Linda Howard

by Cover of Night

  “Get the suitcase and leave.”

  Slowly, not making any sudden moves, Mellor retrieved the suitcase from Cate. Cate stared at him, her eyes wide. Their gazes met for a brief moment. His was still calm and expressionless, as if this was all in a day’s work.

  “Cate,” said Calvin. She blinked at him. “Pick up the pistol.”

  She scrambled for the weapon, gingerly picking it up. She’d never touched a gun before, and she was surprised by the weight.

  “See that button on the left side? Push it.”

  Holding the pistol in her right hand, she used her left forefinger to push the button.

  “Okay,” Calvin said, “you just took the safety off. Don’t pull the trigger unless you mean to shoot. Go down the stairs first, and stay far enough away from him that he can’t reach you. We’ll be behind you. Go past the head of the stairs, and keep the gun aimed at him until I’m out of the stairwell and behind him again. You got that?”

  The logic of it made sense. If he’d let Mellor go first, either he’d have had to be so close behind that Mellor could grab the shotgun, or Mellor would be out of sight for a few seconds after he reached the bottom of the stairs. Cate couldn’t imagine what Calvin thought Mellor could do in those few seconds, but if he thought there was danger, she was willing to go along with him.

  Where was the other man, Huxley? What had Calvin done with him?

  She went down the stairs much faster than she’d gone up them, not entirely on purpose. Her knees were still wobbly and she half-ran, half-stumbled down them. She kept a death grip on the weapon, all the while sending up a prayer that Mellor wouldn’t try anything, because she had no idea what she was doing. She went past the head of the stairs and turned, pointing the barrel at Mellor and using both hands to hold the weapon as steady as she could. It wobbled because she was still shaking, but she thought—she hoped—she was aiming it close enough to him that he wouldn’t take any chances.

  Calvin followed Mellor at a safe distance, and in contrast to her own trembling, he seemed ice cold and impervious to stress.

  “Keep going,” he told Mellor in that same soft tone. They headed down the stairs.

  After a moment Cate moved forward to follow. Neenah came down the attic stairs then, moving very slowly and clinging to first the bannister and then the door frame. Her gaze met Cate’s and she swallowed. “I’m okay,” she said in a thready tone. “Go help Cal.”

  Cate went down the stairs to the bottom floor. She saw the other man lying on the floor in front of the front door, his hands tied behind him. He was groggily trying to sit up.

  “I can’t manage him and three bags at the same time,” Mellor said.

  “So untie him. He’ll be able to walk.” Calvin kept the shotgun at his shoulder.

  Mellor untied Huxley and helped him to his feet. The other man swayed, but stayed upright. His blue eyes glared hatred at Calvin, but he might as well have saved the effort for all the reaction Calvin showed.

  Between them, the two men picked up the three bags and went out onto the front porch, Huxley stumbling and weaving but managing to walk. Following Calvin onto the porch, Cate watched them stow the bags in the Tahoe, then climb into the front seats. Just before Mellor cranked the engine, she heard the faint, high-pitched sound of her children’s voices, and knew her mother was returning with the boys. She almost burst into tears at the realization of how close they had come to walking into a deadly situation.

  Huxley shot both of them a deadly glare as the Tahoe went past. She and Calvin watched until it was out of sight.

  “You okay?” he finally asked, still looking down the road. She wondered if he thought they might come back.

  “I’m fine.” Her voice was thin with shock, almost soundless. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m fine. Neenah—”

  “I’m okay,” Neenah said, appearing in the doorway. She was still white, still shaky, but she was no longer clinging to things to walk. “Just shook up, I think. Are they gone?”

  “Yeah,” Calvin said. He held the shotgun easily in one hand, the barrel now pointing downward, as he gave Cate a searching look. “That was a good idea, turning the stamps upside down.”

  It had worked; her pitiful attempt at signaling for help had worked! “I read…I read that an upside-down flag is a distress signal.”

  He dipped his head in a brief nod. “You were nervous and shaky, too. I drove down the street and circled back on foot, figured I’d check things out and make sure everything was okay.”

  “I didn’t think you’d noticed.” He’d glanced at the envelopes, shuffling them in his hands, but hadn’t even blinked his eyes to show any reaction.

  “I noticed.”

  His calmness made her feel her own shakiness even more acutely. She looked at Neenah and saw that she, too, was trembling as she tried to hold things together. With a choked sob Cate dropped the gun she was holding and grabbed Neenah in a tight hug and they clung together for comfort and support. She felt Calvin putting his arms around both of them, murmuring something soft and probably comforting, if she’d been able to understand what he was saying, but the actual words didn’t matter. A part of her brain noticed that he was still holding the shotgun, and that was definitely comforting. For a long moment they leaned into his surprising strength; then she heard Tucker’s piping shout as he raced toward them, Tanner keeping pace beside him.

  “Mr. Hawwis! Is that a gun?”

  Her children’s voices had Cate straightening and wiping her face dry of the tears that had seeped under her lashes, and she went down the steps to grab both of them and pull them tightly to her.

  9

  GOSS AND TOXTEL DROVE ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE MAIN road before they spoke. Goss had been content to let the silence continue because his head hurt like a son of a bitch and his ego had been squashed like a bug. How in fuck had a damn handyman taken him from behind like that? He couldn’t remember hearing anything, seeing anything, just the back of his head exploding with pain and the lights going out. Bastard must have hit him with the shotgun butt.

  The best thing about Toxtel was that he wasn’t chatty. He didn’t waste time asking what the hell had happened, either, when it was obvious what had happened.

  Hot nausea boiled in Goss’s throat and he said, “Pull over, I gotta puke.”

  Toxtel whipped the Tahoe to the side of the road and stopped. The two left wheels were still on the pavement, since there wasn’t much of a shoulder, and when he got out, Goss almost fell into a gully or ravine or whatever the hell they were called. Balancing himself with a hand on the side of the SUV, he made his way to the rear bumper and bent over with his hands braced on his knees. The position made his head throb even worse, and all the trees and bushes and other green shit did a slow, sickening whirl.

  He heard the driver’s door slam, and Toxtel came around the side. “You okay?”

  “Concussion,” Goss managed to say. He sucked in deep breaths, fighting the nausea. Letting a handyman get the jump on him was bad enough; he didn’t want to puke in front of Toxtel, too.

  Toxtel wasn’t exactly a touchy-feely guy. He didn’t so much as grunt in sympathy. Instead he opened the back cargo door and pulled Layton’s suitcase to him. “Let’s see what we have,” he said. “I want to make certain the flash drive is here before I call Faulkner.”

  Goss managed to straighten as Toxtel unzipped the bag and began pulling things out. Every garment was examined, every pocket and seam felt, then dropped to the ground. A plastic shopping bag yielded a TracFone, which looked promising, but when Toxtel popped the back off, it revealed nothing more interesting than batteries. Determinedly, he dismantled the entire phone and still came up empty.

  There was a pair of black wingtips in the suitcase, and Toxtel turned his attention to them. Holding each shoe with the heel pointing out, he beat them against the truck frame until the heels came off. No flash drive.

  Next was the suitcase itself. Toxtel ripped out the lining, fel
t every inch of the bag, even cut the stitching on the handles and examined them.

  “Fuck!” he swore, sending the suitcase sailing. “It isn’t here.”

  “Maybe Layton took the flash drive with him. All he had to do was slip it into his pocket,” Goss said. He was disappointed this opportunity to screw Faulkner hadn’t worked out, but right now his head hurt too much for him to think of another plan.

  “That’s if he wasn’t planning to come back. Hell, he could have carried it in his pocket all the time anyway. I’d buy that, if there wasn’t something suspicious about this suitcase.”

  “Like what?” Goss asked tiredly. “You’ve taken it apart, and didn’t find anything.”

  “Yeah, and it’s what I didn’t find that makes me think that bitch held out on us.”

  “Like what?” Goss asked again.

  “Do you see a razor, toothbrush, comb, deodorant, anything like that?”

  Goss surveyed the scattered contents, and even with a pounding headache came to the obvious conclusion. “She didn’t give us everything.”

  “Most men carry their crap in a shaving kit. There aren’t a lot of clothes here, either. I think there’s another suitcase.”

  “Fuck.” Goss sat down on the bumper and gingerly felt the knot on the back of his head. The lightest touch sent spikes of pain spinning through his skull, and little twinkling lights danced in front of his eyes. A second chance was presenting itself, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to grasp what it was.

  “We can’t go back in,” Toxtel said grimly. “She knows us now, and she probably called the cops.”

  Through the haze of pain, Goss saw Toxtel’s dilemma. He could call Faulkner and tell him what had gone down, tell him to send in someone else—but that would be quitting, and neither of them had ever quit, ever said they couldn’t do the job.

  It wasn’t just ego. They made their money taking care of things. They both had the reputation of getting the job done no matter how much shit went down, and because of that Faulkner sent more jobs their way. Let their reliability slide, even once, and the doubt would always be there. It wasn’t as if they were on salary, for fuck’s sake. They got a percentage of whatever the kill fee was, and since they got the tougher jobs, the fee was higher, which meant their take was higher.

  “I’ve got the beginnings of an idea,” Toxtel said, turning to look back down the road. “Let me think about it some. First, do you need a doctor?”

  “No.” The response was automatic. After it came out of his mouth, Goss mentally took stock of his condition, and said again, “No—unless I go to sleep and you can’t wake me up.”

  “I’m not sitting by your fucking bedside shaking you awake every hour,” Toxtel said flatly. “So you better be damn sure you’re feeling okay.”

  That was Toxtel: all heart. “Let’s go,” Goss snapped. “Let me know when this grand plan takes shape.”

  The problem was: Go where? They needed at least a temporary place to stay, and he couldn’t remember seeing even a fleabag motel since landing at the airstrip. Toxtel got out the map and opened it on the hood of the Tahoe, while Goss dug in his own luggage to see if he’d brought anything for pain. His own shaving kit yielded one of those sealed-plastic individual doses of ibuprofen that you bought in airports, and he popped both pills, swallowing them dry. That was another thing; they needed something to eat and drink, too. At least that little town they’d gone through would be able to provide that, and if they were lucky it might have a motel on some side street.

  “This map doesn’t tell me shit,” Toxtel growled, folding it up and tossing it back into the Tahoe.

  “What are you looking for?” Goss asked as he carefully made his way back to the passenger door and got in. One slip of the foot and he’d fall a good hundred feet or so. It wasn’t a straight drop, and he’d probably bounce into a tree and stop instead of going all the way down, but he wouldn’t like the experience. Something was wrong with all those fools who liked the great outdoors. As far as he was concerned, fuck nature.

  “I need one of those maps that shows mountains, shit like that.”

  “Topographical,” Goss said.

  “Yeah. That kind.”

  “Why do you need to find a mountain? Look around you,” he growled, waving a hand to indicate the world beyond the windshield. There were plenty of mountains out there. Look in any direction, nothing but fucking mountains.

  “What I need,” Toxtel said slowly, “is to figure out if there’s any way we can box that place in. We know there’s just the one road, and it ends there. Can we block it so no one can leave?”

  Goss’s headache was suddenly unimportant as he grasped the basic idea Toxtel was proposing. If he’d ever heard of a situation fraught with possibilities for escalation, this was it. “We’d need aerial shots, too,” he mused. “Make sure there’s not some pig trail the locals use that isn’t on any state map. The terrain is pretty rough; I’m thinking that if we could block a few spots, the rest would be too rugged for them to get out.”

  Toxtel nodded, his face taking on that narrow-eyed, set expression that said he was committing himself to a course of action. This would take money, Goss thought, and more people. He and Toxtel couldn’t handle this on their own. And they’d also need someone who knew the area and the type of people they’d be up against. Goss knew his limitations. He was at home on concrete, not dirt. Put him out here against some yahoo who was used to deer hunting and crap like that, and who probably had an entire wardrobe of camouflage clothing, and he’d be severely disadvantaged. His biggest asset was his brain, so he intended to use it.

  “We’d have to make certain all the guests at the B and B were gone,” he muttered, thinking aloud. “People would be expecting them back, expecting them to call in, something.”

  “How would we know that?”

  “Someone will have to go in and check, someone local—or at least someone who won’t look suspicious.”

  Toxtel started the engine and put the vehicle in gear. “I know someone I can call.”

  “You know people here?”

  “No, but I know someone who knows someone, if you get my drift.”

  Goss got it. He leaned his aching head back against the headrest, then winced at the pressure and instead eased sideways until he could lean against the side window. The glass was cool, and gave him a tiny bit of relief. He closed his eyes. They didn’t want to rush into anything; they’d take the time to think things over, hammer out the details. He dozed off imagining tick marks placed beside items on a list: power lines cut, check; telephone service out, check; bridge blocked, check; breaking that bastard handyman’s neck, check. Just like counting sheep, only better.

  10

  THE HOUSE WAS FULL OF LOCALS, ALL WANTING TO KNOW what had happened. Almost automatically Cate put on coffee and began serving it, but Sheila looked at her daughter’s tense expression and firmly said, “Sit. People can serve themselves.”

  Cate sat. Tucker and Tanner were in the dining room, too; she normally didn’t allow them in when customers were there, but this was different. This was neighbors gathering in a time of trouble, not customers. She watched the boys’ expressions, trying to see if they were picking up on any of the undercurrents. They were excited, but that was all. When they’d asked Calvin why he had the gun, he said there’d been a snake in the attic and he’d had to get rid of it. Naturally they were fascinated by both the shotgun and the snake, demanding to see both, and they’d been disappointed that the snake was gone. As far as they were concerned, all this talk and excitement was over the snake—and Cate supposed they weren’t wrong. They just didn’t know the snake had been human. Now they were right in the middle of things, their gazes ping-ponging from person to person as the situation was discussed.

  “You should have held them until the rest of us could get here,” Roy Edward Starkey groused to Cal. He was eighty-seven, and his opinions often reflected a time when interlopers who dared harm one of the town�
��s own would have been strung from the nearest tree.

  “Seemed smarter to give them what they wanted and get them out of here before someone got hurt,” Cal said calmly.

  “We need to call the sheriff,” said Milly Earl.

  “Yeah, but I’m the one most likely to be arrested,” Cal pointed out. “I hit one of them on the head.”

  “I agree with Milly,” put in Neenah. “We have to call the police right away. I’m not hurt, but I was scared half to death.”

  “Did the snake almost bite you?” Tucker asked, going to her and leaning against her legs. His big blue eyes were round with excitement.

  “It came close,” she said gravely, brushing a hand over his dark hair. Tanner leaned close, too, never taking his gaze from her face, and he also received one of those gentle caresses.

  “Wow,” Tucker breathed. “And Mr. Hawwis saved you?”

  “He did.”

  “With the shotgun,” Tanner prompted, sotto voce, when she didn’t continue.

  “Yes, he saved me with the shotgun.”

  Roy Edward looked down at the boys, distracted by their alikeness, and asked of no one in particular, “Which one’s which?”

  “That’s easy,” Walter Earl said with a laugh. “If one of them has his mouth open talking, that’s Tucker.”

  Everyone in the room chuckled, and the atmosphere relaxed a little.

  Cate’s heart ached with love, and a fierce sense of protectiveness welled inside her. They were so little, their heads craned upward as they tried to catch every word in a room full of chattering adults. They were just four, and the big accomplishment in their lives right now was learning how to dress themselves. They were completely dependent on her for their safety and well-being. She turned to Sheila and said, “I want you to leave tomorrow, and take them with you. Keep them until this all dies down.”

  Sheila reached for her hand, squeezing. “Do you think they’ll come back?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. She’d been quiet since returning from the walk with her grandchildren to find her daughter had been held at gunpoint, and belatedly Cate realized Sheila was feeling her own sense of protectiveness.