Sinners & Scarecrows

by David Carter

  A minute later Blaze’s phone rang. It was Zoe. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “And Danny?”

  “Safely in the hospital ward with Ellie doting over him. He’s going to be fine.”

  “Good to hear. Keep the engine running, babe.” He clicked off.

  Blaze kept the Glock homed in on the operative. He said, “So how’s the wife and kids doing?”

  Stunned, the operative replied, “How do you know I’m married?”

  Blaze produced the operative’s cell phone that he’d taken from him after he’d knocked him out in the truck yard. “I took the liberty of calling ahead to say you may not make it home tonight.”

  “How dare you!” he shouted.

  “Why don’t you just calm the fuck down.” Blaze waved the Glock in his face. “Now, I’m gonna ask you one question, and if you give me the right answer, I might even let you live.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “All right, would you prefer me to send someone over to your house? Perhaps listening to your wife and daughter’s screams over the phone will motivate you to answer my question.”

  The operative instantly changed his attitude. “Please, don’t hurt my family! I’ll do anything you want!”

  Blaze believed him. “All right, I just need to know one tiny detail: who is the rat inside the MC?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m not privy to the details of this case.”

  “Are you sure that’s your final answer?”

  “I promise you, I don’t know!”

  Blaze started to dial a number on the operative’s phone. “I’m calling your wife, so you can say your goodbyes.”

  “Agent Watson!” the operative cried out.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The agent in charge of tonight’s operation is called Watson.”

  A grin spread across Blaze’s face. “See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Blaze handed him the Glock. “Now get out of the truck and point the gun at me for about ten seconds, then run away as fast as you can.”

  “What?” he replied, stunned at his obscure request.

  “Just fucking do it. It’s your only chance of getting out of this alive. But remember, should you choose to shoot me, I have plans in place that result in grievous harm coming to your family.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Do you really want to take that chance?”

  I don’t have a choice, the operative thought.

  They both climbed out of the truck. Blaze held his hands up high in surrender; the operative aimed the Glock at him, as instructed.

  Commissioner Stuart’s earpiece crackled as one of the snipers on the rooftop of an office block said, “This is Sierra Five: I have a visual on the target. He appears to have a hostage, over.”

  “Do you have a clear shot, Sierra Five? Over.”

  “Affirmative, team leader. Please advise, over.”

  Commissioner Stuart decided to take evasive action. If you want to stop a snake from biting your hand, cut its head off, he thought, then said, “You have a go, Sierra Five. Engage the target. Shoot to kill.”

  “Acknowledged, team leader, over and out.”

  Sierra Five calmly breathed as he lined up the head of the man in the black, biker’s vest.

  Ten seconds passed. Blaze said to the operative, “Moment of truth, man; run like hell. Go!”

  The operative dropped the gun and ran for dear life across the void to the large water fountain twenty metres or so behind him. His highly trained mind had figured out what Blaze was up to.

  Blaze quickly retrieved the Glock and disappeared in the opposite direction.

  Sierra Five’s rifle barrel followed the path of the man in the biker vest. The man stopped running, and surrendered with his hands up. But Sierra Five carried out his orders to the letter. He slowly released his breath and squeezed the trigger.

  The man fell as his brains exploded out the back of his skull onto the cobblestones.

  A perfect kill.

  Sierra Five called it in. “Team Leader; target is neutralised, over.”

  “Acknowledged,” replied Commissioner Stuart as he left the safety of his hideaway on the ground floor of an office building, and walked out into the middle of the square. But what he saw upon his arrival both angered and worried him deeply. The operative lay motionless on the ground, dressed in Blaze’s biker clothes, with the back of his skull missing. “Shit!” he cursed loudly. “That son of a bitch double-crossed us!”

  Blaze had used the distraction of the running operative to slink out of the square. He met up with Zoe in a car park building on its perimeter. She almost didn’t recognise him in the black operative’s uniform. “You get it all?” he asked her.

  She smiled as she hit the ‘stop’ button on her video recorder. “He even surrendered like you said he might, which means they murdered him in cold blood,” she replied.

  “Good; that means we’re in the clear for a while,” he said, and floored the Mustang out of the car park exit on the far side of the building, away from the dead centre of town.

  Moments later, on the drive back to the clubhouse, Blaze’s phone rang. “Yes?” he answered.

  It was Vino.

  Chapter 50

  Ryan’s jaw ached like hell from the belting Sanchez had given him. His head drooped down. Blood seeped from his mouth and ran down his chin, staining his white shirt.

  “I’ll ask you again,” Sanchez said, frustrated with his stubborn prisoner, “what were you doing snooping around my docks?”

  Ryan resisted, offering him nothing.

  “Answer me!” Sanchez booted his outstretched legs.

  Ryan slowly looked up from his sitting positing on the floor of Sanchez’s cabin. His wrists were tied together around a wooden post behind his back. He spat a mouthful of bloody saliva on the floor. “Where’s my partner?” Ryan replied. wearily.

  “She’s in the back room. But she’s dead if you don’t start talking.”

  “We’re dead anyway; might as well go out swinging.”

  Sanchez crouched down directly in front of Ryan. He taunted him by saying, “Would you like to know what I’m going to do to her?” His raspy voice echoed in Ryan’s ears.

  Ryan looked away.

  “I’m going to skin her alive,” he said, and reached for his razor sharp filleting knife from the table behind him. “And you will likely suffer the same fate; but the choice is yours, detective.”

  Ryan reasoned with him. “If I tell you, you’ll just kill us anyway.”

  Sanchez cleared his throat. “While that is true,” he said as he stood up, “there are far more humane ways to leave this pitiful existence. You have my word: I’ll shoot you instead.”

  “It makes no difference to me; the end result is still the same.”

  “Shit, you’re one stupid cop. You value your pride too much.”

  “A man has his principles,” Ryan replied defiantly.

  “And I admire that. But your principles will literally be the death of you and that pretty lady friend of yours.”

  “I think you mean, “Detective Gibson,” Ryan corrected him sharply.

  “So you’re not screwing her on the job, then?” he snickered

  “You know, it is actually possible for a man and a women to work together without having to be sexually involved. And just for your information, I’m already in a relationship —” he stopped himself short, regretting the words he’d said the moment they left his lips.

  Ryan saw Sanchez’s large, yellowish teeth in the dim lighting as he grinned from ear to ear. “Oh, you have a lady friend, do you? I bet she is a pretty thing, too. Maybe I’ll hunt her down and force her to watch your execution, then feed her to the sharks for my own amusement.”

  Ryan gave in. There was no way he would put Sharon in harm’s way. “Forget you even know she exists and I’ll tell you everything,” he bargained with him.

  “Now you’re starting to talk sense.” He put
his knife down on the table, and headed towards the front door. “I’ll give you a minute to think things over, as I have to check my security detail. Thanks to you and Detective Gibson, I have to babysit each and every one of them until I’m satisfied they won’t let scum like you leave my docks alive.”

  Sanchez turned the light off and left the cabin to do his rounds.

  Ryan dropped his chin on his chest. This is hopeless, he thought. When he eventually looked up again he could just make out his and Sandra’s cell phones sitting on the table opposite him. He struggled with his bindings to try and free himself, but it was of no use.

  The door slowly creaked open. Ryan thought it was Sanchez coming back for something he’d forgotten to take with him. But it wasn’t Sanchez. Ryan heard the uneven sound of footsteps plodding towards him. The limping man took Sanchez’s filleting knife from the table and held it to Ryan’s throat, and quietly said, “I want you to know that I’m supposed to slice people like you open and let them bleed out on the floor.”

  “Then bloody well get on with it then,” Ryan scolded him.

  The man took the knife and reached behind Ryan’s hands to cut him free. But before he did, he said, “I’ve have a message for you.”

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  “Go back to Milton City and stay the fuck out of our business.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Ryan replied.

  “Then I might as well kill you now.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “You know who.”

  “Blaze?”

  “Just get out of town, Detective.”

  “But my career will be over if I do that.”

  “And your life will be over if you don’t,” he threatened him, holding the knife back to his throat.

  Ryan hesitated. He had to think fast. He knew Sanchez would be back any moment. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll go. But my partner’s in the back room, so we need to hurry.”

  Ryan noticed the man’s prominent limp as they went after Sandra. “You’re Vino, aren’t you?”

  Startled, he replied, “How’d you know that?”

  “An educated guess.”

  They helped Sandra up from the table she was bound to. Ryan collected their phones as they made their way to the front door. He opened it and stepped outside—just in time to see one of Sanchez’s henchmen standing there, aiming a rifle directly at them.

  Chapter 51

  Vino reacted quickly, and threw the filleting knife at the guard. The finely sharpened blade sliced straight through his oesophagus, all the way to the hilt. Than man lay on the ground, gurgling and choking as blood filled his airways.

  “We need to move,” Vino said to Ryan. “Quick, head up the trail. My car is hidden at the top.”

  The darkness concealed their movements as they crossed the open ground and scrambled up the incline. When they reached the top, Vino led them to his late model BMW, and they made their escape.

  Sanchez returned from his rounds to find his guard dead. But the guard had left him a message. Sanchez fumed as he deciphered the symbols the man had written on one of the wooden boards with his own blood on the pier with his finger.

  “Thank you,” Ryan said to Vino as they fled the coastline. You took one hell of a risk back there.”

  “Now me and Blaze are even,” he replied without looking at him.

  “How did he know we were there?”

  Vino rubbed his eyes. “As much as I hate to admit it, he is very smart. He figured out what had happened to you and called in a favour.”

  “Well, I appreciate you answering his call, we’d be dead —”

  “But you must leave Brighton,” Vino interrupted. “It is not safe for you now.”

  “What about you? Mr Lombardi will have your head for this.”

  “I saved your life tonight,” he replied. “You can repay my kindness by keeping your cop mouth shut.”

  “Agreed.”

  Sandra said nothing in the back seat. She was still in shock. She turned around for one last look back at the horrid place that had almost claimed her life, before they headed inland. No one was following them.

  An hour or so later, Vino dropped Ryan and Sandra back to his car in Brighton. “Remember, you must leave,” he said.

  “What about you?” he replied. “What if they find out you helped us?”

  “It’s a risk I’ll have to take. If I don’t act normally around Mr Lombardi and Mr Sanchez, they’ll certainly get suspicious.” Vino bade them farewell and drove away.

  Sandra broke down in tears. “Are you okay?” Ryan wrapped his arms around Sandra.

  “I don’t know what to do!” Sandra sobbed. “I don’t know where to go. And I don’t want to leave Brighton. But they might go after my kids again —” She stopped as she realised her mistake.

  “What do you mean, go after your kids again?” Ryan asked, puzzled.

  She burst out crying again. “I’m sorry, Cameron,” she sniffed. “I’ve done something terrible.”

  He opened the car door for her. “Get in,” he said gently. “Let’s find some coffee so you can tell me everything.”

  Chapter 52

  Ryan ordered two takeaway coffees from a 24/7 gas station and started driving towards Sandra’s home.

  “God, I need sleep,” said Sandra. “These past few days have been taxing.”

  Ryan said nothing. He sipped at the lid to his Styrofoam coffee cup.

  “I could never have imagined how this case would blow up like this,” she continued.

  Ryan still said nothing. He had connected the dots.

  “Are you mad at me?” she said.

  “I know what you did,” he replied.

  “How could you possibly know?”

  “Hello; big shot detective over here,” he said sarcastically as he mimed quotation marks.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

  “Don’t insult me, Sandra. It’s so obvious to me now. You doctored the reports concerning Luther Sutherland’s DNA. The burglary at the sperm bank was a cover-up. That’s why he was magically released from custody right when we had him nailed to the bloody wall!”

  “They threatened my children!” she burst out crying. “What was I supposed to do?”

  He composed himself. “You could have told me,” he replied calmly.

  “It’s not like you play by the rules! You constantly turn a blind eye to the comings and goings of that biker friend of yours. And because of you, I’ve nearly been killed; twice!”

  She had a fair point. “Tell me exactly what happened,” he said.

  “If you recall, I took a phone call when we were interviewing Mr Sutherland at the station. And the man on the other end of the call said there was a van parked outside my house with one of his employees waiting for my children to arrive home from school. He said he would hurt them if I didn’t help him free Luther Sutherland.”

  Jesus Christ, thought Ryan. It all makes sense now...

  “So I did what he asked. I wanted to tell you, but you must understand that I’d do anything to protect my children. So I make no apologies for my actions.”

  Ryan pulled the car over. He looked at her; the defiance in her eyes was that of a mother protecting her young. He said, “So now do you see why I let Blaze get away with certain indiscretions? Not to mention some of my own actions? The people we are up against sometimes cause us to take action in a way that is considered wrong within the eyes of the law, but in reality, we know where are doing the right thing.”

  She nodded. “But is this Blaze character truly as good at heart as you think he is?”

  “I can’t answer that for you. That’s for you to decide. But you may want to consider that he just saved our lives by asking Vino to risk his neck for us. And if we want to bring the likes of Seth Archer and Tyrone Sanchez to justice, there’s no better person to have watching your back. I can personally vouch for that. Which is why we need to keep him out of jail for as long as possible.�
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  “I see.” She wiped her eyes. “So does that mean you aren’t going back to Milton City?”

  He indicated to get back onto the road, and pulled off the kerbside as he said, “Not a chance in hell.”

  “So where to, then?”

  “Worthington,” he said definitively.

  “All the way back to Worthington? Why? What for?”

  He stomped hard on the gas pedal, and replied, “To prove that Blaze didn’t butcher the Bowmans.”

  Chapter 53

  The hospital ward was quiet when Blaze stepped out of the elevator. He poked his head into Danny’s room to see Ellie asleep in a chair next to his bed, holding Danny’s arm. Blaze walked over to Danny’s side. “You’re getting lazy, man: lying down on the fucking job,” he grinned.

  Danny stirred, blinking his eyes rapidly as Blaze’s face slowly came into focus. “Good to see you made it,” Danny said. “What happened?”

  Blaze filled him in on how he’d switched outfits with the operative and set him up.

  “How did you know he would try and take you out?” Danny asked.

  “I dunno. A sixth sense, maybe? Either way I had nothing to lose. But mainly I was safeguarding myself in case they tried something stupid, which they did, and now it’s given me some breathing room: Zoe got the whole thing on video.”

  “You’re fucking insane, man!”

  “Comes with the job description,” he chuckled. “So how are you holding up? You gonna be outta here soon?”

  Danny winced as he tried to sit himself up. Ellie instantly got up to help him. “Should be outta here sometime today. I won’t be able to ride for a while though, speaking of which, did you manage to rescue our bikes?”

  “Spider and the boys are picking them up as we speak.”

  “Good. I love that beast. Would be a shame to lose her.”

  Blaze’s face turned serious.

  “What’s wrong, man?” Danny asked.

  “I need a favour,” he said.

  “Name it.”