by Jonas Saul
They froze like that, mid-motion.
“My deal still sticks,” he said. “We go and get the Campbells together now, cuffed as it were, and you help bring them here. Then you leave. Nothing has to change.”
She breathed through her mouth, scenarios racing through her mind. Could she be fast enough? Would she be able to twist out of the way in time? How many bullets were left in the gun? Was the safety off?
Thirio pushed the tip of the gun deeper into her flesh. She had to lean away but her cuffed arm restricted movement greatly.
“Or I could do it myself and kill you now. When they discover Campbell’s remains among the bits and pieces of the bomb-making materials, they would find your DNA as well. Your death would be blamed on the Campbell family.” She felt his shrug as the tip of the gun tilted up slightly, then back down. “Maybe that’s the better solution.”
He forced her downward until Sarah’s cheek rested on the cold basement floor. Angling his body up and away from her, Sarah’s cuffed arm twisted backwards, he placed a foot on the side of her neck. Something akin to a raw panic enveloped her. Even mild squirming did nothing to relieve the pressure on her arm. The way things stood, she was virtually immobile.
Vivian? You’re going to let me die here?
“See you in Hell, Sarah Roberts.”
Someone ran by the window. Thudding footsteps startled Thirio. Then someone else approached the house.
“In here,” a man whispered just outside the basement window. A door opened upstairs.
Thirio leaned down close to Sarah’s face and put a finger in front of his lips.
Panting softly, she eased her free hand into her pocket and brought out the handcuff key. Raising her free arm as high as she could, she let the key dangle in the soft light. It caught Thirio’s attention. He snatched it from her and opened the cuff from his wrist. Leaving her cuff fixed to her, he crawled on top of her and used his body weight to hold her down as if they were lovers and he was mounting her from behind. His ragged breathing caressed the back of her neck. Then his mouth was beside her ear.
“Smart girl,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m assuming by removing the cuff you’re interested in taking my deal?”
She tried to nod. Anything to get him off her.
“It’s too late, Sarah. You missed your chance. Your deal is with the devil now.”
Two pairs of footsteps moved on the floor above. They traversed toward the back of the house. She was pretty sure it was Mason and Calder.
Thirio pushed up and sat on her lower back. Sarah placed her hands on the floor beside her chest, took a deep breath, then shoved upwards and snapped her head back violently. She connected with something hard, heard a snapping sound, then Thirio was falling. She twisted around as Thirio groaned, his hands racing to cover the wound. His balance off kilter, Sarah continued to twist under him and pushed him off. His nose gushed blood over his mouth.
“You bitch.” It sounded like he spoke through several layers of cloth.
Sarah coiled her body inward, bringing her knees to her chest, then kicked out. The soles of her shoes connected with his chest. Thirio was knocked back and was lost to the darkness of the basement.
The thought of a bullet entering her body any second made her desperate. Scrambling to her feet, she dove toward where Thirio had disappeared but hit the ground on her elbows and knees. Thirio was gone. He’d moved away to a darker section of the basement. She swiveled on her side kicking the air all around her, but hit nothing.
The small rectangular basement window disappeared momentarily as someone crawled into it, extinguishing the moonlight.
Thirio.
By the time she got to her feet, he’d reached the apex, rolled onto the grass, stuck his arm back inside the window, and began firing the weapon. Bullets zinged by. Chunks of cement burst forth and showered her right forearm. Sarah ducked away from the window, covering her ears and offering up her back. On the last report, something smacked into her lower right side knocking her off balance. She grunted and dropped to the ground.
“What was that?” a man shouted upstairs, loud enough for her to hear him.
Sarah jumped to her feet, winced at the pain in her side but grateful Vivian made her wear a vest by keeping the sharpshooter message brief, and ran for the stairs. She couldn’t let the Satanist escape. He would disappear for good until he started killing randomly again.
The BAE vest had worked as promised. It had stopped the bullet and hadn’t localized the injury. The force had been spread throughout the area of impact. Like a hard body check into the boards in a hockey game, she would be bruised, but nothing that would incapacitate her. Especially not on the adrenaline high she was riding.
When she was two steps away from the top of the stairs, a large body filled the opening. Mason held a weapon. He tried to aim it at her but Sarah barreled into him, hugged him close, pinning his cast tight to her chest, spun in a half circle while he grunted and tried to extricate himself from her, then released him. Mason teetered a moment at the top of the stairs, arms pinwheeling, then stepped backwards into open space and fell. Before he made it to the bottom, Sarah was running for the open front door.
Calder had to be close, but she couldn’t waste time looking for him. Not while Thirio was running away. The thumping of Mason’s body going down the stairs, coupled with his shouts of pain, diminished as she launched off the porch and ran toward the back of the property where Thirio’s truck was parked.
The gun had been emptied. Thirio was unarmed. There would be no weapons between them this time. Thirio wasn’t a born fighter. All she had to do was catch up to him and he would be hers again.
The handcuff snapped back and forth on her wrist as she ran. The open cuff side cut into her flesh. The pain spurred her on as she ran through the darkness.
A message had said that Mason and Calder might die in Thirio’s last explosion. It didn’t make sense when Sarah was sitting in the chair, but it did now. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the guesthouse when that bomb blew. She hoped Parkman got the note she left him in his luggage so he too could be far enough away.
The thought of Thirio disappearing in the night made Sarah run harder, like the hounds of Hell were nipping at her ankles.
Chapter 47
After a bout of rapid gunfire in the distance up ahead that made Parkman and Lee hit the ground, they got back to their feet and continued moving forward. A building came up on their left. Parkman edged closer to Lee and tugged on his arm.
“Lee,” he whispered. “This is insane. We can’t see anything. I think we need to steer clear of that place.”
It was nearly too dark to see Lee turn toward him. Parkman felt the man move his way while his hand clutched Lee’s arm.
“Why’s that?” Lee asked.
“Something Sarah said.”
“What did she say?”
The moon had slipped halfway behind a cloud leaving them partially blinded for the moment.
“In the note she left me,” Parkman said.
“The one you read to me in the car?” Lee asked.
“Yeah.”
“It didn’t say anything about this building out here.” Lee pulled away slightly. “Unless you didn’t read the entire thing.”
“I didn’t.”
“What else did it say, Parkman?”
The tone Lee used told Parkman he wasn’t interested in half-truths or misguided information. Lee wanted to know what Parkman knew and he wanted to know it now.
Parkman retrieved the note from his pocket and handed it to Lee who used his cell phone to read it. After several tense moments, Lee handed the note back to Parkman.
“Destroy that.”
“What?” Parkman stumbled and then righted himself. The note said Mason and Calder would likely die and it would be Mason’s doing.
“Save everyone a fucking headache. Destroy that note. As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t read it.”
“What about the blue
spruce?”
“The blue spruce you’re referring to is the only one on the Campbell Winery property.”
Parkman frowned in the dark as the moon eased out from behind its shroud of clouds. “How would you know something like that?” he asked.
“There’s only one blue spruce because it used to be the tip of the property line between the two wineries up here. The Martin Winery lost two-hundred meters of land in the 80s after a long court battle with the Campbells, effectively putting the single blue spruce solely on the Campbell Winery property. The court case was dubbed the Blue Spruce Territory Battle in the local media.” Lee started toward the guesthouse. “As far as I can remember, it’s about one-hundred meters toward the back of the property from their guesthouse. Something like that—”
A figure jumped from the front porch of the guesthouse and ran off in the distance. They were too far back to see who it was.
“That wasn’t Calder or Mason,” Lee said. “I think that was Sarah.”
“Might’ve been Sarah,” Parkman agreed. “Running from the house like that.” He stopped. “It might tell us something. Think we should find that blue spruce now?”
Lee skirted the house, offering it a wide berth as he led Parkman toward the fabled blue spruce. A man’s voice emanated from the guesthouse. Then another. One of the men yelled something.
Parkman hoped they’d find the blue spruce before it was too late.
Blindly, he followed Lee wondering how everything got so fucked up that he was looking for a tree on a winery in the middle of the night while waiting for a house to blow up.
“Fuck my life,” he mumbled to himself again.
Chapter 48
Officer Tom Mason held his broken arm close and rocked back and forth on the basement floor. He swore to himself that Sarah Roberts would be dead before daybreak if he had to take her out into the street and shoot her in the face. Throwing him down the stairs amounted to attempted murder. Even touching a police officer was assault, let alone grabbing one and shoving him down a flight of stairs.
Calder made it down to him and whispered something.
“What?” Mason shouted. “Whispering does no good.” He breathed in, trying to manage the pain. “I need help here.”
“I know, I know. Just hold on. I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No, get me up. I just need a minute. Then we go after that whore.”
“Anything broken?” Calder asked, his hands touching Mason’s legs.
“Get off me. Fuck! Everything’s fine.”
“You’re hurt.”
“Yeah, I’m hurt. Bruised and sore. Nothing new is broken.”
Calder got so close, his arm touched Mason’s cheek, then brushed his broken nose.
Mason screamed at the pain. Water cleansed his eyes. He felt lightheaded, then rolled to his side, hugging his cast to him. He would kill Sarah. Then he would shoot her in the mouth, the eyes, the ears. Anywhere she had a hole, he would fill it with lead. If he could afford the time, he would chainsaw her body, slicing her into tiny pieces until she was no more. Then dump her body to the fish of the Okanagan Lake so no one would ever see or hear of Sarah Roberts again. He would do all that, but not until he caught his breath.
“Calder, help me to that chair.”
“Listen, Mason, I think we might have taken this too far. I mean, that looked like one of our emergency task force guys back there.”
“Fuck off and help me up.”
Calder placed his hands under Mason’s arms. “You ready?”
“Just do it.”
Calder lifted and a new set of aches and pains rippled through Mason’s body. He gritted his teeth to keep from shouting out. He had hurt women before. In fact, he reveled in hurting the weaker sex. Beating them, punching them, even tying them up and whipping a few of his ex-girlfriends. They claimed to want it. He was the man to deliver it. But he’d never had a woman cause him so much pain in all his life. Was this karma? Was this about making things right?
As Calder half dragged him, half helped him walk to the chair, Mason realized what mattered. Pain mattered. Not receiving it, giving it. Instead of killing Sarah quickly, he would take her and hold her for a while. How long would suffice?
Calder gently set Mason in the armchair. As he settled down, something under his butt clicked.
“You hear that?” Calder asked.
“An old spring is loose. It’s nothing. The building’s abandoned. Of course, the furniture won’t be first class.”
“True enough,” Calder said, always agreeing with him.
Mason eased back in the chair and moaned. He would tie Sarah up. Naked would work. She could shit and piss in a bucket. He would use wipes to keep her clean and barely feed her to make her skinny over time like every woman should be. Then, when he was done hurting her—six months, maybe a year—he would release her and as she ran, he would cut her down in the street like the criminal she was.
Through the pain and the aches from his body, he could still smile. The thought of Sarah’s torture elated him.
“Oh, joy,” he whispered. “Oh, bliss.”
Calder moved over to the window and peeked outside.
“I think someone’s out there,” Calder whispered. “I heard thumps, like someone running. Maybe more than one person.”
“Of course,” Mason said. “Sarah just left. She’s still around, frightened that we’ll come after her.”
Calder moved away from the window and stopped beside Mason. “No,” he whispered in Mason’s ear. “Someone else. Like three or four people. Maybe more.”
“Then we better leave so we can catch Sarah on our own.” Mason tried to stand but stopped when Calder spoke.
“I think I’m done,” Calder said.
Mason eased back into the chair. “Done? What are you talking about?”
“You hurt Campbell, then killed someone by the hedges.”
“Calder. If you keep it together long enough to get through this, it’ll be a miracle.” He grabbed Calder’s sleeve and pulled him close. “We are decorated police officers. Everything can be covered up.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Fuck off and listen. That man was an intruder. We told Campbell we were there because we heard from multiple sources that a fugitive was coming to his house tonight. We convened in his security room where he was overcome. I tried to help him, but he fell. Then we heard something outside and went to investigate. We’re fucking cops, idiot. That’s what we do. That guy tried to jump us. My gun went off. Even if he is who you think he is, all that holds up in court if you go along with it.”
“I will, I will. It’s just …”
“Just what?”
“I didn’t sign on for this.”
He let Calder’s arm go. “Neither did I, Calder, neither did I.”
Calder moved back to the window and peeked out. “I think the coast is clear.”
“Then let’s go finish this and be done with it. After that we can get on with our lives.”
“Yeah,” Calder said. “That sounds good.”
Mason used his one good arm, albeit bruised and sore, to push off the chair and get to his feet.
Something snapped behind him. Movement brushed up his back. He turned around in the dark thinking someone had gotten the jump on him when his face felt punched in a hundred different places. It all happened so fast. There was virtually no pain. His mind understood something had exploded, but he didn’t understand what. He fell to the floor, but part of his body remained standing. Another part of his body moved across the room. Calder had emitted a short scream, cut off by whatever had punched Mason.
His consciousness wavered, his vision all but gone.
What the hell happened? Nothing responded to his thoughts or his mind’s direction. He wasn’t even breathing anymore. Was he alive? His brain worked a moment more, contemplating his fate and rushing to nightmarish conclusions, then it shut down.
The darkness of the basement envelop
ed Mason’s consciousness and all thoughts of pain, whether inflicted or received, ceased forever.
Chapter 49
Sarah crested a small rise by the road, then dropped to her hands and knees. Thirio’s truck hadn’t moved. She collected her breath and took a moment to scan the area. Where would Thirio go if not to his truck? She stared across the open area at the truck which was close enough to Upper Mission Drive to be illuminated by streetlights. A darkness moved inside the cab. Virtually motionless, Thirio sat with his head down on the top of the steering wheel.
