by Matt Hilton
Also by Matt Hilton
Dead Men’s Dust
Judgement and Wrath
Slash and Burn
Cut and Run
Blood and Ashes
Dead Men’s Harvest
No Going Back
Rules of Honour
The Lawless Kind
Short Stories in Ebook
Joe Hunter: Six of the Best
Dead Fall – A Joe Hunter Short Story
Red Stripes – A Joe Hunter Short Story
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Matt Hilton 2015
The right of Matt Hilton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 473 61001 9
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.hodder.co.uk
The one is for Sue Fletcher
‘Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.’
– Michael Corleone (paraphrasing Niccolò Machiavelli), The Godfather Part II
Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Thanks
1
‘Keep your head down this time, Billie, and don’t move. They won’t see us if you stay still.’
There were three men in a GMC Suburban hunting us, two in the front and one in the back. The bottle-green SUV was canted on its chassis, the right side sitting in a deep rut in the road where it crested the hill, the other wheels on the grass embankment. One of the men held something to his face, the glint of moonlight off lenses betraying a set of night vision binoculars. He scanned the road and the forest on both sides. His friends relied on their unassisted vision as they checked out the road both front and back.
They couldn’t see the woman or me.
Wilhelmina ‘Billie’ Womack was scrunched in a hollow in the forest floor, with a stack of broken twigs piled in front of her offering further concealment. I was ten feet away, crouching behind the bole of an ancient fir tree. A storm had torn down the upper half of the tree during a previous season, and the tangle of its brittle branches hid me from the watchful eyes of the hunters in the Suburban.
‘Where are the others?’ Billie whispered. ‘What if they’re moving in behind us, Joe?’
‘It’s always a possibility, but I won’t hear them if you keep talking. Do as I say, keep still and stay silent.’
Billie was a spirited woman, not someone who ordinarily took orders lightly. But I was glad to find that this time she knew I was speaking sense, and that it was best to keep her head down.
The Suburban didn’t move. The men inside continued to search the woodland, but none of them was looking our way. The road before them wasn’t an easy track to negotiate, not even for an off-roader. Best-case scenario was if they reversed back the way they’d come, took another route through the forest. Yet it seemed they weren’t ready to give up on the hunt. I listened. Distantly I could hear another engine, alternately revving and petering out as a second SUV pushed its way along another trail. The terrain was hilly, densely forested, and though there was no way of pinpointing the direction of the second vehicle it sounded far off and of no immediate concern. A helicopter kept buzzing overhead, but the canopy was too thick for its crew to see us. More worrying were the searchers on foot who for all I knew could be close.
Occasionally I heard the crackling of twigs, but again the sound was distant. Didn’t mean that a more accomplished stalker wasn’t nearby. My friend Rink could move through this forest without setting a foot wrong or leaving a distinct track, and there were plenty of trackers as skilled as him, some more so. Truth was, the people hunting us were more capable than many. They didn’t rush trying to flush us out; once they’d got in position, they were controlled and methodical in their search. Someone guiding them was laying down a search grid and sooner or later they’d stumble on to our position.
I was armed, albeit lightly, with a SIG Sauer P226 and a folding knife. But those that sought us came with heavier armament: rifles, automatic pistols. It was serious artillery to bring down an unarmed, untrained woman. Our only advantage was that those chasing Billie didn’t realise who was with her. The only person who could have told them about me was in no position to do that. He was lying at the bottom of a ravine with a broken neck.
The man with the binoculars swept the ground before us, but continued past without being alerted to our presence. He must have said something, because the driver brought the Suburban forward a few yards. The big car tipped like a seesaw as it negotiated its new position, but it inched forward again. Then, once out of the deepest ruts, the driver steered it down the hill and so close that I could smell the exhaust fumes that plumed from the tail pipe.
‘They’re going to see us . . .’ Billie’s voice was high-pitched, fraught with anxiety.
‘Hold your position. They’re not aware of you, and things will stay that way unless you move.’
‘Please, Joe,’ Billie said. ‘Don’t let them take me.’
‘I won’t,’ I promised.
My pledge might have rung empty to her. Billie had come to me for protection, and in her mind that might mean firm and resolute action, not hiding like rodents in a burrow. But I was one man against many, outgunned and outmanoeuvred, and her best hope for safety was that we’d go unnoticed by the hunters. I was itching to do something more telling than crouch behind the fallen tree, and if it had been only my life on the line I’d have probably gone for broke. I bit down on the urge to shoot it out with the men in the SUV.
They passed us by.
I sighed as the Suburban jounced a route along the trail and headed up the next incline. I followed the big car’s progress, seeing it through drifting rags of blue smoke that hung in the cold moonlight like will-o’-the-wisps. As it crested the next rise it paused again as the men inside checke
d the terrain for any telltale signs.
Billie adjusted her position so that she could check where the car was and I heard the crackle of twigs beneath her elbows. The sound was a faint rustle at most, but in the stillness of the forest she might as well have jumped up and down, waving her arms and yelling ‘Over here!’. A corresponding crackle alerted me to the location of something moving through the brush. I hoped in that fraction of a second that it was merely a forest creature, startled by our proximity, but knew our luck was out.
Twisting round, I brought my SIG to bear on the man who’d risen from a dry watercourse about twenty feet behind us. He was wearing cammo fatigues to help blend with the forest. It seemed a lot of trouble to go to when hunting a townie like Billie, as did the rifle the man aimed. The only saving grace was that my movement surprised him. He’d been stalking the woman, closing in on her, and was up until that moment unaware of my presence. He was no weekend warrior though, and my presence gave him only a split second’s pause. He swung his rifle on me even as I shot at him.
Our bullets must have crossed midway; because I was knocked back against the tree at the exact same time he folded over my round in his gut. I’d been hit higher up; attesting to that was the way in which my body was spun by the impact and my left arm swung out to compensate. I smacked up against the tree, and then fell on my side, landing badly because my arm wasn’t able to break the fall. The initial shock of being shot was bad enough, but the pain hadn’t hit yet. It would come and when it happened it would be debilitating. Had to stop the hunter before he could turn his attention on Billie. I fought to a good shooting position, even as the man cursed and struggled with the bolt on his rifle. In his shadowed face, his eyes rolled white and his teeth flashed. His concentration was on me as he fired and the impact on my left shoulder made me jerk the trigger of my SIG so that my return shot missed. Blackness edged my vision, and I barely saw the man take an extra step forward, firming his rifle against his shoulder. A hot wetness was pooling in my shirt and my breath hitched in my lungs. So this is it then, I thought, the place I’m going to die?
I pushed the thought aside. I’d reconciled myself to violent and uncompromising death long ago, also resolving that when the time came I wouldn’t lie down and give in to the inevitable.
‘Bastard,’ I snarled as I squeezed my trigger again and again.
The rifleman’s gun flashed, but my hearing had compressed to register only the rush of blood through my veins. He danced a jig, a dark crimson halo puffing around him as my bullets struck repeatedly. I felt the solid thud of his round slam me, and the strength required to pull my trigger fled.
The smell of cordite wafted past, replaced by the coppery tang of spilled blood: whether the gunman’s or mine I couldn’t be sure.
My hearing was still muffled, and a heavy fog descended through my field of vision. Billie clawed herself free of her foxhole, began crawling towards me. I showed her my empty palm. Droplets of blood peppered the back of my hand.
‘Leave me,’ I said. ‘Go back the way we just came. Try to get to the road.’
Perhaps the words were only in my head, or she was more spirited than I’d already thought, because she didn’t run away. She went down on her knees beside me, and I realised I was lying on my back, peering up at her. She’d found my knife. Her hair whipped round her face as she slashed and stabbed in an arc around her, her voice screeching a challenge.
‘I . . . I’m done. Get away before the others come.’
Between killing the rifleman and Billie grabbing my knife, I must have passed out. I’d lost time. There were already men standing around us, pitiless in the way they aimed their guns down at us both.
Billie shrieked something at them, lunging with the knife.
One of the silhouetted figures grabbed her by an elbow and yanked it away. She fought to break loose. Her captor struck her across the face and she slumped. I tried to struggle up, but if anything only my astral form moved, because I wasn’t going anywhere. My arms were numb, as were my legs. My body felt as heavy as a mountainside. Only my eyelids had the ability to move, but even that strength was slipping away.
Someone crouched close by my side. A hand roughly patted me down, checking for other weapons. I’d no idea where my SIG was.
‘So who the hell is this guy?’ a voice asked, the words coming to me as if from a great distance.
‘Doesn’t matter now,’ said another. ‘Finish him, Danny.’
My lids flickering, I tried to face death.
I saw the metallic gleam of a gun barrel.
A flash.
That was all.
2
Days earlier . . .
Billie Womack loved her home. It was a ranch-style, two storeys, with a peaked roof and stone chimney stack at one end and a flower garden out front. A porch ran the length of the front of the house, with a pitched roof to sluice off the frequent rain showers, or for depositing the accumulated snow during the winter months. Beyond the house was an old double-width garage, a reclaimed barn from the days when farming was the primary occupation in the region. In the garage she kept her father’s ancient Chevrolet pick-up truck and her smaller runaround, a VW Jetta SportWagen, as well as a quad bike for when she needed to get around her land on maintenance chores. The house stood on a spit of land above a pebble embankment marking the southern shore of a lake known locally as ‘Baker’s Hole’. A stream plumed from the higher hills to the south of the house, disappeared beneath the access road, then wound a narrow path past her front garden and emptied into the lake. Tree-capped hills dominated the horizon whichever way she looked.
She’d inherited the house and fifteen acres of land on the southern side of the lake years ago, but never tired of standing on her porch viewing the changeable hills as each successive season passed. She recorded the passage of time with the hues of each season, painting them in oils and acrylics, occasionally in the sombre hues of charcoal and pencil when her mood plummeted from longing to regret. She was certain her daughter, Nicola, would have loved her home too, but Nicola was no longer there to appreciate it.
These days her paintings were Billie’s main source of income. She’d earned herself a name in the art world, and occasionally sold her creations to buyers over the Internet, but most she sold to tourists from a boutique gallery she ran in the nearby town of Hill End, Washington State. Her artwork was a reason she’d held on to her dad’s old pick-up, as temperamental a vehicle as it was: carting her easel and paints and all the attached paraphernalia around wasn’t easy in her Jetta, particularly when she went off-road to capture the scenery from a higher vantage point than the lakeside. On occasion she used the back of the pick-up as a platform on which she erected her easel, usually when the ground was thick with snow or boggy from rainfall.
She’d used the pick-up to get to a high point on the western hills, from where she could barely make out the roof and chimney stack of her house in the distance. On most days she’d have had no view of her home but today the weather was clement. Although the sky was pale grey, the clouds were insubstantial and very high. A little of the sun’s heat made it to the valley floor, but it wasn’t warm enough to shed her coat and boots yet. She was painting the undertones on to canvas; readying a landscape view she’d later take indoors and finish by memory in the attic bedroom she’d converted to a studio. It was important that she lay down the basis of the painting, not so much that the detail was exact later on. She took delight in inventing facets of her artwork that did not exist in the real world, and also by leaving out those that did. In that way she could paint the same scene over and over but each would be unique. Her current work showed the rock-strewn shore of Baker’s Hole, the still waters stretching half a mile to an undulating forest. For undertones she was using a sepia palette. But then she dipped her brush in the cadmium red and directed a single vertical stroke near the water’s edge. That was where Nicki would stand in the finished painting. Nicki featured in all her paintings without excepti
on. It was her way of keeping her daughter’s memory alive.
In her paintings Nicki’s features were always left blank. It wasn’t through lack of trying that Billie couldn’t bring to mind her child’s face, and she had no desire to do so wrongly. She had any number of photographs of Nicola, digital and regular, but refused to refer to them for inspiration. The featureless girl had become her trademark and she preferred things to remain like that. She doubted she could have done her daughter’s beauty justice anyway.
She wasn’t maudlin as she applied the red paint to canvas. Nicola had been dead more than four years, the first raw flush of grief behind Billie now. When she thought of her daughter these days it was with a smile, and not the soul-devouring rage that once drove her to slash at the canvas with charcoal.
Finished for now, she stepped back, measuring the proportions of her creation, judging angles and depth, the play of shadow and weak sunlight, and she nodded in something approaching satisfaction. Never full satisfaction, because like all artists she was never confident that her creations were as good as they could be. It would do, she told herself, and washed out her brushes. She loaded her kit in a purpose-built lock-box, and placed it on the back of the pick-up with her collapsed easel. The canvas she set on the passenger seat for safety. After a half-dozen turns of the ignition key the old pick-up started, belching blue smoke. Driving back down the hillside, she took it slowly, and not just because she barely trusted the vehicle to complete the journey; she had no wish for the still-wet canvas to fall against the dashboard and smear.
A narrow track wound between trees, before the woodland opened up to the valley and lake. Birds broke from the tree line, startled to life by the sputtering growl of Billie’s vehicle. The engine noise and the cawing of birdlife carried far across the still waters, before echoing back from the line of hills. Billie part-squinted at each high-pitched call of the birds, sensing that if they continued it would herald the onset of a migraine headache. She had no desire to retire to a darkened room to stave off the pain and nausea, so instead elected to wind up her window and block the shrieks. She urged the pick-up along the road, seeing again her lovely house heave into view. The rise and fall of the road made it impossible to see all of the property in one go, and at first she could only make out the gable, the chimney stack and the garage; then when only a quarter-mile from home she saw something that was out of place.
