Hank sounded even more tired now than when their conversation had started. Allie had to remind herself that he was an old man and wasn’t exactly in tip-top shape, especially not after waking up in the middle of the night.
“You don’t know who you can trust right now,” Hank continued. “Faced with that, the best course of action is not to trust anyone unless they prove themselves.”
“Thanks, Hank. I got all morning to think about this.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
“You were.”
“Yeah?”
“I needed someone to talk to. You provided that.”
“Glad to hear it. What time is it over there? You said you were in the Pacific Northwest?”
“Yes. I’m two hours behind you.”
“You should be asleep. We both should be asleep.”
“Sorry for waking you up, old man.”
“Eh, I was tossing and turning anyway,” Hank said, but for some reason Allie didn’t fully believe him.
“I know it’s not fun to get a phone call in the middle of the night.”
“I said don’t worry about it. You should try to get some shut-eye, though. You’re going to need it when morning comes.”
I don’t think that’s going to happen, Allie thought, but she said, “I’ll try.” Then, “How are you two getting along?”
“Who are we talking about here?”
“You know who.”
“He’s fine. He eats a lot more than I thought he would.”
“He’s a grown dog, Hank. He eats a lot.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t mention that part. Anyway, I’ve already taken out a second mortgage to make sure I can keep feeding him and me until you return. Wanna talk to him?”
Allie smiled. They were talking about Apollo. It was either leave the dog with Hank or Lucy, and the teenager was busy with school. Hank, despite his grouchiness, looked to Allie like he could use a little companionship. And besides, she needed time alone. Taking care of a dog while on vacation wasn’t exactly her idea of fun. Apollo was obedient, but he needed attention, too.
“No,” Allie said. “I’ll do that when I swing by to pick him up after I’m done here.”
“When will that be?” Hank asked.
“Hopefully soon.”
“Well, you know what they say: Hope springs eternal. But call me if you need anything. I’m not sure how much help I’ll be from all the way over here, but you never know.”
“You never know,” Allie said, and hung up.
She glanced back at the hallway that led into the bedrooms. Sarah and her baby were sleeping quietly in one of them. The two had gone right to sleep as soon as Sarah finished cleaning the blood off her face, and Allie helped her treat the gash on her temple. The baby had been asleep since the car.
A battered housewife fearing for her life and her newborn baby.
Sleeping in her cabin.
Christ. What did I get myself into?
She’d gone toe-to-toe with a serial killer, faced off against a small army of gunmen, and she’d voluntarily put herself into the crosshairs of a criminal organization that was probably still looking for her right now. And yet, helping a desperate woman and her baby was the scariest thing Allie had ever done.
Because she wasn’t ready for this. There were too many question marks. Allie didn’t like the unknown. Her entire life, ever since she lost her sister, was about control. She always knew how to get in, how to get through, and how to get out of every situation. Even if those equations were a little muddy at times, she always had a good idea. A general direction of how to achieve her goals.
But this…
“It’s just one angry husband,” she said to the dark cabin. “You can handle one angry husband.”
She expected to feel better after saying it out loud, but she didn’t.
Allie glanced down at her watch. 3:11 a.m.
Over three more hours before sunup.
It was going to be a long three hours…
Eight
Click.
Allie opened her eyes.
Someone was at the door. Someone was trying to open the door.
In the middle of the night.
That wasn’t good. That was so far not good, it had entered This is very bad territory.
Click.
There it was again.
No, not the door, as she had previously suspected. The sound was off. Doors made different noises.
The windows?
Yes, the windows. It had to be one of the windows.
She stared up at the dark ceiling in silence, though there was nothing silent about the scenarios flashing across her mind’s eye, and counted down from ten.
Ten…
Nine…
Eight…
Seven…
Six…
Fiv—
Click.
She sat up in bed—slowly—even as she reached for the SIG Sauer resting on top of the laptop, on the nightstand to her right. The 9mm was where it was supposed to be, its walnut grip cold against her fingers.
As was the night. It was chilly inside the cabin—inside her room—but not enough to make her use the blanket.
Allie glanced down at her wristwatch. 4:16 a.m.
Two more hours, give or take, before sunrise. The fact that someone was trying to come into the cabin now, at this time of night, made her alarm system go haywire. It was a good thing she hadn’t managed to get a single second of sleep since lying down about an hour ago, otherwise she might not have heard the noise coming from the front of the cabin.
One of the windows. It had to be one of the windows. The front door was locked and bolted. The windows, while also locked, would be less trouble to break into if someone really knew what they were doing. Certainly easier than the door—
Click!
This one was much louder than the previous clicks. Barely audible like all the rest but not quite silent. Not when she was sitting there, barely breathing, and listening for it.
Allie swung her legs off the bed, the semiautomatic pistol in her right hand. She’d gone to sleep in her clothes, so she didn’t have to worry about being caught in the middle of the night in her skivvies. The fabric of her jeans made a slight rustling sound as she moved, but not enough to cause her worry.
Not too much worry, anyway.
Her eyes—long since adjusted to the darkness—focused on the small slit in her bedroom door. She’d left it slightly open to keep an eye—and both ears—on Sarah and her newborn in the room across the hallway. She hadn’t heard a peep out of mother and son since they fell asleep, leading Allie to wonder just how long it’d been since the two of them had gotten such a peaceful slumber. Sarah, in particular, since Allie doubted the baby knew anything about his home’s domestic situation.
Allie had turned off all the lights before retiring, so there was nothing out there for her to zero in on. There should have also been no moonlight, because she’d pulled the curtains. There shouldn’t have been any moonlight, anyway, but there was.
A small sliver of it, splashing across the faux wooden flooring of the back hallway that separated Allie’s room from Sarah’s. There was a third room, but Allie was using that for storage. She had some clothes in there that she hadn’t touched since arriving—
Tap-tap.
Footsteps. Not very loud, but audible still because there were no other sounds in the entire building and, seemingly, the world outside. Of course, the latter wasn’t true. It was only because the owners of the cabin had built the place with excellent insulation, keeping everything out there where they belonged, including all the creatures that roamed the hillside woods.
That attention to detail allowed Allie to hear everything going on in the house. It’d been the first thing she noticed when she went to bed the first night.
And she could hear plenty now. Like someone trying to painstakingly tiptoe their way unnoticed from the front of the cabin toward the back.
<
br /> The operative word being trying.
And it was definitely someone and not something. Woodland creatures could be sneaky, but they didn’t know how to open windows and close them back up afterward.
Allie slowly raised herself off the bed, careful not to cause the mattress’s springs to squeak. She tightened her grip on the pistol as she glided across the room, thankful she’d kept her socks on because it had been just chilly enough. She hardly made any sounds to her own ears.
The same couldn’t be said for the intruder:
Tap-tap.
Her eyes had become used to her environment, but that didn’t mean Allie could see in the dark. The small patch of moonlight helped a bit, but if the intruder didn’t step right into its path—
There. A shadowy form appearing against the wooden floors.
Gotcha.
A human figure, just as she had thought. Allie wasted a second or two wondering if it was Tom Marshall, come to reclaim his wife and child. Or maybe it was Mitch and his buddy, the two bikers from outside the Don’t Stop In, that had somehow found out where she lived and were looking for some revenge.
Not that it mattered who it was out there, because they had just broken into a place she was calling home and that was all the (Excuse) reason Allie needed to shoot them. It was a good thing she’d come armed.
Just in case…
She stared at the intruder’s elongated form as it stretched forward, the shape wrapped by distance, her angle, and the way the moonlight was hitting her target from behind. There was no way to tell if it was a man or a woman, or even how many there were. For all she knew there could be a dozen hiding in the great room, but that was doubtful given how little noise they’d made so far. Groups of people just wouldn’t have been able to stay that quiet.
Allie leaned against the wall, keeping the slightly ajar door to her left. She could see out but hopefully whoever was out there—getting closer—couldn’t see in. Her room was at the very back of the hallway and the limited visibility would keep it mostly hidden. Mostly. She didn’t have any delusions that the intruder would completely miss her opened door—no matter how slightly open—as they got closer. She just hoped she spotted them before—
Squeaking shoes shattered the silence, so loud that they might as well be firecrackers in the heavy silence of the cabin. The intruder, making a quick and sudden move! They were no longer trying to remain undetected, which could only mean—
She’d been spotted!
Allie lunged toward the opening and out into the hallway just in time to glimpse a black-clad figure climbing through one of the windows that flanked the front door. A dark shape wearing all black, its back to her. She couldn’t tell if the figure had its face covered; there was too much shadow and not enough lights.
“Stop!” Allie shouted.
She didn’t know why she’d bothered. She already knew the man or woman wouldn’t obey, but it was a natural instinct to try anyway.
As expected, the intruder didn’t even hesitate and jumped out the open window and onto the other side, only to pop right back up and take off across the grounds of the cabin. And he or she was fast, too.
Allie charged through the hallway and into the great room, but instead of following the intruder through the window, she took the easier—and faster—route by employing the front door. She undid the locks, threw the door open, and bolted outside.
Cold night air pressed against her exposed face but Allie grimaced through it, searching, searching…
There!
The intruder was already gone, having made their way across the clearing and into the thick black woods by the time she made it outside.
Damn, they were fast!
Then, a flock of shadowed birds taking flight, their sudden movements hard to miss.
Allie ran in the direction of the birds, bursting into the woods and dodging trees that appeared as if by magic in front of her. She kept the SIG clutched in one hand, her fingers tight around the walnut grip. She’d thumbed the safety off before she left the cabin but checked it again just to be sure.
There was a bright side to all of this: She was dealing with just one person. One intruder. That was better than a dozen.
She willed her breathing to slow down as she jumped over a bush and landed on the other side and was back into a full sprint a heartbeat later. She scanned the woods as she ran, looking for signs—anything at all—of where the intruder had gone. She’d lost them by just seconds, so they couldn’t have gone very far. Allie wasn’t 100 percent physically fine after the last few months, but she wasn’t exactly a couch potato, either.
Adrenaline pumped through her veins, driving her legs faster, and her ears were filled with her own breathing and the sounds of the woods hammering away around her. The only thing that wasn’t loud was her running footsteps, thanks to the fact she was still in her socks. It was much too dark to see anything beyond a few meters around her at a time, but she was certain she was headed in the right direction.
Probably.
Broken twigs on the ground, along with obviously fresh sneaker imprints. So she was definitely going in the right direction, even if she couldn’t see or hear—
The bang! of the pistol shot was followed by something small and subsonic buzzing her right ear a heartbeat later.
Allie threw herself forward and to the ground on instinct, the fact that she could even do that telling her she hadn’t been hit. She slammed into the slightly damp floor on her chest as the gunshot ricocheted off the trees around her.
It echoed, echoed...
She stayed down, her head slightly raised while eyes snapped left to right to in front of her and back all over again. She didn’t bother checking where the bullet had struck behind her. The only thing she cared about was that it hadn’t ended up in her, even though it’d been close. Close enough that she’d felt the heat of the round as it zipped past her head.
That was way too close.
Realizing that she was out in the open despite being low to the ground and with nothing but a two-feet high brush in front of her for protection, Allie rolled to her right until she had made it behind a thick tree trunk. She picked herself up and leaned against the tree, but she didn’t wander away from its protection.
“You missed!” Allie shouted.
Her voice echoed softer than the gunshot had just seconds ago, and it too faded into the night.
There was no response from the shooter. She hadn’t expected any, but was hoping.
Hope springs eternal, right, Hank?
“Want to try again?” she shouted.
Again, there was no response.
The only sounds she could detect were her own labored breathing and the adrenaline coursing through her veins. Allie stayed where she was. She was safe, for now. If the shooter could see her, he would have already tried to take her out a second time.
Slowly, very slowly, Allie got ahold of her breathing until she could hear the woods around her again. The flap-flap of birds, along with the noticeable mad scrambling along the branches directly above her. She wasn’t the only one that had been sent scurrying for cover by the gunshot.
Someone had taken a shot at her. The same man or woman she had been pursuing; the same one that had broken into the cabin. What was he doing back at the cabin?
Allie didn’t move for the longest time. She was satisfied to wait and listen. She didn’t believe for a second that the shooter had simply stuck their gun behind them and squeezed the trigger while they were fleeing, hoping to hit her. No. That bullet had come too close (Even now, she thought she could still feel its heat signature against her left cheek) for it to be dumb luck. It was more likely that the shooter had stopped, turned around, and waited to see her before firing. Which meant it was entirely plausible they were still out there right now, hoping for a second crack.
Allie wasn’t going to give them the chance.
She glanced down at her watch. 4:22 a.m.
Only eleven minutes since
she first detected the break-in, even though it felt more like eleven hours had passed.
Time flies when you almost get your head shot off.
Her breathing had gone back to normal, and she could hear everything around her with clarity again. The animals had gone quiet, the presence of herself (and probably also the shooter’s) making them very cautious. They were smart like that. Even the dumbest creatures knew it didn’t pay to make a target of yourself when there were humans around.
And Allie thought of herself as smarter than a squirrel, so she stayed where she was, safely behind a massive tree that was probably there long before she ever existed and would remain at the exact spot long after she vanished from this Earth. If the shooter wanted her dead, he or she would have to come and get her.
Come on. Let’s see if you’ve got the guts.
She looked down at her watch again. Only a minute had ticked by since she last looked. The night had started out long, and it wasn’t going to get any shorter anytime soon. That was okay. It wasn’t like she had anything to do anyway. She’d come here to rest, to take her mind off her troubles. This served the same purpose. She hadn’t thought about the Syndicate or Reese in days.
But especially not Reese…
Allie slid down the length of the tree, the gnarled bark pricking at her back, and sat on the cold, hard ground. She kept the SIG in front of her, flexing her fingers to make sure she still had a good grip, and waited.
Morning would come soon. If the shooter (Is that you out there, Tom?) wanted to wait another two hours in hopes she would do something stupid like give them another shot at her, then they were going to have to wait the full two hours.
Allie wasn’t a fool. If they could stick it out, so could she.
It was a good thing she had all her clothes on.
And socks…
Nine
Thirty minutes or so before sunup, and Allie was sure the man or woman who had taken a shot at her was long gone. She was also convinced it was a man; the way the figure had moved while she was chasing it screamed “male.” Not that that particular knowledge—whether she was right or not—did her any good while she was hiding behind a tree staring at a squirrel, while the critter watched her back from a branch a dozen feet away.
Allie Krycek (Book 4): Savior/Corruptor Page 6