Ed shrugged. “I’d best drive these kids home,” he told his wife. “Her daddy must be worried sick.”
But Edna was thinking. “It’s funny,” she said. “Well, not as funny as it is odd. Ed called the fire department number over an hour ago when it started. You’d think they’d have been here by now.”
Lucy felt a growing unease. “How far is the fire station from here?”
“Six or seven miles,” Ed said. “But some fire out in the woods when it’s this wet might not have got their total attention, especially if there was a house burning somewhere else.”
Lucy caught the nervousness in Edna’s eyes.
“It’s a volunteer department,” Ed explained. “But they get the job done.”
“Call them again,” Edna told her husband. “Ask them what the heck’s holding them up.”
Ed lifted the receiver and put it to his ear. He pressed the button down several times, then replaced it in the cradle.
“Somebody on it?” Edna asked.
“Of course,” Ed said.
There was an explosion outside and the lights went out.
Elijah started to wail. In the sudden darkness, Lucy put her arms around him.
A vehicle roared around the building and bright headlights blazed in the windows, filtering through the closed blinds.
A loud voice hollered out, “Utz, sounds like you got a baby in there!”
Ed yelled out, “That you, Smoot?”
“You know it is. Send out the gal and her baby and we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Well, Smoot. Why don’t you just come in here and get ’em?” Lucy saw Ed move, and knew he was reaching for his shotgun.
“Hell, Utz. Senile as you are, you might shoot me.”
“I might.”
“My boys are out here with me,” Peanut yelled. “One out front and the other right here. Make this easy on yourself. This ain’t about you. That gal murdered my Buck and Dixie in cold blood.”
“He’ll kill you both,” Lucy whispered to Edna.
“Well, he’d have to do that anyhow since we know.” She patted Lucy’s leg reassuringly. “You just let my Ed handle this. He was in Korea.”
Ed taunted, “You won’t be the first murdering heathen I’ve sent to hell in my life, Smoot. You don’t scare me.”
“No hurry,” Peanut yelled back. “We’ve got plenty of time to nee-go-see-ate. Plenty of it.”
“I’m a patient man myself, Smoot. Lead don’t rust.”
“Terrible people,” Edna whispered to Lucy. “Just awful.”
Lucy clutched Elijah to her and prayed.
“Goodness, I should get out another gun or two.” Edna said it as if she’d forgotten to bring salad forks to the dinner table.
72
From the equipment cases in the rear of the Tahoe, Winter Massey took what he thought he might need and put those few items into a black nylon knapsack. He took off his coat and holster rig, put on a ballistic vest, and put his figure-eight rig and camouflage coat back on. Using face paint he found, he blacked his face and put on black gloves. Selecting an H&K Tactical twelve-gauge with a high-intensity flashlight mounted under the barrel, he loaded it with alternating 00 buckshot and Hydroshock slugs. He put on a pair of night-vision goggles, slung on the backpack, grabbed the shotgun, and jogged off into an eerie world of vibrant green.
He set an angle for himself that should intersect the gravel road well behind the roadblock. The carpet of wet leaves gave him a surface almost as silent as wool, the only sound the occasional snapping of a twig. The goggles allowed him to run as fast as the undulating terrain permitted. He ran along a ridge for a long while, spooking three deer and a fox before he came to the road.
He slowed, took a bottle of water from his pocket, and sipped a few ounces. He wasn’t hungry, but knowing he needed to feed his muscles, he opened a packet of jerky and chewed the stiff dried meat as he ran. When he arrived where he was going, he wanted to have his full mental and physical faculties to call upon.
Reaching the gravel state road, he decided to run on it to save time, planning to veer off into the woods if vehicles came along. He knew from Able’s file that Peanut drove a black Dodge truck, and what the other siblings drove. If he saw any of those automobiles, he would have no choice but to stop them just in case the Dockerys were being transported in it. The roadblock was keeping everybody out; that had Winter convinced that dead or alive, the Dockerys must be ahead of him, and if they were, so were the Smoots.
Winter saw headlights before he heard the approaching vehicle, and leapt off the road to get behind a tree. He raised his goggles so he wouldn’t be temporarily blinded. The SUV that roared past was identical to the one he had stolen. Winter couldn’t make out how many people were inside, but he hoped Max Randall was in there. If he was, he was probably accompanied by whatever backup he could call upon. More could be coming along.
Before Winter had made another hundred yards, he had to leave the road again. This time he recognized the car that passed by, and he knew instantly who the two people he glimpsed inside it were. Alexa Keen and her sister the Major. Now Winter was even more certain that the Dockerys were ahead of him.
Winter felt energized. He didn’t wait until the taillights were out of sight before he started running behind the car driven by his dear enemy.
73
If it was up to him, Peanut Smoot would have set the store on fire and shot anything alive that came out through a door or window. The Utzes were outsiders who had inherited the store from a relative of theirs. They were smug bastards, who figured they were too good to do business in a way that would make their little cracker-box store a profitable enterprise.
Since Mr. Laughlin had asked him to do what Max said, he’d wait for Max to get there before he went in to get the Dockerys. Getting those two out without destroying the store meant that Peanut might buy it from the Utzes’ estate for chump change already stocked. He doubted any of the Utz kids would come out to the middle of nowhere and run a store that didn’t sell enough goods to pay them minimum wage. If they did, he’d make it plain that they had no alternative but to sell it to him.
He had already figured he would have to stage an accident that would explain the deaths of Ed and Edna “Busybody” Utz. The sheriff would investigate it, hold a midnight inquest, and the funeral home would cremate the bodies by accident, and that would be it.
Peanut smiled, pleased by the perfection of his plan.
Terrible tragedy was a part of life. You live, you lose people you love, you make money, you die and you go to heaven—if you’d accepted the Lord Jesus as your savior, which Peanut had on many occasions.
He could hear the kid bawling through the walls of the store.
Peanut hollered out, “Ed, I got an idea! Why don’t you and Edna just go take a drive and when you come back all this will be like it never happened.”
“I already phoned her daddy,” Ed called out.
“I bet you never talked to him, though,” Peanut said.
“Yes, I did. He’ll be sending people you don’t own out here to straighten you out.”
“Naw, Eddie. See, my people got something called sophistication. They’ve got the judge’s phone blocked and wired. Point is, nobody is coming out here but people I’m partnered with. They’ll come, and they’ll kill you all with poison gas or something that won’t leave bullet holes in you.”
“Hey, Peanut?” Utz called out. “I got an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Kiss my sophisticated butt.”
Utz’s barky laugh was exactly the kind that could piss a man off.
74
Serge Sarnov saw the store ahead and unzipped his jacket to make sure he could get to his gun quickly.
The cell phone in Max’s lap rang and he picked it up. “Yeah?”
Serge stretched his arms out.
“We’re coming up on the store now,” Max said. “Okay. That’s good. We’ll call them in if we need them.”
He closed the phone. “The Major and the FBI agent are coming in through the roadblock. Two cars with Major Keen’s people are there and they’ll hold back unless we need them.”
“Fewer hands involved, the better,” Serge agreed.
Max turned into the lot, illuminating one of the twins, who was dressed completely in hunter camouflage and holding a shotgun across his chest like a soldier. Max pulled in beside him, threw open his door, and stepped out. The men in the back seat did the same. Serge slowly opened his door and got out last.
The twin put a walkie-talkie to his ear. “There’s that Tahoe full of men here.” He listened for a second. “Are one of y’all Max Randall?”
“I’m Randall.”
“Yeah, Daddy. One’s him.”
“What’s the situation, pal?” Randall asked the twin.
“The old people that own the store won’t give us our hostages.”
Max said, “Where is Peanut?”
The twin raised his arm and pointed at the store. “Back there with my brother Curt. We got them boxed up. They live in the back part.”
“And the Dockery woman and child?” Serge asked.
“Inside.”
“The occupants, these Utzes, are they armed?” Serge asked.
“Everybody around here has guns,” Burt said. “I’m supposed to shoot anybody that comes out the front door, but the woman that killed Buck and Dixie is Daddy’s. My daddy said you can go around there.” The twin smiled.
“Who cut the power line?” Sarnov asked.
“I shot it in half.”
“What marksmanship,” Serge said.
“We shoot good on account of all the hunting we do.”
“What’s your name?” Serge asked.
“Burt.”
“You just stand here, Burt, and don’t do any more shooting. We will do any shooting that needs to be done.”
“Even if the Utzes comes out?” Burt asked.
“Yes, even then,” Serge said.
Burt exhaled loudly and shook his head as he thought it over. His breath was like something that might be expelled by a bloated corpse being opened up. “Okay. But if you need me to, I will.”
Max and Serge were about to walk around the building when Alexa Keen’s sedan came into view and pulled off the road.
Alexa and Antonia Keen climbed out of the car.
Serge had never met the two women, but he could see a resemblance between them. One was two or three inches shorter and lighter skinned. The Major held herself more stiffly than her sister. The agent was the more attractive.
“Major, this is Serge Sarnov. He’s—”
“I know who he is,” Antonia Keen interrupted, offering her hand.
“Why’d you bring her?” Serge asked Major Keen, meaning Alexa.
“What is your problem?” the agent asked. “As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with you. So why are you here?”
“My understanding was that your sister wasn’t supposed to have a location until Monday.” The Russian ignored Alexa, spoke to Antonia.
“I didn’t expect her here now,” Max agreed.
“I didn’t expect it would be necessary to bring her in now either, but it is,” Antonia Keen told him. “Do you want to delve into why it is necessary now? I trust her. She’s had twelve years’ experience with volatile situations such as this one has become due to a series of screwups.”
In Serge’s book, the FBI agent was an unknown, unproven quantity. The woman could be a valuable asset, but he had a well-founded distrust of cops. With the crooked ones, loyalty was just a commodity. And most of them carried a lifelong dislike for their old enemies.
“I insisted on coming here,” the FBI agent said. “So far, this is strictly amateur hour. The woman and child were supposed to be captives. How hard is that? They sure as hell aren’t captives any longer. Not only did this young lady, whose background in combat is limited to the bridge table, escape, but she managed to kill two people with extensive experience in criminal violence in the process. This clearly has to be handled by someone who has the expertise to make sure it is done right from here out. I am the only one who can do that. I will make sure the deed is done in the manner of kidnappers, make sure the right evidence is left for me to find.”
“She’ll clean up this mess,” Major Keen said. “Any more questions?”
Serge told the Major, “I trust you because you’re up to your ears in our deal.”
“She’s my sister and she’s in this up to her ears, too,” Antonia said.
“She brought in Massey,” Serge reminded her sourly.
“She had her own reasons. She cut him loose when he started making progress,” the Major informed him curtly.
“If I wasn’t in on this, he’d have already crawled up your asses,” Alexa said. “Now, thanks to you people jumping the gun and trying to take him out prematurely, I don’t have him to lend credibility to my story. Am I wrong?” she demanded.
Serge thought about it as he stared into the agent’s hard eyes. He had a talent for detecting lies and she was not lying. This was a woman who was tired of being taken for granted, a woman who wanted to make the kind of money the firm could pay her. Just like her younger sister, this one had a sociopathic, selfish bent. Alexa Keen was one hard-core bitch. She’d go along with killing the Dockerys. And with killing the Smoots, who had been set up to take the blame.
“Okay,” he said. “Fine. Show us how to do this right.”
“First off,” the FBI agent said, “you can’t just take machine guns and shoot up the place, because the evidence recovery team won’t buy it. Bodies and buildings riddled with holes won’t work. No redneck kidnapper would do that. The subjects have to be put down with a knife, or a bullet in each skull. And preferably not before Monday in case Fondren needs proof of life.”
“We altered the timeline,” Max said. “This can’t wait. We do them now, especially with Massey somewhere out there. We’ll stash them dead and you can find them on Monday. I never saw why they had to be found at all.”
“Because,” Alexa said, sternly, “unless I find them, I won’t get the publicity. I won’t be able to control the evidence, so I won’t get my payoff, my reputation won’t be enhanced so I can’t open my security firm, and you won’t have a name to put on the large checks you are going to write me over the next ten or fifteen years. That’s why. Do it my way or I’m out of this.”
“If you’re out, you’re dead,” Serge said.
“You touch a hair on her head,” the Major said, “and you’ll have to shoot me, too. I die, the chain breaks. Without the contacts I have, Bryce will get the needle.”
“Okay,” Max said. “Hell with it. But first thing that goes queer on this deal, and sis’s dead and we’ll sanitize everything down to bare dirt.”
“Fine,” Major Keen said. “If Alexa’s not on the level, you can kill her as many times as you like.”
“So,” Serge said. “How do we do this?”
“What are we facing?” Alexa asked.
“An old couple inside. Man’s armed. They won’t give up the Dockerys without a fight.”
“So, any ideas?” Serge asked the agent.
“The oldest one in the book,” the agent told him. “How’s your Greek history?”
75
Winter Massey used the woods as cover to reconnoiter the store. Two men in black BDUs in front of the place, one of the Smoot twins off by himself. Sarnov, Randall, Alexa, and Antonia Keen having a discussion out of earshot of the others.
He picked his way around to the back where Peanut Smoot and the other twin were guarding the rear, using the black truck for cover and lighting. The twin stood beside the truck, aiming his shotgun at the store. Peanut was behind the open driver’s door, holding a handgun casually.
It was a siege. Someone was inside the building holding the Smoots at bay. Winter’s ear caught the unmistakable sound of a child crying. It had to be Elijah Dockery. He had no idea where Di
xie and Buck Smoot were, but he doubted they were inside the store. Was it possible that Lucy had somehow escaped and made it here?
Winter figured his odds with a frontal assault were all against him. The men in assault suits wore ballistic vests, and his flashes would instantly give away his position. The Hydroshock slugs might not penetrate the vests, but they would break or at the least shatter ribs, take the men off their feet for a while. Inside twenty-five yards, the 00 buckshot pellets would remain within a twelve-inch cluster. He was more accurate with a handgun, but as soon as he started shooting, all of the targets would be firing at him, and he’d never get a chance to use his pistol. Even with tree cover, his chances of surviving the first few seconds were not good.
The twins had shotguns—probably three-inch Magnums loaded with buckshot—Peanut was brandishing a large revolver, the three men in black had MP5s, and Sarnov probably had a pistol. Alexa was carrying a Glock .40. As far as Winter could tell, only Antonia had no weapon.
Winter couldn’t imagine shooting Alexa, but he well might have to, and he knew he could. Her killing a woman and child was more incomprehensible. He was amazed that she could have hidden her true self so effectively for so many years.
“Ed and Edna!” Peanut hollered. “Send the woman and kid on out. I’ll let both you live. You got my word on it. Ain’t like they’re your kin. She killed my Dixie and Buck. I can’t allow that to go unanswered.”
“If you’ve seen the condition this young lady’s in, you know that whatever happened to your kids was a site less than your kin deserved!”
Winter knew he had to act before the people out front spread out. These people were all accustomed to violence.
His only advantage at that moment was that nobody knew he was there. Surprise only took you so far, and sometimes the surprise was yours.
76
With Elijah clutched to her, Lucy Dockery huddled beside the refrigerator where Ed had put them. Edna sat beside her, back to the wall, holding a pistol in her lap. Ed had dead-bolted the door into the store. He had reinforced it so that in the event someone broke in, they’d make a racket trying to get into the back where the Utzes lived. The Smoots might come in that way, but they’d be ready for them.
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