She closed the door without another word.
CHAPTER 41 - ALARIC
THERE WERE EIGHT doors on the top floor of Bellsfield House South. One led to the roof, according to a yellowed sign, and another to a janitorial closet that couldn’t have been used for years if the state of the place was any indication. That left six. And they’d tried five.
Two tenants had answered, and neither of them was Ryland Willis. The other three apartments were empty, but Ravi had worked his magic and they’d snooped around inside. Two clearly belonged to families, and the third to a female.
They stacked up outside the door of apartment 1706, Emmy and Sky on one side, Alaric and Ravi on the other. Alaric questioned the wisdom of Sky being there, but Emmy had made the call and he trusted her judgement. The other two men from Blackwood were watching the stairs and the elevator respectively, both to prevent unexpected visitors and to stop Ryland from escaping if he somehow managed to slip past the four of them and make a run for it.
Was he inside? Alaric could hear a TV, so it was a good possibility.
Emmy raised a hand and quirked an eyebrow at him. He nodded. She could do the honours.
She knocked.
No answer. Then silence as the TV shut off. The door stayed closed.
Shit.
They’d had two options—knock and hope Ryland opened the door, or let themselves in. They’d chosen the former because most people tended to answer the door. But it seemed Ryland was antisocial, and now they’d lost the element of surprise.
Emmy tried knocking once more.
Was it Alaric’s imagination, or did he hear the quiet shuffle of a footstep on the other side of the door?
“Denise? You in?” Emmy yelled, slurring slightly. “I need a cigarette.” She banged on the door again, harder this time. “Denise?”
“Wrong place, lady.”
So Ryland was home.
“Who are you?”
“Get lost.”
What a charmer.
“Fuck you too, asshole.”
Emmy clomped along the hallway, then tiptoed back again. Two minutes passed, four, nobody moving a muscle, and then she pointed at the lock picks in Ravi’s hand. They were going in. Adrenaline had been simmering through Alaric’s veins for a while, but now it surged as his body prepared to fight. He’d seen the size of Ryland’s shoulders in that mugshot from the gym’s noticeboard. The man wouldn’t go down easy.
A quiet click was the only giveaway that Ravi had done his job, at least until Emmy slowly pushed open the door, keeping her body to the side. Did she have a gun too? If not, she’d certainly have a knife, and she knew how to use it.
The door inched open to reveal a surprisingly tidy living room. Beige carpet, two low cream leather couches at right angles to each other opposite the mother of all TVs. Matching coffee table and sideboard that looked as if they came from IKEA. Dining table with four chairs and one used plate. Drapes pulled tight across every window. No Ryland.
Alaric’s mind fired through the possibilities. Two doors opened from the left side of the room, and another on the right. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen? Emmy headed left with Sky in tow, leaving Alaric and Ravi to take…yes, the kitchen. The smell of cooked chicken permeated throughout, and a collection of unwashed pans lay jumbled in the sink. No sign of a woman’s touch in the room. No magnets on the fridge, no rubber gloves, no moisturiser near the faucet. And unless Ryland had squashed himself into a cupboard, he wasn’t there either. Which meant he was in—
Oh, fuck.
A crash sounded from the other side of the apartment, followed by the slap, slap, slap of feet on tile. Since the living room was carpeted, that could only mean one thing. Ryland had escaped.
Alaric shot out of the front door in time to see Ryland dragging a woman along the hallway in his direction, the door to the janitor’s closet swinging open behind him. What the…? Gemma. It was Gemma, and her hands were secured in front of her. A piece of duct tape hung from one side of her face, a gag loosened in the struggle, and her eyes were ringed red from crying. Alaric fumbled for his gun, got it up, but Ryland had already swung around, putting Gemma between himself and a bullet.
“Stop!”
But Ryland didn’t stop. He backed away, his arm a steel band around Gemma’s chest. She struggled, kicking her feet, then squealed in pain as he squeezed harder. A trickle of blood ran down her neck where Frankenstein’s monster pressed the tip of a knife against it.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Alaric felt rather than saw a presence behind him. Emmy? Ravi? Sky? He didn’t take his eyes off Ryland to check. Sky was right—the man was a giant, and right now his gaze roved wildly like a cornered bull’s as he shuffled backwards towards a dead end. What would he do when he reached the wall? Gemma was sobbing now, but Alaric couldn’t shoot without risking her life.
“Put her down. You’ve got nowhere to go.”
Except that was a lie.
As Ryland passed the door to the roof, he quickly moved sideways, hitting it full-force with one shoulder. The flimsy lock didn’t stand a chance. And the man could move. The door bounced off the wall and slammed shut, and by the time Alaric got it open again, Ryland was on top of the damn building.
Gemma’s sobs turned to screams as the wind hit them. Seventeen floors up, it was blowing a gale, and Ryland was still backing up, this time towards the north tower. The full moon glinted off the knife as shadows danced like ghouls in the gloom.
“Stand still.”
Ryland glanced behind himself, judging the distance. He was ten yards or so from the edge, but unless he planned on jumping, he really was out of options. He was also unhinged—that much was clear. Alaric lowered his gun and paused in front of the door, hoping that if he stood his ground, Ryland would calm down. It seemed to work to some degree. Ryland stopped moving.
Ravi took up a position beside Alaric, but where were Emmy and Sky? Alaric’s heart stuttered. That crash downstairs… He’d just assumed that since Emmy was involved, they were both okay. But what if one of them had been injured? Knocked out, or worse?
Shit, double shit, triple shit.
He needed to check on them, but he couldn’t, not with a hostage situation on the roof demanding his attention. He hated hostage situations. The last one he’d been involved with had gone on for almost two days and only ended when an FBI sniper had gotten a clear shot. Alaric didn’t have a clear shot, and he was unlikely to get one with the wind blowing in unpredictable gusts. And if he tried to shoot and missed, there was a cinderblock plant room Ryland could jump behind.
The other problem was the knife. Alaric was ten yards away, too far to intervene physically if Ryland decided to take his fear and anger out on Gemma. If the worst happened and he cut her, she might bleed out even if they put all their efforts into saving her life and let Ryland get away.
“Now what?” Ravi whispered.
Good question. Alaric would have to take the lead on this. Ravi was smart, but he was a cat burglar, an acrobat, and a thief, not a hostage negotiator. And they were in a stand-off. There was no choice but to talk.
“Well, Ryland, this is an awkward position we find ourselves in…”
It was times like this that Alaric wished he was still bumming around on a beach in Thailand.