There was only one way for Kyle to come out of this alive.
Carl Hendricks had done his research well. He’d chosen the means of his revenge with care. The rope wasn’t a coincidence. With the intuition of a man with too many scars on his own conscience, he knew Kevin Stanton visited Evan in his dreams, swinging from the end of a rope in his garage. He knew Evan would never dare risk another innocent death on his conscience, would gladly sacrifice himself for a chance to save the boy.
If there was no timer, if the note was just a trick to lure Evan out, Kyle was safe. And Evan, unable to live with even the smallest risk, would walk willingly into Floyd’s arrows—for nothing.
That’s the beauty of choices like that. You don’t have to waste time thinking about them.
‘Evan, say something.’
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘We can be there in under five minutes.’
‘No, you can’t.’
He told her about his car blocking the road, the slashed tires, the locked five-bar gate behind it.
‘It’ll take too long. We’ve wasted enough time already.’
‘We’re coming on foot—’
He cut the call, dropped the phone in his pocket and stepped out into the clearing.
***
HE STOOD UP STRAIGHT and walked towards the blind. There was no point crouching, trying to hide. Floyd had him where he wanted him and would act accordingly. Besides, he was safe out here in the open. Everything he knew about Floyd told him he’d drag it out as long as possible. He’d let Evan get close. Let him think he had a chance. If Evan was a betting man, he’d put money on being shot with his foot on the top rung of the ladder, his hand on the door handle.
He saw the trapdoor as he got closer, pictured Kyle standing on top of it. Too scared to move, not knowing what the hell was going on. Asking himself, was anyone even coming to rescue him? He swallowed thickly, tried to put the image out of his mind.
He’d reached the bottom of the ladder.
He put out his hand to grab the side rail and stopped, an idea forming in his mind. He smiled to himself at the simplicity of it. He’d stand under the trapdoor and wait for backup. Let Floyd shoot him standing there just the same as if he was on the ladder. On the ladder he had no chance of doing anything if the trapdoor opened. Standing underneath, he could catch Kyle—if he hadn’t already been shot. It was one slim chance against no chances at all.
Problem was, he underestimated Floyd.
Badly.
He took a step away from the ladder, bent to duck under the diagonal cross struts. If he expected anything, he expected the burning pain of Floyd’s arrow cutting through his flesh. Not the gentle pull of a tripwire against his ankle. There was a metallic click, the sound as loud as a gunshot in the still air—and every bit as deadly.
The trapdoor dropped silently open on well-oiled hinges.
For a fraction of a second it was as if Kyle hovered in mid-air. Halfway under the cross strut, Evan stared up at the soles of his sneakers, three feet away, two feet above him. Kyle hung, defying gravity so long Evan feared the rope was already pulled taut as he stood on the trapdoor, that he wouldn’t fall. He’d slowly choke to death as Evan tried desperately to get up the ladder, get inside.
Then Kyle dropped like a stone.
In one fluid step Evan was directly under him as he plummeted downwards, his feet kicking wildly, the scream that had been building inside him finding its voice. Evan clamped his arms around Kyle’s legs, got a thrashing bony knee in the face and a kick in the ribs for his trouble. Kyle’s legs carried on trying to kick, his screams filling the air, filling Evan’s head until he wanted to scream back twice as hard. He gripped tighter and looked up, saw the slackness in the rope, felt a wave of relief go through him that almost made him lose his grip. Another six inches and the rope would have snapped taut and he’d be hanging onto the boy’s legs as they twitched in his death throes.
‘I’ve got you. It’s okay.’
Kyle’s scream faded away, his kicks became weaker, then stopped altogether.
‘Uncle Evan?’
Evan looked up again, saw the hood over his head. He felt a hot pricking at the back of his eyes that he should be the one come to Kyle’s mind first.
‘Yeah.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s me.’
He felt the boy relax in his grip, the rigid muscles in his legs go slack, wished his own legs had that luxury.
‘I knew you’d kick his sorry ass.’
Evan gave an encouraging you got that right laugh. He didn’t say anything, didn’t want to scare him again. He did think it was a little premature, especially as Floyd chose that precise moment to step out of the trees, his bow in one hand, an arrow in the other.
Kyle felt Evan tense under him. And he was a bright boy.
‘Is it him?’
There was no point lying. Floyd would say something any second.
‘Yeah, don’t worry, it’s going to be okay,’ he whispered. ‘Help’s on the way.’
Whether Kyle believed him or not, his legs didn’t. They snapped rigid in Evan’s arms.
‘Nice catch,’ Floyd said as he took a couple paces closer.
He moved to the side so there was an unobstructed path between him and Evan, no stilts or cross-struts in the way.
Despite their predicament, Evan couldn’t stop his curiosity getting the better of him.
‘Was there a timer?’
Floyd grinned and shook his head slowly.
‘Nope. Worked though, didn’t it. Brought out the hero in you. Uncle Evan to the rescue.’
Fuck you, retard.
The muffled shout echoed out from behind the hood over Kyle’s head. Evan gave his legs a squeeze, couldn’t help grinning. Floyd grinned back, nodded his head appreciatively.
‘Boy’s got some balls. Trouble is, he’s as stupid as his Uncle Evan.’
‘Shush,’ Evan whispered to Kyle, cutting off the next show of bravado.
‘Needs to learn a lesson about consequences,’ Floyd said and fitted the arrow to the bow.
Evan tensed, his heart racing.
‘No!’
Floyd ignored him.
‘Hey, boy.’
Evan felt Kyle’s whole body shaking in his arms.
‘I’m talking to you, boy.’
‘What?’ Kyle said, his voice barely a whisper, all the bravado of a minute ago long gone.
‘You gotta learn a lesson about responsibility. You dis-respected me. Somebody has to pay.’
Evan watched, his muscles frozen, as Floyd drew back the string. He stopped halfway, the arrow still pointing at the ground.
‘Who’s it gonna be, boy? Who gets to pay for your mouth?’
The silence stretched out. Floyd’s bow rose.
‘Can’t hear you, boy.’
‘Me!’
Kyle’s shout echoed around the clearing.
‘Good boy,’ Floyd said and shot Evan in the leg.
Evan screamed and leapt backwards, spinning around. He lost his grip on Kyle’s legs. Kyle dropped six inches, the noose snapping tight around his neck. Evan lurched forward, dipped and clamped his left arm around Kyle’s lower legs, stood up straight. The rope went slack. Kyle was making wheezy, choking sounds in the back of his throat, his legs kicking uselessly against Evan’s gut.
‘It’s okay,’ Evan said, trying hard to keep his voice soft and soothing through the blinding pain in his leg. ‘I’ve got you.’
Kyle stopped thrashing, the sounds in his throat subsiding as the panic ebbed away.
‘Okay now?’
There was a tentative uh-huh. Evan felt the wetness in the boy’s pants leg. He thanked God it wasn’t the same wetness he felt soaking his own pants, draining his strength.
‘Good boy.’
‘It’s only a field point,’ Floyd called out. ‘You should be thankful the boy didn’t call me something worse or I might have used a broadhead.’
Despite the searing pain
in his leg, Evan was thankful. A field point was just an everyday sharpened point—not the lethal three-blade tip Floyd used to cut down Vasiliev’s men.
‘Think you’ll remember what you learned today, boy?’ Floyd shouted to Kyle.
A flood of relief coursed through Evan’s body as Kyle had the sense to keep his mouth shut. He only had one more leg after all.
‘You should thank me,’ Floyd carried on. ‘Maybe you won’t grow up as stupid as Uncle Evan after all, you pay attention to me.’
Evan shifted all his weight onto his good leg. Suddenly Kyle was a lot heavier. Floyd watched him like a cockroach he’d just pulled half the legs off.
‘Even’s things up a bit,’ he said. ‘Big strong guy like you and a skinny kid like him, you could’ve held him all day. Or until I shoot your other leg, of course. Or maybe your pecker.’
He thought that was funny. He started to laugh and he couldn’t stop, the tears running down his cheek.
Evan couldn’t see the funny side of it at the moment. What he could see was an opportunity.
Floyd was shaking his head, gulping great chunks of air down as his laughter subsided. Evan had his left arm around Kyle’s legs, his right hanging at his side. He looked up, past Kyle’s body and the rope stretched almost taut above him to the metal hook in the wooden roof of the blind.
Kyle felt the change in him, felt him leaning away. He started to struggle, maybe thought Evan was going to let go his legs. Evan squeezed the boy’s legs, hoped he understood. Kyle only struggled more.
His eyes on Floyd the whole time, Evan eased his right hand behind his back, felt the gun down the back of his pants. His fingers closed around the grip.
Floyd shook his head one last time and looked up, straight at Evan, a smile still on his lips. His mouth opened to make another mocking remark and then shut as he saw where Evan’s hand was. Their eyes locked. Evan knew Floyd didn’t think he was scratching an itch or rubbing an aching back muscle from holding Kyle up.
Floyd’s arm rose up and over his shoulder towards the arrows sticking out the quiver on his back. Evan brought the gun out from behind his own back. He leaned away from Kyle, raised his arm. Kyle was thrashing uncontrollably, shaking Evan’s whole body as he tried to balance on his one good leg.
Floyd had an arrow out, bringing it around in a smooth, well-practised arc, laying it against the arrow rest.
Evan’s gun arm was waving crazily in the air as Kyle twisted and bucked in his grip.
‘Kyle! Keep still!’
Kyle stopped fighting him, the urgency in Evan’s voice connecting on a subconscious level. Evan fired at the hook in the roof as Floyd drew back his arm, the bow rising towards them.
The bullet punched through the wooden roof, six inches to the left of the hook, the sound of the wood splintering mingling with Kyle’s screams.
Floyd’s hand was at his chin, the bowstring kissing his nose, his lips, the lethal tip of the broadhead aimed at the center of Evan’s body mass.
Evan got off two fast shots, threw Kyle away from him to the left and dived to the right.
The bullets smashed into the hook, ripping it out of the roof, as Floyd let the arrow fly. Kyle landed on his feet and tumbled to the ground, the noose and hook landing on top of him. Evan hit the deck with his shoulder and rolled with the fall as the arrow flew through the air.
He screamed as sharpened metal speared his flesh.
But it was only—except there was no only about it—the arrow in his leg catching on the ground as he rolled.
A solid thunk filled the eerie silence left after the reverberations of Evan’s shots died away, as the arrow buried itself in a tree, deep in the woods behind the blind.
By the time Evan stopped rolling Floyd had another arrow in his hand. The guy was game, going up against a man with a gun with only a bow and arrow. Maybe he was part native American. Whatever it was, he should’ve turned and run if he had any sense.
Lying full length on his left hip, his right leg held in the air to stop the arrow catching on anything, Evan steadied himself in the grass. He rested his left elbow on the ground, left hand supporting his right wrist and shot Floyd once in the right shoulder and once in the left leg.
He rolled carefully onto his back and stared up at the sky, waited for his heart to get the hell out of his throat, settle back down into his chest. Kyle was younger, quicker to bounce back. Evan turned his head to the side and watched him climb unsteadily to his feet without the use of his hands. Evan pulled himself up using one of the cross-struts and hobbled across to help him. He pulled the noose over his head, then the hood and held him tight into his body a minute before he untied his hands. Apart from the wet patch on his jeans which neither of them mentioned—or even saw—Kyle looked as if he’d just come back from playing in the woods with his friends.
‘Stay here,’ Evan said, his tone of voice producing a disappointed, accepting nod from Kyle.
He hobbled over to where Floyd lay on his stomach, squirming his way through the long grass towards the trees on the far side of the clearing, blood smearing the grass behind him like a giant snail. Evan grabbed him by the left leg—the one he’d shot—and hauled him back again on his belly, ignoring the protests from his own leg.
It was like some big macho competition. Evan’s leg was screaming, begging him to stop. Floyd’s must be doing the same. Neither man let even a squeak slip past their clenched teeth.
He dragged him all the way to the blind and leaned him up against one of the stilts. Kyle had watched too much TV already in his short life. By the time Evan had Floyd propped up against the post, Kyle was standing next to him holding out the rope. There wasn’t any point in reinventing the wheel, so Evan looped the noose over Floyd’s head and tied the end off on one of the cross-struts.
They both stood in front of Floyd and looked down at him.
‘So, Kyle, what did you learn today?’ Evan said and winked at him.
Floyd scowled at them. Kyle grinned.
‘You don’t mess with Uncle Evan.’
‘You got it. You want to fetch his bow?’
Kyle’s face lit up and Evan was reminded of the natural cruelty that lives inside us all until we grow to adulthood and social pressures push it below the surface.
‘Are we gonna shoot him?’
‘Maybe later. Why don’t you take some arrows and get some practice on a tree? I need to talk to Floyd a minute.’
Kyle pulled a handful of arrows out of the quiver still on Floyd’s back.
‘Give me one of those broadheads.’
Kyle handed one over, a look of disappointment on his face that he was going to miss out on some of the fun.
‘Off you go.’
Kyle ran across the clearing and Evan dug in his pocket, pulled out the Zippo lighter. Floyd’s eyes widened a fraction. It was fast, but Evan caught it.
‘You recognize it.’
Floyd gave a one-shouldered shrug, didn’t say anything. Evan rested the tip of the arrow on his shoulder, an inch from where the bullet had entered.
‘You can poke it right in that hole, wiggle it around, twist it all you like,’ Floyd said and gave him a smug smile. ‘You won’t make me say anything I don’t want to say that way. I’ve been tortured by better men than you. You’re a nice guy’—he made the nice sound like something to be ashamed of—‘you haven’t got what it takes. You’ll give in before I do.’
He was right. It took a certain kind of person to get information out of a defenceless man that way. Evan wasn’t that kind of person, never would be. He threw the arrow over his shoulder, a good long way. You couldn’t be too careful with someone like Floyd.
‘How do I get you to tell me, then?’
Floyd smiled again.
‘Let me go.’
‘Not gonna happen.’
‘Good luck with the Zippo.’
Evan took a deep breath, looked around the clearing. Guillory and the other cops would be here any minute. On the far sid
e of the clearing Kyle was struggling with Floyd’s bow, barely able to move the string. It was an awesome weapon, a thing of deadly beauty. He had a flashback to a minute ago, lying in the grass, aiming his gun at Floyd’s shoulder as he drew the bow. Why hadn’t he turned and run? Beautiful and deadly the bow might be, it was no match for a gun. And it wasn’t the same macho pride that stopped them both from giving in to a cry of pain as he dragged him through the grass. Floyd was an experienced soldier, there was no shame in retreating to fight another day.
There was another reason Floyd hadn’t run away. It had to be a very good reason.
‘What happened to your dog?’
All traces of a smile, smug or otherwise, slipped off Floyd’s face, a scowl replacing it.
Evan carried on. ‘I know what happened to it—’
‘Her, not it.’
Evan knew then the answer to his questions was within his reach. He was closer now than he had been for five years. It made him lightheaded, the trees closing in on him. Then a surge of pain from his leg brought his mind back into focus.
‘Sorry, her. I meant, where is she?’
Evan believed Floyd when he said he’d be unable to torture the information out of him. Now, the man looked as if he might cry at any minute. Evan looked across the clearing to where Floyd emerged from the trees. He couldn’t be sure, the sunlight played tricks on his eyes. He thought he made out a brown and black mound on the ground.
‘She’s over there, isn’t she? You didn’t have time to do what you did to the guy who killed her and bury her, did you?’
He’d touched a wound every bit as raw as the ones in Floyd’s shoulder or leg. The difference was, this one would take a lot longer to heal.
Floyd looked at the ground between his legs, didn’t say anything.
‘How long do you think it’ll take the critters to eat their way through a dog her size? A week? A month?’
Floyd’s fists clenched. Evan would’ve liked to know how many men he’d killed with nothing more than those large hands. Floyd looked up into his face, a decision made.
The Evan Buckley Thrillers: Books 1 - 4 (Evan Buckley Thrillers Boxsets) Page 86