Though the sun hadn’t gone down yet, the shadows had begun to get long, and it was difficult to make out any details inside the car. As it drew closer he could make out the basic shape of someone in the driver’s seat. There was no similar shape in the passenger seat, or in the back.
The car moved closer and closer, its speed maddeningly slow.
When it was only a few car lengths away, Jake could see that the person behind the wheel was a woman, and that all the other seats did appear empty. But by the time he decided to step out from his hiding spot, the car had already passed. He ran out into the middle of the road, and began waving his arms, hoping the woman would check her mirrors.
For a moment he thought he’d been too late, then brake lights flashed, and the car began to slow.
She saw me, he thought, allowing himself a smile. She—
No, he was wrong. She hadn’t seen him. The reason she was braking was so she could turn down the dirt road that eventually led to the cabin. He started running toward her, waving his arms furiously. Halfway through her turn, she glanced out her window. Her eyes opened wide in surprise, and it seemed as if she said something, then the car’s brakes slammed on.
Jake had paused when she looked at him, but then, just as he was about to start toward her again, he detected movement in the back seat. At the same instant, the woman looked over her shoulder, as if reacting to the same source. When she looked at Jake again, her eyes were wide with fear.
The woman wasn’t alone. There was someone hidden in the back, someone who apparently terrified her.
Jake felt the urge to turn and run, but there was no way he could. The look of fear on the woman’s face rooted him to the spot. He realized in an instant she was being held against her will, her passenger controlling her from behind somehow.
Jake silently cursed himself for not actually carrying the gun Durrie had given him. It was still in the bag on his back. He reached up and started to ease the satchel off his shoulder, but it was only partially off when the driver’s door opened and the woman half jumped, half fell out. She was small and looked Hispanic, maybe in her thirties. As she pushed herself up off the road, Jake could see that she had scraped her hands and arms.
She took a step to run, but a voice from inside the vehicle yelled, “Don’t!” She stopped. “Ask him!”
The woman looked at Jake, her eyes pleading for help.
“Ask!” the voice yelled.
“Where…where’s Dory?” she said to Jake.
“Durrie!” the voice corrected her. “Where the fuck is Durrie?”
29
Durrie pulled the rifle off his shoulder, and aimed it at the car. Even from eighty feet away, he could clearly hear the shouted question, and immediately knew it was Larson. Unfortunately, Oliver and the woman blocked the entire back half of the car from Durrie’s view. He needed to reposition.
“Where is he?” Larson shouted.
“I don’t know,” Oliver said.
“Bullshit. You were with him. Where is he?”
The woman, all but forgotten now, was glancing at the car, probably thinking she could make a run for it.
Durrie slipped several feet back into the woods, then started running parallel to the road, hoping he could get to a better spot and end things now before the woman took action.
“I don’t know where he is,” Oliver said again, then paused. “You’re the one he said was coming after him, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Larson asked.
“He told me last night someone was coming for him. He seemed…annoyed.”
Durrie moved back to the edge, using a cluster of saplings as cover. Oliver had moved several steps closer to the car. Durrie checked the woman, and watched as she eyed the car again, then the woods.
Don’t do it, he thought. He wasn’t overly concerned with the woman as an individual, but the loss of any civilian life always made things difficult.
“Why would he tell you that?” Larson asked.
“I think he was trying to scare me,” Oliver said, stepping closer again.
Durrie raised the rifle and trained the scope on the car. He could now see a small mirror hovering inside the back of the vehicle. Larson was obviously using it to see what was going on while staying out of sight.
“But when I woke up this morning, the door to my cell was open,” Oliver went on.
“Woke up where?”
“In a cabin. Down the road you were turning on.”
The woman took a small, tentative step away from the vehicle.
Dammit, Durrie thought.
Oliver seemed to notice it, too. As he spoke again, he took another couple steps closer, angling, this time, toward the woman. “When I went upstairs, the place was empty. My guess is he’s not coming back.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Oliver shrugged. “Okay. Feel free to go check. You’re already headed in the right direction.”
The woman took another, larger step.
Stop!
“Maybe I will,” Larson said. “Maybe I’ll have you drive me.”
“I’m not headed that way.”
If Durrie wasn’t sold on the kid before, he was now. Oliver came off as a regular guy, average in so many ways, but he was far from that. And the balls on him…
Of course, Durrie would never tell him that.
“I don’t care which way you’re headed,” Larson said. “If I want you to drive me, you will.”
Durrie could put a couple bullets through the door. He might hit Larson, but if he didn’t, things could go very bad very quickly.
The woman started leaning into another step.
“Don’t do it, Mrs. West. Another step and that bullet I promised earlier will be on its way.”
“Please,” she said. “Please. I’ve done exactly what you’ve wanted. Just let me go.”
Durrie stared at her for a moment.
“Please,” she repeated.
* * *
“Please,” the woman repeated.
Jake knew he had to do something. He knew it was the dark-haired man — the guy Durrie called Larson — in the back seat of the car. He had used the woman as cover to bring him here. She wasn’t part of this. She didn’t deserve to get hurt.
Almost before he realized he was doing it, Jake jerked to the left, and moved quickly between the woman and the car. “Run!” he shouted at her.
“Not very smart,” Larson said.
Jake looked back at the car. “I’ll take you wherever you need to go. You don’t need her.”
Larson said nothing for a moment, then, “Durrie was wrong. You wouldn’t have fit in this world.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“He didn’t tell you he was planning on recruiting you? Interesting. Maybe he got smart and changed his mind.”
“Recruit me?”
“Probably would have never even considered it if he’d known about your weakness for civilians.”
Jake said nothing, his mind still processing the idea that Durrie had been trying to hire him.
“Me?” Larson said. “I’m smarter than that. A rookie cop, still full of ideals? I knew it was something I could exploit.”
The hairs on the back of Jake’s neck began to tingle, not from what Larson said, but from a sense he wasn’t standing there alone.
“It was so nice of you to come down here and make it easy for us,” Larson said.
Just as Jake started to turn to look behind him, he heard the crack of a gun.
* * *
Bad move, Durrie thought as Oliver jumped between the woman and the car.
“Run!” Oliver told her.
The woman took a few steps, but as soon as Larson started talking again, she stopped.
The look of hopelessness that had been etched on her face disappeared. It was replaced by the hardened eyes and disdainful smile of a professional. She turned toward Jake, her back now to Durrie’s position.
/> Silently, she reached around and unzipped a secret pocket on the waistband of her billowing skirt. From inside she withdrew a Beretta Bobcat — a.22 caliber, palm-sized pistol. Not great for distance work, but more than enough firepower when held to the back of someone’s head.
She took two silent steps toward Jake, listened to the conversation for a moment, then started to raise her weapon.
Durrie pulled the rifle’s trigger.
The force of the bullet hitting the back of her head thrust her forward a few feet before dropping her to the ground.
“Down!” Durrie yelled, as he put three quick shots into the side of the car.
* * *
At the sound of the shot, Jake whipped around. He was just in time to see the woman collapse to the ground barely a foot away from him.
“Down!” a voice shouted from the trees. It sounded like Durrie.
Immediately three more shots rang out, whacking into the car.
Jake dropped to the ground.
He heard a car door open, then footsteps running on pavement.
Two more shots flew through the air, then Durrie was suddenly crouching at his side.
“You need to help me get her off the street.”
“You…shot her,” Jake said.
“Yes,” Durrie said. “I did.” He grabbed Jake’s chin and turned him toward the woman. “Look.”
Jake did. She was face down in a puddle of blood. There was a hole where the bullet had entered the back of her head. He didn’t want to think about what it looked like where it came out.
“The hand,” Durrie said.
Jake moved his gaze to her hands. The left one was empty, but in her right was a small pistol.
“She was about to do to you what I did to her,” Durrie told him.
“That’s…not possible,” Jake said. “She…she was—”
“Working with Larson,” Durrie finished. “Now help me. We can’t leave her here for someone else to find.” He grabbed the woman’s arms. “Get her feet. But stay low. He’s still out there.”
Numb, Jake did as he was told, and half a minute later they’d stowed the body ten feet deep in the woods.
Durrie then pulled off the long rifle that was on his shoulder and moved over to the car. Pointing at what was left of the woman in the street, he said, “Dig a hole and dump the big chunks in, then use some dirt to cover up the blood.”
“What am I supposed to carry them with?” Jake asked.
“You’ve got hands, don’t you?”
Jake tried not to think about what he was doing as he picked up the pieces of the woman that were no longer attached to her, then carried them back to the trees and buried them. As he covered the blood per instructions, Durrie started to roll the sedan the rest of the way off the road.
“I’m done,” Jake announced, after he dropped the last handful of dirt onto the spot where the puddle had been.
Durrie glanced back, and nodded. “Good. Now help me with this,” he said, indicating the car. “We need to get it far enough down the dirt road so no one passing by will see it.”
Once they finished, it was almost as if nothing had happened. Even a cop could have driven by and he would have seen nothing that would have made him stop.
Jake glanced back at the woods where the woman’s body lay. “I thought for sure she was just trying to get away. I believed her. What…what do we do now?”
Durrie looked into the forest west of their position. “Either he finds us, or we find him. What would you rather?”
Jake’s first thought was to get in the car and drive away as fast as they could. But something held him back from voicing it, something that said even if he was able to get away today, Larson would still come after him tomorrow, or the next day, or the one after that.
He gave Durrie’s question more serious consideration. “Let him find us,” he finally said.
Durrie glanced at him, a curious look on his face. “Why?”
“He wants to kill us, so he’ll be looking for us anyway. Let him do the work. We can be ready for him.”
“Where did you learn that?”
Jake shook his head. “Nowhere. It’s just logical, right?”
Durrie responded with a grunt and a nod. Then he said, “We’ll go back down the dirt road a bit. I spotted a small clearing not far from that ridge you climbed up. We can use that.”
The mention of the ridge caused Jake to ask, “Why did you follow me?”
Durrie frowned, then slung the rifle back over his shoulder. “Don’t make me regret it.”
Without another word, he jogged into the woods.
For half a second, Jake thought again about getting into the car. He could get away not just from Larson now, but Durrie, too. He could bring the authorities back here. He could show them the woman, and where he’d buried the remainder of her face. But the thought passed as quickly as it came. He was staying, and he knew it.
He didn’t dwell on the reason why. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
So he headed after the man who had been holding him prisoner, the man who had just saved his life.
30
By the time they reached the clearing, twilight had settled over the mountains. There, on the eastern side of the range, the shadows were deep and black, as if night had fully engulfed the ground but not yet the entire sky.
Durrie halted next to a downed tree, setting his pack on it. From inside he pulled out a pouch, then removed two items and handed one to Jake.
“So we can stay in touch,” Durrie said.
“We’re splitting up?” Jake asked, surprised.
Durrie looked at him for a second, then nodded at the gear in Jake’s hand. “I’ll leave it up to you to figure out where the earpiece goes. That little square piece attaches to your collar. See the switch on the bottom?”
Jake twisted it around until he found what Durrie was talking about.
“Flip it into the other position. That turns everything on.”
Jake did so.
“On the side’s a pressure button. In, your mic’s on. Out and it’s off. Since you’re not used to the equipment, just leave it on at all times.”
Nodding, Jake activated the mic, then attached the square to his collar. Once that was done, he inserted the earpiece. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Durrie had just finished checking the mags on the two handguns he’d pulled out of his bag. As he shoved the last mag back into place, he looked out at the clearing. “I want you to move through the woods and over on that side.” He pointed across the clearing at the side farthest from the dirt road. “When you get there, find a dry branch about an inch thick.” He looked at his watch. “In exactly five minutes, snap it like you would if you’d accidently stepped on it. But only once. Quiet after that.”
“You took my watch.”
Durrie frowned at him. “You know how to count, don’t you?”
“What are you going to do?”
From Durrie’s pause, Jake sensed the man wasn’t used to sharing his plans.
“I’ll be on the ridge on the other side of the road,” Durrie said. “When I see him go by, I’ll follow him. Once he’s between us, we’ll take him down. If you end up firing your weapon, try not to shoot me.” He strapped his pack back on. “You can start counting now.”
He took off.
With little choice, Jake headed around the perimeter of the clearing, counting down the seconds in his head. On the way, he found a branch that would do what Durrie had requested. He reached his assigned position with about thirty seconds to spare.
Propping the branch on a rock, he raised his foot, holding it in the air as the final seconds ticked off. Three…two…one…crack!
Even as the sound was still reverberating across the clearing, Jake started looking for a place to hide. He found a spot about thirty feet away, where he could see both the clearing and the area where he’d snapped the branch.
He wasn’t nervous, in fact, far from it. He
was…energized, he realized. Focused, alive, and energized.
* * *
Durrie was scrambling up the ridge when he heard the crack. He checked his watch. Right on time. Durrie was the one who was slow.
He saw a shallow depression to his left, and angled over to it. He had barely lain down in it when he spotted a dark shadow race across the dirt road. He brought his rifle around, but was too late.
Son of a bitch! He’d been expecting to catch Larson coming over the ridge, putting Durrie in the position to end it right there. He hadn’t expected to see the other man already halfway to the clearing. So much for his plan.
He quickly got to his feet and started down the hill. As he did, he clicked on his mic.
“Oliver?” he whispered.
“Here,” the kid answered back.
“I just spotted him on the road. He’s heading in your direction.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t do anything stupid. In fact, just stay down. I’m coming in behind him.”
“Got it.”
“I mean it.”
“I said, I got it.”
Durrie clicked off his mic.
When he reached the road, he paused. This was the most dangerous part. Larson could be just on the other side waiting for someone to show up. Though it was now full dark, the mountain sky was full of brightly shining stars, making the road the one place a person wouldn’t be able to hide.
Crouching low, Durrie made a quick dash to the other side. No bullets, no sound of a gun. Just the breeze through the top of the trees, and the underlying buzz of insects.
Durrie made his way as quickly as he could toward the clearing, while being careful not to make any noise that would betray his position.
“I think I see something,” Oliver reported.
Durrie pushed the mic button twice so that the radio would broadcast an audible click. It was a signal to say that he heard, but couldn’t talk. He hoped Oliver would understand.
Apparently, he did. “Movements on the side nearest the road,” Oliver said. “It was in the trees, but I don’t see it now.”
Durrie double-clicked again. He wanted to say, “Get the hell out of there,” but he was too near the clearing to risk it.
Becoming Quinn (jonathan quinn thriller) Page 17