“Yeah,” he said. “It’s black. Why, you seen him?”
I didn’t answer; Faraday and I simply turned and ran back to the car. He threw it into gear, and we peeled out of there. “Buckle up!” Faraday yelled, as I was pulled hard to the right by the force of his hairpin turn.
While I struggled to get myself strapped in, Faraday pushed a button on his dash. A woman’s voice came on the line. “Grand Haven FBI, Agent Butler speaking.”
“Christine!” Faraday yelled. “I need an address for Wes Miller on Thirteenth Street in Grand Haven!”
We heard nails clicking over a keyboard then, “Six-eight-six Thirteenth Street, and, sir?”
“Yeah?”
“Wes Miller has a record. Convicted of three counts of sexual assault and two counts of rape in twenty ten. Sentenced to six years in Sing Sing. It looks like he only served three and a half.”
“When exactly did he get out?” Faraday growled, baring his teeth as he wound through traffic.
“July tenth, twenty fourteen, sir.”
Faraday snuck me a glance, and then he gripped the steering wheel even tighter. “Christine, I need you to send every available agent to that address. Code ten-seventy-eight and a possible ten-fifty-two. Tell everybody we’ve got an ANA!”
There was an audible gasp, and then she said, “On it, sir!” The line went dead and Faraday clicked the dash again to end the call.
“What’s ANA?” I asked, feeling helpless and anxious.
“Agent Needs Assistance,” he said distractedly. “We only use it when one of our guys is in serious trouble.”
I looked again at the photo. It was taking longer and longer for the 2051 date to come back onto Wallace’s forehead. I was so worried that we weren’t going to be in time.
Faraday screeched to a stop in a run-down neighborhood in a bad section of Grand Haven. He jumped out of the car almost before it’d come to a complete stop and raced to his trunk. There he got out a bulletproof vest and threw it over his head, latching the Velcro sashes. He then moved back to the open door and leaned into the car, across my legs, to pop open the glove box. He pulled out a carton of bullets and a gun clip, then slammed the glove box closed again and began to load his gun. “You’re to stay put, Maddie,” he said, his voice level and firm. “Under no circumstances are you to get out of this car. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I said, so scared I was trembling.
In the distance I could hear sirens. Lots of them. They seemed to be coming from all directions. Faraday finished with his gun, pulled back on the barrel to load the chamber, and with one last firm look at me, he shut the door.
I had the urge to call out to him to stop—I felt a terrible foreboding, but he was already across the street, running over to a white house with peeling paint and a rickety-looking porch. I watched him creep up the steps and ease his way over to the window while gripping his gun with both hands. Faraday peeked into the window, then pulled his head back. He crouched and ducked low under the pane to stand up on the other side and peek in again.
The sirens drew nearer and I whispered, “Please, please, please…wait for them!” But he didn’t. Faraday moved more agilely than I would’ve expected, and slipped over the railing to the brown grass. He then darted around the side of the house, and I lost sight of him.
For several seconds nothing happened, and I waited and watched with bated breath. Then, almost as if a curtain had been pulled back, all sorts of cars with flashing lights appeared on the street. The tires screeched, and the sirens cut out almost instantly, but the strobe lights continued to flash. Cops emerged from their vehicles with guns drawn and vests on. They descended like a dark blue swarm on the house, and I found myself crouching low in my seat. A few agents went up to the door, others stayed on the lawn, and still others went to the right and left of the house.
For a moment, nobody moved except to make eye contact with one another and signal back and forth with their hands. In that small window of silence, I heard a slight buzzing sound coming from the dashboard, and when I could pull my eyes away from the scene outside I looked down and saw a police radio set under the dash. Quickly I reached over to turn up the volume, and as my thumb and forefinger made contact with the knob, everyone on Wes’s lawn flew into action. The door to his house was kicked in and several people darted inside. My fingers turned the knob and the interior of the car erupted with sound. It was like everyone was screaming at once. “Ten-fifty-two!” someone shouted. It was so gravelly that I couldn’t tell if it was Faraday or not. “Ten-fifty-two, ten-fifty-two, ten-fifty-two!”
And then at the door of the house, all of those agents and officers who’d gone inside came rushing back out as if the house was on fire. Suddenly, amid all the shouting I heard, “…gas! GAS! GET OUT! GET OUT!”