Town at the Edge of Darkness (The Excoms Book 2)

by Brett Battles

  The van came up the gentle slope leading to the parking area next to the lodge.

  “Take us around back,” Slater said.

  “We’ve got to get him to a doctor,” Yates argued.

  “No, shit. But he needs blood.”

  Given the nature of the trials, the lodge had a supply of standard and nonstandard first-aid supplies, including pouches of blood plasma.

  Cory drove the van behind the lodge and stopped near the kitchen door.

  “Bring your car over,” Slater said to Yates. “I’ll get the blood. Cory, you stay here with Mr. Rally. Don’t wait for me to get back before moving him into the sedan.”

  “Which one do you want?” Ananke asked.

  “I’ll take Mr. Security Chief,” Dylan replied.

  “Shout if you need help.”

  “I won’t.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ricky led Rosario and Tasha through the forest in the general direction he’d seen the other captives run. After they’d been going for several minutes, Rosario let out a low psst. Ricky looked back and she motioned for him to stop and get down. As he did, she and Tasha moved up beside him.

  “I saw something,” Rosario whispered.

  “Where?”

  She pointed ahead to the left.

  Ricky surveyed the forest, but didn’t spot whatever she’d seen. “A person?” he asked.

  “Not sure. Big enough, I think.”

  “I’ll circle right, and you…” He remembered Tasha was there.

  “I’ll be okay,” Tasha said.

  Ricky looked at Rosario, unsure.

  Rosario said, “Give her your gun.”

  Ricky had a pistol and a crossbow. He handed the gun to Tasha, butt first. “You know how to use this?”

  “Point and pull the trigger,” Tasha said.

  “Right. Will you be able to use it?”

  A moment before she nodded. “If I need to.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “Just try not to use it on us.”

  He and Rosario went their separate ways, leaving Tasha hiding in some brush. Ricky went as wide as he thought necessary, and arced back around toward the point Rosario had indicated. Every twenty feet or so, he paused and listened, but whatever Rosario had seen was either gone or had stopped moving.

  Onward he went, closing in on the spot, until he was only a few yards away. Nothing there but the trees and the ground and a few bushes. As he stepped closer, he saw Rosario coming his way. He headed toward her, but then spied movement out of the corner of his eye. He twisted around and brought the crossbow up to his shoulder.

  “I would appreciate it if you did not pull the trigger,” Liesel said. She held a rifle, pointed at the ground.

  “Holy crap,” Ricky said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Rosario hurried over and the two women hugged. “We are very glad to see you.”

  “Damn right we are,” Ricky said. “Where are Ananke and Dylan?”

  “A little busy at the moment.”

  “But you all came for us?”

  “We did.”

  “That is so sweet!”

  Liesel looked around. “Did something happen to Tasha Patterson? I saw her run into the woods with you.”

  “Oh, right. Tasha. Hold on.” Ricky hurried back to where they’d left the woman. As he neared the bushes, he noticed the muzzle end of the pistol sticking out between branches. “Take it easy. It’s me. Don’t shoot.”

  He escorted a relieved Tasha back to the others.

  Rosario said, “I told Liesel about the hunters following us.”

  Liesel did not look happy.

  “What’s wrong?” Ricky asked her.

  “Ananke did not want us to kill anyone and lose a potential information source, unless it was absolutely necessary.”

  “I think we can chalk up those three assholes as absolutely necessary. I mean, they were trying to kill us.” He paused. “If it makes you feel better, Rosario did leave their guides alive.”

  Liesel didn’t look like his words made her feel much better.

  “There were three other hunters, and guides, I presume,” Ricky said. “Tell me you took them out.”

  “Ananke took care of one, and we were able to remove the people they were hunting.”

  “Did you remove their tracking bugs?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Then the hunters are going to find them wherever you took them.”

  “Which is why we need to hurry.” Liesel started walking toward the southwest.

  Ricky jogged up next to her. “Wait. What about Slater and his people? We need to do something about them, too.”

  “Ananke and Dylan are handling Slater, Yates, and Rally right now. As for Slater’s people, they are no longer a problem.”

  Ricky grinned. “Now that’s what I like to hear.”

  Per Ananke’s instructions, Morgan and the three former captives barricaded themselves inside the building where Eduardo and the other two had been held less than half an hour before. Given that there was only the one way out, and their survival was completely contingent on Ananke and her team being successful, it was a gamble. But if they’d stayed outside and tried to make it off the lodge property on their own, they would have never made it.

  After the door was secured, they searched for anything they could use as weapons. They found an unlocked rifle cabinet, but the only things in it were several sets of shackles. They took these, thinking they could be swung at an opponent if necessary.

  Morgan took up position at the door and pressed her ear against it. The thing was thick and heavy, and she had no real hope of hearing much of anything through it, but she could think of nothing else to do.

  “They are coming back for us, right?” the female captive—Claudia—asked.

  “They’ll be back,” Morgan said.

  “Are you sure? Maybe we should see if we can find the way through the fence.”

  Gerald, the African-American guy, frowned. “There is no way through the fence.”

  “You don’t know that. How could you? You didn’t have time to look.”

  “He’s right,” Eduardo said. “They just said that so that we would keep running and not just sit down and wait for someone to shoot us.”

  “That can’t be true. There’s got to be a way out.”

  Morgan looked back at them. “There is a way out. Through the front gate. We’ll use it when my friends come back.”

  No one said anything for several seconds.

  “They are coming back, right?” Claudia said.

  “Absolutely,” Morgan said. She had seen Ananke and her people at work, and knew they’d be a match for groups ten times their size.

  Ten quiet minutes passed before she heard a faint scratch coming from the other side of the door. Morgan pressed harder against the door, and closed her eyes to concentrate. The door handle rattled. She jumped back, surprised, but then shoved her shoulder against the door in case whoever was on the other side somehow opened it.

  Eduardo joined her a second later, and then Gerald, and finally Claudia.

  More rattling, then someone pounding on the door, and a muffled “Open up!”

  Mr. Ford banged the butt of his rifle against the door again, and repeated his demand that those inside open up.

  Tracking the prey had been difficult at first. That changed when Mr. Hawks’s observer had hinted at a possible solution to the hunters’ problems. A price was agreed upon that would be split between the two guides, and from there, it had been a simple task of following the men’s instructions.

  It was a surprise to everyone that the prey turned out to be holed up in a building not far from the meadow where the trials had begun. According to the observers, it was used as the holding area for the prey, and this was the first time any had ever come back to the building. More importantly, they said it had only one way in and out.

  Mr. Ford hit the entrance again. “Open the damn door!”

&n
bsp; Liesel could hear the man yelling before she, Rosario, Ricky, and Tasha had reached the far side of the ridge. The question was, was the hunter alone? Or was the remaining fellow killer with him?

  They had a quick huddle, then Ricky headed around to the north end of the building and Liesel around the south, while Rosario stayed with Tasha.

  Liesel circled wide to the rocky outcropping where she, Ananke, Dylan, and Morgan had watched the building from earlier. She unshouldered the sniper rifle and put her eye to the scope.

  She counted four people. Two hunters and two escorts.

  They were trying to get the door open without any success.

  She checked her watch, and waited until go time.

  When the second hand hit zero, she picked her target and pulled the trigger.

  “Enough!” the muffled voice on the other side of the door yelled. “If you don’t open this now, we will blow it open, and there will be nothing left of you!”

  Claudia’s eyes went wide. “Do you think they can do that?”

  “Who cares if they can?” Eduardo said. “If we open the door we will be just as dead.”

  “You have one minute. If I were you, I’d—”

  An odd sound, almost like an animal screeching. Followed by more of the same, then everything went quiet.

  Morgan put her ear against the door again.

  “What’s going on?” Claudia asked.

  Morgan shushed her. She thought she could hear something but wasn’t sure.

  Thirty seconds later someone knocked on the door again, only it was more a rap than pounding.

  “Morgan? It is Liesel. You can open the door.”

  Relief flooded through Morgan. She reached for the bar that locked the door, but Eduardo put his hand over hers.

  “Are you sure it’s one of your friends?” he asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Maybe they are using her to trick us out.”

  “If they are, then it means my friends have failed and it doesn’t matter what we do.”

  She pushed the bar out of the way and pulled the door open.

  Liesel stood on the other side, a rifle in her arms. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah,” Morgan said.

  She and the others came outside.

  Four men writhed on the ground, clutching their legs. Two had metal bolts piercing their knees, while the other pair appeared to have been shot by more conventional means.

  “Hey, Lady Cop.” Ricky, one of Ananke’s colleagues who had gone missing, smiled and nodded at Morgan.

  She looked around. “Tasha was with you, wasn’t she? That’s what Liesel said. W-w-where is she? Where—”

  Two figures emerged from the south end of the building. Rosario, the other missing team member, and Tasha. When Tasha saw Morgan, she stopped and stared, clearly not expecting her to be there.

  Morgan ran over, smiling bigger than she ever had in her life. She threw her arms around her girlfriend, lifted her off her feet, and planted her lips against Tasha’s. Joyful tears ran down their cheeks.

  “I thought I was never going to see you again,” Morgan said once they stopped kissing.

  “I was sure you wouldn’t. But you’re here.” Tasha sounded like she still couldn’t believe it.

  “I’m here.”

  They kissed again.

  Liesel, Rosario, and Ricky checked the injured men and knocked out the ones who weren’t already unconscious. Then everyone pitched in dragging the men into the separate cells and locking them in.

  When they were finished, they began hiking toward the lodge.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Dylan let Yates get all the way to the sedan before closing in. As Yates climbed into the driver’s seat, Dylan rushed over in a crouch, yanked open the passenger door, and hopped in.

  Yates dived for the center console, obviously going for a gun. Dylan poked him hard in the forehead with the suppressor end of his own weapon, stopping the head of Scolareon Security in his tracks.

  “Hello, Mr. Yates. Now why don’t you just sit back?”

  Yates leaned back, rubbing his forehead.

  “What’s in the compartment?” Dylan asked. “Wouldn’t be a gun now, would it?”

  Keeping both his gaze and his pistol aimed at Yates, Dylan opened the center console and extracted a Glock G43 9mm.

  “Well, lookie here. I was right.”

  “What do you want?” Yates said.

  “What do I want? To be honest, I’d love to be back in my room, asleep. But that’s not what you meant, is it? It’s not a matter of want, Mr. Yates. It’s matter of what we are in the process of doing. Go ahead. Ask me what we’re doing.”

  Yates did not oblige.

  “Fine. I’ll ask, then. What are you doing, man holding the gun? Thank you for asking, Mr. Yates. What we’re in the process of doing is shutting down your little killing factory.”

  “You’re never going to get out of here alive.”

  “Why? Because you have an army of men beyond the ones we’ve already taken out? Well, we know there are a few still out there. You do have that delivery coming into Scolareon tonight. But you’re in luck. The FBI is helping you out on that.”

  The color drained from Yates’s face. “You’re…you’re FBI.”

  “Do I sound like I’m FBI?” Dylan said, playing up his Irish accent. “Of course we’re not FBI. They’ve got too many rules.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “You know, that’s a good question. We really could use a name. We’ll have to get somebody working on that. For now, you can think of us as a group of individuals who do not approve of what you’re doing.”

  “Which means you’re here to kill me.”

  “You’re in luck. I’m not here to kill you, only to make sure you don’t go anywhere. But if you force my hand, I will do it. Now, if you could please toss your keys over here, that would be grand.”

  Dylan had to waggle the gun to get Yates moving, but eventually the keys landed at his feet.

  “You are going to kill me.”

  “Mr. Yates, I already told you I wasn’t. And I’m a man of my word. I am, however, going to have to hobble you.”

  Dylan shot Yates in both ankles. Yates screamed and tried to bend toward his injuries, but was thwarted by the steering wheel.

  “Do you feel that’s enough to keep you here, or do I need to take out one of your knees, too?”

  Dylan was pretty sure Yates hadn’t heard him.

  “You’re right. No sense in wasting the bullet.”

  Dylan smashed the still hot silencer against the side of Yates’s head. The man crumpled against the door but didn’t black out. A second hit did the job.

  Dylan was sorely tempted to spit on him, but decided it would be a waste of good saliva.

  He attached zip-tie tourniquets to both of the man’s legs, then climbed out and headed back around the side of the lodge toward the van.

  Slater entered the lodge cautiously. Whoever had attacked them at the field could have colleagues waiting inside.

  The kitchen was unoccupied, as was the hallway to the basement entrance. He put his fingers against the basement security screen and yanked the door open.

  He took the stairs down two at a time, touched the security screen at the bottom, and hurried to the other end of the floor where the medical room was located.

  In addition to several packets of plasma, he grabbed two infusion kits, half a dozen rolls of gauze, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and two rolls of medical tape, throwing everything into one of the duffel bags hanging on the wall.

  By the time he returned to the upper hallway, four minutes had elapsed. He jogged back to the kitchen door, pushed it open, and was four steps inside before he realized he wasn’t alone.

  A tall, black woman sat on the edge of the prep table, smiling at him. Though he’d never seen her before, he knew she was Shawn Ramey, the associate of the Mex woman he’d prepped for that night’s trials.

&n
bsp; “There you are,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Slater dove back at the door and rushed into the hall. What he really would have liked to do was head down into the basement again, where there was not only another way out of the building, but also weapons he could use to deal with the bitch. But he knew he didn’t have enough time to perform the security scan, so he raced to the end of the hall and took the servants’ stairway up to the second floor.

  “Ugh,” Ananke said after Slater reversed course back into the hallway. She’d done enough running for the evening, and really didn’t want to partake in another chase.

  It was her own damn fault. She should have waited in a spot where he wouldn’t have seen her so soon. Another two steps into the room and he wouldn’t have gotten away.

  She pushed herself off the table and jogged over to the door. She’d checked out the hallway earlier when he was downstairs, and she’d seen the fingerprint-scan protected door. She expected to find him there now, trying to head back to the basement. But instead he was way down at the other end, disappearing around the corner that led to an upward set of stairs.

  She ran after him and hustled up the steps.

  Upon reaching the second-floor landing, she could hear him on the next flight, heading up to the third level. She followed.

  The new landing let out into a long hallway moving down the center of the floor. Slater was about thirty feet away, running for his life.

  Ananke thought about shooting him, but he was moving around so much she was worried she’d kill him. Not that the asshole wouldn’t deserve it, but besides the need to preserve the information he had, killing him would be letting him off easy. He and his relatives deserved to spend decades locked away in a deep, dark cell.

  Slater heard the woman run onto the third floor behind him.

  Dammit.

  No way he could let someone of her kind catch him. Maybe the project was finished, but he had no intention of going down with it.

  If he could gain just a handful of seconds, he’d have enough time to get back down to the basement and grab a weapon.