The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer [158]
Gallo points to the closet.
My whole body goes numb.
DeSanctis nods with a know-it-all smirk. Approaching the door, he holds up three fingers. On three.
Gallo points his gun at the closet.
One…
I reach under the back of my jacket and pull out the gun we took from Gallo in the train station.
Two…
DeSanctis grabs the knob on the closet. I silently creep down the aisle, toward the front of the floats. Gillian looks at me like I’m crazed, but there’s no way I’m letting them—
Three…
DeSanctis pulls on the door, but it barely budges. Charlie’s holding it from the inside. “They’re in there,” DeSanctis says. He pulls again and it clamps shut.
“You’re only making it worse!” Gallo warns.
Fighting with the door, DeSanctis is raging.
“Enough of this,” Gallo says, pushing his partner out of the way. He raises his gun to the doorknob and fires two quick shots. I go to scream, but nothing comes out.
With one final tug, DeSanctis rips the door open. A bent folding chair dangles from the inside doorknob—and then goes crashing to the floor. I angle my head, struggling to see the rest of the damage… praying to hear Charlie’s voice. But all I get is silence.
“What the hell is this?” Gallo asks, confused as he stares into the closet.
It’s not until DeSanctis steps aside that I finally see what they’re looking at: the dark-tiled floor… the electrical boxes along the walls… and no sign of Charlie. There’s another door that’s already open on the other side. It’s not a closet. It’s a room. A room that connects to the other half of the building. I laugh to myself and my eyes well up. Go, Charlie, go!
DeSanctis and Gallo rush in after him. I spin around to share the news with Gillian. But just as I do, I step on a stray Christmas light that’s hanging off the side of the float. There’s a sharp crack and I freeze in place. Crap.
“What was that?” Gallo asks.
I duck down and search the aisle for Gillian. She’s not there.
“You coming?” DeSanctis asks.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” Gallo says as he turns back toward the parade floats. “I just want to check something out.”
77
He decided to wait for the little girl to stop crying. Tucked back on the wood porch of the Pecos Bill Cafe, there was no sense calling attention to himself. And as long as the little girl across the street kept screaming—as long as she and her consoling mom were blocking the swinging gate that Gallo and DeSanctis had just ducked behind—he wasn’t going anywhere. Of course, there was something to be said for taking it slow. From here on in, there was no reason to rush. Oliver and Charlie… Gallo and DeSanctis… he found them earlier—he’d find them again. Last time, all he had to do was wait around the corner from DACS. He knew they’d come running by. Just like Gillian had said.
He grinned to himself at the thought of it. Gillian.Where’d she get that name anyway? Shrugging it off, he didn’t much care about the answer. As long as they got their money, she could call herself whatever she wanted.
Scanning the crowd, he kept tabs on every stray glance and every lingering look. He didn’t like being alone in Disney World. If he were younger, maybe, but at his age—without kids—it was a guaranteed way to stand out. And right now, standing out was the last thing he wanted to do. Eventually, he hopped off the porch, shoved a hand in his pocket, and calmly headed across the street with the purposefulness of someone rejoining his family. In front of the swinging fence, the little girl had stopped crying. And the crowd had stopped staring.
“I’m sorry—are we in your way?” the mother of the girl asked, kneeling down and wiping her daughter’s nose.
“Not at all,” the man said with a friendly nod. Stepping around them, he opened the fence and crossed inside. As it closed behind him, he never looked back.
78
I squat down behind the Cinderella coach float, and the door to the closet slams shut. In the distance, I hear Gallo slowly spin around. His shoes scrape like glass against the