State of Emergency

CHAPTER 11


Pollard burst through the front door.

“Marie!”

A male voice answered him from the around the corner in the parlor where Marie kept her piano. “We’re all here, my friend,” it said. “Please, come join us.”

Pollard froze at the doorway when he saw the dark man with a thin mustache lounging on the love seat. His legs were crossed and a glowing cigar hung from his fingers. Marie sat in a matching chair to his right. She was tall and slender with short caramel-blond hair pulled back with a red polka-dot band. Her normally wide smile had fallen away and her lips parted in shock. Her chest shook with uncontrolled sobs as she clutched their squirming baby in her arms as if he was a life buoy.

A thuggish man with a crooked nose and broad shoulders crowded in between the back of the chair and the wall, towering over her, arms folded across a chest. A sparse beard did little to hide the burn scars on his lips and chin. The glint in his eye said brute intimidation was a favorite pastime.

The front door slammed as the man and woman from the SUV came in behind Pollard. He shot a glance over his shoulder and saw that a third man, the Hispanic driver, limped badly. His heart sank. Five to one were impossible odds.

“Matt . . .” Marie looked up when he came in the room. “Who are these people?”

Simon, just under a year old and teething, sucked on a peeled carrot. He was just beginning to take a few steps and stood on Marie’s knee, holding the edge of her chair.

Pollard’s face twitched with rage. “What are you doing in my house?”

The man on the love seat looked back and forth from Matthew to Marie. At length, he turned his body to face Marie, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

She coughed as the cloud of smoke from his cigar enveloped her.

“You must forgive me, my dear. I’ve been hopping from Africa to New York then Spokane. . . . I must confess the last several hours have been a blur.” The man yawned, blinking as if he was about to fall asleep. He shot a glance up at Pollard, batting his eyelashes. “I am shocked your husband has not mentioned me. We were . . . Matthew, would you have called us friends?”

“Hardly.”

“Pity.” The man gave an exhausted sigh. “I would have called us friends. My name is Valentine Zamora. The man behind you is my associate, Julian Monagas. We had the good fortune to work with your husband some years ago.”

“You know these people?” Marie turned toward Pollard, eyes pleading to understand.

Zamora stood, reaching for the baby.

Marie screamed, but Monagas yanked her back by her hair.

Pollard roared, bolting to protect his family no matter the odds. Something heavy caught him across the back of the head, driving him to his knees. He pushed himself up with one arm, holding his head with the other, waiting for the waves of nausea to pass.

Zamora stood beside the love seat, an anxious Simon pressed to his chest. His actions were soft and gentle, but his face and words made it clear he had dispensed with all other niceties.

“I find myself in need of your expertise, Matthew,” he said, looking up at Marie. “Did you know your dear husband is a nuclear genius?”

Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t move.

“It doesn’t matter.” Zamora shrugged. “There is often much we do not know about our loved ones. Pack a bag. You are coming with us.”

“My family?”

Zamora cocked his head to one side. “Do as I say and they will be fine.”

“I’m not leaving them.”

Zamora flicked his fingers, and Pollard heard the men behind him step away.

“There’s only one reason you’d need me, Valentine,” Pollard said. “I’m not going to help you blow anything up.”

“Oh, Matthew,” Zamora said, giving a weary sigh. “Let me see.... How shall I explain myself?” He bounced Simon to keep him calm, but looked down at Marie with a leering eye. “Some men prefer to see their women in a flimsy negligee, the delicate lace of underthings hiding just enough to enhance the mystery of the feminine form.” He glanced up at the dark woman who stood in the doorway behind Pollard. “Lourdes, darling, how do I like my women?”

“Naked.” She chuckled.

“Precisely,” Zamora said. “I despise mystery. I want to have all the goods exposed and on the table, so to speak.” He craned forward with narrowed eyes, staring at Marie but speaking to Pollard. “So let me be plain. You will help me do anything I ask or I will quite literally rip this lovely boy into tiny pieces.”

Marie choked on a sob.

“I know you, Valentine.” Pollard set his quivering jaw. Inside, his bowels churned. “My family has seen your face. No matter what I do, they’re as good as dead once we leave.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Zamora said, stroking Simon’s sandy curls. “You have serious trust issues, my friend.”

Pollard wracked his brain, searching for any alternative to what he was about to say. Tears poured in earnest from his eyes as he looked back and forth from his precious little boy to a baffled Marie. He ground his teeth until he thought they might shatter.

“Bullshit!” he sniffed, his voice harsh and cold. “You hate loose ends the way you hate mystery. You’re forgetting, I’ve seen what you do with witnesses.”

The Venezuelan’s lips turned white under his pencil-thin mustache. He rocked the baby back and forth. “You can’t be certain. It’s not worth—”

Pollard rose to his full height, fists clenched at his side. His shoulders shook with rage.

“Kill us all now!” Pollard demanded through clenched teeth. “We are all already dead, and I know it.”

Zamora’s flat-nosed thug, Monagas, gave a startled jerk, yanking Marie’s head back by her hair. Marie’s eyes bulged like they would pop out of her head.

Pollard could feel the three from the SUV loom closer behind him, but he didn’t care.

Zamora took a measured breath, clutching the baby close to smell his hair. At length, he dropped the burning cigar on the carpet and drew a black pistol from under his jacket. Finger on the trigger, he pressed it gently to Simon’s cheek, and then looked at Marie with a sickening smile.

“You see? No mystery here, my darling. You should speak to your husband. His attitude is about to make your child very dead.” The words dripped from his mouth like poison. “He seems to have lost his way.”

Marie’s lips moved, but she was too terrified to speak. Unable to turn her head because Monagas still had a fist around her hair, her eyes shot frantically between her husband and her little boy. She blinked bloodshot eyes at a heartbroken Pollard.

“Matt?” she pleaded.

He met her gaze, begging for her trust as he struggled to quiet his quaking legs. Marie’s was a world of playgroups and Pampered Chef parties. She knew little of his past and could not fathom such brutality. A brutality he thought he’d left behind, dead and buried.

He locked eyes with Zamora. His words spilled out in ragged, panting breaths.

“You’re an intelligent man, Valentine. Do you believe killing my son would force me to comply? You have me cornered. That makes me more dangerous than you could ever imagine.”

Someone attempted to grab his arm from behind— and got an elbow to the nose for his trouble. Pollard heard the snick of a pistol cocking near his head, but he didn’t bother to turn around.

Simon batted at the barrel of Zamora’s pistol with chubby hands, cooing, oblivious to the danger.

“Move the gun away from my son or shoot me now,” Pollard whispered, surprised at the sudden calm that washed over him. “Otherwise, I’m going to beat you to death.”

The room seemed to freeze as Zamora considered the situation. Grinning like a madman, he pointed the pistol at Pollard, his chest heaving with the first signs of real emotion.

Pollard met his stare with stony resolve. “It was a grave mistake to take away my hope.”

Zamora’s face twitched and then erupted into laughter. He shoved the pistol behind his back and pushed the baby toward Pollard.

“Take him,” he said, suddenly sounding fatigued. “I must admit, I forgot how well you play this game. I will leave some people to keep your wife company. You may speak to her daily via the Internet.” He raised a dark brow and flicked his hand toward the front door. “Provided you do your part and cooperate. Forget packing a bag. We’ll purchase what you need en route.”

Pollard’s shoulders slumped. He gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“Matt! You’re not actually going with him?” Marie gasped. “What is happening?”

Zamora nodded toward Monagas, who instantly released her hair.

Pollard handed her the baby and took them both in his arms.

“Apurate!” Zamora snapped his fingers. “As lovely as this scene is, my dear Matthew, you have a plane to catch. Say your quaint good-byes and let us be on our way.”

Marie’s shoulders quaked as Pollard held her to him, breathing in the smell of her and his child.

“You can’t help him hurt anyone,” she whispered, her voice soft against his neck.

“I won’t let it come to that,” Pollard lied. There was nothing he would not do to save his family.

“I mean it, Matt,” she hissed, regaining the iron will that had drawn him to her in the first place. “No matter what happens to us.”

Pollard kissed her long and hard, their tears mixing against moist cheeks. He held her shoulders firmly as he pulled away, looking directly into her eyes. He knew he’d probably never see her again.

“Trust me. Like you said, I’m a genius.”

Every word stuck in his throat. He’d brought this misery on his family. Valentine Zamora was evil, the exemplification of what he wanted his students to write about—but Pollard knew he had no one to blame but himself.