Closing Costs

by Bracken MacLeod

  Another report blasted in the hall, and a bullet sent bits of a closet door frame splintering as he turned the corner. He sprinted for the cellar door, hoping he wouldn’t hear gunshots coming from downstairs. It was a certainty that Stas was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, alert and ready, hearing the sound of the chaos above him, but Evan didn’t care. He hoped that he’d have a second. Just a second to try to save his wife. To give her a chance to get away.

  He flung open the door and plunged down into the basement. The footsteps of the man behind him sounded like they were close enough to be his own.

  50

  Stas’s head whipped around at the sound of the first shot. Heavy footsteps scuffled over their heads, and Nelle heard the sounds of bodies banging into walls, stomping the floor. The echoes of the fight drifted down, and she understood Evan had taken his chance. This was hers. Stas still aimed his gun at her, but his focus was on the stairs, not her. He took a step away, as if he might get a better glimpse at what was happening on the floor above if he found the right angle to peer through gaps in the floorboards.

  Nelle gripped the EpiPen tight in her hand and sprung off of the chair. She lurched at Stas, rearing back with the injector. Stas looked at her, his face red with rage that made her want to stop and shrink away. But she flew forward. Above them, the door at the top of the stairs banged open, and he again turned to look. The gun in his hand went off, but wherever the bullet went, Nelle didn’t know. It didn’t hit her. Not that she knew, anyway.

  She collided with the man and jammed her fist down as hard as she could, aiming the end of the injector for the hollow above his collarbone—the supraclavicular fossa. There was an “artery island” there—the external jugular, transverse cervical vessels, supraclavicular vessels, and subclavian veins and arteries—all waiting to take her medicine.

  The device clicked, and the man roared. If she’d been administering the shot to herself in her thigh, she’d want to hold it there for ten seconds to ensure all of the epinephrine inside was delivered. That was an eternity—a chasm of time she couldn’t cross, though she tried. She held on, shoving hard down, bearing her weight down on the autoinjector behind the man’s collarbone with one hand while trying to hold the pistol away from her body with the other. Stas shoved at her, but she held on. She counted in her head, two, three, four . . . before she was flung away. She let go of the EpiPen, hoping it would remain jammed into the man’s body, sticking up like a plastic collarbone erupting out of his body. The spring-loaded safety tip did its job, though, and as soon as she let go, it snapped into place, pulling the needle from his body, rendering the device safe and inert. It clattered to the floor at his feet.

  Another man hurtled down the stairs, moving with abandon and nearly falling, but catching himself on the rail and staying upright. Nelle didn’t have another weapon. If it was the other Russian, she was dead.

  It was Evan.

  Stas raised the gun to shoot her husband, but Evan hit him hard, driving him into the wall. The firearm flew out of the man’s hand, clattering away into the shadows. Nelle felt her body jerk toward it, wanting to put her hands on the weapon, turn it against its master. But she lost sight of it in the dark recesses of the cellar behind the weight bench and water heater. Barefoot, and already wounded, she didn’t dare run over there among the rest of the broken glass to go looking. Instead, she turned and ran for the two-by-four they used to bar the bulkhead door.

  Evan swung into Stas’s midsection and the big man fell, his face an even deeper red, and his lips spread open in a clench-toothed rictus. He clutched at his left arm. Nelle had hit him where she wanted; his heart couldn’t take the direct shot of epinephrine. He was going into cardiac arrest.

  “Evan!” she screamed.

  He looked over his shoulder at her. Another man came lurching down the stairs. “Run!” Evan shouted. “Get out of here!” He turned to face the dark figure on the stairs.

  51

  A hot bloom of pain erupted in his shoulder at the same time he heard the report of the gun. Still, he reeled forward, letting his momentum carry him into the shadow staggering down the stairs. He couldn’t see who it was clearly, but it didn’t matter. Another man with a gun. He had to fight. He ducked at the last instant, trying to shoot for the man’s midsection, hoping for a takedown like he’d learned in jiujitsu classes long ago but hadn’t practiced in years. The man moved, and he didn’t take the guy down. They collided, and the man shoved him back, hard. Up close, he could see who the figure was. Not a third Russian as he’d first thought, but their original captor returned as a nightmare version of himself, face bloodied and almost unrecognizably twisted with rage. Together, they slammed into the edge of the doorway leading into the smaller room where he and Nelle stored their holiday decorations. Where this man had hidden to ambush him hours earlier.

  The man barked something as Evan shoved him into the sharp corner of the foundation wall. He felt the butt of the gun slam down on his wounded shoulder twice. Evan cried out and shoved forward again, ducking out of the corner, trying to get out from under the man’s blows. He drove a hard hit into the man’s ribs, under his elbow. He felt a hard exhalation in his face and heard a faint clatter that he thought might be the weapon falling out of his opponent’s hand. Following the sound, Evan took a step back and looked for the gun. He spotted a dark shape nearby he thought might be it. Everything was dark and blurry. Maybe it was the gun. Maybe it was something else. If he bent over to grab it, chances were even that he’d fall down trying. He tried to kick it toward Nelle, and it went skidding away, clattering into the far end of the cellar.

  Evan felt something hit him in the gut. The air rushed out of his lungs, and it hurt to try to take a breath. Still, he gasped and swung back with a tight uppercut he hoped would find its mark. His knuckles popped and ached as he landed against something hard, yet yielding. A head rocking back. He heard the hard clack of the man’s teeth jamming together and a dull knock as his head hit the wall behind him. The man fell forward into Evan, and they both tumbled to the floor in a heap of intertwined limbs.

  Evan felt his own head bounce off the concrete floor and saw a brief, bright flash of light. He wanted to shout at Nelle to get the gun and shoot, but the darkness took him, and he was deep again. His last thought before he went back under was of her.

  At least she’s got the gun!

  52

  Mack’s head was spinning. He had thought the husband looked like a hipster pussy, but the guy hit hard. That he felt badly muddled from being shot added force to the guy’s punch. Still, he was conscious, and however off course he felt, it wasn’t enough to stop him.

  He looked up to see the bitch standing over him with something long and heavy-looking in her hands. The pussy husband didn’t put out his lights, but that broad might. He tried to roll away as she swung it. The thing still hit him, but in the shoulder instead of in the head, where she was aiming. It hurt, but not like being shot in the face. He took it and lashed back at her, missing, but feeling like he’d caught a touch of her in the swing. A brush.

  She shrieked with surprise and stepped back. Mack felt a trace of satisfaction. She was afraid of hitting him—or missing and hitting her man. Either way, it made her pause long enough for him to lunge for her. He got ahold of her leg and yanked. Her knee folded and she went down like a rag doll. The board fell out of her hand and clattered away. Thanks to the gunshots, he couldn’t hear much, but still he heard the thump of her body hitting the floor, and that sounded fucking great. He got up onto his hands and knees, ready to show her what it cost to fuck with him. He fumbled at his pocket for his knife, wishing he’d brought the bigger one with him.

  The fist that caught him in the jaw seemed to come out of nowhere. She rocked his head harder than her old man had done, and for a second he imagined she’d broken his neck. It didn’t snap, though it popped a half dozen times, and the hard twist made his mind feel extra fuzzy. She swung at him again, missing his face this t
ime and catching him in the collarbone. She hit hard, and pain arced up his neck into his jaw. He shouted again, more out of anger than pain, though he felt plenty of both. He reached for her, but she was gone. Instead, his hand fell on the board. He pulled it toward him and rocked back on his knees, swinging it blindly, just to keep her at a distance while he got his shit together. He shook his head and got up onto one foot. The room pitched and yawed like a boat in a white squall, and he fell over on one hand before righting himself again.

  Mack’s eyes cleared, and he spotted her in the far corner trying to reach under the gap beneath a shelf. He shouted, “You’re dead . . . bitch! Fugging dead!” His words were mush, and it hurt to speak. He was missing more than a few teeth on the left side of his mouth where the Russki’s bullet had deflected and torn out of his face. It was still mostly numb, but he could tell it was bad. Bad or not, he was alive, and they weren’t.

  She turned at the sound of his voice. The look on her face when she saw him—really saw him—that look excited him every time he saw it. She was piss-her-pants terrified of him, and the exhilaration of it ran through him like a bump of cocaine. His head began to feel tight. His already deadened hearing turned from a whine into a buzz. He pushed up with the board and got to his feet and took an unsteady step closer to her. She pulled her empty hand out from under the shelf and backed away.

  “Dead. Bitch,” he panted. He could feel the blood and saliva running down his jaw and neck on the ruined side and thought it had to be a particularly frightening image. It almost made him feel all right about being shot in the face. The room rolled again, and he shook his head to clear it. When his vision came back into focus, she wasn’t by the shelf any longer. She’d made it to the doorway leading outside. “Stop,” he yelled. She disobeyed him. The metal bulkhead door shrieked as she shoved it open. He threw the two-by-four at her like a javelin. It clattered impotently across the room. She bounded up the steps and out into the daylight.

  “I’LLFUGGINGKILLYOUYOUFUGGINGBISHYOU’READEADCUNT!”

  His utterance was as worthless as the board, and it only made his head and face hurt worse.

  He staggered over to the shelf he’d seen her fumbling under. He hadn’t seen what happened to his pistol, and probably never would’ve thought to look for it there if it weren’t for her. He got down low and tried to reach under, but couldn’t get his thick arm into the space past his elbow. He staggered over to the board, grabbed it, and went back. He jabbed with it under the shelf trying to find the damn thing, but it was dark and he couldn’t feel the gun at the end of the stick. He’d guessed this was the shelf and not some other only because this was where he’d seen her kneeling, trying to reach under, and assumed that she’d actually seen where it had gone. After another few seconds, he pulled the board out and, sitting up on his knees, hurled it across the room again. It clattered into the corner behind the furnace. His head ached worse than ever. Another bitch who’d taken a gun from him.

  He looked right at the other Russki. He sat slumped against the wall, blank eyed and slick with sweat. He wasn’t breathing. Somehow, one of them had killed the monster. Good for them. Good for him. He looked for that man’s pistol, but it was gone too. He could go upstairs and get the one from the other dead Russki in the hall. He knew where that one was. But that would take time. Time he didn’t have. She was getting away.

  He stumbled over to her husband, still out cold on the floor. Mack couldn’t tell whether the pussy was alive or dead. It didn’t matter. He stomped on the man’s face twice. A red bubble grew on Evan’s lips and popped. Still breathing. But like the man upstairs, not going anywhere.

  Mack looked at the door to the back yard. It was bright outside. It wouldn’t be hard to see her running. He could catch her, and when he did, he was going to make her look in his face until he got as much of that look on hers as he could stand. And then I’ll fucking kill her too.

  He headed toward the light.

  53

  She shoved the bulkhead door open, bracing herself against the blast of sunlight that tried to blind and stop her, scrambled out of the cellar, and tried slamming the door shut to buy some time. But the safety arm caught and held it open. She shoved again, and a small cry of frustration escaped her throat. To free it, she’d have to bend back down into the stairwell and lift the release bar. Fighting with it or stepping inside to release it both took time she didn’t have. Roarke was coming.

  The board had hit him in the shoulder, not his head. It might’ve hurt, but it was miles from deadly or even incapacitating. Standing there waiting to swing at him, she’d felt like a Van Helsing hovering over a coffin. And then she missed. Fucking no good at all. He’d looked at her with that tattered undead face—a neat little hole under the cheekbone below his left eye and a huge, gaping tear by his ear that seemed almost yonic and vulgar in its bright red exposure—and she had wondered if he could be killed. If it would really matter if she hit him in the head or at all.

  In her head, she heard an echo of Evan saying, Get away!

  Leaving him in the cellar was the hardest thing she’d ever done. But if she didn’t get away now, she couldn’t get help. Neither one of them would make it.

  Nelle turned and lurched toward the hedgerow of burning bush trees separating her yard from the neighbors’. The bushes were grown together too thickly for her to push through on her feet unless she ran to the end of the row down by the road. No time. Nelle got down on her stomach and started to shimmy under, waiting for the feeling of a tight hand closing around her ankle or a hard stomp in the small of her back. Neither feeling came, and she emerged in the Darnielles’ back yard, filthy and choking on dirt. She tried to stifle her coughing, but the soil she’d kicked up scrambling beneath the tight branches was in her throat, and she couldn’t inhale without gagging. She swallowed as well as she could and ran for the sliding door at the end of the patio.

  She grasped the door handle and tugged. It didn’t move. Juanita’s voice called out from her memory. Oh, sweetie. We don’t have an alarm system. Shit. We don’t lock our doors unless we’re headed out of town for more than a night. They were gone for a whole week and had locked the house up tight. Peering inside, she couldn’t see a telephone—she didn’t know if they even had a landline, or if they were like her and Evan and only used cell phones. She hadn’t ever thought to look for a telephone the times she’d visited. Who did when everyone had one in their pocket or purse?

  She spun and looked for something to smash the glass with. Behind her were a pair of molded plastic chairs that wouldn’t help her break a sweat if she swung them all day, never mind a pane of glass. There was a picnic-style table with fixed benches at the other end of the patio that was the opposite of the chairs—heavy and unmovable. She searched for something in the Goldilocks zone—not too light, not too heavy, but just right. She ran toward the low wall bordering the edge of the patio and wrenched a brick from it. Her injured shoulder resisted the effort, but she bit down against the pain and forced herself to pull the block free. Huffing it back to the doors, she tried to throw it as hard as she could. The brick hit the glass and bounced off. Nelle had to skip out of the way as it returned to her. While a round spiderweb pattern of cracks appeared in the door, it remained as solidly impassable as before. She picked up the brick and threw it again. The shatter pattern grew larger, but the door held. She wasn’t getting inside. Not this way.

  She tried to remember what the Darnielles’ front door looked like. Was it half glass like her own? She picked up her brick and took a step toward the path leading around the side of the house. Even up on the balls of her feet, moving made her heel feel like hell. The adage that you didn’t have to run faster than the tiger, only faster than everyone else running from it came to mind. Except there was no one else running with her. That meant she had to be faster than Roarke.

  Nelle stumbled, and the heavy brick slipped out of her hands and landed with a dead thump in the lawn in front of her. She tripped on it, hurti
ng the toes on her good foot and sprawled out facedown in the grass. The silence that followed was somehow more horrible. No shouting or sounds of a struggle. If Evan was alive, he’d keep fighting. And if he’d won, he’d be standing in the yard now calling out for her, telling her it was okay. It was all over. But he wasn’t there. Mack had somehow gotten the gun that she couldn’t reach with her slender arms, and he’d . . .

  She shoved the thought down. She hadn’t heard any shots. She didn’t know for certain Evan was dead. She didn’t know he wasn’t, and the silence didn’t offer any evidence to the contrary. Instead, her darkest fears settled into her mind and whispered the worst things. They had lost. There was no more fighting to do.

  Without Evan, what remained but dying?

  He’d want me to live. He’d want me to run.

  Run where? I don’t even know if Juanita has a landline. What if I waste time and make a bunch of noise trying to break another window and there isn’t a phone? What then? She knew what would happen, phone or no phone: she’d die in the Darnielles’ house waiting for the police to come while her killer leisurely made his way over to find her. Or she could head for the next house down the highway and hope they were home instead of also at the Cape or in the Berkshires. That way wasn’t escape either. To get to the road, she had to run all the way around the house and down the driveway. If Roarke caught up to her, there was nowhere to hide and nothing she could try to use as a weapon. Sure, maybe if she made it to the highway someone would be passing by in a car at just the right time and would stop to help. But with the blind bend in the road, they’d be as likely to run her down as stop. And if they did stop, Roarke might kill the Good Samaritan too before finishing her off.