Wolfhunter River

by Caine, Rachel

  “Wait,” she says, and drags me to a stop. “We can’t get out that way. We need a plan. There must be another way out of here.”

  “But Mom—”

  “Help me look!” I hear the shake in my sister’s voice, and when I look at her, she’s crying, but there’s something hard underneath the tears. That’s how Mom looks when she has something to fight against, and fight for. “Come on!”

  We’re only partway down the stairs again when we hear the lock disengage. Lanny freezes, and so do I. We turn to look.

  Mr. Sparks is dragging our mother down the stairs, holding her by one wrist as he slides her down. She’s lying on her back. She’s leaving a trail of fresh blood behind. I’ve never seen my mom hurt, not like this. She’s not moving. She’s not moving.

  I let out a scream, and I break free of Lanny, and I charge up the stairs right at him. My sister’s right behind me. Sparks seems like he has no idea what to do. Just a shocked old man. But that’s just his mask. Like my dad’s words. Like his smile.

  He hits me so hard I smash against the wall, and for a second I can’t pull myself up. I find myself stumbling on the stairs, and I realize that Mom’s eyelids are fluttering. Lanny’s struggling with Sparks. “Mom!” My voice comes out as a croak, so I try again. “Mom! We’re in trouble!”

  Her eyes fly open, and for a second they’re vague and confused.

  Then they fix on me, and they’re not confused at all.

  “Get your damn hands off my kids!” she shouts, and she spins around, still flat on her back, and kicks Mr. Sparks from behind. Not in the ass, like I would have, but right up between his braced legs. She kicks him like she means to score a field goal.

  He screams. He lets go of Lanny and stumbles down two steps. Then misses a step. Then he’s falling all the way down, and he hits the concrete floor at the bottom and slides limp for two or three feet before he comes to a stop, facedown.

  He isn’t moving. The gun slides out of his hand and across the floor. Vera runs to pick it up, and she holds it in trembling hands and aims it at Mr. Sparks.

  “Don’t!” Lanny’s voice is hoarse but loud. “Vera, don’t do it!”

  “I won’t,” Vee says. “Would serve him right, though.” She sounds tough, but she looks like she’s about to cry. “He was supposed to help me.”

  I reach out to my sister. She takes my hand. She’s coughing from where Mr. Sparks had his hand on her throat, and I know how that awful burning sensation feels. “Mom?”

  I hold out my other hand, and Mom takes it and climbs to her feet. She sways a little, but I feel her get immediately stronger and steadier as she hugs us to her, and for just that moment, everything’s okay again, everything’s right. It only lasts a second or two, and then she lets us go and moves down the steps. She pauses and presses her fingers to Mr. Sparks’s neck. “He’s alive,” she says. “Help me tie him up. Get his belt.”

  I stop her. “We don’t need to.” I grab his phone, his keys, and then I pull the remote control from his pocket. It has four buttons on it. The bottom left one opens the window, I remember. He pressed the top left one upstairs to lock his office door so the knob wouldn’t turn. One of the others must lock the bookcase—probably the right one on the top.

  So that just leaves the bottom right one. I point it at the door and press the button.

  There’s a harsh buzz, and the steel door pops open half an inch.

  Lanny runs down and opens the door wide, and light spills out from the room across the concrete floor. “Hey,” she says, “come on. You can come out now. You’re safe.” She looks back at Mom. “We can put him in here. Right, Connor?”

  “Right,” I say. “And leave him.” To die, I think, but I don’t say that. But for a long second I imagine him starving to death in there, falling down, turning to bones and dust.

  Lanny looks in the room again. I press the window control so I can see what she’s seeing.

  The two women are standing, hands folded. Tarla’s crying, but she’s not moving.

  Sandra is the one who breaks. She slumps, gasps, and moves to take Tarla by the hand.

  “No!” Tarla says. “No, we can’t, we can’t, he’ll punish us!” She looks scared to death. She keeps pulling away and standing at the foot of her bed.

  My mom takes all this in. I see it in her face, in her eyes, in the way she straightens up.

  The way she looks down at the man we trusted to keep us safe.

  She grabs him by the wrist and drags him limp as a dead fish across the concrete and into the room where the women are. His captives.

  The second they see him down and helpless, it all changes. Tarla screams, and it actually hurts to hear it because it’s like months of fear just come boiling out of her and turn into fury. She runs. I think she’s running for the door, but she stops and starts kicking him, hard, over and over, until Sandra grabs her and pulls her on.

  They step out of the room, and Tarla staggers like she’s been hit. She sags against the rough wall and sinks down to a crouch. I hear her white gown catching on the chipped rock and tearing.

  Mom turns and walks back out of the room. Mr. Sparks is starting to wake up, but he’s not as quick as she was. Maybe he hasn’t had as much experience.

  As soon as she’s clear, I press the control, and the door swings shut with a heavy, final slam.

  Mom takes the gun from Vera, who looks relieved to get rid of it, and she comes to stand next to me. Puts her arm around me.

  Mr. Sparks gets up and lunges for the door. We can hear him banging on it. Then he tries the window and smashes his fists into it over and over. Thump, thump, thump.

  “That’s the sound we heard,” Mom says. “It wasn’t a washing machine off-balance. It was the two of them, trying to let us know they were here. Hoping for rescue.”

  I nod. I press the bottom left button.

  The window shutter comes down, and we don’t see Mr. Sparks anymore. It’s like he doesn’t even exist, except for the thumping. If he’s screaming, we can’t hear him.

  Vee Crockett starts to help Tarla to the stairs, but my mom stops her. “Not yet,” she says. “You stay down here until I come back and tell you it’s safe.” She turns to me and holds out her hand for the remote. “Which one is it?”

  “The top right for the bookcase,” I tell her. “Top left for the office door. You’re going after her?”

  “Yes,” she says, and hugs me so fiercely I feel like my ribs might break, but it’s good pain, and I love her so much, that hurts too. Then she hugs my sister. “I love you. And I’m so proud of you. Stay here.” She hesitates, then hands my sister the gun. “You know how to use this. Protect them if you have to, sweetheart.”

  “What if you don’t come back?” Vee asks her. “What if she does?”

  “That’s my mom,” Lanny says. “My mom’s coming back.”

  There’s no doubt in her voice.

  Sandra Clegman comes over to us as my mom goes up the steps. She looks scared, still, but steady. “Give me his phone,” she says. I hand it over. “I can help.”

  There’s a passcode on the phone, but she stares at it for a second and then punches in a number. She must have watched him do it a hundred times, and it works. It unlocks.

  “What are you doing?” I ask her.

  “Texting his sister,” she says. She laughs shakily. “I loved to text. I usually did emojis. People still use those?”

  “Yeah. There’s even more now. But I don’t know if he would use emojis.”

  “No. He wouldn’t.” She looks thinner than her picture, like she hardly eats. I can see the bones in her wrists. She types out something and hands the phone back to me.

  It says TIME FOR DINNER.

  I look up at her. She shrugs. “If she’s carrying a dinner tray, it means she can’t have the shotgun,” she says. “He does this every night if we do what he says. We get to eat.”

  I look at Lanny and Vee. They’re listening. “And . . . if you don’t do wha
t he says?”

  “Then we don’t eat,” Tarla says. “I nearly died before I learned. Now I eat on the regular.” She sounds tired. Almost drunk. “Is there still ice cream out there?”

  “Yeah,” Vee says. She sits down next to Tarla. “We’ll get some.”

  I hit the “Send” button. Tarla puts her head on Vee’s shoulder. I hope Sandra’s right. Because if she isn’t, if somehow that was wrong to send that message . . .

  Mom will be walking into something really bad.

  18

  SAM

  It takes me a while to get my brain working again after the wreck. I run it backward and remember Fairweather, dead back on the road. Shots through the windshield.

  The shooter’s still out there.

  I lunge for the door and tumble out, yank open Mike’s door, and grab for him. We lock forearms, and I pull. He’s heavy, and nearly deadweight. I’m aware that I’m going to pay for all this later, but for now we have the car between us and whoever’s coming.

  Maybe only one or two guys coming for us now. Probably one. They’re down at least three from the original kidnapping team back at the house. I try to remember how many black SUVs I’ve spotted cruising Wolfhunter, but they’re all alike, and it’s hard to know for sure. At least three, I think, which means three or four guys each. We’ve accounted for one SUV full. They probably couldn’t spare more than one to take Fairweather down.

  Mike’s bleeding pretty badly now. Shaken up even more than he was already. I prop him against the steaming metal and say, “Hang on, man, back in a second.”

  He just grunts. That’s how I know he’s really hurting. I leave him and climb back in the cruiser. The shotgun’s broken free of its lock behind the front seat. It’s a pump-action riot gun, preloaded with at least six shots. I bring it back and hand it to Mike. “Watch my back,” I tell him. “And stay here.”

  “Can’t do both,” he says. I’m not listening. I’m starting to feel real pain. The crash jolted everything inside me good. I may be busted up somewhere. I can’t tell yet, but it doesn’t matter. I have to move.

  I need to find this enemy, and I need to end him.

  Plans change when I’m a few hundred yards away from the crash site, because I realize I’m not thinking straight, though the haze is finally starting to lift as pain sets in. I’m not up to stalking through the woods. I need to make him come to us. And he will. He can see the steam from the cracked radiator if nothing else.

  He doesn’t know if we’re alive or dead, and he’ll need to be sure.

  I crouch where I am near a tree and watch. Every second means more blood Mike is losing, and I’m pretty sure I have a couple of broken ribs. I try to breathe shallow and slow. I don’t think I’ve punctured a lung; if I have, I’m in trouble.

  I hear Mike moving slightly. Then I hear another noise that comes from another direction. It’s soft, well disguised, but in this breathless stillness, it’s definitely there.

  I see the man before I hear him again. He’s wearing hunter’s camo, and it’s not the cheap Vietnam-era versions that the men who ambushed me back near the lodge had; this is the good stuff, private-contractor quality. He has training and money. He moves like liquid through the forest, invisible when he pauses. I’m not invisible. I’m not a trained ghost. But I’m a smaller target than Mike, who’s moving, bleeding, and the best bait to get this man up close. But close is a relative term. I don’t know the range and power of this gun, and now isn’t the time to screw it up.

  I have to get closer.

  I’m not bad at this, but I’m bad enough. I get within twenty feet, and something—poor foot placement, brushing a branch, the sound of my breathing—alerts the enemy. He’s close to Mike. And aiming. Screw it. I rush forward, low and fast, and close the distance to ten feet. No time to aim; he’s turning to focus on me.

  Mike saves my ass. He pumps the shotgun, even though he’s out of range to do anything effective. The sound scares the man just enough. The shot that would have killed me blows a hole in the tree beside me instead.

  I drop to one knee, brace, and fire. I can’t go for his torso; I can’t tell what kind of armor he’s wearing under the camo. So I take the dangerous target, and aim for his right eye.

  I’m off—nerves, the jolt that hits my broken ribs, whatever reason. Instead of the eye, I hit him in the side of the throat, but it does the job; he reels back, loses his weapon, and rolls on the incline. I scramble after him, ready to shoot him again, but he’s lost interest in the fight. When I get to him, the man’s got both hands wrapped around his throat, shaking and trying to hold in his blood. It’s a minor miracle, but I don’t think I’ve hit anything vital.

  He’s a slender young guy of Asian extraction, and as much as I want to hate his guts, I can’t. He looks too much like a scared kid. I aim the gun at him anyway and say, “Keep pressure on it. You’ll live.” Maybe.

  I hear sirens, but I can’t tell which direction. If they’re from Wolfhunter, Mike and I are screwed, and as dead as Detective Fairweather. If it’s the county sheriff and TBI, we’re saved. I can tell that this guy doesn’t much care.

  “Help,” he whispers.

  “You help me first,” I tell him. “You’re with the original crew that took Ellie?”

  He nods. He’s terrified. “Ambulance,” he says. Blood’s oozing out between his fingers. “Help.”

  “You know where the little girl is?”

  “No,” he whispers. His lips are turning a delicate shade of purple. “Get me help.”

  I pat him down for more weapons. He’s got a hunting knife, a good one, and an even better 9 mm in a Velcro holster I almost miss. I take both, toss them over beside Mike, who’s now propped himself up a little. Mike’s good eye is open and watching. “You keep that pressure on, and you’ll live. What’s your name?”

  “Zhao Liu,” he says.

  Mike manages a chuckle. “The John Smith of China,” he says. “Don’t think so.” He turns his head. “Where those sirens coming from?”

  “Not Wolfhunter,” I say.

  “You sure about that?”

  Zhao’s eyelids flutter. He passes out. His hand falls away from his neck, and blood gushes out.

  “Dammit. Shoot him if he tries anything.” I crouch down and apply pressure on the wound. I don’t have a phone, but Zhao does, and I dial it one-handed to get to the county sheriff’s office.

  We all live to see law enforcement arrive: two county cruisers, followed almost immediately by a third, and an ambulance trailing. Fairweather’s 10-34 got action, after all. He saved us. And I left him dead on the road. Dammit. That hurts worse than my broken ribs.

  The county sheriff himself arrives in the next hour, accompanied by a full van of TBI agents in identifying windbreakers. By then my ribs are wrapped, I’ve been allowed to sit down next to Mike against the wrecked car, Zhao’s in an ambulance handcuffed to a gurney, and I am so infinitely tired, but nobody’s answered my damn questions and I need to know that Gwen and our kids are okay. I make enough noise that I finally get the sheriff, who plants his booted feet in front of me, casts me in the shade of his Stetson, and says, “What the hell are you going on about?”

  “Gwen Proctor and the kids. They’re with Hector Sparks,” I tell him. “In Wolfhunter. You need to get them out of there.”

  “Can’t do it now. We’ll see to that after we get Chief Weldon and that son of a bitch Carr.”

  “You know about Carr?”

  “Fairweather told us his suspicions. We got us a warrant to search his compound. If Ellie White’s there, we’ll get that poor child back for her folks, alive or dead.” The sheriff, who’s a beefy old guy with a Santa Claus beard and the eyes of a snake, walks away without another word. Mike and I both watch him go.

  “You know,” Mike says, “if he’s been bought off, none of us are making it out of here alive.”

  “They can’t buy everybody.”

  “So you say.”

  “Relax, man. Y
ou’ll live to print fake money again.”

  “Do not make me laugh.” He sighs. “I’m sorry about Miranda. I didn’t like her. But I would have saved her if I could.”

  “I know,” I say. I get up to my feet. Everything hurts, and I’ll be black-and-blue tomorrow, but for now, I’m steady enough. “Not your fault, Mike.”

  “Where the hell you going?”

  “To find somebody to take me to Wolfhunter,” I tell him. “I need to be sure they’re okay.”

  I don’t get more than a couple of steps away before the sheriff comes back. He studies us for a few seconds, then says, “Come with me.”

  Mike, despite the cuts and bruises, stands up too. “Where we going?” All the weapons we took off Zhao have now disappeared, like a magic trick. I don’t have them. But Mike’s probably a walking secret gun show.

  “Carr’s compound,” the sheriff says. “Then we’ll go get your family.”

  It’s a ten-minute ride; nothing’s far around here. The description of Carr’s place as a compound is accurate; it’s got fortified concrete brick walls, coiled razor wire on top of them, and some impressive floodlights on top.

  The central gate’s been wrecked. It lies in pieces.

  “What the hell?” I say.

  “Our men got here to serve the warrant and drove into the middle of a damn war,” the sheriff says. He sounds grim. The situation warrants it. There are two Wolfhunter PD cruisers inside the gate with their light bars flashing, but nobody near them . . . until the sheriff’s car rolls farther in, and I start to see the bodies.

  Two dead officers lying between the two cars.

  There are two burning SUVs, and dead men all over the place, I realize. A guy lying at the base of the wall in old, cheap desert camo, which is just dumb out here in tree country. A cluster of four or five over by what looks like a barracks on the other side of the wall.

  “What the hell happened?” I ask.

  “Best we can guess right now, these people in the SUVs got here half an hour ago,” the sheriff says. “Full-on firefight ensued, with lots of casualties. Then Wolfhunter cops arrived, and they got killed getting out of their cars. We found Carr’s wives and kids hiding in a basement.”