by Barry Eisler
Snake double-checked the terrain. To reach the cop, he’d have to cross a patch of grass, then the asphalt street, then a gravel shoulder. The only surface his footfalls would be noisy on would be the gravel. At that point, he’d be too close for the cop to effectively react.
He eased the Ruger from the small-of-back holster and watched, his stance forward and low like he was a sprinter at the starting blocks. The cop’s head swiveled left. Swiveled right. Swiveled—
Snake exploded forward, arms pumping, legs churning. Over the grass. The asphalt. The gravel, the soles of his boots loud now, and the cop heard the sound and must have recognized the danger, because his shoulders were coming up, his head turtling in, his body spinning toward the passenger side, his left hand coming across to protect his face, his right going for his waist—
Snake skidded into the passenger side of the car, grabbing the window frame with his left hand and jamming the Ruger inside just enough to contain some of the noise if he had to fire but not so much that the cop could easily grab it. “Freeze, cop,” he said. “I don’t want to kill you.”
Of course, that last part wasn’t exactly true, but these things almost always went more smoothly if you gave the person a reason to cooperate.
The cop’s right hand froze midway to the pistol holstered at his waist. His head continued to turn, though, and he looked at Snake. His expression was more angry than afraid. Snake didn’t like that. He needed the guy to be compliant, because the plan was for him to drive Snake to the motel, where Snake would kill him and jump in the rental car, then drive back here and grab Sherrie Dobbs.
“Hands on the wheel,” Snake said, the muzzle of the Ruger pointed directly at the cop’s face. But his posture casual, just a passerby leaning in and chatting with the cop. “Slowly.”
Still looking at him, the cop put his hands on the wheel. Yeah, he was solid, all right. Big hands, thick forearms. Maybe a rock climber or something. With all the mesas and national parks, there’d be a lot of that around here.
Snake didn’t like the way the guy was looking at him. Like he was considering his options. The guy wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, meaning he was more mobile than Snake would have liked, and the engine was running, meaning he could pop it in gear and be off in a heartbeat.
“Look the other way,” Snake said. “Out the driver-side window.”
“Why?”
Snake couldn’t believe it. “Because I’ll kill you if you don’t. Any other questions, cop?”
“Yeah. What do you want?”
“I want you to drive me out of here.”
“Why?”
That actually made Snake laugh. “You make me say it again, I might save us both the trouble and just fucking do it.”
“No, I mean, why do you want me to drive you? If you want to get to the visitors center, it’s not far. They close at four. You could easily make it.”
Was this guy out of his mind? “Listen, you dumb shit—”
But he realized too late the question was just a distraction, because the guy lunged at him, his hands flying off the steering wheel and backhanding the Ruger away. Snake’s fingers smacked hard into the window frame, and it would have hurt, maybe even caused him to drop the gun, but the glove was Kevlar-lined. The guy twisted and grabbed Snake’s wrist, trying to control Snake’s gun hand, knowing not to bother trying to unholster his own weapon, and using both hands to try to wrest Snake’s gun away.
The guy was desperate, and his hands were fuck-all strong, too, but he was seated and hemmed in by the confines of the car interior, while Snake had complete leverage and mobility. Using his free hand for support, Snake yanked the Ruger back. But Jesus, the guy’s hands were like a fucking bear trap. Snake tried turning the gun toward the guy’s head, but the guy was too strong. The guy bellowed, a primitive roar of rage and determination, his teeth bared with the effort of trying to GET THE GUN, and in another second, the guy might grab the barrel, which would give him the leverage to twist it out of Snake’s hands.
Snake shoved the Ruger forward, then yanked in the opposite direction off the guy’s reaction. The move gave him just enough space to get a knee up against the car door, and to then use his lumbar muscles like a pry bar. The cop hung on gamely for another second, so tightly that Snake actually dragged him across the console and onto the passenger side. But the biggest forearms in the world were no match for a back, and when the guy’s shoulder hit the passenger-side door it was enough for Snake to tear the gun free. The guy felt it coming a second before he lost his grip and started to turn to the driver-side door, maybe imagining he could scramble out even if his torso and the vest he was probably wearing soaked up a few bullets along the way. But Snake was faster, and trained to take out bad guys carrying hidden explosives, where center mass was nothing but a good way to get blown up. He brought the Ruger forward and shot the guy point-blank behind the ear. The guy’s head jerked, then he slumped sideways in the passenger seat, his head coming to rest against the dashboard.
Snake heard the dog barking again. Fuck, he hadn’t wanted to shoot the guy here at all, and if he had to, he’d planned to do it inside the car to keep the sound relatively muffled.
Well, probably anyone who heard the shot would tell themselves it had been something else. But you never knew for sure. And if Sherrie Dobbs had been concerned enough to ask for some kind of police protection, she wouldn’t be dismissing a gunshot as a firecracker or backfiring truck. She might do anything—call the police. Grab the family shotgun. All of the above.
Snake glanced at the house. It didn’t look like much. Just clapboard. He could probably kick in the door. He could certainly go in through a window. But between the gunshot and the sounds of his trying to gain entry, Sherrie Dobbs would have a lot of time to prepare. And that image of her waiting for him like Annie fucking Oakley wasn’t a happy one.
Okay, Plan B. Or C. Or wherever we are.
He holstered the Ruger, ran around to the driver side, opened the door, and jumped in. He popped it in drive, whipped around to the right so the rear was facing the house, hit the brakes and skidded to a stop, threw it into reverse, and accelerated backward directly into the front door. There was a boom! and a huge jolt and the back of his head slammed into the headrest, but the car plowed through the door and the wall around it. He hit the brakes again and was suddenly, weirdly, in the middle of someone’s foyer, albeit with a ton of wood shards and broken glass all over the place, and the air thick with dust.
He looked around but didn’t see anyone, then opened the door and jumped out. “Sherrie Dobbs?” he called out. “Are you all right?”
There was a pause, then a woman poked her head from around the corner. Her eyes were terrified, but he recognized her instantly from his online research. Sherrie Dobbs.
“Who are you?” she said, her voice so high it was practically a squeak.
“Police,” Snake said. “And we need to get you out of here. Right now.”
“What happened to Tom?”
He could see she was struggling with her confusion and doubts. The trick was to keep things moving fast, so the person didn’t have time to think. Didn’t have time to listen to her gut.
“Tom’s in the car,” Snake said, heading toward her. “He’s hurt and I need to get him to the hospital. But I can’t leave you here alone.”
The indecision in her eyes lasted another half second. Then it was gone, and he could see the doubt had won over. She disappeared around the corner.
Snake realized he had never seen her hands. Fuck. He raced to the corner and went around it—
And there she was, wearing a blue robe and hugely pregnant, holding a shotgun in badly trembling hands. Other than her swollen belly and the bizarrely bright yellow kitchen, the scene was right out of his imagination.
He knew without conscious thought that there was no turning back. The only way out was straight ahead.
He held up his hands and kept moving forward. “Are you out of your mind?” he
said. “Don’t point that thing at me. We need to get you out of here. Come on.”
Her arms were trembling so badly she could barely keep the muzzle downrange. “Please,” she said. “Please—”
He grabbed the shotgun by the barrel and snatched it out of her hands so fast she didn’t even have a chance to get off a shot. The second he had the weapon, he realized how close it had been. If he’d so much as paused to think about it before acting, he never would have done it. Which was of course why he hadn’t thought.
“Point a fucking gun at me?” he shouted, getting in her face. “I ought to shove it up your box and pull the fucking trigger!”
“I’m sorry,” she said, holding up her shaking hands and crying. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on or who you are. Oh God, why is this happening?”
He threw the shotgun aside and grabbed her by the arm. “I’m with Tom,” he said, struggling to get back in character and pulling her along. “I told you, he’s hurt. You need to do what I tell you if we’re going to get you out of this.”
They turned the corner, and there was the cruiser, covered in plaster rubble and wood shards, the air around it swirling with dust motes caught in the sunlight coming through the windows.
Well, you don’t see that every day. He had to stifle a crazy laugh.
He pulled her to the open driver door, reached inside, and pressed the trunk release. Nothing happened.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Must have damaged the mechanism backing up through the wall. Murphy. Every damn time.
But whatever. He reached into one of the pockets on his cargo pants and pulled out the handcuffs he’d brought.
Sherrie saw them. “What?” she said, her eyes freak-out wide. “What, why are you . . .”
Snake didn’t even respond. There was no time. He just spun her around and shoved her facedown across the trunk. She screamed but he barely heard it. He ripped the robe off her back, tossed it aside, hauled her wrists behind her, snapped the cuffs on, grabbed the gag from a pocket, and tied it around her mouth. Then he opened the rear driver-side door, shoved her sprawling inside, and slammed the door closed behind her. He jumped in front, popped it in gear, and punched it. The engine roared and they blew across the lawn, the tires spinning clumps of grass and dirt behind them. A woman was standing in the doorway of a house across the street, watching open-mouthed. Snake cut the wheel right and the cruiser fishtailed and bounced over the curb, then the tires grabbed asphalt and they rocketed forward, and just like that the stupefied neighbor was in the rearview, obscured by a cloud of dust.
Snake gunned the engine, figuring if he was lucky he had maybe sixty seconds before whatever other cops Kanab could muster would be swarming all over him. He accelerated two blocks south, turned right, then forced himself to slow it down. He made another right. He was so juiced he didn’t even see the car coming up behind him.
33
Livia and Little had jumped into the rental car they’d reserved at the airport in Kanab, just north of the Arizona border. Livia had felt lucky the place even had rental cars—the airport itself wasn’t much more than a landing strip. The landscape was stunning, though—red mesas, endless sky, and a road stretching almost to the horizon—and she promised herself that one day, she’d take a vacation and ride out here on the Ducati. It made her think of Carl, who was also an enthusiast, albeit a Harley man. Maybe they could have taken a trip like that together. But it never would have worked. She’d done the right thing. Or, at least, the thing that had to be done.
Livia needed to be in control, meaning she always preferred to drive. But if they encountered any problems, she thought they’d do better with Little behind the wheel and her behind the Glock. So she agreed when Little had asked, obviously rhetorically, if he could do the driving. She hadn’t offered her reasoning. He would have found it inherently insulting, in part because he would have recognized its fundamental accuracy.
She’d spoken with Sherrie Dobbs from the air, but wanted to let her know they were in the car now and just a few minutes out. She called. Four rings, then voicemail. She clicked off.
Probably it’s nothing. Could be in the bathroom. Could be feeling ill—remember, eight months pregnant and on bed rest.
Still, it made her uneasy. She called Tom Cramer. And got his voicemail, too.
She clicked off and pocketed the phone. “No one’s answering,” she said. She pulled the Glock from the belly-band holster.
Little glanced at the gun, then at the navigation app open on his phone. “We’ll be there in two minutes regardless.”
Livia nodded, looking at the map in the navigation app. “Don’t stop in front of her house. Go past it. We’ll circle the block a couple times.”
Little didn’t argue—whether because he knew better than to try or because he agreed, she didn’t know and didn’t care.
They turned right onto Dobbs’s street and drove north. Two blocks ahead, a Kanab police cruiser coming in their direction turned right. It was going fast, though without flashers, and was too far away for Livia to make out who was behind the wheel.
There were a dozen benign possibilities. She ignored all of them. “Did you see that?” she said.
“I did. You want me to follow him?”
She felt a small hit of adrenaline ripple through her torso. “Yes. But hang back. Give him room.”
They turned left onto the street the cruiser had turned on just in time to see it making another right two blocks down. Little, who was obviously experienced with vehicular surveillance, sped up so they wouldn’t lose visual contact for too long.
They turned right onto a four-lane street. No cruiser. “Shit,” Livia said, scanning. Even if the driver had gunned it after turning the corner, they’d been close enough that they would have seen him turning onto the next block. There was some sort of park directly across from them, but he would have had to go straight, not right, to enter it. Two motels—the Quail Park Lodge on the left side of the street, a Days Inn on the right. An antiques store on the left side, but no cruiser in its parking lot. A restaurant called Sego to the right, part of another hotel called Canyons.
“U-turn?” Little said.
“Not yet.” Her heart was thudding strongly now. Something was wrong here. She could feel it. “Turn right at the intersection. I think he pulled into that Days Inn and drove around back. Maybe there’s a connecting lot.”
Little turned right, then right again into the Canyons Hotel driveway. There was a parking area in front. Little drove past it, along the back of the hotel. To their right were more parking spaces, most of them empty, some occupied by empty vehicles. A few sedans. A U-Haul van.
They kept going. Straight ahead was a low concrete wall with a row of trees behind it.
“Not a connecting lot,” Little said.
“Well, we can’t drive through, but . . .” She pointed to the empty parking spaces along the back of the hotel. “Pull in over here. I want to get out and have a look.”
Little did a three-point turn and stopped the car with the nose pointing toward the street they’d turned in from. A good habit—turning the vehicle around when you could was better than doing it when you had to.
They got out. It was quiet behind the hotel, just the muted sounds of traffic from the four-lane road they’d turned off. The air was cool and dry. Little unholstered his weapon. She was glad he needed no prompting. As the saying went: denial has no survival value.
“Hang back,” she said quietly, dropping to a crouch and heading toward the wall. The trees running along it were good concealment, but she couldn’t see what was on the other side, either. She was glad she was wearing her vest.
She came to the wall and dropped lower, thankful for the cover it provided. From the new position, she could see through the trees. And there. On the other side, not fifteen feet away. The cruiser. A sedan parked next to it, the back facing Livia’s position. And a man stuffing a naked, cuffed, gagged, pregnant woman into
the sedan’s open trunk. Sherrie Dobbs. And Snake.
She felt a huge adrenaline dump. Her heart started pounding. Sound faded out. She put her sights on Snake’s torso. “DO NOT MOVE!” she shouted.
Snake froze. He looked at Livia, his expression utterly surprised. His right hand drifted high, the palm forward, the fingers splayed, but his left hand remained pressed against Sherrie Dobbs’s naked back. There was something disconcertingly protective about the way he was touching her—almost as though he cared for her, as though she was precious to him. Dobbs looked up at her, her face streaked with tears, her eyes so terrified that it hurtled Livia straight back to the boat, and the cargo container, and Nason—
She felt the dragon unfold inside her. Shoot him, shoot him, KILL HIM—
But she couldn’t. The scrutiny she would face. The lost opportunity. To make a case against Boomer. To find out where they had taken all those girls. Where they had left them.
“Both hands!” Livia roared. “Show me both your hands RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”
Snake’s left hand came up, too, palm forward, fingers splayed.
“Step to your right!” she shouted. “Away from—”
“Livia, down!” she heard Little yell from behind her.
She dropped instantly, and the concrete to the right of her ear exploded as a round punched into it, the sound of the shot reaching her just after. And then the sound of a fusillade of new ones. Little, returning fire.
She spun, brought up the Glock, and dashed along the wall, knowing she had to get off the X, trying to orient on where the shots were coming from. Another round hit the wall near her, and there, a man ducking back along the side of the U-Haul van, fifty feet away. More shots coming from behind the van—two sets, she thought—with Little returning fire using the door of their rental car for cover.
The geometry was bad—the van was the apex of a scalene triangle with Livia and Little at the base. What she needed was to widen the angles, and then flank the shooters. There was another concrete wall perpendicular to the one separating the lots and parallel to the back of the hotel. She reached it, dove over, and sprinted north, crouching to use the wall for cover. She heard more shots and ran faster. Any second, Little was going to have to reload, and even though if he was good it would take him only a moment, in that instant the shooters might try to leapfrog or flank him. She had to get ahead of that.