Moment of Weakness

by KG MacGregor

  Wes inched backward down the steep roof and dropped to the ground with a soft crunch in the snow, which was muted on the dock by Ancil’s continued chatter with Sasha.

  “Allow me to introduce my friend David. His cousin was an unfortunate casualty today. A loyal soldier sacrificed to the cause.”

  Zann scooted to the edge and let her feet dangle. At Camp Lejeune, she’d made hundreds of jumps like this with a full pack, even in the dark. She pushed off and landed in a squat, falling back clumsily. Her right hand struck a snow-covered concrete block and popped so loud she feared the men might have heard it.

  “That how you jarheads do it?” Wes whispered.

  The pain was like molten lava running through her veins. Her hand was broken. Ignoring it, she scrambled to her feet and peered around the corner, realizing instantly that she couldn’t use her rifle at all with just her left hand…which was now her good hand. She slid the strap off her shoulder and secured the textured grip of her pistol, managing to cock the slide with her rapidly swelling fingers. The combat soldier in her wanted to rush the dock and stick the barrel in somebody’s face. Four of them, two of us. The odds didn’t faze her, but she wouldn’t dare make a move without first knowing Marleigh was safe.

  “Mr. Percy wants the girl,” Sasha said, spurning the niceties.

  “Then I am pleased to present her.” Ancil drew his handgun and gestured to David, who kicked at something beneath the console.

  Bridget suddenly appeared, her tall frame unsteady as her feet sought purchase on the deck of the swaying boat. She looked terrified. Her wrists were bound in front with handcuffs, and she needed David’s support to step out onto the dock.

  Zann’s gut tightened. What if Ancil had concluded he had no use for Marleigh? He could have killed her in front of Bridget for the thrill of it, or to terrorize her into cooperating.

  “What do we do with this one?” David asked. There was more movement in the boat as another figure slowly uncoiled from the cuddy cabin.

  “I do believe that’s your wife,” Wes whispered, his voice sounding like a smile.

  Zann felt her knees go weak with relief. Marleigh too was in handcuffs, but unlike Bridget, she showed no trace of fear. Steady on her feet, she shrugged defiantly from David’s grasp to take a giant step out of the boat by herself.

  Wes caught Zann’s arm as she instinctively started forward. “Don’t go jumping the gun, now. We got ’em right where we want ’em.”

  As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. A sudden move could draw panicked gunfire from all directions, putting Marleigh and Bridget at risk of getting caught in the crossfire. One nightmare like that was enough for a lifetime.

  “Who’s she?” Sasha demanded gruffly.

  David hurried to catch up to the group, rubbing his shoulders briskly. “Goddamn, it’s cold out here. If you guys want to chitchat, let’s do it in the house by the fire.”

  Ancil ignored him. “She is…how should I put it…extra incentive for our friend here to be forthcoming about her boyfriend.” Strolling casually around Bridget, he leaned into her ear. “Your memory of where Luc’s father lives…it improves, oui?”

  “I’ll help you however I can. Just don’t hurt her. She has nothing to do with this.”

  Marleigh spoke her first words with a cold, flat tone. “He’s going to kill us whether you help them or not. And probably David too, just like he did Scotty. Isn’t that right, Ancil?”

  He took a menacing step toward her, prompting Zann to raise her handgun to eye level and line up the sights to his chest. But could she trust her aim? Marleigh was so, so close.

  “Yes, well…perhaps Luc Michaux will bargain for your lives.” He lowered his gun and spun back toward Bridget. “I would graciously consider making such a trade. But first I need to find him.”

  “Ancil!” Percy appeared in the doorway and bellowed, “What are you waiting for? Come inside. Sasha…”

  At the sound of his name, the bodyguard whirled on David and plunged a knife into his gut.

  * * *

  Sure, there still was a glimmer of hope they’d get out of this alive, but Marleigh didn’t like their odds. Montreal was a major world city. It could take days—weeks even—for Bridget to find the building where Luc’s father lived. Ancil wouldn’t wait that long. He was on the hook for seven million dollars worth of Everett Percy’s China Girl that he’d entrusted Luc to deliver.

  Watching David get stabbed at the snap of a finger told her all she needed to know about the barbaric culture of the drug trade. Money was god. People were expendable, especially those who screwed up. Everyone linked to the Luc Michaux disaster would be killed eventually, and even Ancil seemed to know it.

  “I don’t care about dying anymore as long as I get to be warm,” Bridget muttered as they entered the house at gunpoint. A fire crackled on a stone hearth that rose from the floor to the cathedral ceiling. The surrounding décor was every bit as tacky as Bridget had described, from the filigreed sculptures to the mounted heads of exotic trophy animals.

  “Keep your hands in your lap,” Marleigh whispered. They couldn’t afford to call attention to their loosened handcuffs.

  The tension between the two men was immediately tangible. With henchman Sasha still outside disposing of David’s body, Marleigh wondered if this wasn’t their best chance to break free. She’d feel a lot braver if Ancil’s finger weren’t still resting on the trigger of a gun he wasn’t afraid to use.

  From the couch where Ancil had ordered them to sit, she took a visual inventory of the exits. The carved mahogany front door clearly had a keyed deadbolt. They couldn’t take a chance on sneaking over there and finding it locked. The hallway was a possibility, assuming it led to a bedroom with an outside door. But that one too could be locked. The only certain way out was through the same door they’d entered.

  They needed a better plan than just to get out of the house. Where would they run? Not back to the boat—there wasn’t time to untie it and push away from the dock. Then there was the high wall that surrounded the property. To get around it, they’d have to go through the freezing water to the other side, where there was no guarantee they could escape or even hide. It might buy them a couple of minutes, but then Ancil would kill them in a rage.

  Still, they had to try. There was no “bargain” that ended with her and Bridget being freed, especially since they could finger Everett Percy as the kingpin. It was run or die.

  “You told me you trusted Luc Michaux,” Percy spat as he lounged in a wingback chair, glaring indignantly like a king reviewing his subject. He had an air of eccentricity, not surprising given his odd array of collectibles. “And I trusted you. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you gutted like your friend out there.”

  Ancil shrugged out of his heavy coat and warmed his hands by the fire, his courage an obvious pretense. “Because you need my help to move your product, Everett. And because I am the only one who can recover our shipment. You seem to forget that Luc stole from me too. I am highly motivated to find him and make him pay for his foolishness.”

  Percy gestured with his drink toward Bridget. “Young lady, do you know where your boyfriend is?”

  She shook her head. “He hasn’t called me in three days.”

  “Then—excuse my bluntness—why are you both here in my house and not outside in a plastic tarp with Ancil’s incompetent colleague?”

  Ancil stepped between them, regaining the aura of self-assurance he’d shown when he surrendered to the fake DEA agents. Like Everett, he was an alpha male who enjoyed calling the shots. “Because she will take us to Luc’s father in Montreal. I messaged my friend who works the border crossing at Saint-Armand. We will go tonight, mon ami.”

  So he intended for them to travel the rest of the way by car. Saint-Armand was north of Burlington on Interstate 89. Police on the US side would be out in force looking for him.

  “See, there’s your problem, Ancil. You seem to think I’m your friend.
I’m your employer and right now I’m extremely unhappy with your job performance.”

  “As you should be, Everett. But a good employee takes responsibility for his mistakes and makes them right. Together we will send a message to everyone that neither Everett Percy nor Ancil Leclerc will tolerate betrayal.”

  Marleigh kept her eye on his hand, which still gripped the pistol he’d brandished all day. It rippled with tension, as if at any moment he might end the condescending rebuke with a bullet to Percy’s head. Probably the only thing keeping him in check was the threat of Sasha.

  The older man grunted. “I won’t tolerate incompetence either. I’m sending Sasha with you. You’d best hope he’s happy with your results.” He craned his neck to see into the backyard. “What’s taking him so long?”

  * * *

  Zann tiptoed into the boat shed behind Wes to find the thug, his back to the door, rolling David’s lifeless body into a plastic sheet. With just two silent steps, Wes reached him with a cocked pistol at his temple. “Hey there, big boy. Your mama said for you to take that gun out of your armpit before it gets all smelly.”

  Sasha barely even turned his head before making his move, sweeping Wes’s feet out from under him only to see Zann step forward in his place, her SIG aimed right between his eyes.

  “Like my friend said.” The gun shook slightly in her left hand, but she was more than confident at a range of only three feet. Her other hand looked like a latex glove someone had inflated and tied off as a joke. “But only if you want to live.”

  Holding one arm out in surrender, Sasha cautiously removed a semiautomatic pistol from a holster inside his sport coat and placed it on the dirt floor.

  Wes scrambled to his feet and patted him down, finding the bloody knife he’d used on David and a snub-nosed revolver in an ankle holster. “You’re just full of tricks, ain’t you?”

  Zann studied Sasha’s steely eyes and twitching jaw. The cogs were turning in his head as he gamed his options. Any second, he’d explode with rage, betting he could survive her first shot and kill both of them before they got off another. He still thought he was in control, all the way up to the moment her boot viciously struck his chin and sent his head snapping back.

  “Remind me never to piss you off,” Wes said as he retrieved a coil of ski rope from a hook on the wall. Straddling the thug’s back, he went to work knotting his limp limbs together. “They say it’s kinda dangerous to hogtie a fat guy. It’d be a shame if we forgot about him.”

  With Sasha out of the way, the major threat now was Ancil. Everett had shown no movement so far toward a weapon of any kind—henchmen like Sasha were there to provide the muscle. However, both of the men inside had proved their ruthlessness, snuffing out Scotty and David without hesitation.

  “You ready to close in?” Wes asked, ducking low as he sized up their advance.

  Zann inched toward the house, careful to keep a support column between her and Everett so he wouldn’t see her approach. He and Ancil, whose back was to the door, appeared to be arguing, while Bridget and Marleigh sat side by side on a couch near the fireplace. Marleigh was studying the room, as if searching for an escape. “That’s my girl…looking for a way out.”

  Wes made it all the way to a row of shrubbery beneath the window and waved her over. “What’s taking the cops so long? Think we oughta rush ’em before they do something stupid?”

  “Not with that gun in his hand.” With all the glass, they’d be seen before they could get through the door.

  Suddenly the floodlights went dark, their automatic timer expiring after a prolonged period without any movement in the backyard.

  “Well, fuck me,” Wes muttered under his breath. If they moved now, the lights would come on again and give them away.

  Zann peered through the bush to gauge the reaction inside. Everett sat up tall in his chair, straining to see beyond the glass. Clearly he expected to see his man Sasha moving around outside.

  Wes yanked her collar backward, pulling her under the hedge. “Get down!”

  Not ten feet away, Ancil appeared in the doorway to survey the backyard. His words, though somewhat muffled by the glass, were clear enough to hear. “I do not see him. Perhaps he is in the boathouse.”

  In the distance, a cell phone rang. And rang. It was Sasha’s, which Wes had tossed aside during a search of his pockets.

  Everett began to yell, his voice growing louder as he neared the door. “Go find him.”

  “You find him! Do you think I trust either of you after what he did to David?”

  Moments later, Everett stormed onto the patio with the assault rifle in hand, triggering the floodlights again. “Sasha!”

  They were sitting ducks if he turned around, up against the shrubs in plain view.

  He called the name again and continued hesitantly toward the boat shed as a faint blue light began to flicker against the building and the tree above it—a police car in the driveway. The next few seconds seemed to pass in slow motion, as realization dawned and he looked over his shoulder to confirm his fears. When he saw them next to the house, he instinctively raised his gun.

  A barrage of bullets exploded from Wes’s mighty SIG MCX, one causing Everett to jerk and spray several rounds into the air. Wounded, he scurried behind a stone barbecue pit.

  Wes shouted, “I got this one. Go!”

  Gun drawn and cocked, Zann raced toward the door and collided with Bridget as a bullet shattered the glass nearby. “Go around to the front!”

  If Bridget reached the gate, the cops would be there to meet her.

  There was no sign of Marleigh or Ancil in the great room. With her Legion in the ready position, Zann checked potential hiding places, finally starting down the hallway. Her broken right hand throbbed as she tried to steady her left-handed grip. She was barely aware of her trigger finger, such were the deadened nerves in her hand.

  Another exchange of gunfire sounded outdoors, ending with two shots she would have bet her life came from Wes’s rifle.

  “It’s over, Ancil,” she called. “My partner just shot Everett and the cops are outside.”

  There was no reply as she kept walking, clearing each room the way she’d been trained, acutely aware she wasn’t wearing body armor and her firepower was limited. Swinging into the last room, the master suite, she came face-to-face with a terrifying sight—Ancil’s arm wrapped around Marleigh’s neck and his gun pointed at her head.

  “Let her go. There’s no way out of here.”

  “That is where you are wrong, mon amie. She is my way out. You know I am not afraid to kill her. What do I have to lose?”

  “He’s going to kill me anyway, Zann. Don’t let him take me.”

  Even if she was sure she could aim straight, she had no shot with him using Marleigh as a shield. Too close, too much room for error.

  “I am going to the boat.” Averting his eyes for an instant, he unlatched the door behind him and peered out onto the patio. “If anyone tries to stop—”

  Marleigh’s hands parted, one of her cuffs hanging open like a dangling claw. Reaching behind her, she dug it into his groin and yanked upward. He doubled over to clutch his injury, the instinct of self-protection. In the instant his gun was lowered, she threw her weight against his legs and drove him into the glass door.

  His gun went off, the bullets setting off puffs of plaster from the ceiling.

  With her left elbow locked, Zann raised her arm and reeled off a string of shots, her wrist weak and flailing with each recoil. The glass doors exploded one after the other.

  With every pop, Ancil twisted and flinched as if to shield himself from the onslaught, all the while firing back wildly. Then suddenly his neck burst into a gurgling fountain. Bright red, oxygen-rich blood meant for his brain. He slumped forward over Marleigh, the two of them motionless on the floor.

  Zann took a tentative step forward, horrified. Seconds dragged by without any sign of movement as the pool of blood crept outward. “Marleigh…oh God.�
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  “Get him off me,” a muffled voice finally said.

  She stumbled over and shoved Ancil aside, shivering at his vacant stare. Marleigh was drenched in blood. “Where are you hurt?”

  “I’m okay. I knew you’d come.” With a handcuff still hanging from her wrist, she threw her arms around Zann’s neck. “I knew you’d come…I knew you’d come.”

  Voices filtered down the hallway, police officers fanning out through the house. Trooper Lisper, with her service weapon drawn, was the first to reach them. “Marleigh, are you all right?”

  “She’s fine. Did Bridget get out? Where is she?”

  “Outside in a patrol car—a real patrol car.” She holstered her gun and put on a latex glove before checking Ancil’s carotid pulse. “Marleigh, your wife here…she’s the one who figured everything out. Those guys had us chasing our tails.”

  Marleigh buried her head against Zann’s chest. Her breath was ragged, as though she was trying not to sob.

  Zann nodded to Lisper, who winked and left the room. “It’s over, sweetheart. You’re safe now.”

  “I thought I was going to die.”

  “I wasn’t going to let that happen.” For a fleeting instant, she let herself feel like the hero Marleigh believed her to be. Holding her, rocking her, basking in her own stoic pride.

  Over Marleigh’s shoulder was a notch in the doorframe where one of her errant bullets had splintered the wood. How close had she come to killing the person she loved more than life?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Two days later

  The steering wheel of the Jeep pulled slightly to the left, making it tough for Marleigh to stay in her lane. If that weren’t enough, a spring in the seat dug into her butt, and as she pulled into the driveway, the brakes went all the way to the floor before they grabbed. The Jeep was like a bucking bronco that only Zann could ride.