by Kim Baldwin
“No more lies now, Frank.”
“Okay, Okay,” he wheezed. He was having a hard time talking through the excruciating pressure on his windpipe, and he had lost all feeling in his right hand. He was in real trouble here, he realized. And she was getting impatient. “Look, I’m just out here to find someone.” He gasped for air. “Sorry to have bothered you. Obviously she’s not here.” He was past thinking about the money now. He just wanted the hell out of here.
*
Kat felt fairly relaxed, considering the current circumstances. She knew now that this man was probably no real immediate threat to her or to Jake. He didn’t seem to have either the brains or the imagination to get himself out of his current predicament, and he seemed to be alone.
But she still had to find out who he was and what he knew, and more importantly, she then had to decide what to do with him. Part of the latter decision would depend on whether he had told anyone the location of the bunker.
She hoped he’d give up the information willingly. Sometimes big brutes like this had a high tolerance for pain, like she did. She didn’t think he was operating on his own. He was the type who took orders. And if she was right about who sent him, she knew Frank would try at least for a while to resist giving up the full story. Evan Garner could be ruthless with underlings who betrayed him. The contract on her life was proof of that, wasn’t it?
Kat let several seconds elapse in silence. She smiled a little when she could feel the desired response. Frank’s pulse rate beneath her thumb increased. She squeezed his larynx until he coughed in pain. “Who are you looking for, Frank?”
He blinked against the aching pressure on his throat and the blinding light held directly in front of his eyes. “A woman. Blond. Had a car wreck,” he rasped out.
“I’m listening,” Kat urged.
“Tracks from the wreck led here,” he said. He paused, considering how much to tell her.
Kat squeezed his throat again and pressed the flashlight forcefully against the bridge of his nose. A sharp outcropping of rock on the wall behind him cut into his scalp. “Don’t make me beg for every tidbit, Frank,” she warned.
“I’m a private investigator,” he said hoarsely, “working for the woman’s husband.” Frank didn’t think the story would pass. He knew he lied poorly. But he feared what Hunter would do if she learned the truth. He was rather surprised when she didn’t immediately call him on it.
Kat’s muscled forearm began to tire from the pressure she was putting on Frank’s larynx. She thought the man was lying, but what if he wasn’t? Had Jake’s husband somehow tracked them down through the car? She had nearly convinced herself that the wedding ring was merely a prop Jake used as a bounty hunter. Was that only wishful thinking?
“Okay, Mr. Private Eye,” she said playfully, never altering the steely grip around Frank’s throat. “Time for show-and-tell. First I want the names of the client and the wife. Then I’ll want to see your P.I. license, because I’m just sure you’re the law-abiding type and carry it with you like you should.”
Frank tried to swallow. An impossible task at the moment, even if his mouth wasn’t sandpaper. “Uh,” he stammered, “Uh, I don’t have my license. It’s back in my car.”
“Of course it is,” she said agreeably. She kneed him in the groin.
He groaned loudly and slumped forward against the excruciating, blinding pain. Her hand remained locked against his throat, increasing his agony. He fought to remain conscious.
After a couple of minutes, the pain had subsided enough for him to focus. He wished he could feel his right hand enough to risk some move against her. His left was a problem now as well; it was going numb from being held so long in the air. That blow had angered Frank and dampened his fear. He wanted so badly to hurt this bitch now. Screw the money—that would just be a bonus. Rage poured through his body.
Just as he had about mustered his courage to try something, she kneed him again.
“Calm down, Frank,” Kat said, nearly supporting his full weight against her hand as he slumped forward in response to the second jarring blow. She had felt his pulse increase beneath her thumb after she’d kicked him the first time, and she’d correctly identified the strong, rapid pounding as an adrenaline rush. She knew he’d been about to lash out at her. It was why she favored the neck grip she was using on him, in fact. It was a debilitating hold that enabled her to get a good idea of what her victim’s heart rate was doing. And that helped her predict their behavior.
But her forearm had begun to ache from the strain of holding him. She knew now he was lying about being a P.I., and she wanted to get this over with.
“You need to resist the urge to fight me, Frank. I won’t hurt you any more if you just start cooperating and tell me the truth.” She eased up just slightly against his throat so that he could take deeper breaths.
He stood on rubbery legs. Holding his hands even slightly aloft now took tremendous effort. At least for the moment, the fight was gone from him.
“You trying to earn a million dollars tonight, Frank?”
He jumped a little, startled at the question, but didn’t ask her to explain it. Instead, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I came here because I was ordered to follow the trail from the car,” he volunteered. “To find a missing blonde,” he reiterated through clenched teeth. “That’s the truth.” There was a long pause before he continued. “I know who you are, Hunter, but I came here to find Scout. She was the one out to collect on the money.”
Kat nodded to herself. This finally was the truth. There were two more things she wanted to know. “What can you tell me about this Scout?”
He was surprised at the question. “Isn’t she here?”
She tightened her grip on his neck. “I get to ask the questions, Frank,” she scolded. “Tell me about Scout.”
“Okay, enough,” he choked. “Sorry.”
She loosened her grip again just enough so he could breathe.
“She’s a bounty hunter, like you. Didn’t check in for several days so the boss sent me looking for her. He put a tracking device in her phone, and I followed it to the crash site. That’s honest to God all I know.”
“You know nothing else about her? Her real name, where she’s from?” Kat prodded.
“No. Only what I told you,” he insisted.
“When was the last time you checked in with Garner?”
So she knows about him, too, Frank thought with deep disappointment. Figures. She knew about the money. He didn’t want to answer, because he knew when he did, Hunter would have no further use for him. She’d have to kill him because he knew where the bunker was. So he had nothing left to lose. He’d have to take any chance he got to get out of this. If only she’d relax her grip just a bit more. The pain between his legs had dulled to a low throbbing. He tried to wiggle his fingers, hoping she wouldn’t notice. He could not feel his right hand at all. It seemed detached from his body.
“When, Frank?” Kat repeated.
“Several hours ago,” Frank wheezed, exaggerating his discomfort in the hope it would get her to loosen her grip. “Not sure, exactly.”
Kat knew she couldn’t hold him much longer. She was afraid her forearm would soon tremble against the strain. “Do they know where you are?”
“They kn-know where the car is,” he admitted, stuttering slightly. It was a speech impediment he’d overcome as a child that only resurfaced now because of his extreme stress. “They don’t know about this place. M-m-my cell wouldn’t reach,” he finished.
That’s that, Frank thought absently. Now or never. With a quickness born of desperation, he brought both hands together, then down hard, aiming blindly for where he imagined Hunter’s head was. He tried to ignore the choking agony in his windpipe.
Pain flashed up his arms as he contacted with something solid. Suddenly the bright light was no longer in his eyes, and her grip was gone. Still blinded from the flashlight, he blinked furiously, reaching out for her. He g
ripped coarse material and tried to pull her toward him in a bear hug.
Kat fought back with an elbow to his face that broke his nose.
Blood poured from both of his nostrils, and his rage flared anew. He fought for his life. Frank threw wild punches with both hands, making contact only rarely, thankful that the more frequent hits to his own body were being cushioned somewhat by the thick padding of the snowmobile suit. His eyesight was coming back. He grabbed for her, and they struggled against each other, locked in a violent embrace until they toppled over into the deep snow.
Frank was momentarily distracted by the shock of his exposed face and neck being enveloped in the knee-deep powder. He relaxed his grip on Hunter’s right arm.
Kat yanked her revolver from its holster and brought it down hard against the side of Frank’s head.
He stopped moving.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jake was frantic with worry. She had witnessed most of Kat’s interrogation of the intruder outside the bunker, staring stunned at the monitor as her enigmatic friend subdued the man against the rock wall. Kat looked to have the situation under control, but Jake sorely wished she could hear the conversation between the two.
Suddenly, the man fought back. Jake saw him hit Kat hard against the side of her head. The flashlight went flying and the two were flailing away at each other, locked in a desperate struggle that propelled both their bodies outside camera range.
Jake waited, her heart pounding in her ears, her anxiety an enormous weight in her chest, but neither Kat nor the intruder immediately reappeared in the monitor.
Jake didn’t think at all about what she did next. She hobbled to the exit door of the living room, her promise to Kat forgotten, overtaken by her concern for her rescuer’s safety. Once through the door, she glanced around the tunnel, taking in the big steel door at the other end, the clothes and boots along the wall, and, immediately to her right, the ladder rungs that led up to the exit she’d seen Kat emerge from.
Jake yanked a pair of black insulated coveralls from a peg on the wall. They were much too large for her, so she rolled cuffs at her ankles and wrists. All the footwear was several sizes too big as well. She pulled on a pair of boots, then fished around in one of the army barrels and pulled out gloves and scarves, stuffing the material into the boots to make them fit more snugly. She donned a pair of heavy woolen gloves and a hat and, trying to ignore the pain in her knee and wrist, struggled to scale the ladder rungs. She was out of the emergency exit a couple of minutes later. I’m coming, Kat. Hang on.
*
Kat stayed where she had fallen for several moments to catch her breath. Then she got to her knees and unzipped her coveralls enough to jam her right hand beneath her left armpit to warm it up. It was nearly blue from its long exposure to the frigid temperatures.
She leaned over Frank’s supine body. He was out cold. Dumb shit, she thought, aiming the crude sentiment at the man before her, but also acknowledging that she had left herself open for his attack. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him—he was just a hired gun—but he’d left her no choice.
She had a lot to do now. She looked up at the sky. A thick layer of clouds obscured the moon and stars. If it snowed soon, the bunker might be safe for at least a while longer. She wanted to check the forecast, but first she had to get rid of all evidence of Frank’s being at the bunker.
She got slowly to her feet. The big man had clocked her a good one to the side of her face when he’d hit her. A small cut beneath her eye was bleeding profusely, and there would be a large, ugly bruise across her cheek and jaw. She felt the blood running down her face but ignored it.
Her hand had warmed sufficiently for her to regain the use of her fingers. She flexed the sore muscles of her forearm. Standing at Frank’s shoulders, she leaned down to take one of his wrists in each of her hands. Grunting slightly from the effort, she pulled him toward the rock wall entrance several feet away. Heavy though he was, the task was not as difficult as it might have been because his nylon suit slid over the snow with little resistance.
Once at the panel, she keyed in the access code and hauled Frank into the generator room. She removed a roll of duct tape from her toolbox and trussed him up, securing his feet and his hands behind him. Then she searched the pockets of his snowsuit.
She found a cell phone, which she immediately took apart to render useless and check for a homing device. To her relief, there was none. She also found a gun—a .44 magnum—extra ammunition, a jackknife, a candy bar, and a map of Michigan. She stuffed the weapons into the pockets of her coveralls.
She unzipped his snowsuit and thoroughly searched the clothes he wore underneath. She leafed through his wallet before she stuffed it into her pocket. When that was done, she went back outside the bunker and retrieved Frank’s flashlight, still lit under several inches of snow.
She used it to find her night-vision goggles, which she’d removed just before she snuck up on him. She followed the tracks he’d made until she came to his rental snowmobile a short distance away. The key was in the ignition. She drove it through the rock wall entrance and parked it beside her own machine. She closed the hidden door again.
Frank would be coming around any minute.
*
Jake pushed herself up through the emergency exit and shut the hatch behind her, cutting off the small amount of light from the tunnel and plunging her into darkness. She waited a minute for her eyes to adjust, then began searching for the tracks Kat had made.
She remembered the way Kat had gone after leaving the exit, so she headed in the same direction. It was very difficult to see, especially once she entered the edge of the forest. Finally, she stumbled across a trail in the snow she could barely make out. She moved with agonizing slowness because of her knee, but the adrenaline pouring through her body propelled her on.
She had gone only thirty feet or so into the woods when the silence was broken by the high-pitched whine of a snowmobile. She froze at the sound, which seemed to be coming from some distance away, farther down the hill she was descending and off to her left. What did it mean? Was the intruder leaving, and if so, what had become of Kat? Her heart sped up. She headed directly toward the sound, leaving the tracks she had been following.
Jake had hobbled quite some distance when the roar of the snowmobile ended as abruptly as it had begun. She stood still, listening, and heard another faint sound from the same general direction. Then all was silent again.
Jake was momentarily torn about whether to continue forward or backtrack to regain the foot trail she’d been following. She was in the deepest, blackest part of the forest, and it was nearly impossible to make out her own tracks. She decided the safest route would be to return the way she’d come and try to pick up Kat’s trail again.
She saw a faint path veering off to the right. She followed it, confident she would soon catch up to her friend. She knew from watching the monitors that it had taken Kat only six or eight minutes to travel from the exit to the wall where she had confronted the intruder. But Jake knew it would take her much longer. Pain shot through her knee. She limped forward at an ever-slower pace.
The snow was deep enough, and it was dark enough, that Jake couldn’t see individual prints in the snow, just a line cut through the soft powder. But she just had to be on Kat’s trail. Didn’t she?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Frank groaned. What the hell? His head ached something fierce. He wanted to touch the spot that hurt worst, but he couldn’t move his hands. Or his feet.
Then he remembered, and came fully awake. Hunter. He forced his eyes open, thin slits against the throbbing pain. He was lying on his side on a concrete floor. A pair of boots walked away from him.
Frank tilted his head to see the rest of her. Tall. Dark hair. She had her back to him and was searching the pack that had been strapped to his snowmobile.
He glanced around. A small electric heater, placed out of his reach, blew warm air in his direction but with little ef
fect. A water bottle lay nearby. Beyond that a generator and two snowmobiles—one of them his rental.
His eyes drifted back to Hunter.
She was watching him. Her face was stone. Expressionless. Blood dripped from a gash on her cheek. The front of her white snowsuit was spattered with it. She studied him in silence, her eyes boring into his, until Frank withered under her unrelenting glare and looked away.
“That was really dumb, Frank. You said you know who I am,” Kat chided in an almost friendly voice.
“Aw, Hunter, I had to try.” Frank tested the bindings at his hands and feet. Shit.
“What am I going to do with you, Frank?” She stepped closer, looming over him, until he had to strain his neck painfully to see her face.
“Probably nothing I’m going to like,” he managed.
“You may be surprised.”
The chitchatty tone she was using was beginning to rattle Frank. His breathing picked up, and he started chewing on the inside of his cheek.
She leaned down until her face was only a foot from his. “Still think you can collect on the million, Frank?” she hissed. Her eyes were predatory. She bared her teeth in a savage smile.
He didn't like that look at all.
Frank turned his head away from her. “Told you, I was just looking for the woman. She was the one who was after you. Not me. I don’t want to get in your business.” He didn’t care about the money anymore, so he hoped it sounded like the truth.
She seemed to consider his answer. She paced around him for a long moment before speaking again.
“Frank, what do you think of Garner? Do you like working for him?” Her voice was gentle now, soothing.
Frank’s bushy eyebrows knitted together, and it took a moment for the question to register. Where is this going? “Well, he’s not a bad boss,” he volunteered.