by Jon Land
“Not all of us have yet.”
“What brought you to Condor Key, then?”
“Long story. It’s more important that I hear yours first.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not the one somebody’s trying to kill.”
Back at the farmhouse, Liz pulled out the bottle of whiskey she and her father had done their best to polish off a few nights before. She brought two glasses, filled hers and took a hearty sip, while Blaine’s remained empty when he declined a drink.
“I wish he’d never come up here,” she said, turning the glass around in her hand.
“He wanted to help.”
“He didn’t have the right. Five years he’s a stranger. Five years I don’t see him, and then he pops back in, out of nowhere.”
“Because you needed him.”
“I didn’t need something to happen to him!”
Blaine gazed across the table at the hard set of her jaw, the thrust of her chin, the way her eyes could ride way back in her head. The sight almost chilled him. This wasn’t Buck Torrey’s daughter; this was Buck Torrey all over again.
“He leave you with a duffel?”
“How’d you know about … ?”
“You thinking about checking the contents yourself?”
“It crossed my mind.”
“After the swim?”
“Even before. I was going to look as soon as I got home. Like opening the presents on Christmas morning. See what Santa left behind.” She smiled mirthlessly and refilled her glass with the last of the whiskey.
“What would your father think?”
“Not very much, or he wouldn’t have had his friend ready to contact you.”
“Maybe you should trust his judgment.”
Liz held the whiskey but didn’t drink it. “It’s a shooting war now.”
“Meaning … ?”
“That maybe I’m glad to have you with me.”
“Maybe?”
“Relax, soldier. We can open Dad’s duffel together.”
“Let’s talk about where your father was going before he disappeared.”
“To meet Maxwell Rentz.”
“Friendly little chat?”
“I think he said something like that.”
“What about?”
“He never told me.” Liz paused. “Not in so many words.”
“Go on.”
“He kept disappearing after he got here. I saw him down by the lake a few times and heard him rummaging around in the attic.”
“He say anything about what he was looking for?”
“No.”
“What did you tell him when he first got here?”
Liz thought for an instant. “The lake. A little over a week ago, Rentz sent divers down there at night to—”
Blaine was studying Liz’s face intently when the red beam crossed it. He thought at first it must be a trick of the light. But a second sweep circling toward her forehead sent him lunging across the table, taking her down beneath him an instant before the kitchen window exploded.
NINETEEN
Glass showered them as more gunshots peppered the house.
“Stay down!” Blaine ordered Liz, and began to edge away from her.
“The hell I will!” she blared, crawling on her elbows after him.
“Like father, like daughter,” he said when she had caught up.
“This is my house, soldier!”
“Yes, ma’am. Now, where’s your father’s duffel?”
“Front hall closet,” Liz told him, and Blaine gave her the lead, staying just behind her with pistol in hand now, Buck Torrey’s Glock nine.
Neither gave any thought to trying the phone, because even if the line hadn’t been cut, they both knew that by the time help arrived it would be too late to do them any good, especially coming from Chief Lanning. This was their fight alone.
Automatic fire blew out another pair of windows in twin staccato bursts that ripped into the walls and dumped picture frames to the floor. More shattered glass sprayed them, and they picked up their pace, reaching the hall as shapes dipped and darted just beyond the front door, briefly visible through a worn sheer curtain.
“We’re about to have company,” Blaine warned.
Liz had the closet door open by then, but her eyes turned back toward him, as empty as her hands.
“The duffel’s gone. They were in my house, goddamn it! They were in my house!”
A pair of shapes lunged up the outside front steps, straddling either side of the door, ready to come crashing through. Blaine opened up with a barrage that blew out the vertical slabs of glass on either side of the door, scattering the intruders the instant they had spun to burst through.
“You should have waited until they were inside!” Liz snapped. “Didn’t my father teach you anything?”
“They were carrying submachine guns. You want to face that in close with a single pistol?”
“I’ve got a twelve-gauge and a pistol upstairs.”
Blaine started to slide away. “I’m going outside after them.”
“Around the rear?”
He nodded.
“Looks like my father taught you something, after all, soldier. I’ll head upstairs, find a window to cover you from.”
Blaine left Liz moving in a crouch for the shattered front windows. He hurried to the rear of the house, staying low beneath the sight line of all windows he passed. Back in the kitchen, he slid across the tile floor and shimmied to the rear door on his stomach. Its top half was glass, covered by open miniblinds. He rose only enough to reach the knob and yanked the door open.
He dropped out down the back steps, careful not to let the door slam before he sank to the grass. Trees rimmed the yard, offering plenty of cover, the farm’s fields invisible from this vantage point. Blaine clung to the house, keeping to the deepest shadows as he worked his way around to the front. Felt his heart thudding hard against his chest and calmed himself with a few deep breaths as he reached the front yard, which sloped down into a rolling meadow. The lake lay beyond that meadow, plenty of cover from trees and low shrubs for any man who needed it.
They were probably dealing with three to five well-armed men, decent shots but far from experts. The problem was picking out their positions in the night. Time and firepower were both in the opposition’s favor, and they knew it. A pistol in these conditions was good up to fifty, maybe sixty yards; a rifle, two to three hundred. And the gunmen had come equipped with laser sights. Blaine needed to determine where they were, swing the odds a little in his favor.
Think!
The Glock felt foreign in his grasp. Six months without holding a weapon, and they all become strangers. But this wasn’t Condor Key anymore and he didn’t have time to learn to shoot all over again. He had eight shots left, another full clip in the car if he wanted to risk a dash to it.
Blaine pressed his back against the house, his insides tightening briefly until a sense of exhilaration began to spread through him. He remembered the feeling of negotiating his way past the gators, the mind-set, and felt it fill him again. A familiar chalky taste spread from the back of his mouth, and Blaine knew he was back in his world.
His rental car was diagonally across from him, parked between the house and the barn under partial cover. He focused on it, judging distance and darkness, planning his next move.
It was time to flush the bastards out and take them as they came.
Liz had been keeping the loaded Mossberg twelve-gauge in the corner of her bedroom, and her .380-caliber Smith & Wesson in the top drawer of her night table. She reached the second floor and padded softly down the hall. Started to ease the door open.
A burst of breeze caught it from the other end of the hall and pushed the door all the way ajar. A breeze meant an open window, a realization that drove her to the floor below the first burst of submachine-gun fire from down the hall. She kicked the door closed behind her and scurried for the shotgun as more gunfire tore c
hunks from the old wood.
She grabbed the Mossberg by the butt and drew it down. Shoulders pressed against the wall, she leveled it and fired through the door. Pumped and fired again, watching another huge chasm appear at chest level in the wood. She heard a grunt, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Liz chambered a third round and moved across the room toward the ruined door. Her ears stung from the roar of the shotgun’s blasts, feeling as though they needed to pop. Almost to the door, she brought the shotgun to waist level, preparing a quick burst through.
She heard the thump of heavy footsteps an instant before the door was torn from its hinges and slammed back into her, the intruder she had shot screaming as they both tumbled to the floor with the door between them.
His upper body angled awkwardly over the driver’s seat, Blaine got the rental car started and gunned the engine. He slid his feet backward against the ground and shifted into drive with one hand while he kept the brake pedal depressed with the other. The final touch was to place a rock over the accelerator. As soon as he took his hand away, it would hold the pedal down, freeing the car to shoot across the field in an apparently desperate escape attempt.
He released the rock and the brake pedal at the same time, had all he could do to lurch out of the car and get the door closed before it dragged him away with it. He sprawled to the ground as the car picked up speed with a grinding screech that sprayed mud backward.
The car shot across the field, drawing fire just as he expected it would. Blaine was hidden in the darkness of the low grass before the first of the bullets chewed into its frame and coughed glass in all directions. More rapid fire blew out both driver’s-side tires, sending the car into an uncontrolled spin.
Blaine traced the sources of the barrage, memorizing the positions of the gunmen. Certain they weren’t watching anything but the car, he stepped out and steadied his pistol in both hands. When the next muzzle flashes came, Blaine fired toward the two nearest shooters, sighting down the line of what he expected was their bores.
He was in motion again before he could tell if his bullets had found their mark, rushing low across the meadow with his gun poised for its next target.
Liz’s breath was knocked out of her on impact with the floor. She maintained enough presence of mind to try and right her shotgun, but it lay pinned between the door and her body.
A pair of bloodied hands groped for her throat. She finally looked up at the intruder and gasped, screaming.
The left side of his face had been blown away, the flesh hanging in huge clumps, the eye gone, part of his skull visible. Blood dripped from his mouth with each labored breath, the smell of it sickening as he loomed over her.
Liz had only one arm free, and she jammed it under his chin to keep him off her. The intruder’s breath turned wet and gurgly, but his hands found her throat and began to squeeze.
Liz fought to extract her other arm, maybe free the shotgun in the process, but it was no use. She felt the life being pressed out of her, the pressure in her head already incredible as she fought for breath, writhing, kicking with her feet.
Her free hand flailed backward, trying to reach the night table and the .380 Smith & Wesson inside the top drawer. Coming up empty, she heaved herself backward and felt her back grinding against the bedroom’s bare floor.
The intruder stayed right with her, the door dragged between them.
Liz heard herself gasping, felt her eyesight begin to dim as her free hand smacked the drawer. She located the drawer pull and yanked with all her might. The drawer popped out, banged to the floor, and spilled its contents all around her.
The intruder seemed not to notice, his remaining eye fixed with hateful intensity on her face, as if he didn’t care if he died right now so long as he could take her with him.
Liz’s hand was shaking as it whipped desperately across the floor, feeling for the .380. A finger brushed steel and then her palm found the pistol’s butt. Her hand closed around it as the man with half a face rose further over her to better his angle.
Her eyes had started to mist over when she brought the .380 upward. Aiming it from behind her own head. Firing blind.
The gunshots sent sharp needles digging into her eardrums, the pain dizzying as she continued to fire. One bullet caught the man under the chin, another just over the top of his nose. Liz felt more blood shower over her when impact lifted the man upward and dumped him off, freeing her to breathe again.
She drank in the air, not even trying to move, eyes and gun fixed on the corpse whose blood was spreading across her floor, as she waited for him to stir again.
Blaine moved in a well-practiced zigzag. He dared the gunmen to turn their bullets upon him so the flashes would give their positions away. He offered return fire each time there was a flash of gunfire, counting his shots to make the most of his final clip, salvaged from the rental car.
He could feel the automatic fire burning the air close enough for him to catch the sparks, extinguished like candles blown out one at a time as he continued his jagged charge. Then he heard the soft crunch of grass and brush underfoot as men rushed to get away.
He had them! They were trying to flee!
But where were they? When darkness or camouflage denies sight, the trick is to aim at sound; at least use it to pick out shadows that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Blaine hunkered low, closing like a predator on its prey when he reached the line of trees that separated Liz’s house from the rolling meadow leading down to the lake. He placed a hand on the ground to brace himself and felt something wet and sticky coating the grass. Blood.
Blaine brought his fingers to eye level, trying to see the blood through the darkness. He followed the blood trail along the tree line until it vanished near the road. The gunmen had made it off the property, had run away with their tails between their legs.
Blaine turned and sped back toward the house and Liz.
Chief Lanning gazed up from the sheet that covered the body of the man Liz had killed in her bedroom.
“So, Ms. Halprin, was this one of the men driving the truck that forced you off the road, or wasn’t it?”
“There’s not enough of his face left to be sure.”
“Uh-huh.” The chief stood up, looked back and forth from Liz to Blaine. “I’m gonna have to close this room off for the state police crime people.”
“I wouldn’t have slept in it tonight anyway.”
“Got a call in to them now. Detectives should be here within the hour.”
“I know the procedure.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do, Ms. Halprin.” Lanning peered back down at the body. “Just like I’m sure you know how to use a gun. Couple different kinds, in fact.”
“She comes upstairs,” Blaine interjected, “finds an intruder. She supposed to think he’s here selling magazine subscriptions?”
“Where were you?”
“Out looking for my dog.”
“Didn’t notice one in your car earlier today.”
“That’s why I was out looking for him, Chief.”
Lanning’s face reddened. “I don’t think I got your name this afternoon.”
“It’s tough to spell. I’ll write it down for you.”
“’Cause what I’m thinking is that maybe you’re the kind of man gets called in to solve other people’s problems for them. Woman with Ms. Halprin’s background would know where to look to find one.”
“And what kind of background is that, Chief?” Liz snapped at him. “Maybe you’re forgetting who the victims here were.”
Lanning’s expression tightened some more. “Maybe I’ll check the rest of the property. See what I find.”
“Why don’t you call Rentz first?” Liz shot at him. “See if he approves.”
Lanning squared his shoulders and flashed her a look. “You implying something?”
“Let’s leave the chief to his work,” Blaine said, drawing Liz’s rigid frame away and positioning himself between her and
Lanning. He glanced down at the bloodied sheet, a man with his face mostly missing beneath it. “Maybe he’ll want to interrogate the victim.”
They sat on the porch outside, waiting for the state police detectives to come. Blaine cradled Liz’s shotgun in his lap, back against a boarded-up window.
“You know what set my father off, don’t you?” she asked him.
“You’re in my light,” Blaine said. “And, yes, I think I do.”
Liz moved out of the way.
“Well, that wasn’t any underwater survey team you watched dive and never come back up last week, I can tell you that much. You were describing top-of-the-line salvage equipment.”
“Then what do you think Maxwell Rentz was looking for under that lake?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out tomorrow.”
Liz’s features tightened. “The lake’s not as easy a dive as it looks.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it’s haunted.”
Liz told him the story as her grandfather had recounted it to her a hundred times. Blaine did not interrupt once.
“Civil War soldiers?” he asked when she was finished.
“Their ghosts. Protecting some kind of treasure. That’s what the legend says.”
“And you believe this legend?”
“Not until last week. Not until what happened to Rentz’s divers.” Blaine started to shake his head, but she continued. “And they weren’t the only ones, either: five more have disappeared in the past twenty years, along with a local boy who went in for a swim. His body turned up on shore a few days later, all ripped to shreds.”
“We talking about ghosts or sea monsters here?”
Liz was unmoved. “You weren’t here last week. Something had ahold of Rentz’s divers, I’m telling you, and when the men on shore yanked up the compressor line to their air bazooka, nothing followed.”
“Liz—”
“Then the day before my father disappeared, Rentz sent down an unmanned submersible. It never came back up, either.”