by Jonas Saul
The suggestion that Mason and Calder were fugitives wasn’t lost on Mason. James Campbell was an old man from another era. He was not just well-known in the city, he was something of a celebrity. The kind of man who had lawyers on call and the money to spend years in court without worry. Basically, he felt above the law in the sense that he would be able to slime his way out of anything. A car accident gone awry? A large cheque could make it go away. A criminal lawsuit? Nothing a team of lawyers and a smear campaign wouldn’t remedy. In other words, he was the kind of man Mason detested. He vowed to himself when this was over, he would make a point of harassing Mr. Campbell for several years. The man deserved humble pie and who better to serve it to him than his friendly RCMP officer.
Mason was convinced that Campbell had a preconceived notion of who they were because of Sarah Roberts. She had to be in the house. Who else could fill his noggin with such bullshit about what happened with Barry Ashford.
Mason believed Sarah was close. He just needed to be more persuasive with Mr. Campbell.
“Where is she?” He asked from the doorway. “Once we know, we will remove her from the premises and you can go on with your evening as if we weren’t here.” And erase any digital evidence of our presence, Mason thought but didn’t say.
“Where is whom?” Campbell asked. He stood ramrod straight and glared hard at Mason. “I presume you’re referring to the supposed fugitive.”
“Just tell us where she is, Campbell. Asking more than once makes you an accomplice in her actions. Aiding and abetting won’t bode well for the family name.”
“Excuse me, young man,” Campbell bellowed, his voice amplified by the small room. “I am not aiding or abetting anyone and I resent the notion and the charge of such lunacy. I don’t have time for this. Please leave my home.” He started forward. “I’ve done as you asked. Now get out.”
Mason didn’t budge from the doorway. “Stand where you are, Campbell.”
The man froze one foot in front of Mason. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Yeah, Mason,” Calder whispered from the security console area. “What’s up?”
“Sarah is in this house and Mr. Campbell wants us to leave.” He focused on Campbell’s eyes, studying the man closely. “Is it sanctuary you’re offering her? Or are you enamored by the young woman’s attributes?”
“All right,” Campbell roared. “That’s enough. Out. Or I’ll have my lawyers remove that filthy badge of yours—”
“Don’t threaten me,” Mason out-shouted Campbell. The violence of his rage irritated the nose injury. His eyes watered from the pain. “Remain in the room and calm down. No one is leaving.”
“How dare you,” Campbell said, his cheeks flush with redness. He looked at Calder. “You’re going to let this man order me around?”
Calder shrugged nonchalantly, as if this a daily activity. Mason knew he would never challenge him.
Calder spoke next. “My partner and I have it on good authority, from multiple sources, that Sarah Roberts is either here or on her way to this location. If what you’re saying is correct and she is not here, you have nothing to worry about. We wait, monitor your cameras and watch for her. But if she’s already here, Mr. Campbell, hiding in this house right now.” Calder looked down and shook his head. “Well, dealing with Mason will be the least of your worries.”
“You’re going to threaten me in my house, too? You’re both finished when I’m done with you.”
Old men like Campbell were a nuisance. They’d lived their lives, served their purpose. It was a new generation now and James Campbell could die and take his old boys club with him. He was something even the world knew was to be discarded.
“Sit the fuck down,” Mason bellowed. “And shut up. I’m tired of your yapping mouth.” Mason moved into the room, forcing Campbell back toward the chair by the console.
Spry for an old man, he grabbed the elbow of Mason’s cast, pushed it upwards, and slipped around him, heading for the door. The pain in his broken arm shot through his shoulder and fired rockets off in his head. Even his knees wanted to give up their job of holding him upright, but he fought the urge to drop. With his good hand, he clamped onto Campbell’s collar. His hand tightened into a vise grip and yanked downward. Mr. Campbell lost his balance and stumbled back, but Mason had pulled too hard for Campbell to stay on his feet. The old man hit the floor with his buttocks first, then his shoulders. The air whooshed out of him along with a low-grade moan, the kind that signaled defeat and despair. Sprawled out on the floor, the old man stared wide-eyed up at the ceiling, breathing in and out in quick gasps.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Calder asked, kneeling to check on Campbell.
Mason stepped over the prone body of the old man and stood by the dozen security cameras. “Because he’s helping Sarah and he assaulted me.” He tapped on several keys to move cameras and get familiar with the system. “Self-defense, Calder. Self-defense.”
Calder rose to his feet and stood beside him. “You better hope you’re right.”
“Oh, I’m right, my friend, I’m right.” He tapped several keys again. “Help me bring up the last two hours on this thing. I want to see when Sarah approached the house and where she entered. Then we’ll have our proof.”
Calder took a seat and got to work. Mason turned around to look at Campbell on the floor. The man’s eyes were closed and his mouth had formed a circle as he breathed in and out rapidly.
“You should’ve tried to help us, old man, instead of fucking around. We’re the RCMP. How come people don’t get it? We’re here to help.”
“Uh, Mason,” Calder said.
“What?”
“I think we’ve got a problem.”
Mason spun around and stared at the camera Calder was pointing at. Two unmarked cruisers and two police SUVs had just pulled up behind their vehicle. The vehicles paused a moment, window to window, then one cruiser and the two SUVs moved out of camera range, headlights extinguished.
“What’s up the street?” Mason asked.
“It’s a dead end. The Martin Family Winery is the next stop, then that’s it.”
He looked at Calder. “Could Sarah be up there?”
Calder shrugged. “No idea.”
They watched as men slipped out of the unmarked cruiser by their car and disappeared from view.
“Did we lock the front door?” Mason asked.
Calder shook his head.
“Shit,” Mason said and ran out of the room.
Chapter 42
Lee stopped behind a car parked on the side of the road. The other vehicles slowed in response to him stopping.
“That’s Mason and Calder’s car, isn’t it?” Lee asked.
Gossett nodded. “I can confirm that, sir.”
Lee radioed the other vehicles and told them to carry on toward the Martin Winery and park out of sight, then double back and surround the Campbell house. Possible rogue officers inside the house.
The other vehicles disappeared up the road in the dark, their headlights off.
“Stay low,” Lee said. “I’ll take the lead. Gossett, move to the right of the house. Parkman, move to the left. Flank the front. Then follow my lead. Got it?”
“Yes sir,” Gossett barked under his breath.
“Gun?” Parkman asked.
Lee reached over the seat and dangled one in front of him. “Don’t kill anyone with it unless you have to.”
“Awww.” Parkman grabbed the gun, then checked the chamber. “You’re no fun.” He pulled the door open a few feet, then slipped out. Gossett moved around him in a crouch, then ran across the road toward the darkness in the bushes that led to the front. Parkman followed with Sarah on his mind. What would her boyfriend Aaron say if something happened to her? Scratch that—how could Parkman live with himself if something happened to her?
At the side of the house, he lost sight of Gossett. Oh, to be young, strong, and agile again. Lee strode to the front windows which we
re lit up by an overhead chandelier just inside the foyer. He cupped his hands and peeked inside.
“All clear,” he whispered loud enough for Parkman to hear.
Parkman adjusted himself to have a better view of Lee and the door as his friend started up the front steps. Lee hesitated, taking one last look to either side, then rapped on the door.
They waited. No one came to answer.
Parkman looked behind him, toward the street, then back at Lee. Where was everybody? If Mason and Calder were inside, why wasn’t someone coming to the door?
A flashing light caught Parkman’s eye. He glanced upward and stared at the black dome of a camera by the edge of the roof, a tiny green light blinking on its rim. The camera moved as he watched it. Along the eavestrough, he followed the edge of the roof and spotted three more cameras. Someone was inside the house watching their every move.
“Lee?” he shouted loud enough to be heard.
“Shh,” Lee whispered back, a finger in front of his lips.
Parkman moved out of hiding and pointed above Lee’s head to the roof’s edge sixteen feet up. “They already know we’re here.”
Lee looked up, stomped his feet in exasperation, then hammered on the front door.
“Officer Tom Mason,” Lee shouted at the door. “Officer Jeff Calder. Open up. This is the police.”
Chapter 43
“Mason,” Calder said, cracking his knuckles. “Decision time. It isn’t too late to walk away from this.”
Mason spun on him and glared the smug look off Calder’s face. “Your head is so far up your ass you have no idea what’s going on, do you?”
“What?” Calder stammered.
“Those officers were at my hospital room to hold me on attempted murder charges. Lee thinks we’re after this little pet psychic of his and he would be right. When this is over, we’ll have an inquest and we’ll tell our story and Sarah won’t be around to tell hers. That’s how this ends. Until then, it’s always too late to walk away from this. It was too late the moment you helped me get out of that hospital.”
Calder stopped cracking his knuckles. His eyes wandered from Mr. Campbell on the floor, then back to Mason. “What now?”
“We leave through the rear door before Lee’s friends surround the house. If Sarah’s somewhere in this house, we’ll have to come for her another day because it’ll take too long to search the place. If she isn’t here, then we leave via the forest road at the back of this property and continue to hunt her until we find her.”
Lee smashed the front door again. “Open up,” Lee’s shout came through the door, muffled.
Calder exited the room and turned toward the back of the house. Mason stepped over Campbell and followed him along the corridor. He only hoped they weren’t too late and the house wasn’t surrounded yet. Sarah would win if they were stopped now, and he could never allow that.
He pulled his weapon as he stepped onto the Campbell’s back porch. The safety was off as he hit the grass running toward the row of bushes, Calder slightly ahead of him.
As Mason rounded a row of hedges in the almost complete darkness, something moved to his right. He dropped low, swung his gun around, and fired at what looked like Sarah Roberts. The person who startled him was no more than three feet away. That was close enough in the dim light from the moon to see the person’s hair jerk upwards as the bullet exited the back of their head. The ground under Mason’s feet trembled slightly as the body one meter away thudded to the ground.
“What the fuck?” Calder hissed, his voice high, girly-like as it escaped his mouth.
“I got her, man,” Mason breathed. “Sarah Roberts is fuckin’ dead. It’s over, Calder.” He dropped to his knees beside the corpse. “Finally.”
Chapter 44
Thirio—née Leonard—mumbled something to himself as he came to. While he was passed out at her feet, Sarah had retrieved the cell phone from his pocket. For whatever reason, the phone had no signal. She couldn’t call for help, text anyone, or even get it off the screen where six missing digits waited to be entered. The gun sat on the basement floor just out of reach. The BAE vest over her vital organs warmed her like a sauna in the basement. Her face ached and throbbed where she’d been kicked earlier, and her wrist had numbed where it was now attached to Thirio.
Something like a firecracker popped outside. Did someone fire a gun? The sound came once, then faded and didn’t repeat.
She leaned over the edge of the chair and looked down at Thirio in the faint gleam from the penlight left unattended two feet in front of her.
“Wake up, asshole,” she said. “We need to talk.”
“Huh?” he mumbled.
“What’s the code?” she whispered. “Tell me the code. We need to get out of here.”
“Fuck you.”
“Tell me about the Campbells. Why do you hate them so much?” She watched the small basement window where the moon gave it a rectangular shape.
“Feud. Longstanding.”
“What kind of feud?”
“The kind where you fight. Dense much?”
“Fuck you. I mean, what caused it?”
“Originally? Or now?”
“Both.” Her eyes didn’t leave the window. Someone was out there, she was sure of it.
“Originally, a land dispute. In the winery business, land is gold. Grapevines are gold.” He swiveled beside the chair until he was sitting cross-legged. Thirio rubbed his head where Sarah had clocked him. “This sucks, Sarah. Why’d you hit me? Now we both die and it’s all been for nothing. I have to kill James Campbell.” He held up their cuffed wrists. “You’ve ruined everything.”
“Why the current feud? You didn’t finish.”
“Because they killed my Julia.”
The discarded penlight offered enough glow for her to easily see his face. “Julia? Who’s that? Your sister?”
“We were going to get married.”
“What happened?” She would stall him until Vivian showed up with the six digits for the phone. Come on, Vivian. Where are you?
“They killed her at her bridal party.”
That sparked Sarah’s interest. She faced him. “How’d they do that?”
“By crashing it. The girls had gone downtown and we headed to a pub for a final round of shots. A couple of Campbell’s sons were driving downtown and saw Julia. They recognized her. It was raining that night. At the red light, the Campbells sat in their car and waited for Julia and her girlfriends to walk by. When Julia was in front of their car, Harris Campbell hit the gas, then immediately hit the brake. The car hopped forward several feet. According to Dwayne, his brother, it was meant only to scare the girls. A prank. A joke.”
“How does that kill someone?”
“The car went close enough to bump Julia. She fell down and hit her head. She never woke up.”
“So it was an accident.” Sarah leaned forward in the chair to look down at Thirio. “That caused you to bomb innocent people and spread poison on vegetables in grocery stores? That’s quite a leap from a family feud.”
“There’s no leap.” He tugged on the cuff, examined its link, then released it. “The feud has been going on too long. What Dwayne and Harris did wasn’t a joke. Someone had to end it.”
“And you thought killing innocents would end it?” Sarah asked, her voice rising as she spoke. “That’s a stretch even I can’t connect.”
“The bombs were random, but it would lead back here. When this house blew with that bomb under you, James Campbell was supposed to die with it. Over there,” Thirio pointed off into the darkness to another part of the basement, “is a work bench and table where I’ve left all the bomb making materials. Everything would link back to the Campbells and it would be over. Their name would be ruined and their businesses destroyed. My family would win in Julia’s honor.”
“You don’t sound like a Satanist when you talk about Julia. You loved once. Satanism isn’t synonymous with love.”
He fixed h
er with a cold stare. “Sure, I’ll admit that I loved once. But if I have a heart anymore, it’s as black as tar and as empty as a nun’s dried up snatch.”
“You’ve never been good with similes, have you?”
“Fuck you, Sarah, and unlock these things.” He pulled on the cuffs again. “You’re a renegade. You’re a maverick. Too fucked for your own good. How are you not dead yet?”
“There’s a little go fuck yourself in everything I do. Keeps me breathing.” She adjusted herself as the BAE vest started to dig into her right side. “Who’d you kill first? How’d it make you feel?”
