Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [123]
“That makes me very angry,” the Dark said, “but I’m a reasonable man. I want you, personally, to deliver the money tomorrow. If you do, we’ll call it even. If you don’t . . .”
The line went silent. The Dark was gone.
Jack tried to get Shada to look at him, but she was staring at the floor, numb. “Listen to me,” said Jack. “If that’s the game he wants to play—insisting that Shada deliver the ransom—we need to revisit the idea of just calling the police.”
“No,” said Shada. “He’ll kill Vince.”
“It’s not an option,” said Chuck. “I could run this guy through every conceivable database, and I guarantee you he’d show up on every terrorist watch list in the world. You know what that means for hostage negotiation.”
Shada looked even more worried. “What does it mean?”
Until now, Jack hadn’t thought it all the way through, but he quickly caught Chuck’s drift.
“The United States has repeatedly stated that as a matter of official government policy it does not negotiate with terrorists,” said Jack. “Even though we’re not on U.S. soil, Vince is an American law enforcement officer. Scotland Yard will likely respect U.S. policy.”
Shada’s eyes widened. “If we don’t negotiate, Vince is a dead man.”
Chuck said, “Do you disagree with that analysis, Jack?”
Jack processed it. “I can’t disagree.”
“So what’s it going to be, Shada? Can you deliver?”
She was staring at the computer screen even though it was blank.
“Shada,” Chuck repeated, “what’s it gonna be?”
Chapter Sixty-six
Vince was alone in the hotel room. His ribs ached. The side of his face felt swollen. The Dark certainly knew how to deliver a punch. But Vince was proud of himself.
If the Dark knew Jack Swyteck was in London, he hadn’t heard it from Vince.
Vince had spent his time alone counting steps, trying to diagram the floor plan in his head. More precisely, he was counting the sound of the Dark’s footsteps each time he crossed the room. Eight steps, twelve o’clock, from the door to the chair Vince was tied to. Six steps, one o’clock, from Vince to a table or a counter where the Dark had popped open a beer or a soda after beating the daylights out of him.
Three steps, nine o’clock, from Vince to the chair on which the Dark had tossed the Brainport after Vince had told him to stick it up his ass.
You weren’t the only one injured in that explosion.
Those words kept swirling around in his head, and he wondered what the Dark had meant by that. Vince’s memory of the explosion in the Mays garage was fuzzy—pushing through the door, the gunshot, the deafening percussion, the flash of light . . . and then nothing until he awoke in the hospital. Rescuers were already in the driveway and acted fast enough to save his life, but not his sight. Firefighters arrived too late to keep the house from burning to the ground. He was lucky to be alive, was the way he tried to look at it—which meant that the Dark, too, was lucky.
You weren’t the only one. . .
Vince could only speculate, and his thoughts ran the gamut on the possible injury to the Dark. Third-degree burns to his skin? Ringing in his ears? Vince wanted the satisfaction of knowing that the Dark had gotten the worst of it, that the man who had murdered McKenna had paid a price. Short of death, what could be worse than blindness? Millions of things, Vince told himself.
But at that moment, he couldn’t think of one.
The door opened, and Vince heard someone enter. It closed quickly, and the chain lock rattled. Then Vince heard footsteps . . . one, two, three . . . and the sound of a heavy sack or backpack dropping onto the luggage rack. A zipper opening—too long for a backpack, maybe a suitcase. Finally, there was the unmistakable sound of a magazine loading into a firearm. The Dark had been out gathering supplies.
“Amazing how much crap you can accumulate in self-storage,” the Dark said smugly.
It was a safe bet that there was more than one handgun in that suitcase. It had sounded like an arsenal, the thud with which it had landed on the luggage rack.
“I have to use the bathroom,