Bad Bones (Claire Morgan)

by Linda Ladd

  “You bitch!” he screamed into her face. But then he calmed down pretty fast. “You hurt me bad, and Bones is not gonna like it. He’s been taking real good care of me since I got back. But hey, did you hear that music when you broke my nose? Huh? Pretty, right?”

  Claire was seeing double now, two of him, two of everything, very dazed and not quite thinking clearly. But Punk wasted no time. He jumped off her and dragged her over to the rope that had suspended the other man. He quickly wrapped it around her wrists, knotted it tightly, and then he wrenched her up with one hard jerk that nearly took her arms out of the sockets, and she was hanging in the air, her feet suspended about a foot off the floor. He stood in front of her, wiping blood off his face with a dirty white towel and then holding it against his wounded nose, but he was staring up into her face.

  Still woozy, Claire started trying to loosen the ropes binding her wrists together, but he had the knots tied so tightly that it was already cutting off her circulation. He picked up an aluminum baseball bat from the table and held it up where she could see it. She swung her foot out at him, and managed to get him a good kick in the face again. He staggered back a few steps. If he liked broken bones so much, maybe she’d play a catchy tune or two on him before he finished her off.

  Standing out of her reach, he wiped off more blood, soaking the towel. His voice was muffled. “You’re pretty damn tough, know that? But you sure shouldn’t’ve done that. Now you’re makin’ me mad.”

  “Untie me, and we’ll see who’s tough. C’mon, let’s have a little cage fight, right here, right now. What’d you say? See who’s really the toughest. You or me. Or are you too chicken to fight a woman? Do you have to tie me up to beat me?”

  He laughed a little bit but he sounded uncertain. “You couldn’t beat me at nothin’. You’re just some skinny girl, and you don’t have no badge and gun no more.”

  “I can fight, all right. Too bad you’re too yellow to face me, fair and square.”

  At that, Punk frowned some more and thought some deep thoughts for a second, or two. “I’m not gonna fall for that shit. But know what? I’m a gonna leave you for Bones to play. Because, even though you really got me good, probably broke my nose, and all that, you do got some guts to you. Most of our instruments don’t fight back, once we get ’em down here in those cages. They just hang there and take it and beg and cry. You’re pretty damn different, but kinda stupid, too, ’cause you’re just gonna make both of us real mad.” Now he looked puzzled about it all. Glancing back toward the entrance to the shaft, he said, “Can’t figure what’s keepin’ Bones. He shoulda been back by now.”

  “Maybe you oughta go out there and find him. Maybe he got lost in the storm. Maybe a Fitch shot him down and he’s hurt and needs your help.”

  “Bones don’t get lost nowhere. He don’t get shot. He don’t get hurt. He don’t never need any help.”

  After that, Claire just hung there, hoping to hell Bones never came out to meet her. She sure didn’t want to trigger that. She stared at him, still trying to work the knots free with her fingertips. They gave some but not enough.

  Punk leaned against his worktable and stared up at her awhile, and then he said, “Know what?”

  He waited as if she was supposed to take some kind of wild guess. She debated the wisdom of just waiting until somebody came and rescued her. Who, she didn’t know, when she didn’t know, but there were people out looking for her by now and had been for some time, she did know that much. She still had a chance. So she said nothing, and let him contemplate the meaning of life or whatever loony tunes he was playing inside his evil mind.

  “Aren’t you even gonna guess?”

  “Not much point in it.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll just show you what I done.” He started unbuttoning his shirt, and Claire watched warily, hoping that didn’t mean what she was afraid it meant. She had expected assault and pain and broken bones and lots of other horrible stuff, but not sexual assault, not rape. But, and lucky for her, Punk stopped when he got to his insulated underwear and just pulled the top all the way up to his chin. Claire stared at the scars on his chest, just above his nipples. ANNIE. It said Annie, all right, her birth name, the name Thomas Landers called her. Scratched out in some bizarre kind of homemade tattoo.

  “Thomas did it, too, carved your name in his chest just for you, cut it with a needle. Then your boyfriend done gone and shot him dead. I’m gonna get him, too, when he comes out here lookin’ for you.”

  “Well, good luck with that. He’ll kill you with his bare hands if you don’t let me go.”

  Punk frowned. “Better not say nothin’ like that to Bones when he gets here. He’s real sensitive to that kinda thing. And he protects me from people like you.”

  So Claire just hung there, limp and completely unable to free herself. For the first time in her life, she realized that she was probably going to die. Right here, right now. Death was finally going to catch up with her in this awful place with this awful man. Her luck had run out. She was never going to get out of this alive. Never in a million years. She was never going to see Black again. Never see Bud or Harve or anybody else, not ever again. The revelation stunned her. She had always known she might get killed in the line of duty, that it was possible, but she had never allowed herself to accept it. Until now. Now she was accepting it. She was going to die the most cruel death imaginable, here alone with a madman. She was going to be beaten to death, just like the caged man and Blythe and Paulie and God only knew how many others.

  Trying to swallow down the rising horror and accept her fate with some kind of courage, she began to hope that Punk or Bones, or whichever one of them killed her, would play his bone music staccato style and get it over with. But he had taken plenty of time with the other man, time she had witnessed and now would experience herself. But no, no way would she let that happen. She’d goad him into finishing her off quickly, if she had to. She sure didn’t want to be awake and aware when the obscene body licking started. She resigned herself, tried to prepare for the first brutal swing of that bat, tried to control the paralyzing fear that was gripping her. She did not want to die, not here, not like this.

  Then suddenly, in the utter stillness, in the endless waiting for the violence to commence, a voice rang out in the distance, echoing down the mine shaft, a woman’s voice, like an angel calling down from heaven.

  “Claire! Are you in here?”

  “He’s got a gun. . . .” Claire screamed to Laurie Dale, but that was all the warning that Claire could get out before he busted her mouth and nose with a quick jab of his fist. She felt an explosion of pain, went limp on the ropes, head lolling forward, only half conscious, but she heard him running. Heard multiple shots fired, heard somebody fall and crash into something. Then somebody was jerking her head up by the hair, and it was Laurie Dale’s beautiful green eyes that Claire saw, worried and frantic and focused on Claire’s face.

  “Claire, Claire, can you hear me?”

  Claire managed to nod, but then the ropes were being cut and she collapsed down into the FBI agent’s arms. “I got him, Claire. He’s dead. He’s not going to hurt you anymore. Oh, God, look at your face. What did he do to you?”

  “How did you . . . ?” Claire kept trying to talk, but her injured mouth wouldn’t quite move the way she wanted it to. She could taste her own blood, warm and metallic and sickening.

  Laurie was on her knees on the floor beside her now. “I came out to check on you when you didn’t come back, saw the tracks in the snow leading down onto the Fitch property to some shack and then more footprints led me out here. C’mon, we gotta get you outta here and call this in.”

  Laurie dragged Claire up onto her feet, and Claire found she could walk and her dizziness began to clear a bit. Punk/Bones was laying on his back on the ground several yards away, the back of his head completely gone. Laurie was a good shot with that .357, all right, and thank God that she was.

  “Think you can walk? I got the sn
owmobile right outside. All you have to do is get to it,” Laurie said anxiously, still supporting Claire with one arm around her waist.

  “Yeah, I’m okay, I think. I’m okay now. Thank God, you found me. He was gonna beat me to death. He had the bat in his hand.”

  “I was afraid something like this was gonna happen. I know the way these guys operate only too well. We’re goin’ in on them tonight, raiding Fitchville on the gun charges. . . .”

  A sharp blam suddenly shattered the quiet and a slug slammed into the wall right behind them. They both hit the ground and scrambled for cover. That’s when Claire got a glimpse of the man who’d fired at them. He was now kneeling over Punk’s lifeless body, and when he looked up, Claire couldn’t believe her eyes. Oh, God, Bones Fitch was not a figment of Punk’s imagination as Dr. LeCorps had believed. Punk really did have a twin brother. Bones Fitch was real and alive, and he was back and he was armed and he was angry. She watched him throw back his head and wail plaintively for his dead twin brother. Laurie didn’t need any more encouragement. She rose on her knees and got off a couple of quick shots, but Bones saw her and was too quick. He returned fire, hitting Laurie as she tried to scramble away. She was knocked backwards and fell on her side, her weapon skidding off on the dirt floor toward Bones Fitch. Laurie groaned and tried to push herself up, but then just collapsed and didn’t move. Claire took off in the opposite direction and headed for the dark passage where Punk had exited with the dead man’s body. Bones got off a shot at her just as she reached the first turn in the tunnel.

  The shaft was low and narrow, and she heard another shot go off behind her, and then she heard the bullet ricocheting off the stone walls and knew Bones was hot on her heels. Good, at least he wasn’t finishing off Laurie. She fled through the frigid darkness, unable to see anything, feeling her way along the cold damp rock walls with both hands, but she could smell fresh air and feel a breeze on her face and she knew that the passage was leading her outside the mine. She ran faster, stumbling on the loose shale covering the ground, cutting her palms on the sharp edges of the rocks, hoping Laurie wasn’t dead, hoping she’d stay alive and get away somehow, but she could hear Bones Fitch coming hard down the passage after her.

  Minutes later, she burst from a low arched opening and into the whipping blizzard winds outside. Icy sleet hit her and sent her backwards a step. She could barely see but realized she was up high on a cliff, a dead end with no way down. There was a frozen river below, one that was enclosed by high granite walls. She tried to run down the steep hill in front of her but slipped on the slick ground, her feet going out from under her, and then she hit hard on her side and slid all the way to the bottom on her back and then farther out onto the frozen river.

  Another shot rang out behind her, and she tried to get up without falling and slide her feet out over the ice toward the opposite side of the river, but then in the reflected light off the snow she saw the dead bodies. They were all around her. Five or six bodies, at least, lying on the ice, some half in and half out of the water, like Paulie Parker had been, all frozen into stiff and grotesque human ice sculptures. She grabbed at the nearest one, shocked when she realized that it was Misha Chicherin. She tried to pull his legs out of the water and realized that he’d been wounded in the chest. Bones had shot him and disposed of him with the others. She dropped down behind him and tried to use his body for a barrier against the gunfire.

  Then he made a little moan, and she realized that somehow he was still alive. She couldn’t think about that very long because Bones was shooting down at her from the higher elevation, still up in the opening where she’d started her slide. His bullets were slamming into the ice all around her. She heard the crackling and sucking sounds as the ice began to give way under her weight as the rounds cut through it, and then the ice suddenly cracked wide open, and Claire and Misha both plunged down into the dark frigid water. She held on to him as best she could, trying to keep his head out of the water and break through the gradually splintering ice, trying to get them away from the shooter, but then Bones was out there on the ice with her, coming out toward her, only ten yards away, screaming curses, his shrill voice blown away on the wind. He had his gun pointing straight down at them, and then Claire remembered that Misha carried her Glock and the Beretta at his waist under his parka.

  Frantically, praying that Bones hadn’t disarmed him, she jerked at the tail of his coat, trying to find the guns, and when her fingers finally touched the icy grip of her Glock, she got hold of it, jerked it out, and aimed it up at the man above her, her back braced against Misha’s shoulder, praying it would still fire, and then pulled the trigger and kept pulling it.

  Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

  The slugs hit Bones Fitch dead center in his chest, all of them, in a tight pattern that sent him reeling backwards a few steps and then sprawling down on the ice. He broke through and floated there on his back. Panting, heart thumping, adrenaline surging through her veins, her waterlogged coat dragging her down, Claire tried desperately to get her arms up on the ice and pull both of them out, but she just couldn’t manage it, she was just too tired and Misha and her wet clothes were too heavy. She hung on as best she could, her feet not touching bottom, grasping Misha’s coat tightly, shivering and shaking with cold, and trying to summon enough strength to climb out of the water and onto the ice.

  Then she heard the retorts of more gunfire not far away, and somebody calling her name. She hoped to God that it was Laurie Dale, still alive and looking for her. She lifted the gun in her hand somehow, and fired a couple of rounds up into the air to pinpoint her location and struggled to hold both of them out of the water while the ice continued to crackle and break up all around them.

  Then Laurie was there, coming out toward her, wounded arm hanging uselessly at her side, but still up on her feet, her coat off and flung out for Claire to grab on to, and Claire did grab it and clung to it with all her remaining strength as she was slowly pulled in, ice breaking and coming apart in front of her as she moved through it and in toward the snowy bank. She had a death grip on the back of Misha’s waterlogged orange jacket, her fist pretty much frozen into place on the handful of material she was clutching. But then she was out on the ground, gasping and shivering and trying to help Laurie drag the wounded man out onto the snow. Claire managed to tell Laurie to fire shots to summon help and hoped to hell Joe McKay was at home and could hear them echoing over at his place, and then she just collapsed on her back beside the unconscious Russian, sleet pelting her body. Laurie emptied her gun into the air and covered up Claire with her own coat and then stumbled off on foot to find the snowmobile.

  After that, Claire just lay there alone in the dark, so very cold, completely still, as if she were already frozen like the other corpses in the water, thinking that freezing to death wasn’t going to be so bad, if it was her time to die, and a lot better than her bones being smashed apart with a bat. In time, even those thoughts faded away and she began to feel sleepy and content, and slowly entered into a lovely dream where she was snuggled up close to Black at home in their bed, warm and cozy, his arms around her, where she always felt safe and secure and happy. That was the last conscious thought she had, except that death seemed to be slowly creeping up on her, pulling her away as the grim reaper was purported to do. Finally, those thoughts faded, too, and it was just cold and dark with the sound of wind and blowing snow, and then even that faded away, and there was only nothing, nothing at all.

  Epilogue

  Pacing the floor and worried sick about Claire, Nick Black hadn’t been able to get hold of her or anybody else on their cell phones, the heavy snow making connections impossible for hours. He couldn’t get her coordinates on GPS, either, and didn’t have a clue where she was or what she was doing. But he wasn’t willing to wait any longer and was ready to go out searching for her when his cell phone finally rang around two o’clock in the morning. Caller ID said that it was Claire. Damn it, she was way out of line this time.
She should have called him and let him know where she was. What the hell was she doing out in a raging blizzard in the middle of the night?

  “Claire! Where the hell are you? You all right?”

  “Hey, Nick. Listen, it’s Joe McKay. I’m at the hospital. . . .”

  Black went rigid. “Where’s Claire? Is she okay?”

  “Well, actually she’s pretty messed up, but she’s gonna be okay, they think.”

  Black shut his eyes, and his heart pretty much just stopped. “What happened to her?”

  “She got herself into some trouble with those maniacs she was tracking. I heard gunfire out in my backwoods, and I took off out there on the snowmobile to see what was going down. That’s when I found them.”

  “Found who? For God’s sake, Joe, tell me what happened!”

  “Claire, and some FBI agent she knows named Laurie Dale. Claire was lying unconscious in the snow, wet and half frozen. God, Nick, I thought she was dead, for sure.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Somebody worked her over pretty good. The Dale woman was gunshot but still on her feet, and some guy with them had been shot, too, and was barely breathing. I got them all back to my house as quick as I could and wrapped them up in blankets, and then got them down here to Canton County Medical in my truck. Claire’s asking for you. Told me to call you and tell you that she was okay and ask you to come to the hospital.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Despite the inclement weather, Black made it to the hospital in the Humvee in less than ten minutes. He pushed through the emergency room doors and found Joe McKay just inside the entrance, leaning against the wall and waiting for him.