by Matt Hilton
Po stood over the man, knife again near his hip as he prepared to open Randall up.
‘Stay down. Trust me, after what you’ve done, I’ll happily slit your damn throat.’
Randall writhed in agony, his crippled elbow cupped with his opposite arm. He moaned and thrashed seemingly oblivious to Po’s threat.
Po eased back.
It would be easy to kill the man, and the temptation was great. He’d killed before, but never in cold blood. He sheathed his knife in his boot.
He glanced at Elsa.
She hadn’t fled. She crouched a few feet back from the edge of the platform, watching Randall squirm. She appeared unaffected by the trauma he’d suffered, didn’t even display any joy at seeing her abuser punished, and Po knew she was in shock. She was shivering, and not only through being naked in the chilly air. If she wasn’t treated quickly she could go into a seizure. He pulled off his denim jacket. It was damp, spattered with Randall’s blood, but it might help.
He reached up to her, offering the jacket, but she shook her head wildly. She wasn’t looking at him.
Po turned quickly, just as Randall rushed at him in silence.
His disabled arm hung loose at his side, but his left hand slammed Po, and he was knocked away from the platform. Elsa scuttled backwards but Randall had lost interest in her. His rage was on the one who’d shattered his arm, and cut him to pieces. He stormed after Po, backhanding him, then aiming a kick at his legs. Off balance, Po couldn’t avoid the furious attack. He grimaced at the cold fire burning through his thigh, his leg deadened, and was swept up by Randall, who took them to the floor in a graceless dive. The wind exploded from Po’s lungs as he bore the brunt of the impact. Randall’s fingers dug into his face as he climbed Po’s body. He braced his knees either side of Po, and tried to grind his skull into the concrete. Despite a dislocated elbow, Randall went to punch with his right arm: it slapped ineffectively against Po’s shoulder.
Po’s advantage was that his hands were still free, and the man on top was losing strength fast. He got his arms up, knocking aside the hand on his head, and Randall braced it on the ground to stop from falling. Po bucked at the hips, and Randall was dismounted, though not fully. Po squirmed out from under him, and then kicked with both feet at Randall’s body. Before Po made it up, Randall had got his knees under him, plus one hand. His scarred face turned to Po as he pushed up from the floor, and madness shone in his one good eye. He was dying, but there was still fight in him. Po scrambled to meet his next attack.
But then Elsa was behind the kneeling giant.
Incredibly, she wrapped a length of her chain around Randall’s throat, and yanked backwards. She was half Randall’s weight, and severely emaciated, but she found strength from somewhere as she dragged him backwards. Surprise now filled Randall’s features, then panic as the chains bit deep into his throat and cut off his breath. He pawed at the chain, even as he toppled on to his butt and was dragged across the floor.
‘Elsa!’ Po hollered in alarm.
But his warning came too late, or maybe she ignored it. Still hauling with all her might, Elsa pitched backwards into one of the deep trenches, and filthy water gouted around her. Inexorably, the chain tightened around Randall’s neck, and his eyes bulged, his tongue protruded, and his fingers fell away from the chain. Trailing a wide smear of blood, he was dragged over the lip and into the trench.
Po scurried to the edge of the trough. The scummy water foamed with bubbles, but there was no sign of either Elsa or the man she’d just strangled to death.
‘Shit!’ Po snapped, and without pause dropped over the ledge and plunged beneath the surface. Floundering around, he reached and grasped, but found nothing, so tucked at the waist and dove deeper. He touched cloth, ignored it, and felt further up until he found Randall’s neck, and the chain that encircled it. The chain was yanked taut, and he groped down its length until he found Elsa’s bare wrists. She grasped at his arms in reflex, and he was glad. He kicked for the surface, trawling her below him. Towing two people behind him took every ounce of effort and yet he was barely making any progress, but unexpectedly he found something slick under his feet, and he kicked and pushed, until he was standing on a car roof. He broke the surface, gasping for air, then hauled with his last strength and was thankful when Elsa popped up alongside him. She screamed in panic, ejecting a plume of dirty fluid from her mouth. Po pulled her into his embrace and planted his feet. Randall didn’t emerge from the depths, and Po could care less.
‘It’s done,’ he soothed Elsa, stroking lank hair from her face. ‘You did it, Elsa. You’re safe, I’m safe, everyone is safe now.’
FORTY-TWO
Tess thought about Po, not the bullet intended for her brain.
It saddened her that she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye. She briefly wondered where he was, and if he’d saved Elsa. She knew he’d do everything in his power to help her if the girl could be saved. The way he would fight to save her if he realized she was in peril. When first they met and she engaged his services as her guide to Louisiana she told him he wasn’t her bodyguard, and wasn’t expected to take a bullet for her. He’d proven he’d do just that for her – once placing himself between her and a madman’s last desperate attempt at her life – and he would now. She hadn’t known him long, but her feelings for him were the strongest she’d felt for anyone alive, and she’d also take a bullet for him. Yet here she was, and she wasn’t throwing down her life on Po’s behalf, but for his friend, Pinky, and for Jasmine Reed, and the other girls. How would Po take the news of her death? She pitied Hopewell for the weight of vengeance he was pulling down on him … but not much.
At the last moment, she’d slid shut her eyes; she’d no intention of having Hopewell’s sneer imprinted in her mind as the last fleeting image she’d ever see.
As her thoughts had coalesced on Po’s face, and his lazy smile and twinkling turquoise eyes, she’d sensed the pressure of Hopewell’s finger on the trigger through the subtle movement of the barrel digging into her forehead. So what was he waiting for?
The gun barrel retracted.
She glimpsed up.
Cal Hopewell still loomed over her, but his gun was down by his side, and his head was tilted back at an odd angle, as if he was mimicking the way Jasmine had earlier thrown back her head to gulp down the rain.
What the hell?
Hopewell’s silhouette appeared bulkier than before, and he seemed to have sprouted extra limbs. Tess shook her head to make sense of what she was looking at.
There was more than one man. Behind Hopewell a second figure craned back, his left arm looped around Hopewell’s throat. Hopewell’s head was pulled back, because the second figure was levering on a handle that jutted from his face. The Glock slipped from lifeless fingers as Hopewell was dragged a few steps backwards. Both men sat down heavily on the concrete dais, but the second man continued to grind whatever he’d rammed through Hopewell’s eye into his brain. Hopewell’s mouth hung open, there was no life left in him.
Tess could feel blood streaming from her nose from when she’d been elbowed. She wiped at her nostrils with the back of her hand, then reached for the dropped Glock with her bloodied fingers. She dragged it into her grasp, then glanced back in confusion when she felt hands on her. Jasmine hugged her around her shoulders, her head pressed to Tess’s cheek. The young woman sobbed in relief, and Tess was certain she sobbed too, though she’d no time for it. She slowly extricated from Jasmine, assuring the girl it was all over, but with the gun now aiming at John Trojak as he sat numbly with Cal Hopewell slumped in his lap.
Police sirens now made a cacophony of sound, and from above them, Tess heard the voices of the first officers to arrive.
‘Trojak?’ Tess whispered. ‘John?’
Trojak’s head lolled, and she saw that one side of it was matted with gore. His gaze was unfocused, and it took him a few seconds to settle it on Tess as she pushed up off her backside. ‘I … I only ever … wanted to
help,’ he whispered.
He let go of the piece of rusty iron he’d shoved into Hopewell’s eyeball. Looked at the palm of his hand as if he didn’t recognize it.
Jasmine spoke his name.
Trojak blinked and resettled his gaze on her.
‘He warned me that Cal was coming home,’ Jasmine said for Tess’s sake. ‘It’s why I ran. If I’d known what was going to happen I’d have stayed put. Could anything have ended as bad as this?’
Trojak was critically wounded, and he had saved their lives, and he deserved Tess’s gratitude. But she turned to Jasmine and said, ‘Help him if you can.’ She went to Pinky.
Lucy and Maria had come out of hiding, and they too crouched alongside Pinky. He had rolled on his back, and he stared up at the trio of concerned faces peering down at him as rain pattered on his face.
‘Did I die and go to heaven, me?’ he asked. ‘I’m surrounded by angels!’
‘Pinky, are you hurt bad?’ Tess asked, her voice strained with emotion.
‘There are benefits to having well-padded love handles, eh?’ He was clasping his side where Hopewell’s bullet had punched in and then out of him. ‘Don’t think I’m hit bad, me, just had some impromptu liposuction.’
He was making light of being severely wounded, but he was right; with the correct medical assistance he would make a full recovery, with only minor scarring to boast about later.
‘Thank God, thank God,’ Tess said, and placed her palm on his cheek, stroking gently.
‘As lovely as that feels, you promised you were going to give me the number for that hunky male nurse,’ Pinky said. His smile was a grimace of pain. ‘Never a dull moment round you two,’ he said, ‘but for now I wouldn’t mind things slowing down, me.’
‘You’re going to be OK, we’ll look after you.’
‘Nicolas might not be happy that I failed to save you,’ Pinky said.
‘You did save me, Pinky. All of us.’
She checked out Lucy and Maria. Both young women looked as shocked as everyone else, but also equally relieved that their nightmare was over: they at least owed Pinky for getting them out alive. If he hadn’t gone at Hopewell with the iron pipe, then who knew where things might have ended for Tess or Jasmine.
Pinky craned round, trying to see behind him. ‘Where is Nicolas?’
‘I … I don’t know,’ Tess admitted. ‘But you know him, he’ll be fine.’ She wished she felt as confident as she sounded.
Police officers swarmed down the stairs towards them. Tess checked for Jasmine, and saw that she was supporting John Trojak’s head in her lap. The man, for all Tess had thought him a troublesome burr in her hide, had become her saviour, and probably of them all. She hoped dearly that he’d pull through. Hopewell was dead and good riddance.
Police officers moved among them, first checking for weapons, then when seeing that the survivors were all in need of assistance in one form of another, melting into caring roles. Tess stayed beside Pinky until a uniformed cop took over, then she stood, scanning faces. A plain-clothed woman came down the steps, followed by a tall guy, and Tess identified them as detectives. The woman was perfunctory with her commands as she viewed the scene and directed her officers. Pinky, Trojak, and the three young women were all being administered to. Tess stood and faced Detective Ratcliffe.
‘I’m Tess Grey,’ she said. She hadn’t yet put away Hopewell’s Glock, and Ratcliffe eyed it cautiously. ‘Thanks for coming, Detective Ratcliffe. Everything is fine here, but we’re not finished yet.’
Ratcliffe had straight dark hair, clipped back behind one ear, and wore spectacles and a smudge of pink lipstick. Her features were fine boned. She could pass as a meek school ma’am if you ignored the intense intelligence burning in her gaze behind her rain-dotted lenses. She was counting survivors, and then her attention alighted on Hopewell. ‘That isn’t the Jesse Randall you warned me about?’
‘He’s Calvin Hopewell, another dirtball rapist.’ Tess used the Glock to point at the derelict plant. ‘Randall’s still in there. There’s another girl, Elsa Jayne Moore, and my friend, Nicolas Villere, still inside with him.’
Ratcliffe waved over the other detective. He approached, weighing up the presence of the gun in Tess’s hand, then dropping any concern when Ratcliffe told him to organize a search.
‘I’m going with them,’ Tess announced.
‘No,’ Ratcliffe said, ‘you’re not. And I think it best you hand over that gun, Tess, before you go doing something stupid with it.’
Tess looked down at the Glock, and it surprised her that she still held it. She handed it butt first to Ratcliffe, with a nod at Hopewell. ‘It’s his. He shot both those men you see over there, and was about to kill me with it.’
‘You were lucky to survive,’ Ratcliffe said. She handed Tess a handkerchief, which she dabbed at her nose with. ‘There’s time for details later, but how you stopped an armed man with only a lump of iron … well, lucky’s the word.’
‘I had help,’ Tess said, but didn’t offer any more. She turned from the detective. ‘The details can wait,’ she agreed, ‘we need to get going. Po needs me.’
‘Po?’ The name meant nothing to Ratcliffe.
‘My partner, Nicolas. I have to go help him.’
‘I’ve officers looking for him.’
‘They could take for ever,’ Tess said, recalling the labyrinthine tunnels she’d tracked through, and stooped to pick up her grandfather’s Ruger. ‘This one is mine. I’ve a concealed carry permit for it, but if you want to inspect it, you’ll have to wait until I can fetch it from Maine. I know of a quick way to where Randall was holding those girls. You coming?’
Detective Ratcliffe tucked back her jacket and displayed a gun on her hip. She placed her hand on the butt, and Tess thought for the briefest second that Ratcliffe was about to draw on her. ‘Lead the way.’
Gratefully, Tess nodded at the woman, then turned and danced down the stone steps to the cinder path. Ratcliffe waved two uniformed officers to follow. At a jog, Tess retraced her steps back to where she’d rammed a gaping hole through the roller shutter. Behind them the lake danced with white caps as the storm pummelled it, but none of them paid the dramatic view any mind. As soon as they entered, the uniformed cops securing the cavernous room, Tess spotted Po, though only his head and shoulders were visible above the turgid water that surrounded him. He was holding a naked young woman in his arms, but Tess had never been happier to see either of them in such an intimate clinch.
‘Hi, Tess,’ he said and winked. ‘I’d wave hello, but I have both hands full.’
FORTY-THREE
The first real snow of winter had fallen overnight and through the next day. For years Tess had dreaded the first fall because of the ugly memories it always stirred. That was then, and this was now. She could now look on snow with a different slant, because although her old life had ended that fateful night, it had been the beginning of the new one she enjoyed now, and for that she was grateful.
She was enjoying a rare dinner date with Po, though they weren’t alone. Emma Clancy and her brother Alex had been invited to help them celebrate. It was a low-key affair, in a small but favourite waterfront restaurant on Custom House Wharf that specialized in seafood, and was rustic and cozy. The snow twinkled in the lights as it fell gently over the Fore River. It was a Christmas-card-perfect scene, and the food and drink was good. She’d even got Po out of denims and boots into an open-necked shirt and suit jacket over chinos and shoes. Freshly shaved, with a neat new haircut, he resembled a dashing young Clint Eastwood. Normally reticent in company, he was more relaxed, and enjoying the laughter: he and Alex were more at ease with each other, which couldn’t be a bad thing.
Emma Clancy ordered champagne, and once their flutes were topped up, she proposed a toast. ‘To us,’ she said, keeping things simple.
They clinked glasses, repeating her words, and drank.
‘And to absent friends,’ Po added.
Pinky had retu
rned home to Baton Rouge, with a firm promise to return for Thanksgiving. The bullet wound he sustained had shortened his planned stay in Portland, most of which ended up in a hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts instead, and he was determined to come back to enjoy their company when the bullets weren’t flying. He was healing well, and in good spirits.
‘Absent friends,’ Tess said, ‘and unexpected ones.’
She was referring to John Trojak. Despite the impressions gained from their first encounters with the man, he’d shown his true colours when he’d come to Jasmine and, by virtue, Tess’s rescue. He was a good man, one who’d been used and abused in a way dissimilar to what Hopewell and Randall’s victims had, but still a victim all the same. He’d done some bad things on Daryl Bruin’s behalf; there was no denying it, but who was Tess to judge? It was all a matter of perspective, and in her opinion he’d paid penance for his old ways, both in the injuries he sustained and in saving the day. She’d even forgiven him for burglarizing her home, because had he not done so, events would have ended in a totally different manner. OK, so Hopewell had only made it to Randall’s lair through Trojak’s misdeed, but if not he’d have gone for Jasmine at another time and place, perhaps when none of them could have stopped him. In some versions of the story, John Trojak was a hero, and to be honest Tess was fine with that. He’d certainly earned the accolades: his stay in hospital had outlasted Pinky’s, because the bullet Hopewell had fired at him had creased his already injured skull, and nobody could understand how a man with such a traumatic injury found the fortitude to creep up on the gunman and end his reign of terror with a piece of rusty iron he’d found beneath the dais where he’d fallen.