Next Last Chance

by Jon A. Hunt

Nobody waited to kill me at top. He didn’t need to wait. The secret door refused to open. It wasn’t merely locked. Something immovable had been tipped against the opposite side.

  I wasn’t getting into Hillbriar that way.

  Thirty

  I holstered my gun before I dropped it, possibly my last intelligent act before feeding myself to the Donovan family’s private inferno. The stairs screwed from dizzying heights into fire. Superheated air wrapped the structure in haze and it seemed to sway like the mainmast of a burning Clipper ship. The railing scalded my palm. I tightened my grip anyway, gritted my teeth, started back down. My shoes slipped but the railing held in spite of ominous groans and pops. Steam spewed from crevices. Noah Donovan had distilled the fuel for this disaster from that same surprised spring water.

  Stationary rock slapped the bottom of my foot. I was down.

  The guts of a volcano must look similar. I saw no tunnel back to the hillside shed, no corridor to Jetta’s subterranean bedroom—just fire. I could smell my clothes thinking about ignition. Every breath scorched my insides. I guessed and stumbled through fumes, hunched low where they’d take a couple minutes longer to subdue me. I didn’t know why. No one was going to appreciate my perseverance when I died there.

  More crates. Gold King Corn. The stenciled letters managed to look proud of their lie. The tunnel ended. Nowhere else remained for Ty Bedlam to run.

  Brutal light exploded behind me. Then came the roar. Shards bit into my back and shoulders, tore through the crates, shattering more bottles, igniting their contents. The tunnel filled with more brilliance than geology intended. But I saw the door behind the crate.

  You wouldn’t expect a door that fancy in a mine, crafted of planed oak, cross-braced, held in place by iron hinges and a two-inch drawbolt that could be operated from either side. I hoped it was as sturdy as it looked. A modern combination padlock secured the bolt. Today the combination would be 45. One shot from the Smith & Wesson obliterated the mechanism and I hauled the drawbolt back, charged through, and rammed the door shut again between myself and Noah Donovan’s self-immolating legacy.

  Now I needed the penlight. Its thin beam revealed straight walls, a flat ceiling, a passage barely wider or taller than the door opening onto it. Hardwood beams marched at eight-foot intervals. There was no moisture; dust furred the floor and walls. Whatever Jetta’s suggestion, the door hadn’t been tested and no one had walked there in ages. Maybe she’d heard Noah’s ghost, checking the stills. Thunder pulsed through stone and I felt tremors. Ceilings on the door’s hot side had collapsed.

  How had these passages eluded the press, police, FBI, when they’d all swarmed over Hillbriar twice? Or had somebody discovered them, and kept quiet?

  The alibis of JD, Sandra, Jetta and others might not hold if it was known they could scuttle in and out of the grounds, and between houses, unseen. Even Waldron could have tipped Muriel down those stairs and been dusting antiques in the main house before anyone missed him.

  Another staircase matched the one I supposed had crashed in ruin into the previous tunnel. These steps held no dust, as if they’d been swept regularly, which was ridiculous. They corkscrewed among timbers that tied monstrous rock footings together. A grated catwalk crossed the crawlspace, which was more of a cavern with a manmade roof, and ended at meticulously cut sandstone. I’d reached the feet of one of the main mansion’s chimneys. An iron hatch opened into the side of the stone. It wasn’t for removing ash.

  Oak planks, slotted into stone, made silent steps. My shoulders brushed either side. I had to stoop. After two claustrophobic landings, the passage became genuinely cramped. I didn’t have far to go, however. A lacquered rectangle told me I’d arrived. I shut off my light and pushed the panel sideways. I crawled out of the side of a fireplace on the second floor and stood face to face with Sandra Donovan in jeans and a t-shirt, in her bedroom.

  She looked a little surprised to see me, which explained the gun in her hand.

  Vaulted windows need more than rain to brighten a room and the sun had given up. A bedside lamp was on, but the main light came from the usual hickory fire on the hearth. Hillbriar was all about fire. Flames glinted off the muzzle of her weapon, a silver small-caliber cousin of my Smith & Wesson, deadlier than Jetta’s crap revolver, and steadier. Sandra’s gold-flecked green gaze held equally firm. No one is more dangerous than a person with every reason to panic who still appears outwardly calm. I wondered how calm I looked.

  “It’s time to leave, Harley,” I said. “Hillbriar isn’t safe anymore.”

  Her eyes never strayed from mine. Tears gathered on each lower lid. She kept her gun aimed at my heart. There’d be no dismay at the mention of her real name.

  “They’re killing already,” she whispered. Indeed, outside gunfire made the double-paned glass ring, irregular reports like distant fireworks, dampened yet not far. “They’re here for me.”

  “So am I. You going to shoot me first and try your luck with the rest?”

  Her eyes moved finally, to the window then back to the chimney passage I’d just quit.

  “Nobody’s leaving that way,” I said. “The tunnels are burning.”

  The little handgun pivoted as if its barrel suddenly weighed forty pounds and she let it drop to the carpet. Her lips formed a name without the breath necessary to make the sound.

  “Jetta got away,” I told her. I liked to believe that. The kid deserved a chance.

  I caught Sandra in one arm and pulled her close. Alcoholic smoke and fiery tunnels hadn’t deadened my senses so much I didn’t appreciate her honeysuckle perfume and warmth.

  “I never thought I’d see you again,” she murmured.

  “The pictures are gone. Rico decided maybe he wouldn’t kill me after all.”

  If Sandra still breathed I couldn’t tell.

  “But what made you change your mind? You kept me home on purpose so I’d miss the drop at the post office, or I’d have caught Nolman then. Can’t say I mind your methods. Just, if I’m going to risk my neck trying to get you away from here, I’d like to know why.”

  Gunfire was louder now. Reports came in the rapid succession of shooters scrambling to hit moving targets before they wound up in the crosshairs themselves. How in the hell was I going to keep my promise to Rico? I hadn’t anticipated my escape route would go up in flames.

  When she found them, her words came dim and flat. “I’m not a killer, Tyler. I’ve done a lot of things but I’ve never been party to killing.”

  “Not even in the desert? If that wasn’t you they found—”

  She reeled back and slapped the jaw of the idiot who’d said it. She didn’t give a damn that the idiot had a gun. She wouldn’t succumb to fear while an outlet for rage existed.

  “You act so smart but you believe anything someone tells you? There wasn’t any girl when that car blew up! Just the driver, and Rico wouldn’t let me warn him. I don’t know who that was they found! I don’t…”

  “Okay,” I said. My cheek stung. “I had to ask.”

  Sandra’s face was flushed, her copper hair in gorgeous disarray. She was afraid and lovely, and I wanted to take her someplace safe forever. Rico’s “favor” had nothing to do with it.

  “Okay?”

  She tipped her head in terse agreement. I crouched to collect her gun, ejected the magazine, tossed the separate pieces behind the false panel and shut it before the ping-ping-ping of metal bouncing down stairs finished. I didn’t trust her enough to leave her gun with her.

  “Can you quit Hillbriar, now, if your life depends on it? Because it does.”

  Another silent nod. A third volley of gunfire outside helped convince her.

  “All right. Has JD made it home yet?”

  “Waldron left a couple hours ago to pick him up from the airport. I saw the BMW earlier, just Waldron parking it. Maybe the flight was delayed.”

  “Maybe. Are there other tunnels that don’t connect to the one I came up?”

  “There a
re side doors for the staff.”

  Not perfect. Still, that would be slightly better than dashing out the front doors.

  “Ready?”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “I’m scared. Really scared.”

  A door slammed downstairs.

  I had no illusions of JD bopping in through his own front doors while gunmen ran uninvited all over the property. Someone had entered the mansion, though. I pushed Sandra to her bedroom floor and crept to the balcony on my hands and knees. The French doors’ swing gave the person downstairs sufficient cause to fire. One of the twenty-foot windows ruptured into scintillating shards. I rolled to the top of the glass-sided stairs while the man admired the spectacle, saw enough to decide whose side he wasn’t on, and shot two large holes in his chest.

  Nothing else moved on the main floor, but between us we’d just invited the party indoors. I got to my feet and yelled for Sandra. The French doors parted again. She screamed.

  If his foot hadn’t skidded on a window fragment, Nick would have come from nowhere and sliced my head half off like he’d done to the sniper in the woods. Instead, he ruined the collar of my jacket and got an elbow in the gut for his trouble. I tried to follow up with a real punch and managed to put myself in front of one of his. Nick didn’t need a knife to kill anybody; he probably preferred to beat me to death anyway. I heard my ribs crack before I felt it. The blow launched me off my heels backward across the glass-littered floor.

  “Fuck you, Bedlam!”

  Glass bit my palms as I grabbed at wet floorboards—both palms—the Smith & Wesson was gone. I shoved down in spite of the pain clutching my side, changed my slide to a less predictable tumble. I was conscious of the big man’s form pitching upright, a thick arm jabbing my direction even when I’d fallen out of reach.

  Knife!

  A wicked blade, similar to what Jim Bowie took to the Alamo, drove three inches into a leg of the grand piano, next to my head. The piano responded with a dully outraged shrill of strings. He’d missed again and laughed about it. I didn’t think it was funny.

  Where was Sandra?

  Breathing hurt.

  I started to stand behind the still-ringing Baldwin. Nick’s shoes crunched toward me, visible from under the instrument. Light from somewhere turned the glass to diamonds. JD’s transparent sheet music panels flung warped sixteenth notes across it all from the edge of the balcony. The shoes stopped twenty steps away. I spotted my gun on the floor as I peered around the metal framework of the piano’s dolly. Nick kept laughing. I stopped in a crouch.

  I still thought a piano with wheels on a second floor balcony was a bad idea.

  Nick wasn’t near my gun, but judging by the positions of his feet he had his own.

  I stomped the wheel release, threw my weight against the Baldwin. Nick’s gun barked. His aim was off; somebody’d busted his trigger finger. The piano lid burst into mahogany spears—but it moved! My feet scrambled across broken glass and rain-slicked flooring. My name got shouted, maybe by Sandra, maybe by Nick, maybe by me as sort of a battle cry.

  Nick fired again. Another of Hillbriar’s magnificent picture windows violently ceased to hold the weather out. The piano rolled faster, a thousand-pound musical juggernaut. Nick stood his ground and kept shooting. Another bullet plowed through the soundboard and spattered bits of ivory in my face. Then the Donovan’s beautiful concert grand caught Nick in the stomach and took him with it through the glass panels and over the balcony. His gun barked a farewell and put a final slug into the tiger maple ceiling, almost drowning out the very last time Nick Jones uttered the word “fuck!”

  The house shuddered when man and piano crashed through the first floor and ended in a mess of wood, iron, twanging wire and blood in the crawlspace below.

  Sandra met me where the balcony railing used to be. She took my arm while I got reacquainted with the breathing process. I picked my gun out of a pile of shards. We peered past toothy remnants of music standards on glass, down to the cratered main floor.

  “I knew that man.”

  “Nick? Yeah, he worked for Buck and his son. We never hit it off.”

  She squeezed my elbow and turned another direction. I didn’t blame her.

  “You mentioned servants’ doors?”

  “Yes. We’ll have to take the other stair.”

  Part of the grand foyer’s walls, several irreplaceable guitars, and the left staircase’s bottom steps had joined the wreckage of the first floor. We descended the right staircase. Floor planks jutted like porcupine quills at strange angles. An aroma of burning grain alcohol flavored the air. The storm outside poured into the unprotected upstairs library, and thin cascades slithered down the steps. Hillbriar was a mess and I suspected this wasn’t the worst of it.

  More gunshots beat against our ears. The battle drew nearer. I wondered where JD was. I wondered where Rico was.

  The kitchen was dim and empty. I’d half expected to bump into Waldron. I could do with a shot of that old Scotch. Around the pantry, a plain door interrupted the wall, locked from the inside. Sandra touched the deadbolt.

  “Me first,” I said.

  “What are you going to do if someone’s out there?” she asked.

  I didn’t have a good answer so I didn’t give any. I unlatched the deadbolt and peeked through while the opening was still narrow. No one seemed to wait outside for it to open. And I’d guessed right. Hillbriar had far more grievous issues than a piano through the mansion floor.

  Flames engulfed the guest house. Black smoke gushed from every window. Portions of roof had fallen in and the front façade had collapsed into a blazing core diced into rectangles by a stubborn timber skeleton. Fire sirens whined far off on Franklin Pike, but I knew Pennington’s bunch wouldn’t let firefighters within sight of the place while people were shooting. I pressed the servant door open farther. Sandra crushed against my shoulder.

  “Oh my God!” she cried. “The stables!”

  She dodged past me out the door and I couldn’t stop her. Nothing short of a bullet would stop her, because the stable house burned, too. I followed, quick.

  My attention for detail was limited by multiple distractions that went “bang!” The jab of damaged ribs every time a foot hit the ground didn’t help. But I did notice that flames darted through windows from within the stables. The fire hadn’t spilled across the driveway from the guest house; it had started internally. Between gunshots I heard jarring movements of panicked horses and neighs eerily similar to human screams.

  The door’s frame blew apart as Sandra jerked it open. She never realized a slug had brushed her flying hair, she just darted inside. My peripheral senses caught running figures converging from separate directions. They ran too hard to shoot straight, or I’d be dead already.

  I dove into a stinking chaos of blackness and brilliance and cries of primal terror. A wall of hair bucked across my vision. A red flower blossomed in the wall—someone had shot the poor animal—but it continued past me, staggered through wide-flung barn doors on the end to my left, and disappeared to either run or fall out in the paddock. Metal clanged, a woman yelled, booming hooves pulverized lumber. I heard a sharper explosion and felt the burn of spinning lead across my forearm. Ejected brass rattled through the bars of a stall beside me.

  That one had been close enough I could’ve pulled the trigger myself.

  I sidestepped, grabbed a tack hook to arrest my forward momentum, pivoted hard and cut my knuckles on somebody’s dental work. The man hammered the wall with the back of his skull, lunged with outstretched fists, went down with a gasp and a damp crunch beneath four sets of driving hooves. One of the ponies slipped in gore on the rubber floor and righted itself just in time, then both were through the barn doors.

  Sandra was opening stalls and setting horses loose. Whiskey’s pen was down at the far end. His kicks weren’t frantic. They were the same measured, testing impacts I’d heard before.

  Two shadows moved against the gray rectangle that r
epresented the door we’d entered. The silhouettes enjoyed the fire splashing at them from both sides of the corridor so much they spat appreciative flames of their own. A horse screamed with Sandra and huge weight slammed to the floor. The other shot pinged viciously through choking smoke.

  The men fired as they sprinted, but a gust through the side door swept flames across their line of sight and I lucked out again. The best shield I could find was an eight-by-eight post.

  The wind changed again and sucked fumes and flames back outside to clear the space between us. Another stable slammed open. My assailants remembered what happened to the last guy and stepped aside, one left, one right, both weapons swinging back to me. By then the Smith & Wesson was rocking in my fist. The man across the hall went down, then a stampeding horse rammed me into the wall. Before the animal quite passed the second man, I shot that guy, too. The horse kicked back hooves high on the way out into the rain. A hand flopped toward a fallen sidearm. My .45 roared again and stopped it.

  Flames hadn’t yet chewed their way to the last two stables. Every stall door had been thrown open, every horse had fled except for one dead pony in the corridor and Whiskey. JD’s infamous jumper pawed the floor and steamed. He looked more ready to fight than flee. Damn horse probably chased his morning oats with gasoline. Sandra stood shoulder to shoulder with him. A braided nylon lead rope draped between them. Both horse and girl turned their attention from me back to a lump propped in the corner.

  I ejected the .45’s spent magazine as I walked and rammed in the spare. My ribs felt like they’d been punched again. Gradually the lump resolved into a man, then into an old man, then into Waldron. He’d let that brittle posture of his go. Dead men have no use for any kind of posture. The caterpillar brows had frozen in a permanent expression of surprise. An ugly hole was centered in his narrow chest. The ‘39 Macallan lay, corked, on the rubber floor beside him.

  I stooped. I glanced apologetically at the woman and the horse. In their peculiar ways, each had adored Hillbriar’s wizened emcee. Sandra’s eyes suddenly widened.