by Sam Sisavath
Now or never!
She dived the last few yards and almost slammed into a tree as she entered the woods, landing against a trunk with the back of her head even as the gnarled bark above her was shredded by Jerry’s continued volley. The smell of burning foliage filled her nostrils as the mercenary continued to raze the area with the submachine gun, 9mm rounds slicing through branches and leaves at an impossible rate.
Allie didn’t scramble up to her feet. No, that would have just made her a bigger target, and it was clear Jerry was firing high on purpose, expecting her to pick herself up and make a run for it. Instead, she crawled away from the tree, heading deeper into the woods even though she couldn’t exactly see where she was going. It was a lot darker on this side of the tree line, but maybe that was only because her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the sudden absence of light yet.
She knew Jerry’s MP5SD had a thirty-round magazine, but she’d be damned if the weapon seemed to keep firing and firing, with the smell of burning leaves clinging to her skin like a permanent thing.
Then, mercifully, the trees stopped breaking apart and the (too close) buzzing finally stopped.
Thank you, Jesus, I’m still alive!
She stumbled to her feet and risked a glance over one shoulder, but could only see bright lights from the house’s front yard penetrating the tree line in slivers. If Jerry was still out there (or closer), she couldn’t tell at the moment.
Allie began jogging through the woods, going around trees and ducking under branches. She was moving on automatic pilot, thankful she had ditched her pumps for tennis shoes, pants, and a sweater in the name of comfort for the long drive over here. She gripped the Glock tightly, the heft of the weapon reassuring but also noticeably lighter in her hand.
She’d fired five times, and Jones had squeezed off one back at the house. That left her with…at least six (?)—possibly less, maybe even seven. She’d know for sure when she took a peek at the magazine, which wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. At least not with Jerry in pursuit. She didn’t think for one second that he would give up now.
Soft earth felt good under her sneakers, and she ducked another low-hanging branch before coming to a complete stop.
Where the hell am I?
She turned around in a full 360 degrees, remembering the last time she had found herself lost in the woods.
Beckard. A cabin. Those college kids.
She shook the thoughts away and concentrated on what Walter had said to her while he was pitching the vacation.
“It’s super private,” he’d said. “Private land surrounded by woods. It’ll just be the three of us. You, me, and Lucy.”
“What about your neighbors?” she had asked.
“I’m not sure. They mostly keep to themselves.”
“You’ve never met them?”
“Out there? Are you crazy? You never know what kind of wackos are living next door,” he had added with a chuckle.
Walter’s neighbors. Right now she needed one of them to have heard her gunshots and call the police. If not the locals, then the state police. Someone should have heard those gunshots. For God’s sake, she had fired three times.
She stood perfectly still and listened.
Police sirens. Where the hell were the police sirens?
Maybe she was being too impatient. It would take time for the neighbors to call the gunshots in. Then more time for the locals to show up. Thirty minutes? An hour? By morning?
Snap.
It was subtle, except she was hardly breathing and it would have taken a ninja to sneak up on her at the moment. She spun around, lifting the Glock, finger against the trigger when she saw the coat of white fur emerging out of the shadows.
Allie sighed. “I almost shot you.”
Apollo trotted toward her, stopping and dropping down to his hind legs and presenting the top of his head. She gave him a wry smile, then crouched and scratched him with her left hand, while keeping her right—and the gun—at the ready next to her.
There was another snap—this one much louder—from the shadows, just before Lucy walked around a tree, rubbing her hands up and down her arms and looking cold despite the almost perfect weather. Her eyes darted left, then right, before finding Allie’s, then quickly moved away again, searching for signs of danger around them.
“You okay?” Allie asked.
The girl nodded. “You?”
“I’m fine. Everyone’s fine.” She focused on Apollo. “And where were you all this time?”
The dog, of course, didn’t answer her.
“Fine, keep your secrets,” she said.
His eyes were partially closed as she continued scratching him under the chin. There were splashes of not-quite-dry blood along the white fur around his head and neck. Jones’s blood. She wished she could have said the sight of Apollo mauling Jones back at the house had been horrifying, but the truth was it wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before. The dog’s previous owner had raised him to be violent, and there was nothing she could do about it now. Good for her, as it turned out, because a dog without Apollo’s killer instincts might not have been able to take down a man as large as Jones.
Allie looked up at Lucy. “You guys were supposed to keep running.”
“I did, but he stopped,” Lucy said.
Allie smiled. “He’s a bad dog, that’s why.”
Apollo lifted his head so she could get a better angle at his chin. She did her best to scratch him down there while avoiding the spots of Jones’s blood, but even when she got blood on her fingers she discovered she wasn’t nearly as queasy as she thought she would be.
“What about Dad?” Lucy asked.
Allie looked up at her, Walter’s absence hitting her for the very first time since they fled the house. He was still back there, in the other guest bedroom.
She stood up, Apollo doing the same. He was suddenly alert again, ears standing up at attention as his eyes scoured the darkness around them.
She looked back toward the house—or where she thought it was. The truth was, she hadn’t fully oriented herself to the wood’s layout and there was a very good chance she was turned in the wrong direction.
“Allie?” Lucy said. “What about Dad?”
“We have to go for help.”
“But Dad…”
“I know. But we have to go for help first.”
She walked over to Lucy and, putting the gun in her front waistband, reached over and laid both hands on the girl’s shoulders and squeezed. Lucy eyed her back, but the rebellious teen who had made Allie question if dating Walter was worth the headache had been erased entirely from those brown eyes that were so much like her father’s. And just as big, too.
Walter…
“He’s safe for now,” Allie said. “It’s us I’m worried about.”
“How do you know he’s safe?” Lucy asked.
“They want your dad for something; something important enough to go through all this trouble. They were going to use us as leverage against him because they couldn’t afford to hurt him. So believe me, Walter’s fine back at the house. But he might not be forever, so what we need to do is go find help. Call the police, if they aren’t already on their way. That’s what Walter would want us to do. Most of all, he’d want you to be safe, and that means not running back to the house.”
She couldn’t tell if Lucy believed her, but the girl nodded after a few seconds. “You’re right. We should go call the police. That’s what Dad would do.”
Allie nodded, then glanced over at Apollo. “Anything?”
Apollo was turned back toward the house, and if he’d heard her, he didn’t show it.
“I guess not,” she said.
“Does he ever answer you?” Lucy asked.
“Not really, no.”
Without a word, Apollo turned around and walked over to them, then on ahead as if he already knew where they needed to go.
And maybe he did, she thought. Apollo, more than her and definitely more
than Lucy, had spent a lot of time in woods like this one. It helped that his former owner had been a devoted hunter.
“Come on,” Allie said. “Follow the dog.”
She took the Glock out from her waistband and let it hang at her side (just in case), then threw a quick look over her shoulder. There was no one behind them, definitely no Jerry with a reloaded MP5SD or Jack with his assault rifle. But that didn’t mean they weren’t back there, somewhere, tracking them.
And further back, between her and her pursuers, was Walter.
What did you do, Walter? What did you do to put us in this mess?
But there were no answers to be found behind them, so she turned back around.
Ahead of them, Apollo was slipping into a dark patch of shadows, and she and Lucy followed wordlessly.
Chapter 8
JACK LEFT THE door open so he could hear the tap-tap-tap coming from inside all the way from the living room. He didn’t worry about Walter getting brave all of a sudden and making a run for it. If Walter hadn’t been the action-first gung-ho type before, he wasn’t in any position to morph into that now, not after what Jack had done to him. So the tap-tap-tap was like music to his ears, every tap representing another step closer to the kind of life he’d always wanted but always seemed out of reach, until now.
He cleaned the blood off the Ka-Bar using one of his pant legs, then put it away. He had gotten specks of red on his fingers without realizing it. It was probably when Walter began struggling, once he realized what Jack was going to do. That was okay, because Jack was used to blood, and he swiped his hand on the same pant leg.
He stopped in the living room and looked around, when his right ear clicked.
“It was a dark and stormy night, and I’m stuck tracking down two chicks and a dog,” Jerry said through the earbud. “Minus the stormy part, anyway.”
“What’s your situation?” Jack asked.
“Wishing I was somewhere else.”
“Besides that.”
“I’m still tracking them. The dog’s like a ghost, but the two humans are leaving plenty of clues. Don’t quote me on it, but I think I’m somewhere between the house and one of the neighbors. Close enough I can see lights in the distance; looks like LED lamps with auto sensors. Good news? I don’t see any cops.”
“Can you hear sirens out there?”
“Negative. Of course, they might be waiting until morning to show up. We’re not exactly in the city, are we? Shit tends to run slower out here, or so I’ve heard.”
Hope springs eternal, Jack thought.
The lack of police sirens or any law-enforcement presence at all was more than he could have hoped for. It was a good sign Walter’s neighbors were MIA, and like Walter, were using their houses out here as a vacation spot instead of a permanent residence. He would have loved to know for sure, but they hadn’t had time to investigate the surrounding area when they first arrived. It was yet another reason why he hated taking jobs without the lead time for proper preparations.
“Report in as soon as you can,” Jack said into his mic.
“What about Jones?” Jerry asked.
“He’s dead.”
“Aw, man.”
“The dog took a chunk out of his neck. Bled out in the room.”
“So they didn’t shoot him?”
“No.”
“Still, death by fangs… Damn.”
“Concentrate on what you’re doing out there. I have everything under control at the house. Everything’s back on schedule, and we’ll be done by morning.”
“What are you going to tell the client?”
“About what?”
“Didn’t they say not to hurt Walter?”
“Yeah, well, desperate times,” Jack said. “Just get your part done.”
“Back atcha,” Jerry said. “Over and out.”
Jack resumed walking through the living room, looking left, then right, trying to find an answer to the question that had been nagging at him ever since he found Jones’s body: How the hell had the dog gotten into the house after they had locked all the doors and windows?
They had locked all the doors and windows, hadn’t they? Of course they had. Then again, that was Jones and Jerry’s job, and what was that saying about doing something yourself if you wanted it done right?
The question was going to drive him insane the more he thought about it. Maybe it didn’t matter anyway. The dog was gone; it’d gotten what it came for: its owner, the woman Allie. There was no reason for it to come back, because there was no reason for her to come back. If she was smart, anyway, and Allie had proven to be pretty goddamned smart.
He shook his head and headed back to Walter’s room to check up on the work-in-progress, when gunshots echoed in the distance from outside the house.
From the woods.
Jack stood still and listened. He couldn’t tell how many shots had rung out, but they had to have come from a distance because he could just barely make them out, and wouldn’t have if the house weren’t so quiet.
He hurried to the front doors, clicking the PTT as he went. “Jerry, report.”
There was no response.
At the door, Jack made sure it was still closed. They had deactivated the alarm as soon as they had secured Walter and the women as a precaution, and he had to lock the door the old-fashioned way now by manually twisting the deadbolt into place.
“Jerry, answer me.”
Still no response.
He peered through the security glass at the top of the door. Walter’s vehicle was the only one parked in the front yard, the SUV he, Jones, and Jerry had arrived in earlier still hidden in the woods. It was too dark beyond the halo of the lights to make out anything that wasn’t a trick of moonlight.
“Jerry, goddammit, you still out there?” he said into his mic.
“Quit your nagging,” Jerry finally said in his ear. He wasn’t quite whispering, but it was close. “I’m trying to work here.”
“Report.”
“They’re in the house.”
“Which house?”
“The neighbor’s. One of the neighbors, anyway. I got them cornered inside.”
“What about the dog?”
“Hell if I know. I’ll radio back when I’m done over here.”
“Roger that.”
The earbud went silent, and Jack pushed off the door and walked through the house again.
He liked Jerry. Well, as much as you could like someone you didn’t know existed until five days ago, anyway. He guessed if someone were to press him on it, he didn’t have anything against Jones, either. Not that he minded Jones’s demise too much. Money split two ways was a lot more attractive if his math was correct, and he was pretty sure it was.
The tap-tap-tap of computer keys from the second guest bedroom was a welcoming sound, even though Jack kept one ear open for further reports of gunshots. The fact that he hadn’t heard anything yet meant Jerry had the situation under control. Or, control-ish, anyway. Jerry’s primary weapon, the MP5SD, wouldn’t be audible over this distance, but his handgun wasn’t suppressed. Still, Jerry wouldn’t resort to the sidearm if he didn’t have to.
Jack just hoped Jerry didn’t waste both women in the process. He still preferred to have at least one of them alive as insurance. After all, there was always a chance Walter might suddenly grow some balls. It was a small chance, he had to admit, but it did exist.
He stood in the doorway and watched Walter working, hunched over the laptop at the desk at the back of the room. If the man noticed his presence at all, he didn’t show it. Walter alternated between tapping on the keyboard, using the mouse touchpad, and wiping at beads of sweat that had accumulated around his temple despite the cool night air.
“How’s it going?” Jack finally said.
Walter stopped working and looked over his shoulder. “All right,” he said, his voice wavering slightly.
“Good to hear.” Jack walked across the room. “How much longer?”
<
br /> “An hour, maybe.”
“Why is it taking so long?”
“It’s complicated,” Walter said. “I have to do it right, one at a time, or it’ll trigger alarms. If that happens—”
“Everything goes up in smoke?”
“Not everything, but a lot of it.” Walter brushed at sweat that was dripping down his chin. “If I miss a single step, it’ll cause problems—”
“Enough,” Jack said. “I don’t need to know about every comma and backspace. Just keep in mind, Walter, that my employer will verify all of this when you’re done, so don’t think you can fuck with us.”
Walter nodded. “Where’s my daughter? Is she okay?”
“Jerry’s looking for her right now.”
Jack waited for Walter to ask about the gunshots, but either he hadn’t heard them or he hadn’t processed their significance.
“Allie?” Walter asked instead.
“Her, too.”
“They’re both fine?”
“For now.” Jack leaned against the back wall and peered through the curtains at the woods that ringed the property. “You should be more concerned about your own welfare.”
Walter didn’t say anything.
Jack looked back at him. “You understand what’s going to happen if you don’t get this done before morning, right?”
“Yes,” Walter said quietly.
“So let’s finish it. The faster you get it done, the faster we can all go our merry ways. And I mean that, Walter. I want nothing more than to get this over with, for you to be reunited with your daughter and girlfriend. I’m sorry about what I did, but you didn’t give me any choice.”
Walter swallowed, but didn’t say anything.
“They’re doing amazing things with plastic surgery these days,” Jack said. “You’ll be fine. I think you can even reattach it.”
Walter might have flinched physically that time.
“Let’s get back to work,” Jack said, and swiveled to face the window again, when he heard it coming from outside the house.
Something that didn’t belong, that shouldn’t have been out there tonight.
Shit, shit, shit, he thought, as he moved across the room, picking up speed as he went. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “In the meantime, keep working!”