or if the line should go dead, the child dies. Then
the other child dies. Then maybe your child dies. Do you
understand?”