KnockOut

by Catherine Coulter

  Cully said, “They’ve probably got it stashed in some trees off the road.”

  “Can’t be too far from here. Maybe the chief will find it. Then we’ve got them.”

  “So in the best of all possible worlds, Lissy and Victor have no clue they’re surrounded,” Sherlock said.

  Cully slammed his fist into the wall. “I hate this, I really do. What if Bernie is dead?” He looked into Savich’s eyes. “I guess you don’t know. Bernie’s wife, Jessie—she’s my sister. They’ve got two kids, my nephews.”

  Sherlock touched her fingers to his forearm. “He’s their hostage until they nail us and drive out of Winnett, Cully. He’s alive, at least for now.”

  He nodded, but she knew he wasn’t holding out much hope.

  She said again, “Dillon, it’s time to see if they split up, see if one of them is waiting out back for us to step out the kitchen door. It’s about thirty feet from the back of the house to the edge of the woods, and the neighboring house is a good fifty feet away. It’s all forest on our other side. Now, since it wouldn’t be bright to go out the back door, I’m thinking to go out the bedroom window, there’s a whole mess of oaks out there. Great cover.” Sherlock saw his face and added real fast, “I’m the smallest, I can slip through the window, they won’t see me. You know I can dodge and duck with the best of them. I’ll slip into those trees and work my way back—”

  Savich said, “No way. You just had your spleen removed, Sherlock.”

  “Come on, Dillon, it’s been months since the surgery. I’m fine. You know I’m fine. Stop playing Mr. Protector.”

  “Forget it, you’re still not up to running all out in the woods. I want you and Cully to stay put, keep a sharp eye out. Look at it this way, we’ve got backup in place. I’ll probably be redundant. Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. Good plan, by the way.” And before Sherlock could jump on him or yell at him, Savich moved away from the front windows back down the hall to the bedroom.

  He heard Sherlock say behind him, “Who needs a spleen anyway?”

  64

  VICTOR NESSER threw his binoculars to the ground. “Where are they?”

  Lissy jumped a bit, picked up the binoculars, and looked through them. “There’s still no movement in the house, not even a face looking out the front windows. Even though they couldn’t find our federal cop buddy here—I’ll bet you they called for their crime scene team, Victor, and that’s why they’re still inside the house.”

  Victor said, “But why isn’t the crime scene team here yet? Why aren’t they doing something?”

  “I remember, it’s forensic team, that’s what they call them on TV,” Lissy said. “You’re right, it’s been way too long.” She handed him back the binoculars.

  “Yeah, but, you know, this is a hick town. Where would anybody get a forensic team? Maybe at Bud’s Bowling Bonanza or down at O’Malley’s Dairy Queen? What’s taking them so long to get it together? Why aren’t they coming out of the house?”

  Lissy patted Victor’s cheek. “They will, baby, they will. They’re stupid. They don’t know anything. They’ll come trotting out of the front door any minute now and we’ll blow them into a gazillion pieces.” She frowned suddenly, punched his arm. “Some bomb you made, Victor. First you couldn’t manage to stall out that security guard’s car in Washington, and now you couldn’t get the bomb to go off. Some computer expert you are.”

  “It should have gone off,” Victor said, rubbing his arm. “I followed the instructions carefully; you watched me do it. Don’t hit me again, Lissy, I don’t like it.”

  “Still,” she said, then looked over at Bernie. “We’ve got Mr. Fed here, and that’s something.”

  Victor leaned over and punched Bernie hard in the arm. “Hey, wake up, pigface. You know why your buddies aren’t out here looking for you?”

  Bernie was awake, had been for some time now, trying to control his roaring headache from the blow on the back of his head. Actually, he’d been whispering hallelujahs. Victor’s bomb hadn’t exploded, thank the good Lord, which meant Savich and Sherlock had disarmed it. Cully was still alive, and that was all Bernie wanted to think about. He’d hoped they’d say something useful if he kept playing possum, but then Victor hit him.

  “Come on, pigface, open your baby blues!”

  “His eyes aren’t blue, Victor, they’re brown.”

  “Yeah? How do you know that, Lissy?”

  “He’s all big and dark; no blue eyes for him.”

  Bernie opened his brown eyes and stared up at Victor. He didn’t have to fake looking dazed. “What?”

  “Hey, were you trying to fake it? Or are you still knocked stupid?” Lissy punched him in the belly with her fist. He barely responded. “See? He’s still stupid. I hit him so hard his cop brains are still scrambled.” She leaned down and whispered in his ear as her palm flattened out on his stomach. “Hey, Mr. Agent, I like the feel of your gut. No fat, good muscle tone. Let me see.” Lissy jerked his shirt out of his pants, ripped the buttons off, and spread it open. “Wow, Victor, look at our buff cop here.” She stroked her hand over his stomach, and, to his horror, Bernie felt her fingers slide down into his shorts.

  He tried to jerk away, then coughed, wheezed.

  Victor jerked when he saw her hand. “What are you doing, Lissy? Stop that, you hear me? You don’t even know him. Stop it!”

  Lissy laughed, pulled her hand out of his pants. “That’s the way to wake up a cop, Victor. All you gotta do is touch their brains.” And she laughed again. “Hey, that’s true of any guy, isn’t it? From what I could tell, our cop here’s got a pretty good brain.”

  Victor looked at her like he hated her, then kicked a rock on the ground beside him. “Why’s it taking them so long to come out of the house? Forget the forensic crap. There’s no way they know we’re here; they’ve got to figure we’re gone. So where are they?” But Victor didn’t really care at that moment what the federal agents were doing because his heart was still pounding at what Lissy had done—she’d actually touched another man, she’d actually felt the damned cop, and right in front of him. His hands shook. He wanted to hurt her; he wanted to kill the damned agent. He said again, “They should have come out. Why haven’t they?”

  Bernie heard the shrillness in Victor Nesser’s voice, knew he was furious, near violence, at what Lissy had done. He had to calm things down. He said matter-of-factly, “Since I’m not in the house, they’re checking everywhere for clues. They’re thorough, so it takes time.” And they know you two didn’t leave. They figured it out, they’re holding tight, waiting for the local cops to show up. But Bernie hadn’t heard any sirens, hadn’t heard a blessed thing. Were they coming in silent?

  “Our pretty boy here is right,” Lissy said. “There’s been time for a whole battalion of cops to get here, but no one’s come to save their butts. I think they’re still looking around, still looking for clues. Don’t worry about it, Victor, those clowns don’t know we’re out here. They’re stupid.” She thought about the constant ache in her stomach and rubbed her fingers along the row of ugly metal staples still dug into her flesh. She saw Savich clear in her mind, on his back on the bank’s marble floor. He’d kicked up so fast, kicked her so hard, she hadn’t even seen his leg, just felt the horrible pain that knocked her backward, knocked all her breath out of her. She remembered lying there, a fire in her belly, and she couldn’t breathe.

  “We’ll get them.” Victor saw she was in pain and smacked his fist against his leg once, twice. “We just didn’t have time.”

  Lissy said, “I could have killed all three of them when they came running out, exploded their heads right off. But you were saying wait, wait, wait.” She frowned. “Too bad that redheaded woman is going to eat one of my bullets. Her hair is cool; I want to know how she makes it look like that. She must be Savich’s partner. Do you think they’re sleeping together? Hey, pretty boy? Savich and that redheaded woman, they doing the dirty?”

  “I don’t know,” Be
rnie said, and hoped it sounded believable.

  Victor said, “Look, Lissy, you need to focus. Listen, I stopped you from shooting at them because it was too big a risk. Why take chances? If you missed even one of them we’d be in a deep crap pit now. No, this is better. We’ll wait. When they come out of that front door, not expecting a thing, we’ll take them down, take them all down, because we’ll be ready. It’ll be like shooting those Coke cans off tree stumps in your backyard, remember? Don’t forget, we’ve got their buddy here, and they’ll figure it out eventually. He’s a big, important FBI agent. He gives us an edge, if we need it.”

  Lissy said suddenly, “Wait, what if they’re worried we could be out here waiting for them? What if they go out the back door?”

  Victor said patiently, “There’s no reason for them to go out the back door. There’s nothing back there but miles of woods. Why would they do that? They haven’t figured out a thing. Stop your worrying and keep your eyes on the front of the house.”

  Bernie was praying Lissy would listen to him.

  Lissy got to her feet. “I’m going to jump out of my skin if I have to wait here another minute. I’m going to check it out. I can circle around through the woods, get right up to the back door.” She kicked Bernie with her toe. “You think they’re still looking for clues? Dusting for fingerprints on the kitchen floor? Maybe using one of those fancy machines that shines blue and shows up bloodstains? It takes that long? They’re up to something, Victor. Hey, if I come in through the back maybe I’ll catch them all by surprise, shoot ’em before they even know I’m there. Maybe I can talk to that redhead about her hair. I’m thinking she must use some special hair products.”

  Down the rabbit hole, Bernie thought, and kept his eyes closed.

  “Open your eyes, lover boy, say good-bye.”

  Bernie opened his eyes and said to the beautiful fresh-faced teenager who was anything but, “Good-bye.”

  She laughed and blew Victor a kiss, looked again at Bernie’s belly, and said, “Keep him close, Victor, you never know when you’ll need yourself a shield.” She smacked her lips and laughed. “If he’s still alive tonight, I might have myself some fun with him. You know, give him an IQ test.”

  Victor didn’t say anything to that until Lissy disappeared into the trees. Then he bent down to the man lying bound at his feet, and stuck his gun against Bernie’s mouth and shoved his lips apart. “You’re never going to touch Lissy,” he said. Bernie nearly gagged at the barrel close to the back of his throat. There was nothing he could do. He thought of Jessie and his boys.

  Victor got himself back under control. He pulled the barrel slowly out of Bernie’s mouth, shrugged, and eased down, his back pressed against an oak tree.

  Bernie thanked God it wasn’t Lissy who was enraged, because she’d have shot him without a thought. He tested his wrists again. He wasn’t going to get himself free, his hands and feet were tied too tight. Victor held a gun on his lap, which meant Bernie was a half a second away from being dead. There was nothing he could do, nothing except pray, and that’s what he did.

  He prayed Savich and Sherlock and Cully had realized what was happening, prayed this insane Lolita wouldn’t come in through the back door, laughing like a maniac, and empty a clip into them.

  Victor said in a meditative voice, never looking away from the front of the house, “Do you know I’ve never killed anyone myself? That’s why I drove the van for my aunt. I told her I didn’t want to do that. A couple of days ago I shot a highway patrol officer woman in the chest. Lissy was yelling at me to shoot her between the eyes so she couldn’t rat us out, but she was looking up at me, you know? And I shot the ground next to her head. I really didn’t think she’d live; there was blood all over her chest.” Victor leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I guess Lissy was right, that woman cop did live, and she did rat us out, she told them exactly who we were. It was all over the car radio news, this big news bulletin about us.”

  Victor turned to look at Bernie. “But you, buddy, you’re coming on to Lissy, and that makes me mad. Maybe I could kill you and not feel bad about it.”

  65

  PEAS RIDGE, GEORGIA

  When Ethan managed to open his eyes, he was lying on his back on a soft, pale blue rug, staring up at a white ceiling. He managed to sit up. He was in a nice-sized room, with a large bed with a pale blue coverlet, a desk that looked like an antique, and shelves built in behind it filled with books and what looked like journals. There was a gooseneck lamp on top of the desk, next to a computer. He saw a door that probably led to a bathroom.

  The room looked like a superior hotel accommodation. There were raised blinds over the glass window in the door.

  He walked to the door. It was locked, but he looked out the window. He could see only a window down the hall a ways from him.

  He was in one of the members’ rooms. No mortification of the flesh in this place, he thought, and touched the frame of a photograph on the wall, this one of a sky filled with stars.

  He felt dizzy and slightly nauseated from the gas. Where were Joanna and Autumn? Probably in a room of their own, he thought. He stretched out on the comfortable bed and looked up at the white ceiling.

  Who had brought him here? Whistler? There had to be others who worked for him. He had to be ready when they came.

  He lay silent and still for a while longer, until the vagueness and nausea slowly receded a few minutes later. Ethan realized he was hungry. He pulled an old wrapped mint out of his pants pocket, peeled off the wrapper, and sucked on it. He closed his eyes.

  He had nothing to do but wait.

  He heard a key turn in the lock, and the door opened. Whistler stood there, his hand out, holding a gun. “I see you’re awake already, Sheriff, as you should be,” he said. “We’ve never had to use the gas before. I see now it was a prudent measure, after all. We couldn’t have you leaving through the outer door.”

  “Were you watching the whole time?”

  “Another precaution. I saw how you overcame my poor Kjell. I was fond of him.” Whistler continued in a meditative voice, “Truth be told, I believed Kjell was invincible. I saw him fight at his dojo in Seoul; he never lost. Evidently I thought too highly of his skills, since you killed him.

  “You have cost us dearly, Sheriff, and I hope to see you pay for it.”

  “Where are Joanna and Autumn?”

  “They are in a comfortable room. Now it’s time, Sheriff. You wanted to meet the Father. You will now.”

  66

  WINNETT, NORTH CAROLINA

  Savich eased open the bedroom window and climbed out. He ran bent over into the thick oak and pine trees before making his way around to the back of the house. Once in position, he dropped to his knees and looked across the large overgrown backyard. He didn’t see anything, and no face through the window. Good, Sherlock and Cully were still in the dilapidated living room in the front. He moved deeper into the trees, stopping every few steps to listen. He was surprised when the land sloped downward. He realized there was no way Victor and Lissy had hunkered down back here; they wouldn’t be able to see much of anything from this position. Climbing a tree would probably give them a view of the front of Victor’s apartment building, but they’d be too exposed. No, they were on higher ground, with a full view of the front of the house. Still, he could never be certain of anything Lissy Smiley might do. One of them could be here in the woods behind the house figuring it was a perfect way to surprise them.

  Savich studied the patterning of the trees, the play of light and shadows, the shapes of the branches, watching for any sort of movement, anything at all.

  He stopped cold when he heard a soft popping noise. Did an animal make that sound? Then he heard a man moan, nothing more, just a low moan of pain. Another moan, this one deeper. Whoever it was, he was in trouble. If it was Bernie, that meant Lissy and Victor were close by.

  Savich waited another moment, listened. He moved as quickly and quietly as he could through t
he trees, keeping low, in the direction of the man’s moan.

  It was oddly silent, not even the sound of a bird or an animal. Every creature was listening, as he was.

  The ferocious humid heat had slackened some in the early evening, but still sweat poured off him. He paused again, listened, but he heard nothing. Had he misjudged the direction of the moans?

  Through the trees in front of him, Savich saw a small clearing, and in the middle of it a man in a deputy’s uniform lay on his side, his face turned away from Savich. Savich couldn’t tell if he was alive. Lissy or Victor did this, which meant they were close by, maybe waiting for him, or anyone, to step clear of the trees. He’d be hopelessly exposed. Savich didn’t want to go into that clearing, but he also knew he didn’t have a choice. If the deputy was alive, he couldn’t leave him lying there helpless. He ran crouched over, dropped to his knees beside the deputy. The man was unconscious. He was young, not more than twenty-two, fresh out of the police academy. He had a bullet wound to his shoulder. Savich hadn’t heard a gunshot, just the quiet popping sound. It was a silencer he’d heard, and the shooter had to be near.

  If it was Lissy, he wondered why she hadn’t shot him between the eyes. He pressed his fingers to the deputy’s throat. A pulse, fairly steady. Savich pressed his palms down hard on the wound to slow the bleeding. What could he use for a pressure dressing? He ripped off one of his shirt sleeves and tied it tight around the deputy’s shoulder. Then he pressed his palms down over the wound again.

  In that moment, Savich knew someone was close, but there was nothing he could do about it, not with this young man’s blood all over his hands. He heard the popping sound again at the same moment he felt a shock of frigid cold in his leg. And he heard Lissy’s voice, all high and excited. “Hey, Agent Savich. Lookee here, lookee here!”