by Matt Hilton
Ellie was sobbing softly, while Nicole’s attention had barely strayed from my face. She had fully accepted me as a lifeline, indeed had grown dependent upon me for everything.
‘Nicole,’ I said. ‘Find something to carry water in and fill it up. While you’re at it, have a drink and make sure Ellie does too.’
She nodded, and led the girl towards the kitchen area. I checked the sawn-off liberated from Brent and found it to be an old-fashioned double-barrelled model chambered for twelve-gauge shot. There were two unused shells in it, and I discovered extra ammunition in a drawer in a rickety sideboard. I shoved a number of the shells into my pockets then went to the front window. Taking care not to offer a target, I only pulled the drapes aside by an inch and peered outside. This vantage offered me a view back across the wide plain towards the mushroom mountain, but there was no sign of the pick-up truck. That could mean anything: the Logans could be taking a different route back, or might even already be out there and beyond my line of sight.
When I turned from the window I found Nicole and Ellie staring up at me. Nicole’s gaze was rapt on my face, whereas Ellie was studying a scar next to my heart, then drifting from it to the bullet wound in my shoulder and the tattoo next to it. I couldn’t tell if she was troubled by the marks I carried as emblems of my trade, or if they gave her some kind of comfort. After weeping moments ago her face was now flat and without emotion; I worried that her mind had been irretrievably affected by the inhumanity she’d suffered these last few days. Damn it, the girl was going to bear witness to further horror before we were through, but there was nothing I could do about that.
To Nicole I said, ‘Can you shoot a gun?’
‘No,’ she replied, her voice a thin whisper.
I handed her the shotgun. Firing it without any training would be enough to knock her on her backside, but that’s not what I had in mind. ‘Carry this for me, but be ready to hand it over when I need it.’
‘OK.’ She took the shotgun tentatively.
Jay Walker, for all her resistance to shooting Samuel when she’d had the opportunity, now seemed like a much stronger person than her friend. Then again, I’d no right making that assumption, because Jay had suffered differently. She had endured physical assault, and had been confined in a box, but that would be preferable to what I suspected Nicole had put up with. Maybe if she got a bead on the Logans she would blast them to hell without a second thought; though here I was probably imposing my sense of justice on hers.
Switching my attention to the girl, I touched her gently on the side of the face. She didn’t as much as flinch. ‘How are you doing, Ellie? Are you OK?’
‘What’s that tattoo for?’
Her question surprised me, and I glanced down at the ink on my shoulder. It was a reminder of my time with Arrowsake, the secretive Special Force I’d once been a member of and now longed to put behind me. They had owned me for far too long and to this day were still trying to exert their influence upon me. Back then I’d been an idealistic soldier, and had gladly gone to war for them, in denial that I was being used. I believed that my work was just, that I was making the world safe and free from tyranny and terrorism, when in fact the men I’d served were equally as despotic as those I killed. Once I’d worn the tattoo with pride, but now it was just an ugly reminder of my past, as horrible as the knife and bullet wounds in my chest.
‘It’s a reminder,’ I said, ‘so that I never go back.’
Ellie squinted, trying to make sense of the three intersecting arrows embossing a shield. Beneath the coat of arms was a weighing scale, both arms equally balanced, one side supporting an ellipse, the other a horizontal crescent. Symbolically it signified the balancing of good and evil – a halo and devil’s horns – but I wondered about the validity of it now: perhaps, more pertinently, I’d come to understand that the balancing of right and wrong was a constant battle. Not that I suffered a moral conflict while looking down at the girl; I’d no qualms about taking the war to the Logans on her behalf.
My words were too cryptic to make sense to the girl, but she accepted them without question. Then she added her own doleful summation: ‘I never want to come back here either.’
It was a good motivator.
We moved for the back door, but I halted them with a raised hand. ‘Hold on a minute.’ I looked at Nicole. ‘Do you know where they put the keys to Jay’s car?’
She shrugged. Things like car keys wouldn’t have been important to her while she was being stripped and humiliated, but I hoped that she’d seen where they’d been hidden.
‘Think, Nicole. Did you see any of the men hide them somewhere?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
‘Ellie?’
The girl shook her head, then glanced back at Brent Logan. I knew what she was thinking, and guessed that it wasn’t somewhere she’d like to look, but I wasn’t as squeamish. I returned to the corpse and went through its pockets. Apart from a couple of Chupa Chups lollipops in his back pocket there was nothing. I didn’t think that Ellie would appreciate them so left the sweets where they were. I looked around the living room. No keys. The kitchen and bunk room came up bare as well. At worst Samuel or Carson was holding the keys, but then again, for all I knew they could be in the SUV. When I’d spotted it in the lean-to shed outside, I hadn’t been thinking of the car as a possible getaway vehicle. Its presence had meant something else to me then, and it did now. I wondered where Jay was and if I’d made a terrible mistake in sending her off alone.
If my suspicions were true, there was nothing I could do about it. Nicole and Ellie needed my help, and I had to prioritise.
The girls were each carrying a plastic bottle of water. Ellie held hers in her arms like a doll, while Nicole had jammed hers under her armpit so she could also carry the shotgun. I went quickly to the faucet and pumped the arm. The water tasted mildly salty, but it was better than nothing. Some of it dribbled down my chin, and I dashed it away with the wrist of my gun hand. I took another gulp, swilled it round and then spat the remainder into the sink. I was ready.
‘Let’s go, girls,’ I said, as if I was about to take them on an exciting adventure. It was important to keep them motivated, and not have them dwelling on the alternative, that I was possibly leading them to an unmarked grave. ‘Stay close to me at all times. Don’t speak and stay low, OK.’
We made a ragtag group in our mismatched and generally ill-fitting clothing but that didn’t mean a thing as long as it kept them safe. The overlarge clothing would help keep the sun off their bodies, even if I was condemning myself to a serious case of sunburn. I checked the way was clear, then guided the girls over to the lean-to and directed them to crouch in the shadows alongside its north-facing wall. ‘I’ll only be a few seconds,’ I said. ‘If you see or hear anything don’t shout, just knock on the wall. I’ll hear you.’
Checking all around, I backed up to the board covering the front of the shed and pulled it to one side. Jameson Walker’s SUV was coated with trail dust, but otherwise it seemed as good as new. Moving quickly for the driver’s door, I opened it and leaned inside. There were tiny cubes of broken window glass in the footwells. Luck wasn’t with me. There were no keys in the ignition. I checked all the likely hiding places: behind the visor, under the seats, in the glove compartment, but my search didn’t turn them up. Typical, I thought, because that would have been way too simple a get-out.
What I did find outweighed the disappointment that using the SUV for a getaway had proven a dead end. Both Jay and Nicole’s belongings were still on the back seat, holdalls containing clothing. I searched through them, grabbing something more appropriate for the girls, as well as two pairs of sneakers. Since Nicole wasn’t that much bigger than Ellie, I supposed there wouldn’t be much difference in the size of their footwear. There was no time to change now, so I stuffed them into my rucksack, and returned to the girls.
‘We can’t use the car I’m afraid. We’re going to have to wa
lk out of here.’
They exchanged a glance, but neither looked perturbed by the prospect of having to traverse the desert. In fact they looked eager to get going, as if they wished to be anywhere but here, on foot or otherwise.
We used the trail I’d followed coming in, skirting the rubbish tip to the boulders where I held up a hand to stop them. The Logans’ no show was troubling me, and caused me to rethink our options. It was one thing taking Jay in that direction when I’d a vehicle waiting for her, quite another to expect to guide the two girls all the way back to the highway on foot. Instead, I made them head to the west towards the sweeping range of hills. Not that I planned on walking them too far that way; all I was interested in was finding some place where I could hide the girls while I returned to the ranch. The only way I was going to prevent the Logans from pursuing us was to stop them dead in their tracks.
Dead, I decided, was a good choice of word.
22
Fortune shone on Jay in a totally unexpected fashion. The cellphone was proving wholly unpredictable, and when she’d tried to patch through to the local police the line had been so weak that she couldn’t hear what the dispatcher was saying and suspected that her words were equally garbled. Frustrated, she’d pulled in by the side of the road, but when that had failed to make any difference she chanced calling Hunter’s friend instead. She had no luck, but had the idea to write a text message instead. An old hand at SMS messaging, she filled a page with a brief description of what had occurred and a description of the Logan ranch’s location in no time. She pressed the send button and it failed, but then set it to retry. The cell would automatically resend the message and she didn’t have to concern herself with it while she drove nearer to Holbrook. Throwing the Yukon into drive, she was pulling back on to the highway when she saw a vehicle approaching. Her first fear was that it was the old pick-up truck, but in the next instant she yelped in joy as the gumball light rack on the roof of the vehicle became visible. She brought the Yukon to a halt and got out, running towards the police cruiser waving both arms over her head.
The police cruiser coasted to a stop a hundred yards from her position. Jay understood how crazy she must look and couldn’t blame the officers for approaching her cautiously, but it didn’t stop her. Both front doors opened and an officer exited each side of the vehicle, both resting their hands on the butts of their sidearms.
‘Help me!’ Jay yelled. ‘Help me for God’s sake!’
‘Ma’am, stand still and place your hands on top of your head.’
Jay couldn’t believe that they thought her a threat and continued towards them. The taller, younger of the two officers drew his sidearm. The other, a balding man whose gut shadowed his belt buckle, merely dug his thumbs into his gun belt. The two officers shared a measured glance. Then the younger repeated his command. ‘Stand still. Place both hands on your head. I will come to you.’
Jay stumbled to a halt. Fifty yards still separated them. ‘I need your help. My friend has been kidnapped.’
‘Just take it easy, ma’am, and we’ll have things sorted in no time.’
The younger officer continued to approach her, alert for any sudden movement. He also checked the desert on each side, and Jay wondered why the hell he’d do that. What did he think: that she had some friends hiding by the roadside ready to jump out on him? Who in their right mind was going to try to hijack a cop car? ‘My friend and another girl have been kidnapped! You have to do something.’
‘Everything’s under control, ma’am, now take it easy.’ The young cop turned to call back to his colleague, but kept one eye on Jay. ‘You hear what she said, Sarge? Maybe you’d best call it in.’
‘I’ll try but you know how these power lines cause interference.’ The older cop leaned back into the cruiser. Jay expected to hear his voice in stereo, coming from both the cruiser and the radio set clipped to the younger cop’s shirt. She heard neither, and realised that the set in the car must work on a different frequency to that for the radio the cops carried. It didn’t matter, some kind of action was being taken and that was all she cared about.
The young cop was now within ten feet of her and Jay saw a handsome, clean-cut face, a well-developed body. A badge pinned to his uniform shirt identified him as Officer Lewin. Jay opened her mouth to speak but the cop pre-empted her. ‘Tell me your name, ma’am.’
‘Jay,’ she said. ‘My name’s Jay Walker.’
She saw the man’s eyes narrow slightly at her name and again he glanced quickly at his partner. The older cop was still busy at the handset in the cruiser. Officer Lewin appraised her, taking in the bruising on her face, her dishevelled appearance, the dust adhering to her clothing, and believed her words. His gaze slid to the Yukon and it was as if he recognised it, though she couldn’t imagine how. His next words made things clearer to Jay. ‘The man who was driving the GMC, where is he?’
Jay turned to look at the vehicle as if it would help order her mind. ‘He’s called Joe Hunter. He helped me escape but has gone back to get the others out.’
‘Joe Hunter.’ Lewin nodded his head, confirming the name was the same one he had lodged in his memory. ‘He’s a private investigator from Florida?’
‘Yes,’ Jay said, eager to relate the rest of her tale. Her words came in a rush. ‘They murdered those people at the gas station, the other day. They kidnapped a girl called Ellie then came after me and my friend. They still have them: Nicole and Ellie. You have to do something now!’
Lewin moved closer, doing a visual check of her body a second time, and frowning. ‘OK, slow down. You said your name is Jay?’
‘Yes, Jay. It’s actually Joan Walker, but I go by Jay.’
‘OK, Jay. Tell me again: who committed murder, who took the other women?’
Jay threw a hand towards the desert. ‘A family from out there. They’re called Logan. Three of them.’
A dark cloud descended over Lewin’s features. He looked back towards the cruiser and saw his partner staring back at them from behind the windshield. He lifted a hand to indicate that all was fine. When he turned back to Jay, his brow had knitted into a frown. ‘You’re sure it was the Logans?’
‘They’ve held us prisoner for the last three days. Of course I’m sure. Carson, Brent and Samuel. They’re monsters. They killed those people at the gas station and if you don’t do something quickly they might kill the others.’
For a second time Lewin turned to regard the other cop. The older man slid out from the cruiser and stood with his thumb hooked in his belt. After a moment of reflection he began to walk towards them. Returning his attention to Jay, Lewin said, ‘OK. The Logans.’ He was thinking hard, and Jay sensed he wasn’t figuring out a way to handle the situation, but his superior. He caught her looking and shot her a cautionary glance. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
He went to meet the sergeant halfway.
Jay stood watching as they conversed, but couldn’t hear their voices. The sergeant scrubbed his palm over the back of his neck, a sign that he wasn’t happy with what he was hearing. The older man snapped something guttural, then marched towards Jay. Looking abashed, Officer Lewin fell into step behind him. The sergeant looked angry with her and Jay couldn’t guess why.
‘What is this madness?’ he demanded.
Madness?
‘It’s the truth. A family called Logan murdered those people at the gas station then kidnapped me and my friend. They also took a teenaged girl called Ellie Mansfield. I think they also took another woman. Helena Blackstock.’
Behind the sergeant, Officer Lewin slowly closed his eyes.
‘Could you be confusing their names?’
Jay went from one foot to the other, restless, and eager to see action. ‘Like I told your colleague, they’re called Carson, Brent and Samuel Logan. Aren’t you listening to me? They murdered those people and are going to do the same to my friends if you don’t get a move on!’
The sergeant’s hand went to the back of his neck once more. He sho
ok his head, turning to appraise the younger cop. Lewin must have felt the sergeant’s eyes on him because he slowly opened his own to meet his superior’s stare. Jay felt a tremor pass through her: it was as if both men stood on different sides of the same fence, and she was unsure which way things would go with either. Jay saw the sweat on the sergeant’s palm. Not all of it was from the palpable heat surrounding them. His hand slowly lowered to rest again on his belt, an inch or so from the snap holster holding his sidearm.
Jay knew instinctively that something was about to happen, but she was rooted to the spot, unable to make sense of the sudden note of challenge emanating from both men. Though she was baking in the desert heat, she fancied that a cold wind was blowing and she shivered. She heard their voices as if they came from inside a deep cave.
‘You said you’d checked the Logans’ place.’
‘I did.’
‘You can’t have. Not if what she says is true.’
‘I checked it. There was no one there.’
‘You also said you checked their place when Helena Blackstock was taken. You put me off going out there myself.’
‘I did check it, but I didn’t have a warrant to search the entire ranch. She could have been anywhere, and anyway, their alibi checked out.’
‘Their alibi wouldn’t have held water if you hadn’t also said you’d seen them in town. I think you lied about that, and I think you’re lying about all the rest.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I think you’re lying and covering for that damn family of yours.’
‘They ain’t my family.’
‘They are. They’re your blood. It’s why you’ve always covered their asses.’