Chasing China White by Allan Leverone (best time to read books TXT) 📗

place next to the omelettes and toast and half-full cups of cooling coffee. He stepped away from the table and stood with his hands fidgeting, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

And that was when the phone rang.

10

Greg flinched and Derek jumped—literally jumped, both feet leaving the floor—and then stumbled when he came down, nearly toppling over. The thoughtful look disappeared from his eyes and the terror returned, a mushroom cloud of fear and confusion. He spun and snatched up the handgun and held it in front of him like some sort of mystical talisman.

“It’s okay,” Greg said. “Don’t blow a gasket. It’s just the cops. The hostage negotiator has arrived and he wants to open the lines of communication, that’s all.”

Derek licked his lips and looked wildly from the telephone hanging on the wall behind the counter to Greg and then back to the phone.

Greg cursed inwardly at the timing of the call. “This is a good thing,” he said as the phone continued to ring insistently. “It’ll make it easier to negotiate your surrender.”

But he’d lost him. It was obvious. Derek turned a full three hundred sixty degrees, gun now held in a two-handed grip like every hero in every action movie he’d ever watched.

And he was panicked again. He was no more likely to surrender now than he was to snap his fingers and magically become clean and sober.

The phone continued to ring. It was one of the old-fashioned wall-hanging jobs with the jangling ringer and it was giving Greg a headache. He could only imagine the effect it was having on his brother, as ill as he felt and as desperate as he was.

“Let me answer it,” Greg said. “Let’s see what they have to say.”

“No. I’ll talk to them.” Derek marched behind the counter and lifted the handset off the cradle and finally silenced the goddamned ringing. It seemed to have been jangling forever and felt like the most hopeless, desolate sound Greg had ever heard.

“What,” Derek spat into the phone. He immediately began pacing back and forth, short little trips limited by the length of the landline’s cord.

Greg checked on the condition of the cop as he listened closely to the one side of the conversation he could hear. His packing job with the towels must have worked because the blood flow seemed to have stopped, more or less, and the injured man was still breathing, although his respiration was labored.

“Yeah, he’s alive,” Derek said into the phone. He was trying hard for arrogance and bravado in his conversation with the cop, but to Greg the fear in his voice was plain. He guessed that fear would be no less obvious to a professional police negotiator trained in these types of situations.

“You can’t,” Derek said after listening for a moment.

“Because he’s unconscious, that’s why. So I can’t prove it. You’ll just have to take my word for it, I guess.”

More listening.

“That’s right, there is a third person in here. Yes, he’s a hostage, too. So if you’re planning on busting in here guns blazing, you’d better take that into consideration.”

A little more listening, but only for a moment. This time when Derek spoke, Greg got the distinct impression that he was cutting off the negotiator in mid-sentence. “At the moment all I want is more time.”

“Because I need to get my shit together, that’s why. And I’d watch my step if I were you, because if you piss me off I’ll rip this fucking phone right off the wall.” Derek slammed the handset down on the cradle and stalked back toward Greg and the cop, and Greg noticed he’d begun crying again.

“I am so fucked,” he said quietly.

Greg had no idea what to say.

Derek looked around the diner again and said, “There’s something I don’t understand.”

“There are a lot of things I don’t understand,” Greg countered, “including why you’re fucking with the cops. The longer this goes on, the more likely it becomes that you leave here in a body bag.”

“How did he know?” Derek said, continuing as if Greg hadn’t spoken.

“How did who know what?”

“How did the cop know who I was? He walked past us and the minute he saw me, it was like instant recognition. I just can’t believe there’s been time for any investigation to narrow down what happened in Boxford and the fact that I was inside that house.”

Greg pushed off the floor and stood. He winced at the pain in his back and the cracking of his knees. He began walking toward Derek and immediately his brother tensed up, so he raised his hands in a placating gesture and said, “Dude, I’m not going to rush you and try to take away your gun. I’m not that stupid. I just need to stretch, that’s all.”

“But you were about to say something. You have an answer to my question, don’t you? About how the cop knew who I was?”

“I don’t know if it qualifies as an answer. There are a number of possibilities, including that the cops are better at investigating violent death than you want to give them credit for.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, the girl you taped to the chair saw you. The first thing the cops would have done would be to get a description.”

“But how would they have found her that quickly? The neighborhood was empty when I left. I’m certain nobody saw or heard anything.”

Greg said, “If you didn’t gag her, she started screaming five minutes after you walked out the door, guaranteed.”

“Dude, have you ever been to Boxford?”

Greg shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“The town is tiny. And the houses are separated by what seems like miles, especially in McHugh’s neighborhood. I’m telling you, nobody would have heard her scream unless they walked or drove at least three-quarters of the way up the driveway.”

“Maybe somebody did exactly that.”

Derek began pacing again. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Something I’m missing. Tell me what it is.”

An enormous sense of loss welled up in Greg