“You were like, what,” Glory said, “a hit man?”
Mercer didn’t answer.
“Holy fuck,” Glory said. “This is so…” she stopped dead at the look in Mercer’s eyes.
“Glory,” Sharon said quietly. “Go clean up in the kitchen.”
“But…”
“DO it, Glory!”
The girl walked off, shoulders slumped. Sharon looked at Mercer for a long moment. He turned away and looked out at the advancing sea. He closed the door and turned the lock.
“So now what?” Sharon said quietly. “Now we know your secret, you kill us, too?”
“No,” he said. “No women. No kids. And no civilians.”
“Thanks,” she said. “That makes me feel much better, coming from someone who murders people for a living.”
“Used to,” he corrected. “Now I just do it when I need to. And it’s not murder. Not the way I see it.”
“Lovely.”
“Sharon,” he said, “if I was going to kill you, you’d be dead already. You don’t believe me?” He drew the knife from his belt. She started to back away, until she saw he was holding it by the blade. He held it out to her, handle first. “Take it,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“Take it,” he insisted.
“I can’t.” She couldn’t tear her gaze from his eyes.
“If you’re so afraid of me,” he said, “I’m giving you the opportunity to do something about it. Take the knife. Take it and stab me, and then run away.”
“What the hell is the matter with you?” she whispered.
“From where I sit, nothing,” he said. “I think I’m pretty well-adjusted.”
“So well-adjusted, you’re asking me to kill you.”
“No,” he said patiently, “I’m giving you the chance to do it. I don’t want it to happen. But I want you to know. I’ll never hurt you. Or your daughter.”
“Why are you doing this?”
For the first time, he looked away. “Those men need killing. You don’t.”
“And they need killing because they broke your rules.”
He still wouldn’t look at her. “Yeah.”
She stepped forward, took the knife from him. She dropped her arm and let it hang by her side. “And that’s all.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.”
She looked down at the knife.
He continued to look away, not speaking.
She turned the knife around in her hand and presented the handle to him. “I really wish you were Max,” she whispered. “I think I could have gotten to like Max.”
He took the knife from her gently. He looked back at her and smiled. “Yeah. I kinda liked him, too. He was a pretty good guy.”
“So,” she said, “Is Max gone? Forever?”
He tucked the knife back in his belt. “I don’t know. Right now, though, I don’t know how much good Max would be to you.”
“More than you might think,” she said. “I need…”
“You need to go in the back and gather up as much bottled water and food as you can carry. Wherever we end up, we may be there for a while.” She hesitated. “GO!” he barked. He didn’t wait to see if she went or not. He opened the door again and looked out. He didn’t know if it was his imagination, but the ocean seemed even higher.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“Jesus, Blake,” Worth said, “Did you kill him?”
Blake didn’t answer directly. “Son of a BITCH!” he spat down at Bohler. Vomit continued to drip down the front of his poncho. He stepped forward and kicked the unconscious deputy in the stomach.
Worth gave Moon a worried glance. He had never seen Blake lose control like this. Moon’s face remained calm. “You want me to do him now?” he croaked.
With a visible effort, Blake got hold of himself. “No,” he said. He may be more agreeable to telling us what we want to know when he wakes up.”
“I don’t think he knows where they are,” Worth said.
“Right now, what I want to know is who the hell that guy is that’s with the women and the girl. I figure Barney Fife here ought to know.”
“What does it matter?” Worth said. “He’s just some guy.”
“He’s some guy that split Barstow’s head open,” Blake snapped. “A twenty year combat vet. I want to know who could do that.” He turned to Moon. “Watch him,” he said. “Call me if he wakes up.” Moon just nodded. “Worth, come with me.”
They exited the bathroom and went into the well-lighted luxury of the master suite. Blake turned to Worth. “You still good for this mission?” he demanded.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. I’m just getting a feeling you’re turning a little shaky.”
“You’re shaken up yourself,” Worth countered. “That’s why. You look after yourself. I’m still frosty.” The two men stared at each other for a moment, then Blake turned as if to go. He stopped when Worth spoke again.
“I do want to know one thing, though.”
Blake turned back. “Why Moon’s here.”
“I think I know why Moon’s here. And I think I know why you didn’t tell the rest of your team about him.” Blake didn’t answer. His hand moved slightly and Worth raised his machine gun.
“You need to stand down, Worth,” Blake said calmly.
“There’s only one reason I can think of. Moon was supposed to kill the rest of us when the job was done. Me, Barstow, Phillips, even Montrose. So there’d be fewer people who knew about this. And, I figure, more money for you. I’m thinking you got a budget for this job, and the fewer people you had to pay off at the end, the more left over for you. And maybe Moon, except I’m thinking you planned to off him, too.”
“You expect me to answer that?”
“No. But I do expect you to tell me if that plan’s changed, now that we have new problems to deal with.”
“There wasn’t any plan like that, Worth.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’ll tell you this, though,” Blake went on. “You know the old saying as well as I do.”
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” Worth quoted.
Blake nodded. “Which is why I asked if your head’s still in the game. I need every man on his toes here. We’ve got a wild card running around loose out there. At some point we’re going to have to go after him and the other two.”
Worth lowered the gun. “That’s all I needed to hear.” For now, he thought.
“Fine,” Blake said. “Now let’s go check and see what progress Montrose is making.”
Montrose sat in the big leather chair behind the Senator’s desk, her boots up on the mahogany top. She had a sour expression on her face as she started at the screen of a laptop computer whose flickering glow provided the only illumination in the room. A pair of wires led from a card inserted in a slot in the side of the laptop, drooping across a few feet if intervening space to the niche in the wall where the safe was. The front control panel had been pried off and the wires disappeared into the space where it had been.
“We’re gonna need the cutter,” she said. “This thing ain’t workin’.”
“It’s state of the art,” Blake insisted. He walked over and looked at the screen. Numbers were cascading across it as the powerful decryption program inside searched with inhuman speed for the combination that would open the electronic lock.
“May be,” Montrose drawled, “but it ain’t gettin’ that safe door open. I think what happens is, once the security system got a few wrong numbers, it figgered it was bein’ hacked, and shut down.”
“What do you mean, it shut down?”
“I mean, I think this safe is rigged so when anyone tries to crack the entrance codes, the combination goes away. There’s no way to open it.”
“That’s nuts,” Worth said.
Montrose shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe there’s some other way to open it. Maybe the combination resets when the intrusion stops. Or ma
ybe,” she looked at Blake, “what’s inside is somethin’ the owner figgers if he can’t have, no one else can either. In any case,” she took her feet off the desk, “We ain’t got time to be graceful anymore. If we need to get this motherfucker open by the time the eye passes over, we need the cutter. Now.”
“Worth,” Blake said, “You and Moon go get it from the construction site.”
“Suits me,” Montrose said. She got up and flicked on a light. “I’m getting’ tired of sittin’ here in the dark anyway.”
“You think we should be putting any lights on?” Worth said.
Blake thought a moment, then nodded. “Should be okay. I doubt we’ll be getting any more visitors. Not after what happened to the last group.”
“What about our friends out there?” Worth gestured towards the outside.
“What about them?” Blake said. “Chances are, they’re holed up. They won’t be passing by.”
“If they do,” Worth said, “they’ll know right where we are.”
A smile spread across Blake’s face. “Fine,” he said. “Then they can come to us.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The water was ankle deep, but it tugged and sucked at them as they marched, head down, back through the howling wind and rain. After finally getting dry and warm, it was tough for even Mercer to force himself back out into the tempest. He wondered if he’d waited too long, his reluctance to brave the storm again masquerading as a desire to be prepared.
They’d gathered water and canned goods, wrapped in plastic and slung over Sharon and Glory’s backs in knapsacks improvised from table cloths. Mercer had taken a giant meat-cutter’s knife and duct-taped it firmly to a long black iron pole once used to hold up decorative torches for functions on the beach. He didn’t for a moment think it was going to make much difference against a machine gun, but it gave him a spearman’s reach in single combat. He slogged along, the spear over his shoulder, eyes forward. Behind him he could hear the slosh of the women’s steps. He glanced back. They had their heads down, shoulders slumped. They looked utterly miserable. He looked ahead again, his eyes searching for enemies, his gaze calm and level even as his thoughts seethed like the water around him.
Sharon’s words had unsettled him. I really wish you were Max, she’d said. Me, too, he’d thought. He’d liked being Max. Max had a nice, if somewhat boring job that at least took him outdoors in the fresh salt air and the sun. Max may not have had any close friends, but he got along with everybody. Max had a quiet normal life. “Is Max gone forever?” she’d asked, and when he saw the look in her eyes, he’d wanted to say no. He wanted to be Max. For her.
For most of his adult life, what had kept him grounded was his own sense of certainty. He knew the rules. He knew how he needed to live. And he knew who needed killing.
He thought back to the foster home he’d lived in from almost three years, from his twelfth to his fifteenth summer. His foster mother had been an older woman named Earla Suggs. Miss Earla, as she insisted he call her (always being careful to add “ma’am” at regular intervals), would have needed only the hat to play a witch at Hallowe’een. She was bony, beak-nosed, and snaggle-toothed, with a wild unruly shock of gray hair she normally kept tied back. When she spoke, her accent clearly revealed her origins in the Kentucky hills.
She had also been the closest thing to a mother Mercer had known up till that time. She kept him well fed, well clothed and made sure he got his schoolwork done. She tucked him in every night and read him a chapter of the Bible as he drifted off. He didn’t understand much of the words, particularly the long parts about who begat who, but Miss Earla’s bone-dry twang had been familiar and comforting.
One summer, Miss Earla had gotten the summons to appear for jury duty. She was a widow who lived alone; there was no one to watch him if she was gone. So she took him with her. She sat him on one of the old dark wood benches in the county courthouse and told him to be still and read his Bible. He did it; had she asked him to crawl through broken glass he would have done it. But when she actually was picked for the jury pool, he was too fascinated by what was going on to pay much attention to the worn and cracked leather book she’d left with him.
The case had seemed open and shut. The Defendant, a young woman named Darla Steed, had cut her husband’s throat as he slept, then called the police and confessed. Her young defense lawyer had tried to put on evidence that the husband had been a drunkard and an abuser, on one occasion beating Darla so badly she had miscarried their child. The judge, however, refused to instruct the jury on self-defense; the man had been asleep, he insisted, and no immediate threat justifying the use of deadly force. But when the jury retired to deliberate, they were gone three hours before coming back and announcing they were hopelessly deadlocked, 11 to 1 for conviction. The judge scowled and sent them back in. Three more hours passed with the same result. The judge, clearly irked, looked at the clock, which was getting on towards 6:00 PM, and began, “I can’t ask which one of you voted which way…”
Miss Earla stood up. “Don’t need ta. I din’t vote to convict that girl, and I ain’t gonna.”
“Ma’am,” the judge said, “you need to…”
“Judge,” Miss Earla broke in. “That man needed killin’.”
“The law,” the judge said, “does not recognize that as a defense.”
“Ain’t my problem what the law recognizes or don’t,” Miss Earla said. “Right’s right. And that man needed killin’. Now if you’ll excuse me, I got a young ‘un to go home and feed.” The judge threatened her with contempt. She shrugged and told him, “Do what you gotta do, and so will I.” The judge threatened to keep the jury there all night, all week if necessary. “Do what you gotta do,” she said again. “I ain’t a-gonna send that little girl to prison for killin’ a sorry so and so like that, and that’s all there is to it.” Finally, the judge, through clenched teeth, declared a mistrial. Miss Earla had just nodded with satisfaction, swept down out of the jury box, and told him “Come on, boy, we’re late for supper.” He had followed, her words running through his head.
He needed killing.
Something in her face, her voice, her absolute certainty, had called to the boy who’d known little certainty and little stability in his life. There were some people, he knew deep in his bones, that just needed killing. Like the people who had killed his parents.
Six months later, Miss Earla was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Social Services took him away to another foster home the day she went into the hospital. He never saw her again.
Mercer gritted his teeth. He didn’t have time for memories. He didn’t have time for doubts. He needed to be Mercer. At least for a little while longer.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The land rose gradually as they walked north. Soon the water became shallower, then they were only contending with the mud. Mercer began looking for a new refuge. Sharon had probably been right when she’d said that the gunmen probably would set up their base in the old lighthouse.
Everyone who knew anything about Pass Island soon learned the story of how the old ugly structure had repeatedly withstood the worst nature could throw. It wouldn’t be hard to turn the place into a fortress. So Mercer was looking for someplace on the leeward aside of the island, high enough to stay above the rising water, but far enough away from the lighthouse so as not to attract attention. He’d stash Sharon and Glory there, with instructions to stay quiet and lay low. Then he’d go hunting. He expected that his adversaries would themselves have gone to ground, out of the weather. They wouldn’t be expecting anyone to be out in this, stalking them. That would be their mistake. Hopefully, it would give him some element of surprise. He was going to need all the advantages he could get.
He slowed a bit and leaned forward, listening. Over the wailing of the wind and rain, he thought he could hear the sound of a generator. Through the trees, he thought he could make out the white sides of the Buchan house. He held up a hand backwards, signaling them to stop.
Sharon, head down, ran into him before she noticed.
“What?” she said irritably.
He started to speak, but the noise of the wind made regular conversation impossible. He leaned over to speak into her ear. She pulled back slightly, but then saw what he was doing and leaned forward. “I think I’ve found where they are,” he said. “Stay here.” He glanced up through the trees. He could barely see the top of the lighthouse on its promontory. Oh shit, he thought, if they’ve got anyone up there…he leaned back in.
“Get off the road,” he said. “Now.”
“What? Why?” Sharon asked.
“The lighthouse. I should have thought of it. They may have a lookout.”
Glory came up behind her. “What’s going on?”
He took her shoulder gently and pulled her in close so that the three of them huddled together on a tight triangle. “The lighthouse. Someone up there can see the road. Parts of it at least.”
“I don’t think anyone can see anything through all this fucking rain,” Glory said.
“You may be right. But I’m not taking any chances. Stay under the trees if you can from now on.” He thought again of the noise he’d heard. “Just wait here a second.” He turned and moved along the side of the road, under the trees, his improvised spear held out ahead of him. He came to the driveway of the Buchan house, flanked by tall concrete pillars with an iron gate between. The gate was shut. A chain and padlock lay in a puddle in front of it. Mercer moved slowly over and picked the chain up out of the mud. A half link fell off of one end. The chain had been cut. Mercer looked up at the house. There were metal shutters over the windows, like the ones in Kathy-with-a K’s house. These, too were down and fastened, but he could see a glimmer of light around the edges of one of the upstairs windows. The familiar stuttering roar of a big generator came and went on the rising wind. With the windows sealed and armored over, he didn’t think anyone could see him from the house. It was more habit than anything that caused him to slowly back away until the house was hidden from view. He jogged the short distance back to where Glory and Sharon were.
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