When it came to Walter, anyone with her would likely only hold her back. While Eleri Eames might be some sort of witch, Walter was a magician.
GJ ducked into the trees, going from trunk to trunk, staying on the opposite side from where she'd heard the noise. Her eyes glazed and scanned as she looked for people in the distance. She saw movement but didn't catch what it meant. She first thought it might be a deer, but quickly dismissed the idea. With the gunfire, the animals would have scattered. If something was moving this close to the sound of bullets, it was likely a human.
GJ stopped, moved her head slightly out from behind the trunk, and looked again. This time, she found the form. Though it was merely an outline as though a tree had shifted over, she caught that it was human. A male, slightly tall, slightly portly, and definitely holding a rifle aimed to GJ's left.
Taking that as a clue, she followed the sight line of the barrel. At the other end, she spotted another hint of movement—just the slightest bit. She counted herself lucky for even catching that. Walter could disappear.
The man had been hard to find as he'd been in full camo gear with tree bark printing on it. Normally, it looked ridiculous when GJ saw it on people in the mall, but here in the woods, camouflage did its job. She was grateful she'd been able to spot him at all.
The rifle, on the other hand, wasn't his smartest move. Relatively shiny, the wood stock had been oiled. Even the clean metal made a statement. And once GJ saw it, she couldn't unsee it. That was good. Whoever this guy was, she'd be able to find him again.
Walter, on the other hand, was merely a flicker at the corner of her vision. As she saw the man with rifle lift the barrel slightly and take aim at Walter, GJ in turn pulled her own Glock and sighted down the barrel.
22
Walter rolled as the bullet pinged off a rock a little too close to her head for comfort. She had gotten into that eerie calm again, the one she was in when she was in theater in Afghanistan, when the bullets began flying and your life didn't matter anymore. You knew you could only dodge and weave, just like boxing. But with bullets, the hit was going to come a lot harder.
She hadn't expected to ever feel this way again. Despite the fact that she was becoming—or had become—a federal agent, the FBI warned them there weren’t many gunfights. Just because of douchebags like Brian and Hank, who thought drawing their gun was the funnest thing ever, they’d all been given a lecture that being in the line of fire was absolutely shit-your-pants terrifying. Luckily, it didn't happen much. Even a stray shot or a gun on the scene rarely led to someone shooting at you. Though they’d practiced at Quantico, she still hadn’t quite gotten the zing of adrenaline that accompanied real bullets and real danger. But here she was, of course, on her first case, drawing gunfire. She hadn't even graduated for real, for fuck's sake.
Walter rolled backward onto her butt and over her left shoulder. Coming up, she stayed low, head down, keeping her right arm free, her hand on her Glock the whole time. She did it without pulling the trigger, having practiced the maneuver many, many times, using her prosthetic left leg to jam into the ground and force herself back to a not-fully-upright position, but squatted just enough so she could see around.
As she came up, she spotted GJ off on her right. But suddenly drawing her focus, directly in front of her, was the man who'd pulled the trigger on her in the first place and he was the one she took aim at. Though as she lifted the gun, she saw him jerk, yelp, and fall back. The rifle fell out of his hands and he clutched at his elbow.
GJ had winged him.
Was it the result of bad aim? Walter didn't know. Her breathing was heavy now. Nothing could prepare you for the moment when someone actually wanted you dead and had the firepower to achieve it. Then again, GJ—though still not all that strong and still not stupendously fast—had become a crack shot. She wasn't a fast draw and she didn’t do rapid fire well, but her aim had become deadly. Maybe she'd meant to wing him. As Walter thought about it, it made sense. They needed these people alive.
Forcing a breath, she swung around, looking to where she'd last seen the woman, and saw nothing. GJ took off in a run, chasing down the man she’d hit. Having dropped his rifle in favor of his freedom, he'd run in the opposite direction away from both of them.
Walter wanted to call out. GJ hopefully wouldn't turn at the sound of her voice, but if she shouted instructions it would leave both of them open to fire. The problem was GJ was running, and Walter knew there was still someone else out here who wanted to kill them—and maybe even a third person she hadn't yet seen. She couldn't tell. But she knew of at least two. GJ had only taken care of one.
Needing to distract from the open target her partner was making, Walter stood up to full height. Though GJ was doing a good job of staying low, and had the man been the only shooter, it would have been a wise decision, Walter felt the need to act. Gun at the ready, she mentally counted the bullets she’d spent. Since she’d reloaded the last time she'd ducked and covered, as well as once before, she was on her last magazine. She should have eight bullets left. It wasn’t as many as she wanted, and she’d have to parse them out carefully.
Still, she called out to her partner, "There's one behind you. I've got her. Keep going."
GJ, bless her, did not turn, but clearly heard and began zigzagging her way through the trees. The man, who might still have a pistol on him, had at least dropped his rifle. With any luck, she would see some kind of movement as he grabbed for another weapon, which would protect her front. What she also needed to do was protect her back from where Walter had last seen the woman.
Still sweeping the area, Walter wondered what she might find. She found it. Her last turn and sweep had her pulling up short, staring directing into the deadly, dark eyes of a small woman glaring back at her. Two hands on a Glock, the woman took aim. Walter was looking right down the barrel.
With a deep breath, she made a decision.
"Hello. Nice to meet you," Walter offered as though they were in a park on a sunny day. She could only hope her tone masked the shaking deep inside her soul. She'd been here before. She had survived before. But having watched others not survive, she knew that any time you looked down the barrel of a gun, it was very likely your last day on earth.
"FBI," the woman hissed her recognition of them like a curse. Her dark hair was falling out from where it had been tucked up under her ball cap. With the cap knocked off and her roughed up look, she now seemed tiny and disheveled. This was the small Asian woman the runners had been talking about. For a moment, Walter wondered where old white dude was, and she was tempted to ask. If she was going to die from a bullet from this gun, she was going to get her questions answered first.
"You need to stay out of this, agent," the woman hissed again, and the words, if not the tone, gave Walter hope. If she was telling Walter to stay out, then maybe she believed that Walter could in fact do so. If she was trying to get rid of Walter, she probably would have pulled the trigger already. Walter was certainly close enough to make a target that would be hard to miss.
"What is it exactly that we’re mixed up in?" Walter asked, as casual a tone as she could muster.
"You don't know, and you wouldn't understand." That was when Walter saw the gun begin to falter just a little bit.
She pressed harder. "Try me."
"No. It doesn't make any sense and it's evil. We're trying to clean it up. We don’t need you in our way."
Oh, dear God, Walter thought. A zealot. No wonder they were trying to kill Wade’s family. Quickly deciding on a conspiratorial tone and the idea that the FBI was on the same side as these people, Walter leaned in. She was giving the woman a better shot at her rapidly beating heart, but she hoped she was giving herself a better shot, too.
"I've seen them," she said. “And I think you're right…How do we kill them?"
The woman looked for a moment, eyes darting one way to another. Walter had to imagine that it was possible these hunters had seen Walter and GJ at the home of
the de Gottardi-Little family. If that was the case, then it was likely nothing she said would be believed and Walter would soon be dead, surely shot for being a liar rather than taking her chance and getting out when she'd been offered.
"It's an old evil," the woman said grimly, the gun still aimed at Walter. Despite the conspiratorial tone Walter offered, the woman had not pulled her aim. "You don't know what they can do."
"Actually, I do," Walter said, her voice low, wondering if at this moment the old white dude wasn't creeping up behind her ready to put a gun to her head. Because she didn't know, she had to keep down this path. She spoke again. "I have seen it. I've seen the way the bones shift and pop, the way their muscles pull, and then there's something different. Something evil." She echoed the woman's words back to her and when the woman nodded, Walter took her chance.
23
Walter dove toward the woman, shoving her own gun down into the holster as she moved, needing her hands free for the move. Pushing her weight forward, she moved onto her right foot and ducked low. Should the woman fire off a shot, Walter wanted to be out of the way.
The woman gasped, clearly rattled by Walter's movements, which meant they’d worked exactly as intended. Using that dismay to her advantage, Walter shoved her left—fake—hand up under the woman's wrists. Exactly at the point where she was gripping the butt of the handgun. With the fingers and the thumb of her metal hand open to form a V-shape, Walter shoved hard upward, aiming the gun away from herself as she lunged. All of it happened in one smooth motion.
Even so, the woman squeezed off a shot, but it went wild, into the trees and away from Walter. She'd already calculated that even if she got hit, by having her left hand up at least the damage would be on the hand she could more easily replace. There had to be an upside to losing a body part in a war.
The left hand—while excellent for shoving the woman's arms out of the way—was nowhere near as capable for the tricky maneuvers needed to get the gun out of her grip. Standing now, Walter wrapped her own hands over the woman’s and spun until her back was toward the woman’s front. She had the gun and the hands around it contained. She thought about kicking back and dropping the woman, but not until she had control of the weapon.
With a squeeze of her arm into her own side, she applied pressure to the woman’s trapped arms, making her drop her hold. The nine-millimeter fell into Walter’s hands. Luckily, she’d practiced the crap out of this. Catching was hard when you couldn’t feel the touch of the object as it hit your skin.
Within a second, it was Walter with both hands on the gun. Knowing she couldn’t hold the woman with trapped arms and her back toward her for long, Walter moved out. From a distance, it would look like a dance. Until that last moment when Walter spun out and away, her stance wide, the gun in her hands. She stepped back twice, staying close enough to attack if need be, but far enough that she couldn’t have the same maneuver pulled on her. Using the gun to motion, she waited as the woman dropped down on her knees, having been rapidly stripped of her dominant position.
Though her heart was beating fast, Walter knew how to cover it. "You have two options," she told the woman, "die now or come with me."
That was not FBI protocol, she knew, but she didn't really care right now. She figured she could be forgiven because she'd just been fucking shot at in the woods multiple times. The woman didn't answer. Walter pulled cuffs out of the back of her belt, shocked that she’d had the opportunity to use them. These were zip cuffs, lightweight and easy to carry. GJ had insisted that if Walter went out by herself, she had to come fully prepared. Who knew she’d be right? Walter had only had two pairs on her and she was hopeful that GJ had brought her own, but probably GJ had brought all that and more. The little nerd had everything.
When the woman’s hands were securely zip tied behind her, Walter lifted her to her feet. She steered her prisoner along, using the bound hands as a lever. If the woman pulled too hard one way or the other, she'd pull her own shoulder out of the socket. Walter had no sympathy, so she simply steered and let the woman decide how much she wanted to resist.
In the distance, she heard GJ taking down the man they’d seen. She looked up just in time to catch the action. It was a tackle of epic proportions. GJ must have thrown herself at a high speed to get enough force for her small body to adequately smack the man and maneuver him to the ground. Though the two dropped out of sight, Walter heard the thud, meaning GJ had accomplished it.
She wanted to pick up her pace and help her partner in case things got hairy, but she found she was unable to push the woman any faster. Her prisoner was reluctant to move at all, and Walter did not look forward to dragging her across the ground. She was already late arriving to back up her partner—something she held against her prisoner. The list was getting longer.
When she finally got close enough to see what was going on, she spotted GJ practically straddling her perp, who was face down on the ground, hands behind his back.
"You have the right to remain silent," GJ said.
Good Lord, Walter thought, she was Mirandizing him. Walter, instead, had given her victim the chance to die, and didn't that just say it all?
24
GJ looked to Walter. "Where in the hell do we take them?" she asked.
They’d dragged their quarry across the distance and closed them into the car. No names had been volunteered yet, as both had remained stubbornly silent. Given that attitude, Walter and GJ had no issues force-marching the two out of the woods and ducking them into the back of the sedan. The third possible member of their little hunting party had not appeared, much to GJ and Walter’s concern. They still had no idea if someone was going to pop up and open fire on them on any moment, or if he was already in another state.
Being careful not to give away their information or expose their very real fears, Walter and GJ stayed close to one side of the car, huddled low, and kept sharp watch in every direction as they spoke. They couldn't speak freely inside the car with the others in the back seat. It would mean giving away the major problem they were dealing with, which was that they had nowhere to take these two. The closest FBI branch was hours away.
"We can't take them to the compound. It's absolutely unsafe, and probably five kinds of illegal to walk them into the home of their victims," GJ pointed out.
Walter nodded easily in response. So at least that was decided.
GJ looked over her shoulder in time to see the small woman start to struggle against the bonds. GJ found she didn't really care if the bitch was uncomfortable. She shouldn't have taken shots at Walter.
Once they'd dragged their captives back to the rental car, they decided to put the two into the back seat. But that posed another problem. Being merely a rental, it didn't have any kind of safety divider, so the two needed to remain completely tied up, even more so than they'd been on the march. With a little ingenuity and luck, GJ found car seat safety latches embedded in the seats. The two, with wrists bound behind their backs, were now latched firmly down to those, much the same way an official police car worked. Only with zip ties.
Then Walter had taken one look and tied their feet together. It had taken a little more creativity to anchor their feet to their hands, so they were unable to kick the backs of the seats once they were in motion. But, though the four were finally ready, they couldn’t go until they could decide where to go to.
"We have to call Westerfield," GJ said, already pulling out her phone. Once again, Walter nodded. GJ wasn't surprised that Walter wasn't speaking so much. She'd been in the direct line of fire. While GJ had hunted down a man who dropped his rifle, and tackled him to the ground in relative safety, Walter had faced the barrel of a gun. She was breathing steadily, but was clearly not yet back to her normal self.
GJ made the call.
Westerfield answered on the second ring. "Janson, what you got?"
She decided to go with exactly what it was. "Two perps."
"I'm sorry. What?" her boss responded, in a most u
nprofessional manner.
"We have detained two people who were shooting at us today. They match the description of those who fired at the family the other night, and are likely from the same hunting party that killed Randall Standish."
"You were supposed to collect evidence, not people," Westerfield said.
"Well, I guess you're right," GJ commented in a singsongy tone, as though she hadn't thought of this. "Should we just let them go?"
He didn't respond, the sarcasm in her voice plain as day, and GJ dialed it back a little before she continued. "Point is, we can't take them back to the family compound. We can't take them to the motel. I don't think it's very secure."
"Well, I suppose you could anchor them to something secure in your motel room,” he offered in clear retaliation for her sarcastic tone.
Though the thought made GJ bristle with memories of being handcuffed to a hotel closet safe, she pointed out to Westerfield that it wasn't a likely option here. "It's the only motel in town. Everyone will see us coming. Everyone will see us going. Furthermore, I don't think there's anything in there we can cuff them to. There's not a safe at all, nothing anchored down."
"Exposed pipes?" he said.
"Not that I remember. Honestly, any pipe that's exposed in this place? One good yank and it would come right off the wall. It's not going to keep anybody safe. I'm guessing we're going to have to drive them somewhere, but we're looking to you for guidance on exactly where."
He gave them directions to a nearby small town that wasn't Bull Shoals. It was going to take well over an hour to get somewhere big enough to have multiple hotel options and a place they could stash these two. Westerfield would get himself on the next flight in, but it would still be a while before they could hand these two off.
Salvage: A Shadow Files Novel Page 14