Absolution (15 page)

“No problem.” Carlos said.

Logan said nothing.  Just switched off the phone, pocketed it and went to the open driver’s door to get a bottle of water from the door pocket.  He walked back, and took a long swallow of the tepid water as Zack licked his lips in anticipation.  But Logan closed the top of the plastic bottle and just smiled.

“C’mon, Logan,” Zack said.  “No need to be uncivilized, give me a drink of water, for Christ’s sake.”

“You get to breathe for a while longer,” Logan said.  “Be thankful for that.  Remember, I found what was left of Sam Benton.  What you had done to him was not what I’d call civilized.  You’re a sadistic, worthless piece of shit.  You need to know that once I get Andrea Corby back, you’re on the clock.  I see you as nothing but unfinished business.”

“That works both ways,” Zack said.  “You and the bitch will never get out of Arizona alive.”

Logan smiled, closed the trunk and got back in the front.  He reclined the seat and thought through how to best save Andy and kill Slater, and then allowed himself to fall asleep.  He wanted to be fresh for the evening ahead, that he had no doubt would involve more bloodshed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Billy
got to the ranch and had to help Andy out of the car.  After being cramped up in the foot well for so long she was in a lot of pain.  Her head was pounding from the blow from the gun that had resulted in a chicken’s egg-sized lump over her left eye, and her thighs and calves were shaking violently in spasm, due to the constriction of her muscles.  She couldn’t walk, and moaned as the blood began to circulate freely to cause an intense sensation of pins and needles.

Billy shook his head as Andy collapsed onto the ground outside the tack room adjacent to the stable block a hundred yards from the house.  He knelt down and manhandled her over his shoulder and got up and walked to the door, opened it and went inside.  Dropped her unceremoniously onto the concrete floor, grinning as she cried out as her right elbow and hip took the full impact of the fall.

Taking a coiled rope from where it hung alongside bridles on a rack screwed to the wall, Billy trussed her to one of three sturdy wooden posts that were bracketed to a support beam that ran the length of the ceiling.

“No need to gag you,” Billy said, withdrawing a hunting knife from a sheath looped to his belt and placing the point of the blade against Andy’s lips.  “If you start screaming, I’ll come back and cut your tongue out.”

Andy could see the fever of withheld violence in his glistening eyes, and knew that this was a man whom she should be, and was, terrified of.

Billy touched the blade to her throat, pricking the skin to release a ruby-red teardrop of blood that ran down to be absorbed by her shirt.

Gasping, Andy closed her eyes and kept absolutely still.  She knew that if Logan had not been holding Slater captive, then this man would have almost certainly raped and then butchered her like a hog while they had been at the cabin.

After the man had left, locking the door behind him, Andy began to sob, not at just her own plight, but because she had unintentionally been the catalyst of events leading to Fran’s death.  Her heart actually hurt with the loss of her sister.  It was difficult to imagine a future without Fran in it.  She had heard the two gunshots before being knocked senseless, and so did not have any hope to cling to.  If Fran had been alive, she would have also been brought back to wherever this place was.

Billy walked across to the ranch house, rang the doorbell and was let in by a maid.  He was suddenly ravenous.  Told the girl to rustle him up a sandwich, before making his way through to the bar in the living room and pouring a large measure of JD into a fancy cut glass tumbler and adding several slices of ice.  He planned on taking a hot shower, before sitting back and waiting to be contacted.

As Billy drained the glass, the doorbell rang again.

Carlos walked into the room a few seconds later.  Stared at Billy, but said nothing.

“What?” Billy said.  He disliked Rivas.  The guy was in some way aloof, up his own ass, as if he was better than everyone else.  He was Zack’s accountant, and just cooked the books and kept away from all the dirty work that went down.

“I got a call from Mr. Slater,” Carlos said.  “Have you got the girl?”

“Yeah, she’s tied up in the tack room.”

Carlos nodded.  “Good.  I’ll be trading her for the boss, tonight.”

“Where?”

“Doesn’t matter where, Billy.  You won’t be there.  Logan says if he even thinks it’s a setup, the boss will go down.”

“Do you have any idea what Logan is capable of, Carlos?”

“Yes, Billy.  I know that he killed Martin and the others.  All he wants is the woman back.”

“Bullshit,” Billy said.  “There were two women, and Logan will probably know by now that I killed one of them.  Whatever happens tonight he’ll waste the boss and anyone else in his way.  We need to be ready for him and take him out.”

Carlos poured a large scotch and sipped at it as he mulled over the situation.  This wasn’t something he had any expertise in.  He worked for a violent criminal, but had no hands-on involvement with that side of the business.  Since being
hired
by Zack, he had been able to keep his work separate from the activities that he knew were employed, but which he chose to ignore.

“What do you suggest?” Carlos said to Billy.

Billy smiled.  “What time are you meeting him, and where?”

“Ten p.m. at the site.”

“Okay, we know where he’ll be, and when.  Maybe he’ll be in the area a few hours’ before that, so I’ll take a couple of the men and beat him to it.  Just sit tight and cap the bastard when he shows up.”

Carlos was out of his depth.  “Okay, Billy,” he said.  “But don’t do anything that will put the boss in more danger than he’s already in.”

“If we don’t nail Logan, then the boss is history,” Billy said.

The heat of the desert sun woke Logan.  It was almost directly overhead, so he knew that it was a tad before midday.  The shadows cast by the saddle-backed ruins of the houses were now gone, and the car was heating up like an oven.  He got out, stretched, and went back to pop the trunk and check on Slater.  The metal lid was scorching.  He could have fried eggs on it.  And Slater had passed out, bathed in sweat.

Logan pulled the Indian out of the trunk, to let him fall hard on sand and rock that could blister skin; to drag him over to and inside the nearest house by the collar of his jacket.  Going back to the car, he got the bottle of now warm water from the door pocket, took it inside the ruined dwelling and poured a little between Slater’s cracked lips.

Zack came round spluttering and moaning.  He looked up at Logan, who was standing in dappled light, due to the many missing cedar roof shingles that allowed bright beams to cut through the swirling dust to spotlight the dry, splintered floorboards.

Zack gritted his teeth and said nothing.  He looked into Logan’s eyes and saw no trace of empathy for the state he was in.  Begging would not work.  Logan was an ex-cop, not an ex-priest, and so there would be no forgiveness.  His only chance would be to survive the exchange and then hunt Logan down.  No one could be so far off the grid that they could not be found.

“What now, Logan?” Zack said in a gravely whisper.

“We chill out here for a few more hours, and then we go to Ajo and get this sorry mess over and done with,” Logan said.  “I expect the idiots that work for you will try to take me out, so don’t expect to walk away from it.”

Carlos stood in the center of the living room with his eyes closed and considered the possible outcome of the arranged evening meet with Logan.  From what Billy had told him, Logan was a highly proficient killer, and could not be underestimated.  It was hard to imagine that the man would walk into a trap.  He would not only expect one, but would without doubt take measures to thwart any possible attempt on his life.

Going into the kitchen, Carlos took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and left the house, to walk over to the tack room.  He wanted to know what made Logan tick, and was positive that the woman could give him more insight as to what motivated the man.

Andy closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.  She had no idea how long she had been tied up in the room.  Fear and stress and pain amalgamated to allow her short periods of respite in fitful sleep.

“I know that you’re awake,” Carlos said.  “I’ve brought you some water.”

Andy slowly opened her eyes and looked up at the tall, slim man standing before her.  He was wearing a dark linen suit, a white shirt and maroon necktie.  She saw a look of concern in his eyes that appeared to be genuine.  Beads of sweat glistened at his hairline, and he was obviously uncomfortable in her presence.

Carlos flipped open the top of the water bottle and hunkered down next to her.  He held the bottle to her lips, but she turned her head away.

“It’s just water,” Carlos said, taking a couple of sips of it before offering it to her again.

Andy drank the cold water greedily.  Nothing had tasted so good in her entire life.

Carlos placed the bottle on the floor, went over to a corner of the room behind her and returned with a wooden chair that he placed in front of her and sat down on.

“Who are you?” Andy said.

“My name is Carlos.  I work for Mr. Slater, but until now have not been personally involved with anything like this.  I deal with the business side of the company and spend most of my time working a computer.  Tell me your name and why you’re here.”

“My name is Andrea Corby.  And I’m here, wherever
here
is, because Slater is a murdering bastard.  He had my boyfriend abducted and tortured and tied to a railroad track.”

Carlos knew that she was talking about Sam Benton.  He had heard enough to know that Benton had stolen money and had been dealt with.  “And where does this man Logan fit in?” he said.

“Logan found Sam’s body.  He came to Ajo to investigate the murder,” Andy said.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure.  He used to be a cop.  And he thought that Sam’s murder and that of another man would go unsolved.  He didn’t think that the law was going to dig up any worthwhile evidence. Two of Slater’s men went to the motel room that he was in, and he overpowered them and got one of them to admit that they’d killed Sam.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was there.  I followed them.”

“And Logan decided to take the law into his own hands?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that he’ll hand Mr. Slater over to get you back alive?”

Andy gave it some thought.  “I think that he will do whatever is necessary to protect me,” she said.  “But Slater had my sister killed, so Logan will make sure that he pays for it.  This won’t be over till your boss is dead.”

Carlos said nothing.  After thirty seconds he got up and took the chair back to where he had got it from, unconsciously making sure that the bottoms of the legs where in the exact same places in the dust-free spots that they had been in.  Over the years he had become fastidious in regard to almost everything he did.

Back at the house, Carlos went to his office and sat in front of the computer monitor, to stare unseeing at the screensaver as he replayed the conversation with Andrea Corby in his mind, and assessed that Logan would definitely not be dumb enough to be caught in a trap.  He reached into a pocket for his phone, selected a number and made a call to the Sheriff’s Department.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The
sun was low in the west, and Logan was standing in the doorway of the dilapidated house, looking across a wide valley to where the Kupk Mountains rose in the distance.  He could imagine how this former mining town must have looked over a century ago, before a decline in its fortune had led to it first becoming a shadow of its former self, and finally a dead and decaying entity.  Ghost towns were melancholy places, where hopes and dreams had ultimately been abandoned, and all that had been manmade was being reclaimed, overgrown by bunch grass and at the mercy of the elements.

Walking along the middle of what had been Main Street, Logan surveyed the remnants of the more than two dozen remaining buildings.  A sign above the doorway to one proclaimed in flaking, once-white letters that the structure had been J. P. Turpin’s General Store.  Next to it was a small rooming house with no name. On the other side of the rutted street was the Golden Saloon, which was now little more than a shell, its present-day patrons being rodents scampering across floorboards, and snakes curled in shadowy corners, ever ready to make a meal of them.

As he reached the last building, Logan stopped and breathed in the mesquite-scented wind that now rattled some of the rusted, sheet-metal siding and rotated the remaining blades of a windmill that stood next to a water tower that was leaning at what seemed a gravity-defying angle.

He decided not to go to Ajo.  This was a perfect venue to secure Andy’s release and take care of Slater.  The town had a graveyard stillness that he felt an affinity with. He turned and angled across the street, to step up on the warped and twisted planks of the boardwalk and make his way back to where he had left Slater.

From the corner of his eye, Logan caught movement from a short passageway between two buildings opposite him.  He ducked into a doorway, kneeling down on one knee as he drew the Glock from his belt and jacked a round into the chamber.

He knew from experience not to look out slowly from cover.  If a shooter was ready to take a shot, then it was best to snatch a quick look.  He kept low and moved to the right, to bob up at a window frame that still held shards of grimy glass, ready to aim and fire.  He breathed out and smiled as a wild burro wandered out of the shadows, made a left and ambled off into the desert.

He checked on Slater, who seemed to have a fever and was shivering. The man’s hands were a mess; purple and distorted to what appeared skin-splitting size. Without treatment he may end up losing them as infection took hold.  Logan didn’t care.  He had no feelings whatsoever for the two-bit gangster.  It would be better if he lived for a while longer, though, in case proof of life was required.  There was no way that Carlos would trade Andy for a corpse.

Out at the car, Logan made preparations for what he planned would happen later.  He hoped that he’d covered all the bases; knew that he was dealing with people that he could not trust, so had to – as usual – expect the unexpected.

Carlos used the time he had wisely.  He wanted out.  Twelve years of working for Zack had given him more than a good standard of living.  He had relocated much of his earnings into offshore accounts, and had all the paperwork necessary to adopt the alias he had meticulously constructed several years earlier, in anticipation of an event like this.

It took just a few minutes at the computer to transfer three million dollars of Zack’s money to five separate accounts.  He smiled broadly as the numbers rolled up the screen and the cash was cleared.  This was a fitting way to terminate his association with the psycho Indian, whom he had always hated.  It crossed his mind to just let the woman go and then phone Logan and tell him that she was free, and where he could find her.  That would seal Zack’s fate.  But he dismissed the idea.  He wanted Zack to live, to know that he had been robbed by a man that he had trusted, and who had vanished like morning mist off the surface of a lake.  He would make the trade, and let Billy and the sheriff handle Logan.  And if Zack needed medical attention, then that would be a good time to drive north to Phoenix and catch a flight that would be the start of a new life as another person.

Billy drove over to the construction company at six p.m.  Took two of the ranch hands with him: Lee Harper and Eddie Harris.  Lee could shoot out the eye of deer in full flight, and Eddie was ex-special forces.  Killing was second nature to both of them.

Leaving the gates open, Billy parked in Zack’s slot outside the main office.  The three of them went inside, and Lee assembled his Barrett M99 long range sniper rifle.  It was a single shot weapon that fired a .50 caliber bullet.  He intended to be no more than forty yards away from Logan when he took the shot, so did not expect to have to reload.  Logan’s head would fill the telescopic sight, before it was blown apart.  Lee had never missed anything that he had aimed at and pulled the trigger on.  With the M99 he had once put five shots in the center of a target from a thousand yards, equaling a world record that had been set back in two thousand one, by grouping the shots in an area of 4.09 inches.

Nine p.m.  Billy was in the office drinking coffee.  Lee was on the third floor of the building, set up with the rifle’s barrel resting on a bag of sand that he’d placed on a stack of cinderblocks.  He had opened a window a couple inches, and was well back from it, invisible in the darkness from outside the building.

Eddie was in the yard, sitting with his back up against a fifteen foot-high pile of timber.  He knew that Lee wouldn’t miss Logan, but was there as backup, just in case.  He had an Uzi – the Israeli open-bolt, blowback-operated submachine gun – that was compact and extremely accurate at close range. One way or another, Logan would soon be just another body to dispose of.

Carlos was driving a midnight-blue BMW 3 series sedan.  Andy was in the trunk with her wrists and ankles bound, but not gagged, and Carlos had put a pillow under her head.  He bore her no malice, and was embarrassed at his part in all of this.  He made a right into the industrial park, and was less than four hundred yards from the entrance to ZS Construction when his phone trilled.  The caller ID was Zack, so he knew that it was Logan.  He pulled over to the curb and parked.  Took the call.

“Carlos?”

“Yes, Logan.”

“Change of plan.  I know that you have a reception committee waiting for me, so I’ve decided on a change of venue.”

Carlos had a sinking feeling in his stomach.  “Are you here, Logan?” he said, looking in his rearview, expecting to see a vehicle parked behind him.

“Just concentrate on what I tell you, Carlos.  I’m trying to save you a lot of grief.  Drive out of town on 86, and keep your speed down to fifty-five.  If you contact the goons that are waiting for me to show, then the trade will not take place.  I’ll know if you’re being followed by anyone but me.”

“What about the woman?” Carlos said.

“I’d prefer to get her back alive, but the truth is I hardly know her.  My beef with Slater started in earnest when he sent those two lowlifes to my motel.  If you’d prefer to end the call, I’ll just kill Slater and move on.  It’s your choice, Carlos.”

“Okay, where am I heading?”  Carlos said.

“Just drive.  I’ll call you again when I’m sure that you’re playing it straight,” Logan said.

Carlos was sweating.  He was tempted to go back to the ranch, pack and hit the road to Phoenix.  The thought of being at thirty thousand feet in business class with a scotch rocks in hand as the jet headed for Costa Rica was almost too strong to ignore, but he did.  He wasn’t like Slater and the others.  He was part of the organization, but had never been party to actually hurting or killing anyone.  He would force himself to go through with this, and soon after would be living the highlife, and would look back on his association with Slater as a bad dream that would soon fade away.

Billy was beginning to get worried and angry in equal parts.  It was almost ten o’clock and there was no sign of Carlos.  He called him, and waited for twenty long seconds before Carlos accepted it.

“Where the fuck are you?” Billy said.  “It’s ten.  You should be here.”

“Logan phoned,” Carlos said.  “He knows it’s a trap, so he’s got me on the move.  Said he’d call back and give me directions in a half hour.”

“Where are you now?” Billy said.

“Out on my own.  I think he’s following me.  I’ll handle it from here, Billy.  Go back to the ranch.”

“Are you armed?”  Billy said

“Yes, I’ve got a handgun in the glove box.”

“So what do you plan on doing?”

“I plan on getting Mr. Slater back.  Wasting Logan is secondary.”

“But you―”

Carlos disconnected.  He didn’t want to listen to anything else Billy had to say. He needed help, but from someone with at least double Billy’s IQ.  He made a call to the sheriff, who had planned on turning up at the site to clean up and put the blame for whatever went down on Logan, who would have been in no position to dispute anything.

At ten-fifty, Carlos’s phone trilled again.

“Yes,” he said.

“Keep your eyes peeled for a pellet-riddled sign for a place called Absolution.  You’ll be making a right turn.  Just follow the track for a mile or so, and when you reach what’s left of the town, you’ll see an old windmill and water tower at the far end.  Park in front of them.”

Carlos licked his lips and reached for the water bottle in the cup holder.  His mouth was dry as sand.  He had a really bad feeling over what might happen.  When he had slaked his sudden thirst, he called the sheriff back.

“Absolution,” Carlos said.  “It’s a ghost town off the―”

“I know where it is.  I’m not too far away.  I’ll be there soon, but you won’t see me. Just play along with Logan until I deal with him.”