by Matt Hilton
‘Please. Excuse me, but I must be going,’ Tess said, and attempted to duck past him.
Cleary squared up before her, blocking any route past. ‘Sweet girly-girl has sweet-girly lips,’ he announced.
Tess changed her mind. This was beginning to feel like violation. If he tried to kiss her she’d shoot him in the face. Meanwhile she continued to try tact, because the racket would bring the others running from their meeting and then she would be in a worse predicament. ‘Thank you for the compliment,’ she said. ‘But please, I have to be getting on.’
She moved to the right, and when he adjusted his huge frame to block her, she skipped back a step and then spun away. Cleary grabbed at her, but she swerved out, ducking under his elbow, and then was past him. The skin between her shoulder blades puckered in anticipation of his shout, but it didn’t follow. Trying to continue with the charade that she had a good reason for being on the site, she headed past the portable office as if making for the meeting room. Only when she believed she was clear of him did she glance back, dreading the thought that he was stomping along behind her. She could no longer see him. His disappearance brought no relief. The fact that the giant could move so silently and stealthily was worrying, because where the hell had he gotten to?
She was so intent on searching him out she forgot about the trio of guards, almost walking directly out from the front of the meeting hall in her urgency to escape. She skidded to a halt in the mud and one of the men turned towards her. He eyed her momentarily, but luck was with her. He had no reason to recognize her, and being a stranger to the site must have taken her for an administration worker or something else, because he returned his attention to his buddies, catching the punchline of a joke, and joining in with the laughter. Keeping up her act, Tess moved as if she intending entering the meeting room, but once she was almost at the door and certain none of the chauffeurs were paying attention she angled away, and around the corner where she could hide in the shadows. She set her shoulders against the wall, only a few feet from where she’d recently peeked inside the window, and breathed a sigh of relief. Adrenalin made her hot and shaky.
The glare of the floodlights bathed the next cabin along; it was the canteen, as she recalled. Beyond the canteen Pinky kept guard, but she’d no hope of spotting him from her position. Suddenly she longed to see the big guy again, almost as much as she did to see Po. Unsolicited compliments came thick and fast from Pinky all the time, but they were in direct contrast to those recently endured from Cleary Menon.
‘Hoo-hoo! Girly-girl!’
Tess’s knees turned to water.
Her head swivelled to the source of the voice, her mouth open in a silent exclamation.
‘Hoo-hoooooo!’ The call was almost the howl of a wolf.
Cleary’s large, shaggy skull jutted around the far corner of the building in a crazy game of peekaboo. He guffawed out a laugh when she caught him spying on her. Inside the meeting room the babble of voices stilled abruptly. Pressed up tightly to the wall, Tess saw light and shadow flash as someone teased open the blinds for a glimpse outside. The person inside couldn’t possibly spot her from there, but it might only be a matter of seconds before they came out for a better look. She had to move, but couldn’t get past Cleary. There was nothing for it …
She ran across the intervening space in the full wash of the floodlights, and across the front of the canteen building. Behind her, Cleary bayed like a hound dog on a scent and came after her. She heard the door of the meeting room snatched open and feet thud out onto the small porch formed of packing crates. Voices were raised in confusion, some even in alarm when they heard Cleary’s hunting call.
Somebody spotted her.
‘Hey! You there!’
Tess didn’t bother looking back; she was a stranger and an unwelcome one at that. She ran, slipping and stumbling on the clods of churned-up earth. Down near the cars, the three chauffeurs also turned to watch, but she ignored them too.
Where was Pinky?
She could spot neither hide nor hair of her friend.
More importantly, where was Cleary Menon?
His howling was curtailed, but only because he’d flushed her out and now intended stealing on her more stealthily again. She couldn’t fathom his intention – was this a game to him or something more sinister?
She had to assume the latter, and prepare for it.
She gripped her Glock tighter, and for one insane moment considered halting, swinging the gun on her pursuers, and demanding to know where Po was. But pointing a gun at a bunch of men, some of them most definitely armed, could invite a deadly response. She couldn’t do that: not if she were wrong and Po wasn’t here, and all she’d stumbled on was a genuine and lawful gathering of businessmen. She’d be at fault if bullets began popping. But if that damned crazy man tried to lay hands on her again …
Cleary skidded out from the other side of the canteen. His grin was back, fixed now in a shark’s toothsome smile. Tess dodged to the left to get around him, and her feet went from under her. She landed heavily on her side, and her Glock flipped from her hand. It disappeared in the deep tracks left by an excavator. She crawled after it, pushing aside clumps of sticky muck.
Cleary moved to stand over her. One boot was either side of her thighs as he bent at the waist. Tess flipped over so she could face him, and thrust one hand towards him. He halted, and she watched his grin flicker and disappear as he studied her.
‘All muddy now,’ he said. ‘Not sweet girly-girl.’
As his hands reached for her they’d lost all the tenderness they’d previously exhibited.
‘Get away from me!’ The heel Tess drove between Cleary’s legs punctuated her yell.
The giant huffed out a breath.
If she got him fully in the testicles, he didn’t react the way she’d hoped. He seemed to shake off the nauseous turmoil he should have been experiencing in his lower gut with a judder of rage that fired him up. Tess yelped, kicking again, trying to scramble backwards. Cleary snatched at her right ankle, lifted it high in the air, and Tess was borne up with it, dangling in his grasp as he lifted her clear of the ground. Cleary barked, snapped his arm hard, and Tess felt the whip-crack go through her. For the briefest instant it felt as if the kinetic force was about to rip her head from her shoulders, but then she was flying through the air a few feet above the ground. She landed on her shoulders and her body folded into a graceless heap, her knees smacking down brutally on her lower chest. The twin impacts forced every molecule of oxygen from her lungs as she unfurled and lay stunned in the dirt.
She had landed two full body lengths away from Cleary.
He stamped towards her.
Grabbed both her ankles this time and suspended her before him. She was facing away from him, a convulsing wreck as she tried to suck air into her lungs. Tears filled her vision, and the blood thrummed through her brain. She could barely make sense of the group of figures gathering around them, or their words: except they sounded as stunned as her at Cleary’s antics.
‘Cleary,’ a voice rang out. ‘Put her down.’
‘Mine.’
‘Put her down. You don’t want to hurt her.’
‘Do. She hurt me.’
‘Put her down, bra.’
Through her bleary gaze, Tess could see the nearest figure. He was tall, wiry, and wearing a frayed ball cap. Zeke Menon.
‘Mine,’ Cleary stated again, and he released one ankle, but only so he could wrap a forearm around her waist. He pulled her in with crushing force, then allowed her legs to fall over his shoulders. Her lower spine was bent achingly. She tried to roll back out of his grip, but Cleary wasn’t for letting go. Her legs windmilled either side of his head: horribly his mouth was close to her most intimate parts.
Tess prized at his arm, but there was no freeing herself. She tried to appeal to those around her, but everyone – even Zeke – appeared too wary of challenging Cleary for his prize.
‘These are the kind of maniacs
you have on your payroll?’ It was the suited man with silver hair who’d spoken. He was glaring at the man Tess had tentatively identified as Alistair Keane. ‘No wonder everything went to shit. You told me there’d be no more delays in the work schedule, that there’d be no more problems. Then what the hell is this about?’
‘I … I’ve no idea who she is,’ Keane bleated. He stared at Zeke for clarity.
‘I’ve got everythin’ under control,’ Zeke Menon assured his bosses. ‘Cleary will listen to me. Just give me a minute, Mr Corbin …’
‘You’d better damn well sort this,’ the man referred to as Corbin snapped, ‘or there’ll be repercussions.’ He turned away to console some of the shocked individuals behind him. He began ushering them back towards the meeting room, reminding them they’d previously endured trespassers on their sites, and that environmental activists occasionally tried to sabotage their machinery, convincing them that Tess was one such vandal caught in the act. His scowl was aimed directly at Al Keane, who covered his mouth with one hand, before trudging after them. Keane paused, looked wearily at Zeke. ‘Sort this mess, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Cleary,’ Zeke said to his brother, showing the giant both his open palms. ‘Put the woman down.’
‘Mine,’ Cleary growled.
‘No, this isn’t the girl I promised you, bra. Look at the mess of her, why would you want to play with something as ugly as her? Put her down, and you’ll get your sweet girly-girl as soon as I’m finished with her, just like I promised. OK, bra? Are you listening to me?’
‘Not mine?’ Cleary held Tess out, studying her.
‘No. This one isn’t yours.’
‘Messy,’ Cleary observed.
He dumped Tess in another bone-jarring heap at his feet.
‘Good. Now go and read your book, Cleary. I’ll call you when it’s time to get your prize.’ Cleary moved away, bent at the waist as he took off in a loping gait. Zeke looked down at Tess, adjusting his cap while shaking his head. Tess pulled herself over onto her backside and sat up, cradling her ribs. When she returned his gaze there was no thanks in her eyes for saving her: she was seething. He frowned, studying her closely. As Corbin had pointed out, the pipeline had attracted the attention of some activist groups concerned by how the route was damaging the local terrain and displacing indigenous wildlife, and more than once he’d had to chase objectors away from the site, and one of them into a grave. But this woman didn’t look like a tree-hugger. She was filthy; her features were puffy, flushed and streaked with dirt, but otherwise she looked like a normal person. But he thought he recognized her from somewhere. He couldn’t think where he had seen her before but it was recent.
He bent over her, peering closer.
Then stood upright, adjusting the rim of his lucky hat in thought.
‘I saw you at the hospital earlier,’ he said in sudden recognition. ‘You were with that sumbitch, Nicolas Villere!’
‘She was,’ said another voice, ‘and she was also with me.’
Zeke snatched at the knife hilt protruding from the sheath on his hip, while spinning quickly to confront his other old enemy.
‘Too slow, you,’ said Pinky as he battered the barrel of his Glock down on Zeke’s head.
THIRTY-ONE
A frantic five-minute drive later, Pinky pulled the SUV off the levee road and onto a bridge that took them over the still waters of the bayou. Once on the opposite side, he found a secondary road that skirted a neighbourhood of suburban housing, and pulled up in the deserted lot outside a strip mall. All the stores and businesses had closed for the night, except for one fast-food joint at the far end from where they sat. There were no customers entering or leaving, but even if any came they were far away enough to avoid prying eyes. Pinky switched on the overhead light so he could study Tess.
Tess still looked beaten to hell. Her features were slack with shock. She didn’t look at him.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, leaning towards her. ‘That was something you just went through, you.’
‘We shouldn’t have left,’ Tess said. She still wouldn’t look at him.
‘I had to get you outta there, Tess. There was nothing for it, not with them other guys coming over.’
‘Twice in one evening I’ve been slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack of corn,’ she said. She glimpsed sideways at him this time, and Pinky’s face constricted in a frown.
‘I took a bit more care about carrying you than that crazy brute did.’ Pinky stared forward, his gaze settling in the far distance. His mouth worked silently. He looked over at her again. ‘What in God’s name was that?’
Tess shook her head, and the motion followed as a qualm down her spine. She gripped her knees to stop shuddering. ‘That was Cleary Menon.’
‘You sure? He looked more like the Wolfman, him.’
Tess didn’t argue. Cleary had been reminiscent of some monstrous creature out of legend. His shaggy hair, deep-set eyes, and tusky mouth gave him the appearance of something primal, but it hadn’t been his looks that had left her shaken. His strength went beyond anything she’d ever experienced in a human before, but it wasn’t even the way he’d manhandled her as if she was an insubstantial doll filled with feathers that had left her reeling. It was the unfathomable process of his mind that she couldn’t come to terms with, his weirdness that left her feeling as if she’d been touched by something uncanny. ‘I don’t believe in werewolves,’ she said lamely, but she couldn’t convince herself. There was something decidedly wrong about Cleary Menon. She could have as well been the plaything of a carnivore toying with its catch. Reasoning with him would have proved impossible.
‘I should have been there to protect you,’ Pinky groaned in apology. ‘I didn’t get to you in time. I’m sorry, Tess.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she reassured him.
But he wasn’t done apologizing. ‘I lost sight of you, was watching those fools at the cars instead. Didn’t know that you were in trouble ’til I heard that crazy man howling like a loon. By the time I spotted you, he was holding you upside down, inspecting you like a fish on a line. I was gonna pop him right then and there, but then all those other guys in suits gathered round. What could I do: shoot them all? Couldn’t do a damn thing, me! Not ’til they went back inside and left you alone with Zeke. Shoulda capped that fucker, instead of knocking him out.’
‘There was nothing else you could do,’ Tess reassured him again. ‘It’s not your fault, Pinky. I put myself in danger, poking around too long. I should’ve been more careful, but I let Cleary corner me. You got me out, and that’s all that’s important.’
Pinky shook his head. His jowls hung low, and his chocolate eyes were dull; he was deeply sad and it was not a look she was familiar with from the usual jovial guy. He felt that the roughhousing she’d endured was down to him and would take a lot of convincing otherwise. Tess reached over and folded her hand into his. He patted her hand with the fingers of his other hand.
‘If you’d come to my rescue any sooner I wouldn’t have learned what I did,’ she announced.
She was being jerked around like a ragdoll in the hands of a boisterous child, her brain rattling and her thoughts all over the place, and yet she’d still absorbed some of what was going on around her. In as few words as she could, she explained to Pinky about the meeting of businessmen, and that the top man in the room had been referred to as Mr Corbin. Corbin wasn’t too pleased with his lackey, Alistair Keane, or with Zeke and Cleary Menon for that matter. The three were obviously on his payroll, and were supposed to avoid any further problems and delays. It didn’t take much figuring out: they were tasked with keeping the pipeline construction on schedule. Keane was the building contractor, so his responsibility was in the overall management of the project, whereas the Menons’ had a different focus. Theirs, she suggested, was to ensure that nobody got in the way of the job, and it didn’t take too much imagination figuring out how. They were troubleshooters in the most literal sense. If an
yone got in the way of progress, the Menons removed them. She thought of the trapper camp they’d recently visited, and how the Thibodauxs had sequestered themselves on land the pipeline was scheduled to cut through. She wondered if the Menons employed various tactics to run off troublemakers, perhaps with bribes, threats or beatings, but to what lengths would they go to if the more recalcitrant of people dug their heels in? Those pools of blood they’d found spoke volumes.
There had been no hint that Po had been at the site, although Zeke had mentioned seeing her with him at the hospital earlier in the day. From the way he spoke Po’s name, it sounded as if he hoped to meet him face to face, but hadn’t yet had the pleasure. She was thankful for that small mercy, but it left her with a more worrying thought. If Po hadn’t gone after Zeke then it left few others that he’d have sloped off for a reckoning with. He hadn’t suddenly been inspired by where to find his missing sister, he’d gone after her father and brothers. She didn’t care to dwell on what Po had done … and positively wouldn’t think about what could have gone wrong.
She turned to Pinky again, and told him the most important thing she’d learned from her run in with the Menon brothers. ‘Zeke convinced Cleary to drop me in exchange for another “prize”. He said something about another girl he’d promised to give to Cleary as soon as he finished with her.’
‘So he does have Emilia?’
‘He didn’t mention her by name, but who else could he have been talking about?’
‘He actually said he had her?’
‘No. Just that he wasn’t finished with her yet. That could mean he’s still looking for her, but …’
