by Sam Sisavath
He was too busy cutting and talking that he didn’t notice when she put her right hand into her jacket pocket and eased back the hammer of the SIG Sauer with her thumb. Then she turned slightly until she was standing with him directly in front of her and the hidden barrel of the gun was pointed straight at him. Or as straight at him as she could make it, since it was a little hard to aim when the gun was still inside her pocket and she had to eyeball the whole thing.
What if you’re wrong? a voice asked from the back of her mind. He could have gotten those marks anywhere. He works with his hands, remember? What if you’re wrong?
Gabriel had finished cutting the bread when he put the knife down, then picked up a slice and took a bite as he turned and—stopped moving entirely when he saw the look in her eyes.
“What?” Gabriel said. “What’s wrong?”
What if you’re wrong? the voice asked. What if you’re wrong?
Her eyes shifted slightly to his hand, holding the bread near his mouth. He saw where she was looking and turned his arm. The red lines seemed to gleam in the LED light, becoming even more pronounced when the lantern hit them at just the right angle.
Gabriel lowered his arm and tugged his jacket sleeve over the lacerations.
“Where did you get those?” she asked.
“An accident,” he said. “It happens a lot around here. Mayfield’s not the poster child for work safety.”
“An accident?”
“Yeah. It was an accident. Why?” He smiled. “There’s no office jobs here, Ana. Besides, it looks worse than it really is.”
“It looks like someone scratched you, Gabriel.”
“It may look like that, but it’s not.”
She tightened her grip around the gun in her jacket pocket and thought about her options. Did she even have options?
Yes, she did. Maybe. There had to still be people outside on the streets right now, even in the middle of the night. She could call them. If there was actually anyone out there to hear her calling.
But even if there were, then what? Tell them about her suspicions? Would they even believe her? Would she believe a woman she didn’t know until this afternoon, and take her word against a man who had been running the show for six years?
“What’s going on, Ana?” Gabriel asked. His eyes went to her jacket pocket for a brief second. “What’s in there?”
“A gun,” Ana said.
“Is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna shoot me?”
“Only if you go for your weapon.”
He held his hands forward, the palms up. “I’m not going to do that. Why would I? All of this is just one big misunderstanding.”
“One of those women at the campsite got a piece of her killer. Three of her fingers were bloodied. She had skin under her fingernails. Did Kelloway tell you that?”
“Yeah, she did,” he said, his eyes staring at her the entire time. He was trying to read her. “What are you trying to say, Ana?”
“I think you know what I’m trying to say.”
“I’d like to hear you actually say it, then give me the chance to defuse this before it gets out of hand.”
Damn, he’s calm, Ana thought, watching his face closely. He had lowered his hands back to in front of him.
“You killed those people at the campsite,” Ana said.
He shook his head. “That’s not true.”
“You killed them.”
“Repeating the accusation doesn’t make it true, Ana.”
“Did you send Stark and Aaron to kill Chuck, too? To kill me?”
“How could I do that? I was walking you over here when it happened, remember?”
“Then it was to kill Chuck.”
“I was the first one in the building. The first one in the room. Or did you forget?”
“I didn’t.”
“So why would I do that if I was involved?”
“The shooting was over. There was no threat to you anymore.”
“You’re reaching.”
“Am I?”
“Yes—” he said, even as his right hand wandered closer toward his holstered sidearm.
Ana took the SIG out of her jacket pocket and pointed it at him. “Don’t.”
His hand froze halfway to the gun. “Don’t what?”
“You know damn well don’t what.”
She waited for him to go for his sidearm anyway, but he didn’t. His right hand returned to in front of him, folded over the back of his left palm.
“You’re making a mistake, Ana,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
Ana eyeballed the distance between them. Ten feet. She wasn’t much of a shooter, but she didn’t have to be to hit something the size of a fully-grown man from just ten feet away.
Why couldn’t I have been wrong about him? Goddammit.
“Ana,” Gabriel began.
“Shut up,” she said. “You’re going to turn around, and I’m going to take your gun, then we’re going to march out of here.”
“And then what?”
“Then I’m going to find a way to bind your wrists.”
“All of this, over a hunch?”
“I don’t need hunches. I have your arm.”
“Oh, right, I forgot about that.” He looked down at his now-covered arm before refocusing on her. “You’re going to need more than that. Remember, I’ve been here for years. You haven’t. Who are they going to believe? You or me?”
“I can be very convincing,” Ana said. “Besides, the bodies are still out there. And I’m willing to bet if I ask the right questions, you have more in common with Stark and Aaron and those other four names you listed earlier than you were letting on. I bet I can convince one or two of your people to side with me. Or, at the very least, to listen to me and actually look into my claims. What do you think?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Yeah, I’m starting to think that you actually could do that. Convince someone to listen to you…”
“Turn around.”
He didn’t. Instead, he said, “I guess there’s nothing left to say.”
“Turn around.”
He still didn’t. “The truth is, you’re right; I was there, but I didn’t kill them.” Then, with a smirk that made ice slither up and down her spine, “Well, not all of them.”
His right hand went for his gun, and she pulled the trigger.
It was a surprise—to her, that she actually did it, and definitely to him. The gunshot was louder than she was expecting—especially for such a small gun—but maybe the confined nature of the kitchen had something to do with that.
She was startled by the blast, and so was Gabriel, who jerked his right arm back with a grunt, just before he grabbed a pan from a counter next to him with his left hand and threw it at her. Ana was moving the gun around, trying to get a better second shot, when the metal cooking utensil ricocheted off her temple.
She stumbled backward, struggling to remain upright. She was more stunned than hurt, though she was definitely hurting. She was also probably already bleeding and thought she could feel blood trickling down from the spot where the pan had struck her. She was raising her right hand, trying to line up another shot, when he seemed to split into three separate Gabriels.
She shot the one in the middle, but all three Gabriels remained standing in front of her.
Dammit! Wrong one!
The one on the right! Shoot the one on the right!
Or is it the one on the left?
She couldn’t decide, and it was too late to fire a third time, because something struck her in the chest and she was flung backward. Her back slammed into something sharp and metal, and pain exploded across her entire body.
Then someone was screaming just before a heavy object—A fist? Another cooking pan? Maybe a hammer?—hit her across the forehead.
There was overwhelming pain and darkness, and the last thing Ana was conscious of was falling, and the thoughts, Should ha
ve stayed out of the truck. Dammit, why didn’t I stay out of the truck? running through her head.
Ten
She expected chaos and fury and a lot of shouting, maybe even shooting, but instead there was just dead silence and the kind of pounding headache that made her want to immediately snap her eyes shut and go back to La La Land. Of course she couldn’t do that (Wake up, or you’re going to die. Wake up, or you’re going to die, girl!), and Ana forced herself to look around her even as her head threatened to cave in on itself.
Any second now.
Any second now…
There was just enough natural light (Is it morning? No, can’t be. It doesn’t feel like morning.) for her to see her surroundings and come up with a pretty good idea of where she was.
A basement. Concrete walls surrounded her on all sides, and there were box-shaped objects stacked underneath a heavy tarp across from her, a large chunk of it hidden in the shadows that dominated that side of the room. Besides her and those boxes, the place was mostly empty, with the beginnings of a staircase to her left leading up to an unseen door.
Where the hell was she? Was she still in Mayfield? Or was she underneath Lucy’s Cafeteria? Where had Gabriel put her?
Gabriel!
“The truth is, you’re right; I was there, but I didn’t kill them. Well, not all of them.”
That bastard. All this time, and he had been playing her, pretending to “help” her find the killers. What were the chances he wasn’t just one of them, but their leader? Given his position within Mayfield, that was probably a good bet.
Lying asshat.
She looked around her again, hoping to see something the second time that she might have missed initially. But all she could concentrate on was the pounding headache. God, her head hurt. What had he hit her with? There was the frying pan to the temple the first time. She flinched at the memory and relived the rush of pain as the heavy metal object bounced off her head. And after that? It might have been his fist. Whatever it was, it had put her out. She could feel the bruises.
Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark, all right.
To make matters worse, she was tied to some kind of armchair. It was brown and cold and sticky, and her arms were taped to the armrests by gray duct tape. Her legs were bound together, and there was even more tape wrapped around her chest, keeping her pinned to the chair, as if restraining her limbs wasn’t already good enough. It took her a few seconds to realize there was something over her mouth, too, and that she was breathing through her nose and had been since she woke up.
But she wasn’t bleeding, thanks to what she thought might have been a large bandage over her left temple. Or it felt like a bandage. At least the bastard had been nice enough to leave her with that. Of course, that wasn’t going to keep her from cutting his balls off the first chance she got.
Lying piece of shit.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there staring at the dark blue tarp in front of her. Despite her best attempts, she couldn’t move even a single inch in the chair. She also couldn’t hear anything from outside the basement. And there should have been sounds coming from out there. How was the world around her so silent after everything that had happened?
Had Gabriel taken her out of Mayfield after all? No, she didn’t think so. It would have taken too much work to throw her on a horse and ride out, after all the commotion she’d made. Someone would have heard the shooting and come running. They might not have reacted right away, but eventually someone would have responded. Gabriel might have been in charge of the place, but even he was going to have a challenging time explaining what had happened.
So where was she? And did it really matter if it was still somewhere in Oklahoma or Mars, if she couldn’t do a damn thing about it?
Ana sighed out loud and relaxed her body. Fighting against the duct tape wasn’t doing her a bit of good. The only thing the continued struggling would get her was more sore muscles, and she was already sore from head to toe.
But especially the head. God, it hurt. The throbbing was worse now than it had been when she first opened her eyes. The pain seemed to have built up to a crescendo, and there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it but grit her teeth and bear—
The clack of a door opening, followed by footsteps coming down the stairs to her left.
She turned her head just as something clicked, and a single soft LED light hummed to life above her. The brightness stabbed at her eyes, and Ana clenched them closed. She counted to five before reopening them slowly, just in time to see him taking the last step down.
Gabriel.
He didn’t look any worse for wear after their “disagreement,” even though she was pretty sure she’d shot him in the right arm. He smiled at her before walking to the back of the room and picking up a cheap metal chair from a corner and returning with it. He set the chair down about five feet in front of her and straddled it, laying his arms over the headrest.
He stared at her and didn’t say anything. She had a few choice words for him, but of course couldn’t say any of them. She mumbled against the tape instead.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” he said, turning his head in a mock I can’t hear you gesture. “You’re going to have to speak up.”
She muttered louder against the tape.
“Oh right, forgot about that,” he said, before standing up and walking over.
Her body tightened, fully prepared for the man to do something other than remove the tape from her mouth. Instead, he jerked the strip free with one quick tug.
Ana sucked in a deep breath and in the next second shouted, “You motherfucker!”
“That mouth!” he said, laughing.
He doesn’t care, Ana thought. Because he doesn’t have to.
She had shouted as loud as she could on purpose, and it had nothing to do with Gabriel. She had been trying to get someone else’s attention other than him—someone outside the basement. But judging by his reaction, and that cavalier laugh of his, it had been for naught. Gabriel didn’t care if she made loud noises, because either the basement was soundproof or there was no one out there to hear her. She wasn’t sure which one made her feel worse.
Oh, who are you kidding. It’s both.
But Ana didn’t let him see her disappointment. She didn’t want to give him more ammunition. Instead, she stared back at him and resisted the urge to spit in his face. That would have been satisfying, but it would have also put him in a bad mood. Right now, he looked like a man who believed he had the world in the palm of his hands—and maybe he did—and Ana had learned a long time ago that people, especially men, were most vulnerable when they thought they were in charge.
“How’s the arm?” she asked instead.
“Just a scratch,” he said.
He might have been lying, but she had no way to verify that. He didn’t seem to be favoring his right arm, though, and he was wearing a new jacket, so she couldn’t tell how much damage she’d inflicted on him.
“You’re a lousy shot,” he said. “How does someone miss a target as big as me from five feet away?”
Rub it in why don’t you, you piece of shit, she thought, but said, “I’ll try to do better next time.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“You better hope not.”
He grinned before casually sticking the tape that had been over her mouth to her shoulder. “For later,” he said, before walking back to his chair and sitting down. “Now. What were you saying?”
“Where the hell am I?”
“Mayfield.”
“Bullshit.”
He shrugged. “Believe what you want.”
She actually did believe him, but Ana was hoping he might try to convince her, maybe even tell her how he’d gotten her down here without the rest of the town knowing. She hated the idea that the entire population of Mayfield might be in on this.
No. This was a small-scale operation. She was sure of it. Six men, like Chuck had believed, and Gabriel himse
lf had all but confirmed during his charade. Maybe unwittingly, but more likely because it helped sell his story. His lies.
Gabriel, who Chuck once looked at and gave the thumbs up.
“I’ve run across a lot of people,” Chuck had said. “Slayers, regular citizens; sometimes the worst of the worst. Trust me when I tell you, I can sniff out a killer a mile away. These three don’t give off the scent.”
You were wrong, Chuck. You were so wrong.
We both were…
And maybe that hurt more. She had liked Chuck, but she didn’t know him long enough to think there would be a long-lasting sense of loss at his death. But the being lied to and believing every bit of it was going to sting for a long, long time.
He tossed me a line, and I bit. All of it. Every single inch of it.
She was supposed to be good at this: Reading people. Reading men. But Gabriel had hoodwinked her from the beginning. The cowboy persona, the back and forth with calling her ma’am. The man was one step ahead of her the entire time, feeding her lie after lie, and she had bought it. She had bought all of it.
“Who were they?” she asked, fighting down the anger, forcing herself to present a neutral expression. It was hard, but she had experience in controlling her emotions.
“Who?” Gabriel said.
“The other five. Your partners in crime.”
“You already met two of them. Stark and Aaron.”
“So they were real?”
“Looked real dead to me.”
“Did you send them to kill me?”
He shook his head. “Chuck. I figured once I got rid of the slayers, you’d be easier to handle.” He flashed her a wry smile. “Turns out, you were the one I should have been wary of the entire time.”
You’re goddamn right, she thought, but said, “What about the others?”
“What about them?”
“Keenan, Patrick, Bates, and Sullivan. So which one isn’t really a part of your little gang of killers?”
Gabriel smiled. “Bates. I guess you could say he’s my stand-in.”
“So you really did do it. You really killed those people at the campsite.”