Season of the Wolf

by Summers, Robin

  *

  The night was still and deep, the neighborhood fast asleep and dreaming, Billy assumed, of all manner of pleasant, middle-class aspirations. Camping trips and new-but-responsible cars and Disneyland, with the occasional dirty-schoolgirl or shoot-up-my-office fantasy thrown in. Even the tamest, gentlest of men harbored the capacity for degradation and death.

  For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

  All men, of course, except Billy Montgomery. Billy was God’s right hand, His angel of death, His divine covenant to rid the world of the unworthy. God commanded and Billy obeyed. Billy cleansed man, and woman, of their unrighteousness, and in that cleansing, gave them new life. Purification by pain, by divine design. It was the noblest of callings, for both Billy and for those chosen to receive His blessing.

  Billy’s actions had a purpose. They were not the lust-fueled perversions of weaker, lesser men. He enjoyed his work, that much was true. But he also knew that was as God intended it, Billy’s reward for his continued faithful service and utter dedication to his task.

  In all his years working for the Lord, he had lost control only once. It was well past time to rectify that mistake.

  The only break in the stillness came from the faint buzzing of the streetlamps. Even the moon was absent, sinking the street into near-darkness, save for the small circles of sulfurous glow cast by the lamps and the occasional porch light. But there was no bulb illuminating the front porch of the house where his sweet daughter lay sleeping. Billy did not think the police guarding her so stupid as to leave it off. No, God had blessed Billy’s task with the gift of a burned-out lightbulb. The Lord was good to him in that way, and in so many others.

  Billy approached the house cautiously, ever so quietly. He checked the fit of his black calfskin gloves, which weighed next to nothing and molded to his hands like an extra layer of skin. Years ago, he had dabbled with latex but quickly switched back to leather when he discovered that sweaty hands wrapped in latex were altogether unpleasant. His rubber-soled boots made no sound on the sidewalk nor, he was pleased to discover, on the sturdy wooden steps as he climbed up to the front porch. Several hours earlier, once the last house on the block had long gone dark, Billy had crept the length of the house, testing the entry points. The house did not appear to have an alarm system, which was good. The ground-floor windows—like most of the neighborhood’s homes—had bars, negating them as points of entry. In the back, Billy found a sliding glass door—easy to jimmy but usually very noisy when opened. Add to that two floodlights at either corner of the house, and the back was far from ideal. That left only the front door.

  Billy sank to one knee, examining the two locks—one in the doorknob and a deadbolt. He was pleased to see the deadbolt was a two-sided single cylinder, pickable from the outside. Not that it would have mattered. Since most of the work of a small-town sheriff’s deputy was breaking up bar brawls and escorting home the drunkards who had invariably lost their keys, the sheriff had insisted that all recruits spend a day with a trained locksmith. It had proved an invaluable asset to Billy’s work.

  He slipped his kit out of his back pocket and set to work on the doorknob lock. Thirty seconds later, he felt the tumbler release with a soft click. He paused, listening for any sign that his activities had been discovered, but heard none. He moved on to the deadbolt, and after forty-five seconds was rewarded with another click. He waited again. Still nothing. He smiled as he rose to his feet.

  Billy reached for the six-inch tactical knife at his hip. He savored its progression as he slipped it silently up and out of its sheath, reveled in the familiar warm weight of it in his hand, and slowly rotated it. The carbon-steel blade reflected no light, its finish like a black hole casting back absence rather than presence. Freeing it was like releasing a tiger from its cage, the power of it surging up his arm as he tightened his grip around the leather hilt.

  Though he knew the detective inside would most likely have her gun within easy reach, Billy was unconcerned. He was the hand of God, and he would slice open the cop’s neck long before she ever had the chance to pull her trigger. And then, finally, he would be reunited with his wayward daughter.

  That thought put a smile on his lips as he silently pushed open the front door.

  *

  Jordan heard the gunshots, felt the bullet tear through her shoulder and knock her backward. She heard herself scream but it wasn’t for herself. It was for the boy. The boy whose face turned ghostly pale and whose eyes held hers as they both crashed to the ground. She screamed again, only this time it wasn’t the boy’s face she saw, but the blank slate of the ceiling overhead.

  She blinked, trying to clear the nightmare from her vision. She was in her bedroom, but it seemed foreign. The ceiling fan looked familiar but wrong, and the shadows seemed…off somehow. She blinked again, several times, before it hit her. She was not in fact in her bedroom, but in her mother’s room. Devon was in Jordan’s bed down the hall. And there was a mass murderer out there, somewhere, hunting for his daughter.

  She sat up, kicking at the sheets that entangled her legs like jungle vines. She was covered in sweat, her thin tank top glued to her skin like it was made of paste instead of cotton. She swung her legs, now free of their prison, over the edge of the bed and ran her fingers through her saturated hair.

  Damn.

  This one was bad. Worse than she’d had in a while. The dreams never really left her, but lately she had been going days, even weeks sometimes, between the really bad ones. The ones that wrung every drop of moisture from her body and threatened to stop her heart. The ones like she’d had tonight.

  Her tongue felt swollen and her mouth was an oven, as if she’d just spent a week crawling through the Sahara. She glanced over at the nightstand—3:13 a.m. She stood on shaky legs, waiting a few beats to make sure they would hold her up, then reached for her gun next to the clock. Her weapon had not been more than a foot from her since they had entered the house earlier that day, and she had no intention of changing that pattern. She checked the safety and the clip and slipped out of the room, gun in hand. She paused for a moment outside Devon’s door—her door—and heard nothing except the muffled sound of Max’s familiar snore. She smiled to herself and headed down to the kitchen.

  Jordan rounded the bottom of the stairs, casting a glance toward the secure front door, and padded into the kitchen, setting her gun down on the island. She retrieved a glass from the cupboard and the pitcher from the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of water. She set the pitcher down next to her gun, turning toward the sink and the window above it. The night beyond seemed peaceful, almost inviting. This was not the first night she had stood staring out at the darkened world, glass in hand, trying to shake off a nightmare.

  She lifted the glass to her mouth and took a long swallow, and then another, welcoming the cool water. She wondered what the police shrink would think of her nightmares. She had refused to tell him, of course, during her bureau-ordered psych evaluation and mandatory counseling after the shooting. Bureau policy and all that. The guy had seemed nice enough, she supposed, and perhaps was even a good doctor. But there had been no force on the planet that could have made her share the nightmares with him, make her tell him how the events of that day kept replaying over and over in her mind every night or how all she could ever remember when she awoke was Jacob Dubois’s face and his tiny body falling lifeless to the floor or how she hadn’t saved him. She hadn’t even told Henry, though she figured he had guessed by now.

  She was giving that thought mild consideration when she heard it. A short, low creak of a floorboard settling under foot.

  She was moving before her brain could process the sound, flinging her half-full glass in the direction of the sound and reaching for her gun in a single motion. Her fingers just brushed the barrel when she was tackled and hurled backward. Her feet could find no purchase as her assailant crashed her into the kitchen table three feet away. He landed on top of her, forcing the
air out of her lungs with the impact. Dazed and gasping for breath, she only vaguely registered the arm lifting above her and the long silhouette extending from it.

  Years of training kicked into overdrive in a millisecond. Jordan thrust her knee up with all her might, the sharp whoosh of air against her face telling her she’d hit home. The body sagged against her, enough for her to tug her left arm free and thrust the heel of her hand into the man’s nose. He staggered backward, momentarily disoriented, his free hand covering his nose protectively. Jordan’s lungs screamed for air but she ignored the demand and pushed forward off the table. Every instinct demanded she move, told her she had no time, that she had to take advantage. Distantly she could hear Max barking and clawing at something, but her mind could only focus on her assailant, who had already recovered. She launched herself at him, registering his surprise as she brought her elbow up and back down in one swift motion. Pain exploded in her arm as it made contact with his right shoulder. The knife didn’t clatter to the ground as she had hoped, but she ignored the thought. He was too big and the area too confined for her to have any chance unarmed against him. She had to get to her gun.

  She pushed past him, the blow to his shoulder and her unexpected actions knocking him off balance. She dove across the island, her hand connecting with the gun as she tumbled over the other side and crashed to the floor. She rolled as she landed, absorbing as much of the fall as she could with her right side. Her back collided with the refrigerator, arresting her momentum, and she raised her gun.

  “Hold it!” Jordan shouted. The man froze in the shadows, his hate blazing bright as he clutched his shoulder now instead of his face. Somewhere, a door crashed against a wall and she heard Max’s snarling, thunderous approach. The man must have heard it, too, because in a flash he was moving. Jordan fired three times in rapid succession as the man crashed through the sliding glass door and out into the night, one of the bullets splintering the doorframe where he had been an instant before.

  Max barreled into the kitchen and rounded the island, giving chase.

  “Max, no!” Jordan yelled with what little force she had left. The adrenaline rush was wearing off as quickly as it had begun, and the injuries she had ignored were making themselves loudly and painfully known.

  The dog skidded to a stop at the edge of what remained of the sliding glass door, whipping his head toward Jordan and then quickly back through the door and out into the night. He whined loudly. Jordan imagined the war being waged within the shepherd, torn between running down the intruder and obeying his master. She knew Max was a capable dog, but as well trained as he was, he could not yet take down an armed man. Max would only get killed, and the assailant would still be on the loose.

  More thunder from the stairs, then Devon was there, dropping to her knees beside Jordan.

  “My God.”

  Jordan heard the tremor in Devon’s voice and wanted to reassure her, but could only force out a soft, “S’okay.” Max licked Jordan’s face and lay down next to her. She gave the dog a visual once-over to confirm he hadn’t been cut by the door’s broken glass.

  “I’m so sorry, Jordan,” Devon said in a rush. “I heard a crash and then Max was barking and I dialed 9-1-1 and—”

  “No,” Jordan said, gasping as she pushed herself up off the floor. Devon steadied her as she rose gingerly, pain exploding in her side. “No, you did the right thing.” She put the pieces together. The hatred in his face. The knife. This wasn’t just some random break in. It was him. No other explanation made sense.

  “But—”

  “He was here to kill you.”

  That stopped Devon cold.

  “It was Billy. And if you’d come down here, you’d be dead.”

  Devon swallowed hard. “The police are on their way,” she said quietly.

  “We need to go.”

  “Go? Go where?” Devon asked, but Jordan ignored her questions.

  “I need to grab a few things. Max, stay with Devon.” She pressed her gun into Devon’s hand, quickly but efficiently showing her how it worked. “Safety’s off and it’s ready to fire. You see anyone besides me, you pull the trigger.” She didn’t wait for Devon to respond as she moved past them and up the stairs.

  Within minutes she was back downstairs, a duffel bag thrown over her shoulder, her laptop case and Devon’s bag in hand. Devon had stopped asking questions, but Jordan could see them lingering on her face. She would explain, but not until they were moving. She took back her gun and herded them to her SUV, starting it up just as the faint sound of sirens floated to her ears. Her cell rang as she pulled away from the curb.

  “Jordan, what happened?” Henry asked urgently. “I just got the call. I’m five minutes out. You okay?”

  “We won’t be there,” Jordan said, ignoring the question. She grimaced. She was pretty sure she’d broken a couple of ribs. Cracked them, anyway.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Jordan quickly filled Henry in. “It was him. We’re going somewhere safe.”

  “Wait for me.”

  “No. I need you to find this bastard, Henry. Check the hospitals. I’m pretty sure I broke his nose, possibly a dislocated shoulder, and he should be good and cut up from crashing through the glass. And he may have a gunshot wound.”

  “I want to get you with the sketch artist—”

  “It was too dark,” Jordan said quickly. She’d been racking her brain trying to call up a clear image of his face, but it was no use. “I didn’t get a clear look at his face. It just—”

  “I know,” Henry said. It had all happened so fast, and the kitchen had been dark. Even still, Jordan hated that she couldn’t provide a description. How in the hell would they find Billy if she couldn’t even tell them what he looked like? Devon had been a teenager the last time she had seen him, and so her memory couldn’t be trusted to provide an accurate description.

  “Six feet, one eighty, all muscle, close-cropped hair,” she rattled off quickly. She thought harder. “Jeans. T-shirt. No idea what color. He wore gloves. Soft ones.”

  That was it. That was all she could remember, aside from the hatred she felt directed at her from the darkness just before he fled. Her gut twisted reflexively.

  “Okay,” Henry said. “Where are you headed?”

  “Not over the phone.”

  Henry paused. “You think he’s got an interceptor?”

  She traced back the few phone conversations she’s had with Henry since he’d first called that morning. She could not recall having said anything that would have given away their location, but her mind was a jumble of pain and memory. “No. I don’t know. Maybe? How the hell did he find us so fast?”

  Henry didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what was worse: that he had found a way to listen in on their calls so quickly, or that he had followed them all that time and they’d never seen him. Jordan was sure Henry was having the same thoughts.

  “I’ll call you when we’re secure.”

  “Be careful, Jordan. Both of you.”

  “You, too.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jordan opened the door to the cabin, ushering Devon quickly inside. The ninety-minute drive had been quiet and tense. Devon hadn’t needed to look at the speedometer to know that they were flying, mostly on tightly curving two-lane roads. She supposed the speed should have scared her, but whether it was due to shock caused by the previous few hours’ events or the confidence with which Jordan handled the SUV, she had been surprisingly unafraid.

  Devon had always had a decent sense of direction, and despite not having the slightest clue where they were heading, she felt as though they had been driving in circles before they finally reached the cabin. Once they were safely inside and Jordan and Max had conducted what Devon could only describe as a full sweep of the small but homey cabin, Jordan confirmed her suspicions.

  “We’re only about an hour out of Pittsburgh. But I had to make sure we weren’t followed,” Jordan said, moving the duffe
l bag from where she had dropped it by the front door to the small kitchen table.

  The thought made Devon shiver. She hadn’t been afraid since they’d left the house, until now. She took a step toward Jordan, who had opened the bag and was riffling through it. “And are you? Sure?”

  Jordan looked up at Devon, her eyebrows lifting as if she realized what was going through Devon’s mind. “Oh no. I mean, yes, I’m sure,” she said, stepping around the table toward Devon. Jordan took Devon’s hands in hers. “He didn’t follow us. Not this time. The roads around here are labyrinthine if you aren’t familiar with them. Some of them don’t even appear on maps and are hardly used. If he was following us, I damn sure lost him, and he’ll be lucky to find his way back to a main road by Christmas.”

  Devon trusted that Jordan was right, but it was as if her fear finally topped the levee holding it back. She began shaking uncontrollably.

  In an instant, Jordan’s arms were around her, and she released a shuddering breath. Her arms hung limply at her sides for a long moment and then, as if of their own accord, slid around Jordan’s strong body. Jordan pulled her closer, whispering soothing nothings into her hair. Devon held on a little tighter, until Jordan gasped. Devon sprang back.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” Devon said in a rush, watching Jordan’s hand protectively grasp her side.

  “It’s not your fault. It happened at the house,” Jordan said grimacing. Her face had gone pale.

  Devon went to the small refrigerator and opened the icebox, hoping for anything frozen. She found a bag of peas. “Here, let me see.”

  Jordan appeared as though she might argue, but then seemed to think better of it. She let Devon help her lower herself onto one of the kitchen chairs.

  “In case you’re thinking of arguing, don’t bother,” Devon said in a tone that she hoped would brook no argument. “You’re hurt, and I’m sure you’re not used to accepting help, but you are going to accept it from me.” Devon didn’t bother to wait for a response. She knelt next to Jordan and carefully raised her shirt. Devon bit back a gasp when she saw the deep blue and purple bruise already forming on Jordan’s side.