by Brian Harper
The driver’s seat bucked and wobbled, the frame shattered. Roughly she jostled it, the open handcuff dangling from the locked cuff on her right wrist, a bauble on a charm bracelet, coruscating in the dashboard’s light.
With a gasp of effort she shoved the broken seat all the way back, then crowded next to Tyler and pried him from the wheel, silencing the horn.
Even in death, he wouldn’t let up on the gas. The speedometer crawled toward seventy.
She kicked his right leg until his boot lifted off the pedal.
The road curved again. She knew this spot. Intersection with Skylark Drive.
Kneeling on the edge of the driver’s seat, grappling with the wheel, she steered through a shrieking turn.
The van barreled north on Skylark. Toward the Kent estate.
She tried to find the brake, and then Tyler inclined sideways, his head in her chest, the blood-matted ponytail bristling on her chin like a wet paintbrush.
Get him out of the seat, out of the seat.
Reaching across the body, she threw open the door. Snatched the Glock from his slack fingers, jammed it in her waistband, pushed him away, and another sharp curve flashed out of nowhere.
She grabbed the wheel, swinging the van to the right.
Inertia tugged Tyler through the doorway. As he was sliding out, she remembered his ammo pouch. She fumbled at it, hoping to grab a spare magazine-too late.
Tyler fell, bouncing and flopping on the road, then rolled away in a confusion of limbs.
She twisted upright and saw the double yellow line whip into another switchback coil.
Spin of the wheel, the van slewing, a cloud of gravel pelting the chassis, and then the road straightened and she pumped the brake pedal.
The speedometer dipped to fifty. She kept it there. Still a reckless speed, but she couldn’t afford caution, not now.
Momentarily she took her hand off the wheel to check Tyler’s Glock.
Empty.
Lilith’s ammo pouch might contain a spare mag, but there wasn’t time to stop the van and climb into the back.
No medals for quitters.
She would go in unarmed.
78
Charles coughed, an incongruously delicate sound. “We’ll … we’ll have to do them all.”
“Of course.” With his gun Cain motioned to the prisoners. “On the couch.”
Wordlessly Philip and Judy sat at one end of the sofa, facing Ally. Torn cushions deflated under them like punctured tires. Barbara seated herself at the opposite end, shoulders back, lips pursed.
A woman sitting for a portrait. She made a telling contrast with her husband-restless, anxious, sweating, a false smile glued to his face.
Cain stepped back, preparing for the bloody but necessary work at hand.
“Are you going to …” Charles swallowed. “I mean … right here”
Cain nodded. “Right here.”
Philip drew his wife close. Barbara stiffened, waiting.
“They’ll know it was you.”
The small, tremulous voice was Ally’s. She stared directly at her father.
Charles flicked a glance in her direction, then looked hastily aware. “They won’t know anything. I’ll say I escaped. I’m the sole survivor.”
“They won’t believe you.”
He nearly delivered some sharp retort. Cain cut him off.
“She’s right, Mr. Kent.”
Charles took a moment to register the words. “What”
“It’s too convenient this way.” Cain tried not to think of the money, the five million, his better future. “With other witnesses to verify your story, you would have been in the clear. Without them, you’ll be the obvious suspect.”
“Nobody can prove-“
“They won’t have to prove. They’ll interrogate you. They’ll make you crack.”
“I can handle them. I’m a lawyer, God damn it!”
“You’re weak.”
The two words, uttered so softly, absorbed Charles’s tirade like a pillow absorbing a fist.
“You’ll fold. You’ll talk. You’ll implicate me.”
“Why … why would I”
“To cut a deal. You’re a lawyer, like you said. You know all the angles.”
“This is crazy.”
“It’s what you’ll do. It’s what men like you always do. I’m just the hired hand, the trained ape. You’ll sell me out without a second thought … if you can.”
Comprehension flashed on Charles Kent’s face.
His gun came up fast.
He fired at Cain.
A single shot at a distance of ten feet, the report echoing in the room. Judy screamed.
And Cain laughed.
Directly ahead, the Kent estate, gate open. Trish slowed to forty, gripping the wheel in preparation for a tight turn.
The driver’s door banged fitfully against the frame. She’d never closed it.
Forget the door. Get ready.
Now.
She veered to the right, and the van hooked sharply, leaning on two wheels, and the wrought-iron gatepost slammed into the open door and sheared it from its hinges in a shower of sparks.
Then the gate was behind her, the house rushing up. Through the bay window the living room was visible.
Posed in the glow of a single lamp, a waxworks tableau: the Kents, the Danforths-and Cain.
Trish floored the gas.
*
Cain’s laughter rose over the distant rumble of the van pulling into the yard. There was a metallic bang-Tyler might have hit the gate-but he didn’t turn and look. His full attention was focused on Charles, poor Charles, bewildered and shaking and about to die.
“Should have checked the clip more closely, Mr. Kent. The gun in my duffel-it’s one of our spares. We used it in our training exercises. It’s loaded with blanks.”
“Blanks,” Charles whispered.
“Handloaded ‘em myself. Black powder in extra-length cases.” Cain raised his Glock. “My gun has live ammo.”
Squeeze of the trigger, a loud percussive jolt, and Charles stiffened, staring down at his lapel, where a dark red trickle ran like spilled grape juice.
“See the difference” Cain asked.
Charles didn’t answer, didn’t move, just stood there, still holding the gun in a white-knuckled grip.
Cain pivoted toward Ally. His Glock brushed her cheek. Her eyes were round and unblinking above the gleam of the barrel.
“Your turn, freckle-face.”
Barbara screamed. Cain tightened his finger on the trigger—
And the bay window blew apart in a shower of shards.
He looked up.
Glare.
Headlights like a dragon’s eyes. The van bursting through the front wall.
And he knew.
Robinson.
79
Trish steered through a dazzle of flying glass, aiming the van at Cain and Charles Kent, the only standing figures in the room.
Cain leaped sideways out of her path. Barbara rolled with Ally behind the armchair. Philip pulled his wife to cover.
Only Charles remained motionless, stiff and dazed, showing no reaction even as the van bore down.
Thump of contact, and he was hurled onto the hood, head and shoulders bursting through the windshield. Trish averted her face, crumbs of safety glass dusting her hair.
Gun in his hand. She saw the twitch of a finger, was sure he was going to shoot.
Then he sagged over the dashboard, eyes glazed, face slack, and she understood why he hadn’t tried to flee.
He’d been shot. He was dying … or already dead.
The gun dropped in her lap. A Glock. One of Cain’s.
She prayed it was loaded as she snatched it up.
Standing on the brake pedal, she spun the steering wheel. The van jackknifed, the room blurring past in a whirl of motion.
The prisoners were hidden behind the furniture. Cain alone was on his feet.
Trish le
aned out the open doorway and tried to fire, but the gun wouldn’t work. Jammed or something, damn it.
Cain’s bullets strafed the van. The rear windows puckered and fell away in a rain of gummed shards.
The room’s only lamp disappeared under her tires, and the bulb winked out. Darkness now except for the swirl of her headlights and the dashboard’s glow.
On the passenger side, something white and flat expanded in the window frame-a wall-the dining area wall—
Impact.
The wall disintegrated, the van blowing through with the force of a bomb. Both headlights went dark, the dashboard gauges too, darkness everywhere, and then the world was upended, the van rolling over, a kicked can.
Trish clung to the wheel with one hand, clutching the gun with the other. The horn was blaring and someone was screaming, a high-pitched scream curiously like her own, and then the roof pancaked as the van landed upside-down, and there was silence.
She was caught in a cage of folded metal, the busted driver’s seat pinning her to the dash.
From across the room, more gunfire, punishing the van’s side panel. Cain, blasting the wreckage, trying to kill her while she was trapped inside.
Still holding the gun, she pushed free of the seat. Scrambled toward the driver’s doorway. Out.
As she threw herself to the floor, Cain targeted the front passenger window and ripped up the interior in a wild fusillade.
The van was wedged in the ruined wall just a few feet from the entrance to the side corridor. She crawled to the rear, panting, dripping sweat, her heart beating so hard she could see it, actually see it, in pulsing retinal scintillations across her field of vision.
Wetness.
A pool of spreading liquid on the floor.
Gasoline from the van’s ruptured fuel tank. Fumes rising, the smell acrid in her nostrils.
And Cain was still shooting, his bullets glancing off metal, hurling up sparks.
She flung herself into the hall of the east wing, and with a heart-stopping whoosh, the envelope of fumes flashed into white heat, engulfing the van in flame.
Backward glance. Heat scorched her eyebrows. The hallway blazed, walls and ceiling veined with fire, brushstrokes of flame painting magical frescoes on the cracked plaster. Somewhere a smoke detector shrilled.
Exposed in the hall, lit by the fireglow, she was utterly vulnerable if Cain could get past the burning wreck.
And he would. She knew he would. He wouldn’t stop until he was certain she was dead.
Her leg flared with new agony as she retreated farther down the hall, away from flame and smoke, in search of cover.
Ally’s bedroom appeared on her left, but the doorframe had collapsed, wedging the door nearly shut, and she couldn’t force it open or squeeze through the crack.
Keep going, then. Hurry.
Ahead, the master suite. Gulping breath, she stumbled across the threshold and hugged the wall.
A bar of light fanned from the bathroom directly to her right. In the dim glow, the loose handcuff swinging pendulously, she examined the Glock to see why it hadn’t fired. A spent case was caught in the ejector port, preventing the slide from cycling. She pried it loose, threw it away. Checked the magazine.
Eight rounds left.
Trembling, she peered into the hall just as a silhouetted figure materialized out of the mist.
Bellow of rage: “Robinson!”
“You want me” she whispered. “You got me.”
She whipped out from behind the doorframe, and suddenly she was a cadet in the academy again, taking target practice on the range.
Aim for the kill zone.
Now.
She pumped out a shot, just one, and the damn gun jammed again. But her aim was true, she knew it was.
And Cain didn’t go down, he didn’t go down.
He was shooting back, bullets blasting the doorframe and the thin drywall, and Trish ducked into the bathroom, stunned, unable to guess how she failed to hit him when she had him dead in her sights.
Footsteps pounded in the hall.
She looked around. No windows. No exits.
This was where she had to make a stand.
Another quick check of the gun. As before, her expended round hadn’t been ejected. Goddamned gun must be defective. She tossed the round, checked the magazine again. Seven rounds left. But .
The cartridge cases … God, the cases …
The crimped ends held no bullets, only cardboard wads.
Blanks.
That was why the slide wouldn’t cycle. A semiauto pistol wouldn’t work properly with blanks unless it was modified with a special adaptor. This gun, with no adaptor, fired only one shot at a time. Each spent round had to be ejected manually before the next shot.
Cain’s footsteps drummed closer. Nearly here.
Defenseless, she couldn’t fight him. Had to hide. Hide and hope.
The door to the linen closet hung ajar. She glanced inside, discovered a gap in the wall below the bottom shelf.
No time for questions. Go.
On hands and knees she wriggled through the hole into a larger space, dark and smelling of fabric softener and shoe polish.
Closet. Big one. The walk-in kind.
Noise in the bathroom. Cain, looking for her.
She pulled herself upright, stumbled into double doors. Locked from the outside.
From next door, a shout of triumph. “I… found … you!”
She still held tight to the gun, the useless gun, but not useless if only she could find live ammo for it, even a single round.
Crackle of wood, clatter of falling objects. A shelf in the linen closet had been torn loose.
Didn’t even need a full cartridge. A blank round had both primer and powder. All she needed …
The faint light from the bathroom was snuffed out. He’d wedged the shelf into the gap, sealing her in.
All she needed was a bullet.
The floorboards trembled. Cain was leaving the bathroom.
A bullet-nothing special, an inch of lead, a missile, a projectile—
Cain circled around to the locked doors.
Projectile.
She groped in her pants pocket.
“Figured it out yet, Robinson” His footsteps stopped outside the closet. “You’re shooting blanks!”
Her hand closed over the arrowhead.
“Want a live cartridge” Rattle of a key. “I’ll give you one!”
With shaking fingers she tamped the arrowhead into the barrel of the pistol.
“Hey, what the hell, Robinson!” Rasp of a chain. “We’re old friends …”
The arrowhead slid down the barrel, lodged in place.
“I’ll give you the whole damn clip!”
The doors burst wide, Cain stepping in.
Trish pivoted toward him.
He saw. Turned.
She ducked under his Glock.
Raised her gun to his temple.
Pumped the trigger once.
The pistol bucked in her hand, the discharge loud and close, the powder in the blank round igniting …
And in a rush of expanding gas the arrowhead was propelled out the barrel and through Cain’s forehead and into his brain.
His head jerked back, a cry stillborn in his throat.
Unmoving, Trish stared at him as slowly his head lowered, his gaze fixed on her, the cold gray eyes registering shock and hatred and disbelief.
From the scorched hole in his forehead oozed a thread of blood.
He swayed. The Glock slipped out of his hand.
She looked into his eyes a moment longer, mesmerized, and then he fell slowly backward, ponderously, a toppled oak, and thudded on the floor.
Still she didn’t look away. She gazed down, her hands holding fast to the empty gun, her teeth chattering, shoulders jumping.
She was certain he would rise again. He couldn’t be dead, not really. He was evil, pure evil.
Nothing could kill him. Nothing c
ould stop him. And no one could beat him, ever.
But she had.
The truth of it finally clamped down.
Over. It was over. The long night … over.
She stared down at the man with the scarred face and the bloody crater in his temple. The man who had taken Marta away-Marta and other girls.
Now there he was, a limp, bloodied thing supine at her feet, his gray gaze clouded, gloved hands harmless at last.
“Did it,” she whispered between aching gasps. “No medals for … I did it … no medals … I did it.”
Lights flickered in the lace curtains of the bedroom windows. Christmas lights, she thought vaguely-blue and red, twinkling, pretty.
Was it Christmas Christmas in August.
She found the idea funny, but she couldn’t seem to laugh.
Clinging to a bureau, she circled the body, then lurched past the master bath into the bedroom doorway.
Heat flushed her face. Smoke clogged the far end of the hall, glittering with a dance of embers. She wondered about Ally. Had to check on Ally …
She took a shambling step forward, and a gruff masculine voice ordered, “Freeze!”
The command came out of nowhere. She blinked, uncomprehending.
“Drop your weapon, drop your weapon!”
Then she saw him-a uniformed figure halfway down the hall, his gun aimed at her.
A cop. And the red-and-blue lights … patrol cars. Of course.
She released the Glock, then just stood there, knees shaking, as the man warily advanced, his features taking form out of the gloom.
Hairless head. Steel-rimmed glasses. Sergeant Edinger.
He recognized her in the same moment. “Robinson …”
Languid ripples trembled through her. The hall rotated slowly, a world on its axis, as Edinger approached at a run.
Her eyesight was doubling. With effort she focused on his face. She had something to tell him, something important.
“They’re not,” she whispered. “They’re not …”
“Take it easy, Robinson.”
“They’re not all … in L.A.”
There. She’d said it. She hoped he understood. And remembered.
A hum filled her head, growing in volume, and with the hum rose a sea of white spangles, brilliant and clean.
She dropped away into the hum and the white. If an arm reached out to break her fall, she didn’t know it.
