by Erik Carter
She saw something. Movement. A dark figure outside the window, stalking through the trees.
Oh, god, no.
No.
Not sleep paralysis. Not now.
The figure continued forward, stealthily. Like a cat.
Jane’s breathing became labored. Soon the figure would be upon her, ready to take the rest of her breath.
But then she thought of something…
She’d already moved. She’d wiped the window clean. This wasn’t sleep paralysis.
That was an actual man slipping through the trees.
And he was heading toward the cabin.
The man crossed through a beam of moonlight, and something on his neck shined for a moment. A scar.
Jane knew who she was watching. The whole criminal world had heard the whispers of this man.
This was no sleep paralysis shadow figure. It was “The Shadow” himself.
It was El Vacío.
The assassin.
He carried a rifle in his hands. There was another gun on a strap around his back, something boxy and wicked looking.
Jane took in a shaky breath. And quickly made up her mind.
She stepped out of the car.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Rolls-Royce came to a stop.
Paulie stole a glance back—seeing all the cars idling behind his, the combined forces of the Fairs and the Alfonsis—then he turned back around and looked between the front seats, through the windshield.
The gravel road snaked its way through the huge tree trunks. There were two cars on the road, lights out and parked a good distance from the cabin—the Pantera they’d followed, gleaming in the moonlight, and behind it, a Cordoba with massive damage to its rear end.
For a while, Paulie had wondered why Janey and the cop were going so far out of the city. But once they reached Avenue of the Giants, Paulie understood that for some reason Janey was taking the man to the old family cabin.
The Cordoba was a mystery. But only for a moment. When Paulie had gotten the photographs of the bloodshed that had occurred after his men followed El Vacío from the airport, he had seen that his men’s car had been severely damaged; the assassin had rammed them before he finished them off.
With a highly damaged mystery vehicle parked in front of him, there was no question to whom it belonged. El Vacío. He was here at Paulie’s family vacation cabin.
To kill his boy.
This meant that assassin had followed the Pantera too. And now he was about to finish the job.
“Keep going!” Paulie shouted at the driver. “Go around them. And hurry!”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Dale looked at the barrel of a gun.
Kimble was waving his weapon back and forth between Lawton and Dale. The man’s skin was flushed, his eyes crazed and registering utter confusion at who Dale was and why he’d just burst into the cabin brandishing a gun.
So Dale made it perfectly clear for him.
“Federal agent! Drop the weapon, Kimble!”
Dale kept the Model 36 leveled at him. He slowly crept toward the table.
Beau looked to Dale, pleadingly. His hand holding the gun beneath his chin shook violently.
“What’s the plan, Kimble?” Dale said. “Have Beau Lawton write a suicide note and force him to blow his brains out? Get your revenge and make him look as unstable as you on his way out.”
Lawton shouted out to Dale. “No! He—”
Kimble slapped him. “Keep your mouth shut!”
He turned to Dale as he continued swinging the gun back and forth.
“Unstable? Because I was sent to a mental hospital? I committed no crime. I was framed. This man planted evidence.”
“Is it true, Lawton?” Dale said as he continued toward the table.
Lawton started to speak.
Kimble fired his gun into the floor. A tremendous roar. Across the room, Jonathan Fair stirred in his slumber.
“I said stay quiet!” Kimble screamed at Lawton.
Dale stopped in his tracks. Kimble really was unstable. And more so than Dale had thought.
Dale had to choose his next move extremely carefully. He’d been in more than a few standoffs. But never one this unhinged.
Before he could devise a plan, though, he heard something.
Footsteps on the porch behind him.
Chapter Fifty
Jane had heard the crack of the gun shot, and while it had made her jump, it also motivated her to sprint the remaining distance to the cabin.
She bolted up the steps, onto the porch, and to the window. She peered inside.
Right in front of her—just on the other side of the window—was John, in a chair, slumped over. Unconscious. But breathing.
She steadied herself. Gathered her resolve. And scanned the rest of the cabin.
Standing in the middle of the living room was Dale. He had his gun aimed toward the table in the back where Beau Lawton sat. There was a gun in Lawton’s hand as well, pointed under his own chin. Another man stood by the table, swinging yet another gun between Dale and Lawton. It was the man she’d seen in Chinatown with her brother.
An absolutely bizarre scenario. And a dangerous one.
One in which her unconscious brother was in mortal danger.
So Jane opened the door.
Chapter Fifty-One
El Vacío continued to watch with amazement as the bizarre Mexican standoff played out before his eyes. And just when he thought the situation couldn’t get any weirder, Fair’s twin sister swung the door open and entered the cabin.
It was an incredibly brave move on her part. From his studies, he’d gathered that she was nothing if not determined.
The cop glanced at her, stunned, keeping his gun pointed at Kimble. “Jane, what the hell are you doing here?”
The cop had done a good job mediating the strange situation to this point. Again, El Vacío was impressed with him. And for some reason, the cop had forsaken his fake beard. It was another layer of curiosity in this perplexing scenario.
“He’s here!” Jane Fair said to the cop. “I saw him in the trees.”
“Who’s here?”
Before she could answer, more people burst through the cabin’s door. A dozen men. All with guns. Mobsters. At the front of the pack were Big Paul Fair and Angelo Alfonsi. With Alfonsi were the man’s sons, one of whom was El Vacío’s client.
Marco Alfonsi.
El Vacío noticed a strange look on the Fair woman’s face. An expression of shock as she and her father looked upon each other.
El Vacío dropped back below the pony wall, planted his back against it, concealing himself in the kitchen. He needed a moment to think.
This situation had been bizarre and indecipherable before the gangsters had entered. But now that the new men were there, not only was El Vacío confused, but he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach—the feeling of betrayal.
He never should have trusted Marco Alfonsi. The man was a creep. A weasel.
He assessed the situation. He had tracked his supposed target to a cabin in the trees, hours away from San Francisco. And now, the heads of both crime families had suddenly arrived along with a small army of muscle. A dark realization came to El Vacío.
They’d trapped him.
Somehow, somewhere he’d pissed someone off among the two rival families. And they brought their forces together. They’d used the Jonathan Fair escape madness as an elaborate plot to draw him out of Colombia.
He heard Angelo Alfonsi speak from the living room.
“Do it, Marco. Be a man.”
El Vacío continued to listen, and another voice called out. It was Marco.
“El Vacío. I’m calling off the hit. You will still be paid. Show yourself. Please.”
The thoughts in El Vacío’s mind became torrential. Anger rarely came to him. Usually he remained cool and centered. But he was seething now. At Marco Alfonsi.
He tried to think calmly, rational
ly. Maybe he was wrong about being set up. Maybe this really was simply a farce wherein Marco had never received his father’s authorization to contract a hit. A misunderstanding. But why was Beau Lawton being forced to kill himself? Why was El Vacío’s original target unconscious and tied to a chair?
None of it made any sense, and being confused only furthered El Vacío’s rage.
He took the MAC-10’s strap off and transferred it to his custom sniper rifle, which he then slung over his back.
Whatever the truth of the situation was, El Vacío knew that there were over a dozen armed people in the next room.
And he was getting out of the cabin alive.
He made up his mind.
Two massacres had been attributed to El Vacío. A series of explosions in Sudan leaving thirty-seven dead in 1961. Several years later, fourteen people died in a shootout in Lisbon—the police report noted that the only survivor slipped into a crowd of onlookers and was never located.
El Vacío would survive at any cost.
He hoisted the MAC-10 and took a deep, cleansing breath.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Dale recognized the weapon immediately and knew he was in one hell of a dangerous situation.
The assassin had popped up from behind the pony wall separating the kitchen from the living room, and in his hands was an Ingram MAC-10 machine pistol. It bore the Sionics two-stage suppressor, a popular accessory that not only quieted the weapon but gave the shooter a grip in the front—which was helpful, because the MAC-10 was a vicious piece of engineering known for its poor precision. This wasn’t a precise scalpel like the man’s custom sniper rifle; this was just the opposite. This was a weapon that sprayed rounds at an insanely high rate—1,250 rounds per minute for the 9mm variety, which was what the assassin appeared to be wielding.
21 rounds per second.
By the look in the assassin’s face, it was evident that he intended to clear the room.
And with a weapon like that, Dale didn’t have even a single second to hesitate.
He turned and bolted toward Jane, lowering his shoulder and pushing through the men.
The shots started behind him, so fast they sounded like a steady hum.
The man in front of Dale took a bullet.
Men around him returned fire. So many shots and so loud. The smell of gunpowder.
Blood sprayed Dale’s cheek.
Jane in front of him, crouching over Jonathan.
Someone fell into Dale, almost knocked him over.
Nearly to Jane.
A bullet hit the floor in front of him.
More blood.
Jane, a couple feet away from him.
Dale jumped right at her, arms extended.
He crashed into her.
Hard.
He knew he’d hurt her bad. But he’d gotten her and Jonathan—unconscious and tied to the chair—to the floor.
A body fell next to Dale as he wrapped his arms around Jane, covering her and her brother.
The sound was tremendous, so loud that Dale couldn’t even hear it. No longer noise. It was a presence. An engulfing presence.
He felt vibrations, the impacts of bodies throughout the room falling to the hardwood floor.
Everyone shooting guns. Debris fell on Dale’s head as he pulled Jane and her unconscious brother as far beneath his body as he could get them. But with the chair that Jonathan was tied to, it was impossible.
He had to find another way of protecting them.
Another body landed right beside Dale. An arm fell on his back. Warm blood oozed through his shirt.
Dale glanced up. A credenza, a foot away from him. He gave a quick look to Jane, whose face was frozen with fear, then pulled himself away from her for a moment, leaned up as more debris fell on him, and gave the credenza a sharp pull. It fell to the ground with a crash.
Dale tried to yell, “Come on!” at Jane, but his voice was lost in the deafening madness. But she got the point.
They scrambled to the backside of the credenza, combining their strength to drag Jonathan with them.
Behind the credenza, Dale threw himself over them again. More debris fell. The sound was relentless. And it had reached a point that time made no sense. It felt like an hour. But knowing how rapidly the MAC-10 fired, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
And then something changed.
He couldn’t tell if the sound had ended—his ears were ringing so loudly—but there was a different energy. He glanced up.
The firefight had ended.
And the floor was strewn with bodies.
Dale looked at Jane and mouthed, Stay here.
He kept his Model 36 tightly in his hand and stood—crouching low—then zigzagged through the bodies to the pony wall, ducking below it. He took one deep breath and cleared the top of the wall.
The kitchen was empty.
The assassin was gone.
Which meant Dale had to chase him.
He turned toward the front door.
It was only then that the gravity of the situation struck him.
Between him and the front door, the cabin’s living room was covered with bodies. Some moving. And groaning. But most completely dead. There were two metallic smells in the air—gunpowder and blood.
And that blood was everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Dale had never seen so much. And body parts. Entrails and brain matter. Dale had seen some very gruesome things during his time as a BEI agent. But this was absolutely horrendous. The front door was ahead of him, where he needed to go to chase after the person who had brought about this massacre, but for a moment Dale froze. His hands went to his knees. And his stomach turned.
Focus. Stay on track.
He stood back up and moved quickly through the bodies, his boots sloshing through the blood, and ran out the door.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Jane shook all over. And she couldn’t budge. Something wouldn’t let her move an inch from where she was.
Then she reminded herself of her purpose—something more important than selfishness—and she turned to John. He was still breathing. Still unconscious. She frantically inspected him, checking him all over.
No wounds.
She exhaled.
John’s chest rose and sank slowly. Blissfully unaware. If there was a silver lining to the terror Jane had just witnessed, it was that at least John hadn’t witnessed it too.
She made herself look over the top of credenza and out into the room.
Bodies everywhere. People moaning. She heard men saying women’s names. One man quietly uttered, “Mamma.”
Jane’s mind flashed to memories, moments from childhood vacations in this cabin. Where the men had now died. Some of her best childhood memories. This had been her oasis. Her Land of Oz.
There was an awful smell in the air. Jane couldn’t even tell what it was, but it was natural, earthy, human.
Jane turned to the side and was sick.
She wiped her mouth. Then a strange impulse struck her.
She stood, gave one more protective glance to John, and slowly began walking through the bodies, stepping between and over the men—like dodging puddles in a rain-soaked path.
One man looked at her sadly as she walked past.
She saw her older brother.
Danny was on his stomach, head to the floor, and the part of his face that should have been visible was missing—just a bloody tangle of flesh and bone. His bright red hair was all that revealed his identity. Jane was surprised by how sad this made her. But she didn’t stop.
She kept searching. More bodies. Gallons of blood.
And there he was.
On the far wall. A huge, rounded mass. The highest peak in the mountain range of figures on the floor.
Jane moved quicker, dodging bodies, and as she came to her father, she saw Marco Alfonsi crouched behind his girth, using his body for cover, both hands on his stomach as he peered over him toward the kitchen.
Marco tu
rned to her. Sheer dread on his face. “Is he gone?”
Fury swept over Jane. “Don’t touch him, you slime!”
She slapped him.
Marco scuttled to his feet and ran through the bodies—tripping and falling once—then out the door.
She looked down at her father.
His eyes were open. And they looked right back into hers.
Jane dropped to her knees.
“Daddy…”
Blood burst from the corner of his mouth. His body convulsed. There was a dark crater in his stomach. One hand was on the wound, and he brought his free hand to her face.
The hand was massive, like the rest of Big Paul. It engulfed the entire side of her face, making her feel tiny. The hand was warm, rough with calluses. Fingers the size of sausages.
His brown eyes remained on her. He opened his mouth. Small noises.
He was trying to speak.
“For…”
She put her hand on his. Tears fell from her eyes.
“Forg—… Forgive me.”
She squeezed his hand. “I forgive you, Daddy.”
Big Paul smiled. Tension fell from his face. A look of serenity. Then he closed his eyes and stopped breathing.
Jane collapsed onto his chest. She wept.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Marco grabbed the board and gave it a strong tug. There was a tearing sound from the wood as it pulled free from the nails.
Three boards removed from the base of the cabin’s front porch. The gap was now big enough.
He quickly dropped to his hands and knees and crawled under the porch. His fingers dug into clods of dirt. Weeds scratched at his arms. Rocks dug into his palms.
When he reached the front of the porch, he leaned forward and peered through a gap between two of the boards. All the gigantic tree trunks were before him, bathed in the blue moonlight. He held perfectly still.
And he heard them again.
Footsteps. Two sets. One closer, one farther away.