Blown Away

by Shane Gericke

  Emily relaxed her knees and let a soft moan escape.

  “Finally sinking in that you’re going to die, Princess?” Marwood asked.

  “Only in your dreams,” she said. “And stop calling me Princess. Your tongue isn’t fit to clean my father’s behind, much less use his nickname for me.”

  “I thought Princess was Jack’s nickname for you.”

  “They both used it. Not that it’s any of your business, you hair ball.”

  “Behind. Hair ball.” He snickered. “You know, Princess, it’s just not the same. I really miss the old potty-mouth Emily. Too bad you promised Daddy about swearing.” His voice turned reminiscent. “Remember third grade? When you cussed a streak so filthy, the penguins washed out your mouth with laundry soap? What a stitch. Then in fifth grade when you…”

  She wiggled her scalp as he yakked on, trying to feel the handcuff key. Marwood confiscated the one on her ankle because the I Spy cameras in her bedroom recorded her attaching it. The neck key might still be there because she taped it at the police station, out of camera range. Thank God for superstition! But how would she get her hands on the get-out-of-jail card when those hands were behind her back?

  “Why did you switch names?” Emily tried, hoping to extend Remember When. “Was Kepp too many letters for your pea brain to remember?”

  Marwood laughed. “A new identity is a must. After they find you dead, every cop in this country will hunt Brady Kepp till the end of time.”

  “Which is almost here, you know,” Emily said. “Benedetti and Cross know we’ve disappeared because Sergeant Bates stopped checking in. They’ll figure out you came here to play the final game. You’re too obsessed not to, and they know it.” She shifted to ease the cramp in her left calf. “Just surrender, Ellis. You could plead insanity and get away with it. Lord knows, I’d testify you’re nuts.”

  Marwood laughed. “You don’t get it. This place was scoured by the feds and your own SWAT team. Every door and window is boarded tight, and I check in every fifteen minutes. We’re out of sight here, out of mind. Your colleagues aren’t going to save you, Princess. Neither are guns, batons, helicopters, SWATs, task forces, and all the other bullshit you cops wave like magic wands. You’re the only one who can save your life, Princess, by winning our final game. But you aren’t good enough to beat me. Not then, not ever—”

  Annie kicked the door and heaved the wrench at Marwood’s head, screaming. With the reflexes of a cat, Marwood dodged it and the hammer to his abdomen, then flung Emily’s bayonet deep into Annie’s stomach. The SWAT went down howling, Marwood on her like a mongoose. “A for effort, Sergeant,” he said, stunning her with a vicious hand chop to the neck. “But no reservist beats a Green Beret.” He broke Annie’s pelvis with a heel stomp, and she fell unconscious. He placed the bayonet on her carotid for the killing thrust, then reconsidered. “I know! I’ll slit your throat when I hang Emily. You can watch each other die. That’ll be fun, won’t it?” He cuffed Annie’s wrists, removed the bayonet, duct-taped her wound—“Can’t croak till I say so, Ossifer,” he said—and hurried to the basement door. “One peep from you, I’ll come up and fillet her to bone,” he warned Emily. “So don’t get stupid on me.”

  “Not Martin. Marwood!” Winslow insisted. “Commander Benedetti isn’t capable of murder!”

  “Everyone’s capable given enough motivation, Barbara!” Cross said loudly, over the snoring captain, desperately trying to think through this dilemma. If he wasted even a minute hauling in the wrong man…“I’m positive I told Branch to spell his first name! Not his last name, his first! So it has to be Marty! Not Marwood!”

  “We drugged this poor man up to his eyeballs,” Winslow shot back. “And Branch is human. He misunderstood our directions. Or believed he was spelling Marwood’s first name. Or something else entirely.” She clapped her fists together, burning off adrenaline. “To hell with logic, Ken. Who do you believe committed these crimes? Ellis or Marty?”

  Cross closed his eyes, weighing what she said. He opened them a minute later and pulled out his cell phone. “Marty? Ken. We’ve been suckered!” he barked. “Marwood is the Unsub. Repeat, Dr. Ellis Marwood is the Unsub.”

  “You killed Flea, didn’t you?” Emily growled, sickened by her certainty at what this monster just did in the basement. “All of them.”

  “Of course, I did. I don’t need more fucking surprises.” Marwood wiped the bloody blade on Emily’s legs, slipped it in his belt. “What were we talking about?”

  “Your CIA identity,” Emily said, seeing Annie stir.

  “Ah, right. Those political assassinations I did were on presidential orders. So if you believe the CIA will hand my new identity to your people, you’re crazier than I am.”

  “The courts will make them.”

  Marwood snickered, fluffed his hair. “‘Golly, Judge, the paperwork on this Kepp fellow you ordered us to produce?’” he falsettoed, mimicking a bewildered CIA lawyer. “‘It’s disappeared. We’re looking high and low, Your Honor. We’d never disobey an official court order.’” A harsher laugh. “Nothing about me will leak. Kepp is dead, long live Marwood.” He bowed in admiration. “Nice gambit, though, Princess. You’re playing the game brilliantly.”

  “I told you not to call me that.”

  “You’re in no position to dictate rules,” he said. “I’ll call you whatever—” He darted for the submachine gun, slicing a finger across his throat. “There’s noise on your back porch,” he whispered. “Say one fucking syllable and I’ll shoot you. Annie, too. Savvy?”

  Emily nodded, hoping whoever it was carried grenades and heavy weapons. She’d gladly die in a SWAT assault if it meant taking Kepp with her. It was one thing to terrorize her for the crimes he imagined she’d committed against him. Lucy Crawford deserved no such fate. Neither did the other lost souls, especially Mama, Daddy, and Jack, whose only crime had been to love her. She prayed for a lightning entry and instant annihilation.

  But the only “assault” was a light scratching on the door, followed by thumps. Not in the middle, where people put their hands, but way down at the bottom.

  “It’s the neighbor’s dog,” she whispered. “The yellow Lab from the fun run.”

  “Shelby,” Marwood whispered back.

  “Right. He’s come over to play. Probably heard Annie scream and wants to join the party.”

  Marwood peered through the puffball curtains. “All right. Just keep your mouth shut,” he ordered, hooking the submachine gun on the doorknob. “Animals are stupid. If Shelby doesn’t hear anything for sixty seconds, he’ll get bored and leave.”

  The porch noises faded. It was time. This escape plan was desperate, practically suicidal. But Marwood held every other card. “Please, Shelby, don’t go!” she blubbered. “Don’t leave me with this bad man!”

  “I told you to shut up, Princess!” Marwood snarled, pulling the bayonet.

  “And I told you not to call me that, you lunatic!” Emily shouted.

  “That’s it, Princess!” Marwood thundered, eyes bulging. “Time to hang you by the neck till you’re dead-dead-dead! Not by snapping it quick and easy, nosirree. I knotted that rope so you’d strangle! Your face will turn purple. Your tongue will sag, and your eyes will bulge. At that point I’ll cut your cunt pal’s throat, and you’ll watch each other die. Then I win our final game! After thirty years of plotting and rehearsing and dreaming of this—”

  “We didn’t play Hangman at my birthday party, you idiot!” Emily screeched, going for broke, praying Shelby hadn’t wandered too far. “There were only eight games! Not nine! Thirty years and you’re still a pathetic loser—”

  “Hangman was my game!” Marwood thrust the bayonet like a picador. Blood spurted from her thigh. “It’s the game I was bringing to your party, if only you’d invited me!”

  “There’s no way I’d invite you, Fraidy Brady! You’re a loser! A bed wetter! The kids at school laugh because a girl beat you up! Your father whips your sorry but
t because you’re such a disappointing son! You’re weak! Pathetic! A disgrace to your family! Your underwear’s always wet! Boo-hoo-hoo, better run to Mommy and have her change your widdle—”

  Marwood howled, pulling back his leg to kick the game table away.

  “Shelby! Help!” Emily screamed as the burly Lab blasted through the pet flap she’d installed so many years ago. “Bad man, Shelby, get him! Help me!”

  The dog yowled, ears flat to his skull. He rocketed across the kitchen and sank his teeth deep into Marwood’s left arm. The profiler screamed, the bayonet clattering under the refrigerator as Shelby tore muscle and tendon. “Let go of me, goddammit!” Marwood shouted, punching Shelby’s head with his free fist while straining to reach the guns. Shelby dragged him back, eyes glowing, frothy slobber turning the pine floor into a skating rink.

  “Good boy! Attack! Kill!” Emily prepared for the high-school gymnastics move she prayed would save her and Annie. “That’s right! Get him! Get the bad man. Awk!” Shelby’s butt knocked the table away, dumping her sideways and jamming the noose deep in her throat. “Do it!” she screamed at herself, panic overwhelming her nervous system. “Do it now or die!”

  She moved her wrists as far apart as the handcuff chain allowed, lifted her knees to her chin, kicked her feet back behind the chain, then dropped her legs all the way down. The “dislocation” made her shoulders squeal in pain, but it moved her hands where she needed them—from the back of her body to the front.

  “Gotta land, Commander,” the FBI pilot warned by radio. “Air’s too unstable. We’ll go back up at first break.”

  “Understood. Thanks.” Benedetti turned to Cross, who’d just dashed up from his car. “The storm’s grounded the choppers. Nothing from the road search. Marwood’s got nine lives—”

  “He thinks we’re stupid, right?” Cross interrupted, panting. “Dull-minded pencil pushers who couldn’t hack it in the big leagues, so we’re stuck writing parking tickets in the suburbs? As opposed to his superior, world-class self?”

  “Yeah…”

  “So where would such a genius bury his treasure? Where X marks the spot? Or somewhere he knows for certain we’d never look because we’re too retarded?”

  Benedetti realized what Cross meant. “No way, Ken,” he protested. “Emily’s house is too risky even for that maniac.”

  “Because it’s right downtown,” Cross pressed. “Because it’s boarded up tight. Because the cops check in every fifteen minutes. Because a starving rat would never risk a trap to steal the cheese. Right?”

  Benedetti recalled Jodi’s concern over the team’s raspy voices. “Right!” He grabbed his radio to flood Jackson Avenue with firepower, but Cross touched his hand. “If Marwood hears the cavalry coming, he’ll kill her on the spot. Where’s your race car?”

  They broke into a dead run.

  Bearing her full body weight suspended from her neck, Emily saw stars explode in the approaching black clouds. Only seconds of consciousness remained. She raised her shaking arms, clawed her bra, pulled out the knife Marwood had condescendingly allowed her to keep. Heart pounding fast and thready in her ears, she thrust the knife over her head and sawed at the rope. Marwood and Shelby wrestled across the slick pine. “Let go! Let go!” Marwood screamed, hammering Shelby’s skull. Shelby growled and held on tight. Eyelids fluttering, Emily sawed as hard as her numbing hands allowed.

  She hit the floor like a sack of hammers. She rolled to her side, gasping and retching, reaching under the noose to find the taped handcuff key. Her heart pounded so hard from the fresh oxygen, she thought it’d explode. She glimpsed Shelby’s eyes rolling and knew it’d be only a moment before Marwood freed himself to finish his deadly obsession.

  There it is!

  She ripped the tiny key off her neck and shoved it at the ankle cuffs. It scraped past the lock hole. She steadied herself against a cabinet, then eased the key into the hole, willing her hands to quit trembling. “Shoot this mongrel! Then you!” Marwood howled, dragging the ragged dog toward the guns. “You’ll never get away!”

  Click!

  “I’ll come back! I won’t abandon you guys!” Emily croaked, her legs popping free. She flung the bra knife at Marwood—dizziness made her aim so bad, it clanked off the stove—and tossed the key into Annie’s lap. Gathering the last of her strength, she stood, picked up the game table, and heaved it at the window over the sink. The heavy rock maple shattered the glass, and Emily dived face-first through the jagged hole, still-cuffed hands shielding her eyes. Marwood fired a long burst, but she was already through, her body whomping onto the shards littering the porch. Groaning, she rolled to her feet and limped down the hill.

  “We’re coming, Emily! Hang on!” Benedetti yelled as he tromped Love Shack’s gas pedal to the floor and blasted through the garage.

  “There’s his rental car!” Cross shouted as the air bags deflated. “They’re here!”

  Marty grabbed his shotgun from under the passenger seat and rolled out the door.

  Marwood chased her down the hill, raising the submachine gun.

  Annie unlocked the handcuffs, moaning at the pain in her pelvis and belly. She heard the shuddering crash from the front of the house and arm-crawled to the sniper rifle. She grabbed it and headed out the back door. Shelby was already down the hill, inching toward Emily.

  Emily zigzagged down the steep slope, dodging Marwood’s first two submachine-gun bursts. The third came so close, she heard the bullets’ angry buzz. She could barely see through the blood sheeting down from her forehead cuts, but a decade of fun runs had burned this route deep in her muscle memory. “Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine!” she cried as her bare feet hit familiar depressions. “Forty, forty-one, jump!” She soared headfirst over the woodpile, exactly forty-two strides from her back door, intending to roll to her feet on the other side to keep momentum. But her foot caught a jutting log. She crashed face-first into the ground as Marwood’s fourth burst thudded into the thick birch logs. “Go-go-go!” she huffed through her broken nose, aiming at what she hoped was the path through the woods. She screamed as a bullet drilled her left calf, stumbled hard but recovered.

  “Got you now, Princess!” Marwood sang from not nearly far enough behind.

  “Never!” she screamed, abandoning her zigzag for a fourth-and-inches plunge. The submachine gun ripped a fifth time, but she was safe in the tree line.

  Annie sprawled sideways, pointing the rifle downhill, careful not to disturb the duct tape—if it became unstuck, she’d bleed out in seconds. Benedetti appeared from the side of the house as Cross blasted out the back door. “Annie!” they shouted together.

  “Marwood’s chasing Emily!” Annie shouted back. “He’s got Flea’s submachine gun!”

  “I’ll catch them!” Benedetti said, tossing the shotgun to Cross and charging down the hill.

  “Who’s that?” Cross yelled, swinging on the figure about to vanish in the trees. “Can I fire?”

  Annie replied by pulling the trigger.

  “Noooooo!” Marwood howled as the rifle bullet shattered his left elbow into a fog of blood and bone. He wheeled around and emptied the submachine gun at the smoke puff near the porch.

  Benedetti slammed to the ground to avoid the bullets pouring uphill. Coughing out dirt and grass, he scrambled to his feet at the first lull and kept running.

  Bare feet bleeding from rocks and glass, Emily sailed out of the woods, across the Riverwalk bricks, through the weedy shoreline bramble, and into the churning river. She couldn’t swim because her wrists were still cuffed. “You can’t escape!” Marwood howled from the trees.

  She splashed into the water as far as she could, then latched onto a floating tree branch, letting the current pull her downstream. Naperville was still rain free, but Wisconsin had been deluged, turning the sedate DuPage River into a blender of foam, waves, and hidden boulders. She slammed into one and spun, silted brown water flushing down her throat. “Awk,” she gargled, the branch f
loating away. She clutched onto a moss-covered tree stump, holding it with shredded fingernails. The bramble was dense here and would hide her. She looked around for weapons. None, and she’d thrown the bra knife at Marwood. But now she saw what was causing such pain in her left breast—a nine-inch shard of window glass. If she could get it out intact, maybe she could use it as a spear. But it was so slender! It couldn’t possibly hold up long enough to reach a vital organ! She hunkered in the mud, looking for another plan, another place to run….

  “Forget it,” she growled as a feeling of utter calm settled in. “You want me, Doc, give it your best shot. I’m tired of running.”

  Annie screamed as Cross fell on her. “Bastard clipped my legs,” he gasped. “I can’t stand.”

  “He got me, too,” she said. She racked in a fresh cartridge and searched for Marwood. “You’ve got to help me here, Chief.”

  Cross didn’t reply, his breathing labored.

  “I can’t steady the rifle by myself,” Annie said. “Crawl in front of me, and I’ll use your neck as a barrel rest. Hurry!”

  Cross grunted, inching forward.

  Emily stared at her pursuer through the bramble. His gun was moving in tandem with his head. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he sang. “I killed your daddy and crushed your mama. I burned Jack like a witch at the stake. Crippled Annie and paralyzed Branch. When I’m done with you, I’ll find Marty and gut him like a trout.”

  She freed herself from the mud, gripping the shard she’d extracted from her breast. Its jagged edges sliced deep into her palm. But she no longer cared about pain. About past or future. Only about ending this madness.

  “You’re naked, cold, and bleeding,” he said. “Shock will get you if blood loss doesn’t.” Six feet from the river, four feet, two feet, one, so close she smelled bay rum. “Surrender to me, Princess! Right now! If you do that, I’ll leave Marty alone. I’ll let him live, I promise. Just one quick bullet to the brain and you’ll join your family. You’ll be happy forever! Come out, come out, wherever you are.”