First Family (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 4)

Willa said, “Don’t hurt her, she’s just scared.”

“We’re all scared. They never shoulda brought Gabriel up here.”

“Mr. Quarry!”

They all froze at the sound of this new voice.

“Mr. Quarry. My name is Sean King. I’m here with my partner, Michelle Maxwell. Can you hear me?”

Quarry remained quiet and stuck his gun into Diane’s side to make her do the same.

“Can you hear me? We were hired to find Willa Dutton. That’s all. We’re not the police. We’re private investigators. If you have Willa, please just let her go and we’ll leave.”

Quarry still said nothing.

“Mr. Quarry?”

“I hear you,” he called out. “And you’ll just walk away if I give her to you? Why do I think there’s an army of police waiting right outside?”

“There’s no one outside.”

“Yeah, you got no reason to lie to me, do you?” Quarry pulled Diane farther down the passage.

“We just want Willa, that’s all.”

“We all want a lot of things, but we don’t always get what we want.”

Sean’s next words froze the older man.

“We’ve been to your house. We saw the room. Gabriel showed us. We know what happened with your daughter. We know all about it. And if you let Willa go we’ll do everything we can to help the truth come out.”

“Why you wanta do that?” he cried out.

“It was wrong what happened, Mr. Quarry. We know that and we want to help you. But we need Willa safe first.”

“Ain’t no help left for me. Ain’t nothing left for me. You know what I tried to do. It didn’t work. They’ll be coming for me now.”

“We can still help.”

Sean had reduced the volume of his voice so that Quarry would not know that they were on the move, that they were growing closer.

“You don’t want to hurt a little girl,” Sean said. “I know you don’t. If you had, you would’ve already done it.”

Quarry thought quickly. “Where’s Gabriel? I want to talk to him.”

Michelle nodded at the little boy.

“Mr. Sam, it’s me.”

“What you doing up here?”

“Coming to help you. Don’t want to see you get hurt, Mr. Sam.”

“I appreciate that, Gabriel. But them folks with you, listen up, Gabriel and his ma had nothing to do with this. It’s all me.”

“We found the letter you left,” said Sean. “We know. They’re not in trouble.”

Gabriel said, “Mr. Sam. I don’t want anybody to get hurt. You or that girl. Would you let her go and then me and you can get on back home? Maybe we can go in the plane, like you promised.”