by C. J. Lyons
“Follow me.” Morgan led the way on foot past the snarled traffic.
They crossed a strip of trees that separated the mall from one of the smaller shopping areas ringing it and then sprinted to the far side of the shopping center where there was a popular all night bowling pub. A few people stood outside, gawking at the lights and smoke, but no one was paying any attention to the cars.
Since she had none of her usual tools—including her phone with its universal electronic vehicle access program—their selection was limited. As Morgan decided on an older but well-maintained minivan, Jenna’s phone rang.
“It’s Andre,” she said eagerly. As if she thought Andre had overpowered Clint and escaped his custody. Morgan started to caution her, but too late, Jenna answered it. “Andre?”
“No, Jenna. I’m afraid Mr. Stone is a bit indisposed at the moment.”
“If you hurt him—” It was an empty threat and they all knew it.
Clint chuckled. “You have something I want, I have something you want. Let’s make a deal.” He said the last in the overblown tones of a game show host. “I’ll give you your precious Mr. Stone in exchange for a hundred thousand dollars and my daughter.”
“Done,” Jenna said before Morgan could protest. “When and where?”
“Midnight. Site of Morgan’s first kill. She’ll tell you how to get there.”
“That’s not much time—”
“Midnight. A minute late, a dollar short, any sign of the cops, and you’ll be scraping Mr. Stone into a pudding cup—or rather, what’s left of him. I hear suicide bombers often have much of their body vaporized by the force of the blast.”
He hung up. Jenna turned to Morgan. “Where are we going? Site of your first kill? Where’s that?”
Her words were a staccato jumble, sparked by hope. Hope was the opposite of what Morgan felt. She felt drained, empty of any emotion.
“When Clint first took me,” she said, wrapping her arms around her as rain began to fall. “He took me to a remote cabin. Up on Tussey Mountain. Taught me how to stalk prey. Survival skills. But first he made me kill animals he caught and staked out for me.”
“Boohoo for you. Where, Morgan? Tell me where?”
“It’s no good. You’ll never stop him or catch him. Not there. He knows those mountains, knows the trails, knows where to find cover.”
“I don’t care about catching him. I just want Andre back. Alive.”
Morgan’s chest heaved as her sigh escaped her. “That’s what I want, too.”
“Then it’s settled. You for Andre.” Jenna’s tone was devoid of emotion.
“I’ll take you there. Me for Andre.”
“Once he’s safe,” Jenna offered her words as a consolation prize, “then you can kill Clint. I don’t give a damn.”
Morgan wished she was half as certain of the outcome. But Jenna was right. Someone was going to die tonight. As long as it wasn’t Andre, she could live with that.
Chapter 28
THE GROWL OF an ATV in the distance announced Clint’s arrival. He was late, and Morgan was freezing, standing in the clearing, the snow alternating with sleet and rain to turn the ground to black ice. He’d planned it that way, had wanted the cold to leech all her anger and the strength it gave her.
After Jenna had gathered what cash she could, they’d switched cars and headed toward the mountain, arriving as early as possible. All Morgan had asked for in exchange for her cooperation was a quick stop to torch Pete’s body and the barn and that Jenna make sure Micah received the reward money. Jenna didn’t care about money, although she would enjoy the prestige of collecting the bounties on the Kroft brothers as well as Clint, so she’d readily agreed.
Clint had called with more specific instructions after they left their car at the end of the last stretch of drivable road. Logging trail was more like it. Thankfully, it was cold enough that the mud was frozen solid, making it passable.
At least he’d let Morgan wear her coat—that and her underwear and a pair of flats. He knew her too well, knew her proclivity to squirrel weapons wherever she could. But she also knew him, knew he would use any excuse, even an imaginary one, to renege on his word.
She’d refused to wear an earbud, despite the comfort it would have given her, hearing the others. No. She’d come as Clint instructed: naked and alone.
Also as instructed, as she waited, she held the canvas gym bag Jenna had given her. She ran through the various scenarios one last time. Most of them did not end well for Morgan. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. As long as they got Andre back.
Morgan craned her neck and looked up, stretching. The rain had finally stopped, the clouds shredded by the wind, unveiling a canopy of black ink sparking with more stars than she’d ever seen before. When she looked back down at her feet, the wet, black mud had been transformed into a mirror, and it was as if she stood on the stars themselves.
No matter how bloody the deeds Clint kept her busy at, she’d learned at an early age to search out the magical moments like this one. It felt as if she could stop time—for a short while, at any rate—immerse herself in the miracle of the world she lived in…until Clint yanked her back to his bloody reality.
More than anything, this was how she’d survived those years with Clint. These split-second vanishments where she left her life behind. Nick called it dissociation. Said it was a defense mechanism. Jenna called her frozen moments daydreaming, while Andre would say nothing, merely watch over her, protect her until she came back. Micah said she had the eye of an artist, drawn to beauty. Of course he would say that, he had the soul of a poet. In fact, one of her most cherished vanished moments was when they’d first met.
Clint’s arrival silenced the night noises. Shifting her weight to get a better grip on the canvas gym bag in her hands, she turned to face the direction the ATV would come from.
The clearing was at the top of a ridge. To the right, a sheer drop down a granite cliff onto the scraggly deadwood loggers had bulldozed over the edge and left behind to rot.
In front of her was thick forest, hemlocks and rhododendrons, easy to vanish into and escape pursuit if you knew the area. Clint would leave that way, she was certain. Oshiro and Liz Harding had agreed, although they’d stretched their cordon as wide as possible, to cover all options.
It wouldn’t work, she’d argued before Jenna had called in reinforcements. Clint knew this area too well. But Jenna was former law enforcement, placed her faith in protocols and training and operating procedures. After all, Clint was just one man, she’d said. Morgan had been half tempted to grab the cash and do the exchange on her own, but the others hadn’t let her out of their sight, so she had no choice.
No, that was a lie. She’d always had a choice. Just this time she was choosing to trust that the others were as determined to save Andre as she was.
Clint came from her left, the ATV’s headlight piercing the black night. More forest there, but also a few cabins. And behind her, far behind her, lay the gravel road that led to the two-lane highway and civilization. The forest behind her had been logged more than once, leaving it thinned out, littered with clearings and deadwood, easy to spot anyone approaching.
The ATV paused at the edge of the clearing. She wondered if it would get mired in the mud at her feet but knew she couldn’t get that lucky.
The others wanted her to wear a wire and carry a weapon, but for once in her life, Morgan had forsaken weapons. She’d come to this battle naked except for her coat, armed only with her wits and her fists. But after almost an hour standing in the wind and rain waiting for Clint, she was stiff and frozen solid, her mind almost as numb as her body.
“I’m here,” she called out. “Just like you asked. No weapons. No cops.” She raised the bag, her arms shaking with its weight and the cold. “Just the money. Like you asked.”
The ATV’s engine revved in reply. “Open your coat, let me see for myself.”
Setting the bag at her feet in the mud, she fumbled th
e buttons open on her coat, the wool now frozen hard, no longer soft and pliable. She slipped it off and circled around, wind slicing into her bare flesh. As soon as she made a full revolution, she quickly retreated into its feeble embrace, the buttons slipping through her numb fingers, going into the wrong holes, but she didn’t care, she needed the warmth, any warmth, even if it was merely a faint promise of protecting her from the wicked wind that swept across the clearing.
“Where’s Andre?” Her voice wavered as her teeth chattered. “Is he okay?”
“I’m here,” came a reply. Andre’s voice but choked and a bit blurred as if he were having a difficult time enunciating. From pain or injury, she couldn’t be sure. “I’m okay.” The last was a lie, she was certain of that.
“Stone will wait here,” Clint called.
Morgan jerked at the sound of his voice. Filled with command and certainty, as always. Every fiber of her being yearned to obey—once upon a time, obeying that voice was all that had kept her alive.
But not now, she reminded herself, the thought slicing through the muddle the cold had made of her brain. Never again.
“No. I want to see him.” After all, what was to stop Clint from slicing Andre’s throat and leaving him to bleed out. “Bring him with you.” She raised the bag again. It was getting heavier and heavier. “If you want your money.”
No answer for a long moment but then the ATV drove into the clearing. Two men on it: one driving, one draped over the rear storage area like a deer carcass. It stopped just outside of the shadows cast by the forest beyond. The driver shoved the other man off as if he were a bundle of laundry.
“Andre,” she shouted.
Andre rolled toward her voice. Finally she could see his face. It was swollen, too dark to see the bruises she knew were there, but he was alive. His wrists and ankles were bound behind him, so all he could do was raise his head. And he still wore the damn vest with the damn bomb.
“Your turn,” Clint said. “You and the money are coming with me. No funny business. Or your friend here gets blown to bits.” He raised a detonator.
Exactly what they’d expected. Now she just had to play her part while the others rescued Andre. Only flaw in their plan was no one could guarantee that the jammers they’d brought would actually block the signal from the detonator. Which meant everything had to go according to Clint’s plan until he and the detonator were either out of range or neutralized.
“Come and get me,” she called to Clint. Then she added the one word she knew he could not resist. “Father.”
The ATV spun toward her, its headlights blinding. It pulled to a stop before her. Clint was dressed like a hunter in layers of thick camouflage that left him toasty warm, no doubt. Unlike Morgan who could barely move, she was so stiff with the cold.
“Climb on,” he ordered.
“First, give me the detonator.” No way in hell would she trust him to keep his word and not use it before they were beyond its range.
He scowled at her, his lips twisting into a pout but then handed it over. Her fingers were dead with cold; she could barely wrap them around it, squeezing the button he indicated.
“Don’t you drop that, now. The dead man’s switch is live.” Clint chuckled at his own pun. He yanked the bag from her other hand—good thing as she was about ready to drop it, it was too heavy—and peered into it. Satisfied by the real cash on top of the dummy bills, he threw it into the ATV’s rear compartment.
“Now, you. Get on.” He scooted back in his seat, motioning her to sit in front of him.
She climbed on, her movements awkward and slow. He circled one arm around her, holding a knife—a wicked sharp Tanto blade—below the left side of her rib cage, aiming up. Then he began to search her, running his free hand over her coat then her body, checking everywhere.
At one point she slipped, falling forward over the handlebars, barely catching herself against the fender that shielded the front wheels. As she fought to hold onto the detonator, the knife pricked her, just a small cut, a reminder of what was possible in Clint’s world.
“Do you remember this place?” he whispered in her ear as his hands did their business. “When I first rescued you, I brought you here. Taught you what life was really about. Shared with you all my secrets.”
“I killed my first deer here,” she answered, her voice sounding like tin. Flat yet malleable. “Slit its throat. You taught me how to skin and gut it.”
“I taught you everything.” His tone was a knife edge.
Clint wasn’t stupid. He’d be sure to dispose of the bag with its tracker as soon as he stopped long enough to learn that the only cash in it were a few actual bills on top—then their plan was doomed. He’d escape again. And next time when he came for Morgan, he’d be even more furious.
She glanced down, the ice-slicked mud reflecting the sky as if she floated above an ocean of stars, and remembered the daydream—dread-dream was more like it—she’d had at Nick’s office yesterday. All of the people she cared for most, they would all be at risk if Clint escaped. Because of her.
“How quickly you forgot everything,” he continued, sliding his hand down her calf, slipping her shoe off and flinging it to the mud. Then he switched to her other leg. “But we’re together again. That’s all that matters.”
“And my friends?”
His hand froze, hovering above her skin. Mistake, she chided herself. Friends weren’t part of Clint’s delusion. She held her breath, waiting for his answer.
“You’ve grown weak without me. Relying on others.” He ran his hands through her hair—one of her favorite hiding places for razor blades and lock picks. He found nothing. “I taught you better than that. Family is everything. Family is the only thing.”
Once Clint discovered her betrayal, no matter the danger to himself, he would return. Because of her. He would hunt down everyone she loved—could she love? If she could, how could anyone love her? It was the cold clouding her brain, such crazy thoughts of love—no matter, Clint would find them all. And they would each and every one pay dearly with blood and pain.
Because of her.
“I’ve missed you, little girl,” he crooned as he revved the engine. He steered one-handed, keeping his knife hand wrapped around her body, holding her close. “We’re going to have so much fun.”
Now that Andre was safe, she was free to deal with Clint. The question was: how? Naked, unarmed, knife to her heart, what could she do? There was no way in hell the cops would ever catch him—despite all their planning and maneuvering and dragnetting.
This was on her and her alone. The ATV headed toward the thick forest, the cliff with its sheer drop to their right. Only one thing to do, she realized as the ground blurred beneath them.
She shoved all her might against the handlebars, barely feeling the pain as Clint’s knife pierced her side. The ATV hurtled toward the cliff.
He fought her, but she bent over, focusing her weight on the controls, torquing his wrist—one of the most fragile joints in the human body. He’d taught her that.
She bit down on the exposed bit of flesh between his glove and his coat sleeve, clamping down hard until she tasted his blood.
He shrieked in fury, tried to pull his arm back, which only drove them closer to the cliff’s edge. She didn’t care. Her one and only thought was to hold on to the detonator. Nothing else mattered.
Clint slid his knife free from her body, not-so-warm blood slipping out behind it. He whipped the blade toward her face, but then they were flying through the air, hurtling, soaring, falling…
Chapter 29
AS SOON AS Clint and Morgan sped away, Jenna abandoned her position and ran to Andre.
“Wait,” Liz Harding yelled as she raced after Jenna. Their deal had been that Jenna would stay back until the cops cleared the scene.
Jenna pretended to not hear her as she sloshed through the mud and thin coat of ice. The sleet had stopped and the skies were clearing, but she didn’t even notice. She skidded t
o a stop beside Andre, knelt in the mud, and pulled her knife to cut the duct tape that bound his wrists and ankles. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” He had his neck arched, watching past her to the action going on at the other side of the clearing. “You shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what the range—”
She shut him up with a kiss. “I’m damned tired of people telling me what I should and should not be doing.”
The vest was nylon. She wasn’t about to mess with the bomb or its ignition device, but she needed Andre out of it. She patted the back of the vest. No obvious wires.
Andre twisted around before she could slice the vest. “Jenna, don’t. Let the—”
“I thought you were dead,” she told him.
“We both might be if you—”
“I don’t care. Can’t you see that?”
Liz arrived with the bomb squad guy—one of the staties—and between them, they trundled a small containment unit, basically a cement mixer on wheels, designed to hold explosives safely.
The sound of an engine revving screamed through the clearing. Everyone turned to look in the direction of the ATV.
“They’re heading over the edge,” a man’s voice came through the radio. “I’ve lost sight of them. Repeat I’ve lost sight of the target.”
“Anyone have eyes on Caine?” Oshiro cut in.
No one responded.
“Morgan,” Andre said. “Forget Caine. Where’s Morgan? Did she go over?” He started to climb to his feet, but Liz pulled him back down.
“Let us get you out of this first.” She turned to the bomb tech. “Best hurry.”
Jenna stood, staring in the direction the ATV had vanished, standing in front of Andre as if she could somehow magically block the signal from the dead man’s switch and the bomb. Hang in there, Morgan, she prayed.
The tech assessed the situation and then did what Jenna was going to do anyway—he slit the vest up the back just as a loud crash boomed through the night, followed by the sound of an engine whining, then dying.