The Kill Radius

by Nichole Christoff

  “You’re worried about who you’ll be if the army kicks you to the curb,” I told him. “That desk Durante chained you to? It’s a career-killer and you know it. You’re worried if you don’t prove yourself in the field, you’re done. You’re worried if you don’t collar Eddie Jepson—”

  “Eddie Jepson,” Barrett breathed, “killed Damon Maddox and forty innocent—”

  “Yes, he did, and he needs to answer for it. But he doesn’t need to answer to you, and he doesn’t need to answer to your interrogation-happy gal-pal, April Callahan.”

  “April is not my—”

  “Barrett, you’re working harder on this than everybody else. You’re working for justice, and you’re working for Damon. But you’re also working toward these elaborate plans to lock in some future you’ve got pictured—”

  “What’s wrong with plans, Jamie?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Plans fail, Adam! You’re planning to leave Fort Donovan, to get back to an operational assignment, to have something to offer me, and I’m not ready to have you offer me anything!”

  My fists clenched of their own accord. I felt sick to my stomach. And then I opened my mouth and the truth came out.

  “I’m never going to be ready for a plan like that. Ever.”

  Barrett shook his head like a boxer who’d been hit a little too hard. “Obviously, I shouldn’t have come here tonight.”

  He blew past me, barreled toward the door.

  I didn’t stop him. As far as I was concerned, he was free to go. But when the door swept closed behind him, all my righteous anger and sense of self-preservation left me. Without those, I felt empty. I sank onto the bed, clutched my head in my hands—but only for a moment.

  I stalked to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face.

  “It’ll be fine,” I said, glaring at my reflection in the mirror over the sink. “You’re right. You know you’re right. Adam knows it, too.”

  But I wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

  Chapter 17

  After Barrett stomped from our room in the wee hours of the morning, I didn’t exactly get a solid night’s sleep. Exhausted and all alone in the beautiful king-sized bed, I managed to doze from time to time. But my traitorous memory kept me dreaming about failed love and second chances.

  I woke early, itchy for action. With the morning news of yet more raids pouring across my rental car’s radio, I drove to Ray and Corinne’s house, left the Ford on a nearby side road. On foot, I circled the spot where someone had smashed Marc’s window, but saw no sign that could connect Bran to the vandalism. I tramped through Ray’s yard, too, looking for any indicator that could identify Corinne’s would-be housebreaker. Again, I came up with nothing.

  I’d just returned to my rental car and settled behind the wheel when Bran’s white pickup rumbled across the intersection ahead of me. He swung into Ray’s driveway, coasted to a stop. Bran hopped from his truck and jogged onto the deck. From my parking spot on the side street, I couldn’t see the back of Ray’s house or the French doors, but before I could ease from my car to take a closer look, Bran returned. He climbed into his truck and off he went.

  I followed him at a distance. It being Sunday morning, traffic was light. And light traffic can ruin a tail job. But Bran didn’t speed up. He didn’t turn. He didn’t do anything to suggest he knew I was along for the ride. Maybe he wanted me to follow him. Or maybe he was too busy thinking ahead to take a look behind him.

  In any case, Bran bypassed the street that would carry us into the thick of Beauville. He hung a right onto a ribbon of road that hugged the Back Bay until the waterworks dwindled into a scenic river. Out here, houses were few and far between. Most were twentieth-century construction clustered in developments where sugarcane and cotton once grew. But across from a historic stone mill positioned on the river, Bran turned again.

  As he bumped along a rutted lane, I blew past him, my eyes peeled for a good spot to turn around. The road swung wide and an asphalt driveway shot off from it. But I wasn’t about to turn around there. For one thing, ornate iron gates blocked the mouth of the drive. And for another, the grand mansion, positioned like a jewel on a wide sweep of well-manicured lawn, boasted a front door painted the snazzy green shade of a twenty-dollar bill.

  It was the house Bran had photographed.

  At this late hour of the morning, its western portico was busy with half a dozen disheveled men, and twice as many scantily clad women, climbing into a long line of limousines.

  Farther on, with only the river as witness, I executed a three-point turn in the middle of the roadway, returned to the track Bran had taken. Its rough terrain gave the Ford Focus’s shocks quite a workout. I could’ve made better progress with a donkey cart.

  Across a culvert wide enough to accommodate a tractor, I spotted an abandoned outbuilding of some sort decomposing on the far side of a deep storm ditch. The rusted-out roof sloped at a precarious angle and kudzu had claimed the rest of the lean-to, but it was here and it was handy. I backed my car into the little shed, cut the engine, and took to my heels.

  Another ditch and a sparse hedge shielded the lane from the ritzy property next door. I stuck to the ridges between the ruts, not daring to set foot in either ditch’s tall grass. This far south, wet and wild places were the perfect habitat for poisonous snakes and other critters, and I sure didn’t want to meet one of them on this particular Sunday morning.

  After a quarter mile or so, I came across Bran’s truck. He’d parked it with the grill pointed down the lane as if he wanted to be ready to make a quick getaway. Bran, however, wasn’t in the truck.

  But I didn’t have to look very far to find him.

  Like a watchman’s lantern, a weathered, two-story structure leaned toward the hedge. Built with wide gaps in its vertical siding, it had to be a tobacco barn. The gaps encouraged air to circulate around racks of drying tobacco leaves—and enabled anyone inside to see out.

  Cautiously, I ducked through the narrow door and was instantly met by the rich, heady scent of nicotine and tar. In this season, the drying racks—row after row of long, thin poles—were bare. The building carried an aura of desertion. Until the floor above me creaked. Through the slats, light shifted.

  Bran’s up there.

  Against the wall, a set of skinny stairs reached for the second floor. Carefully, I crept up them and peeked over the edge of the upper floor. In front of the barn’s wide bale door, Bran crouched behind an old rain barrel, elbows propped on its lid. His digital camera whirred and purred as he snapped shots of the mansion with the green entrance. And of whatever was going on over there.

  I didn’t move. I didn’t even breathe. If Bran turned and saw me—and if he took violent exception to my presence—there’d be no help for me out here in the sticks.

  But the sound of hard-soled shoes rasping on the grit outside meant I couldn’t stay on the staircase forever. I scuttled up the remaining steps and squeezed behind an abandoned Welsh dresser, a moldy steamer trunk, a jumble of antique garden tools, and a pile of dilapidated farm equipment that would have taken a team of mules to operate. Bran didn’t hear me. He didn’t even look over his shoulder. So he didn’t see the two goons join us on the second floor.

  Neither one of them had been the runt of his litter. Both men were thick with muscle and they sported identical sneers, just like junior high bullies. They were dressed nicely in golf shirts and windbreakers, but I got the sense this was a kind of uniform for them. They were professional enforcers. And they happily hurt people for a living.

  “Well, lookey what we have here,” one of them said to the other. The man must’ve used a gallon of gel that morning to freeze his hair into a hundred miniature spikes. As a result, the top of his head looked like a buzz cut gone ballistic. “Mr. Nevis don’t take kindly to field rats making a mess of his place. What should we do with this field rat, Vern?”

  Bran pivoted slowly,
as if he hadn’t been caught off guard at all, and positioned his hip to hide the camera he’d left atop the barrel.

  Vern, the larger of the two men, put his hands together and cracked his meaty knuckles.

  Spikes said, “You’re in the wrong place, rat.”

  Bran turned on the boyish charm. “Guess I’ll be movin’ along then.”

  “Wrong again.”

  Bran glanced at the bale door. I hadn’t had the pleasure of standing at its edge, but I bet it was a twelve-foot drop from its threshold to the barnyard below. Still, using that exit had to be more attractive than going through Vern and Spikes.

  Surreptitiously, Bran scooped up his camera, kept it hidden behind his back. He eased to the opening, but something on the ground below stopped him. He froze and frowned.

  “That’s Ox down there,” Spikes said. “He don’t like field rats any more than we do.”

  Bran said, “Look, fellas. My newspaper just wanted a little dirt on that movie star that comes out here every weekend, but we can make a deal. I’ll forget the story and my editor will pay you to forget about me.”

  That was a lie, of course. But it wasn’t a bad one. Unfortunately, Spikes didn’t buy it.

  “Toss me your keys,” he said.

  “They’re in the truck,” Bran replied, and I hoped that was a lie, too.

  “Toss me your camera.”

  From my vantage point, I saw Bran’s fingers, clutching the camera, flex. He didn’t want to give it up. And that told me he had something good recorded on the device’s data card.

  “Come on,” Spikes said. “I don’t got all day. Toss me your camera.”

  “All right.”

  But instead of tossing it, Bran threw the thing like a Major League pitcher sending a strike across home plate. Spikes batted the device away before it could slam into his face. Bran cut left and bolted for the stairs, but Vern planted himself in the way.

  The camera hit the rough floorboards, tumbled across the uneven surface, and broke into a dozen pieces just two feet from my hiding place. Peeping past the Welsh dresser, I could see the card slot in the camera’s carcass. The little blue data card appeared to be beautifully intact.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Spikes told Bran. “It wasn’t very smart, either. Get ’im, Vern.”

  Vern flicked his wrist. A black, stainless-steel baton slipped from his coat sleeve and into his palm. He flicked his wrist again. The baton extended like a telescope. A cruel knot capped the narrow end.

  In principle, I wasn’t opposed to watching a guy like Bran Laurent get the wind knocked out of him, especially if he deserved it. But Vern wasn’t going to merely tap Bran on the noggin. He was going to kill him.

  Vern’s baton whistled through the air as he swung for Bran’s center mass. Like a cat, Bran leapt away. But Vern kept on coming.

  The baton whirred with Vern’s backhand stroke. And at the end of the move, he let the momentum carry him into a change of direction. He whipped the baton into an uppercut. The flexible shaft bowed. Its nasty end caught Bran under the chin, broke the skin, and threw him onto his back on the planks.

  Desperate to get away, Bran rolled across the dusty floor. The baton slammed down, exactly where Bran’s head had been a moment before. And Vern let loose with a high-pitched giggle that sent a cold frisson racing down my spine.

  “Get ’im!” Spikes hollered. “Get that rat!”

  Instantly, a collapsible baton appeared in Spikes’s hand, too. He circled past the loft door. But I couldn’t let him reach Bran.

  I burst from behind the Welsh dresser, snatched up a long-handled rake from the tangle of farm tools piled against the trunk. Its wooden handle was brittle, but its blocky head was still studded with pecan-wood teeth as thick as a dinosaur’s. With a shout, I charged at Spikes. His baton sliced the air as he lashed out at me. But I didn’t turn tail.

  I butted him in the chest with the head of the rake, threw all my strength into plowing him backward. Spikes staggered a step as he whipped his baton from side to side. But he couldn’t reach me. Not with the long handle of the rake between us.

  I had him off balance. I pressed my advantage. I shoved him to the edge of the bale door. There, gravity did the rest. Spikes plummeted from the tobacco barn.

  I rounded on Vern. He and the steel whip of his baton had Bran pinned to the crux of the wall. I hooked the rake head around Vern’s ankle, jerked his foot out from under him. He was a big boy and heavy. The barn shook as he hit the floor—but he still clutched his baton in his grasp.

  Without a second thought, I stomped on his wrist and stayed there. Vern’s yell could’ve raised the dead. Bran bounded to his feet. He pried the baton from Vern’s weakened fingers. He kicked him in the ribs until Vern curled into a ball.

  “Let’s go!” I ordered Bran.

  Ox would’ve seen Spikes sailing from the barn’s loft. One or both of them would be charging up the stairs at any moment. And chances were, they’d have reinforcements with them when they did.

  Bran led the way down the staircase. I snatched up the body of the camera before hammering after him, shoved it into my jacket pocket. We dashed outside into the weak winter sunlight.

  Bran’s white Toyota Tundra was a ball of flame. Thick black smoke rose from it in a dense column. Up the lane, past the horizon line, an engine roared.

  It had to be the second wave, coming to finish what Spikes and Vern had started.

  “This way!” I told Bran.

  We ran flat out for the main road, kicking up dust in our hurry. The growl of the engine grew louder. I took a chance, glanced back the way we’d come.

  A black Hummer with tinted windows the shade of midnight skidded to a stop outside the barn. Vern limped from the outbuilding, cradling his side. I saw no sign of Spikes.

  Maybe he hadn’t survived the fall.

  Vern shouted at the Hummer’s driver, pointed at Bran and me. The passenger’s window slid down smoothly. And the long barrel of a rifle emerged.

  Crack!

  I leapt into the deep ditch that paralleled the right side of the lane as the first bullet whizzed past my head. Bran splashed down next to me. Together, we slogged through ankle-deep rainwater at a crouching run.

  Over my shoulder, I heard the crunch of heavy tires on sand. The men and their rifle would be on us in an instant. And trapped in the ditch, we’d be easy targets, like fish in a barrel.

  But the slanting roofline of the old, dilapidated outbuilding concealing my car angled above the opposite bank. In simple words, I told Bran what we had to do. He didn’t hesitate.

  Bran scurried up the steep embankment as our pursuers appeared on the berm behind us.

  “There they are!” a man yelled.

  I threw myself onto the sharp rise. The bank was muddy and my boot slipped. Falling onto one knee, I clawed at the weeds, willed myself upward. The muck pulled me down. And from the edge of the roadway, the rifleman opened fire.

  Crack!

  Every muscle in my body tensed, anticipating the shot right between my shoulder blades. When the bullet didn’t slam into my spine, I scrambled, but my feet couldn’t find purchase. Another round split the air.

  Crack!

  They’re shooting at Bran, I realized.

  And after they killed him, they’d kill me.

  Still, I was stuck in the ditch. I snatched at roots, rocks, anything and everything that could give me a leg up on the steep embankment, but nothing helped. Nothing—until a hand grasped my wrist. I looked up. Bran lay flat on the bank above. He’d reached low for me, clutched my arm with determination.

  Crack!

  Bran flinched and so did I. But he didn’t desert me. He dragged me from the ditch. On all fours, we scuttled for the cover of the cowshed. As I dove behind it, a bullet pierced the planking beside my ear.

  Chapter 18

  Bran and I threw ourselves into my rental car. I cranked the engine, hit the gas. The Ford shuddered as we rocketed from the outbuilding
, rumbled over the culvert and the ruts in the lane. At my elbow, the rearview mirror shattered. The rifleman had finally found a target, but since it wasn’t my head, I wasn’t going to complain about it.

  I took the turn onto the main road’s asphalt too fast. The car fishtailed, but it kept on going. And as I pushed the pedal to the metal, I dared to glance through the rear window at the men who meant to kill us.

  They’d followed us to the cowshed on foot, thinking they had us cornered. Now, they scrambled to climb into their SUV, but it was too little too late. Bran and I were already burning up the roadway.

  “Do they know you?” I demanded.

  “You mean will they show up at my apartment?” Bran countered. “They won’t. They don’t know me, and they don’t know I’m in with Ray, either.”

  “They’d better not.”

  Bran said nothing more. Neither did I. He flipped his visor down and took a look at his bloody chin. The front of his shirt was red with the stuff. He used his cuff to stop the flow.

  “Do you need me to drive you to the ER?”

  “I’ve got a good first aid kit at my place,” he said, “but thanks for asking.”

  I shrugged. Bran had taken quite the hit from Vern’s baton, and I would’ve been surprised if he didn’t need stitches. But I didn’t want him to think I’d gone soft and had begun caring about his condition or anything—even though I had. I drove directly to his apartment. And because I didn’t believe in taking chances, I pulled off the street and parked in the alley behind his building where any goons cruising the avenue would have a hard time spotting my car.

  “Come on up,” Bran said. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

  Though it was only a little past noon on a Sunday, I wasn’t opposed to accepting an alcoholic beverage. I followed Bran upstairs. His apartment was just as tidy as it had been when I’d searched it the day before.

  “Have a seat,” he said, and I did so, lighting on the edge of his sofa with my hands thrust deep into my blazer pockets.