Fade To Midnight (54 page)

The big guy shoved her uncomfortably close, sandwiched between the two men. Des was dressed in a winter coat, black hat. He was pale, with circles under his eyes, and very bulky under the coat. Edie reached out with her cuffed hands, and poked at his chest. Rigid as steel.

“Nervous, Des?” she asked. “Are your painkillers working?”

Des slapped her, knocking her back against the other man. Then he frisked her, his hands lingering on her breasts, her ass. Crouching down to feel her ankles. She saw stars, tasted blood in her mouth.

The man who'd cuffed her crouched in front of the laptop, and manipulated the joystick. There was a video image on the screen.

“Look at this, Edie,” Des taunted. “Your snake bomb wasn't the only one who went adventuring. Look where this one's gotten to.”

The big guy lifted his ski mask, and showed her his fleshy face. His eyes lingered hungrily on her chest. “Remember me, beautiful?”

She shook her head mutely. He jerked down her shirt, until her breast was revealed, and fitted his fingers over the bruises around her nipple. He squeezed, hard. She jerked back, but Des blocked her.

The pain made her want to vomit. She gasped for air.

“Remember me now, bitch?” the man growled.

“Focus, Tom,” Des snapped. “Show her the snake's-eye view.”

Tom spun the laptop so she could see it better. Her breath caught. The screen was divided into four images. Each was a different perspective of the exterior of Aaro's house, except for one, which was an interior. A muddy, fish-eye view from a corner of the inside. She could see a cat's food dish in the foreground, a forest of chair legs. A muddy, booted foot. Noise, men's voices speaking. The sound was distorted, but she could distinguish voices. Tom manipulated the joystick, and the camera panned around. Up, down. Right, left.

“A swinging cat door. That's how I got it in.” Tom sounded pleased with himself. “I could've planted the thing in the space under the house, but this way, I can physically see when they're all inside. The other snakes will tell me when the men should drive them all in, and then boom! All gone at once! Problem solved in one blow. I love that.”

“Tom likes to streamline,” Des explained.

“These babies are fun to play with.” Tom sounded like a kid with a new toy. “And so discreet. I took my time this morning, finding the perfect placement at my leisure. And look.” He grabbed the one draped over his shoulders and pushed a button. A device detached itself from the snake's lens eye. “A retractable infrared periscope. We use them in the dark, too.” He lifted a black plastic device, like an ergonomic remote control. “This is the detonator. Slick, huh? I love this shit.”

He sounded like he expected her to be pleasantly impressed. She looked around at the vehicles. “That's Kev's car,” she said inanely.

“Oh, yes. We've fixed it up for the police,” Des assured her. “We've thought of everything. It's all about the spin, remember? Selling the story. There's C-4, and the AWM sniper rifle that killed your father. We covered them with your boyfriend's fingerprints when we took him yesterday. And now, the cherry to put on the top. This!”

Tom held up the mechanical snake she'd carried. “A snakebot bomb, covered with Edie Parrish's fingerprints,” he said. “That'll be in Kev's car, too. What will they make of that, I wonder?”

Des clicked his tongue. “You bad girl. What did Charles do to you when you were little that made you so angry? Everyone will wonder.”

“Why did you…” Edie's throat seized up. “Why not kill me along with them? Why draw me out? You just wanted to gloat?”

“No,” Des said absently. “We've got other plans for you. Shut up.”

Like hell. She dragged in a breath, and screamed. “Kev! Bomb!”

“Fuck.” Tom lunged for her, clapping his hand over her mouth. “Should have gagged the bitch,” he snarled, grabbing the walkie-talkie.

Edie struggled, and kept screaming. He whapped her on the side of the head, dazing her.

“Positions?” he rapped into it, and listened to a terse, staticky reply that she could not make out, because she started screaming again, even though it hurt her head. She couldn't make herself stop.

“Pin them down,” Tom yelled, over her shrieks. “Nobody leaves the house! Drive them in! Des, shut that dumb bitch up before I shoot her!”

Des grabbed her from behind. Guns blasted across the meadow. She used Des's body for ballast, and jackknifed, kicking the laptop off the stump. It flipped, spun, cracked to the ground, screen side down.

Tom roared in outrage, launching himself at her—

Thhtp,
the muted sound of a silenced gun firing, and Tom was knocked backward with a shout, thudding heavily to the ground.

He gasped for air.
Thhtp
, another shot. He squawked, writhing on the ground, cursing viciously.

Edie twisted to look. Tam stood among the trees, a stark silhouette, elegant and cat-slender in quilted black nylon, holding a huge, squared off pistol. Her face was pale and set.

“Let go of her,” she said. Her smoky voice was menacing.

Des backed away, holding Edie in front of himself as a shield.

Edie writhed and flopped. “Tam!” she shrieked. “It's a bomb! A bomb in the house! A snakebot loaded with explosives! Tell them!”

Tam's eyes flashed. A com device appeared in her hand as gunfire crackled across the meadow.

“Aaro?” she shouted. “Come in, Aaro? Anybody? Anybody?”

A staticky hiss. Then a voice, tense, shouting, “Tam? Tam!”

“Con!” Tam yelled. “Bomb! A snakebot! Watch out!”

“In the corner!” Edie shrieked. Des tried to cover her mouth with his hand, but she tore her face loose, writhing. “By the cat dishes! And the detonator, it's here! That black thing! Quick! Tom had it, it fell down over—”

Des slammed the side of her head with his fist, tossed Edie aside and dove for the detonator. Tam's gun spat again.
Thhtp.

Des yelped, jerking on the ground. Edie hurled herself at the detonator, grabbed it. Des's hand shot out, clamped her throat, hard enough to grind bones. Her heartbeat got louder, roaring in her head.

She could hardly hear Tam screaming into the com device. Tom was struggling up onto his elbow, face distorted with rage. Taking aim.
get rid of it…going to blow…goddamnit, now, right now…

Bam, bam, bam, bam.
Tom fired his gun. Tam's voice cut off.

Tam lay flat, gasping, clutching her shoulder, her thigh. Tom swung his gun, bashing Edie's elbow, jarring her grip on the detonater.

Des snatched it. She screamed, in horror, despair—

Boom.

The sound was huge. The woods shook, the trees quivered.

In the numb, dreadful silence that followed, Edie looked at Tam, sprawled on the ground. Their eyes met. Tam's were full of stark grief, and a knowledge that they shared, now. There was no bottom to that hole. A person could keep falling forever.

Des and Tom struggled to their feet, panting. Des jerked Edie up, cursing as she wobbled and sagged. “On your feet,” he snarled, and turned to Tom. “Are you shot?”

“I'll live,” Tom muttered. “The vest caught them. Just a flesh wound. Hurts. That dirty little cunt. I'll teach her.”

“I'll take Edie, then,” Des said. “You go do clean-up.” He gestured toward Tam, aiming a vicious kick at her wounded thigh. Tam jerked, gasping, but made no other sound. “Kill her.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tom said, with relish. “It'll be my pleasure.”

Edie held Tam's gaze for as long as she could while Des dragged her to his car, which was parked behind Kev's rented SUV. He lifted the remote, popped the trunk, and the world flipped and spun as he tossed her in. She landed with a jarring
thump
, a gasp of pain.

Des stared down, lips drawing back in a quivering parody of a grin. “This is where the fun starts. Bitch.” He slammed the trunk shut.

The smothering darkness of the grave closed in around her.

K
ev writhed on his belly toward the house. The woods offered cover, but he had only one clip. If they cut him off outside with no ammo, they'd slaughter him, and the house was an arsenal.

Bullets whizzed, digging into the packets of cedar shakes Aaro had planned to side his house with. Another gouged into the future deck, a raw framework of four-by-fours. He scrambled around to the back, then leaped up on top of the half-constructed porch. A bullet scored a red line of fire across his thigh as he slithered in the door.

The front windows on the basement level had been shattered. Everyone was flat on the floor. Aaro was tossing guns and clips around from a big metal locker that lay on its side.

Another barrage hit, punching through walls. Glass and wood, drywall, chalky chunks of sheetrock showered down. A walkie-talkie lay on the floor. It was squawking. A female voice, shrill and urgent.

Con crawled over, shouted into it. His head jerked up, eyes wide with alarm. “Bomb!” he yelled. “Snakebot! In the house!”

The writhing caught Kev's eye. A one-eyed, mechanical boa constrictor, heavy and thick, clothed in a sack of winter camo canvas. Flipping and flailing like a crazed whip. He flung himself at it.

“Drop it! It's going to blow!” Con screamed. “Everybody out!”

Kev looked around. Exits blocked. Guns blasted outside. They'd get torn apart if they ran out of here. Even if he tried to jump out with the bomb into a hail of bullets, the blast would knock him back inside.

The other direction, then. The picture windows on the second story of Aaro's house, the ones that looked out over the sheer cliff. He leaped for the scaffolding that led up to the unfinished loft.

Time dilated. Bruno and Tony leaped at him, mouths working in grotesque slow motion. Screaming at him to stop. But he couldn't.

He'd be silhouetted against the sky for the marksmen outside. So be it. Neither of his families would get blown up today, for having tried to save his sorry ass. Not if he could help it. And Edie. Oh, Edie.

Something grabbed his foot, wrenched. He was hanging with the injured shoulder, reaching with the other. He yelled at the brutal yank, lost his grip. Howled, in rage and despair as he fell, hit the ground.

Tony yanked the snakebot away, and started climbing up before Kev could move to stop him. He looked down as he stepped onto the loft, his eyes meeting Kev's. His face hard, with grim acceptance.

Bullets shattered the windows, punched into Tony. Lifted him and the flipping snakebot up, back, out, and into the void outside. Arms and legs wide, sprawled backward, suspended, falling…

Boom.

The huge explosion stunned them all. Kev lay open mouthed. Struck stupid. Time stopped. That hadn't just happened. Not possible.

Not Tony.

Bruno's face jolted him into the time-space continuum again. His mouth open, yelling something that Kev couldn't hear. Tears streamed down Bruno's face. He leaped up, hung out the shattered window, screaming incoherently as he sprayed bullets from an M-16.

Miles seized him by the waist and yanked him back down again. A volley of bullets thundered through the space where Bruno's torso had been, leaving a pattern of holes in the opposite wall. The light shone through them, the wind blew through. The smoke swirled, stank. The place was a fucking sieve. Ah, God. Tony.

You're worth saving, kid.

He was sobbing. Someone tugged on his arm, finger to his lips. Aaro. He tried to stop his chest from shaking, tried to close his mouth.

Aaro shoved an Uzi and a spare magazine into his hands, and beckoned, gesturing to stay down. Wrenching up boards with a hammer, they slithered through the ragged square torn into the floor, down into a crawl space. It was part solid granite bedrock, part poured concrete. From there, they writhed out into a narrow trench which had been dug through a thicket of sapling pines. They could crawl through the forest without making the branches shake, and giving away their position. Aaro had built his house on a cliff, and dug himself an escape hatch. The kind of paranoia that would make Crazy Eamon proud.

Ahead of them, there was a rustling of branches, a cracking of twigs, a choked cry. Then Sean appeared, his hands red. Kev was too numb to be startled by the face of the dead man when he crawled past the corpse. The guy's white and gray camo was bloodsoaked, his eyes wide with surprise. Mouth wide. Throat slit.

Sean had done that. Kev tried to get his head around it, then stopped trying. They wiggled in single file. Circling wide through the forest, to get behind the guys who were still shooting at the house.

Time warped as they crawled. He stopped when he saw Davy, sprawled on his belly, a Ruger 10/22 semiautomatic rifle poised on a rotten log, taking aim. Davy was a crack shot, the best of the brothers. He'd inherited the ice-cold inner stillness that had made their father a legendary sniper. The rest of them had not. They were good shots, but not on Davy or Dad's level. They waited, all holding their breaths. Three hundred meters or so. The distance was nothing for Davy.

Bam.
Half the man's head exploded. Davy barely flinched. Deep in the zone. Kev envied him. He himself was a fucking shattered mess.

Then another belly-to-the-ground slither through bushes and dead leaves and pine needles. Three of the guys in winter camo were crouched behind Aaro's battered, mud-splattered gray van, conferring angrily in whispers. Con popped up and lifted a long tube with two telescopic ends onto his shoulder. It took Kev a few seconds to place it.

Holy shit, that was an AT4. An anti-tank weapon. Those guys were toast. Aaro had some serious shit in his toy box. In fact, Aaro's eyes were wide as he silently gestured at Con to stop, stop, stop—

Kaboom.
The vehicle lifted up with strange, aerial grace, bashing down onto its side. Glass, shattering. A column of greasy smoke. Flames licking.

Aaro clapped his hands over his eyes, cursing in some thick Slavic language. “My van,” he moaned. “Did he have to kill my van?”

Deathly silence, then nervous muttering. A guy desperately trying to raise someone on the com equipment. He was huddled behind Zia Rosa's Taurus sedan that Tony had driven, talking into a com device. From his desperate tone of voice, he wasn't getting a reply.

Davy had a clear shot. He positioned the rifle, but Kev waved him down. The guy was alone. The tone in his voice indicated that he wasn't a threat on his own. He'd panic, and bolt.

Sure enough. The guy dove into the trees and fled.

Kev rose to his feet, and started running. It wasn't a decision. He just couldn't wait anymore, no matter who might be shooting at him.

The others came after him, merging with the last path Edie had taken. He saw them from across the meadow, and began to sprint. Two bodies on the ground. A big guy, sprawled on top of a long, slender woman, dark hair spread out in a fan. The wet gleam of blood beneath her. He ran faster, breath jerking, heart thundering, chest burning and cramping with anguish, denial—

That hair. Too straight, too shiny. The hand. Those fingers were longer, olive gold, not the pale pink tint of Edie's. This was Tam.

Kev hurled himself to his knees, and heaved the big guy off her. She'd been shot. In the leg, and the shoulder. It looked bad. Her face was gray, her lips blue, but she as still alive.

The big guy, Tom, was very dead. His eyes were blank, his mouth wide open. His bowels had loosened. He smelled foul.

Davy, Con, Sean, Miles, and Bruno crouched down around her while Aaro circled, gun out, on the lookout. Davy and Sean yanked off their belt pouches, and got going with bandages, tourniquets.

“Jesus, Tam,” Davy growled. “What did you do to that poor guy?”

Her lips twitched. She lifted her fingers, fluttered long gold nails at them. “Cat scratch fever,” she whispered. “Nerve toxin.”

Kev focused on the tiny needle that stuck out from under the nail of her index finger. Her down coat was soaked with blood.

Davy looked up at Sean. “Call Val. Tell him to charter a private plane from Friday Harbor to the Hillsboro airport,” he said. “Tell him to hurry.”

Sean got on it. Kev stared down into the woman's grayish face. Blood spatters at the corner of her mouth. Jesus. She looked like she was dying. He felt like a user, but he had to know. “Tam.” His voice shook. “I know you're hurt, but please. Where did they take Edie?”

Her eyes fluttered open. She dragged in air, face contracting in pain at the effort. “Des Marr,” she said. “Car trunk. All I know.”

Davy dug into the dead man's pockets and pulled out a wad of car keys. “Take the bastard's rig,” he said. “He doesn't need it anymore.”

“To where?” Kev snarled. “In which fucking direction?”

Davy's lips twitched in a short, grim smile. “She's got my cell phone, little brother. At least, I hope she still has it.”

“Yeah? And so?”

“So you're set.” Davy jerked his chin at Miles and Sean. “Con and Aaro will get Tam to the hospital. And the rest of us will show our little brother the wonderful world of X-Ray Specs and SafeGuard beacons.”

“We don't have a handheld,” Sean said.

“Call Nick. Have him spot you from Stone Island,” Davy said. “He has all our codes.”

Sean punched in another number. Started muttering to someone about beacon codes, coordinates. Kev stared at Tam, panting. Blood soaked into the leaves beneath her. The woman had been so strange, so rude to them the night before. But she'd tried to protect Edie. Maybe at the cost of her life. He inclined his head, respectfully. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Edie's tough.” Her golden eyes were slitted with pain. “Hang on to her. That's…rare.”

“I mean to,” he said.

He took off running. Toward the end of the world, probably, but it no longer mattered to him. As long as he could see Edie.

Just one more time, before he went over the brink.

 

Ava leaned closer to the bathroom mirror, struggling to repair her face into something she could use as a weapon. It was hard, tonight.

She'd slathered on foundation to cover her sickly pallor and spots, but it wasn't the right shade for her skin. Several coats of old, lumpy mascara made her eyes big and kittenish. Lip gloss, and that was it. She left the master crown on, and ran a brush through her hair. Good thing she had the cap, because her hair was wretched. And no time for a shower. Des and Edie would be there in a half an hour.

The blessed event was at hand.

She shoved plastic cuffs up her tight, fitted sleeve. Wadded the flexible slave crown into the waistband of her jeans, which were looser than usual. Stress made her slimmer. More room for the gun. That went into the back. She gave herself a critical once-over.

Lost sex kitten left in the rain. But that look had its uses.

She put an ear to Ronnie's door, heard the thump of headphones. The girl was sulking, listening to her iPod. Ava descended the stairs and peeked into Parrish's study. She spotted it instantly. A silver letter opener in a fine leather case. CWP. Parrish's monogram. She pulled out a scarf she'd gotten from Edie's drawer, wrapped it without touching it.

She slid it into the pocket on the side of her pants. The monogram gave the murder weapon that personal touch that meant so much.

Then she headed down to the security room and peeked in. Big eyed, self-conscious and shy. “Um, excuse me?” she said softly.

Two security guys looked over. The other two were out making the rounds. “Dr. Cheung,” the older, senior one said. “Can we help you?”

Paul was his name. She pulled in her lower lip, leaving half to dangle, plump and enticing. Fluttering with the gummy eyelashes, waif-like. “I couldn't sleep,” she said. “Have you heard from her?”

“From Edie, you mean?” Paul's lip curled. “Don't count on it.”

Paul wouldn't do. Too big, too fat, too old. Robert was more like it. He was fifteen years younger, maybe thirty-five. A big, handsome black man. No wedding ring, she noted. He'd be more believable as Edie's patsy. That poor fool Edie fucked into dazed submission, along with the promise of the moon, and billions of dollars. Yes, Robert was her man.

“There's something I need to show one of you gentlemen,” she said timidly. “In Edie's room. Nothing urgent. I don't want to, you know, bother you, or take up your valuable time. But I want someone to see.”

“Just tell us what is it that you saw, Dr. Cheung,” Paul suggested.

“You have to see it to understand,” Ava said. She gave Robert a pleading smile. “Would you…? Please. It'll just take a moment.”

“Go check it out, Robert,” Paul said grimly. “And hurry back.”

Robert walked her out, polite doubt on his face. She pulled him into the kitchen, looked around to make sure they were alone.

“Dr. Cheung?” he said, baffled. “I thought you said—”

“Shhh,” she whispered. “Just a moment.” She heaved her chest, arching her back. Pressing on her bosom in just such a way as to tug down on the stretchy shirt, and simultaneously shove up her enhanced breasts. “I just…wonder if you'd just take a second to…to…”

Robert looked almost afraid, staring at her tits. “To what?”

She blinked her heavily mascaraed lashes. “Hold me,” she blurted. “P-p-please. I feel so lost.” She pressed her face to his chest, grabbed his hand, brought it up to her breast with a pleading whimper.

His hand shook. She struggled not to smile. She had him. So easy. They were always so easy, the filthy fucking pigs.

Stab.
The needle went into his arm, the plunger came down.

Robert stiffened. His jaw stretched in a taut grimace. Air rasped into laboring lungs. Poor Robert. She was almost sorry for him. So cute.

She got to work with the crown, attaching sensors quickly. Robert's shaved brown head made it easy. She braced him against the wall, confident that his locked knees would hold him upright.