Sin And Vengeance

by West, CJ

  Just then, a figure emerged from the shadows as if he chose his timing to contradict Charles. He materialized several feet inside the door with a shiny handgun hanging down from his right hand. Charlie’s mouth was agape when he saw who it was.

  Charles continued his search among the fermenters.

  “I’m over here, Charles.”

  Shoes scuffed the concrete as Charles stopped short. The shotgun popped up, aimed in the direction of the voice. He inched to his left then went cold when he saw the close-cropped black hair.

  The problems with the workers made sense now. Sebastian had scared them away so no one was here to interfere.

  “What are you doing here, Sebastian?” Charles asked.

  “Collecting on an old debt.” He raised the gun toward Charlie’s chest and stepped back half a step to put a huge stainless steel tank between himself and the shotgun. “Now put down the shotgun, or I’ll have to shoot little Charlie here.”

  Charles angled three steps closer to Charlie, bringing Sebastian back into the line of fire.

  “No closer, tough guy. Put the shotgun down.”

  Charles held the gun firmly against his shoulder, the barrel aligned somewhere on Sebastian’s torso.

  Sebastian clicked the hammer back. “Listen, shit head, I’m done playing. Put down the gun, or I put two in the boy.”

  Charles didn’t move.

  Charlie was caught in the center of the floor with no place to take cover. The case in his hands might stop a bullet if he knew where it was aimed. He waited, watching the black hole in the muzzle, defenseless against the semi-automatic at this range. His best hope for protection was waffling a dozen feet to his right.

  “You think that bird shot will kill me from this range?” Sebastian took his eyes off Charlie long enough to snicker at Charles. “You might knock me down after I kill the kid, but then, it’s me and you.”

  Charles reluctantly lowered the gun.

  “On the floor,” Sebastian ordered.

  Charles complied slowly, seeming unsure even after the gun settled on the concrete. “Why are you doing this?” he asked as he straightened up.

  “You have a lot of balls! But I guess if you knew how much I hated you, you never would have hired me, would you?” Sebastian turned his attention to Charlie. “Walk toward me and set down the case, Junior.”

  Charlie took four short steps and placed the case in the middle of the floor. Sebastian waved the gun and Charlie moved back to join his father. “Do you remember my father, Charles?”

  “Of course. An excellent winemaker as I recall. That’s why I hired you.”

  “That’s funny. He never got a decent job after you finished with him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You destroyed him, you asshole!” The gun trembled in Sebastian’s hand.

  Charles quivered as well. “The scandal would never have blown over otherwise. I had to make a change. He knew it was nothing personal.”

  “It was your scandal, your problem. Ruining my father gave you an easy out and you took it.”

  “I did nothing of the sort. I gave him plenty of severance to carry him until he got another job.”

  “How could he after what you did to him?”

  “I never said a word…”

  “Come on! No one believed Roger Joyet doctored his own wine. Who do you think people blamed? Winemaking is a tight little club. No one would hire my father. We had to move to California and he never did better than assistant out there.”

  The realization finally hit Charles.

  Sebastian picked up the case. “I told your son what you did and he didn’t seem all that surprised. Some example of fatherhood you are.”

  Sebastian turned quickly to locate the door.

  Charles inched toward the shotgun when he did. “What are you two going to do with all that money?” he said to cover his footsteps.

  “The money’s mine. Oliver gets you and your family.” Sebastian lowered the gun. “Don’t try following me. Open this door and I’ll shoot you.” Sebastian turned his back and walked away.

  On the second step, Charles picked up the shotgun and in one swift motion, shouldered it, located the bead somewhere on Sebastian and fired. The plastic wad flew out of the gun and fluttered past Sebastian’s head. No pellets hit him or the door. Charles fired again, unleashing a deafening boom inside the barn.

  Sebastian calmly set the case down just inside the threshold and wheeled around toward the tower of oak barrels. He aimed up toward the rafters and snapped off a shot. Wood splintered and a spout of white liquid cascaded down twenty feet and splashed on the concrete floor.

  “Now that’s what happens when your gun is actually loaded.”

  Sebastian stepped closer and locked eyes with Charlie.

  “See what a piece of shit your father is? So fucking predictable. I turn my back and he shoots me like the coward he is.”

  Sebastian shifted his ire to Charles and aimed the gun somewhere in the middle of his face. “Do you really think we’d leave you live bullets? We’ve had three months to comb through that house and I’m going to leave live bullets in the fucking gun cabinet. What kind of fool do you think I am?”

  The shotgun clanked to the floor.

  Charles stood rigid.

  Shocked and utterly defenseless, Charlie faced the muzzle of Sebastian’s .45.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Sebastian peered down the sights at Charles, aligning certain death somewhere on his chest. Charlie stood beside his father in the center of the fermentation room, too lame to rush him and too far from cover to make a break. Sebastian held the .45 steady until his arm shook. He wanted to shoot, but his finger never entered the trigger guard. Sebastian was waiting for something.

  Where’s Oliver? Charlie wondered.

  Surely he wouldn’t leave their execution to his partner. Not unless he was watching or recording it on video tape. Charlie turned away from Sebastian and scanned the room. Everything was in place: the fermenters, the oak barrels, the loft and the dark cellar behind. It was then that Charlie realized exactly where Oliver was: with the women. Oliver’s flirting with Elizabeth drove Charlie mad. He called her his prize. Attacking her was the best way to repay father and son at the same time. A morbid satisfaction struck: Sebastian wasn’t allowed to shoot them, not yet.

  Suddenly impatient in spite of the gun, Charlie wheeled around for an escape.

  Sebastian pulled a small black box from his pocket and pushed a button. A hum instantly surrounded them, but there had been no electricity a moment before. Batteries, he was using batteries, but for what?

  As if in answer to his unspoken question, sawdust floated down from the loft like a heavy snow. Fine particles billowed in from the office. The cellar was choked with a cloud that seemed to materialize from the stacks of bottles. Now, Charlie wished he’d checked the aging sparkling more carefully before coming in.

  Oliver planned to blow the barn and the air was getting thicker by the second.

  Charlie spun toward footsteps in time to see Sebastian run out the door.

  They needed to get out. The cellar door was a deathtrap. An explosion would catch them long before they reached the warehouse. The office door led directly to Oliver and more likely than not, he’d have a gun trained there.

  Charlie took a hurried step toward the door Sebastian used, but stopped when the door swung back open. Sebastian appeared with a red can in one hand, the gun in the other. Without a word, he splashed a gallon of gas on the concrete. Father and son both jumped back from the spreading puddle. Charlie frantically wheeled for another exit. Charles stepped back and watched, confused by the combination of gasoline and sawdust. Sebastian backed out the door pouring a trickle of fluid behind him to form a long liquid fuse.

  Charles seemed dazed when Charlie grabbed a handful of his shirt and yanked him sideways toward the loading dock.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  Charles stumbled backward lamely. “Wh
at?”

  Charlie was instantly three steps ahead and barely slowed to shout over his shoulder, “It’s going to blow.”

  Charles hobbled to the door severely favoring his leg while his son forgot his injury and sprinted outside, ran forty yards downhill, and dove over the stone wall. Charles stopped on the grass, thirty feet from the barn.

  The first wave of the explosion ripped through the fermentation room, blowing out the gable vents and knocking Charles head-first down the slope. The flames ripped through the cellar, building pressure until they burst through the windows of the bottling room and erupted into the warehouse. The two-hundred-foot barn blazed from one end to the other, the explosion-shattered bottles spilled thousands of gallons of wine to cook in pools on the warehouse floor. The boxes and pallets burned until they could no longer support their own weight. Entire stacks crashed to the floor, engulfed in flames.

  A river of wine gushed from a cracked stainless steel tank.

  Charlie watched the wine flood down from the loading dock, a foaming river making its way across the white shells and down toward the grass. If they had made red wine here, it would have seemed the fulfillment of Oliver’s favorite prophecy: the Lord’s great winepress squeezing the unworthy, covering the fields with their blood.

  Charlie hiked up the slope to his father. As he reached him, tires screeched in the distance. The Buick sped away carrying Sebastian and his money.

  Charles tried to stand, but dropped back to the ground. Charlie wasn’t sure which pained his father more, his bleeding calf or the millions he lost as the barn was devoured by flames.

  Charlie stood over his father. “We’ve got to go.”

  Charles lay on his side, clutching his leg. “I can’t get up.”

  “Suck it up. Let’s go.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I can’t walk.”

  “We left mom and Deirdre alone.”

  Charles surged up on his good leg.

  “He has to be in there with them,” Charlie said.

  Oliver had planned this moment for fifteen years. He knew the explosion would bring help and he wouldn’t waste the precious little time he had left.

  The two men split up. Charles took the shorter path along the stone wall. Charlie circled around the blazing barn. From there, he’d head up into the trees and approach the front door from above the parking area. With luck, they’d converge on Oliver simultaneously from front and back.

  Chapter Fifty

  The wind-lapped flames blindly raged for oxygen and fuel, stretching ten feet from the barn in every direction. Blowing waves of heat lashed out further still, forcing Charlie off the crushed shells for the safety of the grass. His knee swelled and stiffened as he hiked upward, his body demanding payment for the ill-advised run to the stone wall. He teetered past the gift shop and angled across the parking lot, using the blazing barn to hide himself from Oliver. The trees would cover him as he looped around toward the house. With any luck, Oliver wouldn’t see him until he stepped inside, but he told himself Oliver had planned too thoroughly to be taken unaware.

  Charlie plodded ahead. Each halting step took him further from his destination; another painful step he’d have to make up once he reached the trees. Step after detoured step meant he’d be a little later for his rendezvous with his father and a little weaker when he got there.

  The pain was excruciating. If there were nerve endings among the damaged bones and menisci, they would have been ground raw long ago. At times, he felt the joint lock, bone on bone and then his knee refused to flex for several steps as if the bones were welded together at some random angle. When the joint started working again, his lower leg felt like a sword, stabbing upward, penetrating deeper every time he loaded his right side.

  He’d shunned the knee replacement two years ago, but now the option seemed terribly attractive, no matter how painful the procedure or the recovery. His football career was beyond resurrection and he realized that having the surgery wasn’t giving up. Choosing surgery was facing reality, preparing to live the next forty years as a winemaker. He promised himself he’d have the operation if he survived the day.

  He slithered in among the bushes and, once hidden, began angling toward the house. Impenetrable underbrush rose up to meet him, repeatedly forcing him to change direction. Wrestling head-high tangles of green briars that snagged him at every step, he battled his way forward, around, and under; the clearest path taking him deeper and deeper into the woods. Blinded by greenery, he might have lost his way had it not been for the sound of roaring flames consuming the barn.

  Twenty yards in, he reached a stand of tall pines that blotted out the sunlight and choked out most of the undergrowth. Unencumbered, he moved quickly through immature pines with their soft flexible branches until finally, he pushed aside a small white pine and stepped onto a well-worn path.

  This was no game trail, but a walking path that originated somewhere in the forest and paralleled the Marstons’ driveway. The trail was deep enough in the woods to conceal him from view, yet shallow enough so he could glimpse his parents’ house through gaps in the trees. Charlie steadily limped along until the trail petered out somewhere above the house. Before he started down, he spotted several new-looking beer cans alongside a brush pile. He ventured closer. The mound of brush appeared more and more organized until he stood a few feet behind Oliver’s surveillance post, complete with mosquito netting and a stack of electronic gadgets, including a security monitor.

  Charlie collapsed to the ground. He could see the angle of the shots Oliver fired at them when they had tried to escape. There were other shots, easier shots, he hadn’t taken. Their little group had been in his sights as they descended from the deck to the stone wall and he’d let them go. Charlie’s position by the tree was clearly visible. Oliver had also had unobstructed shots at Deirdre and Elizabeth at the base of the wall. Of course, he wasn’t trying to kill them, not then. But things were different now. This was the end. The barn was burning and the police would soon be on their way. Oliver might take those same shots now.

  The monitor flicked and Elizabeth came into view. Her back was to the camera with one hand duct-taped to each bedpost. She wasn’t struggling to free herself. Charlie guessed Oliver was somewhere in the room. Deirdre wasn’t visible on the monitor, nor was his father, who should be just below the house by now.

  The screen flicked to black, a camera Deirdre and Elizabeth had found. He waited. The screen flicked to the kitchen then the living room and on to the smashed greenhouse. When the original picture returned, Charlie recognized the furniture: the guestroom, just off the second floor landing.

  He searched the shelter for a weapon. Finding none, he pulled himself up and hurried off to meet his father.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  An arcing puzzle of windows dominated the west wall of the Marstons’ bedroom and when the curtains were pulled back, they could see the sunset over forty acres of vines without leaving their bed. Oliver remembered walking into this room as a boy. His parents had it arranged the same way, down to the stuffed burgundy chair he sat in now. The chair had been his before he sold it to the Marstons with the rest of the winery. He’d been young, overwhelmed by his change in circumstances and he never realized how much they’d taken from him. The chair was quite comfortable and it reminded him of his parents, but he had no need for it then or now.

  He watched Charlie burst out of the barn and teeter down the hill with a loping gait, powering as he pushed off with his good leg and gingerly favoring his bad knee on the alternate step. However awkward he looked, he managed good speed all the way to the stone wall. The blowing sawdust had had just the right effect. Oliver wondered if Charlie sensed the irony as he lay face down behind the wall. He’d shown Oliver such an exquisite way to pump him full of adrenalin and incinerate his father’s ill-gotten wealth at the same time. The scare would prime them both for what he planned next.

  If Charles were an actor running away from a building about to expl
ode, he would have been wholly unconvincing. He labored off the gravel and a few feet down the grassy slope, more intent on his injuries than the crisis unfurling behind him. His lethargy showed an utter disregard for the force pent up in the barn.

  Perfect!

  Riveted with anticipation, Oliver leaned forward, his eyes fixed on Charles.

  He hoped to score a hit with a few fragments of glass or maybe a loose board. The evil robber baron was about to experience the awesome power those tiny particles released when interspersed with just the right amount of air and a spark. Charles’ skepticism wasn’t surprising. Oliver himself had to be convinced by the blast in Piolenc. This would be a fitting end! Just like the trace amounts of propylene glycol that destroyed Oliver’s family, the tiny particles would decimate the winery and send Charles and Charlie running to meet their fate.

  Oliver jumped to his feet as the blast knocked Charles headlong down the slope. He screamed out loud as flames engulfed the barn. The truckload of sawdust set off a blast ten times the size of the explosion in Piolenc. He wished he had his binoculars to see Charles’ anguish up close. Everything inside the barn had to be obliterated; several years of production, cooked. Oliver could almost feel the bottles fall to the cement floor and smash; hear the paint sizzle off the equipment; an excellent beginning to the end of Marston Vineyards.

  Of all the things the Marstons could have done next, Oliver was thrilled with the scenario they chose. Rather than rush over and burst in together, they split up to approach from opposite sides. The dutiful son took the longer route around the barn and through the woods. Charles headed straight along the wall to the back door. Perfect! Charles would arrive well ahead of Charlie, leaving time to deal with father and son individually.