Dire

by Jeff Carson

  “That a girl. Time to go see Ella!” He pocketed his phone. “I told you to put the gun and your phone in the snow. If I have to ask again I’ll let you take me down. Let you have your way with me, and I’ll let Zeke have his way with Ella. The guy’s a real sick bastard.”

  Wolf clenched his teeth and dropped his Glock in the snow, then his cell phone. Then he kicked a pile of snow over them both.

  Lauren came up out of breath. “Where’s my daughter?”

  “You’ll be seeing her soon enough. Now take out the phone I gave you and drop it in the snow.”

  Lauren hesitated.

  “We’re on a time schedule here, people. Move! If we’re not back in my car in the next minute I’m not sure I’m going to be able to talk Zeke down.”

  Lauren dropped the phone in the snow and stomped on it. “Let’s go.”

  The man waved a hand toward the rear of the building. “Lauren, you go first, and Mr. Detective David here can follow. But first, you have the pendant, correct?”

  “Yes.” Lauren said.

  “Give it to me.”

  Lauren produced the velvet bag from her pocket and handed it to him.

  The man dropped the shimmering chunk of jewelry onto his latex-gloved palm. His future twinkled in his eyes, and then he shoved the pendant back into the bag and drew it shut.

  He waved them onward.

  They went to the back of the building, to the black Toyota 4Runner they’d just seen enter the lot parked right next to Wolf’s SUV.

  “Hands on the hood, please,” he said. “My hood.”

  On the way to planting his hands on the car, Wolf looked around. There was nobody in sight. No cars, no civilians. Only piles of snow from overnight plows, a sleepy parking lot, and pine trees.

  “Less than one minute,” the man said.

  Wolf put his hands on the hood and spread his legs.

  The man was on him instantly. His search was expert, thoroughly exploring Wolf’s crotch for foreign objects before moving onto other places.

  The man moved to Lauren next, taking more time than necessary on her crotch.

  “That’s enough,” Wolf said.

  The man frowned and stood up. “And the money?”

  She turned to face him and leaned against the hood. “I couldn’t get any. The guy didn’t have it.”

  The man’s confident smirk disappeared. “You said you got it. You bitch!” The man reared his hand back in a fist.

  Wolf moved. Fast—like he’d been stung. He caught the punch and pushed. It missed her, though barely. His left elbow connected with the man’s cheek bone at the same time.

  “Ah!” The man fell to the ground with his legs up in the air.

  Wolf stepped over him, grabbed him by the coat, and hefted him back to his feet.

  The man smiled, a smear of blood staining his teeth.

  Wolf let go of him and stepped back. “You got a name or what?”

  The man wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He sized Wolf up, like he was about to say “Screw it all” to his timetable and throw down some rounds. He was big and muscular—Wolf gave that to him—but would be no match for Wolf in his current state of mind.

  “Bristol.”

  Wolf nodded. It looked like the truth, which meant the man was planning on killing them soon.

  Bristol spat a red dollop in the snow and flicked a set of keys to Wolf. “You’re driving. Lauren, you’re sitting in front. I’m in back.”

  Wolf walked to the driver’s-side door and got in.

  “Where to?” Wolf said, adjusting the mirror to look at Bristol.

  “Out of the parking lot.”

  “Aren’t you going to call Zeke?” Lauren asked.

  Bristol ignored her. “Drive.”

  “You have to call him. Please.”

  “If you don’t shut up, I won’t. Now drive.”

  Wolf backed out and drove, only vaguely reacting to the sight of Patterson coming past in Rachette’s beat-up Volkswagen Jetta. She looked straight ahead out her windshield, as if she were on the mundane mission of shopping for eggs.

  “Right on the highway.”

  Wolf took a right and adjusted the mirror to see out the back window.

  Chapter 40

  “Where are you guys?” Patterson sat on the side of the highway, watching the cloud of mist kicked up by the Toyota receding into the distance.

  “We’re just getting into town—shit, watch out!” Hernandez talked with a voice raised two octaves above normal.

  “Where?”

  “We’re … passing the coffee shop, almost to the station.”

  “Oh … crap.” Patterson let off the brake and gunned it. The clutch slipped for a long moment before catching, and the engine almost stalled out. She pushed the clutch and wrenched the stick over, realizing she’d been in third gear.

  “Piece of shit.”

  A car honked and veered in front of her, kicking up spray onto her windshield.

  “Damn it.”

  “What’s going on?”

  She finally got up to the speed limit. “I just watched the guy pick them up. They’re driving north on 734 in a black 4Runner.”

  “Where are you?” It was Rachette’s voice in her ear now.

  “North! Get your asses up here fast.” Patterson felt something pop inside her, and she sucked in breath as her legs and butt flooded with warm liquid. “Oh no.”

  “Oh no, what? Get over, asshole! What’s Wolf doing?”

  Patterson put both hands on the wheel and pulled herself forward to look down. Her crotch was soaked. “Oh, shit.”

  “Oh shit what?”

  “I’m wet.”

  Rachette went silent for a second. “You’re … here, talk to Hernandez.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Patterson jammed the brakes because the car in front of her was almost at a dead stop with his left blinker on. She lay on her horn when the driver took his sweet time turning.

  Edging past the car, she spritzed the windshield with washer fluid and saw the Toyota had disappeared. “They’re gone.”

  “They’re gone?”

  “Just a second.” She caught movement beyond the flat barbed-wire-enclosed field to the right. “There they are. They took a right on …”—she slowed and turned on the road—“County 19. They went right, east, on County 19.”

  “Okay. Right on County 19,” Hernandez said. “East on County 19.”

  Patterson heard a muted horn sound through her earpiece as she shifted. Rachette’s tiny engine sputtered and howled, vibrating the wet seat underneath her.

  She started to shiver and fumbled with the controls of the heater, breaking off a knob in her fingers. Looking back at the road, she clenched the wheel with both hands to correct a sideways skid. She barreled into a deep drift, then edged her way out and back onto the plowed and packed surface of the county road.

  The Toyota was bouncing ahead, kicking up a cloud of snow behind it.

  “Where are you guys now?”

  “Passing the station … we’re through the stop sign. It’s a little tough without a siren … Shit, watch out!”

  Patterson’s doctor had told her she would have “fake” contractions—essentially her body’s warm-up session for the real deal. She’d always thought that a strange concept, and she’d wondered for the past few weeks whether she’d been having them or whether it had been gas pain—and she’d been gassier than Wolf’s dog the past few months.

  Then there was the time a month ago when she’d bent over the toilet to vomit, coughed, and soaked her pants. That day she’d gone to the doctor, only to be told that her water was still intact and she’d peed herself.

  When the twisting, clenching pain made her forehead bead with sweat, she knew this was a real contraction. And that was no pee—her water was trickling onto Rachette’s fast-food, crumb-ridden seat.

  “Wait a minute.” Rachette was back on the phone. “Did your water just break? Is that what you were tal
king about?”

  Patterson shifted into third and let the car ride out on the straightaway as the excruciating pain in her pelvis ratcheted upwards.

  “No, I was all of a sudden horny from the sound of your voice!”

  “Here’s Hernandez.”

  “Your water broke?” Hernandez’s voice went up another half octave.

  “It’s okay. Just get your asses here now.”

  “We’re passing the grocery store. We’re coming, we’re coming. We have to get you to the hospital. I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No! We can’t do that.” Patterson let off the gas and held back, watching the Toyota take a left and climb a rise, passing under a big fancy sign. “They’re turning into the Swallow Creek development. Damn it, I might as well have a flashing siren on this thing, driving into a fancy neighborhood in this piece of crap.”

  Hernandez said nothing.

  The crunching pain subsided just as suddenly as it had come. “I’m heading in. I’ll figure out where they’re going and get you guys an address.”

  Chapter 41

  “What did you do with the family?” Wolf asked, locking eyes with Bristol in the mirror as they drove down the straight county road.

  In his peripheral vision, through the swirling white wake behind them, he saw a tiny blue dot.

  “Which family?” Bristol asked.

  “The one who owns this car, the house we’re going to.”

  Bristol looked out the window and Wolf took the opportunity to focus his eyes on the car behind them.

  Bristol shrugged. “I think they’re in Denver. This little five-million-dollar cottage is just their weekend getaway, looks like.” His eyes flicked back to Wolf’s.

  Wolf had been ready for it, already shifting his gaze back to the road ahead of them, but he’d seen clear enough that Rachette’s Volkswagen was definitely following them. “So you didn’t kill one of these families up here? Just the three people.”

  “I didn’t kill three people.”

  “Zeke did.”

  “I killed two people.”

  Wolf nodded. “The Mackennas.”

  “Is that what their name was? Take a left up here into this development.”

  Wolf slowed and took the turn, then passed under a gate with the sign above that read Swallow Creek. The neighborhood had houses built on ten- to twenty-acre lots, strategically placed in trees or out in flat meadows that left residents feeling like they lived in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the majesty of the Chautauqua Valley.

  “Right here.”

  Wolf took the first turn inside the overhanging sign, thankful it was well plowed—Rachette’s Volkswagen would need all the help it could get. He cursed their timing and the microphone-bugging software, because now Patterson and the child in her belly had been sucked into the danger.

  “Second house on the right.”

  They passed the first house, a sprawling two-story with a separate guest house, surrounded by a meadow and sweeping views of the western peaks. The second house was more secluded, squatting in a section of forest.

  “So, you knew this house was vacant?” Wolf asked. He was trying to stall, knowing Bristol would be in a big hurry to kill them if he wanted to get out of this unscathed. “Is that why you chose this place?”

  “No. Unsecured wireless internet. Just a happy coincidence for them that they’re out of town. If they’d been here, I’d have shot them in the head.” He raised a gun and waved it in the mirror. “Which I’ll do to both of you if you try anything, like that sucker punch you caught me with back there.”

  Wolf slowed at the approaching driveway and turned in.

  “Press the garage-door opener.”

  Wolf did, and one of the four doors lifted, revealing an empty space in a spotless, well-lit garage.

  “Park in there and shut off the engine. Close the door all the way. I’ll get out and then you’ll get out when I tell you.”

  The driveway was half plowed, half covered in at least a foot of snow from the overnight storm. Car tracks led into another of the closed garage doors, twin depressions covered by inches of snow, and as Wolf pulled in he saw that it was the Mackennas’ Silver Jeep Cherokee that had made them.

  Wolf shut off the engine and pressed the button for the garage door. With a final glance in the mirror, he saw the tail end of Rachette’s Jetta pass by.

  Chapter 42

  “1493 Edelweiss Lane,” Patterson said. “That’s where they are. I’m going to … oh God.” She breathed rapidly as another wave of pain hit her.

  “You okay?” Hernandez asked. “We’re coming. We’re on the county road now. We can see the entrance to the neighborhood.”

  She twisted in her seat and looked behind her—the movement made her gasp. “I’m going to be at the next house around the bend. It’s on the right. There’s forest between here and the other house. You could approach on foot under cover of the trees.”

  “Copy that. We’ll drive by to the next house. Get inside if you can. If not, we’ll be there in a second.”

  Patterson shut off the phone, too distracted by the pain to say anything more. Bouncing hard in her seat, she launched the car into the ample driveway of the sprawling house and jammed the brakes.

  The Volkswagen skidded for a few feet and rocked to a stop.

  Rather than reach up and turn the key, she let off the clutch and stalled in the deep snow.

  Her cop instinct was telling her that nobody was home. The blinds on all the windows were closed. The driveway was covered with deep powder.

  “Maybe someone’s there. It’s still early in the day,” she said out loud. “They’re just lazy with their shoveling.”

  Opening the door, she rolled off the seat and landed on her hands and knees in the deep snow. Her butt and legs were ice cold, the amniotic fluid exposed to the cold air, and now her hands were numb bricks.

  She struggled to her feet and slammed the door, then breathed on her left hand, while her right hand pulled desperately up on her belly. It felt like the baby wanted to dive out of her. She was dilated—she could feel it—and the baby was dropping lower and lower with each bowlegged step.

  She stopped. Tackling the driveway and the snow-covered steps up to the front door in the grip of a contraction was too much. And what if no one was there, anyway?

  She was in limbo, standing with her legs wide, in snow up to her knees, too far from the house, and the prospect of going back to Rachette’s Burger King trash can of a car even less appealing.

  She’d wait for her car. Hernandez and Rachette would be here any second. It would be warm. It would be clean. It was the next best thing to a hospital.

  She turned and sucked her breath in as she saw the red in the snow. She looked at her legs—the right was stained darker than the left.

  She was bleeding.

  What did that mean?

  Her placenta had ruptured? Oh my God. That was deadly to both of them, wasn’t it?

  “Oh shit, oh shit.” She stepped fast back to Rachette’s car and opened the rear door. Pausing for a moment, she crawled inside on her hands and knees, because that’s what a million years of evolution was telling her to do.

  She pulled out her phone and stared at it. If she called 911, the ambulance would come and her baby would be saved. She’d also be pulling the pin on a grenade. What would happen to the little girl, Wolf, and Lauren if a wall of sirens came toward them?

  She lowered the phone and brushed aside a crumpled bag and a rock-hard French fry.

  As she shivered uncontrollably, another contraction came on. They were too close together. Something was wrong.

  The rear door flew open and Rachette bent down in front of her face. With wide eyes, he studied her and the fabric seat beneath her. “Holy shit, you’re bleeding!”

  Chapter 43

  Wolf stepped out of the SUV and onto the painted concrete floor of the garage. There were plenty of weapons hanging on the walls above a workbench—hammers, s
crewdrivers, wrenches—but little opportunity to get at them.

  Bristol came around the other side of the car with his gun to Lauren’s head. “You go first. You try anything tricky and I splash your back with her brains.”

  Wolf pushed the driver’s-side door closed and walked slowly and deliberately around the front of the car.

  “Go on.”

  Wolf kept walking, past the silver Jeep Cherokee and a gleaming black Ferrari.

  “There had to have been an alarm on this place,” Wolf said.

  “I’m good with electronics.”

  Wolf nodded.

  “Now start moving faster. Inside.”

  Wolf took three steps up to a house entrance. He twisted an expensive knob, pushed the door open, and walked into a warm hallway that smelled like pine cleaner.

  He held the door open for Lauren and Bristol.

  Bristol was still at the bottom of the stairs, smiling up at Wolf. Lauren stood stiffly in front of him. Bristol lifted his elbow, changing the angle of the gun pointed at the back of Lauren’s head. “Use that doorstop to prop the door open and back up into the hallway five steps. Do it, now.”

  Wolf flipped the hinged doorstop down with his foot and stepped back.

  Lauren waited and then flew forward as Bristol’s brutal push hit her from behind. She just caught her balance, narrowly avoiding going head first into the steps, and stumbled up into the house.

  A television played behind the closed door immediately to Wolf’s left. A flickering sliver of light escaped out the bottom, and he saw shadows of feet standing on the other side.

  Lauren walked in stiffly, the gun still pressed to the back of her head, and then she followed Wolf’s eyes to the bottom of the door.

  “Is Ella in there? Ella!”

  “Mommy!” the girl screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Lauren lurched for the door but Bristol pulled her back by her hair.

  Wolf tensed, waiting for an opening, a millisecond when Bristol let his guard down amid the confusion.

  But Bristol held Lauren’s hair with one hand and kept his eyes locked on Wolf. “You’ll see your daughter soon enough. Now shut up and move down the hallway.”