Power Struggle

by Carolyn Arnold

  She lifted up her right leg and kicked backward, slamming the heel of her boot into the shin of his right leg. He stopped for a second but then tightened his grip, resuming as if nothing had happened. She did it again, this time putting even more strength behind it.

  Constantine let go of her, and she dashed toward the shovel again.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said.

  She turned around, and he had his gun aimed on her.

  “No!” Chelsea screamed.

  Madison tightened her jaw and jutted out her chin. “Let her go.”

  “You’re not in any position to barter.” He took the gun and turned it on Chelsea.

  Tears were streaming down her sister’s cheeks. But it was the dire resignation in her eyes that had Madison going cold inside. There was nothing stopping Constantine from killing Chelsea except for her, and she was at a loss of what to do right now.

  “Please, I’ll do whatever you want me to.”

  Seconds passed.

  “Get in the kennel,” he directed.

  Madison didn’t move.

  “Now!”

  Shudders shook through her and she stepped slowly toward the cage.

  “You unlatch it and get in.”

  Madison held up her hands and proceeded to do exactly as he’d directed. She crawled to her sister, who had stopped crying but was quivering.

  “I’ll get us out of this,” Madison whispered to her.

  Constantine smacked the side of the steel kennel, startling both of them. “I wouldn’t bet on that.” He latched the kennel and clicked the padlock shut and stood straight. “Don’t miss me while I’m gone.” He then left the room, a slight limp to his right leg, laughing.

  “He’s going to kill us.” Chelsea was trembling.

  Madison rubbed her sister’s arms. “Not if I can help it.”

  “What are you going to do?” Chelsea’s eyes were pools of fear, but Madison dare not take a dip. If she did she’d lose all thinking ability and it would be game over for both of them.

  -

  CHAPTER

  47

  MADISON SQUEEZED CHELSEA’S TREMBLING HANDS. “SWAT’s listening to everything.” She let go of her sister just long enough to point at her chest with one hand.

  “Save us,” Chelsea cried out.

  Madison’s eyes flicked right to her sister’s and enclosed the warning to keep quiet. They didn’t need Constantine storming back in here.

  Chelsea took a few deep breaths.

  “We’re going to be all right.” Madison spoke calmly for her sister’s sake, but she meant it. Come hell or high water, she’d figure a way out of this with both of them surviving.

  “He’s going to… He’s…”

  Madison caressed her sister’s face, hoping the touch would soothe her. She watched as her sister’s breathing evened out and the storm in her sister’s eyes began to clear and her hands stopped shaking.

  “He’s got a plane in the barn,” Madison said for the benefit of the wires, and she wished she was rigged for two-way communication. She could only trust that they were hearing everything. “And he’s got a bomb in place rigged to—” She stopped talking when she heard something. A groan and creaking. A draft gust into the room, and she was certain what it must have been. Constantine had opened the barn’s back doors. “I think he’s preparing the plane to leave,” she said, again speaking to SWAT.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Chelsea gulped air. “He’s going to take you with him.”

  Madison’s lungs were expanded in an exhale. “What do you mean he’s going—”

  “He told me what his plan is.” Chelsea took Madison’s hand. “He’s going to…” Her chin quivered. “Blow me up and take you with him.”

  Her insides wrenched as her sister’s words sank in. “He told you that?”

  “Yeah.” Chelsea paused. “I tried to tell you on the phone, but he snatched it from me before I could.”

  Madison’s mind propelled her back to the call. “He’s…he’s going to—”

  Why would Constantine tell Chelsea his plans, and then put them together to talk? He’d have to know Chelsea would tell her his intentions.

  God, she wished she could get confirmation SWAT was hearing all this!

  “What are we going to do?” Chelsea gaze traced over Madison’s face. Her sister’s words might have included herself, but she was looking to her for help, and it only strengthened her resolve.

  “We’re not going to cooperate.” She slipped her hand free of Chelsea’s and turned to the door of the kennel.

  “He’s padlocked it.”

  “If I can figure out some way to bust the lock.” She put her hand through a square of the metal kennel and gripped the padlock. Turning it to an angle so she could see the bottom, she confirmed it required a key. When he’d unlocked it the first time, she couldn’t tell for certain. She scanned the small room and came up empty for a solution. Where were bolt cutters when you needed them?

  “Can you shoot it?” Chelsea asked.

  “If I had a gun.”

  “You came in unarm— Or he took it from you?”

  Madison spoke over her shoulder. “I came in unarmed.”

  “On purpose?” Chelsea screeched.

  Madison held a finger to her lips.

  Chelsea’s gaze ignited and she clenched her jaw. “Why?”

  “Because he would have found it and things could be a lot worse.” In light of their current predicament, she wasn’t sure how that was exactly possible, but that had been the reasoning.

  “A lot worse? Than this?” Chelsea pulled from her thoughts.

  The door swung open and Constantine’s hulking frame stood in the doorway. “Ready?” He took huge strides toward the kennel, eating up the space between them like twenty feet was four.

  He pulled out a key from his left jacket pocket and unlocked the padlock, but left it inserted in the overlapping latch. He backed up and held his gun on them. “You get out.”

  Madison couldn’t get herself to move. How was she just supposed to leave Chelsea here?

  “I said, get out!” Constantine roared.

  Instead of making Madison jump, his rage, his directive, pumped through her veins, infusing her with resolve. She met her sister’s gaze. She hoped that her sister could read the promise in her eyes. She would be back for her.

  Constantine kicked the kennel and Madison noticed that it was with his left leg. And he had walked favoring his right. Her kicks to his shin had done more damage than she’d originally thought.

  “Now!”

  “Fine.” She held up her hands. “I’m coming.” She gave one more look to Chelsea, hoping her sister was getting her message.

  Madison turned and took the lock off the latch and let it fall. The thud of the metal hitting the barn floor marked in her brain as a sliver of doubt weaseled in. Would it be forever associated with the day she lost her sister?

  She crawled out of the kennel and was working to get upright when Constantine pressed his gun to the back of her skull.

  “Relock the kennel.”

  She took a deep breath, hesitating.

  “You do everything I say or I’ll pull the trigger.”

  “Why should I if you’re going to kill us anyway,” she spat out.

  “Yes,” he said with a smile, “but timing is everything. Now lock it!”

  His bellow shuddered through her body and she did as he said. Snapping the padlock shut, the guilt of all of this threatened to suffocate her.

  “Get up.”

  She did as he said, making eye contact with her sister, blinking deliberately, doing her best to send her sister strength.

  He nudged Madison in the shoulder blade. “Move.”

  “Where
are you taking me?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  She needed to get him to say something for the wires, but he wasn’t going to be that stupid. As it was, his cockiness let her remain wired.

  He shuffled her out of the room. The entire time, the muzzle of the gun rarely broke contact with the back of her head.

  They entered into the main part of the barn. As she’d suspected, the plane had been pushed outside and the back doors were open. The winter wind was howling and gusting into the space carrying with it small snowflakes. She gripped her coat tighter.

  “Just let my sister go,” she stopped walking about seven feet from the doors. “She didn’t do anything to you.”

  “But she’s family and must pay for the sins of her sister.”

  Was he quoting scripture to her? Madison recalled Sunday school as a little girl and talk about sins being repaid on generation after generation. She questioned now why so much fear was instilled in children, but it had to be about control.

  “She’s innocent. Let her go,” Madison pleaded. “Do whatever you want with me.”

  “Oh, I will do that. Now move.” He shoved her again, but this time hard enough that she almost lost her balance and fell forward.

  As they continued to walk toward the plane, maybe falling wasn’t a bad idea. If nothing else, it could buy her some time. She pretended to misstep a few seconds later. This time, letting herself crumble to the ground; her knees meeting barn wood flooring and shooting slivers of pain through her legs.

  “Get up!” he barked.

  He was towering above her and another Bible story came to her mind. In this scenario she was like David, tiny and seemingly nonthreatening, pitted against a man of Constantine’s size—her Goliath. She hadn’t been to church in many years, but the recollection buoyed her. It only took one small stone to bring the giant down.

  So what is my stone?

  She was farther away from the mounted tools than she had been before, and there was nothing she could see within attainable reach that she could get to fast enough. Hope began to fade as the rest of the account filled in. Supposedly David had been backed by God.

  Constantine gripped onto her coat and pulled her to her feet, easily as if he were just doing arm curls at the gym. “Move it.” This time he emphasized his point by jabbing the gun forward into her head with enough force it had her crying out and reaching back instinctively.

  The gun had bit into her flesh and she was bleeding. But her fingers came into contact with something else—the barrel of the gun. Without thinking it through, she wrapped her hands around it, ducked, and spun.

  A shot fired over her head, deafening her.

  She rose up, struggling to get control of the weapon. But he wasn’t relinquishing it easily. And there they stood playing a tug of war with a loaded gun. Each yanking and shifting their bodies to the side.

  But she was still at the losing end. The gun fired again, but only fractions of a second before she juked out of the way.

  She heard it then: the screams of Chelsea in the other room, but they were dulled to Madison’s ears due to the close-range gunfire.

  Constantine wrenched back on the gun, nearly tearing her shoulder from its socket. Her hand opened and the weapon slipped out of her reach.

  He was heaving for breath, as was she. “Maybe I’ll just put a bullet in her head for fun.”

  He turned, heading back toward the room, and she sprung after him, jumping onto his back and clinging to him.

  “You stupid bitch!” He shook her off and this time when she hit the ground, she fell back and her head hit the floor. She lay there, winded, and momentarily unable to move. Her arms and legs weren’t responding to her commands. Her gaze went across the barn floor and landed on a short length of chain nestled in a corner between a jut out and a bale of hay. It was only a few feet away.

  And Constantine had already resumed walking toward the room.

  Come on… She coaxed her body to move, and now it responded.

  She got to her knees and crawled across the floor. She grabbed the chain—it was about four feet long but the links were half an inch thick and a couple inches long—and stood to her feet. She closed the distance between her and Constantine—doing so with lightly placed steps. Once she got within striking distance, she pulled the chain back and pitched it forward without letting go.

  The metal hit him in the back of the head and he crumbled to the ground.

  His gun fell from his hand and skittered across the floor.

  For a second, she hesitated, breathing, taking in that she’d actually brought him down. But the daze broke and she snapped to, let go of the chain, and hurried to secure his weapon. Once she had it in hand, she stood there looking down on his unconscious form.

  One bullet… That’s all it would take.

  She aimed the gun on his forehead and moved her finger from the guard, placing it on the trigger.

  “Madison!” Her sister’s high-pitched yell hit her ears.

  She was torn between running to Chelsea and finishing this once and for all. Her finger stayed on the trigger, time coming almost to a standstill as she debated whether to pull back on it and bury him in the past. But he was unconscious and unarmed and the shot wouldn’t be made in self-defense. She’d be no better than the cold-blooded murderers she hunted. Still, she found herself struggling to side with ethics. This man had taken so much from her—her sanity, her freedom, and her and her family’s security.

  “Madison!” her sister cried out again.

  This time, she broke Madison’s concentration, and she lowered the gun. “I’m coming.” She rummaged through Constantine’s coat pocket for the key, fearing that he’d come to and kill her, but he was out cold. She found the key and got up, heading to free her sister.

  She practically slid across the floor on her knees to the kennel and stuck the key in the padlock, setting the gun down for only a second while she did so. Chelsea was right at the door and sprung out the second Madison tossed the padlock across the room.

  “You came for me.” Chelsea was sobbing, and Madison’s eyes filled with tears. She threw her arms around her younger sister, kissed her forehead, and squeezed her as tight as she could. She didn’t ever want to let her out of her sight again.

  “All’s clear,” Madison said for the benefit of SWAT.

  “You didn’t think this through, Detective.” Constantine stood behind them, holding up his phone.

  The bomb…

  She lifted his gun and shot him right between the eyes. It was an instant kill shot. No hesitation, no thought. Just as she’d promised herself she would.

  The phone clattered to the ground as the giant fell again, and this time he wouldn’t be getting up. Blood seeped from the wound, trailing a path of red down the sides of his face.

  She helped her sister walk past him and out the door, her gaze fixed on his lifeless form, peace washing over her. The threat was off her head, off her family.

  “Timing is everything, you son of a bitch,” she mumbled as she stepped over him.

  -

  CHAPTER

  48

  PARAMEDICS ENTERED THE BARN, and Madison swatted them away from her and directed them to Chelsea. They helped her onto a gurney, but Madison noticed her sister’s unsteady legs before they did.

  “Is she all right?” she asked the medical staff, but her attention was on her sister.

  “She’s fine. She’s just weak,” one of the two responded.

  “Did he feed you? Give you water?” Madison asked.

  “Some, yes,” Chelsea responded.

  “And he let you go to the bathroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s been in there—” the paramedic pointed to the kennel “—for almost two days. She’s bound to have weak legs.”

 
; Madison’s insides ached as her mind went to what that must have been like for her sister. Hunched down, not able to stand, likely unable to sleep, wondering if she was going to die…

  Troy came rushing into the barn and scooped Madison into his arms. Her feet came off the floor as she sank against him and whispered into his ear. “I love you.”

  He put her down, cupped her face, and captured her mouth with his.

  Better than words…

  When they parted, they were smiling at each other.

  “You pulled it off, Bulldog,” he said. “Now, can you go the rest of your life without attracting a killing maniac?”

  “What fun would that be?” She smiled, then laughed. So did he.

  She savored this period of light at the end of a nightmare she’d been living for so long. But it wasn’t to last long as her mind turned to the name on the prison letterhead.

  “Did officers bring in Greg Berger?” she asked.

  Troy’s face grew serious. He blinked slowly and shook his head. “No sign of him. His place was emptied out. No trace of Lyle, either.”

  “What about Sylvester Stein?”

  “He’s in the wind, too. So far we haven’t turned up anything criminal on the board members at Berger & Stein Accounting, but Greg’s connection with the Mafia was enough reason to call in the Feds to look closer at the company.”

  “Greg’s connection?”

  “Yep. Nick found a picture of Greg with Roman Petrov.”

  “What?” she spat. “From when?”

  “It was taken in Stiles, and he figures it dates back forty-five, fifty years. Greg was standing next to a pregnant woman. Greg’s sister,” he punched out. “She’s dead. Died years ago in a car accident. The records show that she had a son, but the father was marked as unknown. The kid’s name was Sergey.”

  “As in Dimitre’s right-hand man? The one that he had taken out?”