by Jim Heskett
“Is that a… panther?” Molly asked.
The cats from the BCS. At least one of them had escaped.
“Do we go after the cat,” Molly asked, “or do we join this gunfight?”
Layne watched the cat slink along Main Street, and then he looked back at the two inexplicably warring groups of Disciples. A grenade explosion on the far side of the park sent the skulking panther into high-speed mode, and it disappeared around the side of the shoe store.
A quick risk analysis left him with one clear answer.
“Cat,” Layne said. “We follow the cat. If these assholes want to kill each other, we let them, as long as they’re shooting at each other, not the townspeople. Those cats can cause real damage, because they don’t give a shit about sides in a conflict.”
Layne put the car in Drive, and a slew of messages appeared on his phone as cell service finally returned. Layne scanned a few. Most were from Harry, explaining more cats had escaped than he originally thought. For whatever reason, Harry had failed, and at least one of the deadly creatures had wandered into town. It was now up to Layne to fix it.
“I’ll clean it up, Harry,” he muttered as he pulled out onto Main Street. The panther padded back into view, lingering in the street. Its blocky head pivoted, looking directly at Layne’s car. Glowing eyes stood out against midnight fur.
“What’s the plan?” Molly asked.
Layne handed her the phone. “Read these, please, from my friend, Harry. I only skimmed them.”
Molly’s finger traced down the messages. “His most recent says he deployed the sanctuary’s drones, so their homing signals will lock in on the escapees’ GPS trackers. These cats should be sedated within minutes.”
Layne parked in front of Shotgun Barber, within a block of city hall. “Good. But we still have to stop them from killing anyone until then. They wandered into a war zone, and it’s only a matter of time before they attack in self-defense.”
Molly readjusted her tactical vest as she slammed a mag home in her AR-15. Not a whiff of hesitation on her face. Layne angled around to the back seat to check on Paul Clausing. His eyes were wide, his lips pressed together. Shoulders pumping up and down.
“Clausing? You okay?”
“I’m not… I don’t know how to… I’m not a soldier.” He looked down at the weapon in his hands, forced upon him by Layne. Ten or fifteen years ago, government-employed spy Layne Parrish would have yelled at Paul to get his head on straight. He would have said they needed every pair of hands available. But now, Layne knew the cost of such blind will. He knew better than to send an unprepared person into battle. It would be a death sentence.
Layne pointed at the barbershop. “Does Ruth still keep the barbershop key underneath the back mat?”
Paul’s lips twitched. “Probably.”
“Then hide out in there. You’ll be safe. No one is going to loot the barbershop.”
“I’m sorry about this.”
“Don’t be. We’ll come back for you. Hurry.”
Paul looked red-faced and ashamed. Without a word, he slipped out of the car. Molly didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she pointed at the panther as it made a course correction, now padding directly toward city hall.
“Let’s go,” Layne said, and they slipped out. As soon as he could feel the open air, Layne watched city hall’s front door open. A man dressed like a biker came running out, clutching a shotgun. And then, a moment later, Bob’s Diner owner Sheriff Bob followed that escapee, brandishing a shiny Desert Eagle in his hand.
He blasted the Disciple in the back. His hand cannon boomed across Main Street, drowning out the sounds of nearby gunfire.
“Not in my town, you son of a bitch!” Bob roared. Keegan had said Bob was too clueless to help, but he seemed to be doing okay. Maybe if Layne had involved him earlier, things wouldn’t be so messy now, but he’d been worried about how it would affect George. Since Layne had no time machine to fix that now, he had to move on.
The diner owner looked across the street at Molly and Layne, then he dipped his head in greeting. “There’s only a few of them left! They’re holed up at the VFW!”
As soon as Bob finished talking, the panther emerged from the shadows to Bob’s right. He jumped, raised his gun, and emptied the magazine. But the panther darted past him, into city hall. Not a single one of Bob’s rounds had struck the cat. No blood on the light-colored steps.
“Holy shit!” Bob yelled.
Layne hustled across the street. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, but the city council is still in there. They were meeting tonight.”
Bob’s careless shooting had driven the cat inside. They now had a panther running around free in an enclosed space with vulnerable humans.
“You go to the VFW,” Layne said. “We’re going to get the city council members out safely, then we’ll join you.”
Bob nodded and darted down the street. Layne and Molly, weapons readied, hustled inside city hall. In the circular lobby, no cats. No dead bodies. The sounds of chaos outside dimmed. Layne could even hear himself breathe. He could hear the sound of Molly’s pincher clicking against the metal of her ArmaLite rifle.
“There,” Molly said, pointing through a window to the outside. A drone whirred as it descended toward a tiger perched at the edge of the park. The tiger looked up just in time to see a slew of darts eject from tubes on the bottom of the drone. A couple stuck into the cat. It gave a confused roar, took a few steps, and then slumped to the ground.
“It works,” Layne said. “Thank you, Harry Boukadakis.”
Another drone came down from the sky, and it hovered in front of the open doors to city hall. It floated in place, whirring, LEDs blinking.
“What’s happening?” Molly asked. “Why is it just sitting there? The doors are open.”
“Looks like it won’t come in the building. This one must be hunting the panther, but it won’t enter an enclosed space. Probably programmed to avoid losing a signal.”
“We have to get this cat back outside for the drone to spring into action?”
Layne nodded. “Looks like it. We’ll split up. You head for the council chambers, and I’ll shepherd our cat out of here. Don’t shoot me, okay?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she growled, then she raced away from him.
Layne set his shotgun behind the reception desk, then he drew his dual SIG Sauers.
He skulked along the main hall, fingers on the triggers, careful to make his footfalls as light as possible. He kept his ears tuned for any sounds. Layne didn’t know much about big cats, but he knew enough from watching the panther move outside: this silent killer probably wouldn’t reveal itself unless it wanted to. Too many shadows in here for cover.
Layne pushed open the door at the end of a hall to a wider room, with cubicles in the middle and smaller offices lining the walls. And the shiny black cat sat next to one of those offices, seemingly frozen in place. It probably thought itself invisible, as long as it stayed motionless.
Layne glanced at his pistols to make sure they were ready, then he aimed.
45
Jordan Beckett finally wrapped his head around the fact that everything had gone to shit. He had told his men to resist the incoming Denver Disciples, and that had been a terrible mistake. Maybe part of him thought these invaders would stand down when faced with fighting their own kind. After all, they were an organization that detested certain types of people, but preached loyalty to their own.
But the reality had not come close to Beckett’s hope.
They’d only been in town for fifteen minutes, and they had killed most of his men. Some of these invaders had even since left, considering the job done.
Beckett was at the VFW, on the second floor. The indoor climbing school was unusable due to a collection of armed men who had set up residence in the passage between it and the VFW.
Soon, they and the others would come for him. They would kill him, and then probably hang his severed head from a tele
phone wire in Denver, to act as an example of what happens to dissidents.
Just him and Roscoe were left, and Beckett felt tempted to give up. He wanted to put his gun down and let the townspeople take him away, to face up for what he’d done. To face up to his ego that had landed him in all this trouble in the first place. Either that, or put a bullet in his brain right now and then let the rest of the world fend for itself.
But he couldn’t do that. Even if he had no cards left to play.
Roscoe stood by the door to this room, pistol in hand, pointed at the ceiling. He was panting, red-faced, on his last ounce of energy. Roscoe had been shot once above his right knee, turning that pant leg into a red mess. He’d bleed out in the next ten to fifteen minutes without proper care.
Still, Beckett appreciated his loyalty. He wasn’t begging to be taken to a hospital. He would stand there and bleed and defend his boss until his last breath.
“Thank you, Roscoe. You’ve always had my back.”
The underling tossed a confused look at Beckett. “Sir?”
“Don’t worry about it. I just wanted you to know—“
Before he could finish, the renewed sounds of gunfire came from the first floor.
“That’s townspeople, sir. The Disciples are either gone or dead.”
“And now they’re coming for us. Can you lead the advance team?”
Roscoe pursed his lips. Beckett could see his #2 knew exactly what that entailed. An advance team of one had a zero percent chance of success, but Beckett needed the extra time to escape.
And, like a good soldier, Roscoe complied. He gave Beckett a final nod, then raced out the door, down the stairs, to meet these foes head on. Beckett watched him go, weapon up, a war cry roaring from his lips as he disappeared.
“Thank you,” Beckett said to the empty spot where his assistant had been. He removed Keegan Swiney’s severed finger from his pocket and turned it in the light a few times, studying the grooves along the knuckles. It wasn’t as nice as the set of bones he carried in his fabric-lined box, but Beckett still enjoyed adding pieces to his collection.
Time to cut his losses. Nothing left to do now except run and hope for the best.
Beckett stared out the window.
He’d tried everything possible to organize this town and secure a future here, but all of that had failed. And he hadn’t even found the damn treasure he’d hunted all this time.
“Hunting,” he said, musing on the word.
Hunting.
Like a light through the window, a moment of clarity occurred to him. After months of searching in vain, the answer was right in front of him. Layne Parrish. Instead of rutting around in the trenches, Beckett had a different approach for his endgame.
Would it work? Maybe.
It was so simple, it had to work.
He knew exactly how to find the treasure he’d been seeking. Shotgun Mine. While he didn’t know all the specifics, he knew how to tip the scales in his favor and make Layne Parrish do the work for him. Just a nudge in the right direction.
As he listened to his assistant die in a hail of gunfire on the first level, Beckett chucked a glass paperweight at a window to break it. He jumped out the second-story window, then rolled in the frozen grass until a bush broke his fall.
Then, he raced toward his car so he could anticipate Layne’s movements, beat him to the treasure, and end all this.
46
Layne aimed his pistols. This was the second deadly beast he had faced today. The first had killed his father deep in a mine. Would the second one take his father’s son?
“I see you, panther,” Layne said, and the panting beast angled its head to meet his eyes. Cold, yellow eyes, eerie and powerful.
They sized each other up over the next few seconds, neither willing to make the first move.
“Time for you to go,” Layne said, and he shifted away from the doorway, to leave a clear and easy path for the cat to escape outside, where the drone waited to sedate it.
The cat took a few steps in his direction. They were about thirty feet apart. Layne didn’t want to shoot, but he feared he’d have to. Also, he wasn’t sure if he could kill it before it could reach him.
He had to do something to break this stalemate.
“Leave!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. The cat flinched, took a step back, but didn’t obey the command. It looked at the open door, but didn’t seem to be in a hurry to run.
“I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to.”
A low rumble came from across the room, the precursor to a roar. But the cat stayed in place, locked onto Layne. If it was frozen in place with terror, Layne didn’t know what to do. Harry had called Fish and Wildlife, so someone else would be here with the right equipment eventually, but Layne had heard horror stories about their response time. Sometimes they drove in from hours away.
He couldn’t wait around forever. Eventually this panther would decide to stop being unsure, and it would attack.
“Screw it,” Layne said, and then he pointed his guns. He aimed low, toward the cubicles. Since they were mostly fabric, he hoped they would slow down the bullets and keep them from bouncing everywhere. Lot of concrete here, perfect for ricochets.
He didn’t see how he had another choice.
Layne pulled the trigger, sending bullets deliberately near the cat.
The panther screeched and then raced toward Layne. Directly at him. Thirty feet of carpeted space separated them. Layne could see the panther’s white teeth and pink mouth highlighted against vibrant black fur.
He shifted to his right and fired two more shots, these above the cat. Fifteen feet away. Muscles rippling along its back.
If this didn’t work, Layne would have to kill it.
The panther skidded to a stop five feet from Layne, like an aborted game of chicken.
He lunged forward and then jumped over it, landing just beyond its tail. Then he spun and shot at the cat’s tail. One time.
But it was enough.
The bullet struck the cat, sending a whiff of blood arcing into the air.
Now behind it, Layne raised his pistols again, primed for the beast to turn and attack.
But it did not. The single shot had worked.
The panther launched toward the open door, sprinting. Seeing that silky black thing move was like poetry. The muscles, the bones, everything working in concert to force the beast into action. Majesty in flesh form.
A wave of relief washed over Layne. Mostly that he was still alive, but also that he hadn’t had to kill the panther.
And as it ran, he chased after it. He pulled his trigger a couple more times, shooting near the beast’s tail, which had done the trick the first time. It barreled outside and stumbled down city hall’s steps. It stopped, head swinging left and right, eying the empty street.
A moment later, a bank of LEDs on the drone twittered and changed from red to green. The drone emitted a warning beep, then shot a slew of darts. All of them hit their target. Snick snick snick snick.
The panther took one more step and then collapsed, four limbs spread out. For a few seconds, the beast panted, its whole body rising and falling. Then it slowed, and its eyes dimmed a few times before closing.
And now, Layne noticed he heard no gunfire in town. He looked right, toward the playground. No gunshots. No one hiding by the bathrooms.
To his left, he saw no activity at the VFW. But he did see Sheriff Bob wandering down the street away from it, with his big gun holstered on his hip, his head bobbing back and forth in a show of small-town law enforcement swagger. He’d probably never thought he would ever have to face something like this, and he’d come through the other side alive. Let the man strut a little. He’d earned it.
Either way, it seemed like the fighting had ended. No more gunshots tore across the night.
Layne returned to the building and shouted for Molly. A few seconds later, she ushered half a dozen scared men and women in fancy clothes into the
lobby.
“Shooting’s finished,” he said. “No Disciples in the immediate area.”
“Safe out there?”
“As far as I can tell.”
He helped the city council members out of the building. All of these civilians showed signs of trauma, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. They balked at the sleeping panther splayed out on the steps. But Layne led them past it and down to the parking lot.
No one asked him or Molly any questions about any of these events. None of them spoke at all as he ushered them to safety.
When they were gone, Molly Waffles joined up with Layne. “Is it really over?”
“I guess so. From what I can tell, we had a little skirmish between different members of the Disciples. I think they must have had a management disagreement.”
She looked past him, frowning. Layne turned to where she was looking, and he saw it, too. A single light on the road leading up to the mountains. One pair of headlights.
A car navigated up the pass, then it turned into the driveway for George’s Parrish’s cabin.
47
When Layne and Molly Waffles arrived, he saw the car parked, but no sign of a driver. Not in the car or in the nearby vicinity. The snow had finally stopped, restoring much of Layne’s previously obscured visibility.
He pulled over on the side of the road, just before the turn to his father’s driveway. He killed the lights and squinted. At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
The problem was the lack of lights on at the cabin, and a streetlight on the other side of the road ruining their night vision.
“Can’t see anything?” Molly asked.
The sun had set and a few stars littered the sky. There was almost no light pollution from the town, but the streetlight was too strong. “No, but it might get better in a minute.”
“Did you come with us that night when we shot out the old streetlights on Second Ave?”
He shook his head. “No, I was going to come with, but I had to take my dad to Alamosa that day, so I didn’t make it back in time.”
