“If they aren’t dead already. Who’s to say the Council hasn’t already gone in and cleaned the place out? How do you fit into the Vineyard?” Finn asked Maggie.
“Before the Event,” Maggie said, “Marr put together several floating management units to move between various sites and facilities. We were part quality control, and part couriers. We’d begun to suspect we were being monitored by the government, so Marr didn’t trust a lot of our communications to digital networks—thus our need for human couriers.”
“And you simply left Sara in the hands of other people while you jetted all over the country?”
Maggie didn’t answer.
“I’m going down there because I want a gun,” Ava said. “You guys feel free to keep on arguing between yourselves.”
“This isn’t going to work,” Maggie told Parker.
“I killed Church members at the TV station,” Parker said. “In order to get Ava out. You and your kind aren’t welcome in my home. End of story.”
Eric and Jason lifted the muzzles of their weapons—not pointing them, but obviously in a more aggressive posture. Maggie put her hand out, signaling them to stand down. She narrowed her eyes and frowned at Parker.
“If this is a trick,” she said, “There will be bullets in the air, bullets that could hit our daughter. If you have some kind of bullshit batcave escape tunnel down there, we’ll know you’re going back to the Vineyard; we’ll be there, too, and we’ll be pissed.”
Sara pulled the gun from her pocket lifting it up, stepped forward and fired twice.
The echoing bangs boomed loud in the cabin, and Parker blinked in surprise at the muzzle flash going off so close to his face. Two shell casings erupted from the weapon’s ejection port. The rounds struck Eric first, and then Jason, in the head, painting the wood paneling of the walls behind them with syrup-like blood splatter.
The men crumpled.
Parker turned his gun on Maggie, yelling, “Freeze!” even as Finn brought her shotgun up and pointed it at her. Maggie paused, her pistol half-raised at her daughter, a look of horror on her face. Sara turned her muzzle toward her mother.
“Holy shit,” Ava said. “Like father like daughter.”
Parker swallowed, then lowered his weapon. “Let’s all of us relax.”
Sara still held her gun on Maggie. Face drained of blood, she stared on, wide-eyed. Parker caught Finn’s gaze, indicating she should cover Maggie. She nodded, and Parker turned to his daughter. He spoke slow, keeping his voice low and calm.
“Sara,” he said. “Sara, are you okay? Are we good here?”
Sara released a pent-up breath and slowly lowered her pistol. When she spoke, her voice was monotone, drone-like. “There, problem solved. Now, would you stop making demands, Mom? We don’t have time for this.”
“We had an agreement!” Maggie shouted at her. She was pale now, almost visibly trembling as she looked at her two dead bodyguards. When she spoke again, her voice was dull, the cadence slow. “You were only able to surprise them because they had their attention on these three.”
“I know,” Sara said. “And, I killed Dexter. It doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Not when I hate the Church this much.”
Maggie’s eyes abruptly filled with tears that welled up and then spilled over her eyelids, making her cheeks wet. She slowly thrust the muzzle of her handgun into the front of her jeans. Her voice cracked when she spoke, but the vehemence, the utter certitude of her belief, was clear as a bell. “Genesis 22,” Maggie said. “Abraham tied up Isaac and put him on the altar. He held the knife over Isaac. Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son. But an angel spoke to Abraham. He told Abraham not to sacrifice his son. Abraham had obeyed God. God loved Abraham.” She wiped the tears from her face. “I knew things weren’t perfect, Sara, but I had to show I was ready to obey in order to earn love, and that love would have protected you.”
“I was not protected!” Sara yelled at her.
Maggie looked at her. “Yes, you were. Nothing happened to you until you chose to serve the Beast. When you did, the protection of the love I earned by being willing to sacrifice you was lifted, and you were punished.”
Parker and Sara stared at the woman across from them in shock, both left speechless in the face of her naked zealotry.
“Jesus Christ, she’s cuckoo for Coco-Puffs,” Finn said.
“So that’s a green light to go on killing her, yeah?” Ava asked. “Seriously, I’m here to kill Church nutjobs, and she’s one. We all heard that, right? It wasn’t just me?”
Parker held up his hand. When he spoke, his voice was dull, almost listless—the voice of a man who’d given up on any last fragments of a dream he might have held onto. “Marr,” he said. “Marr did the psych profiling for the Council. She was an expert at it. She saw something in you, Maggie, something already there that she could bring out and polish for her own use. It’s nothing quite so crude as brainwashing—”
“Seems like fucking brainwashing to me,” Ava said, her tone droll.
Parker went on, ignoring Ava. “But it might as well have been a fucking lobotomy for what it did to your sense of objectivism.”
“For those who believe,” Maggie quoted. “No explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation will suffice.”
Sara stood silently crying. She let her gun hand drop until the gun dangled, almost forgotten, by her side.
For Parker, however, that show of defeat was all he needed. His anger and hatred at the woman who’d betrayed him was still there, but it was a cold thing, a distant feeling, not of hot rage and indignation. His Maggie was gone; whoever this was now, it wasn’t the woman he’d married.
“You know Marr killed herself, right?” he asked. “We were there; we saw it. She didn’t bravely rally when her nightmare predictions came true,” Parker said. “She fucking ate her gun and left her faithful to fend for themselves.”
“Yeah,” Ava answered. “So you can stop acting as if you have her hand up your ass like a puppet.”
Maggie’s face twisted in fury and she swung around toward Ava, her eyes dark shiny marbles. She went for the pistol in her jeans and Finn lifted the Mossberg, but Parker stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and took his fist and smashed it into Maggie’s jaw. His ex-wife crumpled under the blow and dropped to the ground.
22
Parker bent and snatched the pistol before she could recover. Three minutes earlier, and that punch might have been something darker, something more cathartic, something biblical in its punishment. Now, he felt none of that. He’d stopped someone from killing Ava. That was all.
He handed the pistol to Ava. “Do not shoot her,” he warned. “I don’t think Sara’s ready to see her mother murdered in front of her eyes.”
Maggie glared up at them from the floor. “Wow,” Finn said. “If looks could kill, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Oh, Mom,” Sara whispered, a small sob escaping her lips. She addressed Parker without looking at him. “What do we do with her? She can’t be allowed to warn the remaining section leaders at the Vineyard.”
“In the cellar,” he said, “I have left-over equipment from when I was still a cop, including handcuffs.” He turned to Ava. “Take the lantern and go down there. There’s a 5.11 Tactical belt down there on the workbench, too. It has two sets of cuffs with keys on the belt hook. Bring them up. It’s a start.”
“I don’t know what a ‘5.11 Tactical’ is,” Ava pointed out.
“It’s the belt with the cop gear hanging off it,” Parker answered. “You won’t miss it.”
Maggie glowered at him, but Finn kept the cavernous muzzle of the Mossberg pointed at her face. She looked at once sick and grimly determined, and Parker noticed her finger, white from stress, was hard on the trigger.
“Easy, Finn,” he said. “Take your finger off the trigger and lay it straight against the guard. You don’t want to pull it by accident.”
Finn nodded before slowly i
nching her finger off the trigger.
“That thing looks like a cannon in your hands,” Sara pointed out.
“It gives me a real feeling of security,” Finn replied. “I’m not exactly someone who’s had a lot of experience with firearms. This seems to balance out my lack of practice.”
Sara looked impressed. “Good to know.”
Ava took the lantern and began to descend into the cellar. Her shout of, “Oh, my God, I think I’ve gone to prepper heaven!” made Parker smile as he took his mini-Maglite out of his pack and turned it on, keeping the light shining on Maggie’s face to blind her.
“Hold the light while I search her,” he told Sara. “She may have a hold-out on her ankle or behind her back, or a knife in her pocket.”
“Or some eye of newt and wing of bat for casting spells,” Finn muttered.
“Screw you, Calamity Jane,” Maggie growled.
“And my little dog, Toto, too?” Finn asked.
“Are you armed, Maggie?” Parker asked. He handed the light to Sara, who took it. Her hand was only shaking a little bit now.
“Find out for yourself,” Maggie replied. “It’s the only way you’re ever going to get your hands on me again.”
“Once upon a time that was something that was very important to my idea of happiness,” he admitted. He squatted down beside her. “But not anymore, Maggie. I like this less than you do.”
“I hate you, James,” Maggie said. “I so fucking hate you.”
“Please, Mom,” Sara begged, her voice close to breaking. “Shut up.”
Ava came back then and Parker took the cuffs from her. Maggie lay on the floor at his direction and looked up at him. “Turn over,” he told her.
“Or what?” she asked. “You’ll hit me again?”
“He might not,” Ava said. “But I sure will.”
Maggie scowled at Sara, but seeing that she’d get no help from her daughter, she rolled over onto her stomach and held her hands behind her back. Kneeling, Parker placed the handcuffs on her and then quickly frisked her for weapons, coming up empty.
“Someone has to stay up here and watch her,” Parker said. “And the front of the cabin, for that matter.”
“I’ll stay,” Finn said. “Sara needs to be with you and I’m half-afraid of what Ava will do if she’s left alone with this bitch.”
“All right,” Parker agreed. “We’ll go down, resupply, and get on the move.” He looked at Sara. “I need to know you’re going to be okay,” he said.
She still looked upset, but not in shock or panicked. She’d just shot two men in cold blood because it’d been practical. He imagined her adrenaline response was surging through her body even now. She turned her eyes to him.
“I waited for you to come, Daddy,” she said. “I kept thinking you’d find me.” Her voice had softened as though she was remembering the little girl she’d once been, before her mother had introduced her to the Church.
Parker felt something sharp unhitch in his chest, and he didn’t try to fight the tears this time as they cascaded silently down his face. He was too afraid to touch her again, to comfort her; he was still a stranger to her, and certainly not the man she remembered.
At a loss for what else to do, he opened his arms. It felt like a miracle as she came to him, but he hugged her tight and her grip back was fierce on his body. She clung to him and he buried his face in her shoulder, breathing her in, feeling the connection rebuilding between them.
“I tried to find you, baby,” he said. “I tried.”
After a moment, they broke apart, looking at each other. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Finn sniffling. Ava simply glared at Maggie, looking ready to carve her up. Maggie, for her part, continued scowling at them all, seething. I don’t know this woman at all, he thought. Maybe I never did.
“We have to get moving,” he said, voice gentle.
Sara wiped her eyes. She looked at Parker and gave him a tight smile before nodding. “Let’s do it,” she said.
Suddenly, every person in the room turned toward the door as the sound of diesel engines approaching reached the cabin. The noise of grinding gears echoed up in mechanical growls, identifying the troop carriers coming up the access road.
“Watch her!” Parker told Finn.
“Like I want anything to do with the Council,” Maggie said. “Give me a gun!”
Finn lifted the shotgun and pointed it at Maggie as the woman climbed back up to her feet. Parker went to the door of the cabin and threw it open. Immediately, rifle fire came out of the woods and chewed up the door next to his head. He ducked back inside.
“They have scouts in place,” he shouted.
Ava went to the window next to the door and fired her M4 through it. Answering gunfire punched into the cabin and she ducked away.
“Get down!” Parker shouted.
Everyone hit the floor, and Maggie made a break for the other side of the cabin where the kitchen was. Outside, the Council unit unleashed hell on the structure. M2 .50 caliber machine guns opened up from opposite points and raked the building in a withering crossfire. Bullets tore through the room, leaving a devastating trail of destruction in their wake.
23
The acrid smell of gunpowder cloaked the room as bursts of wood dust hung in the air over fragments of window glass, which lay everywhere, scattered on the floor along with furniture splinters. Parker looked around in the lull from the firing. Ava was down on the floor, Finn on top of her, both of them wild-eyed and panicked from the surprise adrenaline rush.
He turned his head and saw Sara frantically yelling, “Mom,” a stunned expression splashed across her face. He saw what her eyes were locked on then, and swore. Maggie lay on the floor, leaking blood.
Parker, crawled toward the kitchen and saw that Maggie was still alive, but she’d been struck several times in the torso and was bleeding heavily.
“Finn,” he shouted. “Cover the door! Ava, keep low, but cover the windows!”
Turning back to his ex, he could see that her shirt was soaking through with her blood. Sara crouched down next to him, openly weeping. Maggie was dying, and the Council would sooner hang her from what was left of his porch than see that she received medical attention.
The sound of Sara’s sobs as much as what lay before them brought up a sudden rush of anger and bitterness in him for this woman he’d loved, who’d said she loved him. And who’d hurt him worse and in more ways than any other person or event in his life. But she was Sara’s mother, and he found that it still very much meant something to him.
“Hold on, Maggie,” he said.
He didn’t know what else to say. He needed to help cover the entrance points to the cabin, in case an assault followed the initial barrage, but he couldn’t leave her handcuffed as she bled out in front of their daughter.
“Get her loose,” he told Sara, fishing the key out of his pocket and handing it to her.
Then he took his carbine in hand, still expecting an entry team to hit the door. For long seconds, nothing happened. Sara cried silently, futilely pressing her hands over Maggie’s wounds in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of blood, and Parker crept back toward the entrance.
“Hello to the house!” a male voice called over a bullhorn. “Come out peaceably and you might live.”
“We have one of yours in here,” Parker called out. “She needs safe passage out.”
“Dad! No. I’m not leaving you and mom,” Sara told him from her position by Maggie.
“Way to throw us under the bus, Parker,” Ava replied.
“We are seriously outgunned. If Sara is out there, she has a chance to save the girls at the Vineyard and possibly even us. We need to look at all of our options here.”
The man with the bullhorn spoke up. “My orders are to retrieve a Sara Parker but there’s no specifics as to dead or alive.”
“Shit! Get to the cellar,” Parker said working to keep the hysteria out of his voice. He needed to keep everyone as calm as p
ossible.
“We’ll be trapped,” Ava protested.
“We’re trapped now—trapped and exposed if they cut loose like that again, or use grenades.”
In his mind, he saw the Stryker and felt fear clench his stomach. He was going to have to repeat his actions from when he’d been cornered in the gas station. And get lucky all over again.
“What about Mom?” Sara asked.
“I’m waiting,” the voice outside called out.
“Not without a guarantee of safe passage for Sara and treatment for our wounded,” Parker yelled back motioning to the girls to hurry.
“You aren’t in a position to negotiate. You have until the count of five to come out with your guns down and your hands up. One!”
“Hurry!” Parker ordered. “Go, go, go!”
Ava and Finn began crawling on their bellies toward the opening in the floor.
“Two!”
Parker turned to Sara.
“Help me drag her! Grab her collar and pull.”
“Three!”
Parker wrapped a fist in Maggie’s shirt and began dragging her on her back, along the floor toward the cellar trapdoor.
“Hold on, Maggie,” he said again.
“Four!”
She left a long, broad smear of her blood on the floor as they dragged her, both of them straining with the awkward lack of leverage. Maggie moaned with the pain from her wounds.
“Five! Times up.”
The .50 cals opened up again. Gunfire chewed through the walls, cracking wood to powder and punching through the air above their heads in thunderclaps. In the next moment, the pneumatic hammering of light machine guns and assault rifles joined the deadly cacophony.
Parker and Sara finally reached the trapdoor, their hearts pounding with fear and exertion.
“Help her down!” he shouted above the din.
Ava and Finn immediately began assisting Sara with the mortally wounded woman.
Parker rolled sideways, doing his best to stay below the level of the bullets slicing through the air above him. Taking two smoke grenades out of his pack, he tossed pack down into the cellar, pulled the pin on one and lobbed it through a shattered window on one side of the cabin before tossing the other grenade out an opposite window.
Dead End (911 Book 2) Page 19
