Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  In the reverse of what had occurred a moment before, Baxter could hear footsteps, voices in the background growing louder with each one, Creel returning to the center of the home.

  The sound of a muffled movement came over the line – Creel probably covering the mouthpiece – before Pyle appeared, the first words they’d shared in days.

  “Yeah?”

  “Finish them.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  There was no way Deputy Talula Davis should be doing what she was doing. It violated every form of training and protocol that had ever been drilled into her, bypassing even the most basic tenants of common sense.

  Under no uncertain circumstances should she go anywhere near the house on the other end of the trace that Tim Scarberry had gotten his hands on, the place that was now across the street from where they were sitting.

  Looking like nothing more than a ramshackle farmhouse, the sort of place that dotted the entire region, homes that had at one point been the epicenter of the familial and economic structure in the area.

  Buildings now sitting empty and silent, their state of disrepair making future use highly unlikely.

  To look over at it, it was impossible to tell the last time anybody had even been by the place. With tall brown grass for a front yard and no vehicles parked out front, blinds pulled shut over the windows, it looked the same as it probably had a month ago.

  Just as it would a month into the future.

  Odds were, they would walk up, pound on the door, and nothing would happen. Whatever tech wizardry Tim thought he had run on the place would be proven wrong, this place just another dead hub, a spot for another receiver, used to run it off to somewhere else.

  Another stop in an unending game of hopscotch, meant to give them the illusion of progress while really doing nothing more than luring them in.

  That didn’t mean she was any more excited about walking up to the front door and banging on it.

  Still, it wasn’t like she could call the station for backup, the staff just Charbonneau and Adams, both probably with their feelings hurt and their underwear in a knot over what she’d said earlier.

  Her not getting a call and being fired already was a miracle. Phoning in to ask for help would do nothing but manage to shove that eventuality a little closer.

  After what had happened earlier in the day, no chance she was going to bring that about any quicker than necessary.

  Not with the yellow pickup and the men that tried to end her still on the loose.

  Which was why Talula Davis the person, her father’s daughter, couldn’t fathom walking away, no matter what her training might be telling her.

  Seated behind the wheel of her Bronco, she had insisted on driving. Even without a rear windshield and with a handful of bullet holes pockmarking the metal, it at least held the guise of being official, something Tim’s Charger could not.

  Much the same as she was the only one present that actually worked for law enforcement, whereas he was nothing more than a concerned family member.

  Among everything of concern that was occurring around her, his status still ranked near the top. With both hands clinging to the wheel, she could feel her heart pounding, a light veneer of sweat covering her body.

  Earlier in the day was the first time she’d ever taken fire, in a professional capacity or otherwise. It had been equal parts surreal and invigorating, frightening and instantaneous, the sort of thing she wasn’t able to process until after the fact.

  This one, she had plenty of time to mull beforehand.

  The sum total of that was that Tim was someone she had once known to a degree, a person that she had lost touch with and then believed dead. Years later, he arrived with a connection to her case and a set of skills that belied military training and an attitude that spoke more to an angry family member seeking atonement than a trained professional.

  What that added up to, she had no way of knowing, no certainty that she shouldn’t have just cuffed him and herded him into the station that morning.

  All that was clear was that he had her back earlier, had held up his word ever since.

  And clearly wanted the Baxters as much as she did.

  “What’s the subway?”

  The first words since they’d pulled up, Davis asked it before shifting to look over at him.

  Keeping his gaze locked forward a moment, Tim turned his head slowly to look at her. “Hmm?”

  “Riding the subway. You mentioned it earlier, but never got around to explaining what it was.”

  Raising the top of his head just slightly, Tim matched her gaze before shifting his focus to look out through the window at the house before them.

  “The WITSEC program has different classifications for people they’re protecting. Someone can be in custody, usually awaiting trial. They can also be secure, often relocated, in no immediate danger.”

  After the last word, he fell quiet, looking down to his lap, at the top of the duffel bag he held gripped between his fingers.

  “And the subway?” Davis prompted.

  Maintaining his stance a moment, Tim looked up, sighing as his head rotated toward her.

  “The subway is slang for going underground. I don’t think I’m even supposed to know they use the term, but I overheard an escort use it one time. Means they don’t know where the hell I am. Alive or dead.”

  Raising her chin a half inch, Davis looked back to the house, trying to superimpose what this meant, if it had any bearing on where they now sat, how they proceeded.

  “And that’s what you are now? You just vanished from the Witness Protection Program?”

  “Yup,” he said. “Like I told you, when I got that message, I had to come check on Uncle Jep.”

  “Right,” Davis conceded. Though he hadn’t exactly put it in those words, obscuring the facts more than a little, he had hinted as much.

  If in his position, it was hard to tell if she even would have given that amount.

  It wasn’t like she’d exactly been gushing forth about her own circumstances, personal or professional.

  “So are they out there somewhere looking for you?” Davis asked.

  “Don’t know,” Tim replied. “Most likely. They have a strong record, take this stuff pretty seriously.”

  Falling silent for a moment, he again glanced at his hands before looking over to her.

  “Look, I know it’s bad. I shouldn’t have disappeared, shouldn’t have been poking around at that cabin, but this man was the only family I had left in the world. That one phone call was the single tether I had to the first thirty years of my life.

  “If I didn’t at least try, if I didn’t come back and look the bastards in the eye that did this, that meant it specifically as a message for me...”

  It was obvious there was so much more he could add, untold numbers of things he wanted to say, but he pulled up short.

  Not that he needed to, most of it etched across his face, in the fine lines bunched tight around his eyes, the set of his jaw, the way his breathing had become pronounced.

  All of which Davis recognized instantly, most of it being exactly the way she felt.

  Which was good enough.

  Tugging back on the gear shift, she let the Bronco idle forward out of the grass on the opposite side of the street. Tires finding asphalt, they moved just a short distance before making a right into the driveway.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  The smell of blood and cordite competed in equal measures for the top scent in the house. Emanating from the rear living room, they rose into the direct path of the vent of the air conditioner, the rattling coils shoving them throughout the space.

  Standing in the open doorway connecting the living room and the kitchen, Radney Creel stared in disbelief, his gaze moving between the two bodies sprawled across the front carpet. Each with a pair of bullet holes in their chest and a third between their eyes for good measure, the rear wall behind them resembled a monochromatic Jackson Pollack painting, b
lood spatter tossed liberally across it.

  Mixed in were tiny flecks of brain and bone matter, texture against an otherwise smooth surface.

  Beneath them, twin pools of blood seeped out, their progress impeded by the thick carpeting they were sprawled on, the heavy shag loops absorbing the viscous liquid, so saturated they were almost black.

  “What the hell?!” Creel asked, his gaze moving from the bodies to Elijah Pyle, an incredulous stare on his face.

  Calmly tilting back the top of his weapon, Pyle extracted an oil rag from his rear pants pocket. Running it up the length of the barrel, he did the same for the noise suppressor screwed tight on the end before twisting it away.

  “Boss said to end it,” Pyle replied, as calm as if discussing the weather. “Why do you think he had you give me the phone?”

  In the moment, Creel hadn’t thought much of it. He’d figured that Baxter just wanted to speak with each of them in the wake of his own screw-up, bringing the kids in to begin with.

  Never would he have thought that’s what he had in mind.

  “And you think end it equates with mow them both down?” Creel asked.

  Pausing, Pyle turned to look at him, annoyance on his face. “What else would it mean?”

  Tucking the suppressor into the same pocket the rag had just emerged from, he went to work on the opposite weapon, performing the same sequence.

  “You saw what happened earlier,” he said. “Damn kids didn’t know what they were doing, went and left a witness. They couldn’t be trusted. Loose lips sink ships.”

  Not in the mood for hearing any of the man’s condescension, or retread clichés, or even his voice, Creel turned on a heel. Despite what had just taken place, they still had just a handful of minutes before needing to take off.

  Except, now they also needed to be a bit more thorough in their evacuation, the pair of bodies in the front room meaning there was no chance they could leave behind so much as a fingerprint.

  In the system since being picked up for shoplifting as a kid, it wouldn’t take much more than a preliminary pass through the place for the cops to get an ID on him.

  He could only imagine that the same would be true for Pyle.

  With his back turned, he stopped for just an instant, wanting to put as much distance as possible between himself and the scene that had just transpired.

  “We need to be going.”

  “I’m ready,” Pyle replied.

  Opening his mouth to respond, Creel thought better of it, knowing that any further interaction between them would only heighten what was already a festering situation.

  Opting for silence, he moved into the back room and grabbed up his few personal belongings, most of them still damp with sweat. Ignoring the stench, he crammed them into a grocery sack and made his way forward, getting as far as the kitchen before a sound caused him to pull up short.

  Faint but distinct, it sounded like a single squeal, like two artificial surfaces rubbing against each other, the sort of thing that nature would never be capable of producing.

  Dropping the sack onto the table, he eased his way into the front room. Looping around wide, he made sure not to leave so much as a shadow behind the lace curtains as he came to the same spot in the corner he’d used just a half hour earlier.

  That time, he’d seen the oversized yellow rig that was being driven by the team of unwanted help Baxter had sent.

  As much as it had infuriated him, it was nothing compared to what he felt at the sight of their newest visitor.

  Dropping the curtain back into place, Creel rose up onto the balls of his feet. Padding silently across the room, he made his way back to the living room, finding Pyle still working at the guns, oblivious to the macabre scene splayed out on the ground by his feet.

  “We need to go.”

  “I know, I’m on it,” Pyle said, his earlier annoyance a bit higher.

  “No, I mean we have guests. We have to go.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  “You hear that?”

  I had my head cocked toward the passenger window, my eyes narrowed. After the conversation we’d just had, I’m sure Lou thought it was nothing more than a diversion, some way for me to push us past any further discussion of WITSEC and my disappearance and all that.

  But it wasn’t. Not by a stretch.

  “What?” she asked, her features drawing tight, as if she were trying to focus in on it as well. “The engine?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. Reaching, I released the catch on the passenger door, stepping out to the ground. “It sounds almost like a generator. Or maybe...”

  Across from me, Lou exited as well, her feet crunching on the ground masking all sound before falling silent.

  “An air conditioner,” she finished.

  In unison, we cast a glance over the hood of the Bronco, our features both drawn tight, registering what the sound meant.

  Here, in this dilapidated and seemingly deserted farmhouse, somebody was present.

  Reaching toward her hip, Lou touched at the base of her weapon. In short order, I could see a host of thoughts and conclusions all pass over her features, each much the same as what I was feeling.

  Anybody inside had to be there because they were hiding. Knowing already that this was at bare minimum a relay point for the signal, that meant whoever it was was working with Baxter.

  If it wasn’t Baxter himself.

  At the same time, this was private property. Just because the place looked to be in a state of disrepair and was receiving a wireless signal did not exactly give us probable cause to roll up, weapons drawn.

  “Stay behind me,” Lou said. “And for the love of God, leave that backpack of yours behind.”

  No part of me wanted to do that. After seeing what happened on the road earlier, the thought of being anywhere near Baxter or his henchman without a weapon wasn’t something I was overly keen on.

  Matching her gaze for an instant, I leaned back into the truck, unzipping the top of the bag. Placing it down on the floorboard, I extracted the Beretta from within, the magazine replaced with a fresh one after my earlier shooting.

  Tucking it into the small of my back, I slammed the door shut, Lou watching me the entire time, her expression telling me she wasn’t amused.

  “I saw that.”

  “Wasn’t trying to hide it,” I countered. Walking around the front of the Bronco, I stopped beside her, focus on the front door. “You only said leave the bag.”

  A small smirk was her only response, a sarcastic retort just barely audible.

  I didn’t care.

  “We doing this or what?”

  Keeping my gaze forward for a few moments, I eventually rolled my focus toward her, her features hard as she glared back.

  Which she could do all she wanted. I understood she was a deputy and had to at least consider protocol, but she had to remember these men had tortured Uncle Jep and tried to kill us both.

  I was long beyond concern with public perception.

  “Behind me,” Lou said, turning for the door. Keeping her upper body angled so her fingertips were no more than millimeters from her weapon, she followed the narrow concrete path, ending with three short steps.

  Staying just behind her, my body cocked so I could see across the front and over the driveway, I assumed a similar stance, ready to draw if need be.

  Raising her fist, Lou made it as far as a single knock before all hell broke loose.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  The wooden door of the garage offered little resistance to the oversized yellow machine that had tried to run us down earlier in the day. With a single rev of the engine and a squeal of rubber peeling against polished concrete, there wasn’t but a split second of warning before it exploded out of the garage, a shower of smoke and splinters spilling out in a wide arc.

  Rotating toward the sound of it, I dropped to a knee, reaching with my right hand for the small of my back, my left for Lou beside me. Flailing twice, on the th
ird stab I was able to grab a handful of leg meat, my fingers wrapping around her calf, tugging her down.

  For a moment, I could feel the striated muscles tense beneath my grip, as strong as cabled steel, before she lowered herself beside me, both of us with weapons drawn.

  No more than ten feet away, the truck engine revved again, the deep and angry sound of concentrated horsepower rolling out across the yard.

  Aiming for the front tire exposed to us, I squeezed off a pair of quick shots, the ping of my rounds hitting metal echoing out, sparks flashing from the glossy paint of the body.

  Beside me, Lou did the same, rattling off a half-dozen shots, peppering the truck as fast as she could squeeze.

  Ignoring both of our efforts, the driver revved again, cutting a diagonal path across the driveway.

  “No,” Lou said beside me, her voice a strained yell. “No, no, no!”

  Continuing our shot pattern, neither of us could do anything as the truck set a course for the Bronco sitting at the end of the drive. Aiming the front grill toward the exposed corner of Lou’s ride, one last rev could be heard, a belch of black smoke burping from the stack behind the cab.

  The Bronco never stood a chance.

  Buckling beneath the heavy weight of the reinforced monolith before it, the headlight crumpled on contact, the sound of glass shattering obvious. Following in order was the front corner, the bumper and tire both folding in on the engine, an accordion being returned to home position.

  With each inch it crumpled, the angry wail of metal could be heard, the sound working in a two-part harmony with the engine bearing down on it.

  Rising to my feet, I raised my left hand to serve as a base, firing off a fresh pair of shots. Twin spider webs sprouted along the rear windshield of the truck, the driver never once slowing as he shoved the Bronco to the side, tossing the smaller vehicle into the ditch lining the road.

  Plowing forward until it was turned parallel to the street, it braked hard, taillights flashing, before twisting a hard left.