by Naomi West
“You figure a trained soldier on guard duty like this,” Smalls had said while he was seated in the driver’s seat with Cutter checking out the building, “can keep his attention for just a few hours at a time in a warzone situation. These guys can probably keep theirs fixed for what, maybe thirty minutes?”
“I see one sneaking a drink from a flask already, Smalls.”
“Clearly, they ain't seeing you as a threat. If they’re even expecting you at all,”
“Would you? Hell, we knew Wyland was a threat, and look what happened to us.”
“Good point, brother,” Smalls had said.
Then, they'd waited till the sun went down. As it dropped below the horizon, they climbed out of Smalls's Prius and started to unload everything. A suppressed rifle for Smalls, his precious 30.06 that was dropped inside an AR-15 style body.
For Cutter, a pistol with a suppressor, extra clips of ammunition, and one homemade canister of tear gas he'd bought off some anarchist kid about a year back. He'd purchased two at the time, and used one as a gag during a hazing ritual. It had, surprisingly, worked pretty well. Almost too well, actually, and had ended up scaring off one of the prospects. He hadn't been able to find a use for the second one grenade until now.
Then there were his knives. They hadn't nicknamed him Cutter for nothing. As he crouched in a tangle of shrubbery near one of the side doors, with two Bolt Riders hanging out and nominally guarding it, he realized that this was the moment their assumptions about these guy's capabilities were going to be put to the test.
Smalls was off in the distance, crouched up on a hill with a clear line of the sight on the building. He'd been a pretty stellar shot in his USMC days, and he'd kept up the practice over the years. But, if he was off by just a little bit, this could go very wrong for Cutter, very quickly. As Cutter crept through the brush, his blackened knife gripped in one hand, he prayed Smalls was as good of a shot under pressure as he was on the range.
His eyes fixated on the two men, who were laughing and jostling back and forth, he crept closer. Smalls would be able to see him from this vantage point, and they'd agreed that it was up to him to start this little shindig.
Smalls fired. His rifle wasn't any louder than a cap gun, and all Cutter heard was the sound of mosquito whizzing by. The man farthest from Cutter reached up, almost idly, and put a hand to his neck. Even in the dim light, Cutter could see the look of horror on his face as he pulled his bloody hand away and looked at it. His eyes were wide in terror, and he clutched his hand back to his throat as his partner stared in shock.
The man Smalls had shot stumbled a little, landing against his buddy. His friend tried to steady him. “Dude? Dude! What the fuck, man? What happened?”
Cutter came up out of the bushes in a flash, his dark knife not even glinting in the low light. It was like cool black ice on a winter night as he came up behind the uninjured man and put a hand over his mouth, pulling him back into the bushes. The man screamed into his hand, but his wordless cry was muffled as Cutter pulled him out of sight.
He didn't bother speaking to him. Didn't bother threatening, or asking for information. He brought his knife up, cut deep into the man's throat, and slid it across in a horizontal arc. He opened up his jugular artery, unleashing a warm flood of blood, as he kept his hand clutched across his mouth. The man kicked, once, twice, and struggled for a long, tense moment before falling silent and ending his struggle.
Cutter had killed before. Sometimes, in this line of work there was a certain amount of murder that had to happen to get a point across, or to protect what was yours. This, though, felt personal to the Vanguard president. This man had been at least partly responsible for taking Liona, whether he knew it or not.
He dropped the fresh corpse to the ground, hiding him in the bushes. He slipped out, checked the man Smalls had shot, then pulled him back to join his comrade. With both of them hidden away, he gave a thumbs up to the unseen Smalls, and slipped through the side doors. On his way through, he glanced down at the concrete. A few drops of blood had splattered there, but nothing overtly noticeable. If anyone else came through, they'd just think the two guys had fucked off for a beer or something.
Now in the hallway, he dropped to a crouch and listened. From here on, he was going to be alone with no cover from Smalls. Nevertheless, Smalls had his own part of the plan to carry out. He was to start dropping any singular out of the way Bolt Riders he happened to see. Maybe he could thin out the herd a little bit before word got out that Cutter was in the building.
Chapter 41
Liona
“Sweetie?” Wyland asked, his voice high-fructose levels of sweet. If Liona could have eaten his words, she would have gotten a cavity. “You feeling any better?” He was sitting on the cot, now, with his arms protectively over her. Behind him, the two men still flanked the doorway, their expressions a mix of dourness and boredom.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“You almost ready to come home?” he asked, reaching out to brush the hair from her face.
She flinched back again. “Wyland,” she said, “I don't know why you think I'd want to go home with you.”
“Well,” he said, “because we love each other. We need each other. Isn't that right?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “You don't get it, I left you. For Desmond.”
He smiled and shook his head, laughing. “Oh, sweetie, he just had you fooled, like he has everyone fooled. He just wanted you to get to me, that's all. I started going after that biker gang of his long before our wedding, before you left me.”
“Maybe that's true-”
“No, it is true. Why do you think he was even coming to our wedding? To see you?”
That much was true, at least. Damn him. She hadn't sent the invitation, and Cutter was only coming because Wyland had had two of his guys arrested in twenty-four hours. She frowned a little, shook her head again. “Well, it doesn't matter why, he's been protecting me.”
“Protecting you?” he asked, reaching out again to stroke her hair.
In her confused state, she didn't see the hand coming. She felt his soft fingers stroke her hair, just like he used to when they'd first gotten together. Between the drugs and the confusion, she almost began to forget what this man had put her through.
“Don't you mean keeping you locked up?”
She slowly blinked her eyes. “That's not ...”
But he had been, hadn't he? Every time she'd wanted to leave, Cutter had fought tooth and nail to keep her in. Hadn't that been what made her the angriest with him? That she was being kept like a pet bird in a cage, just another cell? But, no, she needed to look at the source of the ideas going into her head. This was Wyland she was dealing with.
“He's a criminal, sweetie. A very, very bad man. And he's been keeping you because I was trying to do the right thing and protect you, and the town. Remember? I'm the good guy?”
Okay, that part she knew was bullshit. He could lie to himself all he wanted, but that kind of shit wasn't going to fly with her. She brushed away his hand. He looked hurt as he retracted his hand.
“If you're such a good guy,” she spat, “why the hell are you keeping me here with two guys who are talking about raping me?”
His eyes went cold. Back to the same look he'd give her just before the beatings began. The old Wyland was back. With a vengeance. “What?” he asked, his voice almost a hiss.
Before she could respond, though, he was up off the cot in a blur. His hand went inside his coat and came back out holding a chrome automatic pistol. With a shout, he shot both men between the eyes, one after the other. Liona screamed, as her ears rang from the back-to-back blasts in the enclosed space.
“See?” he shouted as he wiggled a finger in his ear. “I'm the good guy! They won't ever touch you, sweetie! You're all mine!”
Chapter 42
Cutter
Cutter had been a lot of weird creepy places. Crack houses, cartel grow ops, meth labs, bro
thels, even back alley surgeries for the occasional stray bullet. But this place took the cake. Maybe it was because he'd spent forty hours a week here for nearly four years, but there was something about the big, sprawling building with its graffiti on the lockers, fallen ceiling panels, and broken beer bottles everywhere that gave him the heebie-jeebies as he pressed himself against the wall and made his way down the hallway.
He stopped, his feet crunching on a piece of old dry wall, and listened. He heard voices ahead and, as he peered through the darkness, he could make it out the flickering light of something like a kerosene lamp coming out of one of the old classrooms. He held his breath, tried to listen more closely.
“West ain't shit, man,” a gruff voice said. “Fucker thinks he's got us lock and stock on this, boys, but once he gets the rest of the money, we're gonna take care of him.”
“Think we can really pin it on hem BB fuckers?” asked another man.
“Hell, yeah, man. Cutter is the only one still out. We take the money, take the drugs, then we kill West and blame it on Cutter. Then, we move in and pick up the pieces, taking all their territory and business.”
So, that was their plan. They were working for Wyland on this, but then they were going to double-cross him. If he just used the shadows to sneak by, the problem could take care of itself. Nothing screamed bad DA like being killed by a bunch of bikers over a bad deal. Of course, that would still leave the Bolt Riders out, running around, trying to pin everything on the Vanguard, and Cutter in particular. The men inside the room laughed, and Cutter counted three, maybe four guys inside. He gritted his teeth. Even with a surprise attack, that would be dicey to handle on his own. Plus, if they got a shot off, he'd alert anyone else still in the building.
One of the guys inside the room piped up. “I say we take the girl back to the clubhouse when we're done with the DA.”
“Yeah, chief, let's get the girl,” one of them added, excited. “We could keep her as a real clubgirl, like a pet or something. After a few nights, and some China White in her veins, we'll have her begging for all of us.” All the bikers in the classroom laughed cruelly, their voices filtering out into the hallway. “We get a collar and everything for her!” The men laughed again, encouraging him.
Cutter didn't hear the rest of their words. A spike of rage-fueled adrenaline entered his veins. His vision narrowed, his eyes clouded over. There was no way in hell these scumbags were going to touch Liona. Not a fucking chance. Their words were a burble in the background, barely audible over the sound of rushing blood in his ears.
He reached down and grabbed the canister of DIY tear gas off his belt and began to inch closer, along the wall. He got to the edge of the door, makeshift grenade in one hand, silenced pistol in the other. He pulled the pin on the canister and banked the tear gas against the open door of the classroom, arcing it inside. Just like pool.
“What the fuck?” one of the guys asked as the hissing can bounced one, twice, three times, before rolling to a stop in the room. Then, the coughing began. “Motherfucker! What is this shit?”
Cutter raised his pistol to chest height, gripped it in both hands, and took a deep, grim breath. The men came running out of the room moments later, uncontrollable tears streaming down their red, blistered faces. “Jesus fucking Christ!” one of them nearly yelled as he ran out into the hallway, his hands frantically rubbing at his face. He turned left, passed right in front of Cutter.
He was the first to go down, heavy as a sack of potatoes. A quick singular bullet to the head from the Vanguard president's silenced pistol. He was a human one moment, a corpse the next. The other men streamed out behind him, all with cries of confusion and shock coming from their lips. Cutter dropped them all, one after the other, still not saying a word as he seethed with anger.
“What the fuck?” the last man cried as he dropped to his knees. “What the fuck's going on?” Clearly, he could hear the shooting, but he couldn't respond in any meaningful way. He put his hands in the air, and sobbed. “Please, don't. I'm barely even with these guys.”
Cutter walked around him, still not saying anything, a cruel grimace on his face. He could see from the patch on his back that he was lying. He was a full member of the Bolt Riders. Granted, he didn’t recognize his voice as one of the guys who had joined in on the conversation regarding Liona's fate. He put his pistol against the back of the man's head.
He started to sob. “Please, man, I got a little girl at home. Lemme live, okay? Lemme live.”
Cutter sighed. Maybe the guy was lying, maybe he wasn't a father. He was still someone's son. Now, as Cutter paused, the blood-rage subsided a little. He took the barrel of the pistol from the man's head.
“Oh, man, oh thank you. Fuck, thank you so much!” he cried out, shaking his head from side to side, not believing his luck.
Cutter whacked him on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol, whipping him into unconscious with the big hunk of tempered steel. As the man dropped to the floor, he heard something else. It sounded like gunfire, like two shots fired one after the other. He looked around. It had come from one of the nearby air vents.
He ran over to the closest one and put his ear against it. Screams drifted up from below the school, from the basement where they kept all the maintenance stuff. He knew that scream. Liona.
Cutter scrambled, trying to find the door he knew was around here, the one that would lead him to the stairwell that would take him into the bowels of the school. He reached down to his belt, pulled out a mini Maglite he'd been avoiding using, and flicked it on. He ran down a hall, found it, and threw it open. In the pitch black, with nothing but a round of pure, white light to guide him, he took the steps two at a time, running over detritus and kicking bottles of out of the way.
“I'm coming, Liona,” he breathed to the silent high school. “I'm coming, babe!”
Chapter 43
Liona
She slapped at Wyland's hands, trying to keep them off her.
“Sweetie, honey, lovey,” he said, his voice saccharine sweet, as he tried to calm her down. “Calm down! I'm just trying to protect you! Trying to keep these goons off you!”
“Get away from me!” she screamed in a shrill voice as she slapped at him harder, struck his face.
He gave an exasperated sigh and stood up from the cot. “That's the way you want it, then?” he asked, his voice suddenly back to the old Wyland. “One last chance.”
“Leave me alone!” she screamed.
“Fine, bitch,” he said through clenched teeth. “You asked for it. Time to show you some respect.” He descended on her again, his hands not brooking any argument. He reached for her clothes, began to tear at them.
She clawed at his hands, at his face, trying to keep him away from her. He was too strong, though. He gripped her wrist, twisted it out of the way. He slapped her with his open hand, right across the mouth. She cried out in pain, too shocked to fight back for a moment. With her hands not protecting her anymore, he reached down and grabbed the front of her shirt, began to tear it off her. He ripped the buttons off with effort, opening her to the cold deserted room.
“See?” he asked, as he grabbed her other wrist and pinned it down to the cot. “This is what you get, sweetie.”
She came back to her senses, began to scream again. When he'd torn her top open, he'd had to let one of her hands go. She lashed out with her suddenly free fist now, instead of just her nails, and caught the bastard in the eye.
He recoiled, putting his hand to his face as he stumbled a couple steps back. He took his hand away and looked down at the smeared blood. She'd split open his brow, and he'd smudged a little trickle of his blood. “You fucking hit me,” he said, disbelief filling his voice. “You fucking whore!” he said, louder. “You fucking hit me!”
Her eyes widened in fear as her hands came up to defend herself. “Lay another hand on me, you son of a bitch,” she swore despite her wavering voice, “and I'll fucking kill you. So help me God.”
<
br /> “Better start praying, then,” Wyland said, his voice cold as the arctic on a January night, “cause he's the only one that's going to help you.”
He closed on her again.
She screamed back. “Fuck you!”
If she was going to go out, she wanted to go out kicking, screaming, and standing up for herself.
Chapter 44
Cutter
He came out of the stairwell, the door banging and clanging against the wall. He shined his light around, searching, straining his ears. Somewhere, down the hallway to his left, he could hear the sounds of screams and struggling. Cutter bolted down the hallway, splashing through puddles of water filled with needles, used condoms, and old cigarette butts. He had to stop every twenty feet or so and perk his ears up so he could make out the sounds.
