I sidestepped Hall, who had finally shut the refrigerator door and was looking quizzically at Claude while wrestling with the lid on a jar of olives. “How long have you known Nathan?” she asked.
“Do you need help with that?” he asked.
“No, no.” She brought the jar to her chest and bent into it, giving the lid another go. “Got it.”
The sight of Hall wrestling with the jar was strangely reassuring. It wasn’t just that she didn’t have superhuman strength—she didn’t even have my strength—it was the mundane diorama she presented. Woman, jar, olives, kitchen.
“Let’s see.” Claude considered Hall’s question. “Nathan and I have known each other about five, six years. Up until a year ago I lived in Santa Fe.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked, cracking eggs into a bowl.
“Too big, too many people.”
“Too many tourists,” I said with a smile, knowing full well that twice a year I was among the vile horde.
“You’ve got that right.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
“Not really. I miss Lydia’s barbecues, though.” He gave his dog’s neck a scratch. “By the way, this is Palmer, Harry for short.”
I laughed—loudly—and Hall, her brow knit in confusion, looked from Claude to me. The reference to fictional spy Harry Palmer had escaped her. “Hello, Harry,” I said, looking to the dog. He wagged his tail and sank to the floor at Claude’s feet.
Half an hour later, after we’d eaten our eggs and were working on our second pot of coffee, Nathan returned. Striding to the table, wearing an expression of single-minded intent, he handed Claude his laptop, slung his coat over the back of a chair, and took a seat.
Zack, unable to wait another second, leapt. “Did you find out if we’re on a list?”
“None of us are on the central return list,” Nathan said, glancing around the table. “Or any New Mexico or Colorado porter’s list.” When he came to Claude, he gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod. Claude returned it. The two had met while at Gatehouse, I was sure of it.
“That’s good news,” Zack said.
“It’s helpful,” Nathan said, not sounding nearly as cheery as Zack.
Taking a long sip of coffee, I watched Hall over the rim of my mug as she glanced warily from Nathan to Claude. Had she caught their nods? Was she, like me, trying to decipher the signal that had passed between them? Or was something else going on?
I found some of my old doubts about her returning in a rush of emotion. Doubt to trust, and back again. That waffling, from me and others, was the price she’d have to pay for the rest of her life. No one would ever fully trust her. It wasn’t entirely fair, but fairness couldn’t enter into it. Fairness made for foolish decisions when it overruled your common sense.
“What next?” Hall asked.
“First of all, Zack, back in your holster,” Nathan said, pointing at Zack’s Ruger on the table. “Everyone take care of anything you need to do, and do it fast. Wash your clothes, take a five-minute shower, and we’ll meet back at the table in one hour.”
He was instructing us to take showers? This was a plan? I leaned back in my chair.
Nathan propped an elbow on the table, lowered his head into his hand, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was looking directly at me. Staring at me. The look of pain on his face scared the daylights out of me.
Hall and Zack rose from the table, coffee mugs clinked, Claude said something to Harry about going outside. Someone turned on the radio on the sill above the kitchen sink. They moved around me while I remained still, waiting for Nathan to say something. Rising from his chair, he said my name and gestured for me to follow him down the hall and into Claude’s office. He gently pushed the door closed with the palm of his hand then turned to me. My eyes shot to the office’s single window and the November sky, a pale, milky purple in the minutes before sunset.
Nathan said he had bad news, and then quickly—quickly and thus mercifully—told me that a Sack had murdered my mother on Halloween.
Chapter 18
Because of me. Nathan didn’t have to confirm it. A Sack had shot my mother four times point-blank when she answered the doorbell of her Denver home on Halloween night. Because I was a hunter. Because my name had appeared on a kill list and Mother of Crows had made sure it was there. Because I was on the run with Elizabeth Hall, the traitor Elation, and Nathan Tennant, formerly or still with Gatehouse. Because I had been marked, so had she.
I demanded the Sack’s name. By God, Gatehouse would not hide the name from me this time, as they’d done with Emily’s killer. When Nathan told me it was Sever, a male Festal, I knew the Sack had fired, shut the door behind him, and scrawled his filthy declaration in my mother’s blood.
I let out a sob and turned away. I felt weak and steadied myself by laying a hand on the window sill. When he touched my arm, I jerked from his grasp. Damn his world, I thought. Damn the ignorant bastards everywhere who slept soundly at night and went to football games and parties and knew nothing of hunters’ lives. He waited while I cried, my face to the window, then wrapped an arm around my shoulder before he let himself out the door.
I dropped into Claude’s desk chair and stared down at the wood planks of his office floor, forcing myself to stop crying. Eventually I’d have to leave the office, and the last thing I needed were puffy, red-rimmed eyes. Zack and Nathan weren’t the problem. I knew they wouldn’t hover and gawk at me like I was some circus animal, but Hall was something else. She watched everyone. Besides, instinct told me it was best not to appear vulnerable in her presence. Sack or not, she was a predator.
Christmas in Denver, not quite two years ago. That was the last time I’d seen my mother—and my father too, since he hadn’t yet been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I didn’t find out about his cancer until after he had died. My parents let me know that my unmerited survival was a too-painful reminder of the eighteen-year-old sister I’d failed to protect. The sister who didn’t die a clean car-crash death, one of crushed bones or swift decapitation, but who had been cut and burned for ten long minutes before being bludgeoned to death. But, Mom, I was only twenty-three then. I was a baby too.
My hands flew to my mouth, stifling a high-pitched moan I hardly recognized as my own. Had I thought we’d talk again one day? That while my mother was alive there was always a chance she’d take me in again? Forgive me? Stupid. Utterly stupid of me.
So I thought about Sever, swallowing my grief with the gaping mouth of anger, and I thought about what I’d do to him when I found him. And I would find him. And I’d let him know, just before he died, that it was me, Jane Piper, daughter of Marcia Piper, who was about to send a bullet into his throat and watch while he pumped blood.
I gave myself half an hour more then left the office. There were Sacks and traitors to hunt, and Nathan had a plan. Everyone was in the kitchen, and everyone looked shiny and freshly showered as they turned their faces in my direction.
Zack said, “Jane,” and I shook my head to silence him. He’d shaved, I noticed, and so had Nathan, of course. Hall’s hair no longer looked like a short salt-and-pepper wind sock. I didn’t give a damn what I looked like. I marched up to the coffeemaker, found a dirty mug on the counter, and poured myself a few ounces—all that was left of the dark, syrupy residue in the carafe. Then I drank it at the counter, looking back at the table, which seemed an ocean away, and feeling strangely that I no longer belonged.
Who were these people? They knew all about me, but I knew little about them. I still didn’t know what event in Nathan’s life had triggered his need to become a hunter, and all I knew about Zack’s previous life was that he’d “lost a friend.” Those were his exact words to me, that was as open and unguarded as he’d ever been on the subject. Kath had opened up—we had spent many late nights talking, especially after a hunt—but what a liar she’d turned out to be. Oh, I believed that her daughter had been killed by a Sack, but the rest of it? Not a bit. H
ow she must have struggled not to laugh when I talked about Emily and my parents.
I pushed all of that to the back of my mind as I finished off my coffee, knowing that if I didn’t, this hopeless feeling would take hold of me and make me useless in the battle to come. Without saying a word, I removed the holster and mag pouch for my Seecamp and stuck them in my backpack. Then I pulled out my HK pistol and holster, along with an HK mag pouch, and attached them to my belt. The weight of the 9mm, even its much larger holster, felt good.
At the table I sat next to Claude, even though it meant jockeying around Hall and the empty chair beside her. He gave me one of those silent chin-nods, which warmed and welcomed me in a way words were not capable of doing.
“In the past six hours, there have been three attacks in northern New Mexico,” Nathan began. “A porter in Taos and two hunters in Raton were killed. Manifest Manifest was involved in the attack on the porter. It turns out he left Colorado before he could be returned, and he moved down here.”
“Nathan and I figure maybe one of those attacks was part of the general increase in activity,” Claude said.
“The others?” Hall asked.
“They’re trying to find us,” Nathan said.
Zack started letting out deep breaths. Knife-edge living wasn’t his style. For me, numbness in the wake of my mother’s death made the edge bearable. Bring it on, I thought. Killing one of those monsters was just the ticket.
“They don’t know where we are, so they’re hitting any address they have,” Nathan said. “Porters and retired porters, hunters, suspected Gatehouse members.”
“And as you’ve probably guessed,” Claude said, looking from me to Zack and Hall, “that means they may show up here.”
I nodded. Sacks and even rogue porters had followed us from Colorado into Wyoming and back to Colorado, so why not here? Maybe they hadn’t found us yet, but they soon would. Or maybe they knew exactly where we were, but they also knew that five proficient killers were inside the house and they needed a more strategic approach than they’d used in targeting Zack’s house. Either way, they were going to bring plenty of firepower.
I looked over to Zack, but he averted his eyes. He didn’t want me to see how afraid he was. A short, loud ring pierced the silence and he twitched in his seat.
“It’s all right,” Claude said, rising from his chair and heading for the kitchen. “I’ve asked a neighbor to take care of Harry for me.” He opened what I’d thought was a circuit-breaker box to the left of the door and peered inside—obviously at a security monitor—waited, then opened the front door just as his neighbor, a woman his age dressed in jeans and a khaki barn coat, was making her way up the walk. Harry dashed to her side, wiggling from his nose to his tail in blissful, unaware-of-the-world doggy pleasure, and I was glad that parting with his master would not be wrenching for him. He was getting out. Harry would be safe, this border collie I’d just met but very much wanted to see again.
“I need a straight answer,” Zack said as Claude retook his seat. Glaring at Nathan, his face clouded with anger, Zack opened his mouth then clamped it shut.
“Go ahead,” Nathan said.
“All right. Is all this because of her?” He tilted his head in Hall’s direction. “Are we all going to die because some Gatehouse jackass decided she was restored?”
“We’re not going to die, Zack,” Nathan said.
“Tell that to Connor Doyle.”
I shook my head. “Connor died before we hooked up with Hall.” Zack gaped at me. He’d been expecting my support.
“So you don’t have a problem with this?”
“I’m just saying Connor died for some other reason. Same with Chester Avila and Brent Vogel. Sacks have been escalating for weeks.” I thought back to Nathan’s map of red and green circles, most of the incidents they marked having taken place in the past two months. We were little pieces on this big game board.
“Don’t tell me that two Sacks with body armor broke into my house because they were targeting me,” Zack said, rapping his fist on the table to drive home his point.
Nathan thought for a moment before speaking. He understood Zack’s anger, I could see that, but he knew Zack wouldn’t survive on his own and he couldn’t send Hall away. Even a former Elation couldn’t hold off the hounds of Sack hell that would surely come after her if they discovered she was on her own. “Whether or not you were a target then doesn’t matter, because—”
“The hell it—”
“Because now you are a target, with us or without us. We’re all targets, together or alone. I can’t force you to stay with us, I can’t force you to stay a hunter, but I don’t think you’ll make it as far as northern Colorado if you try to go home. If we stick together, we’ll be fine.”
“Don’t you feel any shame about this?” Zack said, turning to Hall.
Hall was staring straight ahead, wearing the same glazed, unfocused look I’d seen on her face after she’d confessed to murdering a child. Zoning out, shutting down in self-defense.
“We stick together,” Nathan said.
Zack continued to look at Hall. “Really? No shame?”
“Knock it off, Zack. End of discussion.”
Zack cursed under his breath, not so much angered by Nathan’s response as embarrassed by his desire to exile Hall.
So we were going to stick together. Yet two short days ago Nathan, thinking he was the target, had stayed in Colorado and sent us to Laramie. That was before Hall and Claude entered our lives, when it was just Kath, Zack, and me, three unknown hunters. We weren’t unknown now. We were protecting the great traitor Elation, our photos probably in the hands of every Sack, Festal and above, in Colorado and New Mexico. In spite of this, I still believed Nathan was also a target. Maybe the main target. The killers in the Kia had been watching him, not Hall. Though, hell, right now every porter in every mountain state was a target, and a Gatehouse porter like Nathan was a prize.
“Well,” Claude said, leaning back and folding his arms defiantly, “I have no intention of dying. I’ve been through worse than this.”
“Yeah, you have,” Nathan said, acknowledging Claude with a nod.
“So what do you think?” Claude asked him.
The answer came quickly, firmly. “I think there’s a traitor in Gatehouse.”
Hall’s eyes popped wide, and Zack reeled, looking like Nathan had reached over and slapped him. Claude, on the other hand, didn’t move, didn’t blink. This wasn’t news to him.
“Any idea who it is?” I asked. Nathan was probably still figuring that out, and even if he did know, he wouldn’t say, but I wanted to appear as taken aback by the news as Zack and Hall.
“Not yet.”
Zack spread his hands in a gesture of despair. “Could we be in any deeper shit?”
“Yes, we could,” Claude said. “Remind me to tell you about 2001 one of these days. In the meantime, why don’t we listen to what Nathan has to say?”
Just as Nathan rested his forearms on the table, an alarm, the same ring I’d heard earlier, sounded. Then another ring came from somewhere down the hall.
Claude and Nathan sprang from their seats. “Drop and stay here,” Nathan said as he ran for the hall. Claude latched onto his Remington then hit a switch on the wall just under the rack, shutting down half the lights in the house. An instant later the lights at the back of the house went out.
“Shit,” I heard Zack say. Then I heard chair legs scraping on the floor. My eyes, adjusting to the dark, couldn’t make out where Zack was or what he was doing. I saw Claude only faintly, in the glow of his half-opened circuit box. He studied the monitor, shut the box, and told us to stay put as he rushed past. Hall had scuttled over the floor, away from the window and toward the wall with the gun rack. I heard her behind me, her shoes grinding as she pushed herself to the wall. I slowly, smoothly pulled my gun from its holster.
“What the shit?” Zack said. Fear and anger tended to limit his vocabulary.
&nb
sp; “Zack, be quiet, please,” I said. I strained to hear Nathan and Claude as much as I listened for noises from outside the house. The moonlight seemed brighter now, casting light through the kitchen curtains and allowing me to make out Zack’s form. On the floor, pressed to the wall directly beneath the window, he held his Ruger muzzle-up in both hands.
We heard another alarm, then a fourth.
“Oh, shit.”
I got up on my feet, dashed to the front door, and opened the circuit-box door a crack. What I saw made me drop to my knees. Four Sacks, guns drawn and carrying a battering ram, were heading straight for Claude’s front door. Ten seconds away. “Jesus,” I said, scrambling back to the kitchen. “Four Sacks coming in now,” I shouted down the hall.
Claude raced into the kitchen and ordered us to hold off until he’d fired three times. “Then you take over and I’ll head to the back. Aim for the neck and head.” He yanked hard on the short bureau on the wall farthest from the door and motioned for me to get behind it.
With two kicks of the ram, the door tore loose from its hinges and slammed to the floor. Claude waited one terrifying second then fired. Faster than I thought possible, he racked and fired the second and third rounds. Three of the Sacks fell, and Claude spun back for the hall. From behind the bureau I zeroed in on the Sack in the doorway, the only one standing, and fired off four rounds. I saw him, backlit by moonlight, grab at his throat, stagger, and crumple.
When one of the three downed Sacks tried to rise, Hall fired two rounds into him just above his body armor. Zack straightened and fired downward at another squirming Sack on the floor, striking him in the head.
I shouted for them to guard the door then headed down the hall. I knew at least four more Sacks were about to break in through a back door or window. That was their style now. I crouched low as I went, wishing I’d taken the time to walk around Claude’s house so I knew it, and its weak spots, better.
“It’s Jane,” I called out. I stopped and listened, trying to make out rooms and doors in the dark hall.
All Souls: A Gatehouse Thriller Page 18
