Joanna yelled, “Let her go!” When he twisted toward her, Joanna kicked him in the crotch.
Ethan yelled, “Drop, Autumn! Now!” and the little girl dropped and rolled away. Ox screamed, his gun flying as he sank to his knees. Joanna yelled her daughter’s name even as she watched the gun skid across the tiles to bounce off a chair leg.
“Keep away from him,” Ethan yelled at Joanna. He grabbed Ox around his neck, jerked his head back, and yelled into his face, “Ox!”
Ox was cursing, moaning. “I’m going to kill the bitch, kill her, kill her, kill her, and I’m gonna take the little girl and—”
“No, you’re not,” Ethan said, and grabbed his collar and hauled him upright.
Ox took a mad swing at him, but Ethan leaned back on his heel and kicked Ox square in the gut. Ox dropped without a sound to the kitchen floor, his arms clutching his belly. Ethan kicked him again in the chin.
Ethan stood over him, watched his eyes roll back in his head. He lay perfectly still.
No one moved. There wasn’t a sound in the kitchen except for Ethan’s hard breathing and Autumn’s small gasps and hiccups. Joanna stared down at Ox, unmoving, watchful, her eyes narrowed, her foot up and ready to kick him again.
A minute passed—more like a damned year, Ethan thought—before he saw Ox open his eyes. He stared up at Ethan. Suddenly he didn’t look like a madman bent on murder, he looked very scared. Ethan wanted to shout with relief because now he saw Ox behind those eyes, saw Ox’s confusion. Ox—the Ox Ethan knew—was back. Had the violence, the pain, brought him back?
“Is he all right?” Joanna asked.
“Yes, he’s himself again.”
“It was the pain that brought him back,” she said. “Pain somehow breaks the hold.”
Brought him back from where? What hold? What happened to him? Had someone done this to him? This Blessed?
Ethan came down on his knees, pulled Ox up in his arms, and shook him slightly. “Ox? Come on now, wake up. You okay? You there?”
It seemed to everyone in the kitchen that another year passed before Ox said, his voice low and gravelly, like he’d been screaming too long and hard and bruised his throat, “Yeah. Ethan—what happened? My jaw and my guts feel like they’ve been kicked through my backbone by Old Hestus’s mule. Why’d you kick me like that? And Mrs. Backman kicked me in the ba—She kicked me and I wanted to puke and die. And the kid, she attacked me. What’s going on here, Ethan? Why?”
“It’s over now, everything’s okay.” Now that was a whopper of a lie. As Ethan pulled Ox up, he looked closely into his clearing eyes and dusted him down. “You sit down, get yourself together.” After he’d settled Ox into a kitchen chair, he speed-dialed Faydeen. “Get all my deputies at my house right away. This is a bona fide emergency. I don’t exactly know what’s happening, but there may be a very dangerous man here, so tell them all to come armed and be very careful. Hurry, Faydeen…. Yes, yes, I’ve got Mrs. Backman and Autumn with me. They’re all right. Do it, Faydeen, now.” He turned to Joanna, who was holding Autumn against her side. He saw that the little girl was trying very hard not to cry. He came down on his knee in front of her.
“You did really good, Autumn. You grabbed his arm, kept your mama safe. I’m very proud of you.”
She snuffled once, then gave him a very small smile.
He patted her arm and rose. Joanna was as white-faced as her daughter. She looked panicked, ready to bolt. He said quietly, “Tell me what happened to Ox.”
She grabbed his arm, shook him. “I’ll explain later, but that’s not important now. Listen to me, Sheriff, you saw what he did to your deputy. He’s close by, probably right outside the window. He can make anyone do things, horrible things if he wants, crazy things.”
“Who’s close by?”
“A very scary man,” she said, trying not to pant with fear, trying not to lose it in front of her daughter. She lowered her voice. “We’ve got to get out of here.” Then she slapped her palm to her forehead. “No, I’m an idiot. He’s out there, and I can’t take the chance he’ll get Autumn. How are we going to get her away from here, away from him?”
Joanna grabbed for Ethan’s Beretta on the kitchen table. He closed his hand over hers. “No, stop. Dammit, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. What the hell happened to Ox? You say this man made him act crazy? That’s true enough, but how? How did Blessed make Ox do this? How did hurting Ox break the hold? Talk to me, Joanna, stop holding back. If some crazy man is here, I need to know all about him, now.”
Joanna was so scared she thought she’d vomit. She saw him, through the kitchen window, saw him—yet in her brain, she knew it was only shadows, tree branches shifting in the night winds. It didn’t matter, she had to get that gun and shoot him. Or would he make her turn the gun on herself and blow her own face off?
Ethan shook her, then noticed Autumn ready to leap on him to protect her mother. He didn’t yell at her, he kept his voice low and quiet. “Joanna, look at me. I’m big and I’m mean and I know what I’m doing. You are not going to take my gun. I can protect you and Autumn, but you’ve got to tell me what and who I’m protecting you against.” He grabbed her and shook her again. Her head snapped back on her neck. “Pay attention here! Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Leave my mama alone! Leave her—”
Ethan looked over at Autumn. “Listen, honey, Mama needs to talk to me so I can help you, okay? I’m not hurting her, I promise.”
Joanna said, “He’s not hurting me, Autumn.” She drew a deep breath. He’s right, stop it, stop it. She sucked in a shuddering breath, steadied herself. Autumn was making small mewling sounds. She had to get it together; she couldn’t fly out of control. Autumn ran to her, and Joanna hugged her against her legs. “It’s all right, sweetie, I promise. The sheriff will help us, you’ll see. Now, stay strong for me, okay?” She looked at Ethan. “Sheriff, listen to me. Blessed is here. He is very dangerous. He’s not right in the head; he has the ability to look at you and sort of hypnotize you. He can make you do anything he wants you to. You saw yourself what he just did to your deputy. You’ve got to believe me.”
“Okay, say I believe you,” Ethan said, but of course he didn’t. “Who exactly is Blessed? No, forget that for the moment.” He streaked his fingers through his hair, then turned to stare at Ox, who was rubbing his stomach. He still looked confused, and his face was white with pain.
Ethan, voice calm, filled with authority, said, “Don’t bother making another grab for my gun. Now, I want you to take Autumn and Ox back into my bedroom. Lock the door and stick a chair under the knob. I want you to close and lock the windows, pull the drapes so no one can see in. Turn off the lights. I want all of you to sit on the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Don’t move until I call you. Don’t open the bedroom door except for me. Do you understand?”
“But—”
“Do it, now,” Ethan said over his shoulder as he went to the back door, looked out, and slid the dead bolt home. He pulled his grandma’s lacy curtains over the kitchen window and took one last look at Joanna, Autumn, and Ox, still sitting there looking dazed and lost, his jaw grinding because he still hurt. “Turn out the kitchen lights. Autumn knows where everything is. Go!”
Autumn clutched her mother’s hand. “Come on, Mama, we’ve got to hurry.”
Ethan hoped she’d obey him. He didn’t have time to convince her. He turned and ran toward the front of his house.
Joanna patted Ox’s arm as she bent down and picked up his gun. She saw he was still too disoriented to take care of himself. “You need to come with us, Ox. It’s not safe for you to sit here right now, okay?”
Ox raised dazed eyes to her face. “I don’t understand what happened. Why did you all hit me?”
“I’m sorry, but now you’ve got to come with us. It’s dangerous. It’s what the sheriff wants. I’ll take care of your gun until you get yourself together again.” Actually, she had no intention of ever giving
up that gun. They turned off lights in their wake as they half dragged Ox to the back of the house, to Ethan’s bedroom. It was dark as a pit once Ethan had turned off all the front lights. Joanna shut the bedroom door and locked it, but she knew, simply knew, that Blessed was outside the window. What was the sheriff doing? What if Blessed killed him? Or made him kill himself?
Ethan stood quietly beside the locked front door. He heard them dragging Ox down the hallway, heard the bedroom door close, heard the lock click. Good. They were safe.
The house was completely dark now. He wasn’t worried about the animals. If they weren’t under his bed, he knew Mackie, Lula, and Big Louie were hiding beneath the desk in his study, all three of them huddled together.
Who was this man they were so frightened of who’d made Ox act crazy-dangerous, like some mad killer? A powerful hypnotist? That’s what Joanna believed. He had to be if he’d made Ox act against everything he was at his core.
The man’s name was Blessed; the name itself sounded crazy. Was he some sort of gifted psycho who wanted Autumn? But why? And both mother and daughter knew him and were terrified of him.
He stood sideways to the front door and slowly, carefully, eased back the corner of the blind to look outside. It was perfectly black, the dark clouds hanging lower now, obscuring the quarter moon. It would begin to rain soon. He stood very still, watching for any shift in the deep shadows, listened for any sound that didn’t belong to the night, but there was nothing except the shimmering of the thick-leafed oak branches in the night wind.
He heard the owl again, then the answering call of its mate.
Nothing else.
Then he heard glass shatter.
8
ETHAN SPUN AROUND so fast he nearly fell. The sound had come from the back of the house—from his bedroom.
He banged opened the front door and then ran full-out around his cottage. He saw a man standing on a lawn chair, leaning into his broken bedroom window, a gun in one hand.
He was tall, long-limbed, with a ski mask pulled down over his head and face. Blessed?
Ethan heard him say softly, his voice scary slow, mesmerizing, “I know you’re in there, Joanna. I heard the sheriff tell you what to do. You can’t get away again. I know the bedroom door’s locked. I know the sheriff heard the window crashing. When he roars through that door, I’m gonna blow his head off. You hear me? I’m not kidding now. You want to see him die? Send Autumn out. I don’t want to take a chance of shooting her. Send her out now, Joanna.”
Ethan raised his Beretta and said, “Drop the gun now, Blessed. I won’t tell you twice.”
The man jerked around, his hand coming up fast. A shot rang out from inside the bedroom before Ethan could fire his Beretta. The man screamed as he twisted back and fell off the lawn chair, grabbing his arm. “You weren’t supposed to have a gun! You didn’t have to die, but now you are. I’m going to kill you for shooting me, bitch, kill you, you hear me?” He was rolling and off the ground before both Ethan and Joanna fired again, both bullets missing him. He whirled around, saw Ethan bearing down on him, and fired wildly toward him. Ethan fell to his side and rolled behind an oak tree, firing off a half-dozen rounds. The man returned fire but only three shots. Too bad Joanna hadn’t hit his gun arm. Then he heard a repeated clicking noise. So he had a revolver, not a pistol, and he was out of bullets. Blessed made a weird high-pitched wailing sound and ran in a crouch toward the woods.
Ethan fired at him a couple more times as he leaped to his feet, and ran after him. “Don’t shoot me, dammit!” he yelled at Joanna, who was climbing out of the window, Ox’s gun in her hand. She ignored him, finished off the clip, but she didn’t hit Blessed. He heard her say, more to herself than to anyone else, “I only got him in the arm, dammit. I missed him but good this time.” She yelled after him, “Get him, Sheriff, get him!”
Ethan ran into the woods, stopped, and listened, all his training and experience coming to bear. He didn’t hear anything, not even a breaking twig. The man had known enough to stop too. That meant he wasn’t a fool and he knew the woods. Ethan heard Joanna yell at the top of her lungs, “Sheriff, don’t get too close to him. Don’t look him in the eye!”
Just what he needed. “Stay back!” he yelled, then stilled again. Ethan knew these woods as well as any Titusville native, any ranger, knew them certainly better than this maniac. He heard Blessed now, heard him running, breaking branches, stumbling, heard his hard breathing, and he smiled. He ran directly to his left, knowing where to run to keep as fast and quiet as possible. He was nearly to the road. It was then he heard the sirens blasting through the still night. Blessed had to hear them too, had to know they’d block off the road.
Ethan smiled. Gotcha. He broke out of the trees not six feet from the asphalt when three patrol cars raced by. He fired his Beretta into the air. All three cars screeched to a stop. Marco Hayes leaped out of the driver’s seat, his gun drawn.
“Sheriff? What’s going on?”
“A man alone, tall, kind of skinny, ski mask. His gun’s empty, but he could have another one. He’s close, in the woods. His vehicle has to be nearby. Did you see a car by the road when you went by?”
None of them had seen a car, but it was dark, and they’d been over the top with excitement, focused on getting to his house. The car could be well hidden.
Ethan put his finger to his lips and listened. He couldn’t hear Blessed moving now. Was he still again, and waiting? Had he walked here from Titusville? No, that made no sense. He had to have a car, or maybe a motorcycle.
But where had he gone?
And then Ethan knew. Adrenaline rushed through him, making him nearly airborne. He yelled to his deputies, “Everyone get to my house. He’s gone back. Hurry!”
Without another word, Ethan took off running into the woods, not trying to mask his noise. When he neared the edge of the woods at the back of his property, he heard a gunshot not twenty feet from the side of his house. The man had another gun or he wouldn’t have gone back. Or maybe Joanna had been the one to fire. Only a single shot, and that scared him more than a firefight.
He saw cars pile into his driveway, heard men’s shouts fill the night. He didn’t see Blessed.
“Joanna!”
She didn’t answer. When he reached the shattered bedroom window, he realized he was afraid to look inside, afraid he’d see that Autumn was gone, her mother bleeding on the floor. And Ox?
He heard his deputy Larch yell, “Sheriff, front door!”
He ran around the side of his house to see Ox and Blessed, locked together like wrestlers, burst out of the front doorway, roll across the porch, and land hard on the flagstone steps. Both men were grunting and heaving as their fists pounded, blood from Blessed’s arm spreading over both of them. Ethan saw Blessed had a gun.
“Stay back!” Ethan yelled at his deputies. “Don’t shoot! You might hit Ox!” He got within six feet of where the men pummeled and battered each other when Blessed managed to jerk his arm out of Ox’s hold and fired. The bullet barely missed Ox’s face. It was so close it had to deafen both of them.
Ethan raised his gun. Enough was enough; he had to end it. He aimed carefully, only to have Ox suddenly roll on top of Blessed. All of them watched, guns leveled at the two men, when suddenly it seemed like Blessed was embracing Ox, but Ox wasn’t fighting him now. He was holding Ox close, and the two were staring at each other, Ox’s body blocking any shots. Neither man moved.
Moments passed before Ox came to his feet, Blessed coming up behind him, pressed against his back. Ox stood there, not moving, protecting him. All of them saw the gun pointing to Ox’s neck.
“Stay back, all of you, stay back, or this boy here’s dead!”
The Ox Ethan knew, the Ox he worked with, a man who was so tough he could beat the stuffing out of most other men without breaking a sweat, simply stood there, no expression on his face. He knew his deputies couldn’t believe Ox had folded, that he’d stopped fighting. It looked like he was
now willingly protecting Blessed, letting him press his gun into his neck. Ethan raised a warning hand. “Blessed, we’re not moving. Look around you. You’re surrounded. Let Ox go, tell him to lie down. I won’t let you take him as a hostage. You hear me, Blessed?”
Blessed laughed, eerie and low. “No, Sheriff, Ox is my little buddy now, right, Ox?”
Ox didn’t move, didn’t speak, simply stood quiet in front of Blessed.
“Right, Ox?” Slowly Ox nodded.
Blessed yelled, “I want the kid! Bitch, I know you can hear me. You’ve probably got your gun aimed right at me. You send Autumn out now or this good old boy buys it. Now!”
Ethan heard her curse, knew she had no more bullets. She kept clear of the front door, but she was close. She shouted, “You’re not taking Autumn, you monster! Go back to that mad old woman and tell her it’s over. You’re not getting Autumn!”
His deputies were staring at Joanna, whose head came around the front door, but no one moved a whisker. Ethan figured he had maybe three more rounds in his clip.
He called out, “Why does the mad old woman want Autumn?”
Blessed screamed, “She’s not mad! It ain’t none of your business, Sheriff. I’m gonna hurt you bad for that, Joanna. Now I’m gonna kill me this big guy.”
Ethan said, “Wait, Blessed! Talk to me, maybe we can work something out. Tell me why you want the little girl. Tell me why she’s so important to you.”
He didn’t think Blessed would answer, but he did, his voice high, nearly a wail. “I gotta have her. You hear me? That’s all you gotta know.”
Joanna walked slowly out of the front door.
Ethan felt his heart drop to his boots. “Joanna, get back inside!”
“No, Sheriff,” she said, her voice as calm as the night. “He can take me if he’ll let Ox go. You just have to take care of Autumn, give her her last two pills.”
“Joanna—”
She waved him away. “Will you let him go, Blessed, and take me?”
The FBI Thrillers Collection: Vol 11-15 Page 71