by Chris Mooney
When he had a solid view of the front of the house, he looked through his binoculars again.
Saw Paul standing in the spacious foyer next to some old guy Frank would have called a Q-tip.
Sebastian felt a fierce stab of joy. He had found Paul. Paul was here, and Paul didn’t know Sebastian was here.
Another man came into view—another tough-looking goon. Sebastian increased the magnification and said, “I’ve got a visual on Paul, some old white dude, and a guy who—”
Sebastian cut himself off when he saw the muscled goon holding the arm of a young woman wearing a black cocktail dress. Her hands were behind her back, as if she was handcuffed, and she was crying. The men ignored her.
The Q-tip laughed at something Paul said.
Sebastian got a clear look at her features and felt his insides turn to water.
“My daughter’s in there,” he said.
Faye yanked her binoculars away from her face and looked strangely at him.
“Grace Lewis is my daughter,” Sebastian said, and moved away, confronted with a level of fear and a whole host of other emotions no father should ever have to experience.
When Faye joined him at the Range Rover, he was removing the weapons and other gear he needed from the compartment under the spare tire. The SUV’s interior lights had been turned off, and the canopy of branches over the area where he stood cast everything in a gloom that made it difficult to see, but he knew where he had stored each item, could recognize each by touch.
He picked up an AR-15 and handed it to her.
“There’s a patio off the back of that room,” he said. “Has a sliding glass door. I’m going to go through there—after you lob a couple of flash-bangs through the window. After that, you’re to swing around to the front of the house, get yourself behind that tree over there.” He pointed to an immense oak roughly two hundred yards away, near the front of the house. “The rifle has a scope. I want you watching the front door. That’s going to turn into a choke point. Once the shooting starts, everyone’s going to start funneling through there, Paul included—provided I don’t take him down first.”
Faye was shaking her head. “He’s going to fight you.”
“You don’t stand up to an assault rifle. Paul’s a coward. He’s gonna run straight for one of those cars—trust me.”
“And if he does, you want me to take him out.”
“I’m looking forward to doing that myself. But if you’ve got a clear shot, yeah, I’d sure appreciate it.
“Get down on your stomach—it’ll give you more stability with the rifle,” Sebastian said. “You see Paul, Guidry, anyone he brought, take them down. Just make sure Paul doesn’t leave here. You do that, you’re looking at a seven-figure bonus.”
“Go,” she said. “I’ve got your back.”
CHAPTER 50
IT TURNED OUT he wouldn’t have to break down or shoot his way through the sliding glass door. It was unlocked. Sebastian cracked it open an inch, and then he crouched down and looked through the glass at the spare, dimly lit kitchen, used, he guessed, strictly for entertaining. It was big enough to service a hotel restaurant.
Sebastian had never pulled the trigger on someone who hadn’t deserved it. The people in his line of work had no illusions about the business they were in, and not once had he ever lost sleep over his actions or decisions. If anything, he slept more soundly, comforted by the knowledge that he had performed a valuable service, not only for the city of Los Angles but also for humanity.
His blood hummed at the thought of putting Paul down. But he wouldn’t do it at the expense of saving his daughter. Grace was the goal.
But he needed Faye to play along, do her part. Would she? He had offered her a solid financial incentive, plus his promise to help her locate her twin brother.
Sebastian heard breaking glass.
Smiled.
Good girl, he thought, a jolt of adrenaline surging through his limbs. He jumped to his feet and threw the door open as the grenade exploded in a deafening boom. In front of him was a swinging door. Just a bump of a hip or shoulder, and it would open.
In the movies, chaos was a well-orchestrated affair, perfectly lit and flawlessly executed. In real life, chaos was mean and ugly and merciless. It stripped people of their manners and humanity. When Sebastian charged into the great room, or whatever the owners called it, the stock of the AR-15 wedged firmly against his shoulder, his gaze down the iron sight, he saw the goons, many of them armed, blinded by the flash grenade. Some trampled over one another, like nocturnal insects suddenly exposed to light, as they fought to see and fought their way to the exit on the far right of the room. The blast had blown out the windows, and the wind coursing through the shattered glass scattered the clouds of gray-white smoke.
Sebastian rested his cheek against the bump stock’s grainy polymer and opened fire.
Save Grace, kill Paul—and Faye. Sebastian liked her—she was a good kid and all, smart and tough—but she knew too much about him, and he couldn’t have that hanging over his head, not with the new life waiting for him with Ava and their daughter. Save Grace, kill Paul and then Faye, in that order.
* * *
* * *
Back at the Range Rover, when Sebastian had handed her the AR-15, Ellie knew, without a doubt in her mind, that he was going to go inside the mansion, guns blazing, and mow down every single person possible in his quest to save not only his daughter but also himself. It didn’t make sense to leave witnesses.
And that includes me, she thought. I’m a witness. She had found Paul for him, and while Sebastian needed her to cover the front door and prevent Paul from leaving or, even better, take him out, the moment Paul was out of the picture, she suspected she was, too. Why fork over two million when, with a single bullet, he could kill her and leave with his daughter, all of his problems solved?
Ellie had taken cover behind the trunk of a valley oak so large and old, she suspected it had been there since the world’s inception. She lay in the prone position favored by snipers, but she didn’t have a bipod to hold her rifle steady, so she had to make do leaning the left side of the rifle’s handguard against the tree trunk. The plastic mask felt slick against her wet face, her head damp underneath the hood.
The blast from the grenade had blown out most of the windows. When she heard muted gunfire coming from inside the mansion, she felt the lining of her stomach constrict, as though someone were holding a flame to it.
She was sure Sebastian was killing them—killing everyone he could. If she went in there, she knew she’d find piles of dead and wounded, all casualties in his quest to save his daughter, Grace.
His daughter, Ellie thought. It explained why Sebastian had been so driven, so determined to search the properties.
Her spot offered her the best cover but not the best line of sight. She was lying roughly two hundred yards away, east of the entrance, at a forty-five-degree angle, and on a slight incline. Ellie stared through the target scope, blinking sweat from her eye, at the front door, which was, amazingly, still shut. Once it opened—and it would at any second—people would funnel through it, scrambling in all directions. If Paul was among them—and if she was inclined to take him out (and she wanted to, for Danny)—it would be nearly impossible to get off a clean shot. She wasn’t a trained sniper, had no idea how to hit a moving target, let alone do it cleanly, without collateral damage.
The same principle applied to shooting a vehicle, even if it was stationary. She had fired an AR-15 before, but she had no idea how the weapon she held in her hands had been calibrated, if it had been calibrated at all; if it had been cleaned properly and wouldn’t jam. And then there was the wind to consider, and she didn’t know how to factor that into her shooting.
The door opened, swinging into the house.
Her heart pounding and her breath coming hard and fast, the odo
rs of grass and the arid, sunbaked earth beneath her filling her nostrils, she watched as armed men bolted outside. The entryway got choked with bodies, just as Sebastian had predicted, but mainly because three armed bodyguards were flanked around a small, chubby, and terrified Middle Eastern man.
Paul came out last, backward, with Sebastian’s daughter gripped in a powerful choke hold; he was using her as a human shield. He was armed with a handgun—a nine, by the looks of it—and he fired several shots into the house; at Sebastian, Ellie assumed. Two of the bodyguards in the rear-flank position had turned to the house and fired as they moved backward, providing covering fire to protect their boss, or whoever he was. When they ran out of ammo, they replaced their spent magazines with fresh ones, all with the practiced ease and confidence of professionals used to handling weapons.
Paul fired as he whipped his head back and forth, trying to get a quick lay of the land. Ellie had the side of his torso lined up in the scope’s reticle.
She thought of Danny and wanted to take the shot—and would have, too, if Paul hadn’t taken a hostage. He held Grace Lewis effortlessly, like she was a doll, the woman’s face turning a dark crimson and her bare feet kicking above the ground as she tried to pry his forearm away from her throat.
Take the shot.
She couldn’t.
Too risky. If she was off just a bit, she might hit Grace. She was an innocent.
Paul’s handgun either ran out of ammo or jammed; he tossed it aside as he moved to the nearest car—a red Lamborghini that screamed “middle-aged man with small penis having major midlife crisis.” Ellie watched his hand reach into his pants pocket and come back with a key fob. He opened the driver’s-side door and turned, his back facing her—
Ellie fired.
The shot went wide, the bullet exploding the Lamborghini’s back window.
Paul spun around so fast, he lost control of his hostage. Grace slipped from his grip. He thought about going after her, decided against it. He slid behind the wheel of the sports car. Ellie sprang to her feet, eyes locked on Grace, and ran.
CHAPTER 51
HE COULDN’T FIND Grace. What Sebastian did find was the old Q-tip with the tufts of white hair slumped against the floor. His breathing was labored as he held out an arm, terrified, shaking the set of car keys pinched between his clawed fingers.
“That’s my Bugatti Chiron parked out front,” Q-tip said, his voice trembling with fear. “It’s worth nearly three million dollars. Take it. Just let me live.”
“The girl,” Sebastian said.
“I can give you money, anything you want—”
“The girl. Where is she?”
The old man pointed to the front door. “Out there,” he said. “He took her out—”
In his mind’s eye Sebastian saw the old man laughing at something Paul had said, Grace standing next to them both and crying, and shot him in the face.
No witnesses.
He heard gunfire coming from outside—not from a handgun but the rapid fire from an AR-15. Had to be Faye, unless Paul had grabbed a similar weapon on his way out. He assumed Paul was armed. Sebastian approached the doorway, looking down the iron sight, ready to fire.
The area outside the front door appeared clear. He swung around the door, to his left, and saw the bodyguards and the small, fat man running, almost to the cars. Sebastian kept his finger pressed on the trigger, shooting at them and having no idea if he’d hit them, because he saw Faye—saw her standing, her hood pulled back and her mask gone, firing from her shoulder at a cherry red Lamborghini Aventador convertible that drove, in fits and starts, across the lawn as though the driver didn’t know how to drive a standard. He caught sight of the steel pockmarks created by the AR rounds and knew Paul was driving the car. Paul was driving away, and he was going to escape.
Grace stood behind the tree where Faye had taken cover. Faye must have grabbed her. His daughter’s shins and knees were scraped and cut in places, but she didn’t look like she was in pain; she didn’t appear even to know what was transpiring around her.
His daughter was safe.
But he had to consider Paul. Paul was alive, and the only way Sebastian could ensure the safety of Ava and their daughter was by killing Paul. If he didn’t, he would spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, wondering if Paul was going to make another move against him, threaten everything he loved once more.
No. End this shit now.
The Range Rover wouldn’t be able to catch up to a Lamborghini.
A Bugatti would.
“Take her to my house,” he called to Faye. “I’ll meet you both there.”
Sebastian glanced at the Lamborghini—it was almost at the gate—and bolted back inside the foyer. He grabbed the keys from the floor, and when he came back outside, rushing to the Bugatti, he saw the Lamborghini’s dim taillights racing in the distance, fading.
Sebastian started the car and floored the gas pedal. As he went after Paul he thought again about his daughter. What was more important? Taking Paul down or meeting his daughter and bringing her home to Ava?
They were both important, he told himself.
He deserved both.
Paul didn’t know how to properly work the clutch and gearshift to drive smoothly, to take full advantage of the power and speed of the Lamborghini’s engine, which meant he wouldn’t be able to get as much distance from Sebastian and the house as he would have liked.
Worse, Paul had chosen as his escape route a winding, solitary stretch of track road, which allowed two-way travel but, in reality, was wide enough for only one car. The road was also made of dirt—not the best choice for a high-performance sports car—and it dipped and rose between rolling valleys of undeveloped land.
Sebastian kept reminding himself to drive carefully. The Bugatti had a lot of horsepower, and it was suited to driving on flat surfaces, not winding dirt roads through hillsides and mountains. If he didn’t maintain control over the car, especially near one of the hairpin curves, he could spin out, drive off the road, and crash.
For the next twenty minutes, he trailed Paul under a sky glowing blood red from the nearby wildfires. The glow intensified, making Sebastian wonder where Paul was going. Is he playing the ultimate game of chicken, thinking I’ll stop following him? What’s the son of a bitch doing? Sebastian didn’t have the luxury of focusing much on these thoughts; he had to bear down hard on driving, having Paul in his view one moment, only to lose sight of him as the younger man took another switchback road or hairpin curve or drove down some steep decline or up some rise, Sebastian’s heart freezing with dread and loss until he caught sight of Paul again, thanks to the Lamborghini’s headlights. Paul, he was sure, would have preferred to kill the headlights, but he couldn’t. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to see the roads and could very well crash or drive off an incline.
Paul turned right, across a sharp curve, and disappeared behind a stretch of land. Sebastian reached it minutes later, and when he turned onto the flat stretch of dirt road, he saw, maybe half a mile ahead, the road engulfed in flames that reached so high into the air, they looked as though they were touching the sky.
But where was Paul? Sebastian didn’t see his vehicle or its headlights; he didn’t see any other roads. Had Paul decided to drive off-road, through the valley of scrub brush? The Lamborghini wasn’t designed to handle that type of terrain. But there was nowhere else for him to go unless he turned around and—
There! There he is! Sebastian caught sight of one of the taillights through the clouds of smoke whipping across the road; then, as he drew closer, he saw that Paul had backed up, the sports car now sitting at an angle, like a sawhorse set up to block the road. But Paul wasn’t moving. In the glare from the headlights Sebastian saw him furiously trying to work the gearshift and clutch.
End it here. End it now.
But how? What was t
he best approach?
Sebastian had an idea—risky, yes, but still promising. He reached into his front pocket and grabbed the switchblade he always carried with him. It felt slick in his sweaty palm, and after he clamped it between his front teeth he put on his seat belt. Then he accelerated, working the gears and clutch, the flames reflecting off the hood of the Bugatti, the Lamborghini growing larger in his windshield. He had reached almost forty miles per hour when he transferred the switchblade from his mouth to his fist and then intentionally drove straight into the Lamborghini’s driver’s-side door.
Before the airbags deployed, before the headlights smashed and his head and body were thrown violently against the seat belt and seat, he saw Paul, who hadn’t put on his seat belt, thrown sideways, out of his seat.
The switchblade was still clutched in his fist. Sebastian used it to puncture the bags so he could see the road clearly.
The front part of the Bugatti had been smashed, turned into an accordion of steel, the windshield gone. The wind, as hot as the exhaust from a blast furnace, blew across his face, smoke filling his lungs and irritating his eyes. He quickly got his bearings—saw that he’d been thrown sideways from the impact, the Lamborghini somewhere behind him. Sebastian didn’t turn around to look, focused on seeing if the car was still drivable.
It was. He drove back up the road, the Bugatti wounded, the transmission groaning, causing the vehicle to buck. He got just enough distance between him and the fire, and then parked the car. He had to make sure Paul couldn’t escape. He had to make sure.
Sebastian was banged up, but he could move. He opened the door and got out, legs shaky from adrenaline. Where was the AR rifle? There, on the passenger-side floor. He reached back inside the car and grabbed it.
Paul was heaving himself out of the totaled car’s missing driver’s-side window.
Sebastian brought up the AR as Paul landed face-first on the ground. Through the smoke, he saw Paul’s powerful arms push him up, but all of his strength, all his time spent in the gym, wouldn’t get him to stand. His left leg had been badly fractured, the foot twisted and nearly torn off. There was no way Paul could stand, let alone run.
