To Part 21
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"What about you, Caine? Don't you have anything to say?"
Without further hesitation, Peter pulled out his .9 mm Beretta, flipped off the safety, and stuck the barrel in his ear, finger tensed and ready on the trigger. "I thought you wanted me," he said in a tightly controlled voice. "You pull your trigger, I pull mine. Fun's over. Short game, wasn't it?"
Peter's friends and co-workers, along with his father, froze in stunned silence, afraid to move or breathe. Kermit and Blake sat with fingers suspended above their respective keyboards, mouths hanging open. "Steady, Peter," Kermit murmured softly under his breath. "You're playing a dangerous game there."
"You would blow your own brains out for her?" The figure sounded incredulous.
Peter's reply was fast and sure. "In a heartbeat. If you want this little game to start, I'm ready to play, but only as long as I know my wife is alive. She dies, game is over."
"You will NOT dictate terms to me!" The ski-masked face screamed and loomed large on Peter's monitor.
Peter's voice gun remained in his ear. "I'm not dictating terms," he said in a voice that was unnaturally calm. "I am simply letting you know that if you kill my wife, I will kill myself, and your game will be over before it starts. This is your game. You decide." He paused, and picked up his still burning cigarette with his right hand. After taking a drag, he blew out the smoke along with his question. "So we playing or not?"
"Oh, we're gonna play, all right. But I say when and I say how. Right now, I don't feel like playing any more. I'll be in touch. You stay available."
The screen went blank as the connection was broken. Peter moved the gun away from his head, reset the safety, and gently laid down the weapon on his desk blotter before burying his head in his arms.
"God damn it!" Kermit exploded. "That wasn't anywhere NEAR enough time to get a complete trace!"
The mug previously sitting on Peter's desk abruptly found its way across the room and shattered against the wall, spraying coffee and glass splinters in its wake.
"Excuse me all to hell, Kermit!" Peter raged. "You'll have to forgive me, because I was trying to keep my wife from being executed before my eyes!" He sprang to his feet, upending his chair with a crash as he reached for Kermit.
Kermit raised both hands, palms out. "Hold it. Hold it. Hold it! You did everything you could do, Peter. I'm just…ticked…that I couldn't trace things faster. I'm still waiting on info from the server in China, and Blake and I traced the phone connections to the Ukraine. Things are so fucking backwards there, someone has to physically trace a call through all the different circuits. There just wasn't enough time. You'd have to keep this guy on-line for hours before we could get anywhere, and it won't happen if the connection keeps getting cut off so quickly."
Peter stared at his friend, and as his anger drained away, he felt his world breaking apart, like the stones of the temple when Tan and his men destroyed it. "So what do I do now?"
"You wait until this guy contacts you again." Strenlich spoke more calmly than he felt. "The rest of us will do plain old-fashioned police work while Blake and Kermit do their thing."
Glaring around the squad room, the chief barked, "Skalany, I want you to pull up every file of every case Peter's worked on at the 101st, and compile a list of suspects. Jody, you work with Mary Margaret on the cross-referencing of where they're all located now." He raised his voice even more. "I need volunteers to head out on the streets and contact every snitch in the city. And we need to run down every gray van registered in DMV. Who's available?"
A lump the size of Texas stuck in Peter's throat as he saw every hand in the room go up. He tried to voice his thanks, but ended up bowing his head and brushing a sleeve across his eyes.
Caine walked over to his son and reached out his arms to embrace Peter.
Peter backed away, resisting the contact. "Don't, Pop. I'm-I'm barely holding it together right now." His gaze met the hazel eyes so like his own. "I love you for being here, and for wanting to help, but I-I-I just can't let you touch me right now. Do you understand?"
Caine nodded gravely. "Yes, my son, I understand. I will stay near by. I love you."
Peter smiled faintly. "I don't need your touch to know that, Pop."
Kermit approached Peter cautiously, unsure of his welcome, but wanting to report anyway. "Blake is attaching a de-scrambler to your machine, to see if we can't come up with an ID on these guys the next time he calls. We're taking a tape of this first conversation to a sound specialist at the university, to see if it's possible to unscramble this message."
Peter nodded wordlessly.
"That gun in the ear ruse to sidetrack our mysterious strangers was pretty quick thinking. How'd you come up with it?"
Peter stared grimly at his friend. "What ruse? If that gun had gone off, mine would have, too."