by Unknown
The FBI searched the shoreline while the MPD maintained a wide parameter, keeping onlookers at bay.
Without turning his head to speak, Cutter opened his door and got out of the car.
Shane watched him. He didn’t know what to expect, but he followed suit and got out of the car as well.
Cutter walked around the trunk and approached Shane.
He stopped just behind the passenger rear door and opened it. Then he took off his suit coat. I began to surface. I stared at Cutter’s shoulder holster.
In the holster was a Glock 22. I stared at it. It was a beautiful weapon.
I sensed no immediate danger and receded into Shane. I stood at the edge of him just in case.
Cutter tossed his suit coat into the back seat of the car. He bent down into the car and pulled out two new items. The first was an FBI windbreaker. It was blue with FBI letters scrolled on the back in a bright yellow color.
The second item was a laminated FBI pass. He tossed it to Shane.
Shane flipped the pass over in his hands and studied it. It read “Visitor.”
“Put that on,” Cutter ordered.
Shane stared into Cutter’s cold, unrevealing eyes. Deep inside those offset eyes, a monster lay in wait. It stared back at me from behind Cutter’s face. It wore his face like a mask. The dark thing inside of him had no idea that it was staring at something far worse––me.
Shane responded to Cutter by slipping the lanyard over his neck. The temporary badge fell across his chest and over his tie. The white of the badge matched his wrinkled shirt.
Cutter stopped and stared at Shane’s clothes for the first time since he had abruptly picked him up.
“You slept in those? Were you out all night?”
“Wild night,” Shane responded, and that was all he said. The human side of Shane smiled in a playful way, the kind of playfulness that brothers shared.
“Follow me,” Cutter demanded. He led Shane down the row of parking spaces. They walked a short distance to a large cement pillar.
On the opposite side of it was a fire escape leading down to the shoreline of the river.
Cutter led Shane down a flight of stairs. Then they stepped onto the bank of the Potomac River.
Shane saw the scene in much greater detail than before.
The Coast Guard used a rescue chopper to search for Townsend’s body.
The helicopter was the model that they’d adopted in 1979. It was an HH-65.
The HH-65 was known for its Fenestron tail rotor, a rotor that spun inside the end of the tail. This breed of helicopter was also known for its autopilot abilities, capable of completing an unaided approach to the water and bringing the aircraft into a stable fifty-foot hover over the water’s surface. It could also automatically fly search patterns, an ability which allowed the crew to engage in other rescue efforts.
In the scene in front of Shane, the crew was scanning the water with depth equipment and using simple eyesight in order to search for any sign of a human corpse in the river.
“Why are we here?” Shane asked.
“Someone killed your client last night,” Cutter said.
“Townsend? Killed? How do you know that?” Shane asked.
“We found blood in his penthouse,” Cutter replied.
“So you’re dragging the river?”
“His tracker was last traced here,” Agent Cutter said.
Then he said, “His body is either in that river or somewhere else. We will find him.”
“Why am I here?” Shane asked.
“I don’t like killers. I hate them. One year ago I came to you. I gave you an assignment.
“You were supposed to look into why so many of your clients have gone missing, but so far you have come up with nothing.”
“Maybe I’ve come up with nothing or maybe I just don’t want to help you. It’s not my job to help you with yours!”
Cutter said nothing. Then he began walking through the clusters of police and forensic investigators.
The two men skirted through the crowd.
Shane was impressed by the work and manpower that surrounded him.
All of this for me? he thought.
Shane was in fact a little intimidated. He had been on national television, in front of state officials, and even posed for Vanity Fair. But the FBI—that was quite a feat. Perhaps one day he would be on their most wanted list.
Suddenly, Cutter stopped walking. He turned his toes and pivoted back in Shane’s direction.
He poked his long fingers into Shane’s chest.
Shane felt the power and force behind them.
Cutter said, “I know that you know more than you’re saying. I know that you’re more than you let people see.”
A couple of the FBI agents who stood on the outer perimeter of the river turned and stared at them. The agents gazed at Shane like he was threatening their lead agent.
Two of the agents began to walk over to back up Agent Cutter.
Kirk Cutter didn’t flinch. He just stared into Shane’s intense blue eyes. He didn’t see me. I was certain of it, but his demon sensed that I was there.
Before the two FBI agents stopped just behind Cutter’s shoulders, Cutter reached his hand up and signaled for them to retreat.
“I’m fine,” he said.
The two agents knew better than to question Agent Cutter’s orders.
They glanced at each other. Shane could see that their faces questioned the situation, but their bodies didn’t dare disobey Agent Cutter. They quickly turned around and headed back to their business.
Cutter moved in closer to Shane. His breath fell across Shane’s face as Cutter exhaled.
Then Cutter whispered two single words. He said, “Follow me.”
Kirk Cutter turned and walked away into the distance. He headed toward the tree line at the top of the hill, a spot that gave a perfect sniper’s view of the landscape. It was also secluded from the swarms of FBI agents and Coast Guard patrols that canvassed the water.
He tried to get away from the other officers. He wanted to have some privacy for him and Shane, but still be near his men.
As soon as they reached the top of the hill, Cutter turned away and faced the river. He scanned over it. No prying eyes. No one looked up at them. No one seemed to even take notice that he and Shane had walked up here.
Then Kirk Cutter drew his weapon and pointed it straight at Shane’s chest. He pointed it dead center.
A Glock 22 comes in a .40 caliber. With all things equal, a .40 caliber bullet was not as damaging as a .45, but it was a lot more damaging than a 9mm.
A bullet shot at dead center mass would inflict catastrophic damage. It would be absolutely detrimental. It would be the death of Shane and of me.
In order to kill, I needed Shane. I needed his hands. I needed his mind. I needed his body. Shane was more than just my vessel, my transport, my life-pod; he was my weapon. He was my host.
The instant that the barrel of the Glock 22 touched Shane’s chest, I withdrew from hiding.
I revealed myself to Cutter. My eyes changed to black. At the same moment, Kirk Cutter’s inner demon also came out of hiding.
The trees cast shadows over us. Time seemed to slow down. We were in a standoff.
The darkness that veiled us helped to hide our true appearances from the FBI agents below us, but it also kept us from seeing each other in our complete, monstrous selves.
Cutter’s lips began to move, and he said, “Don’t mess with me. I have the FBI’s resources at my disposal. Remember that.
“Even your precious past is not sealed from me. I saw your files. I know that the StoneCutter killed your parents while you were in your mother’s womb.
“How did you survive that attack?
“Right. I know. He buried your mother alive while she was pregnant with you.
“Tell me. Did she give birth to you in that grave? Did she die after she saw you?
“Did you kill her?” Cutter said.
Silence fell between us.
Then he said, “How did it feel decades later when you had to free the StoneCutter from his conviction?
“It must have ripped you apart to have freed him only to have him kill your guardian, Terrance Graves. Right?
“That is what happened. Right? You freed him and then he murdered your adopted father?”
Shane said nothing. I listened to Cutter, but my mind was busy. I calculated six different moves to escape his Glock 22. Some were riskier than others.
Shane had trained his body his entire life. He was a fine-tuned combat weapon. And I was a deadly creature with uncanny abilities and tactics at my disposal.
However, I still liked to have good odds. Mathematically speaking, a reliable gun, especially a high-quality gun like a Glock, left very low odds of survival at point-blank range. No. Scratch that. It left no odds of survival, none at all.
The odds against escaping Cutter’s gunshot were even more distressful when I considered that he was a skilled shooter and a trained FBI agent. Cutter was in his early forties. It struck me that he was a lifelong FBI agent, so he was more deadly than most people with a gun.
Agent Cutter could probably hit Shane from more than twenty feet away while wearing a blindfold. So escaping his gunfire at this range wasn’t even worth considering. Six moves or not, I wasn’t escaping it. So I abandoned these tactics.
Instead I tried focusing on a different tactic. I focused on communication and diplomacy. Then once I diverted his attention or moved his aim away from Shane’s chest, I could make a move to escape him.
“You won’t shoot me,” I said. My voice resounded through Shane’s, like a voice modulator. It sounded feral and electronic.
“What makes you think that?”
Good. He was talking. Thinking. Considering. That was better than shooting. “How are you going to explain it to the other FBI agents? What happened? An unarmed man that you escorted onto a crime scene attacked you?”
Cutter said nothing, but his demon grinned behind Cutter’s human face. It was the kind of sinister grin that I had seen on guilty defendants in the courtroom when they were asked about killing their victims. It always seemed like they spent a microsecond relishing the memory of it.
A short burst of memory flashed across their faces. This caused the quick grin. Only Shane and I had witnessed the grin. And that grin told a story of guilt.
Cutter’s grin told me that that was exactly what he had planned to say. He’d brought me here to kill me.
Cutter began speaking in a dark voice. He mimicked a TV news anchorman.
He said, “Shane Lasher, the hated, the loved, and revered lawyer who defends serial killers, murderers, and the lowlifes of society, attacked an FBI agent today at the scene of a crime.
“The FBI agent confronted Mr. Lasher about his involvement in the disappearance of Townsend Dry, the Woodsman.
“Mr. Lasher attacked the FBI agent. And in the line of duty, the special agent shot Mr. Lasher in the chest,” Agent Cutter said.
I had steadily grown angry to the point of boiling over and rising up higher and higher through Shane. Without warning, I was so far out on the surface of him that I almost leapt completely from his body.
I shouted, but the words hissed from my lips instead.
I said, “What about you? I know what you are! You shot Miguel Crown. Shot him in cold blood. You think that I’m scared of you. You have no idea who I am. Cutter, you killed Dry, chopped him into little pieces. I found him. He was scattered all over his apartment. Tiny fragments and long, serrated appendages. He was unrecognizable.”
Cutter gripped his gun so tightly that his knuckles turned red.
I had started at six conceivable ways to break the connection from Cutter’s gun. Six ways that might lead to my successful escape.
I was now up to ten, but even with the four additional ways that I had come up with, not one of them had good odds.
I had to break away from the barrel of the Glock. Even a matter of inches could make all the difference. All I needed was two or maybe three inches of room to move away from it.
Then, suddenly, like an answered prayer, like an oddity, a miracle that was totally unexplainable and yet gratefully accepted––Cutter’s cell phone rang.
The ringer sounded from his inside jacket pocket.
Cutter broke his sights on me for only a second, but it was enough for me to back away from the gun, which I did.
I managed to remove the tip of the barrel from Shane’s chest. That was enough to give me the room that I required for the second move that I had formulated in my snake brain.
Cutter tilted his head at me. Then he made his first mistake. He released his left hand from the butt of the gun, from just underneath the magazine. It was the hand that he had used to brace the recoil from the gun and to help steady his aim.
He used this hand to reach for his phone.
The second mistake that he committed allowed me the diversion and time that I needed to make my move.
He reached into his pocket, pulled the cell phone out, and answered it.
It was that moment that I made my mistake. Well actually, it was Shane’s mistake, but it still affected me just as much. I hesitated because of the words that came from Agent Cutter’s mouth.
In a reptilian voice, he said, “Sun Good. How can I help you?”
Shane’s weakness!
“Where is Shane Lasher? I’m not sure. Have you tried his apartment?”
There was one good thing that emerged from Shane’s feelings toward Sun Good. As he had proven in the past, Shane would do anything to protect her. He’d even stopped me from killing her once. And that was not an easy feat.
At first it had angered, no, infuriated me that Shane could resist me at all, but I’ve learned to live with it. In fact, I’ve evolved and decided it was best to use his feelings for her as a weapon.
After I discovered Shane’s ability to resist me, I realized that I could use this to our advantage on occasion.
This was the way I would save us from Cutter.
As he continued to talk on the phone, he smiled at us. He taunted Shane. His eyes registered a primitive expression. This expression was common among males of almost every kind found in the wild. It was a primal notion that went back thousands of years. It was found everywhere from lions to apes to humans.
His eyes conveyed to Shane this message: I’m talking to your woman. After I shoot you in the chest, I think that I will pay her a little visit.
Maybe I’ll even lead her away from the city. I’ll take her out deep in the woods and have my way with her.
“Big mistake!” Shane whispered.
Agent Cutter leaned his head forward slightly and squinted his eyes. He couldn’t hear Shane. So he tried to read Shane’s lips. He didn’t understand what Shane had mouthed.
Kirk Cutter had made my escape a hundred percent easier. I harnessed Shane’s feelings for Sun Good and, with a swift strike with Shane’s right hand, swiped Cutter’s gun arm down and away from his body.
At the same time, Shane pivoted on his right foot and charged toward Cutter.
The Glock’s slide racked and the gun fired in the process. The bullet exited the gun and shot through the air past Shane’s left shoulder, barely missing us.
The bullet fired over the crowd. It traveled over the river and into the cold morning air.
The gunshot rang out. If everyone had ignored us before, they weren’t ignoring us now.
FBI agents brandished their weapons. They scattered and took cover, using parked vehicles, broken trees, and large dirt mounds.
The gunshot ignited their trained instincts. They had to stay under cover and assess the situation.
The divers stayed in the water. Members of the Coast Guard ducked down into their boats.
The rescue chopper began to rise. Its rotors spun and shook as the pilot reacted and pulled the chopper up, evading the gunfire.
As th
e other agents took cover and watched Agent Cutter fighting with the stranger on the hill, none of them dared to fire their weapons. The two men on the hill were too close together to risk taking a shot.
I charged into Cutter, his cell phone flying into the air. We both struggled for the Glock.
As Cutter’s legs moved back from the force of my charge, he responded by pulling the gun toward him and propelling me past his body. It was an excellent move, and he almost retrieved the gun, but I was quick to counter. I never let go of the weapon. It nearly pointed at my chest, and he tried to fire it, but he retreated once I had grappled his trigger finger and applied pressure to it.