58
“We’re almost there,” Melissa said, peering at the paper map. “The driveway’s a mile up the road, on the left.”
The rain had stopped but the road was wet, glistening in the light of a nearly full moon that kept appearing and disappearing behind the clouds. Ford continued on for three-quarters of a mile at a slow speed. They were in the isolated hills above the town of Half Moon Bay, dotted with farms and a scattering of expensive estates. As they came around a bend, he could see, a quarter mile away on the side of a ridge, the lights of the house.
He slowed to a stop.
“What are you stopping for?” Melissa asked.
“I don’t like it,” said Ford.
“What do you mean?”
“There are too many lights on in the house.”
“It’s just a kid and a robot,” said Melissa.
“That’s exactly my point.”
Ford eased the car forward, looking for a place to turn off. He found a dirt apron near the driveway entrance and pulled in.
“What are we doing now?”
“I think we should approach on foot and scope the place out before we go in.” He took the .22 revolver out of the glove compartment, opened the cylinder, and confirmed that it was loaded. He tucked it into his pocket.
“You really like this spy-versus-spy stuff.”
Ford got out of the car, with Melissa behind him. He cut across a wet meadow along one side of the driveway, making a wide arc toward the house. He approached from the side, climbing a split-rail fence and moving across an overgrown lawn to a rusted swing set. As he did so, the bright moon came out from behind a cloud, bathing the area in light. He froze, crouching behind the swing set. Darkness returned quickly as the moon disappeared behind another cloud, and he continued on to the side of the house. He edged up to a window, glanced in for a moment, then ducked down.
“What is it?” Melissa asked.
“There’s a guy in there with a pistol, and he’s got a woman taped to a chair.”
“Oh my God. Where’s the robot?”
“No boy, no robot.”
A silence. “It must be the algo traders Dorothy mentioned,” said Melissa.
“We need to find out how many other people are here.”
He took out the .22. They circled the building, keeping close to the side of the house, peering in each set of windows in turn. It seemed like there were only those two people: the woman taped to a chair and the man guarding her. A skinny, long-haired individual, he was pacing back and forth, holding a .45 with his finger on the trigger in a way that indicated to Ford that he had little experience with firearms.
When they came around to the backyard, they found the back door open, light spilling over the lawn. Ford could see tracks in the water-laden grass going out the door and up the ridge. It looked like three or four people had headed up the hill. The whole scene had the atmosphere of something gone terribly wrong.
“Did you see anyone besides those two people?” Melissa whispered.
“No.”
As he was considering what to do, he heard a series of distant gunshots from over the ridge.
“The action is out there,” whispered Ford, gesturing. “We need to find out what’s going on. We need to make that man talk.”
“I was just thinking about how we’re going to take that man down,” said Melissa. “You want to hear my plan?” She told it to him. Ford thought it would work.
Ford crept through the screen door, opening and closing it silently, and made his way through the back of the house to the hallway leading into the living room, where the two people were. He flattened himself behind the archway that led into the room.
Melissa followed him. She banged through the back door, walked past him, and kept going, stopping boldly in the archway. “Hello?” she cried out. “Hello? Is anyone home?”
The man came rushing toward the doorway, pointing the .45, screaming in a panic: “Who are you? Get down!”
Melissa backed up, raising her hands. “Hey! What’s going on?”
“Get down on the ground!” he yelled. “Who the hell are you?”
She backed away. “Just a neighbor.”
She took another step back, and he advanced through the archway.
“I said down!” he screamed, taking another step forward and gesturing at her with the gun.
Ford stepped up behind him and, in one clean, sharp movement, wrenched the .45 out of his hand while jamming the barrel of his own pistol into the man’s ear. He gave it a twist, cutting the flesh.
The man gave a scream of terror.
“One more sound and you’re dead,” said Ford calmly, handing the .45 to Melissa. “Go back to the living room.”
The man stumbled forward, his hands up, moaning softly to himself.
Ford went over to the woman and removed the tape from her mouth. Gasping and sobbing, she said, “My husband, they shot my husband!”
“Where?”
“Back at our house! Help me, please!”
“The address. We need the address.”
The woman babbled out the address. Ford quickly removed the rest of the tape, freeing her from the chair. She collapsed onto the floor.
“Are you hurt?”
“Call the police—they’re out there chasing my son! They’re going to kill my son, too! Oh God, call the police! And an ambulance for my husband!”
Ford turned to the man they had just caught. “Give me your cell phone.”
“I don’t have a cell phone,” he muttered.
Ford quickly searched him. Nothing. He looked around and saw one lying on the floor near the dead fire. He grabbed it and dialed 911. He told the dispatcher that a man had been shot and gave the address. He told her what was happening at their current address and to send an ambulance and police there as well.
He gave his name and then, after a hesitation, said, “Inform Special Agent Spinelli of the FBI, too.”
He knew that would guarantee a maximal response. Ford turned to the man with the long hair. “The police will be here in five minutes,” he said. “Before they get here, I want you to tell me what’s going on, how many people are involved, who they are, and where they went.”
The man, shaking with fear, said nothing.
“You will talk,” said Ford, “or things will not go well for you.”
He remained silent.
“Where’s the boy, Jacob?”
No answer.
Melissa spoke: “You’re not doing this right.” She stepped up to the man and kneed him with tremendous force in the balls. He went down with a howl, and she fell on top of him, grabbing his open mouth and ramming the barrel of the .45 into it, pushing it in so far that he started choking.
“Talk or die. Count of three. One…”
More choking noises.
“Two…”
More frantic choking noises. His eyes were rolling in his head, his hand beating a tattoo on the floor.
“Three.” She pulled the gun out and fired it next to his head, blowing off his ear. Then she stood up and straddled him, aiming the gun with both hands at his head. “Talk now.”
“I’ll talk! Oh God, please don’t hurt me!” Melissa had reduced the man to a howling, blubbering specimen of pure terror. Ford was impressed.
“The boy,” he gasped, “the boy took the robot and ran over the ridge.”
“Who’s after him?” Ford asked.
“The hit men. Two professional Kyrgyz hit men. And Lansing. My boss. Please, please don’t shoot—”
“When did they leave?” Ford asked.
“Fifteen minutes ago.”
“What are their weapons?”
“The hit men have pistols. Big ones. Lansing, the same thing. Three big guns.”
“Forty-fives?”
“I don’t know, big guns. Please—”
“Who are you?”
“Moro. Eric Moro. I’m the computer guy.”
Ford heard some more distant shots. “What’s their objective? Hurry!”
“They … they want the robot.”
“And the boy? What’ll they do with him?”
“Kill him.”
Ford looked at Melissa. “I gotta go after them. You stay here with him.”
“We both go.”
“Who’s going to watch him?” Ford said.
“I will,” said the woman, who seemed to have collected herself. “Give me one of your guns.”
“You know how to use it?”
“Yes.”
Ford handed her the .22. He could already hear the distant police sirens. It would be a disaster if they were still there when the police and FBI arrived. He knew exactly what would happen then. It would turn into a long drawn-out situation, where everything would have to be mapped out and vetted by the brass and would require choppers and a SWAT team. He and Melissa would be taken into custody. And the boy would be long dead.
“We gotta go save that boy.”
Ford sprinted through the house and out the back door, Melissa running alongside him. They ran up the hill to the top of the ridge and looked out. About half a mile away, in a dark valley beyond a second ridge, he could see the dim flicker of several flashlights in the trees. Even as they stared, Ford saw four quick flashes of gunfire and, a moment later, heard the sound of four shots.
And a boy’s distant scream.