KnockOut

by Catherine Coulter

  Five minutes later when he saw her rental car barreling toward him he honked and pulled his Rubicon over on the shoulder.

  Joanna’s first words were “I should have killed him. Dammit, I should have killed him.”

  Autumn was white-faced and silent, plastered to her mother’s side. “Get in.” He threw the passenger door open and Joanna lifted Autumn inside, jumped in beside her. “I don’t have a gun. We just ran.”

  “I do; don’t worry.” That was about the stupidest thing he’d ever said. “There’s a rifle in the box under the front seat. I’ll take that; you can have my Beretta.”

  He patted Autumn’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right, kiddo.”

  If Autumn didn’t believe him, he didn’t blame her. He pulled his Beretta off his waist clip, handed it butt-first to Joanna.

  “Where are we going?”

  He saw an ancient Ford Escort in his rearview mirror, closing fast. He didn’t have to see for sure who was in the car. It was Blessed and Grace. Had to be.

  “Hang on,” he said, and pressed down hard on the accelerator.

  The Rubicon pulled away smoothly on the windy two-lane highway, and soon they were far enough ahead so Blessed couldn’t see them around the turns. Ethan pulled off fast onto a potholed fire road that led straight into Titus Hitch Wilderness, not the front entrance with the ranger kiosk but a narrow dirty path barely wide enough for the Rubicon. It came to an abrupt stop at the Sweet Onion River. If they were lucky, it would take Blessed and Grace a good long time to find out where they’d gone. But they would find them, Ethan knew it.

  “Let’s go.”

  Joanna said, “You know where we are; that’s good. Where to?”

  “We’re going to head on foot into the Titus Hitch Wilderness. We can’t go back where we came from, and going forward is better than staying here. I know these woods well, know a good spot to stop.”

  “Ethan, what are we going to do in the wilderness?” Autumn asked him.

  He looked at the mother, then at the daughter, and said, “We’re going hiking.”

  He pulled his bolt-action Remington 700 out of his gun box. It was a gift from his father when he was twelve years old—to make a hunter out of him, his father had said. Ethan had learned to shoot the bolt action, loved the rifle as a matter of fact, but he hadn’t stayed with hunting. He preferred to paint animals and take their pictures rather than shoot them.

  He grabbed two boxes of boattail bullets. He had only forty rounds. He had to be careful. He said, more to himself than to Joanna, “The clip is already loaded—ten rounds, so that gives us fifty rounds.” He looked up at her. “This baby is slow, but it’s really accurate at distance. Here’s two magazines, Joanna, fifteen rounds each, for the Beretta.”

  He thought about setting up a blind, shooting Blessed from a good hundred yards away, far enough away to be safe. But what about Grace? Was he good at disguises, or was he something else entirely? Ethan was very afraid he knew the answer to that.

  He walked to the back of his truck, opened a metal storage trunk, and hoisted on a heavy backpack. He passed a smaller one to Joanna. “Okay, guys, let’s get out of here.”

  Ethan led them along the edge of the Sweet Onion River, through lush water reeds, to a narrow slice of water only ten feet wide, with black stepping stones that he himself had laid fifteen years before, for a dry crossing. “Okay, Joanna, you go first, then Autumn. I’ll come across last.”

  “Why don’t we pick up the black rocks so they won’t know where we’ve crossed?”

  He said simply, “I want them to know.”

  Joanna looked at his rifle, then back up at his face.

  When they reached the other side of the river, Ethan pulled out his cell and dialed Savich. “We won’t have service for much longer.”

  Two rings, then, “Savich.”

  “Ethan here. Grace sprang Blessed. If you want the full story, call Ox. Joanna, Autumn, and I are heading into Titus Hitch Wilderness, a place I know better than you know Washington.”

  “We just left the Backmans’ place. No bodies to be found, so they moved them. Do you want us back there?”

  “You can’t get to us out here any more easily than they can,” Ethan said. “It has to end, Savich. I hope to end it here.”

  “He can’t stymie me, Ethan.”

  “There’s no time.”

  “Can you get a distance shot?”

  Ethan grinned into his cell. “Exactly what I’m hoping for. We’re going to keep moving and then camp for the night. If we don’t run across them, I’m planning to lead Joanna and Autumn out across the north boundary in the morning.”

  “Have you called your deputies in after you?”

  “No. I thought about that, but I want the only one trailing us to be Blessed. I don’t want to take the chance he’d stymie my deputies. Call Ox and let him know, will you? We’ve got to move.”

  There was a pause, then, “Good luck, Ethan.”

  Ethan pocketed his cell phone, then turned to Joanna and Autumn. “Either of you need to rest, you just holler, okay? We’re going to be going through some pretty rough terrain. I’m the only one without good footwear.” He kicked a stone with the toe of his low-heeled boots. “Your sneakers will be fine. Stay close. We’ve got a ways to go before we get to Locksley Manor.”

  One of Joanna’s eyebrows went up. “Robin Hood’s house?”

  “You’ll see,” Ethan said, and took the lead.

  He pictured Mr. Spalding hanging in that tree, the bear ripping him down. He had no intention of ending up like him. He prayed they wouldn’t run into hikers. He prayed harder that any hikers didn’t get close to Blessed and Grace.

  They walked a few hundred yards on narrow trails until Ethan hooked off-trail to the right, and they walked, always upward, through thick brush dotted with brilliant daisies and jasmine.

  45

  BRICKER’S BOWL, GEORGIA

  Late Wednesday afternoon

  “We need to go back to Titusville, Dillon. We can’t leave Ethan on his own, even if he asked us to.”

  “We’ll be on a flight this evening, Sherlock,” Savich said, and turned the Camry onto the main road, heading east from Bricker’s Bowl. “Right now I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “Anything to make this headache go away.”

  “How about MAX found the address of the Children of Twilight?”

  “He’s been working on that for days. You’re not kidding me?”

  He shook his head. “Nope, got it.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’ll do it.” She snapped her fingers. “Headache’s gone in four-point-five seconds. How did MAX find out where they’re located?”

  “Whistler’s mother.”

  She punched him in the arm.

  He grinned. “MAX couldn’t find any property in Caldicot Whistler’s name, so we dug into Caldicot Whistler’s antecedents, his father, then his mother. Father’s dead, so is the mother, but I had him do a property search within a hundred-mile radius of Bricker’s Bowl, flag anything that might be suspect. He finally found a good-sized property hidden within two holding companies, the first under the proprietary name of the second. That second company’s name was listed as C. W. Huntingdon, Limited. The initials C.W.—as in Caldicot Whistler—triggered MAX’s algorithm, and he went for it. Underneath all the layers, MAX discovered the property actually belonged to Mrs. Agatha Whistler as sole trustee. She inherited it from her husband when he died some fifteen years ago. Although the trust isn’t in the public record, it must have been passed to Caldicot when she died only last year at the age of eighty-five years. Caldicot is her only surviving child, now age fifty-two. Her other child was much older and is also dead.

  “So Caldicot made a good stab at hiding the property, but MAX dug him out anyway.”

  The pride in his voice made Sherlock smile. “What sort of property is it?”

  “An old flue-cured tobacco farm.”

  “What on earth is that?”

/>   “Flue-curing is still used commonly on tobacco farms in Georgia, supposedly produces the best tobacco. Evidently they string the tobacco leaves onto sticks that they then hang from tier-poles in the curing barns. Then brick furnaces heat flues that ‘cook’ the green tobacco leaves.

  “According to the deed, the farm was active until the nineteen thirties. There are two curing barns still standing after more than a hundred years, and a huge stone mansion, built in the early part of the twentieth century that now probably houses the cult. I can’t imagine what other use Whistler would have for it. It’s located about two miles outside of a small town called Peas Ridge, ten miles from Haverhill, where Caldicot Whistler supposedly sells cars.”

  “May I ask when you worked with MAX on this?”

  He shrugged. “I woke up early this morning, couldn’t go back to sleep. You looked so happy in whatever dream you were having, I didn’t have the heart to wake you. I already called Ethan about it.”

  Sherlock nodded. “He needs all the info he can get. Good job.” She frowned at him. “You could at least act like you’re a bit tired.”

  “Hot tea’s my secret, you know that.”

  “All right, macho man, the Children of Twilight. I haven’t told you where I think that name comes from.”

  “Yeah, you were going to tell me about that earlier.”

  “I found a couple hundred references to the name, but the one that caught my eye was a Children of Twilight group back in the fifteenth century in Spain, which was at the height of the Inquisition. They were called Los Niños en el Atardecer in Spanish. They’d been around for maybe a hundred years before that, living in isolation, causing no trouble.

  “Torquemada himself went after the cult. You’re going to like this—the Children of Twilight were all supposedly endowed with psychic powers.”

  Savich said slowly, “They wouldn’t have called it that back then. How were they described?”

  “Torquemada called them Adoradores del Diablo—devil worshippers—who communicated not only with each other but with the devil himself to further the devil’s evil schemes.”

  “Not a good ending for them, I’ll bet.”

  “No, not a good ending. Those Torquemada caught were burned at the stake. Auto-da-fé—an ‘act of faith.’ Isn’t that lovely? Some escaped, but the group was never heard from again.”

  Savich said, “So if this present-day cult has taken up their name, that leads to an interesting conclusion, doesn’t it?”

  “The same direction Whistler’s blog took us—a cult that glorifies psychics—and might risk a great deal for a child like Autumn. Of course, it could all be coincidence.”

  “Or maybe not.”

  A bullet whistled past Sherlock’s head and spiderwebbed the windshield.

  46

  SAVICH SHOUTED, “HOLD ON.”

  He got control of the car again, glanced into the rearview mirror at a small black Ford Focus not twenty feet back and saw the black barrel of a gun and the hand holding it coming out the passenger-side window. So there were two of them. He wasn’t in his Porsche, he was in a Camry with regular gas in its tank, but it was a game little car. He sawed the Camry back and forth across the lanes, grateful there were no other cars in sight.

  Sherlock slithered low across the seat as she pulled her SIG from her belt clip, then twisted around to look at the car behind them. Savich said, “Gun out the passenger-side window. They haven’t fired again because they can’t get a fix on us.”

  “Got it.” She rolled down the window, leaned out, and yelled, “Now, Dillon!” She fired off three shots as he steadied the car, then he jerked the Camry hard to the left, through the other lane, nearly into the ditch, before he jerked it back. He heard the ping of bullets hitting the pavement and the car.

  “I missed him. Hold steady again, Dillon!”

  She emptied her clip this time. He wasn’t surprised when the Ford began careening all over the road, out of control and gaining speed on the decline behind them. The driver had to be hit. He saw the shooter trying to shove the driver aside so he could get control. It was going to be close, because lumbering toward them, not fifty feet ahead, was an old silver pickup truck loaded with hay bales higher than its cab. Savich laid his palm on the horn, blasting loud into the hot late afternoon. Thank God the driver of the ancient pickup wasn’t a slouch. He careened into the right lane and pulled over onto the shoulder, chewing tobacco furiously at them while they whizzed past.

  A caravan of trucks and a Goldwing with a man and woman on board came around a wide bend in the road, going at a good clip. He looked at the Ford behind him, thick black smoke billowing from beneath the hood, and watched the shooter jerk the Ford hard to the right and peel off onto an unpaved country road he hadn’t even noticed. He knew then they had to be locals, but he’d known that already.

  Savich slowed and Sherlock fired another full clip after them, but they disappeared into a cloud of whirling dirt from the road. He had to wait for the spurt of traffic to pass, then he turned the Camry in a tight U and came in behind an old SUV, the last of the traffic he’d just let pass. All the vehicles had slowed and were rubbernecking, trying to see that smoking car. He laid his palm on the horn and got the finger in return. Finally he reached the country road and turned a sharp left onto the dirt road.

  Sherlock was still hanging out the window, her hair whipping around her head. She jerked back inside. “There, Dillon, behind that stand of trees on your left. They didn’t get far.”

  He saw the black smoke before he saw the car. He braked fast and hard, closer than he wanted. Sherlock was out the door while the tires were still trying to grip the dirt.

  “Careful,” he shouted, pulled his SIG, and went out the driver’s side, bent low, his eyes on the car.

  The Ford exploded. No time, no time. The burst of heat singed their hair, seared the air itself, and the blast concussion hurled them backward. Savich grabbed her as they went down, protecting her as best he could, and rolled with her beneath the back of the Camry as burning pieces of the Ford rained down around them.

  Sherlock, coughing and trying to suck in air at the same time, finally managed to whisper against his shoulder, “I really didn’t mean to, but guess I got the gas tank. You think those guys are still inside?”

  “Yeah, probably,” he said. “Don’t move.” There were still hot flames and foul-smelling smoke gushing upward like black geysers, pieces of the car still hissing and exploding off the frame in the heat, setting nearby bushes on fire. Then there was silence, absolute silence.

  Savich slowly eased from beneath the car, came up on his elbow over her, and studied her black face and the cut along her hairline, snaking a line of blood down her cheek. He touched the cut, saw it was superficial, and drew a deep breath.

  “I’m okay, Dillon. How about you?” She was grinning at him, teeth whiter than his shirt had been before the explosion.

  “I’m fine, but you’re hurt.”

  “Just a little cut. My hair will soak it up. You’re okay?”

  He consulted his body parts, nodded. “Do I look as bad as you do?”

  “Yeah, but you know, kind of black-ops sexy.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the cut. It was indeed as shallow as he’d thought, nothing much really, thank you, God. He realized he’d been shaking. It had been too close, simply too close, and here she was cracking a joke. He grabbed her and pulled her hard against him on the ground, pressing her into his shoulder.

  “I’m all right. Come on, Dillon, I don’t want to, but we have to check to see if those guys are still in the car.”

  He wanted to hold her for at least another hour and breathe fresh air, tons of it, but fresh air would be in short supply here for a while, and the shooters could have gotten out of the car. He gave her a final squeeze, then they slowly got to their feet.

  “Careful,” he said. SIGs drawn, they made their way to the smoking ruin of the car.

  She
rlock stepped around a burning running shoe with a foot in it and swallowed bile, swallowed again when she felt the heave coming. There was a smell of burned flesh mixed with the foul smell of burning plastic and gasoline. When she got ahold of herself, she said, “I guess they didn’t get out.”

  Through the smoke they saw blackened remains huddled together in what was left of the front seat. Two men.

  Savich pulled out his cell and called the Atlanta field office. “Beau? Savich. Sherlock and I have got ourselves a pretty gnarly situation here.”

  And he told the SAC, Beau Chumley, what had happened.

  He said to Sherlock, “Guess we’re not going to get to have dinner with the Children of Twilight.”

  They waited in their car, cleaned up as best as they could with water from Sherlock’s fizzy water bottle. Savich tried Ethan several times but no go—no cell service that far out in the wilderness. He knew this, yet he tried once again. Then he looked at his wife and said slowly, “I’m dumb as dirt. I forgot about Autumn. Let’s see if I can reach her.” He closed his eyes and pictured her face in his mind.

  Dillon? It’s you, really you?

  Hi, Autumn. What’s happening?

  We’re resting for a minute, Dillon, so I can talk. What happened to your face?

  Sherlock and I had a spot of trouble here in Georgia, but we’re okay. I need you to speak to Ethan for me, okay?

  That beautiful child with her hair in a ratty ponytail, and her mother’s freckles marching across her small nose, giggled.

  I’m going to be a TV.

  Yep, with picture and sound. Okay, ask Ethan to tell me where you are.

  Savich watched Autumn turn away from him. Oddly, he couldn’t see anything else, only her profile, nor could he hear her speaking to Ethan. So did that mean Autumn couldn’t see Sherlock? Autumn turned back to him. Ethan says he’s taking me and mom to Locksley Manor. He said it’s a cave and he knows it real well. We’re going to hide there.

  Savich knew exactly what that meant. Ethan would leave Joanna and Autumn in the cave and go after Blessed and Grace. Since that was what Savich would do as well, he couldn’t say much of anything except, of course, warning him about not looking at Blessed, but Ethan knew that. Ethan also knew what he was doing. He knew the wilderness, and he knew what was at stake. He settled for asking Autumn to tell Ethan to be careful.