The Sarah Roberts Series Vol. 7-9

by Jonas Saul

  “Bullshit. If something happens to her with any of your trigger-happy fuckups, I’ll be calling your name.”

  “Are you threatening me now?”

  “No. I’m merely explaining to you that if something happens to her, you’re not above the law.”

  “I will send out an order to have her picked up. I can’t control my men if she resists arrest.”

  “Who is in charge?” Parkman asked as he walked across to stand in front of the senior officer.

  “I am.”

  “Exactly. And don’t your men take orders from you.”

  “They do.”

  “Then control your men. If something happens to Sarah, it’s on you, and you’re the man I’ll come to for an explanation. In the meantime, I’m leaving. I’ll find her first and then you won’t have to worry about killing her.”

  His anger at the injustices Sarah always had to face with cops riled him. How come they didn’t just shut up and help her? How come they always had to suspect her as the bad one? Was it jealousy because she got the job done when they couldn’t?

  He hit the door as he left the room.

  He had to find Sarah before they did. It was the only way to guarantee she would live.

  But he suspected Delarusso had a different agenda, one he wasn’t letting anyone else in on.

  Chapter 43

  The darkness in the cellar of the abandoned building at the bottom of the stairs was almost absolute, the smell overwhelming.

  “Anyone there?” Sarah asked.

  More scurrying came from somewhere in the darkness ahead.

  She had to find a way to see. The extra ammunition Darwin had given her would work. She raised the gun and fired once into the floor above. A large hole punched in the wood, offering a circular spotlight on the floor five feet in front of her.

  Even though the report of the weapon had been loud in the confined space, the scurrying was easily audible as it had intensified. She fired again, not too worried about being heard by passing cars. Then once more, making a path of spotlights to see where she was headed.

  A chunky rat with a long thick tail ran by one lighted hole on the dirty cellar floor. Another rat followed.

  “Shit.”

  She tried to hold her breath, but it was impossible. She gagged again at the smell of rotting flesh.

  In the light that beamed down from the third hole, the edge of a shoe was visible. She moved closer and fired one more time directly above the shoe.

  When this bullet punched a hole in the floor, an entire chunk of wood snapped out of place and fell to the cellar floor, and a cloud of dust and pungent odor rose.

  She leaned over and held her stomach, sure she’d vomit. After not throwing up, she turned around and slipped the gun into the jacket’s pocket.

  A man lie stretched out on his back. Beside him, according to Vivian’s note, lay his wife on her side, most of her face missing. The left side of her jaw and cheek were gone. The bullet that killed her went so deep, her spinal cord was visible.

  The man’s wounds were harder to see. Four small bullet holes were grouped together on the chest of his denim coveralls.

  Sarah thanked God this farming couple didn’t have any children, or they would be lying here with them.

  Vivian had explained there was nothing Sarah could’ve done for them. She was preparing for the restaurant that fateful evening when this couple was taken from their home and brought here to be murdered.

  This was the couple who owned the cornfields at the farm where the GMO conference was being held later that day. Someone was taking their place. Someone with an altogether different plan.

  Sarah could do something about that.

  The bodies had been dead a few days. The skin was bloated and gaseous. Rigor had set in and was already relaxing as the muscles and tendons all let go. The bodily fluids had settled to the lowest points and their wastes had vacated days ago.

  She looked away, took in a rancid breath, and turned back to the male’s body. Then she pulled the scissors out and started cutting the bottom pant leg off the man’s coveralls where no blood or bodily fluids had marked it. After she cut out a strip the size of an average ruler, she pulled back, crossed her chest, and walked briskly across the floor, stuffing the scissors and the denim in her pocket.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she took one more look over her shoulder and started up. Halfway up the stone steps, someone moved into the light above.

  “Hello?” a man said in a British accent.

  Sarah jumped and fumbled for her gun.

  “What’s that smell?” the man asked.

  Sarah yanked the gun out and kept it hidden by her leg.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I was on my mountain bike passing by this house when I thought I heard gunshots. I stopped because I was surprised they were hunting back here already. Then I heard more shots and saw the back door there had been smashed up. I just called the police.”

  Shit!

  She brought the weapon up. “Bad choice.” She ascended the stairs. “You should’ve kept peddling by.”

  He raised his hands and stepped back. “Whoa, I didn’t see anything.”

  “That’s right, you didn’t. And you didn’t see me, either.”

  He shook his head violently, his eyes wide. “I didn’t see you,” he agreed. Then he turned his head and looked away from her.

  “You’re going to walk away from this building and keep walking. When you get to where you’re staying, you’re going to thank your lucky stars I didn’t shoot you. Because I could and no one would ever know.”

  He nodded in an exaggerated manner.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Walk to the door.”

  She followed him, crisscrossing around the new holes in the floor, breathing deeper now that she was farther from the bodies.

  At the door, he stepped through the small opening, and she followed, gun first to maintain her aim on him.

  “Now start walking.”

  “I can’t use my bike?”

  “No. I’m confiscating it. You’re walking.”

  He backed away. At the corner of the building, he lowered his hands, turned around and ran.

  Sarah got on his bike and peddled the other way. It wasn’t until she crossed the Tiber River, located the farmer’s house and started down his private road that she realized she hadn’t grabbed the guy’s cell phone.

  Shit, I could’ve called in. They’re going to think I killed those people.

  Chapter 44

  Kierian sat in the back seat of the police car, en route to an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of Umbertide.

  A British man called and said a fiery red-haired American woman had held him at gunpoint and stole his mountain bike. The senior officer, Delarusso, who was tasked to head the security of the GMO conference and wanted Sarah out of his city, asked Kierian to come along because Parkman had already left on his own.

  They drove over a bridge, sirens blaring, and raced by an empty field.

  “What used to be here?” Kierian asked.

  “Tobacco,” the officer in the passenger seat said. Kierian had forgotten his name. “This whole area was big for tobacco in the past. Farmers used to make good money in this region with it.”

  They turned at a T in the road and a moment later pulled into an abandoned farmhouse where three buildings sat in disarray.

  All three men jumped out as a man wearing cycling pants ran toward them.

  “I can’t believe this woman,” the man said.

  “Please,” Kierian said. “Start at the beginning.”

  “I heard shots so I pulled in off the road. I came to the back here and saw that broken door.” He pointed. “I couldn’t see any hunters so I slipped inside the door to have a look around. I know, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I’m a curious sort.”

  “When you say shots, do you mean gunshots?”

  He nodded. “Yes. It was a red-haired American woma
n.”

  Kierian and Delarusso exchanged a look.

  “She pulled a weapon on me and said I was lucky she didn’t just shoot me and walk away. Something like that. The balls on this woman.”

  “Sounds like Sarah,” Delarusso said.

  “Also, there’s this smell …” the British man shook his head and waved a hand in front of his nose.

  “What do you think she was shooting at?” Kierian asked.

  “Well, whatever it was, it’s in the cellar because that’s where I found her.”

  The cop who rode along with them ran over to the car and retrieved a mag light.

  The three men followed the Brit into the house and across the floor, listening to him rant about how people didn’t have as many guns in Britain. Kierian didn’t want to listen to the gun debate.

  The Brit pointed down the stairs while covering his nose. “She was down there when I got here but I didn’t go down. I didn’t have a light and that smell …”

  Kierian followed the officer with the flashlight. At the bottom of the stairs, rats scurried away. By the time they had moved five feet into the basement, both men saw the bodies.

  Delarusso came up behind them. “Shots fired,” he said. “Two dead bodies here. A witness placing Sarah at the scene. Could you even attempt to explain this one away?”

  Kierian was speechless.

  “Hey,” the Brit yelled from the top of the stairs. “Doesn’t anybody want to take a description of my mountain bike? She stole it. That’s why I called you lot.”

  Chapter 45

  Sarah rode hard along the private drive of the farm. On her left, the train tracks ran parallel to the driveway. They gave her an idea for escape if she needed one later. To her right, the farmer’s field sprawled out until it touched the banks of the Tiber. A temporary stage had already been set up for today’s conference. The old rustico farmhouse came up on the right. She eased onto the gravel driveway and stopped peddling, letting the bike glide down the slight decline as she approached the house, watching everywhere for movement.

  At the end of the driveway, she steered to the brush on the side and rolled the bike out of view. Before doing anything else, she pulled out the denim patch from the man who had owned this property from her pocket and then the packet of dog food.

  It didn’t look like anyone was here this early. The only sounds were birds flitting in the trees and the distant roar of the highway.

  According to Vivian, the farmer’s dog was left on the property without food or water.

  Sarah walked out of the brush and headed around to the back of the house. At the corner, she leaned against the stone wall and took a moment to breathe. Her nerves were still zinging from the dead couple in the cellar. Also, at any moment their dog would act aggressive toward her to guard their property.

  She turned the corner slowly. A small lawn on this side of the house needed tending. Large rocks mixed with bricks lay in a pile to her left, surrounding two walls that hadn’t entirely fallen down. Something had collapsed here years ago and no one had bothered to rebuild or clean it up.

  She walked onto the lawn and examined the back wall of the house, looking at each window for movement.

  Below what looked like the kitchen window was an old wooden door. The cellar of this house was ground level. She walked over to the door and tried the handle.

  It opened. She stepped inside with caution, holding the plastic baggie of dog food in front of her.

  “Here boy,” she whispered.

  Once inside the gloom of the dusty cellar, she closed the door behind her. At the back of the cavernous room were a row of windows and another wooden door. The windows allowed enough light for her to see the entire room.

  To her right was an extensive workbench. Tools hung suspended from the thick wooden beams crisscrossing the roof. Cobwebs hung in the less used spaces above her head.

  The workbench was covered with tiny boxes of nails, screws, hoses and other items the farmer had been using before his untimely death.

  As she turned for the door to her right, she heard the low growl.

  She stopped moving, her eyes roaming the floors.

  The growl came again.

  Of course. That’s how the killers missed her. She’s stealthy.

  The dog had been in the cellar when they came.

  “Hey, Betsy,” Sarah said. She had no idea why an Italian farmer would call their dog Betsy, but that’s what Vivian said the dog’s name was.

  “Betsy, it’s okay.”

  The dog would probably respond better to Italian. She tried to remember a few words.

  “Bene,” she said, recalling that meant good.

  “Bene, bene,” she repeated.

  The growl moved closer until the dog stepped from behind the counter near the door that led upstairs.

  The dog was hungry, scared and lonely.

  “It’s okay,” she said in her softest, loving voice.

  She opened the baggie all the way, pulled a few morsels out and tossed them at the dog.

  “It’s okay, Betsy. Go ahead. Have something to eat.”

  Betsy, a large German shepherd, looked at the food and then back at Sarah.

  “It’s okay,” Sarah said again. Two cappuccinos, two dead bodies and now two minutes to appease a huge dog or get eaten. Her hands trembled at the notion.

  She considered pulling the gun and keeping it handy. She could deal with angry men, but a pissed off guard dog was something else entirely.

  She tossed more food, hoping Betsy would warm to her.

  Betsy looked down again, but this time lowered her snout and sniffed the food. One more glance at Sarah, and Betsy ate the pieces.

  Sarah tossed more. Betsy ate all of it.

  Then Sarah tossed food closer to her feet.

  “Come on. You can do it.”

  Betsy moved closer and ate again.

  Sarah repeated the process until the dog was four feet away. Then she took the denim patch and held it out toward the dog. After the ritual hesitation, Betsy edged close enough to sniff the patch.

  The dogs eyes changed subtly as she relaxed in her alpha’s scent.

  “Good girl,” Sarah said in a soft voice as she dumped the rest of the dog food onto the floor.

  Betsy ate ravenously as Sarah moved to her side and ran her hand along the dog’s back. When the food was gone, Betsy looked up and tried to lick Sarah’s face.

  She giggled and reared back to avoid the slobbery pink wetness.

  “Oh, Betsy, I’m so sorry your owner was taken from you.”

  The dog was so close, Sarah hugged her. The animal leaned into her, wanting to be held, consoled.

  But it was time to get into position.

  “Okay, Betsy. You need water. Come on upstairs before anybody arrives. We haven’t got much time.”

  Sarah got to her feet slowly. She opened the door to the upstairs and looked around the corner. Just as Vivian had told her, stone steps led up to the kitchen.

  “Come on,” she whispered with a wave of her hand. The dog’s tail wagged for the first time as she trotted over, passed through Sarah’s legs, and headed up the stairs.

  “Betsy, wait.”

  The dog got to the top and turned the corner. Sarah followed, but before turning the corner, she drew her weapon.

  Inside the kitchen, the dog sat by the old fireplace beside her food dishes. Sarah swept the gun left, then right, but no one else was in the room.

  The fridge was to her left, and the counter lined the back wall. Everything was rustic, old and withered, but maybe that was a style the farmers were going for. Pots and pans hung from a wire square suspended from the ceiling. Cloves of garlic were tied to the edge of the wire square, as well as onions.

  Sarah grabbed the silver water dish and filled it in the sink. When she set it back down, Betsy lapped it up with vigor.

  Sarah walked through the kitchen to an alcove to look into the dining and living room. It was also empty. As far as s
he could tell, she and Betsy were the only ones in the house.

  She dropped the gun in the jacket pocket.

  “I have to see the bathroom. Then we hide until later, okay?”