“Okay.”
“Ready?”
“Okay. Yes.”
Darren smiled and nodded his head. He started crawling forward through the doorway. His feet disappeared around the corner, and Issabella started to follow after him, her whole body trembling with the sort of uncontrollable shivers she’d get as a kid standing at the bus stop in January, freezing and miserable in the early morning darkness. She ignored the faltering trembles and kept on, poking her head into the oven room.
Patrick Two-Leaf was sprawled in an awkward heap on the floor, a pool of blood seeping and expanding around him. Issabella closed her eyes against the sight and fought the creeping dread it summoned inside her. Part of her wanted to remain rooted exactly where she was, to keep her eyes shut and just refuse to participate in reality until reality changed back to something that wasn’t a nightmare.
Instead, she scolded herself and put another hand forward, intent on following Darren into the room and out of the building. Reality would change, she knew-- but only if she forced it to. Resolute, she forced her eyes open and inched further into the room.
A second gunshot erupted through the room, shattering her calm, and Issabella screamed.
*
The Indian was dead.
Through the scope, Allen calmly examined the scene inside the crematorium. He noted the hole in the wall where his bullet had buried itself. There was a small spattering of blood surrounding the hole, carried along with the furious momentum of the bullet. The Indian himself was hidden from view, below the windows. Allen scanned, breathing slow and steady, his mind uncluttered and serene.
There, along the shiny-smooth face of a crematory oven. A spray of blood dripped and ran down the machine, and mingled within it were sharp little fragments of bone and bits of brain matter.
Allen smiled with fierce satisfaction at the confirmation.
‘Bingo. Good-bye, Johnny Two Leaf. See you in the Happy Hunting Grounds, chief.’
Allen wasted no more time in celebration. Remaining in the air between the scope and interior of the crematorium, he drifted with the meager wind and kept all of his attention fixed on what he could see inside. He shifted seamlessly from confirming the Indian’s death, into an internal game of predicting what the still-living would do now that they knew a killing presence was upon them.
In the desert, this had been the most important aspect of missions. The first trigger pull was, really, a sort of freebie. After that, the game became anticipation and patience. Where would the other targets go? And how long would they just freeze in fear and remain crouched away and hidden? This was the hunt. This was the real thrill—the glee of knowing that he was implacable, inevitable death. Human minds below him were bent on evasion and escape. His sole reason for existence was reduced to the simple act of revealing the truth to those panicked souls: they were already chosen for removal, and this was a fate they could not outwit.
There was a closed door along the back wall of the room. Allen settled on a pattern of watching. He would watch the door, then drift to the right and scan the corner of the building where the main entrance would disgorge anyone who tried to crawl out to the vehicles parked outside. Those were the only escape routes he could see from where he was, so he patrolled them both with equal attention.
When he spied movement in the corner of the room-- nothing more distinct than the shifting of shadows near the closed door --Allen’s strategy solidified. He would shepherd the living into the open.
The movement continued, inching closer to the door.
‘There is a dark and hungry God above. And I am his hand upon the earth.’
Allen pulled the trigger a second time.
The movement stopped and a woman’s scream leapt like a shrill alarm out of the building. Allen blinked and pulled himself out of the air, back into himself. He raised his head up, away from the scope. The serenity inside him evaporated and his face bent into a dark, contemplative frown.
There was no question that the scream had been a woman’s. He’d heard enough wailing in his work to recognize the terrible, plaintive sound of female sorrow.
Tumblers fell into place in Allen’s mind, and he came to a swift conclusion. The blond FBI agent wasn’t in the building down below. No, the Indian had been ferreted out and contacted by the lawyers. That scream was from the woman he’d seen in the hospital, the young, good-looking girl who’d been in Vernon’s room with the other lawyer.
Killing Vernon hadn’t been enough to send them off looking for some other big money case. They’d stuck with it and filed a lawsuit to bring the missing heroin to light. And now they were cowering around a dead Indian they’d planned on putting on a witness stand in order to sing to the world what a monster Allen Phelps was.
He remained frozen for several seconds, contemplating his options in light of his new assessment of reality. The two lawyers wouldn’t have guns. They wouldn’t be trained like the FBI agent. They were just two terrified civilians trapped inside a cement box.
Allen laughed softly at the situation as he saw it. He stood up straight and stretched like a cat among the trees. He pulled the Glock from its holster and descended down the slope.
*
Issabella kicked shut the utility closet’s door once she had crawled through, despite the overwhelming urge to just fall apart. Tears leapt into her eyes, swelling and running down her face. She shifted on her hands and knees and looked into the little closet’s dim interior.
Darren had been shot.
He had been halfway into the closet, pausing to look back and make sure she was still with him. He’d managed a reassuring smile and nod.
“You’re doing great, Izzy.”
Then the second thunderclap of gun fire erupted through the room. Darren pitched forward and down, a weak groan rustling out of him. Panic had seized hold of her and she only dimly registered that she was screaming. He was limp and quiet for a second, and Issabella was as certain as she had ever been of anything that Darren was dead.
But then his shoes moved, and his legs, drawing up, pushing against the floor. Noiselessly, Darren scuffed and slid himself the rest of the way into the closet.
In the unlit interior of the closet, Issabella couldn’t make out his features. He was a dark mass on the floor. She put her hands forward, feeling, and touched his legs. She squeezed them, reassuring herself that he was there and alive.
“Izzy.” His voice was weak and haggard.
A sob wrenched out of her.
“Baby, get out the window,” he whispered. “Don’t stop now. Get out the window right now.”
“Darren…”
“Now,” he hissed. “Get out of here.”
Above them both, the window was a rectangle of light, high enough on the wall that it only illuminated the upper-half of the shelves lining the walls and the cleaning supplies stacked on them. She saw that window was already partially open, the sort that can be pushed outward from the bottom and propped that way with a little metal rod.
Issabella stared at the window. She saw herself using the wall shelving to boost herself far enough up, then belly-sliding through and landing in a heap outside. She saw herself plunging into the woods, sprinting, stumbling and wild-eyed.
She saw Darren in the darkness, alone and wounded.
“I’m not going anywhere, Darren.”
She heard her voice and the words she said as if she were a third spectator in the room. A resolve had filled her in that moment when she saw herself running away from the building.
Crouching over Darren in the gloom and dread of that moment, Issabella’s personal storm—the veil of panic that seemed forever to lurk just on the horizon --evaporated. It was gone, blown far away from her as she made one singular realization about herself.
She would not leave her friend to die alone.
He started to protest, but she had found his face and she cupped his cheeks in her hands as she kissed him and silenced his demand that she run. His lips were cold
and dry and she could feel how weak he was in the trembling that ran from him, into her cradling hands.
“I can’t…” His voice was frighteningly weak, trailing away.
“Darren?”
“Izzy…I can’t live with another death. Not you. You have to…”
“Shhh. We’re okay. Don’t worry.”
She held his head against her, and folded herself in a protective arc above him. She wanted to scream. She wanted to fall apart and break into a million pieces.
But in the darkness, holding him close to her, she wasn’t crying anymore. She wasn’t panicking.
She was thinking.
*
Allen kicked the door to the crematorium open, the Glock held out straight in front of him. He dipped to the side and kept the weapon leveled at the room. Inside, nothing moved.
He remained crouched and training the pistol across the interior of the oven-room for several seconds. The Indian was floating in his own blood in the center of the floor. On the far end, Allen could see a doorway that lead into another room, and the corner of what looked like a British flag.
He moved in. The Glock trained left and right and in seconds Allen had cleared the entirety of the room. Ignoring the corpse of Patrick Two Leaf, he continued on in a methodical and practiced fashion, into the office.
He stared at the pyramid of heroin atop the desk and smiled bleakly. A life-time of mojitos and cabana-girls was assembled there in little brown bricks. Once he added it to the heroin and cash he already had in the trunk of his car, Allen would never have to worry about financing again. There were men in Toronto—the same men who were likely wondering right now where their Marquette supply was, and who had it –who would transform the heroin into cash.
‘It ain’t over, Al. One more little bit of dirty business before you can cash in and fade out, brother.’
That last bit of dirty business involved the blood trail Allen had spotted in the oven-room. It began a foot in front of the closed door he had spied from his sniper’s position and continued across the floor, disappearing under the door.
He stepped back out into the oven-room and regarded the closed door with a feverish, wild anticipation. One of the lawyers, at least, was inside there. Maybe both, he couldn’t be certain. Even if both of them had trekked up here to get the Indian to turn witness, one of them was shot and likely dying. The other would be a panicked, useless mess.
Relishing the fear he knew was filling the room on the other side of the door, Allen strolled up and put his hand on the knob. He raised the Glock in front of him and yanked the door open.
“Whoop whoop,” Allen laughed, and pointed the Glock at the bleeding smart-ass lawyer who was sprawled out on the floor at his feet. He aimed at the man’s forehead. “Here’s my objection, counselor--”
A rush of motion appeared on his left, from around the corner of the door. He saw the woman’s intense, focused expression. He saw something in her hands, bearing down on him-- a bucket, blue and foamy liquid splashing out, filling his vision.
Allen screamed as a gallon of haphazardly-mixed industrial cleaning agents poured over his face and into his eyes. He went blind and lurched backwards, instinctively spinning away from the burning agony that ignited in his eyes and nose.
He raised his hands and scrubbed at his eyes. The Glock fell to the floor, and he was stumbling away. The agony of the chemicals burning into his eyes was like nothing he had ever experienced. Even so, a part of him knew that he was prone. He had dropped his weapon and there was a live hostile in the room.
Allen shrieked in pain and outrage. He forced his eyes open and ran in a shambling gait toward the blurry rectangle of light that lead outside. He bolted into the trees surrounding the crematorium, crashing through the brush and howling with pain-fueled rage.
TWENTY
Malcolm heard the gunshots. They originated not so far from Allen’s car, he knew, down in the trees on the north side of the road. For a moment, he wondered if he had been cheated of his revenge. He let the distressing notion drift away in the air, becoming as faint as the echoing reports of gun fire.
He was not an expert in firearms. Even so, he had enough experience with them to know that the twin shots were from a high caliber weapon. No, Allen was not dead. Allen was firing the sniper rifle Malcolm had watched the man retrieve from his trunk.
Malcolm had been circling. Allen was a dangerous man, more dangerous than most. Armed with a weapon like that, Malcolm had no intention of following straight after him and rushing into a volatile confrontation.
He circled in a wide arc around Allen’s position on the rise. Once Allen was out of sight, Malcolm forgot him and scrutinized the land all around. It was a woods that rose and fell dramatically. As he walked, Malcolm noted that the concrete building was in a basin, surrounded by steeply sloping earth.
He began to imagine how he might attack Allen Phelps. He pictured himself approaching from behind, carefully, as Allen was prone and blind to everything except what he could see through his scope.
He imagined Allen hearing him. A twig might snap beneath his shoe. Or the crunch of leaves. Something, betraying his approach. He saw Allen flipping himself over and producing a handgun. Saw himself dying as Allen emptied a full clip of bullets into him.
Malcolm frowned. It was all too easy to envision. He needed the man boxed in, his possible actions circumscribed, his deadliness stifled. This wilderness was an ideal place to leave Allen’s dead body, but it was not ideal for the initial task of killing him.
He settled on continuing to follow Allen. Eventually, the man would present himself in an opportune spot, at an advantageous time. Malcolm was in no hurry.
He was carefully descending the southern slope of the basin when he heard an anguished cry from down below. Malcolm edged down several feet until he had a clear view of the building below.
Allen Phelps burst into view. His hands were clawing at his face. A second howl of wounded fury roared out of him. Malcolm watched Allen stumble, then fall to his knees, only to lunge up and away. Allen veered north, weaving like a drunkard.
Blind, Malcolm realized. Something had blinded Allen Phelps. He watched the man lurch headlong into a tree, stumble, and fall. Allen got back to his feet and disappeared into the trees that carpeted the northern slope.
Malcolm started after him. A blind Allen Phelps didn’t need to be boxed in. He could be confronted here. Now. Malcolm moved at a quick walk.
When he reached little gravel lot outside the building, a young woman appeared in the same doorway Allen had exited. Malcolm froze. A black SUV was between him and the woman. He stared through its windows at her.
Her clothing was covered in blood, and her eyes were wild with fear and adrenaline. She had a cell phone pressed to her ear.
Malcolm listened as Issabella Bright desperately begged a police dispatcher to come. He paid attention to what she said, gaining a full understanding of what had happened inside the crematorium while he circled the woods.
As he listened, he stared up the northern slope where Allen had disappeared. That direction lead to Allen’s car. Malcolm’s was too far away, concealed in the woods to the south.
Malcolm continued to listen, but now he was looking at the SUV.
*
The agony relented, somewhat, when Allen found the half-full water bottle inside his car and poured it directly into his eyes.
“Fuck,” he shouted, and hammered a fist against the roof of the car. The world was an indistinct blur, a painting left out in the rain. He blinked several times and clawed the glove box open. He tore a wad of sanitary wipes out of their plastic sleeve and scrubbed them over his eyes.
‘Move,’ a voice hissed in his head. ‘You ain’t safe. Adapt. Move. Run.’
He opened the trunk and pulled his roadside emergency box to the lip. Inside were flares, a one-gallon can of gas, a blanket, a battery-powered jumper, and a gallon of distilled water.
A minute later, Allen was behind
the wheel and driving slowly north. He slopped water from the jug into his eyes. It sloshed all over him. He blinked furiously, praying for the world to come into sharper focus.
The world was still melted and indistinct. He focused on the blur that most resembled a road, and held the wheel steady while he doused himself again.
Soon, he was far away from the crematorium.
*
Darren was unconscious.
Issabella stood over him. He was very pale. Blood had pooled underneath him. She stood there and tried to remember what the dispatcher had told her. There had been a conversation, she knew. She had called them. Were they coming?
She couldn’t think. As soon as Allen Phelps had stumbled away, out of the building, Issabella’s personal storm had rolled in from the horizon.
She was dizzy with fear. Not for her safety. That fear had focused her. It had allowed her to remain calm and determined enough to fend off the murderous Phelps.
But now, there was only Darren, bleeding to death in a closet. She felt helpless. Her mind raced around, a shrieking wind that paralyzed her and prevented her from seizing on any one course of action.
She crouched down and put her hands on his cheeks. They were cold, and growing colder. She saw the sanguine stain beneath him growing wider. She sobbed and touched her forehead to his.
“Don’t don’t don’t don’t,” she begged. “Don’t go. Don’t go.”
Her fingers fumbled at his tie. She hadn’t conscious decided it, but she realized that she was struggling to get it untied so she could use it as a tourniquet around his shoulder.
Right? Wasn’t that what you did? They did it in movies, and in the Boy Scouts, didn’t they? She’d never been shown how. She didn’t know what she was doing, even as she was yanking furiously at the knotted length of cloth. She was grasping at the idea of helping him. An idea, with no substance behind it.
Issabella cried out in frustration and kept trying to undo the knot. A bad idea was something to hold onto. If she kept at it, she was doing something.
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