The Kill Radius

by Nichole Christoff

  But morning changed to afternoon, and the farther I went, the fewer structures I saw. They all had one thing in common, however. With February being too late for deer season and too early for turkey, most of the shelters I spied from the track had the desolate look of being closed for the winter. So when I saw a plume of white smoke rising from a distant patch of pine, I searched out the nearest lane, parked the SUV, and got out of the vehicle to investigate on foot.

  The sandy trace that jutted from the dirt throughway might’ve been a logging road once. Or maybe it had been cut into the earth generations ago by the neat feet of white-tailed deer. In recent years, all-terrain vehicles had turned it into a wide, deeply rutted trail, choked with weeds but clear of trees and shrubs.

  I followed the trail’s arc, carefully watching my step and the winter woods all around me. Birds flitted in the branches. A cold breeze sighed softly. I startled a rabbit. It bounded away—and then the undergrowth opened up into a wide clearing, revealing the largest log cabin I’d ever seen.

  The place was like a so-called camp the Vanderbilts would’ve built in the Adirondacks. Certainly, some architect had taken a page out of an Arts and Crafts–era design book. Rough-hewn timbers framed a porch with a pinnacle that pointed straight into the gray sky. River stone, hauled from who knows where, formed the foundation and an enormous chimney that continued to give rise to the smoke I’d spotted from a mile away. But this place wasn’t a blast from the past in every respect. From the cover of the tree line, I noted the windows were high-tech Thermopanes and not exactly the kind of thing I’d read about in Little House on the Prairie. Of course, none of this meant the place belonged to Hunch Nevis. But if Nevis was here, and if he’d brought Corinne, he wouldn’t be alone.

  With that thought to motivate me, I hunkered down under the cover of stunted pines, sumac, and tangles of honeysuckle brown with the season. I watched and waited. But nothing moved at the lodge, and no one came or went.

  I didn’t have my father’s skills in the woods—his had been honed in the jungles of Vietnam—but thanks to him, I was far from a tenderfoot. Slowly, I circled the lodge from the shelter of the scrub. Outside a mud porch on the north side of the building, four all-terrain vehicles with knobby tires and stout roll bars waited. Together, these ATVs could accommodate eight men at least and carry equipment for more.

  Tall windows bracketed the chimney on the west side of the house. Through them, I spied an enormous flat-screen TV. Life-sized basketball players flickered across it. I picked out actual men on the oversized sectional. There were half a dozen of them. One got up, crossed to a wet bar, and came back with a long-necked bottle of beer. Even at a distance, he looked a little too much like Vern.

  Pushing down a fight-or-flight adrenaline spike, I moved on, intent on completing my circuit. Because, without backup and the absolute certainty that Nevis was holding Corinne against her will, this could only be a reconnaissance mission. But when I rounded the far side of the lodge, my little sojourn in Forbidden Oaks became something else altogether.

  As I eased behind a hickory tree and set my sights on a wild holly, I heard a thunk…thunk…thunk I couldn’t quite identify. I peered through the brush on the south side of the house. Hunch Nevis, decked out like a lumberjack in a red buffalo-check jacket, swung an axe high over his head and brought it down on an unsuspecting log. The blow cleaved the wood clean in two. Nevis paused, bent to gather the split timber, and with his gnarled hand, tossed it toward a cord of firewood stacked a stone’s throw from the south-side door.

  He was alone, as far as I could tell. But I was well aware his bodyguards were within shouting distance. And I didn’t want to tangle with them again. Getting myself killed or worse wouldn’t locate Corinne. And if the gambler had locked her away for some reason, I couldn’t free her if Nevis fed me to his guard dogs. So I willed myself still. I’d wait him out. But Nevis didn’t seem to be in a hurry to head indoors.

  Instead, he wiped his brow with a rumpled bandana he pulled from his jeans—and in his rasping voice, he called, “What’s the matter, Miss Vivian? Lose your way?”

  Standing still wasn’t an option, and for a split second, I considered making a break for my SUV. But with the engines on those ATVs, Nevis’s goons would mow me down in a minute. So, head held high, I stepped into the clearing, halting three yards from Nevis and his long-handled axe.

  “I’m not lost at all,” I replied. “I’m just checking out the wildlife. What brings you to this neck of the woods, Mr. Nevis? There aren’t many casinos here.”

  “Everyone needs a little fresh air and exercise. Especially an old man like me. These young fellows in my employ, however?” He chucked his chin at the lodge, a pointed reminder that the odds were in his favor. “They only come outside when they have to.”

  “Really?” I replied. “I thought your employees liked to work in the open. Like Eddie Jepson taking in the breeze on the deck of the Lady Luck. Or skulking around in the great outdoors to spook pregnant women at home.”

  Nevis’s laugh was like withered cornhusks rattling in an October breeze. “Oh, Miss Vivian, you delight me. Except I shouldn’t call you Miss Vivian, should I?”

  “You can call me Jamie.”

  “Ah, yes.” Nevis planted the head of his axe on the ground and leaned on the shaft as if it were a walking stick. “You’re Jamie Sinclair, only child of Senator James Sinclair. You see, I saw old footage of you on the news.”

  “That’s interesting. I didn’t know criminal lowlifes watched the news.”

  Nevis’s laugh became a wheeze. “You’d be surprised what we do, Miss Sinclair. In any case, I heard you nearly had an accident in the stairwell of my club. I’m delighted you weren’t injured.”

  “Me, too.”

  Nevis picked up his axe, choked up on the handle like a batter ready to bunt. “Why don’t you tell me what you wanted then and what you want now?”

  “I want the pregnant woman. I know your boys have been following her. I want you to leave her alone.”

  “Mrs. Walther,” Nevis said, “isn’t with me.”

  In Nevis’s mouth, Corinne and Ray’s last name sounded like a dirty word. Whatever he had against them, it was hard and hateful. And when Nevis said the name, I wasn’t convinced my friend wasn’t chained up in his lodge.

  I said, “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because if I had Mrs. Walther in my custody, I’d trade her for what I’ve got coming to me.”

  “And what would that be?”

  But instead of answering, Nevis turned his back on me. He grasped another log and upended it on his stump. “You have ten minutes to return to the main road, Miss Sinclair.”

  “That almost sounds like a promise,” I said.

  “It is.”

  Nevis raised his axe high. I took off at a run and dove into the woods. I let the undergrowth screen me as I blazed a trail toward the trace that had led me to the lodge.

  I didn’t dare let Nevis see me.

  Because Hunch Nevis didn’t keep his word.

  Chapter 32

  The second my boot thudded down on the uneven terrain of the lane between Nevis’s lodge and the road, the first ATV roared over the knoll behind me. Two of Nevis’s goons whooped and hollered as they bore down on me. And their compatriot, standing on the cargo platform at the rear, propped his elbows on the roll bar and opened fire on me with a flat-black assault rifle.

  Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  Instinctively, I leapt for thick brush and safety. Bullets tore the leathery leaves of a wild magnolia as I hammered past it, intent on finding a new way to the main road and my SUV. And just as I began to put some distance between my tender hide and the ATV racing along the lane, a second all-terrain vehicle burst from a thicket, digging into the leaf litter in front of me and cutting off my escape route.

  I turned on a dime, fled down a slope where hardwoods grew few and far between. Cypress dotted the landscape instead. I stumbled and fell on th
e hip still sore from my encounter with Monique. Momentum carried me down a muddy embankment. I tried to right myself, but I tumbled.

  Head over heels, I splashed into the shockingly cold waters of a marsh.

  My arrival set off ripples through the scummy bracken. Cattails, the color of winter wheat, stirred and parted. A massive S-wave flowed toward me and one word formed in my brain.

  Gator!

  With a wordless shout, I fought my way through the shallows, scurried onto the bank. Black muck sucked at my boots. I glanced over my shoulder, saw a snout at the waterline, reptilian and moving fast.

  The second ATV burst between stunted oaks and bore down on the water hole. Too late, the driver saw the marsh. Too late, he cranked the wheel. The vehicle skidded off the embankment, water spraying in a wide arc beneath the tires, before overturning to dump its passengers in the swamp. Men shouted. Water churned. I dug in my heels and didn’t look back.

  On the run, I took my bearings. I used the sun and the rumble of the first ATV to orient myself toward the Escalade and the road. If the men in that vehicle reached my SUV before me, I’d be toast.

  I swung toward the bumpy lane where the ATV cruised slowly and dropped behind a rotted log. Through trees and brush, I watched the men crane their necks as they searched for any sign of me. When they passed my hiding place, I made my move.

  I darted onto the trail behind them, let loose with a high-pitched whistle between my teeth. Standing on the platform on the back of the vehicle, Machine Gun Joe let go of the roll bar to whip around and face me. He raised his weapon to his shoulder—just as his driver pulled a tight 180 to turn the ATV around. Joe fired, but the hailstorm of bullets went wide. I sprinted up the lane as if returning to the lodge. And when I heard the ATV’s engine rev, I threw myself into the undergrowth again.

  I crashed through the brush, barreled beneath the dark and wilting evergreen leaves of a rhododendron whose branches touched the ground. Lying flat on my stomach on the forest floor, I willed my breathing to slow and my ears to hear. A beetle, black and shiny, emerged from the leaf litter. He tracked up and over the back of my hand. I didn’t dare move a muscle to shake him off.

  Between the trunks of obscuring trees, I saw the ATV rolling slowly along the lane. It halted. Machine Gun Joe jumped from the back of it, his automatic rifle in his firm grip.

  He pushed into the brush to hunt for me.

  He was an ugly man with pockmarked cheeks and no neck, built short and squat like a country outhouse, and he swept right, poking the muzzle of his gun into the hollow beneath a fallen log. Finding nothing, he turned left, then paused to listen. And that’s when his eyes locked on my rhododendron.

  Fear scrabbled along my nervous system. I held my breath, refused to move. The snap of a twig could give me away.

  Joe’s cronies cheered him on from their ATV. Their crass catcalls left me in no doubt of what they’d do to me if they caught me. The breeze shifted and I could smell them, all beer and body odor, but Joe smelled something else as well.

  He paused, nostrils flaring. In two strides, he crossed to a rotten stump and kicked it hard. But I wasn’t hiding inside of it, and its resident burst from the decaying tree in a blur of claws and fur.

  A thirty-pound badger tore into Joe, snarling and slicing at his legs with its nails and teeth. Joe shrieked, swinging at the creature with the butt of his rifle. He accidentally fired into the sky.

  Tat-tat-tat!

  His pals shouted for him. And he turned tail and ran. Fighting through the brush, he collapsed onto the cargo platform of the ATV.

  The driver hit the gas.

  And I hit the trail.

  With Nevis’s heavies headed the wrong way, I hotfooted it toward my car, negotiating the thick groundcover as well as I could. Wayward roots tripped me, angry brambles clawed at me, but fear and soul-deep determination kept me going. And when I rocketed from the undergrowth onto the main roadway, panic nearly turned me inside out.

  I didn’t see my SUV.

  But then there it was, twenty yards up the road, right where I’d left it, crowding the ditch. And with the hum of the ATV much too close for comfort, I sprinted to my vehicle. I clambered inside and sped away.

  When I reached Beauville’s city limit, I turned in to a nice, quiet neighborhood. On a tree-lined street among cookie-cutter houses, with bicycles on the lawns and hopscotch games chalked on the sidewalk, I pulled over. I folded my arms on top of the steering wheel, buried my face there, and let the shakes take control.

  After all, adrenaline and near-death experiences will do that to a person.

  When the shivering subsided, I fumbled for my cellphone. I called Ray, figuring the hospital would’ve let him go by now. He answered on the first ring.

  “ ’Lo?”

  “How are you, Ray?”

  “Forget me, kid. You find Corinne?”

  “I know where she isn’t.”

  “The cops said the same thing. They were just here. I tried the hospitals again. Her mother’s just sick…”

  “You’ve got to take it easy—”

  “Take it easy? I’m going out of my mind!”

  And I could’ve sworn I heard Ray choke back a sob.

  “Ray, I’ve got to ask you a tough question.” I drew a deep breath. “Why does Hunch Nevis know your name?”

  “My name?”

  “He knows the name Walther.”

  “I’ve been around this town a long time, kid. Ray Walther Investigations.”

  “Well, does his interest in Corinne seem new?”

  Ray’s rage blasted through my phone like an A-bomb. “If that bastard’s got her—”

  “He doesn’t. He said if he had her, he’d trade her for what he’s got coming to him. And I believe him.”

  Ray said nothing.

  “What’s Nevis got coming to him, Ray?”

  “A world of hurt,” Ray replied, sounding like the man he used to be. “If Nevis so much as frowns at Corinne or the baby—”

  “He’s not going to harm them.”

  Because Hunch Nevis believed he had too much riding on them.

  I just didn’t know why or how.

  “You haven’t given up, have you, kid? You’re still looking for her, aren’t you? You swore.”

  “Yes,” I assured him. “I swore.”

  And a deep sadness took hold of me. The old days—and the old Ray—were gone. And whether I liked it or not, getting all of us to tomorrow was up to me.

  “I’ll call you soon,” I promised, “with news.”

  But as I disconnected, my phone chimed to say I had another incoming call. It was Barrett. And he didn’t waste time on salutations.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded.

  “I’m right as rain,” I told him, though it wasn’t completely true.

  “I’m at Gunnar’s Pier. I think you’d better get down here.”

  “Why?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “I’m with Beauville PD and the Coast Guard. We’ve got something I think you need to see.”

  Chapter 33

  A hundred years ago, men like Ernest Hemingway flocked to Gunnar’s Pier to accompany a legendary fisherman named Captain Ivar Gunnar into the rich blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. In those days, those men would fight the sea for trophies of sailfish, swordfish, and marlin. Sometimes they won—but times change.

  With the advance of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty-first, the pier the great captain had built became a relic. On the western edge of Beauville’s shoreline, the former landmark had been surpassed by longer, stronger, newer piers. Toward the east, shrimpers ran their commercial operations from sundown to sunup, and each new dock was locked off with gated chain link. By comparison, Gunnar’s Pier was rather shabby. And rather out of the way.

  On the pocked pavement where Gunnar’s Pier met the coast, I careened to a halt, found a bevy of emergency response vehicles that had reached the quay ahead of me. The blue and white
lights of three police cruisers flashed in an urgent circuit, warning civilians to stay away, and a plain white panel van, a rusty Ford F-150, and an SUV with coast guard markings sat slantwise at the curb. The patrol car emblazoned with Fort Donovan decals had to be Barrett’s, and as I slid from the Escalade, I spied Barrett himself, waiting for me behind yellow crime-scene tape the city cops had presumably strung across the entrance to the pier.

  With trepidation, I jogged to the barrier. A peace officer in the dark-blue uniform of Beauville’s finest scowled when he saw me coming. He tossed up a hand to halt me.

  “It’s all right,” Barrett told him. “She’s with me.”

  And then it was Barrett’s turn to frown as I ducked beneath the tape.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he demanded.

  I glanced down.

  The brand-new brown twill pants I’d bought at Walmart just that morning were torn and dirty. I’d lost three buttons from the placket of my new jacket as well. My hands were filthy, and if they were anything to go by, my face and hair must’ve been a sight to see.

  “Well?” Barrett said.

  “You don’t want to know,” I replied.

  A wayward muscle jumped in Barrett’s jaw, straining with the supreme effort of keeping his mouth shut. Without a word, he jerked his head toward the end of the pier. I took that as an invitation to accompany him, and together, we headed across the weather-beaten planks.

  Two police officers had corralled a pair of boys partway down the dock. The boys looked to be ten or eleven years old, and judging from the well-used bicycles dumped at their feet and the collapsible rods strapped across their handlebars, they’d come here after school to fish. But they must’ve caught more than they bargained for. Clutching cans of Coke I imagined an officer had provided as a goodwill gesture, the boys waved wildly at the end of the pier and down into the rising water of the incoming tide.