The Saint (Carter Ash Book 1)

by Joshua Guess

  In more than a figurative sense.

  Six hours later, I stepped out of the little building on the farm with a paper bag. I was clean, as was the room. No evidence left behind. Russey had the place built with destroying bodies in mind, and the oversize brick oven in the corner was helpful.

  I held up the earthly remains of Jacob Caldwell, reduced to carbon and a few slivers of bone by unrelenting jets of propane. The rest of Russey’s men stood sentinel around the edges of the yard the metal barn sat in, and if they were bothered by the things they’d heard echo out of it, they showed no sign.

  Together, Russey and I walked to the small pond nestled in the crook of the rolling hill the barn sat on. At its edge was a small hole, the bulb of a flower next to it. I poured the ashes and tossed in the bulb before raking the dirt over it.

  “Kinda thought you’d do something worse with it,” Russey admitted.

  “I wanted something to see when I come out here,” I explained. “A reminder.”

  Russey eyed me suspiciously. “When you come out here? That mean what I think it does?”

  I nodded. “For this, I’ll do any job you can dream up. I’m in.”

  Then I turned slightly away and pissed on Jacob Caldwell’s grave.

  27

  Now

  After a great deal of work, I made my way to the secluded little farm where Tom Russey was definitely going to try to kill me. Knowing that was a likely outcome, I’d given Kate’s number to Fahey and made him promise to check on her if things went badly. Of course if I died Russey would have no reason to haunt her, but I had firsthand experience regarding the unpredictability of grieving fathers.

  I considered going full action-hero and raiding a few likely places for military grade body armor, but ultimately decided against it. I’d given the location and thus the advantage to Russey. I knew him well enough to understand anything shy of a tank wasn’t going to cut it.

  Instead I wore a suit with a vest beneath. My daily wear. I was relying on Russey wanting answers to keep me alive past the first moment he saw me.

  I stopped the car a hundred yards from the small metal building and noticed with a bittersweet satisfaction how right I was not to bother with the armor. Atop the flat metal roof were two shooters laying down, sighting me through scopes mounted on very large rifles. Two more bracketed me from the sides, not bothering to hide themselves as they lay on the short grass.

  I walked forward as casually as I could. Thirty feet from the building, a voice cut the air.

  “Stop. Put your hands up and turn around.”

  I did as I was told, keeping still as the heavy door opened and feet approached me. They searched me thoroughly, though I hadn’t come armed. In fact, I had nothing on me at all. Not even the car keys, which I’d left in the ignition. Rough hands forced my arms down and cuffed my wrists together behind my back. I had half-expected it. Even surrounded by armed men, Russey had enough wariness to want me hobbled for our chat.

  Given my assortment of injuries and the level of exertion I’d been putting out over the last few days, I was basically hobbled anyway. At that moment I would have been on the floor with exhaustion had I not taken steps to avoid it.

  “Inside,” said the same, unfamiliar voice. He muttered something almost inaudible, then hands grasped my cuffs and the back of my neck, guiding me through the open door and shoving me inside.

  My eyes adjusted from the sun outside to the dimness within just in time for the door to slam shut behind me and see a fist coming at my face. I rocked back under the impact, off-balance, and hit the back of my head on the door hard enough to send bursts of color through my vision.

  Hands grabbed my coat and yanked me away, tossing me nearly parallel with the concrete floor. I crashed into the floor with a teeth-rattling impact, sliding the last few feet and feeling my injured arm tangle up. Something in my shoulder strained to the edge of breaking. I struggled to my knees just in time to tense my core as a booted foot buried itself in my stomach, knocking me back into the wall.

  As a nice bonus, I bit the side of my tongue when my face cracked against it. I spat blood and wearily looked up, getting my first good look at Tom Russey since entering the room.

  He loomed over me, breathing hard through his nose. He wore heavy combat boots, black BDU pants tucked into them, and a white tank top. The years had added pounds and taken muscle, but he was still built like a fucking tank. His beefy arms and chest twitched along with his hands, his fingers making grasping motions with the regularity of a metronome.

  “I had that coming, I guess,” I said.

  The next hit knocked me out cold.

  I woke up somewhere else entirely. I was still handcuffed, but now sat on a metal folding chair. Consciousness reasserted itself in slow waves, revealing these details in discrete chunks my addled brain could decode. The white walls and stained concrete were familiar in a specific way, the smell of old motor oil and sawdust in a more general sense.

  I saw Russey standing in the doorway and worked moisture into the desert that was my mouth. “Brought me to your house. Garage.” Talking sent sharp pain through my jaw that rippled across my whole skull.

  Russey snorted. “Didn’t think I’d keep you out at the farm, did you? I knew you had to have set something up there. Never let the enemy choose the ground, right?”

  I nodded fractionally. “Cops watching.”

  Momentary rage flashed across his face. “Yeah, they are, and thanks for that. My wife and the kids are with her mother because they have cruisers sitting up on the road in case anyone shows up here. You cut your own throat, too, you know. They’re looking into all of us.”

  “Yeah.”

  The clearing fog in my head made it gradually easier to think. The house was set far back from the road. I knew from experience how easy it was to get onto the property from the back. It was a logical place to bring me. So long as Russey didn’t alert the cops anyone was home, no one would expect us to be here. No one would come looking. Of all his properties legal and otherwise, it was the one place he knew I hadn’t been to since all of this began. His safe place.

  He stood there looking at me, and though I could see the rage beneath the surface, the part that pushed him to instant violence had clearly died down. Russey was studying me. Reading me the way he’d taught me to read others.

  “You’re not gonna do the thing?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “The thing where I threaten you or try to get you to talk? No. You’ll either tell me on your own, or when I start cutting shit off you.”

  I snorted a painful laugh and spat more blood on the concrete. “Gonna cut me either way.”

  Russey flashed a predatory smile.

  I wiped my mouth on my shoulder. “He had it coming.”

  He covered the space between us faster than I could follow, bowling me over onto my back. Strong fingers burrowed into my neck. Russey’s face contorted with fury, mouth a snarling rictus of hate. The world went fuzzy at the edges, but then the pressure was suddenly gone. A flood of sweet oxygen poured down my throat as Russey was pulled backward by one of his men. Two others stood on the other side of the open door leading into the house, watching the scene play out.

  “You told us to watch you,” the man pushing Russey back said. “Not to let you kill him before…”

  “I know!” Russey bellowed, knocking away the other man’s hands. “I know. Just let me—fuck it. I need a drink. You watch him. You two come with me.”

  Russey stalked from the room, leaving me alone with my savior. He helped me to my feet and righted the chair before walking back over to the door and leaning against the frame. I knew him, though he wasn’t one of the guys I worked with regularly.

  “Dan, right?”

  He nodded. “You hired me about six months ago.”

  I cleared my throat, which still burned from Russey’s assault. “You were one of the guys with rifles, yeah? Who was the other dude, the one who put cuffs on me?” I didn’
t actually care, I just hated the idea of sitting here in the silence.

  Dan looked uncomfortable. “Don’t know his name. Wouldn’t give it. All he’d say was Russey hired him to help question you. Showed up this morning.”

  I nodded in understanding. “Professional interrogator. My afternoon is going to be extra full of torture.”

  “You sound like you’re looking forward to it,” Dan said. “You got a big brass pair, I’ll say that much.”

  I shrugged. “I’d be a lot more worried about it if it was going to happen. But it won’t.”

  Dan looked at me as if I were an idiot child who couldn’t stop burning himself on a hot stove. “What, are you going to piss off Russey until he kills you?”

  I cleared my throat again. “No, though I probably could. If it comes down to it, I’ll figure out a way to kill myself first. I’m pretty good at thinking my way out of these kinds of things.”

  The last thing I wanted was to look desperate, so I pushed the other direction and entered the realm of ridiculous overconfidence. Any rational assessment of the facts made it clear I was not in a strong position. The stimulants I’d taken before heading to the farm were starting to wear off. Pain assailed most of my body.

  Not that I was totally lacking good news. I had deliberately baited Russey into attacking to mask the intense pain of dislocating my thumb. I hadn’t been able to pull my hand through the cuff completely, so I’d spent the last few minutes mentally screaming while slowly working the cuff over my hand.

  A few minutes later, they came for me. Russey wasn’t with them, but the three employees and the nameless torturer, who was a large man with a crew cut and serious brown eyes, seemed like more than enough. The three men I knew, led by Dan, approached me cautiously while the stranger stood behind all of them.

  I sighed and took a long blink as I felt the part of me that cared slide into the back seat. Hoping I wasn’t badly misreading the situation, I opened my eyes back up just as Dan leaned in to hook my arm and help me up by the left arm.

  That arm lashed upward into Dan’s throat, crushing it. My right leg whipped forward and up, taking another man in the groin. The third was smart; he took a step back as I rocked to my feet. He went for his gun, and while it wasn’t exactly a fumble, neither was it a smooth draw.

  The torturer had all the time in the world to step forward and drive a knife through that man’s neck.

  “Oh, thank god,” I said. I stepped past Dan as he thrashed, trying to draw breath through a ruined trachea, and kicked the guy letting out squeaky moans while holding his junk right in his face. I took advantage of his flailing to snake my arms around his neck and quickly choked him into unconsciousness.

  “You should kill him,” my savior said. “He’ll be a liability otherwise.”

  “Just give me the key to the handcuffs. We don’t have time to argue.”

  The survivor began to wake as I finished restraining him, but it was nothing to yank a rag from a box of them and duct tape it into his mouth. I ran some around his feet for good measure, then leaned down to put my mouth right next to his ear. “My friend here would prefer we kill you. If you’re a good boy and stay quiet, I’ll make sure he doesn’t get his wish.”

  I looked at the man Fahey had somehow managed to slip into this shitshow, a key part of my plan neither of us was sure would be possible. “What should I call you?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Smith.”

  Nice and generic. “Okay, Smith. Where’s Russey?”

  “On the back deck at the moment, but probably coming back in shortly. What’s the plan?”

  I told him what the plan was. He didn’t like it.

  I slipped through the dark house as fast as possible. I knew what I was looking for and where it was stored. Russey was on the deck smoking a cigar as he pounded back whiskey. He was getting himself ready for what was about to happen. In his mind I was being taken to the panic room, which was small but thickly armored and perfect for muffling the dulcet tones of torture.

  After I found what I was looking for, I handed it to Smith. “Wait for me to draw him in, then leave out the back. Get close to the woods. That thing has a range of about a hundred feet. Give me five minutes, then push the left button once, the right button three times.”

  Smith looked down at the small device, which I’d stolen from Russey’s office. “What will it do?”

  I shook my head. “Not important. Just do what I told you and run like hell when you’re done. Tell Fahey I owe him huge if I get out of this.”

  Smith stared at me for a long few seconds, then nodded. He melted back into the darkened house. I could almost feel his eyes on me as a physical presence as I waited inside the kitchen for Russey to come back in.

  I had known Fahey was planning to send me help of some kind, but as of our last communication I didn’t know what form it would take. It made sense, lacking access to his normal complement of killers and thieves, that Russey would bring in at least one other person. As I was normally his route for hiring such people, Russey had turned to his second option in Fahey. None of the folks I hired regularly would have been trustworthy, not after my escape from Jen.

  But honestly, I’d run out of plan a long time ago. I knew Russey wouldn’t try to keep me at the farm. Bringing me here wasn’t the only option—he could have rented an entirely new spot or kept me in a foreclosed building—but it was where he was comfortable. Where he felt powerful. At the time I asked Fahey for help, I gave it even odds we’d end up here. If I awakened in some hotel or rented house, I would have given Russey his show. Whatever it took to make sure retribution didn’t fall on Kate.

  Being here meant I had a slim chance to not just kill him and end this, but destroy nearly all the evidence that would incriminate me directly. What I’d given the cops implicated me, sure, but the real danger lay in the contents of Russey’s office.

  He walked back in and froze, staring at me across the empty space between us before lurching into a run.

  I sprinted at once, tearing down the hallway toward his office. I slowed at the last second to open the door only to find it locked. My momentum carried me into the heavy, steel-cored slab.

  Russey crashed into me, hand seizing my neck. “You know what, let’s go in. We can have one last talk.”

  The snarling fury was back, overriding his logic. I heard him stab his fingers into the keypad on the wall and the door opened with a click. With one last titanic effort, I kicked and tried to break free.

  Russey was ready for me, and I heard the door lock behind us.

  28

  In his anger, Russey shoved me forward. In so doing he lost his grip and I spilled to the ground, tucking my head as my shoulder hit his desk. I didn’t look back as I mule-kicked behind me, knowing he’d follow. My foot connected with his knee, eliciting a throat-shattering scream as the force of his forward momentum and my kick conspired to audibly tear something in the joint.

  Scrambling to my feet, I leveled a few more kicks without hesitation. Good thing I did, too; Russey pulled a compact gun from one pocket. In a stroke of luck, I connected with the wrist holding the thing. In a display of true grace, I stumbled over Russey and fell on the pistol.

  Staggering up and to the door, I tried the handle. Nothing.

  “Give me the code,” I said. Goddamn auto-lock. Why had I picked a security system with so many variable modes?

  “Fuck you,” Russey gasped, hands gripping his deformed knee.

  “No, you really want to give me the code, Tom. In about four minutes the fail-safe is happening and we don’t want to be in the room when it does.”

  Despite the certain agony in his leg, that make him pause. Then he laughed. “That was what you were going for? Kill me and burn everything in the office? Well, you’re gonna get your wish, Carter, but we’re going with it. I used the lock down code to get in. Remember what that means?”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  Lock down was a master code meant to seal the room c
ompletely for half an hour. It was a safety measure, at least in theory. It would trap a thief or protect an occupant, depending on who was inside. The fail-safe going off would probably kill both of us. Incendiary charges paired with small explosives would reduce the room to ash and shrapnel.

  The room was a vault. The walls were built with steel frames and steel panels. The window was half an inch of Plexiglas whose outer perimeter was firmly inside the wall.

  “Don’t suppose you set up an override in the last few days?”

  Russey shook his head. “No. Changed the codes, but didn’t see a need to reprogram the modes.”

  I leaned my back against the door, then seeing no need to look macho, allowed myself to slide to the floor.

  There was some irony in being killed by the over-thought, complex mechanism I had designed. In a way it seemed fitting. I had never been happy or even satisfied with this life. It started out as a means to an end. Eventually it became my reason to keep going. A crutch, no matter how terrible, that gave me enough purpose to put one foot in front of the other.

  About three minutes now. I felt every second ticking away, precious and fleeting. Time was to me as water spilled by a man dying of thirst, soaked up in the desert sand. For the second time in my life, the knot of worry and fear and stress ratcheted tight by my daily life loosened. Those were no longer worries I would have. I’d suffer none at all before long.

  “The girl,” I said, looking up at Russey. “He hurt the girl, and she looked like my daughter. That’s why I did it. Didn’t plan on it, didn’t even realize what happened until it was done.”