With a Vengeance

by Annette Dashofy

  Pete shuffled through the collection. “And that’s not the oldest one. This is.” He handed over a clipping he couldn’t stomach reading. The news brief from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette told of a nighttime shooting in the Mexican War Streets.

  Officers Adams and Delano faced down two armed drug suspects. Delano had been taken to Allegheny General. Both drug suspects had been killed in the gunfight.

  One of them was Donald Moreno, son of Richard Brown.

  Who now called himself Gabriel Webber.

  Baronick wisely read the entire account in silence. When he finished, he handed it back to Pete. “What about the rest of those?”

  Pete let the stack drop from his fingers onto the desk. “He must have saved every single thing written about me in the last eleven years. Every arrest. Every commendation. Every interview. Every goddamned thing.”

  One of the county officers appeared at the entrance to a hallway. “Excuse me. Sir?”

  “What?” both Pete and Baronick said at once.

  The wide-eyed officer looked from one to the other as if afraid to speak to either of them.

  “What is it?” Pete demanded.

  “We found a gun case under the bed in the spare bedroom. One of those hard-shelled jobs with the foam egg-carton interior? It’s empty, but from the shape of the cut-out, it could very likely have contained a thirty-ought-six with a scope.”

  Pete’s cell phone rang before he could comment on the find. Caller ID showed his station’s number. “Yeah, Nancy, what is it?”

  “It’s me, Pete,” Sylvia replied.

  He didn’t like the strained sound of her voice one bit. “Okay.”

  He could hear the moist intake of Sylvia’s breath. “EOC just contacted me. They’ve been trying to reach Medic Two with no luck and were about to request backup when they received a phone call from Earl Kolter. He’s been shot. And Gabe Webber has Zoe.”

  The nagging fear that had been gnawing at Pete’s gut detonated inside his head. “Where? How long ago? How bad is Earl hurt?” The questions poured from him. All but the one he really wanted to ask. Was Zoe okay?

  “They’re Life Flighting Earl to Pittsburgh right now. Reports are sketchy, but he’s lost a lot of blood and is suffering hypothermia on top of shock. As I understand it, Webber lured them into another of his ambush scenarios, shot Earl, and forced Zoe to drive him—Webber, I mean—out of there. In her truck. And Pete…there’s more.”

  Pete closed his eyes. “Great. What?”

  “Bud Kramer’s dead.”

  Pete’s eyes flew open, and he met Baronick’s questioning gaze. “Kramer’s dead?”

  “Webber used Bud’s body to lure Earl and Zoe out of the ambulance.”

  “Did Earl give any indication of where Webber was taking her?”

  “He reported that the last he saw they were headed north on Ridge Road. The State Police helo is already searching the area, but now that it’s dark out, he could be holed up with her anywhere.”

  Pete was on his feet. Baronick already stood at the front door, once again wearing his trench coat and holding Pete’s slicker and ball cap. “I’m heading in that direction. I don’t care what hole he’s dragged Zoe into. I’m going to flush them out.”

  “Pete.” Sylvia’s plaintive voice kept him from hanging up. “I’m afraid that’s exactly what he wants you to do.”

  He paused. “If I’m what that bastard wants, he can have me.” He ended the call, shoved the phone in his pocket, and snatched his rain slicker from Baronick on his way past. “What he can’t have,” Pete said under his breath, “is my girl.”

  As a kid, Zoe had heard tales about the little coal mining town of Reed’s Grove, situated at the intersection of two lightly traveled country roads. Even in its heyday, the village had only boasted a dozen houses, a company store, and a one-room schoolhouse. The houses and store had vanished before Zoe was born. She vaguely remembered someone turning the school into an antique shop, but the short-lived venture failed after a year or two. Nature had done its best to reclaim the structure, cocooning it in ivy and brambles as the paint peeled off, leaving gray wood bare to the elements.

  Until this night, Zoe had thought the schoolhouse no longer stood. She rarely drove either of the roads, and even when she did, the building had become invisible unless you looked hard enough.

  Apparently Gabe had.

  He ordered her to pull the truck off the road against her protests about not being able to see and not wanting to get stuck in mud. He assured her the ground would hold the Chevy.

  As she cut the wheel in the direction he indicated, her headlights revealed a path chopped through the thicket, wide enough for a smaller vehicle. Vines and branches screeched against the paint, slapped the windshield, and reached for her through the shattered driver’s window.

  Gabe forced the passenger door open. The dome light illuminated Bud’s corpse and the blue tint to his skin. It also shined on the rifle still clutched in Gabe’s hands.

  He motioned with it. “Get out.”

  Saplings and underbrush attempted to hold her captive. She managed to muscle the door open just enough to slide out. Gabe clearly wasn’t worried that she would bolt.

  Other than the truck’s interior light, there wasn’t as much as a star to show her a potential escape route. The wind had died down—or perhaps it couldn’t cut through the dense growth—but the cold autumn rain pattered on the leaves around and above her. Those same wet leaves slapped her face and her arms—already cold and soaked from driving with a broken window—when she moved toward the back of the truck and slammed the door.

  With the dome light doused, the total darkness startled over her, and she froze in place. She patted her leg, feeling for the penlight in her cargo pants pocket, but a larger beam of light appeared from behind the pickup.

  Gabe shone the flashlight directly in Zoe’s face, blinding her. She turned away and raised a hand to shield her eyes.

  “This way,” he said. “Move.”

  Still blinking at spots even after he aimed the light away from her, she slid along the wet truck bed. Rain-soaked brambles clawed her cheek, and she held up both arms, swatting away the grabby undergrowth.

  He waited for her behind the truck and swung the light toward a spot in the vines. Closer inspection revealed a gap. He waved her toward it. “You first.”

  He shone the light on the path ahead of her, and she could see where the bushes and vines had been cut, clearing the way. Someone—Gabe—had been out here before and had prepared this escape plan.

  Just like he’d planned the ambushes and his previous getaways. For a moment, Zoe imagined being shot here and left to die. No one would find her. She’d rot away to bones.

  Nature would reclaim her DNA the way it had reclaimed the village of Reed’s Grove and its buildings.

  No. Earl would have called for help by now. Or the EOC would have sent someone to find them when they didn’t radio in. Pete was looking for her. Every cop within a hundred miles was looking for her.

  The path ended at the front door of the old schoolhouse.

  “Go on. It’s not locked.”

  She grasped the pitted latch. It grated and released. The door swung open with a minimal groan and scrape.

  “Go on,” he repeated, ramming the rifle into her back. “Get inside.”

  She staggered into the dark building, hoping the floorboards would hold her. In the blackness above her head, something fluttered. Pigeons? Or bats?

  Pigeons, she lied to herself. Definitely pigeons.

  “Stop. Don’t move.” Gabe clomped past her. The beam of his flashlight revealed a table with what appeared to be a lamp of some sort.

  Drenched and shivering, Zoe sneaked a glance back at the door. She could lunge for it. Into the rain and the dark and the jungle-like brush. If she was very lucky, she mi
ght make it back to her truck without having a bramble snag an ankle and trip her.

  If she wasn’t lucky, Gabe would blow a hole in her before she crossed the threshold.

  Stay alive. Give Pete a chance to find you.

  One-handed, Gabe struck a match and set the flame to the mantle of a kerosene camp lantern. As the lamp flickered and the room brightened, Zoe could see his other hand holding firm to the rifle aimed at her.

  No, this was definitely not the time to make a run for it.

  Gabe fumbled with a small black box lying next to the lamp. It clicked and then produced a familiar burst of static. A handheld police radio. “Just a little easy listening to pass the time.”

  She rubbed her arms, trying to coax some warmth into them. Her clothes clung to her, leaching away body heat. She pinched the front of her shirt, peeling it away, but the air that rushed in was colder still.

  In the flickering lantern light, she scanned the space, hoping to spot a potbellied stove like the one she’d seen in a restored one-room schoolhouse at a local historic village. But whoever had converted this building into an antique shop had removed the primitive heat source, replacing it with a now useless electric version.

  Gabe dragged a single chair from the shadows. “You might as well sit down. We’re gonna be here a while.”

  For a fleeting moment, Zoe thought he was offering the chair to her, but the rifle aimed her way contradicted such an invitation. She looked around for another seat but could only make out grimy shelves edging the room.

  Gabe chuckled. “Pull up a piece of floor. You can sit or lay down and take a nap. I really don’t care.”

  The wood beneath her feet was strewn with dirt, bird droppings, and a few feathers. Lie down and take a nap? Not a chance. Moving slowly and deliberately to avoid any mistaken notion she was trying to escape, she eased over to one wall and used her boot to scrape a spot clear of debris. Figuring that was as good as it was gonna get, she sunk onto the floor, using the wall as a backrest.

  “Don’t suppose you have a blanket around here,” she said through chattering teeth.

  “If I did, I’d use it myself.” Gabe tucked the rifle into the crook of his elbow, extracted something from his pocket, and approached her. Kneeling, he rammed her ankles together and bound them with what she now saw was a zip tie. “Hold out your wrists.”

  She hesitated.

  He poked her shoulder with the rifle. “Either give me your wrists or I’ll come up with another way to immobilize your arms.”

  In an instant, she visualized knocking the gun aside. He was close enough. She could do it.

  The imagined scenario continued with him slamming her across the face with the gun’s butt and shooting her anyway.

  She extended her arms, hands clasped. He slipped another zip tie around her wrists and yanked it tight. She winced as the thin nylon band bit into her flesh. “I still don’t know why I’m here. What is it you want from me?”

  He stood and ambled back to the chair. “Nothing.” Straddling it, he used the back to support his arms and the rifle. “Or at least nothing more than I’ve already got.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to.” He shifted his weight to one hip and dug in his pants’ back pocket.

  Zoe drew her knees in. Clearly Gabe wasn’t going to volunteer any more information. But he’d already given her some. His plan. Eleven years since his son had died. “You said Yancy and Barry and the rest were necessary…”

  “Collateral damage. Necessary collateral damage.” Gabe sounded pleased with the phrase he’d substituted for murder.

  She tried to fight off the chill and to remember his exact words. “They were supposed to appear random, part of your plan, so no one would suspect it was you when you killed the man you were after.”

  He didn’t reply, but withdrew a small item from his pocket. With the lantern behind him, she couldn’t see what he held. Nor could she see his face.

  She closed her eyes, replaying the events of the last few days—and last few hours—over again in her mind. And then it clicked. Bait. They had all been bait. Gabe had said she too was bait.

  For one man.

  She opened her eyes again, trying to pierce the darkness to make out Gabe’s expression. “Oh my God,” she said. “You’re after Pete.”

  Gabe grunted. “I figured Adams would show up at one of those calls sooner than he did.”

  The rifle never wavered. And while Zoe was soaked to the bone and freezing, her mouth was as dry as the Mojave Desert.

  “But I had to get outta there quick so I never got a shot at him like I’d hoped. I knew eventually though…” Gabe shouldered the gun and mimed firing it at the door, complete with sound effects. Then he lowered it to the back of the chair with the muzzle aimed again at Zoe. “It was getting tough. Too many cops crawling all over the place. But then—” He snapped his fingers. “You came into the garage this afternoon to pick up the ambulance. And you said you were on duty tonight. And I knew. This was my one big chance. If I got you, I knew I’d get Adams.”

  “But why? What did Pete ever do to you for you to want to…?” She couldn’t say the words.

  For a long moment, Gabe didn’t speak. And in the darkness, she couldn’t read his face.

  Finally, he said, “Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose a child?”

  Now it was Zoe’s turn to fall silent. She thought of nearly losing Allison last winter, but as close as she felt to Rose’s daughter, Allison wasn’t Zoe’s child.

  “Well, do you?”

  “No.”

  His heavy breathing carried across the space between them. “Adams took what was dearest to me in all this world. Now I have nothing. I intend to leave him with nothing too.”

  Zoe lowered her head, blocking out the glow of the lantern…the flame glinting off the gun barrel. If only she could as easily block out the thoughts roaring through her mind. She’d spent the last—how many?—hours praying for Pete to find her. Come charging to her rescue. Only now she knew that was precisely what Gabe wanted. This abandoned one-room schoolhouse in this graveyard of a town wasn’t meant to be a shelter from the rain.

  It was meant to be a trap. She needed to somehow warn Pete to stay away.

  “Hey,” Gabe called to her. “Heads up.”

  She looked up in time to see him toss something to her. Instinctively, she reached out and caught it in her bound hands. A cheap flip phone. That’s what he’d dug from his pocket.

  “Adams’ number is the only one saved on there. Call it. Tell him where you are. And tell him to come alone. I’ll know if he doesn’t.” He tipped his head toward the police radio on the table. “But you mention one word about who I am and I’ll shoot.”

  Zoe stared at the phone. Gabe wanted her to lure Pete in so he could murder him. “You kill me and you’ll never get him here.”

  “Oh, I won’t kill you. But a well-placed bullet would make you pray for death. I’m a pretty good shot, in case you haven’t noticed. From this distance, I could blow your fingers off, one at a time. No sweat.”

  She considered his words and knew he’d do it too. She opened the phone.

  “No tricks. You try anything clever and he’ll find you in pieces when he does get here.”

  Zoe didn’t much care. Gabe wouldn’t leave her alive afterwards anyway. Not if he was delusional enough to believe he could still get away. But she might be able to do something—she had no clue what—to help Pete when he showed up. If she hoped to save him, she’d need to be in one piece.

  “Make the call.”

  She swallowed hard. Not needing to pull up the phone’s lone saved contact, she keyed in Pete’s number from memory.

  Thirty

  The hilltop along Ridge Road was ablaze with emergency lighting. The earlier downpour had settled int
o a steady drizzle as the temperatures continued to drop. Pete watched a flatbed tow truck—not one of Kramer’s this time—winch Medic Two up its steep incline. They’d blocked off the road until the crime scene techs could go over every square foot, but Pete knew they wouldn’t find squat. Not with this weather. And not with someone as meticulous as Gabe Webber.

  Or Richard Brown.

  Baronick in his gangster trench coat and fedora ambled over after speaking with one of the State Troopers. “This would be the perfect night for some asshole to hold up a bank. As long as the heist took place anywhere else but Monongahela County. I think every cop within a hundred miles is crawling the streets and back roads of Vance Township right now.”

  And it wasn’t enough.

  Pete tipped his face toward the night sky and let the rain pelt him. He wanted to bellow, but instead he growled it through clenched teeth. “You want me? Well, here I am.”

  His cell phone rang. He snatched it, hoping somehow his wish had been answered. But the screen lit up with Station.

  “I thought you’d want to know.” Sylvia’s voice was somber. “They’re trying to stabilize Earl before sending him into surgery. It doesn’t look good.”

  “Anything from Zoe?”

  “If there was, I’d have called you.”

  Pete knew that. But he had to ask. Had to hope.

  A man who wanted him dead had Zoe. A man who had already killed at least three times. Why? If Webber—or Brown or whatever the hell his name was—wanted Pete, why kill a paramedic and a junior firefighter?

  A hand closed around his wrist. He flinched.

  “Easy, big fella.” Baronick took Pete’s phone from him. A phone he’d forgotten he was holding and was about to drop into the wet grass at their feet. The detective moved in closer and in a low, determined voice said, “We’re going to get her back. And we’re going to nail this asshole.”