by C. J. Box
Noah angled the gun toward the head and fired a three-round burst.
The head split open as if it’d been cleaved with an ax and the body dropped, leaving a mist of blood hanging in the air, behind which another man stood.
Noah fired again—but not before he took a round to the gut.
The two men—Noah and the second guard—went down simultaneously. Noah felt hot blood pouring into his lap before he felt the pain, but he knew there could be more men in the doorway, so he aimed toward it and fired blind, pulled the trigger again and again and again and again, until the gun only clicked. The room was now full of smoke and the stink of cordite.
He pulled the Glock from his waistband—he must’ve dropped the revolver while running—and aimed at the doorway, but the doorway was now empty.
He listened to the silence while pain radiated out through his body in waves from the gunshot wound in his stomach.
He crawled to the doorway and rolled the first guard out into the dirt. He looked at the four other men lying outside beneath the light of the sodium-vapor lamps. One of them lifted his head to look at Noah—he’d only been hit in the bulletproof vest: had the wind knocked out of him, maybe broke a rib or two—and raised his rifle.
Noah shot him in the face and shut the door.
* * *
He sat on the floor and bled. None of the men in the doorway had been the same as those outside his window, which meant there were at least two more guards—but as many as seven—and he felt sick and sweaty and weak, and the pain was nearly unbearable.
He was forty-three years old. His hair was turning gray. He had a beer belly that flopped over his belt. He smoked a pack of cigarettes a day when he wasn’t on a job, two if he went out drinking. His back hurt every morning when he got out of bed. Nobody out of high school would mistake him for an old man—but he was too fucking old and too fucking tired to do shit like this anymore. Unfortunately, he had no job, no skills besides these ones—which amounted to half-forgotten military training combined with amoral misanthropy—and until the morning Santino had written him a check, he’d had about two thousand dollars to his name. What else was he gonna do with his life?
The silence stretched on.
He looked from the girls to Sofia—they were all okay.
“You still thinking Jose Luis Ramos is a swell guy?”
Sofia didn’t respond. She was pale and sick-looking, which was to be expected. Nobody liked violence up close, even those whose job it was to engage in it.
“Are you still alive in there?” Noah recognized the voice. He’d heard it on television and the radio. It was Ramos speaking to him this time.
“No—you killed me,” Noah said. “You can leave now.”
“Send the girls out. We don’t want them to get hurt.”
“Then stop shooting at them.”
“You have to know there’s no way out of this for you. You’ll never get off this island alive.”
“I’ve killed seven of your men. That means there’s eight more men on this island, including you. Even if they’re all trained, I don’t think my odds are too bad.”
“If you don’t let the girls walk out of that building, their deaths are on you.”
“Listen, Ramos?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t wanna be rude, but you’re kind of an asshole.”
“Finish it.” This time softer, not speaking to Noah.
Gunfire exploded outside the building. Dozens of shots all at once.
Bullets pounded against the steel wall. Dents hammered themselves into the metal, the paint flaking off in star-shaped bursts. Every fifth or sixth round managed to punch through. Noah was hit by fragments as he lay on the floor. They shot into his back and neck and his hands, which he was using to cover his head. They weren’t even trying to keep the girls alive at this point. They probably weren’t trying to kill them either—they were valuable merchandise as far as Ramos was concerned—but Ramos was willing to lose them if it meant Noah died too. And willing to lose Sofia, despite whatever love he may have professed.
The shooting stopped.
Noah waited where he lay prone, half expecting another burst of gunfire, but he heard only silence—and the sound of the younger girls crying. He looked over at them. The older ones had lain on top of the younger during the gunfire. One of the older girls was bleeding in her neck, another in her arm, but the injuries didn’t appear to be lethal.
He looked at Sofia—she was dead.
A bullet had punched through the metal and struck her in the temple. Her eyes stared at him with nothing behind them.
“Goddamnit,” he whispered to himself.
He had to end this. One way or another it was going to end soon anyway. He’d been bleeding for some time, and every minute that passed he grew weaker.
“Fuck it.”
He crawled toward the door and pulled it open as quietly as possible. He almost hoped that a gunman would be there to finish him off—he was so tired he didn’t really want to go on—but no one was there. He picked up an M16 from one of the corpses and stumbled to the far side of the building, feeling dizzy, black dots floating in front of his eyes.
He stood in the shadow of the building for a moment doing nothing, then looked around the corner. He saw Ramos standing there, a pistol hanging from his fist. He was flanked by the men who remained on the island. All of them. He suddenly wished he’d thought to bring an explosive device. If he had, he could finish this now.
Well, he supposed, it was about to be finished anyway.
He estimated he had thirty rounds in the M16 and another fifteen in the Glock—but he seriously doubted he’d live long enough to fire off forty-five rounds.
He stepped out of the shadows and began to shoot in bursts, sweeping back and forth across the line of men, walking forward even as they began to fire back at him, even as he felt sharp pain in his left ear and hot blood began pouring down his face, even as something else kicked his right shoulder back and caused more pain to radiate through his body, and when something tore at his right leg he limped forward, and when the M16 was empty and there were three men left standing, he pulled the Glock from his waistband and continued to shoot, watching the men drop, blood hanging in the air beneath the sodium-vapor lamplight, and then it was only him and Ramos standing there, maybe ten feet apart, and each of them was aiming his pistol at the other.
Noah pulled his trigger—click.
Ramos smiled a sick smile, a malevolent smile, his face spattered with the blood of his men, and pulled his own trigger—click.
Noah watched him reach to the ground for a weapon even as the black jaguar leaped out of the shadows, silent as a ghost, sinewy muscle rippling beneath her shiny black coat, and in two bounds she was upon Ramos, her teeth tearing at his throat as a grumbling roar as loud as a truck engine left her mouth, and she shook her head back and forth, ripping at the flesh, and hot blood poured out into the soil, and then—like that—it was finished.
Noah looked at her.
She turned her head to look back with her unreadable yellow eyes and licked the blood from her muzzle.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time to save you, Ana,” he said, knowing he was being superstitious. But he believed his superstition nonetheless. “I’m very sorry.”
She walked over to him silently, licked his fingertips once, her tongue as coarse as sandpaper, but that was it. She turned and walked back into the woods. She didn’t look back, but he continued to watch until the shadows enveloped her.
* * *
He loaded the girls onto the boat and began the drive back to the mainland. The youngest, a five-year-old who told him her name was Luna, stayed beside him while he manned the wheel and talked to him about how her parents had died in a car accident. She was holding a stuffed rabbit named Nicolas, stroking his left ear, which was dirtier and more threadbare than the other—her small comfor
t. Luna was a pretty child with long hair that had been pulled back into a braid, and she wore leggings, a Pikachu T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers. Her eyelids were green with the eye shadow Sofia had put on them, and the eyes themselves—despite what they’d seen tonight—sparkled with innocence.
During a long silence, the shoreline now coming into view in the early morning light, Luna tapped his arm, and when he looked at her, she said, “¿Por qué estás tan triste?”
“I’m not sad,” Noah said in Spanish. “I’m tired. And I’m in pain.”
“You are sad. You’re very sad—here.”
She held out Nicolas the rabbit. Noah tried to refuse, but she shoved it at him again, so he took it and held it while he drove. Luna remained beside him the rest of the trip.
* * *
George Beverly and Gael were waiting in the powder-blue Ford pickup when Noah and the girls reached the shore. Beverly helped Noah into the back of the truck, where he could lie down, and the girls piled in after him. By the time the truck engine had begun to rumble, before it had even been put into gear, Noah had passed out.
* * *
He woke up on a veterinarian’s metal table as a woman in a white lab coat was digging a bullet out of him—but he was only conscious for seconds, and didn’t feel anything. He saw the stainless steel surgical tools on a tray, he saw the vet herself, and he saw Nicolas the rabbit sitting on a counter in the corner. Then his head dropped down again and he was gone.
* * *
He recovered over a period of months. News about what had happened on the island got out. It filled front pages during the first week, worked its way toward the back, then vanished altogether. No one identified him by name and the police never came knocking. He would forever be a “mysterious man,” which, in his line of work, was fine. He didn’t want to be on anybody’s radar. He got jobs by whispered reference only. And as far as the police were concerned he was a burnout American who’d fled trouble in the States, a not entirely inaccurate assessment.
* * *
Late spring the following year he decided to take a trip to the beach for a week. He could lie out in the sun and drink ice-chest beer and forget about everything. He made reservations for a beach house rental—his only major indulgence since he’d been paid fifty thousand dollars by Santino Garcia—and loaded the trunk of his car. Then he and his companion were on the road.
Luna, who’d turned six since the events on the island, looked out the window, excited as the world streaked past. She held Nicolas the rabbit, stroking his left ear. He’d given the rabbit back to her on the day she moved in with him, but she’d assured him that Nicolas was both of theirs, to share.
He told himself he’d invited Luna into his life only because she was an orphan and he had a spare bedroom. But somewhere inside he knew it was also because he wanted to try to be a dad again, and maybe this time he wouldn’t fuck it up.
When the beach came into view, he pulled to the side of the road and just sat there, looking at the sea stretching its way to the horizon—all this distant beauty.
“Are we gonna go?” Luna asked. “I wanna swim.”
He looked at her with what might have been love, and he smiled.
Then put the car into gear, pulled out onto the road, and drove toward the sea.
SHEILA KOHLER
Miss Martin
FROM Cutting Edge
I
When Diane comes back from boarding school this summer, she finds her father waiting in the still afternoon air. Diane usually walks to their quiet town house on a shady side lane in East Hampton, but today her father lounges in his tight blue jeans and his Panama hat in the shade of a tree at the bottom of the station’s steps.
“Oh, there you are, Kitten,” he says, his narrow face brightening, as she descends from the platform, dragging her fancy suitcase behind her. Diane’s father calls her Kitten or sometimes Pussy Cat because of her soft dark eyes, he says. He keeps, she knows, a photo of her as a little girl with blond curls and a bow in her hair on his desk in his office in an oval silver frame.
Diane is aware her father is considered a distinguished-looking man, with his fine profile, the delicate pointed nose, though he has lost much of his hair. He wears the Panama hat all through the summer to protect and hide his bald pate. Tall and slender, he moves quickly to take her suitcase from her and to kiss her hard on both her cheeks. “I’m so glad you are home,” he says, looking into her eyes.
She says politely, “Thanks for coming to get me,” as he swings her suitcase into the trunk of his old gray Mercedes, though she worries immediately that he is here in order to reprimand her in the privacy of his car. She is afraid her headmistress, Miss Nieven, might have phoned him from the school as she had threatened to do. What if they have decided to expel her?
Her father, a lawyer, has very strict ideas of what is right and wrong and often holds forth at length about the evils in the world: dishonest politicians, corruption in the government, and unfaithful wives, always sounding shocked and angry.
But when she gets into the familiar car and her father starts the engine, he says nothing about school. Instead he turns to her and confides apologetically that the work which was supposed to be done on their house has not been completed.
“They told me they would have it finished weeks ago, but of course they are still working on it,” her father warns, speaking of the new sleeping loft he has installed on one side of the house. “They haven’t put in the stairs yet,” he adds, and glances at her anxiously with his close-set, intensely blue eyes.
“Does she like it?” Diane asks, referring to her father’s second wife. It is the first time Diane has been in the house without her mother and with Miss Martin—Diane always thinks of her as Miss Martin—who was her father’s secretary and is now his wife.
He glances at her with something close to impatience and purses his thin lips as though her question is extraneous. “No, she calls it the slave quarters,” he says with sarcasm and scowls, driving skillfully down Town Lane, threading in and out of the cars, pale clouds vanishing across the sky.
Diane just looks at him and wonders why he has bothered to go to the expense of altering the house now that her mother has gone. She thinks of her maternal Kentucky grandmother saying, “Closing the barn door when the horse has bolted.”
Could it be simply out of spite?
Diane’s father is from an old New England family where thrift is prized and ostentatious wealth frowned upon. She knows her father does not like unnecessary expense. Though he is more than generous with her at times, he is basically a thrifty man who despite his excellent salary in the law firm and his inheritance never takes a taxi and says disparagingly that first class on an airplane is “for people with fat behinds.” Diane’s father does not have a fat behind, she knows. He keeps himself trim by running for an hour at six every morning and eating little.
The sleeping loft was something her mother wanted to have built. She always found the two-bedroom house too small, too cramped, claustrophobic. “It’s like a boat!” she would say in exasperation—Diane can hear the way her mother says boat with such disgust, as if she were naming something much more damning and using some other, unmentionable word.
When her father shuts the car’s engine off in the driveway of the white clapboard house, he glances at the small red Renault parked there and whispers, “Things are rather disorganized at home, I warn you. We will have to be patient, Kitten.”
She sits beside him uncomfortably in the shade of the magnolia tree, looking up at the house with some apprehension.
She stares at the creeper-covered dormer window of her small bedroom and thinks of her large, sunny dormitory at school, which she shares with two other girls and where she makes her narrow bed so neatly, with hospital corners, pulling the bright plaid blanket tightly across the top. She keeps her one small bookcase close by her bedside with her favorite books, which she has organized since she was qui
te small in alphabetical order. She thinks of her history teacher, who has given her an A+ for her paper on regicide—she wrote about Charles I, Louis XVI, and Nicholas II of Russia. Mrs. Kelly had read the paper to the class as an example of excellent work. “Listen to the scope of this paper!” she had said, while Diane sat feeling her face turn crimson. What will Mrs. Kelly say now if she hears about what Diane has done? What if she can never return to her history class?
Diane stares at the creeper-covered house, with its small dormer windows, where she has lived all her life, as though she has never seen it before, hesitating to enter until her father says, “Come along, Kitten. Got to face the music,” and they enter the living room together, her father carrying her suitcase.
II
The first thing Diane does in the house is climb up the long ladder which is propped against the wall of the dining room, going into the high loft that runs all the way above the kitchen and dining room.
“Wow!” she says when she gets to the top, standing in the part of the loft where the sloping roof is highest. “You could sleep seven up here.” She peers at the expanse of the long, low room and then down from the open door to her father, who stands watching her from below.
She thinks of her mother, who always said the space above the kitchen and the dining room was wasted. She had said, in what Diane understood was an effort to persuade her father, that this way Diane could have lots of friends over if she wanted to in the summers, when everyone liked to come to a house near the sea. It would be good for her. Diane, despite her house near the sea, has never had lots of friends who want to come over. She is too quiet, too shy, too bookish, to have made many friends. She is not one of the popular pupils at school. She likes spending her holidays alone in the small, shaded back garden with its white roses that her mother grew in shiny blue pots, just reading or swimming in the sea.
