Extreme Denial Part 4

"I won't let you talk me out of this."

"That's not what I wanted. Here. You'd better take this. When I heard you were flying in, I had a package delivered to the office. I've been waiting to see if it was necessary to give it to you."

"A pistol?" McKittrick reacted with astonishment. "Do you honestly think I need a pistol to confront my son?"

"I have a very bad feeling about what's happening tonight."

"I refuse to-"

"Take it, or I'm not leaving you here."

McKittrick studied him. His dark eyes intense, he accepted the weapon.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," Decker said. "How will I find you?"

"Drive slowly through this area. I'll find you." McKittrick shut the door, shoved the pistol beneath his suit coat, and walked away into the darkness. Only when the elderly man's rain-haloed figure was no longer visible in the Fiat's headlights did Decker drive onward.

15.

It took Decker eight minutes to reach the next-to-last address on the list. Along the way, he debated what to do if there was no indication that Brian had been there. Stay, or go on to another address?

What happened next settled the matter. Even from blocks away, Decker heard sirens wailing in the darkness. He saw a crimson glow above rain-obscured buildings. His stomach hard with apprehension, he steered the Fiat onto the street he wanted and braked immediately before the glaring lights of rumbling fire trucks and other emergency vehicles. Flames licked from the windows of an apartment building. Smoke billowed. As firemen aimed hoses toward the blaze, ambulance attendants ministered to survivors, draping blankets around them, giving them oxygen.

Appalled, Decker got out of the Fiat, came close enough to determine that the fiery building was in fact the one he had come to check, then hurried through a gathering crowd back to the car, reversed direction, and sped away into the rain.

His heart pounded. What the h.e.l.l is happening? he thought. Was Brian trying to get even by setting fire to the buildings, hoping to trap the terrorists inside? Surely even someone so out of control as Brian would have realized that other people besides the terrorists would be injured-if the terrorists were injured at all, if they had been foolish enough to remain at the addresses they had given Brian.

He has only one more address to go, Decker thought. Where I left his father. Driving urgently through the rain-filled night, Decker skidded and regained control of the Fiat. Near the university, he again took a side street, then another, feeling trapped in the narrow confines. The address where he had left McKittrick's father was only a half block farther when Decker stomped his brake pedal, swerving, nearly hitting a tall, burly figure who suddenly appeared in the glare of his headlights. The figure was drenched, his face raised to the storm clouds; he was shaking his fists, screaming.

The figure was Brian. Decker's windows were closed. Only when he scrambled out of the Fiat, racing through puddles to restrain Brian, did he hear what Brian screamed.

"Liars! b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

Decker had left his headlights on, their illumination reflecting off the rain streaming down Brian's face.

"Cowards!"

Lights came on in windows.

"We have to get you off the street," Decker said.

"Fight me!" Brian screamed inexplicably toward the darkness.

More lights came on.

"FIGHT ME!"

Cold rain soaked Decker's hair and chilled his neck. "The police will be looking for you. You can't stay here. I have to get you out of here." He tugged Brian toward the car.

Brian resisted. More windows became illuminated.

"For G.o.d sake, come on," Decker said. "Have you seen your father? I left him here."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

"Brian, listen to me. Have you seen your father?"

Brian wrenched himself free of Decker's grasp and once more shook his fists toward the sky. "You're afraid!"

"What's going on down there?" a man yelled in Italian from an upper apartment.

Decker grabbed Brian. "With the commotion you're making, your father couldn't help but know you're here. He should have joined us by now. Pay attention. I need to know if you've seen him."

At once a premonition chilled Decker. "Oh, Jesus, no. Brian. Your father. Has something happened to him?"

When Brian didn't respond, Decker slapped him, twisting his head, sending raindrops flying from Brian's face.

Brian looked shocked. The Fiat's headlights reflected off his wild eyes.

"Tell me where your father is!"

Brian stumbled away.

Apprehensive, Decker followed, seeing where Brian led him-to the address that Brian's father had intended to watch. Even in the rainy gloom, Decker could see that the door was open.

Trying to restrain his too-quick breathing, Decker withdrew his pistol from beneath his leather jacket. As Brian entered, Decker pushed him to a crouch and stooped to hurry after him, his eyes adjusting enough to the darkness to make him aware he was in a courtyard. He saw a wooden crate to his right and shoved Brian toward it. Kneeling on wet cobble-stones, Decker aimed over the crate, scanning indistinguishable objects, peering up toward the barely detectable railings of balconies to the right and left and straight ahead.

"Brian, show me," Decker whispered.

For a moment, he wasn't certain that Brian had heard. Then Brian s.h.i.+fted position, and Decker realized that Brian was pointing. As Decker's vision adjusted even more to the darkness, he saw a disturbing patch of white in the far right corner.

"Stay here," he told Brian, and darted toward another crate. Aiming, he checked nervously around him, then hurried forward again, this time to what might have been an ancient well. His wet clothes clung to him, constricting his muscles. He was close enough to determine that the patch of white he had seen was hair-Jason McKittrick's hair. The elderly man lay with his back propped against a wall, his arms at his sides, his chin on his chest.

Decker glanced once more around him, then ran through the rain, reaching McKittrick, crouching beside him, feeling for a pulse. Despite the gloom, it was obvious that an area on the right breast of his gray suit coat was darker than the rain would have caused. Blood. Decker kept checking for a pulse, feeling McKittrick's wrist, his neck, his chest.

Inhaling with triumph, he found one.

He whirled to aim at a sudden approaching figure.

It was Brian, scrambling across the courtyard and collapsing next to his father, pressing his face against his father's head. "Didn't mean to."

"Help me," Decker said. "We have to get him to the car."

"Didn't know who he was."

"What are you talking about?"

"Didn't realize."

"What?"

"Thought he was one of them." Brian sobbed.

"You did this?" Decker grabbed Brian, finding that he had a revolver in his jacket pocket.

"I couldn't help myself. He came out of the darkness."

"Jesus."

"I had to shoot."

"G.o.d help..."

"I didn't mean to kill him."

"You didn't."

"I'm telling you, I-"

"He isn't dead!"

In the darkness, Brian's stunned look was barely discernible.

"We have to get him to the car. We have to take him to the hospital. Grab his feet."

As Decker reached for McKittrick's shoulder, a b.u.mblebee seemed to buzz down past Decker's head. A projectile whacked against the wall behind him.

Flinching, Decker scurried toward the protection of a crate. The shot-from a sound-suppressed weapon-had come from above him. He aimed fiercely upward, blinking from the rain, unable to see a target in the darkness.

"They won't let you," Brian said.

"They?"

"They're here."

Decker's heart felt squeezed as he realized why Brian had been yelling in the street. Not at the sky or G.o.d or the Furies.

He'd been screaming at the terrorists.

Brian remained in the open, beside his father.

"Get over here," Decker told him.

"I'm safe."

"For G.o.d sake, get over here behind this crate."

"They won't shoot me."

"Don't talk crazy."

"Before you got here, Renata showed herself to me. She told me the best way to hurt me is to let me live."

"What?"

"So I can suffer for the rest of my life, knowing I killed my father."

"But your shot didn't kill him! He isn't dead!"

"He might as well be. Renata will never let us take him out of here. She hates me too much." Brian pulled his revolver from his pocket. In the gloom, it seemed that he pointed it at himself.

"Brian! No!"

But instead of shooting himself, Brian surged to his feet, cursed, and disappeared into the darkness at the back of the courtyard.

Amid the pelting rain, Decker-shocked-heard Brian's footsteps charging up an exterior wooden staircase.

"Brian, I warned you!" a woman shouted from above. The husky voice was Renata's. "Don't come after me!"

Brian's footsteps charged higher.

Lights came on in balcony windows.

"I gave you a chance!" Renata shouted. "Stay away, or I'll do what I did at the other apartment buildings!"

"You're going to pay for making a fool of me!"

Renata laughed. "You did it to yourself!"

"You're going to pay for my father!"

"You did that yourself!"

Brian's footsteps pounded higher.

"Don't be an idiot!" Renata shouted. "The explosives have been set! I'll press the detonator!"

Brian's urgent footsteps kept pounding on the stairs.

Their rumble was overwhelmed by thunder, not from the storm but from an explosion whose blinding flash erupted out of an apartment on the fourth balcony at the back. The ear-stunning roar knocked Decker backward. As wreckage cascaded, the ferocity of the flames illuminated the courtyard.

A movement to Decker's left made him turn. A thin, dark-haired man in his early twenties, one of the brothers whom Decker had met at the cafe the night before, rose from behind garbage cans.