There was a thump on the door, and another, and then sounds of bullets ricocheting. None of them came through. The steel was thick enough and the blasts thumped dully outside. It wouldn’t take them long to get another key, though, or to realize that if they just blow through the lock it would open the door.
I knelt down and cupped my fingers.
Michael shook his head. “I’m never going to fit in there. I’ll try and hold them off,” he said, and knelt down, cupping his hands.
He boosted me up. I crawled into the space, my shoulders just fitting, snug, and only if I stayed on an angle. I wasn’t sure if the passageway narrowed ahead. If it did, I’d be stuck. I wouldn’t be able to come back or go forward. With pain shooting through my finger nub, I hoped like hell the passage wouldn’t narrow.
Below me, a loud thump and a bullet ricocheted. The lock cracked. The door creaked open. Ahead of me, Gemma crawled.
“Can you go any faster?” I urged her.
She got moving. There was a scream and a volley of gunshots. We kept on moving.
Chapter 26
Regret
We continued crawling for a few hundred meters. It was slow going, and I half expected someone to be crawling up behind us. I stopped from time to time, made the others stop, listened out, didn’t hear shit. We whispered in there but the voices carried.
I felt a pang of regret for leaving Michael back there. He’d never get to see his daughter grow up, never get to see whether she survived this, whether his actions, his heroism, had been worth the cost. I made myself a promise then that I’d get Sarah out of this, if nothing else, even if it cost me my own life, even if it cost everything.
“There’s some light ahead,” Sarah hissed.
“Slow down,” I said back.
Gemma didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure she could. Even though her eyes had gained some life back, they weren’t what they once were, vibrant, full of lust and life and joy. I remembered those empty, dead eyes, glad I couldn’t see them right now. We slowed down as we approached the lights. Noises grew louder as we got closer.
A man moaned. “Oh, baby. Yeah. Yeah, baby.”
And then, we were close enough to hear the slapping and the squelching sounds. I told Sarah to keep going. “Don’t look down,” and I knew as soon as I said that she would look down, and I wished I could stop her from going first, from seeing what she was about to see. No ten-year-old should have to see that, not unless they accidentally walked in on their parents, and even then, they would be scarred for life. But, she was already scarred for life, and her injuries and traumas were far worse. She’d probably just block this out. One quick glance; it would disappear amongst the memories of pain and torture.
Sarah didn’t stop or look down. She kept going. But Gemma stopped over the grate, eyes down. I nudged her feet, tried to push her forward, but she didn’t move. I pinched her and pushed again. Eventually, she dislodged herself. I think I heard something she said, but it was only under her breath. “Fucker.”
She was right, of course. As soon as I was able to see down through the grill, I could see what all the moaning and slapping and squelching was about. I was partially right. Dan Branson was riding someone from behind. They were bent down under him, doggie style. He was grinding and grinding into the other man.
I couldn’t see his face, but I knew the back of that head. I’d chased it through the forest, through the thicket, near that golf course, near the cemetery. Adrian Jones. It was Adrian crying out as Dan thumped away into his behind, and then they were cupping each other, lifting, holding, kissing. Adrian rolled over and faced the ceiling, and I put all of my weight into the grill. I punched through the grate and dived forward onto the bed, on top of them. There was a moment of panic and fear as they both squealed, and then Gemma dropped through the hole in the air vent above and held out her hands for her daughter to jump down. Sarah should have stayed up there. Too late now.
Adrian slapped at me. He couldn’t see who I was, but I had him around the neck. Dan got up and pulled me off him, thumped me across the head. I turned and sent my fist flying into his face. He whirled back from me into the wall, and then came at me again, a raging bull charging, his fists raised high, thumping down. I feinted left, dodged, brought a big uppercut into his stomach, his solar plexus. He crumpled in over himself. Momentum carried him forward.
“Get the sheets,” Gemma said, coming alive. I passed them to her and she managed to wind them around Dan and tie him to a chair in the corner of the room.
Adrian stood up, pulled on some shorts and looked sheepish. “I’m sorry, babe. Oh my God! Sarah!” He saw her finally. “You’re okay!” He ran over to her, bent down. “You didn’t see that, did you?”
She wasn’t okay. Any idiot could see that, but Adrian Jones wasn’t just any idiot. He was a coward, and he felt like this was his chance to be the father. Thing was, he wasn’t even her father. Her father, Michael Connelly, was a much better man and he’d died trying to protect her. Adrian had just eaten his steak and come in here and fucked his friend. He wasn’t interested in his daughter. He was only interested in himself. I felt my ears burn with rage as I looked into Dan Branson’s face.
“You depraved motherfucker,” I said, and sent a kick flying into his chest.
The chair fell back and crashed into the wall. I picked him up, set him back on the three chair legs that were still there. He teetered. I thumped him with a left and a right in the chest as well. “How the fuck could you do that to anyone, let alone a kid?”
“Do what?” he managed after he gained a couple of breaths.
I sent a right hook into his mouth. A couple of teeth flew out. A bit of blood spurted. Good. “You know damn well what.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he protested. “I didn’t hurt her. What the fuck are you guys doing in my hideaway?”
I grabbed him by the hair and got my face right down into his. “You think that because you made her mother do that, that you made her mother cut off parts of her body, that you didn’t have anything to do with it? You sicken me.”
I brought my head forward in a crashing motion and heard the crunch as his nose crumbled under my forehead.
“It . . . it wasn’t me. I didn’t make them. I didn’t make her. I didn’t know!” He was trying to save his skin now, doing what any scumbag would do.
I wasn’t going to fall for it.
Chapter 27
Justice
“You’re a filthy, cold-blooded, murdering motherfucker,” I snarled.
Dan just spat blood in my direction. “I didn’t murder anyone.”
I turned, restraining myself. I didn’t want to go to jail, and this sucker wasn’t worth killing. There were plenty of other ways I could think of to make him regret his actions, make him wish he wasn’t alive.
“I never killed anyone,” he repeated.
I swung around and took a couple of steps towards the chair. He tried to raise his hands under the blankets, but they bound him tightly.
“Okay, okay! I did. I . . . I . . . I killed one person. Well, I . . . I had one person killed. No one else. I swear! I swear on my life, on his life.” He nodded towards Adrian.
“Just the . . . the guy with the camera, the photographer. I didn’t mean to, but he was snooping around. I know he was your friend, but he was looking into my brother, and Michael should never have inherited the business. He was always the favorite. Always! Didn’t matter what I wanted to do or how thoughtful I was, how considerate and calm and collected and kind! No, they always lauded him because he had the business acumen. He was tough and wiry and knew how to get things done when they needed to be done.
“I tried. I tried to be like him. But, if I’d inherited the company, if I’d been the one with the ships, I’d have made things different. I would have done them better, environmentally, consciously. We would have shipped soybeans, not oil. There would never have been any spills or ecological devastation. I would never have covered anything up
. They were mine by right. Your photographer was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I had my hand around his throat now. It was tightening slowly. “Tell me again how it was just an accident. What did he have on you?”
“He didn’t have anything, I swear! I just . . . it was an opportunity to frame my brother, to discredit him, to have him in jail, and the company would have had to go to me. I could have fixed things, made them better, made the world a better place...”
I held steady with my right hand around his neck and slapped him hard with my left. “And Rebecca Lancaster? What did she have to do with it? Just another one in the wrong place at the wrong time? Another perfect storm to make your brother the target of a police investigation? A scandal?” I demanded.
A tear came to his eyes even though I hadn’t hit him hard enough. Pussy. I considered hitting him again, as a thank-you for the near-drowning he’d put me through.
“Rebecca. I loved Rebecca. I don’t know who killed her but, whoever did, I’ll fucking kill them.”
He was in no position to kill anyone else now. If there was any killing going to be done, it would be me killing him.
At the mention of Rebecca’s name, Adrian made a run for it, took off towards the door to the bedroom. But Gemma was too quick. She stuck out a leg, brought him crashing down into the side of the bed. His nose crunched and I took pleasure in the sound. He curled up in agony, his hands clasped to his face. He bawled and bubbled and blubbered, the sack of shit that he was.
And then, Sarah shut the door. “Daddy!” she said.
“He’s not your dad,” I said. “Your dad was a good man. This guy’s a piece of shit.”
Gemma fumbled in the drawers. She obviously came to the same conclusion I had because she pulled out a small revolver, checked it was loaded and let off a round into Adrian Jones’ groin. Now he was really crying, and the pain was something worth crying about. I caught him under the arms and threw him onto the bed, slapped him around a few times to get his attention.
“Stop the blubbering,” I sneered in disgust.
He kept crying. I slapped him a few more times. “Why the fuck did you kill Rebecca Lancaster?”
“Daniel was seeing her. I was jealous. That filthy whore, sleeping with my man.”
“You don’t see the irony?” I said. “Your wife’s missing, your daughter’s missing, her body parts are turning up around the city, and you’re worried about whether your boyfriend’s having an affair with someone else, worried enough to go and kill her?”
“It’s all her fault, the fucking bitch,” he said. “Conniving little whore. Slut rascal.”
Gemma fired another round into the bed beside him and he shut up. It was good to see that she knew how to handle that thing.
Sarah was crying now, her whole body shaking. It must have been a lot to take in, finding out your dad’s not your dad, that he’s sleeping with another man, that your mom just shot him in the groin, and watching me beat the living daylights out of his boyfriend—the man who killed my photographer, my friend, Andy Duffy. I slapped Daniel again, hard.
“Don’t think you’re out of this just because you didn’t kill Rebecca. You thought you’d hire me, get me out of the way, start me looking into your naughty little deeds, your depravity, what you were doing to this young girl. I heard you in there, your voice, through the modulator. You think that’s enough of a disguise?”
The door opened then, and the lithe form of Sylvia Rodrigo wrapped a slender arm around Sarah Jones’s neck and pulled taut.
“It’s so good to see you, darling,” she said. “I’m so glad you could come out and play. But this game’s over.”
Gemma turned the gun on Sylvia, trained it on her heart. Sylvia showed that she had a knife in her hand and then she slashed it through the air and it rested on Sarah Jones’ tiny neck.
Chapter 28
Family
“Sylvia!” I gasped.
She ignored me, instead, snarled at Gemma. “Hi, Mommy.”
“How could you make a mother do that to her daughter? What did she do to you?” I said, indicating Gemma.
Gemma’s finger achingly tensed on the trigger.
“Don’t you dare, Mom,” said Sylvia.
And Gemma spoke for the first time. Her voice was hoarse. A whisper. “Why is she saying that?” The question was directed to me.
“You wanna know what it’s like to lose someone you love, piece by piece, year by year?” asked Sylvia through clenched teeth. “How could you do that to me? Give up your daughter, just abandon her, leave her for someone else to raise, leave me for someone else to raise. What kind of mother does that? What kind of mother are you?”
Realization dawned on Gemma’s face.
“She’s a mother who cares,” I said, “cares about her daughter enough to cut off her limbs, her ears, scalp her.”
Sylvia sneered. “Oh yes, she’s a mother who cares enough to abandon her first daughter and leave her to fend for herself, to grow up in New Mexico in foster homes, family to family, creepy father, creepy uncle, creepy mother, creepy everyone. There’s no justice in this world. How could a mother do that? How could a mother do what you did to your first daughter? What you did to me?”
Sylvia was a perfect storm. Her eyes registered narrow dots in tight slits, her knuckles clamped down hard on the knife. It shook in her hand. It scratched at Sarah’s neck.
“You would have killed Sarah if you had to, Gemma. If I’d told you to, you would have done it and you know it. In fact, I’m telling you to do it now. Pull the trigger. See what happens. Kill both your daughters in one fell swoop. Do it.”
Gemma raised her hands, dangled the gun on her thumb, spun it around, let the gun point downwards and held her arms outwards in a supplicating gesture, “Let her go.”
Gemma’s coarse whisper gained strength. Her eyes were alive. There was a fire in there. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do,” spat Sylvia, and her long elegant body took on a hunched, decrepit sadness. She was all bones and angles and teeth, gnashing, fuming, spitting. She was furious. “Don’t you dare tell me what to do, Mommy.”
I stepped forward between the two of them. I could see what Sylvia was thinking. The knife was ready to slice. Her elbow jerked up, the movement just before the final plunge. “Did you ever find out who your dad was, Sylvia?”
She froze. “My father?”
It was as if the thought had never occurred to her that it wasn’t just a mother, that she had a father too, and for a moment her eye twitched as the thought flitted through her head. “I didn’t need a father. I needed a mother and she left me, left me to rot, to be plundered and pillaged and hurt and destroyed. What mother could do that to her daughter? Well, she showed me, didn’t she? She showed me when she did it to her second child, to my little, half-sister. Well, Sarah, there’s nothing left but to say goodbye to your mommy, but before you do that, remember, she’s the one who did this to you. She’s the one who made you like this. She’s the one who’s killing you with her choices.”
Sarah wasn’t shaking now, but I felt my arms jerking about uselessly. I couldn’t get close enough. The knife would punch in before I got there, and Gemma was unable to access the gun quickly. Adrian was still crawling around on the bed, coward that he was. He wouldn’t be any help to anyone. Besides, he wasn’t this girl’s father and he couldn’t care less; not even when he’d thought he was. That was when Dan Branson spoke.
“You’re not our daughter, Sylvia. I would know if you were, and I know a hundred percent that you’re not. When I hired you, I hired you because you were beautiful, because I’m attracted to beautiful people, because I wanted to be with you. But then, I couldn’t let myself be. You were too young, too pure, too perfect. I didn’t want to corrupt how you were, to let my ideas change the way you thought, your views about the environment, about life. They were so pure. But now, I can see they were corrupted all along. You are pla
ying a part in a game.”
He was damn right about that. She’d been playing games this whole time, and I’d been taken right into them. My chest was pounding, but not a shadow on what the others must have been going through.
“He’s right,” said Gemma. “You’re not our daughter. He’s not your father and I’m not your mother. We had a daughter, a Sylvia, too. What’s your last name?”
“Rodrigo,” responded Sylvia, as if in a daze, as if suddenly realizing that the man in the room could be her father had changed her whole life view, the man that she’d looked up to, that she’d worked for on the boat, that she’d lived here with in this hideaway.
“We did put our daughter up for adoption,” said Dan. “We were young parents. We didn’t know what to do, how to look after a baby, someone beautiful, a bundle of joy. We found good parents, knew that they’d look after her, and they did for many years, and then they got in touch with us. They told us to come down and meet them at their place. We weren’t sure what to do. We called them straight away. They told us they’d been meaning to call before but they couldn’t—they couldn’t bring themselves to talk on the phone.
“Our Sylvia, Sylvia Rodrigo—same as you, but not you—she died, a car accident. She’d been riding a bike and a car reversed right over her. We were distraught, absolutely torn apart. But Sylvia, you’re not our daughter.”
Sylvia looked down at the girl in her arms, the missing hand, the missing ear, the circle of scalp that was no longer there, the blood on her head, around her eye. A child she had all but destroyed out of anguish and spite.
Nothing. It had all been for nothing.
Sylvia released the little girl, drew the knife back and plunged it down into her own heart. Sarah skipped over to Gemma, let her mother wrap her up in her arms while they cried together.
The Spill: The Beach Never Looked So Deadly (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 1) Page 13