With a brief nod at the woman, Sara descended the porch steps and glanced over at Todd and Barbara’s cabin. While she couldn’t see her son from this angle, he should be in the room on the far corner, keeping an eye on the gate. Per their predetermined plan for greeting visitors, Todd would have called Frank on the radio but remained in his spot, where he would have a good shooting angle on any potential raiders.
Sara’s eyes moved to Frank’s back. His bulk almost completely blocked the other two men from view, and the wind didn’t seem to have any effect on him despite it snapping the hood of his coat around. The gusts blew down the side of the mountain from above, pushing so hard that Sara had to lean back so it didn’t shove her down the hill.
The man inside the car was trying to be casual as his eyes prowled across the cabins and came to rest on Sara. Their eyes locked, but there was too much glare off the front windshield to get a read on the man.
Sara moved around to Frank’s left so she would be clear of crossfire if Dion, Barbara, or Todd had to throw some lead at their visitors.
“Sorry, guys, but I can’t let you pass,” Frank was saying loudly. “We have to wait for our leader, Sara… Oh, hi, Sara. I was just telling these guys they can’t come through. Probably be best if you explain.”
“Hi there.” Sara practically shouted the words as she gave the two men standing in front of her a thin, neutral smile, her eyes crawling up and down them. They were unarmed, as far as she could tell, though they wore bulky coats and loose-fitting jeans that could hide any number of weapons.
They had both been clean-cut-looking men at one time, although now they wore short beards on their jaws and had tattoos on their necks. The man on the right had an additional teardrop tattoo just beneath his left eye. While Sara tried not to be judgmental, she couldn’t help but recall a reality TV show where men in prison had similar tattoos. She thought the teardrop might represent someone they’d killed.
“You must be Sara,” one of the men said. He had a rough face that made his smile look painted on, and she automatically distrusted him.
“That’s me,” Sara replied. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“I’m Jacques,” the rough-faced man said. “And this is Victoro.”
The one named Victoro nodded, although his eyes narrowed at Sara as if noticing something familiar about her.
Sara swallowed down a lump of nervousness and waited for Jacques to continue.
“We’re looking for something, Sara,” Jacques said. “And we’re hoping you can help us find it.”
“I’ll help if I can. But we’ve been stuck up on this mountain for the past month, so I doubt we’d know anything about—”
“It’s a big black box.” Jacques spread his hands wide. “About the size of a suitcase.”
Sara shook her head as she tried to keep her voice even. “Sounds mysterious. What’s inside it?”
“It’s a big computer, basically. Something you folks probably wouldn’t be interested in. Someone stole it from us, and we’d like it back.”
“We’re not mad about it.” Victoro rushed to add. “We just want it back.” The man glanced at Jacques before blurting, “There might even be a reward in it, if the person turned it in.”
“That’s right,” Jacques agreed. “A big, juicy reward for anyone who knows its whereabouts.”
Sara looked back and forth between the two, attempting to keep her face neutral. “I wish I could help, but we’ve been up here waiting out the storms. We don’t have enough electricity to run a computer. All our phones went dead weeks ago.” While the excuse sounded good to her, Sara wasn’t a natural liar, and every word felt fake and strained coming out of her mouth. Her eyes darted back and forth between the men too quickly. Her heart pounded too fast.
The two men exchanged a look before Jacques turned back to Sara. “How about a maroon Subaru? Have you seen anyone driving one of those?”
Sara’s stomach sank, her eyes started to water, and her hand reached instinctively for her rifle’s grip before she stopped herself. The men were definitely from the lodge. They may have even had a hand in torturing Kayla and her family, although Sara couldn’t remember them from Kayla’s descriptions. The only two Kayla had been entirely clear on were the evil, red-haired woman with the funny accent and the strange doctor who’d done unspeakable things to her family with the disconnected stare of a child plucking the legs off an insect.
Kayla had said nothing about two men with tattoos on their necks. Still, they wouldn’t have mentioned the Subaru if they weren’t somehow involved.
“We’ve just got the van,” Frank explained, gesturing behind him. “We use that for almost everything. My Jeep…it broke down already. Piece of junk.”
Good cover, Frank, Sara thought, impressed with how calmly the big man was handling himself.
“How about we take a look?” Jacques said, and he jerked his head to Victoro. “Let’s get this gate out of the way.” The two men split up, one moving to each end of the gate.
All thoughts of playing friendly evaporated behind a wall of defiance that rose in Sara’s mind. There was no way these two were going to get past the gate. She put her hands on her rifle and raised it to her chest. “Stop!”
Jacques stopped where he’d been lifting his end of the roundwood gate over the rebar. “What are you going to do if we don’t stop?”
Sara swung the barrel of her weapon at Jacques as the wind shoved her forward a step. It was screaming down from above in a prolonged gust that simply wouldn’t quit, and she had to shout to make sure the men heard her. “Put the gate down! Get back in your cars! Leave!”
“We can’t do that, Sara!” Jacques shouted back as he continued to lift the gate. His expression grew amused, daring Sara to shoot. “We’ve got orders to—”
A wailing sound rose with the wind, causing the hairs on the back of Sara’s neck to rise. It had come from the direction of the cabins, and she instinctively knew who it was before she even turned to see.
Kayla stood on the front porch, holding herself up with a wobbly-thin crutch made out of a branch. Sara vaguely recalled Frank having made it for her the night Natasha set the girl’s leg. It was a miracle that she could even hold herself upright with the wind battering her. Her face was streaked with tears, and she held Frank’s pistol in her hand, pointing it at Victoro.
Sara watched wide-eyed as light flashed from the gun’s muzzle, and it took Sara a second to realize that Kayla was firing the weapon, screaming with every shot. Several things happened at once. Victoro dropped his end of the round gate, reaching inside his coat as he fell backwards. The driver of the car stuck the barrel of his weapon out of the window and opened fire on Kayla.
Somehow, with a speed Sara didn’t think possible, Frank anticipated the move and placed himself between the driver and the girl, holding his hand up as bullets made a stripe across his body, taking two of his fingers off on their way to his thicker, meatier flesh.
Sara turned back to find herself face-to-face with the barrel of Jacques’s pistol, and this time she knew her punishment wouldn’t be a nick or graze. It would be death.
The man fired once, and the bullet ricocheted off Sara’s gun, causing her to draw her hand back with a cry of pain. That was when Todd and Barbara unleashed a volley of gunfire from the corner window. Dion must have added his own to the mix because the world was suddenly filled with the sharp reports of small arms fire.
Sara backpedaled and fell on her rear, grabbing her rifle and taking aim at Jacques in a desperate attempt to kill him before he killed her. The man was fast, already climbing into the passenger seat of the car. Victoro was making a run for the sedan’s back door when someone from the cabin cut him down.
She let rip with her own volley. Short, three-round bursts from her gun tore into the car, shattering the front windshield and drawing curses from the men inside. A barrel flashed in her direction, and Sara rolled away as bullets splintered the blacktop around her. She kept ro
lling until she heard the squeal of tires and then looked up to see the car backing down the road until it whipped sideways and then peeled out trying to get down the hill.
Sara leapt to her feet and took aim at the car, ears ringing as she emptied her magazine into the trunk and back window. When the car rolled around the curve and out of sight, everyone stopped firing.
Ears ringing, heart pounding, and chest heaving, Sara looked around in dismay, wondering how things had gotten out of control so quickly.
The man named Victoro lay dead in the road. Frank lay on his back nearby, holding his maimed hand close to his chest. His dead eyes stared up at the tempestuous sky.
Dion and Karen rushed over to Frank, Karen wailing as she fell to her knees at her husband’s side. Sara got herself moving, grabbing Dion by the shoulder as she ran for the van.
“Come on!” Sara shouted. “Let’s go!”
Dion stood up, gesturing to Frank. “Sara, what are you doing? Frank—”
“They’re going to tell the others!” Sara shouted back, her voice filled with panic as she waved Dion to follow. “They’ll come back here.”
“Who?” Dion pleaded.
“The same people who tortured Kayla’s family,” Sara yelled. Then she turned to yank the van’s door open, determined to run down Jacques and his buddy whether Dion wanted to help or not.
She dropped her rifle in between the seats and started the van, already putting it into drive just as Dion jumped in. Dion settled in the seat, ejected his empty magazine, and fished a new one out of his pocket. They exchanged a grim look of determination with the silent agreement that they wouldn’t come back until the men were dead.
Sara jerked the gearshift into drive and hit the gas.
Chapter 19
Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 2:27 p.m., Sunday
Sara clenched her jaw tight as she drove the van recklessly around the sharp curves of the mountain until she reached the familiar straightaway with its snakelike, roller coaster bumps. The flooding she was forced to drive through when they’d first arrived in Gatlinburg was no longer a problem, yet she could still not drive as fast as she wanted. As they flew over each hill, the van rose off the ground and then landed with a lurch.
Teeth rattling in her head, her hands barely able to control the wheel, Sarah worked the gas pedal as aggressively as she dared, plowing forward in an effort to catch Jacques and his man before they could escape onto the main road.
The cloud of steam rose up ahead of them, and Sara knew it must be their car’s engine venting antifreeze from all the holes they’d put in the radiator.
“There they are!” Sarah didn’t dare take her hands off the wheel for fear of flying off the road, but she jerked her head forward to indicate their quarry.
“What are we going to do?” Dion held his pistol in his right hand and a spare magazine in the other, clinching them tightly in his lap as he stared ahead.
“I don’t know… I think I…”
Over the next hill, Sara saw the sedan skewed sideways on the left side of the road. The hood was popped open and the driver was leaning close to the engine, as if he could get the bullet-ridden vehicle to move again. Jacques stood in the middle of the road about fifteen yards farther down, one hand on his hip and the other holding a radio.
Instincts claiming her body and blood pounding in her head, Sara steered the van towards Jacques. Two more small hills, just fifty yards, and she would be right on top of the man before he knew what hit him. But the next hill caused them to land with a noisy heave, and something began knocking in the front end of the van.
Jacques spun around, eyes widening as he spotted the onrushing vehicle. He sprinted back to the car, hunkering down behind the truck and pulling his pistol out. He must’ve shouted something to the driver, because the man removed himself from beneath the hood, spotted the van, and took a position behind the open door opposite Jacques with his gun extended through the open window.
“Buckle up!” Sara shouted, and tires screeched as she angled the van toward the disabled sedan.
Dion saw what she was doing and quickly ripped his seatbelt down, slamming it home just as the first bullets hit the van with loud, metallic pings. Sara ducked behind the dashboard, no longer needing to see her target. All she needed to do was keep the wheel straight.
Glass exploded and rained on her head. The van rammed the car, the airbag explosion knocking Sara backwards with the impact of a fist to the chest. Dion grunted as his body jerked back and forth with the impact. The van skidded sideways and then jolted back the other way, suddenly free of the sedan’s weight.
They rolled a short distance, and despite Sara’s scrambled brain, she slammed her foot on the brake in case they were headed toward the gully. The van jerked to a stop, its engine dead and the airbag deflating in her lap. There was a constant ringing in her ears and the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. She looked dazedly over at Dion to see if he was okay. He was looking at her, shouting something that she couldn’t hear, hand on her shoulder and shaking her gently.
“I said, are you okay?” Dion’s voice came through.
“I’m fine.” Sara winced and clutched at a pinch of pain at the base of her neck. “I think.”
Time seemed to move in slow motion, and by the time Sara had finished her sentence, Dion had unbuckled his seatbelt and was climbing out of the van. And then he was gone, leaving the door wide open and Sara wondering what he was doing.
“Wait,” Sara said in a weak and confused voice before she put the van in park and fumbled for the door handle.
The door wouldn’t open at first, so Sara rammed her shoulder into it, and it opened with a squeal. She started to get out, then turned back for her rifle. It wasn’t between the seats but had slid to the passenger side floorboard. Grabbing it, Sara swung herself out of the van and staggered to her right, almost falling into the gully, a thirty-foot drop to the rocks below. The sedan was already down there, its side smeared with a streak of blood and the body of a man twisted and broken a few yards away. From the looks of his clothing, it was Jacques, definitely dead.
Sara’s eyes moved slowly up the road, feeling like they belonged to someone else. The collision seemed like a dream, her body still thrumming with the impact. She spotted Dion thirty yards away in the middle of the road. He was standing over the driver with his gun pointed at the man’s back, hand clenching and relaxing as if some invisible force kept him from pulling the trigger.
Hobbling up the road, her right knee screaming in complaint, Sara kept her eyes on the two. The driver was attempting to crawl up the road away from Dion, however, it was clear to Sara by the twisted shape of his hips that he wouldn’t make it very far.
When she got there, Sara saw the conflict etched across Dion’s face. He wanted to kill the man for killing Frank, although there were plenty more reasons to do it—keeping them safe the primary one.
Dion looked up, tears streaking his cheeks as if they were racing to his chin, eyes bloodshot and hateful as he wrestled with his own humanity. His gun hand shook, and his arm was unsteady.
Sara felt the dread of her first kill return, and she didn’t want Dion to live with the same curse. “I’ll do it,” she said, nodding assuredly as she raised her rifle. “I’ve done it before, and I can do it again.”
Sara’s words seemed to unlock something in Dion, and he shook his head, shoulders shivering as he willed his body to obey. His gaze fell to the man, and he gripped his gun tighter until his finger finally squeezed the trigger. The gunshot rang out, severing the man’s spine at the neck and ending his life.
Dion collapsed in on himself, shoulders hunched over as the weight of what he’d done settled squarely upon him. Sara turned around, thinking what to do next. The smashed van was beyond repair, its front end looking like a crushed tin can. Venting antifreeze wafted on the strong mountain winds, along with overpowering smells of blood and gunpowder and leaking oil.
“Come on, Dion,” Sara said. When
Dion wouldn’t respond, she strode over to him and slapped his shoulder. “Dion! Come on! We’re not out of this yet.”
The man’s eyes snapped to Sara, and his shoulders jerked back as if waking from a dream. He mumbled something incoherent, so Sara grabbed him by his shirt and wrenched him down the hill, half-dragging him along.
“Look down at the road.” Sara hissed the words as her senses grew sharper. “These guys had buddies. Kayla said as much. What do you think they’re going to do when they drive by and see our smashed-up van sitting in the middle of the road? I’d say they’d be curious about that, right?”
Sara let her words linger until realization dawned in Dion’s eyes. He slowly nodded, eyes looking down at the wrecked van as he worked out their predicament.
“We need to move it off the road,” Dion concluded.
“That’s right,” Sara agreed. “It shouldn’t take much, but I need your help. Are you okay? Do you think you can help me push it?”
“Yeah.” Dion shook his head before he raised his voice. “Absolutely, I can. Let’s do it.”
“Good,” Sara said, patting his shoulder hard.
Dion re-holstered his weapon, and the two of them walked over to the van.
“I’ll take the passenger side and push,” Dion suggested. “You put the van into neutral and guide it into the gully.”
“You read my mind.”
“We’ve got gravity on our side,” Dion said as he skipped around the back of the van.
“Be careful!” Sara called after him. “We don’t want either one of us tumbling into the gully to join good old Jacques there.”
“Gotcha, Sara!”
Sara laid her rifle on the ground and opened the van door. She placed her right leg inside, her foot on the brake, and then put the van into neutral.
“Ready?” she called to Dion
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Dion replied.
Sara let off the brake and quickly pulled her leg out of the van. Hand on the wheel, she kept it turned to the left as she pushed.
Weathering The Storm (Book 5): Downburst Page 12
