Long Way Home

by Tom Crown

  * * * *

  Steve glanced up at Jenny with a grin. She was balancing a glass of Merlot, watching from the head of his bed as he pushed model cars around to show her some of his more dangerous maneuvers on the road. She was laughing between sips, obviously relaxing in his company, and he liked the sedated look in her eyes.

  He still hadn’t been able to gauge exactly how much she knew, and he hadn’t yet decided how best to use her. His initial plan had been to lure them all to his cabin and kill them in their sleep. That would rid him of any witnesses and give him a new batch of bodies to dump on Alex when he needed to up the pressure on him. It was a crude idea, hastily conceived, and he had quickly started to see its disadvantages. First of all, it wasn’t feasible to start killing locals just because they had strayed into his path. It would draw too much attention. His original plan had called for just killing Yulia, a girl no one even knew was in this country. Then he had improvised and claimed responsibility for the car crash, which was fine. Killing Jenny or Ryan, however, could trigger a reaction he didn’t want to bother with now. What he was going to do was keep them nearby until he needed them. Until he needed them dead.

  He let go of the toy cars and looked straight into Jenny’s eyes. He had just explained how badly Ryan and he had started off in Alaska and how Ryan had become notorious within days of his arrival. A local paper had picked up the story of his kidnap and escape in Afghanistan. For Ryan, who had come to Alaska for nothing but privacy, the questions from the other photographers had gotten old fast, and it was safe to say that the fist fight at the camping site here hadn’t been his first.

  “Everyone’s on edge, I guess that’s the best way to put it,” he said to sum it up. “Photographers and drivers. Nobody wants to freeze to death. Not for the foolishness of paparazzi.” He grimaced and framed his own foolish face with his hands.

  Jenny laughed, spilling drops on wine over the edge of her glass. “Well, I can certainly see that!”

  “Oh, you can, can you?” He moved closer and reached out to steady her hands. His eyes drifted toward the shut door. “I guess the point is, we go back pretty far, Ryan and I, and I trust him. It gets rather intense in this line of work. Everyone’s competitive. That’s part of the business, part of its nature. It’s really just another form of hunting, when you think about it. We gear up and head into the forest, or across the desert, or some frozen lake, through the wind and the rain and the snow, chasing, hunting.”

  “So,” Jenny said slowly, not laughing like he had intended, but inching closer, “intense, is that why you like it?”

  He had definitely plied her with enough drink. “I suppose,” he said with a slow grin, “that’s why we all like it. It takes a certain kind of person. Smart. Good looking.”

  “Shut up!” Jenny put away her glass and hit him playfully on the arm. Steve grabbed her hand. She lay down and looked up at the ceiling. “I wish I knew what I wanted,” she said after a moment. “I just want to go away. Get out of here. After tonight, I want that more than ever. But I always felt that way. Even when I was younger, you know, like fifteen. I’ve always felt that longing. I guess most girls here do.”

  Steve nodded. He had seen this before. Small towns, remote places, very little to do besides snow racing, ice fishing, moose hunting, and the like. And of course, drinking and fighting. These were all activities that often suited the young men better than the women. For them, children would come early, and then grandchildren. It would all happen too quickly. It was sad, but at the same time it made him feel better about what he was about to do to her. He’d set her spirit free, one way or another, that much he was certain of.

  “I used to listen to rock ’n’ roll,” she said. “Like Elvis, The Animals, Roy Orbison. You know the song where the chorus says, ‘We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do?’ A few years ago, I listened to that song all summer long. Every single day. Every hour, probably. It drove my mother crazy.”

  “Perhaps your mother actually understood what the song was about.”

  “No.” Jenny closed her eyes. “Yes, maybe. I don’t know.”

  “So, get away from what?”

  “From all this. The town. The people. But I never get around to it. I guess you have to have someplace to go. You can’t just go away. That’s not real. You have to go someplace.”

  He didn’t completely agree. In fact, she didn’t need a place to go to all, she would just go away, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he smiled and moved closer again.

  “Well,” he said after a long moment, “I’ve seen a lot of places, and I can tell you with great certainty that you’d be very welcome just about anywhere.”

  She blushed slightly, and he could see she liked that compliment very much. Perhaps he had taken everything a bit far. He didn’t want the situation to slip out of control. At least, that was what he had thought he wanted, until the moment he saw her reaction. Now he liked her reaction, and he sensed his heart was beating faster.

  She sat up again and smiled. “Steve Manning. I bet you take plenty of pictures of women.”

  He didn’t, not the way she had implied at any rate, but before he could answer, she started to pose, smiling innocently with her hair falling across her face. He grabbed the nearest camera and took a picture. Jenny moved to the middle of the bed and struck a new pose, trying on an entirely sexy look this time.

  Her last boyfriend had died only hours before and he couldn’t help but wonder how drunk she was exactly, or if she actually was this cold, or perhaps simply in complete shock and denial?

  “Don’t say anything.” She moved closer and pushed his camera aside. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  He pulled her to him and brushed his fingertips over the tender skin of her neck, fighting the urge to squeeze until she got to leave this place once and for all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ALEX SLAMMED THE barn door shut and barely heard the beep of the alarm as it engaged. He had made sure all the girls were accounted for and locked in their rooms to give him the night off for other business. Their annoying questions grated on his mind, even more so because this time he knew the lockup really was for their own safety.

  “Coffee?” Roman asked, walking toward him across the yard with a steaming thermos in his hand.

  Alex grabbed the thermos and put the rim to his lips. The coffee was too hot to drink but it didn’t stop him. The scorching sensation was just what he needed, a punishment for recent lapses and a stinging reminder of everyone’s vulnerability. Even he was made of flesh and blood, after all, and one day that fact would kill him as surely as it would kill everyone else.

  “You ready?” Roman asked. “To bury them?”

  Alex wiped his mouth and looked up at the moon. It was just a pale shimmer against the light sky, but a suitable companion for a night like this one. He handed Roman the thermos and nodded.

  Roman had dug a respectable hole behind the barn, using the tractor and a rake to loosen the top layer of the ground and a shovel to dig deeper. It was a mess, and difficult to hide if it came to that, but Alex figured no one would ever get to see it. The bodies of two unidentifiable Russian males killed in a car crash were nothing to nobody. If people didn’t care about the girls, then who’d care about their keepers? No one.

  “Deep enough?” Roman asked a bit uncertainly, tilting his head to study the hole from different angles. Alex nodded.

  They’d never buried anyone by the barn before. The girls always ended up in the forest in some random location that even Alex intended not to remember. Yulia, the first person to die at Steve’s hands instead of Alex’s, had been buried that way only days ago, far from roads and houses, from landmarks and witnesses.

  Alex deeply breathed in the misty night air and looked away from the bodies. The first dead person he ever saw was his father hanging from the ropes of the swing he’d strung up for his children two summers earlier. He’d used the sturdiest branch when he built that swing, eight in
ches across, and a slick new rope that always burned in their hands when they played. It had been a good swing, strong enough for two, but Alex had often wondered if his father had been planning his exit even then, or if stringing up that swing had given him the idea. One or the other.

  Roman had wrapped the bodies in tarp, but Alex could easily tell which was Sergei’s and which was Dimitri’s. It was a shame they would end their days in a place like this, but then again, maybe this was the most peaceful place they could ever have hoped for.

  “Ready?” Roman asked. He bent and pulled at the tarp and rolled Sergei over the edge. He looked up, a bit uncertain all of a sudden. “Shouldn’t we say something?”

  Alex searched his mind for the right words. He wasn’t a religious man. He hadn’t been raised that way, and even if he had, it probably wouldn’t have ever stuck. With the things he had seen in this world, and the things he had gotten away with, religion made no sense at all.

  “An eye for an eye,” he finally said. “Until the whole world is blind.”

  Roman pulled at the tarp, but then stopped himself. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we will avenge them, no matter what.” They wouldn’t, but he knew it was the kind of thing Roman wanted to hear. The only thing Alex wanted was to figure out what had happened and use that information to get back on top of things.

  A lot of money was missing, and Katia was missing, and the two could very well be related, but then again, maybe not. Mats could’ve failed to deliver the money, like he had before, which would mean that his blonde girlfriend Jenny probably had it. Then there was Steve Manning, and his accomplice Ryan West. He’d have to find a way to kill these two without exposing himself. It was all getting to be a bit too much, and vengeance for Sergei and Dimitri was simply not on the table.

  Roman was staring down into the hole with a dazed look on his face. “So this is it.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  Roman nodded and yanked the tarp, sending Sergei tumbling over the edge. Alex listened to the muted thump when it hit the bottom, but he fought the impulse to step closer and look.

  “An eye for an eye,” Roman said, now negotiating Dimitri’s bulky frame toward the edge. “Until the whole world is blind.”

  * * * *

  Ryan had wandered into the kitchen looking for a knife, a long blade with a sharp edge, an instrument perfect for lashing out in self-defense when you least expected it. A bread knife, a carving knife, or a chef’s knife. But neither had felt right in his hand, not when he imagined running the blade across human flesh, and he had finally closed the drawer.

  How could he have stumbled into a situation like this again? Was he looking for it, or was the world really this ugly? All he knew for certain was that he didn’t trust his own judgment. He had been awake for almost thirty-six hours, skipping one night of sleep on the flight over the Atlantic, and almost another one here. It wouldn’t do when the morning came.

  A muted laughter from the bedroom told him he wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping. The cheerfulness surprised him, but he realized that Steve probably didn’t know it was Jenny’s former boyfriend who had been behind the wheel of the crashed pickup truck only hours before. They had talked quickly about Katia and the Russians, but not about how it all had started, with the fight at the camping site. Of course, this strange night had begun even earlier than that, with Jenny opening the envelope containing those gruesome photos, but that was something Ryan still wasn’t willing to talk about with anyone but Jenny, and as far as he knew she felt the same way. It was impossible to know who to trust with information like that before they knew exactly what had happened. Mats was dead, but the photographer was still at large, and so was Mats’s vengeful friends, not to mention the Russian mobsters who hadn’t hesitated to open fire with a machine gun in the middle of the road.

  Leaving the photos in the car had been a mistake. Perhaps the best thing he could do now would be to use his spare energy to go and get them back. But it was very unlikely that he would be able to find the spot on his own, and even more unlikely that Katia would stay in this house if she woke up and found him gone. She had barely spoken a single word to him since they got here, but had said even less to Jenny or Steve.

  He left the counter and moved quietly back to the living room, where Katia had fallen asleep on the sofa. She had pulled the blanket over her shoulders and was clutching her bag, and looked comfortable enough with her head against the low armrest.

  He took a deep breath and sat down on the floor. Watching her sleep made him wonder what it was about her that made him act the way he had. Leaving the crash site. Chasing after her in the forest. Coming here. He didn’t actually know anything about her. Katia Sinyakova from the Ukraine and twenty. That was about it.

  He shook his head. At twenty, his own life had been easy. He hadn’t known that, of course, and time played tricks with the mind. Perhaps one day he would look back on this last year and think of it all as easy, but he didn’t believe that. At twenty, though, his problems really had been pretty straightforward. Finishing college in a timely fashion. Keeping together friendships strained by distance. Learning what love could do to you. He’d had his share of troubles, enough to keep him up some nights, but he hadn’t yet understood that the world harbored people who wanted him dead. He knew that fact now, so it was only with a weary reluctance that he closed his eyes again, hoping for some final sleep.

  Afghanistan was never far away.

  “Hi there, stranger,” she said with a cute Texan drawl.

  Herat Bazaar was already his favorite spot on the hemisphere, but it nevertheless took another big leap up the chart when he turned around and saw that smile. He was already a two-week veteran of the streets of Kandahar by then, long enough to gain some confidence, but not long enough to truly know what was going on there. Probably she’d been noticing him, recognizing his predictable routes, but with sweeter intentions than the men who were to take him a couple of months later.

  “Ehh... Hi. “ He was cautious, well knowing he should be, but he was already falling for that teasing smile. “Do I know you?” The phrase she had used to greet him wasn’t supposed to be directed at actual strangers.

  “No. Natalie Mayfield.” She extended a hand. “We stay at the same hotel.” Her arms were slim, her skin still white despite the scorching Kandahar sun. Her straight blonde hair was tied in a ponytail that was visible under a loose head scarf. She was the first Western woman he’d seen alone outside the NATO base at Kandahar Airfield, which was a world of its own. He’d spent most of the first week there, chatting with soldiers over a Burger King meal or Tim Horton’s coffee, and the country hadn’t felt that exotic then. The base was a useful mid-point between Massachusetts and Afghanistan, but his sojourn there hadn’t done much to prepare him for Kandahar, where women still wore full-body Burkhas and the men had weapons hanging from their waists.

  And how he had stumbled.

  With his heart beating faster he opened his eyes again and saw that Katia was watching him intently. She immediately pulled her blanket higher to cover every inch of skin up to her lips, but she didn’t utter a word.

  “Can’t sleep either?” Ryan finally asked, his voice a quiet whisper.

  Katia shook her head. It was slight movement barely visible in the dusky predawn light.

  “You’re sure you weren’t hurt today in the crash? We could go to the hospital. They wouldn’t have to tell anyone, you know, if you don’t want them to.”

  “No,” she said turning halfway toward him and looking at the ceiling. Then she sighed. “But thank you.”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t know what I want to do yet. I wasn’t prepared for all this.”

  “Me neither. I guess I expected to check in, drop my bags, and find a burger place somewhere. I only got here today, so that was pretty much it.”

  She nodded.

  “You been here long?” he asked, already fairly certain he knew t
he answer.

  She looked at the ceiling again and took a moment. “Long enough.”

  He nodded. He wanted to tell her they could leave any time they wanted, but he wasn’t at all sure that was true. The Russian mobsters could very well have all the exit roads covered and police on the payroll, and Ryan had certainly made enemies among the locals. For now, this cabin was the best place for them both to be.

  But not for long. Sooner or later somebody would come for them, and not a single one would have friendly intentions.

  Ryan stood up and walked to the nearest window. He heard Katia sitting up right behind him. Outside it was almost as bright as daylight, with the sun still visible beyond the jagged line of tall spruce. The place had a barren beauty to it all right, an enveloping peacefulness, but he couldn’t shake the notion that he needed a weapon.

  “Could you find your way back to the car?” Ryan asked, carefully looking out the window.

  She stood. “The one by the river?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right.”

  She took a step closer. “But I could find my way into town.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  STEVE OPENED HIS eyes and turned toward the window. The crimson sun outside made it difficult to sleep, but it was a sound that had stirred him from his slumber. Perhaps he had been dreaming, or he’d simply heard an animal moving around outside. He knew moose liked to stroll down to the lake at night along the forest edge. The first couple of nights here he had taken dozens of photos of them drinking from the water, frustratingly aware he couldn’t simply shoot them.

  Jenny was still breathing behind him. He couldn’t tell if she was sleeping, or just trying to, or even pretending. He didn’t know what she would sound like in either case. Hers was a slow, gentle rhythm at the moment, and it sounded honest enough.