The SUV pulls to a stop in a bare dirt alley lined with weathered wood fencing on both sides. The driver gets out and opens my door with his gun drawn. My backseat companion speaks for the first time. “Out.”
Always an opportunity.
Getting out of an SUV in handcuffs is a naturally clumsy business. I put my booted foot down on the running board, and as the driver reaches for me, I let myself lean too far, and my foot slips off. I crash into him, and he isn’t quite prepared for it; he staggers back and nearly goes down. Nearly. I’d hoped he’d drop the gun, but he doesn’t; he’s lithe, and as I roll to my feet and dodge behind the SUV, I know I haven’t bought as much time as I’d hoped. My backseat companion is already scrambling to get out; I can feel the shift of the vehicle against my back. I have a split second to look around and decide. Are they going to shoot me in the back?
Probably not. Mike’s succeeded in making me seem valuable. They want me. Doesn’t mean they won’t try to hit me in the leg, the shoulder—something nonfatal.
I run anyway.
“Hey!” I don’t know which of them yells that, but it doesn’t matter; I don’t hear a shot, but I do hear heavy footsteps behind me. Running in handcuffs slows me down. I dodge behind a fence and press myself flat against the rough, leaning wood; as the first man—the hipster—blasts past, I catch him with an outstretched foot on his shin and he goes sprawling. This time he does lose the gun. I dive, roll, and manage to get one hand around the grip. It hurts like holy hell, but I brace on my left and aim the gun right-handed at an angle from behind my back. Feels like I’m about to dislocate my shoulder, and thick bolts of agony come off the joint, but I meet the eyes of the second man through the fence break, and I see him calculate the odds. He can kill me, sure, but wounding takes a slower, more meticulous calculation at this distance, and his buddy’s in the way as he tries to get up. I have a clear shot. He does, too, if he wants to kill. But I’m betting he doesn’t.
“Drop it,” I tell him. “Fucking now.”
He shrugs and bends down to place the gun on the ground. “How do you think you’re going to get up, man? There’s two of us, one of you. You’re handcuffed. All we have to do is kick your ass.”
“Harder to do if you’re dead,” I tell him. “I’m a good shot.”
“From behind your back?” Hipster says. “Doubt it, my man.” He’s up now, mildly pissed off but uninjured, and he slips another gun out of an ankle holster. He aims it at me and sights on my shoulder. “I’m a good shot too.”
He’s got me, and he knows it. So do I. They still need me alive and talking, or he’d just go for it and shoot—and he will, if I make him.
I let the gun fall and roll over on my back; the release of tension on my shoulder feels like a shock all its own. I don’t fight when the two men haul me up to my feet and march me back out into the alley. The shorter one is putting some cruel pressure on my elbow, as if he means to tear something. The taller one seems more willing to forgive and forget.
We don’t talk. They take me around the SUV and into an open back gate in an equally dilapidated wooden fence, through waist-high weeds to a cracked back porch of a shotgun shack that looks like it saw better days in the 1950s. There’s a significant lean to it. The back door, though, swings open, and they shove me in.
It’s a kitchen. I immediately lunge forward, pretend to stumble, and fetch myself up against a dirty counter. This place has been empty a long time. There’s a raw hole where the stove would have been, and the fridge is gone too. They’re only a step or two behind me, and I can’t find anything useful in grabbing range. They spin me, and walk me down a filthy, peeling hallway with holes in the ceiling where light fixtures once lived. The place stinks of mold and unflushed toilets.
And it isn’t empty. In the cramped living room—at least, I guess that’s what it was once, because there’s a sagging sofa against one wall, and the gap-toothed remains of a brick fireplace—there’s another man waiting.
On the sofa are Miranda Tidewell and Mike Lustig, and for a sharp second I think they are on the crew . . . but then I see the gag on Miranda’s mouth, and the bruises and cuts on them both, and the way their arms are pinned behind their backs.
They’re prisoners.
Somebody kicks the bend of my knees, and I hit the floor hard, but I barely feel it. I’m looking at the fear and desperation in Miranda’s eyes. She’s been crying. Black trails of mascara down her cheeks stain the off-white cloth of the gag. There are lots of shallow, bloody cuts on her arms, blood staining her blue jeans where cuts were made on her thighs. Her left eye is swollen shut and dark red.
She’s in her worst nightmare, facing a helpless, tortured death. How many nights did she drink herself into a weeping mess over her daughter’s murder, and tell me she never wants to die that way?
Mike’s gagged, too, and if anything, he looks worse than she does. They didn’t hold back with him.
“You bastards,” I say. “Let them go.”
The new man directs his question not to me, but to the two on the couch. “Is this him?”
Mike ignores the question. Miranda nods. More tears break free and slip down her cheeks.
“Okay.” The new man is older, harder, skin like varnished walnut. He’s wearing a plain black suit, something off the rack at Sears, and I think, Prison issue, because he looks like a convict, someone who’s survived the toughest kind of time and come out distilled to a violent essence. He has a wicked combat knife in his right hand. He turns to face me, and there’s nothing in his eyes. “They say you know where Ellie White is. You’re going to tell us.”
They tried to beat it out of Mike, the sons of bitches. Mike didn’t talk—not that he knew where to even begin to look for the girl. Miranda talked, but she lied. She did only what she thought would help her get through this alive: send them after me, in the hopes I’d be able to find a way to stop them. I don’t blame her for that.
I blame them.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You’re the original kidnappers, right? The real crew who took the girl in the first place?” The longer I can keep this as a conversation, the more relaxed they’ll get. I need them complacent.
A tiny expression bends his lips. Distaste? Amusement? I can’t tell. “What makes you say that?”
“You’re organized. You clearly know what you’re doing,” I say. “How’d you lose the kid?”
“Not sure,” he says. “GPS died on the car close to this shit town.”
“Maybe your driver disabled it and took the kid himself.”
“I know my guy.” In a flash, that knife is at my throat. I instinctively try to pull back, but two more sets of hands grab my arms and hold me in place. Walnut’s face hasn’t changed. It probably won’t when he cuts my throat. And he will. He’s just admitted a federal crime to me, not to mention the abduction of the federal agent sitting across from me. The three of us aren’t walking out of here alive. In the back of my mind, I’m scared, but I can’t let that rule me. Panic won’t help.
“Now,” he says, “who has Ellie White? Where’s she being held?”
I have zero downside to telling him, but the fact that I do, in fact, have an idea where the kid might be means I have a card to play. It’s a low-value card, but I have to try. “There was a two-car wreck about a week ago,” I tell him. “On the outskirts of town, in the dark. Two men died. You want me to tell you more, you let the woman go. Have your guy drop her at the hospital.”
He stares at me for a second, then nods. “Okay.” Something’s wrong; I sense it like a sudden heat on my skin. “That’s a deal.” He calmly takes the knife away from my throat, slots it in a sheath on his belt, and in the same smooth motion draws a gun from a holster on the other side. It’s a semiautomatic, but that’s all I see as he turns away from me, sights, and fires.
He shoots Miranda Tidewell in the head.
It’s a kill shot. She’s looking at me, not him; she’s fearing my death. She never sees it coming,
and so I get to see that the last look in her eyes is anguish. Anguish for me.
The bullet he’s fired leaves a small beveled circle in her forehead. Prefrontal cortex, her ability to learn: gone. Memories, gone with her hippocampus. Bone shrapnel cascades through the soft tissue with the bullet, shredding her brain. A high-velocity bullet, like this one, leaves damage ten times its diameter in its wake.
I hear the shot while all this useless information burns through my own brain, but by then Miranda’s already dead. Her limbs are relaxing. Her eyes blank as empty glass. The bullet doesn’t exit, so the only visible damage is that small, ragged circle, and a trickle of blood.
Her body slumps back on the couch. It’s an empty sack now.
Mike’s thrashing against his restraints.
It hits me: a flash of shock, horror, and then I scream. It’s a roar of pain and rage I can’t stop, and neither can the two men holding me down; they’ve flinched in surprise at the shot, and I lunge up and into the man who’s killed Miranda, drive my head into his chest, and bull-rush him back onto the fallen bricks around the fireplace. He goes down. His head hits the corner of a jutting brick and breaks it off with the impact, which dazes him. He swings the gun down and tries to shoot, but I raise up, sweeping his gun hand with my shoulder, and when the shot comes, it’s already past me, headed for the other end of the room. I hear one of his men cry out. They can’t be far behind me. The wild shot he fired has hit one of his own.
I don’t know what Mike’s doing and don’t have time to look. I lower my chin and lean in as I explode upward with all the power in my legs, and the bony top of my skull connects with his chin and keeps going. The impact jolts through me like a train coming off the tracks, but it’s worse for him, a stunning hit that travels through bone to slam his brain against the top of his skull. Lights out. I feel his knees buckle.
As he goes down, I feel one of the other guys at my back. I can’t die here. That would be a bitter damn irony, with Gwen thinking . . . no, knowing . . . that I chose Miranda over her at the end. So I charge backward into him. It’s reckless.
It’s also effective. He yells. We both slam to the floor, and I’m lucky: the impact is mostly his. He’s my cushion, and as he squirms and tries to buck me off, my fingertips skim the gun that’s still gripped in his right hand. I grab his wrist and force it down hard. I feel something break in his hand, and he lets out a burst of a yell just as the spasm pulls the trigger, and a bullet goes into his side.
My tunnel vision is fading now, and I take in that Walnut Face is lying unconscious, but the gun’s still next to him; the hipster is the one who’s just inflicted his own wound. His shorter buddy is now leaning against the wall, gasping for breath, and half his shirt is red. I can’t tell where he was shot, but it’s bad. Mike has lunged up off the couch and is on his feet now, though he’s swaying and dripping blood. I only have time to take note of that before Hipster throws me off him in a convulsive thrust, and I topple over on my side.
Hipster’s still got the gun.
Mike draws his leg back in a powerful kick. It connects with the side of Hipster’s head and snaps it sharply to the side—not a killing thing, but it definitely makes the man forget what it was he was doing for a while. As he rolls over and tries woozily to get up, I kick him too—in the wounded side.
He goes down, curled in a fetal position. I toe the fallen gun away from him and slide it under the couch, then go back to Walnut and do the same for his. Mike, unasked, kicks the third gun away. It’s not really necessary; that guy has lost consciousness and has slipped down the wall to a sitting position. He’s left a broad red streak behind him.
We have a second to breathe. Mike sits down on the floor and, despite his bulk, works his handcuffed hands under his butt and under his feet until they’re in front. He searches pockets. Hipster has the handcuff keys, and Mike undoes mine, then his.
The first words out of his mouth when he pulls his gag off are “Motherfuckers.” It’s pure fury. He presses his fingers to Miranda’s throat. It won’t do any good. I could tell him that, but I don’t. Maybe I’m wrong.
I’m not wrong. He eases back with a sigh and shakes his head. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to erase the image from my head, of her worrying about me while the bullet enters her skull. Goddammit. The pain twists and tears inside me, but I have to push it aside.
I try to tell myself that she’s beyond all of this now. All the pain, the fear, the fury. It’s true, but it’s a cold truth with no comfort. “How’d they get you?” I hear myself ask. I shouldn’t sound that normal.
“Spike strip on the road out of town,” Mike said. “Five minutes after we dropped you off. Real efficient and professional. Once they had us covered, I gave up. Figured it might save her life.” He glances toward Miranda, and even though his face is badly swollen, I see the grimness underneath. He falls silent for a second, then forges ahead. “They wanted to know where Ellie White was.”
“Which you didn’t know.”
He shakes his head. “Miranda guessed Gwen would have told you whatever she knew. And she knew you were pretty much our only hope. They’d have gone after Vera Crockett if they could have, but she’s locked up, so . . .”
“She’s not,” I tell him. He stops and looks at me in surprise. “She broke out. More likely they let her go so they could hunt her down and kill her.”
“The cops?”
“Some of them, for sure,” I say. “They’re grid-searching for her right now. Maybe ten minutes until they reach this street. Faster, if somebody in this wasteland called in the shooting.”
He suddenly bends at the waist and coughs. Spits out some blood, and it scares the shit out of me. He waves off my bracing hands. “I’m okay. Had worse. Cut in my mouth, my lungs are okay.”
“There’s an SUV out back,” I tell him, and roll Hipster—who’s still unconscious, but definitely not dead—to grab the keys from his pocket. I leave him on his side and handcuff him with the same bracelets he used on me. He’s bleeding, could be going into shock, but the police will be here soon enough, and I can’t summon up much in the way of sympathy for him. I check the pulse on Walnut, lying by the fireplace.
He’s still breathing, but his skull injury looks bad. I search him and find a set of zip ties in his pocket; I use those to pin his limp arms behind him. I resist the white-hot urge to kick him, and go to put handcuffs on the second henchman, who’s also still breathing, by some miracle. I check all of them for extra handcuff keys and pocket what I find.
Then I stand up and say to Mike, “Time to get the hell out. Get a couple of those—” I’m about to say guns, because he’s closer to them than I am; we slid all three under the couch while our hands were still pinned.
He pauses me with one massive, upheld hand that he folds into a fist. I freeze. Then I hear the creak in the floorboards. Shit.
I meet Mike’s eyes. We silently have a conversation, and he nods.
I’m faster.
I throw myself flat on the floor, noise be damned, and sweep my arm under the couch. I only find one of the guns and a pile of dead cockroaches. My fingers crunch a couple as I grab the gun, but I barely notice. I stay on the floor, braced against the couch, and am dimly aware of Miranda’s motionless legs beside me; my focus is on the hallway that leads into the room.
A face appears in a blur, checking corners, and it’s about six inches above where I was looking. It draws back fast, and it takes me a second to place it, and then I try to slow my racing heartbeat. Shit. “Fairweather?”
“Cade?” he asks, and when he comes around the corner, he’s holstering his gun with careful, obvious motions. “What the hell is this?” He takes it in with a cop’s precision, stopping for a second on each still form to absorb information. “Is she dead?”
“Yes,” Mike says. I can’t answer. The past wraps us together in red-hot barbed wire, a painful trap that I knew I’d never quite escape, but I never wanted this. I never wanted her to die afraid an
d imprisoned like this. She deserved better. Everyone does. “That one shot her.” He indicates Walnut, over by the fireplace. “They’re all alive.”
Fairweather nods and takes a small compact radio from his belt. He recites the address into it and says he has two wounded. Then he hesitates, looks at the two of us, and says, “I’m bringing two men in who have information. Headed in now.”
He puts the radio back. I realize I’m still aiming the gun at him, and I wonder for a second just why I haven’t put it away, but that flash is paranoia, not rational thought. I hand the gun to Mike, who puts it in the small of his back. I dig under the couch and grit my teeth, because there are living cockroaches under there too; I shake them off and pull out another weapon. Too late, I realize that I’m probably putting my fingerprints on the gun that’s killed Miranda; odds are, it’s either this one or the one I held earlier. Shit. Not that I think Fairweather’s on the Wolfhunter PD’s payroll, or Carr’s, but . . . it nags at me.
Fairweather crosses the room and checks each of the still bodies. Then he looks at the two of us and says, “Come on. My sedan’s out back, official TBI car. I’ll get you somewhere safe out of here. I’ll send the county cavalry out here for these men, but not until the two of you are safe.”
“We need to get Gwen and the kids,” I tell him. “Stop at the Sparks house, get them out, and head for the border.”
He doesn’t like that, I can tell, but he nods. “Let’s go,” he says. When I hesitate, he sighs. “Come on, Sam, do you trust me or not?”
His gaze is on me and the gun in my hand.
I don’t want to, but I put it away.
We follow Fairweather out of the house, and he takes appropriate precautions before waving us to the cruiser. “Down,” he tells me and Mike as we pile in. Mike groans. He’s still bleeding from cuts, and badly bruised from a beating. “Low as you can get.”
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