by James Hunt
He continually readjusted his hands on the weapon, his palms sweating profusely. He kept his breathing at a steady pace, pulling in each breath and exhaling slowly. His mind wanted to drift to the fact that it was Kaley inside the shed, but there was no proof that she was. Not yet, at least.
When Lena stopped close to where Scott was positioned and both were standing out in the open, Jake switched his aim from Lena to Scott and kept him in the crosshairs, slowly moving his finger to the trigger. The moment he saw anything he didn’t like he would take him down. But he never got the chance.
The gunshot, which made him feel as though his entire shoulder had exploded, came from his left and dropped him to the grass, with his gun remaining on the hood of his truck. A thousand knives dug into the wound, and he felt the warm trickle of blood cascade down his arm. He quickly shimmied behind the open driver-side door and felt the thump of another bullet rattle through the door’s metal.
With one shaking arm he pulled himself up onto the bench seat as more bullets thundered across the open plains and collided into the hood of his truck and cracked the windshield. Jake covered the top of his head and kept below the dash.
When the hail of bullets finally ended, the noise of gunshots was replaced by the throaty roar of an engine. Through the cracked windshield and bullet holes he saw a black sedan speeding toward him.
With his arm still aching, he lunged through the open crack in the door to the hood, where his fingertip grazed the stock of the rifle that lay just out of reach. Two more bullets disfigured the hood of the truck close to where his hand rested, and he felt the vibrations from the misses run up his arms. He stretched a little farther, feeling a tear in his wounded shoulder, but managed to get ahold of the weapon’s stock. He pulled it back inside the truck and cranked the engine to life.
The truck sputtered and whined when Jake shifted into drive and floored the accelerator, but the hulk moved forward regardless. He balanced the steering wheel with his knees while he reached for the seat belt, and the grill of his truck was pummeled with gunfire. The windshield shattered and grew cloudy with the thousands of lines of cracked glass. He stuck his head out the window to see and kept his trajectory smack in the middle of the black sedan’s path.
The two kept a collision course, both refusing to slow, but at the last second the black sedan swerved right, only the driver didn’t turn quickly enough.
The impact of the two vehicles spun them both into a nearly three-hundred-sixty-degree spin that flipped Jake’s truck to its side. The air bag in the old truck blasted Jake in the face, and his body was thrown tight against the seatbelt, his body rattling until it came to rest along with the truck. The collision made the pain in his shoulder feel like nothing more than a light pinch. He lay there frozen for a moment, unsure if he was even able to move.
Slowly, he managed to wiggle his toes, and then his fingers, and then, even though he felt an incredible ache in his head and the throbbing doubled in his shoulder when he attempted to move it, he pushed himself upright.
With both legs shaking, Jake reached around behind his seat where the rifle had flung itself. With his one good arm barely able to keep hold of the weapon, he planted his left foot on the base of the steering column and poked his head up through the open passenger-side window.
The sunlight was nearly gone but still somehow accentuated the pain in his head when he opened his eyes. He followed the skidded tire tracks cut in the grass and dirt and saw the wrecked sedan, which had flipped upside down. And from the front seats he saw two men crawl out, both with gash wounds to the head and both with rifles near their hands.
Jake lifted the gun out of the truck and set it on the back rear window. He used his good hand and arm to push himself the rest of the way while his feet scraped against the dash and seats to keep the extra momentum.
The slow struggle to get out and to his feet was made worse by the slow realization of the two men when they saw Jake making his escape. They both stumbled to their sides, twice, trying to balance their rifles, one of them puking in the process, no doubt from a concussion. The man who didn’t puke managed to squeeze off a shot, which was fired lazily into the undercarriage, missing Jake by at least three feet.
Jake’s heart pounded as he scooted his stomach over the side of his truck and kicked his feet. With one final push he flopped all the way out, grabbed the rifle, and then half rolled, half fell off the side just as the gunman managed a more accurate shot that smacked the top edge of the undercarriage.
Jake groaned after the hard landing but immediately reached for the rifle. He scooted on his ass through the grass toward the back tailgate and tucked the weapon’s stock tight against his shoulder. With one shaking arm he poked around the side and only fired one bullet after the recoil from the gunshot loosened his grip and the weapon hit the ground. He ducked back behind the truck bed just as the second gunman managed to get to his feet with his weapon and fired.
The sharp, metallic ring of bullets on metal kept the hazy, dull pain at bay as he reached for the rifle again. When he tried shouldering the weapon he failed. The rifle was too heavy, and he was to weak.
The two gunmen fired more quickly now, and from the sound of the ricochets it was on both ends of the truck. Blood continued to drizzle from his shoulder, though it flowed less liberally. He leaned his head back against the tailgate of the truck and felt the overwhelming sense of finality. Death wasn’t something he feared, but the thought of leaving his sister behind in the clutches of these people provided one last bit of grit for him to hold onto.
Jake forced the weapon into his hand, groaning from the pain, and jumped around the corner of the back of the truck. The barrel of the rifle jammed into the first gunman’s belly, and without thought Jake squeezed the trigger.
The gunman was thrown backward and slammed hard into the ground. Blood sprayed over Jake’s chest and face as he tried to aim the rifle at the second assassin. But his body refused the command, and the weapon sagged to the ground. He jumped back behind the cover of the truck just as the second gunman squeezed off a shot.
Jake kept his back to the truck and felt the irregular drum of the bullets through the vehicle’s frame. With his one good hand he reached for the sheathed knife at his belt. He blinked rapidly, shaking his head and trying to rid himself of the foggy haze of pain. He kept his head on a swivel and crouched low, raising the knife as high as his shoulder would let him.
The gunfire stopped, and Jake tried to listen but heard nothing except the high-pitched silence ringing in his ears that the gunfire left behind in its wake. His vision blurred, blackness slowly taking over as he felt his center of balance sway to the left and right. He was fading. He knew it.
Then, more gunfire. But with the noise came something else. He looked to his right, and he saw a truck speeding toward them. A trail of dust and grass kicked up behind it. Bullets cracked the windshield, and it screeched to a stop near the wrecked black sedan.
Lena jumped out and ducked for cover, the gunman unloading his weapon into the wreckage, screaming between spurts of gunfire. From Jake’s vantage point, lined up with the trunk of the car, he watched her head crane around the back, pistol in her hand and blood splatter all over her face and chest. They made eye contact, and she held up a hand, telling him to stay put. But Jake couldn’t sit there and watch her die.
“Hey!” Jake waved his hand around the corner of the truck. “Over here, asshole!” He pulled his hand back just before the bullets ricocheted off the corner. He looked back over to Lena, telling her to run. But she didn’t. Instead, she sprinted back around the other side of the car while Jake continued to scream. “C’mon, you fucking prick! Come over and finish me!”
A the tip of a polished appeared in Jake’s line of sight, and just when the gunman made eye contact with Jake three gunshots fired and the thug dropped to the grass. Lena then stepped around the side of the truck, gun still smoking in her hand, collapsed, and wrapped her arms around her brother.
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Jake would have winced from the squeeze, but he was too exhausted. “Did you get her?” Jake asked when Lena pulled back from her embrace. “Did you get Kaley?”
Tears filled his sister’s eyes, and he watched the water cut through the dried blood on her face. She said nothing and then buried her face into his good shoulder.
33
2 Hours Left
It took a few tries, but Lena eventually got Jake over to the truck. Once he was secure inside, she searched the bodies of the two dead gunmen then looked inside the wreckage of their car but found nothing except more ammunition and a few more guns, which she took and tossed into the truck bed.
Lena climbed into the driver seat, her view obstructed by the shattered windshield, and started the engine. It choked and sputtered, but it ran. She pulled away from the wreckage, and the vehicle rumbled back to where she’d left Ken with the bodies.
Neither Jake nor Lena spoke on the ride over, but she reached a bloodied hand over to Jake’s and held on to his wrist. When they arrived back at the shed, Ken sat propped up against the side wall, both Mark and Scott’s bodies where she’d left them.
Lena let go of Jake’s hand and put the truck in park. She laid her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. “They didn’t care about the deal.” Her words were dry and chapped like her lips and tongue. Her words tasted of metal and blood. “They have Kaley and Gwen now.” Through the view of the cracked windshield, Mark’s body looked to have been cut in a dozen pieces.
“Did he say anything?” Jake asked. “Before you killed him.”
Lena paused and then opened the door. “No.” She got out, and Ken didn’t bother standing up, either from exhaustion or defiance. She walked over to Mark’s body and examined the shell that was her husband, her partner, one of the best things to ever happen in her life.
Jake walked up behind her, his wounded shoulder wrapped tightly and the connected arm immobile. “They wanted to show you Mark’s body as a warning.” He looked west to where the two dead gunmen lay. “And from the hardware these guys were packing, it looks like we’re dealing with professionals.” He turned to Ken. “You didn’t mention anything about this.”
“I was never told about anything like this.” Ken pushed himself off the ground, rubbing the dirt from his palm on his pant leg. The pistol remained on the ground.
“You have to know something else,” Lena said, her eyes still locked on Mark. She reached into her pocket and checked the time on her phone. If they were still keeping to the original deadline, then there was still time to find the girls. She took large, aggressive steps toward Ken. “Something you heard or saw. You spent so much time with these people. You ate with them, worked with them, lived with them. Think, Ken.”
Ken shut his eyes and shrugged, the lines of his forehead creased in harsh canyons. “I-I don’t know. They shut me out toward the end, keeping the calls to themselves. I couldn’t hear—” Ken opened his eyes, his mouth slack. “Phone calls.” Ken pointed to Scott’s body. “He kept getting these calls, and he never said anything. The phone would ring, he would answer but never speak, then hang up. They happened a lot.”
Lena knelt and searched the body, patting down Scott’s pants pockets until she felt the hard, rectangular outline of the mobile. She pulled it out and then slammed it down in frustration at the password encryption. “It’s locked.”
“I might be able to have Longwood take a look at it with the forensics team,” Jake said.
“Would there be enough time?” Lena asked, the skepticism thick in her voice.
Jake answered softly. “I don’t know.”
“There has to be something—”
Scott’s phone buzzed. Specks of dirt covered the screen, and the name of the caller was blocked, but the number appeared, and Lena made it a point to commit it to memory. It vibrated on the ground, and Lena reached a hand for the device and pressed it lightly to her ear, not saying a word.
Whimpering filled her ears, light moans and sniffles. And then, no louder than a whisper, Lena heard Kaley’s voice. “I’m still alive.”
“Kaley!” Lena clutched the phone with both hands and screamed into the receiver. “Kaley, can you hear me? Are you okay? Kaley?”
“Mommy—” But just as quickly as her daughter’s voice appeared, it was gone, and only ghost-like echoes lingered in Lena’s ear.
“Kaley!” Desperation dripped from Lena’s lips as she tried to listen for her daughter’s voice, but there was only silence. She checked the screen. The call was still connected. She placed the phone back to her ear, and spoke slowly. “I know you’re probably looking at the clock and waiting for time to run out. Every second that ticks away is one more that your life draws closer to the end. Because I will find you, and when I do you will pray for your time to expire, but I won’t let it. I will cut you, piece by piece, forcing you to feel everything. You are a dead man.” She waited for a response, something, anything, but heard nothing.
The call clicked dead, and Lena smashed the phone into the ground. She walked over to Jake. “Call Longwood.”
He reached into his pocket and dialed the number. The bars were low, but he had service. “And what am I telling him?”
“That we have the kidnapper’s phone number. And that we need him to track down the location of that phone before he gets rid of it.” Lena shoved Scott’s phone into Jake’s chest and walked over to the truck. She removed the automatic rifles from the back and placed them up in the cabin of the truck.
Ken walked over, this time the pistol in his hand. “Lena, if Scott didn’t bring your daughter here, then that means they have no intention of giving her back, no matter what.”
“I know.” Lena loaded one of the magazines into the rifle and clicked the safety to make sure it was off. She then checked the number of bullets in the magazine of her pistol.
“Then why don’t you just go to the press with what you have now?”
“Because then they’ll kill my daughters out of spite,” Lena answered, shoving the magazine with five bullets back into the pistol. “This gives me a leg up to try and stop them before they kill my girls.”
Ken grabbed Lena by the shoulder and spun her around. “I can’t go with you on this. I’ve held up my end of the bargain. Have the DA finalize my deal.”
Lena placed the pistol’s barrel under Ken’s chin. “There are no more deals. All there is now is this gun that’s pressed against your skin, and my decision on whether or not I should squeeze the trigger.” She leaned closer, lowering her voice to just above a whisper. “You’re going to help me get my daughters back. Or I tell the DA to drop any involvement you had in the case. Because who else knows about it besides me and him? No one. Now get in the fucking truck.”
She removed the pistol, and Ken sheepishly walked around her to the back door and climbed inside. She wasn’t sure how much help he would be, but she needed as many guns as she could get her hands on. If the bloodshed out here was any indication as to what she was walking into, then it was going to be one hell of a night.
“Got it!” Jake hobbled over, holding up his phone, and climbed into the passenger seat while Lena cranked the truck’s engine to life after a few churning sputters. “They traced it within a mile of an address off of old Highway 9. Longwood’s gonna meet us there with the cavalry.”
“How far?” Lena asked, flooring the accelerator.
“Forty minutes.”
34
1 Hour Left
Despite Lena’s protest, Jake remained with them on the ride over. His cheeks were pallid and kept drifting in and out of consciousness, but the bleeding on his shoulder had stopped. The closer they drove to the location Longwood had given them, the more Lena realized just how much she’d need the sheriff department to back her up. Jake was in no position for any physical confrontation, and Ken looked ready to bolt the moment the opportunity revealed itself.
The GPS on Jake’s phone revealed their destination, which was less th
an a mile up the road. But from what Lena could see out of the rolled-down truck window, there was nothing. She picked up the phone from the cup holder and saw that they were practically on top of the area. “You’re sure this is where Longwood told you to meet up?”
Jake nodded. “Positive.”
Despite the confidence, Lena wasn’t sure if she believed him. Jake could barely keep his eyes open. She pulled off to the side of the road and grabbed Jake’s rifle out of the backseat. She climbed out while Jake and Ken remained in the car. She peered through the scope and scanned the horizon to her left and found nothing. She raised the rifle to the right and slowly drifted the crosshairs along the rolling plains until she saw the old farmhouse amid the acres of open land. When she lowered the scope it was nothing more than a speck, but when she gazed through the lens again, she saw two black sedans parked out front, the same make and model as the one that had chased down Jake. She was in the right place.
It took all of her willpower to not sprint to the house then and there, but she needed more men if she meant to get the girls out alive. “Where the hell is Longwood?” She peered into the truck, but Jake had his eyes shut. “Jake?” Lena dropped the rifle and shook her brother’s arm. He winced, and she let out a sigh of relief.
“So what do we do?” Ken spoke like a child as he sat curled up in a ball, tucked tightly into the corner of the backseat. The hand that held his pistol rested on his knee. “The longer we wait, the closer the clock ticks down to zero.”
