Knock Out (37 page)

Lissy said suddenly, “Wait, what if they’re worried we could be out here waiting for them? What if they go out the back door?”

Victor said patiently, “There’s no reason for them to go out the back door. There’s nothing back there but miles of woods. Why would they do that? They haven’t figured out a thing. Stop your worrying and keep your eyes on the front of the house.”

Bernie was praying Lissy would listen to him.

Lissy got to her feet. “I’m going to jump out of my skin if I have to wait here another minute. I’m going to check it out. I can circle around through the woods, get right up to the back door.” She kicked Bernie with her toe. “You think they’re still looking for clues? Dusting for fingerprints on the kitchen floor? Maybe using one of those fancy machines that shines blue and shows up bloodstains? It takes they long? They’re up to something, Victor. Hey, if I come in through the back maybe I’ll catch them all by surprise, shoot ‘em before they even know I’m there. Maybe I can talk to that redhead about her hair. I’ thinking she must use some special hair products.”

Down the rabbit hole,
Bernie thought, and kept his eyes closed.

“Open your eyes, lover boy, say good-bye.”

Bernie opened his eyes and said to the beautiful fresh-faced teenager who was anything but, “Good-bye.”

She laughed and blew Victor a kiss, looked again at Bernie’s belly, and said, “Keep him close, Victor, you never know when you’ll need yourself a shield.” She smacked her lips and laughed. “If he’s still alive tonight, I might have myself some fun with him. You know, give him an IQ test.”

Victor didn’t say anything to that until Lissy disappeared into the trees. Then he bent down to the man lying bound at his feet, and stuck his gun against Bernie’s mouth and shoved his lips apart. “You’re never going to touch Lissy,” he said. Bernie nearly gagged at the barrel close to the back of his throat.

There was nothing he could do. He thought of Jessie and his boys.

Victor got himself back under control. He pulled the barrel slowly out of Bernie’s mouth, shrugged, and eased down, his back pressed against an oak tree.

Bernie thanked God it wasn’t Lissy who was enraged, because she’d have shot him without a thought. He tested his wrists again. He wasn’t going to get himself free, his hands and feet were tied too tight.

Victor held a gun on his lap, which meant Bernie was a half a second away from being dead. There was nothing he could do, nothing except pray, and that’s what he did.

He prayed Savich and Sherlock and Cully had realized what was happening, prayed this insane Lolita wouldn’t come in through the back door, laughing like a maniac, and empty a clip into them.

Victor said in a meditative voice, never looking away from the front of the house, “Do you know I’ve never killed anyone myself? That’s why I drove the van for my aunt. I told her I didn’t want to do that. A couple of days ago I shot a highway patrol officer woman in the chest. Lissy was yelling at me to shoot her between the eyes so she couldn’t rat us out, but she was looking up at me, you know? And I shot the ground next to her head. I really didn’t think she’d live; there was blood all over her chest.” Victor leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I guess Lissy was right, that woman cop did live, and she did rat us out, she told them exactly who we were. It was all over the car radio news, this big news bulletin about us.”

Victor turned to look at Bernie. “But you, buddy, you’re coming on to Lissy, and that makes me mad.

Maybe I could kill you and not feel bad about it.”

65

PEAS RIDGE, GEORGIA

When Ethan managed to open his eyes, he was lying on his back on a soft, pale blue rug, staring up at a white ceiling. He managed to sit up. He was in a nice-sized room, with a large bed with a pale blue coverlet, a desk that looked like an antique, and shelves built in behind it filled with books and what looked like journals. There was n gooseneck lamp on top of the desk, next to a computer. He saw a door that probably led to a bathroom.

The room looked like a superior hotel

accommodation. There were raised blinds over the glass window in the door.

He walked to the door. It was locked, but he looked out the window. He could see only a window down the hall a ways from him.

He was in one of the members’ rooms. No

mortification of the flesh in this place,
he thought, and touched the frame of a photograph on the wall, this one of a sky filled with stars.

He felt dizzy and slightly nauseated from the gas.

Where were Joanna and Autumn?
Probably in a room of
their own,
he thought. He stretched out on the comfortable bed and looked up at the white ceiling.

Who had brought him here? Whistler? There had to be others who worked for him. He had to be ready when they came.

He lay silent and still for a while longer, until the vagueness and nausea slowly receded a few minutes later. Ethan realized he was hungry. He pulled an old wrapped mint out of his pants pocket, peeled off the wrapper, and sucked on it. He closed his eyes.

He had nothing to do but wait.

He heard a key turn in the lock, and the door opened. Whistler stood there, his hand out, holding a gun. “I see you’re awake already, Sheriff, as you should be,” he said. “We’ve never had to use the gas before. I see now it was a prudent measure, after all.

We couldn’t have you leaving through the outer door.”

“Were you watching the whole time?”

“Another precaution. I saw how you overcame my poor Kjell. I was fond of him.” Whistler continued in a meditative voice, “Truth be told, I believed Kjell was invincible. I saw him fight at his dojo in Seoul; he never lost. Evidently I thought too highly of his skills, since you killed him.

“You have cost us dearly, Sheriff, and I hope to see you pay for it.”

“Where are Joanna and Autumn?”

“They are in a comfortable room. Now it’s time, Sheriff. You wanted to meet the Father. You will now.”

66

WINNETT, NORTH CAROLINA

Savich eased open the bedroom window and climbed out. He ran bent over into the thick oak and pine trees before making his way around to the back of the house. Once in position, he dropped to his knees and looked across the large overgrown backyard. He didn’t see anything, and no face through the window. Good, Sherlock and Cully were still in the dilapidated living room in the front. He moved deeper into the trees, stopping every few steps to listen. He was surprised when the land sloped downward. He realized there was no way Victor and Lissy had hunkered down back here; they wouldn’t be able to see much of anything from this position. Climbing a tree would probably give them a view of the front of Victor’s apartment building, but they’d be too exposed. No, they were on higher ground, with a full view of the front of the house. Still, he could never be certain of anything Lissy Smiley might do. One of them could be here in the woods behind the house figuring it was a perfect way to surprise them.

Savich studied the patterning of the trees, the play of light and shadows, the shapes of the branches, watching for any sort of movement, anything at all.

He stopped cold when he heard a soft popping noise. Did an animal make that sound? Then he heard a man moan, nothing more, just a low moan of pain.

Another moan, this one deeper. Whoever it was, he was in trouble. If it was Bernie, that meant Lissy and Victor were close by.

Savich waited another moment, listened. He moved as quickly and quietly as he could through the trees, keeping low, in the direction of the man’s moan.

It was oddly silent, not even the sound of a bird or an animal. Every creature was listening, as he was.

The ferocious humid heat had slackened some in the early evening, but still sweat poured off him. He paused again, listened, but he heard nothing. Had he misjudged the direction of the moans?

Through the trees in front of him, Savich saw a small clearing, and in the middle of it a man in a deputy’s uniform lay on his side, his face turned away from Savich. Savich couldn’t tell if he was alive. Lissy or Victor did this, which meant they were close by, maybe waiting for him, or anyone, to step clear of the trees. He’d be hopelessly exposed. Savich didn’t want to go into that clearing, but he also knew he didn’t have a choice. If the deputy was alive, he couldn’t leave him lying there helpless. He ran crouched over, dropped to his knees beside the deputy. The man was unconscious. He was young, not more than twenty-two, fresh out of the police academy. He had a bullet wound to his shoulder. Savich hadn’t heard a gunshot, just the quiet popping sound. It was a silencer he’d heard, and the shooter had to be near.

If it was Lissy, he wondered why she hadn’t shot him between the eyes. He pressed his fingers to the deputy’s throat. A pulse, fairly steady. Savich pressed his palms down hard on the wound to slow the bleeding. What could he use for a pressure dressing?

He ripped off one of his shirt sleeves and tied it tight around the deputy’s shoulder Then he pressed his palms down over the wound again.

In that moment, Savich knew someone was close, but there was nothing he could do about it, not with this young man’s blood all over his hands. He heard the popping sound again at the same moment he felt a shock of frigid cold in his leg. And he heard Lissy’s voice, all high and excited. “Hey, Agent Savich. Lookee here, lookee here!”

Savich nearly fell over but shifted his weight to his other leg, and kept the pressure on the deputy’s shoulder. He didn’t even look around at her. He called out over his shoulder, “Hey, Lissy, what took you so long? Where’d you get the silencer for your gun?”

“Oh, I haven’t been far away. I’ve been watching you take care of the little boy cop here. My silencer—it’s the coolest thing. I got it from a really cute redneck gun dealer in Tumis Springs yesterday; gave him two big ones for it. It was marked three hundred dollars, but he gave me a deal.”

“I guess he didn’t ask for any ID.”

“Oh, no. He was smart.”

The redneck gun dealer had known she was crazy and didn’t want to die. Slowly, without reducing the pressure, he turned to see Lissy Smiley standing not six feet away from him in the shadow of a skinny pine tree. She was smiling hugely at him. He said, “I admit I’m surprised here, Lissy. Why didn’t you kill the deputy right off?”

“Fact is, I didn’t clock him because I hoped one of his partners would hear him moaning and thrashing around and come help him. He just folded right down, just managed a couple of wimpy moans. No one came.

Isn’t that just the sweetest thing? Here I was getting ready to give him a little tap to the forehead, get back to Victor, but then you came, Agent Savich, the big hero cop, running to save the little punk’s life. Like, who cares if he was around or not?”

“Wouldn’t anybody care if you died?”

He saw momentary panic in her pretty eyes. Was she seeing herself lying on the ground instead of this deputy, bleeding her life away?

“My mama would have cared if I’d died, but she’s dead, so it doesn’t matter.”

“This guy has a mother too.”

She was shaking, waving the gun at him, hysteria hot in her voice. “Shut up, you hear me? You’re responsible for my mother dying, you bastard, so shut up, you hear me?”

He thought she was going to kill him then, but instead she relaxed a bit and actually sneered at him.

He realized she wanted to gloat, she wanted to rub his face in her victory, and it gave him precious time. She said, “Hey, I sure hope your leg’s hurting bad, like I can see it bleeding from here. I didn’t kill you because I got some things to say first. You wanna know why I shot you in the leg? Because that’s the leg you kicked me with. No way you can kick me now.

“No, don’t you move, don’t you even twitch. I will kill you if you try for your gun. You stay right there. I see your gun right beside the deputy. You throw it over here or I’ll shoot your head off.
Now!”

He didn’t want to let up the pressure on the deputy’s shoulder. He saw blood was seeping from the wound on the outside of his leg, but it wasn’t bad. He said, “Lissy, I don’t want this man to die. I can’t let up the pressure.”

She laughed, then yelled, “You throw your gun over here or I’ll shoot you in the face, then I’ll put another bullet in that idiot deputy, get him out of his misery.”

Savich picked up his SIG and tossed it toward her.

It landed only about three feet from the bottom of the deputy’s left boot, too far away for her to get it, but Lissy didn’t seem to notice. He kept pressing both hands on the deputy’s shoulder, fully aware he had to get some pressure on his own leg soon.

She sang out, her voice high and manic, “I got you, I got you. Now it’s you and me. You want to talk about dying, Agent Savich? Why not? I can’t wait to watch you die slow.”

“Yes, you sure do have me,” Savich said, voice low, controlled. He held himself perfectly still. “You know, Lissy, this deputy wasn’t just lost. There are deputies all around us. There could be one coming up on you right now. Fact is, you and Victor will end your spree right here, tonight. I’m thinking maybe there’s a way out for you, but then again, maybe not.”

“What way? Come on, spit it out, you bastard.” She twisted her head around, then back to him again.

“I know you’ve got Bernie Benton for a hostage already, right?”

“Yeah, we got him.”

“Fact is, he’s a very little fish, of little importance in the FBI. He’s just not enough. I’ve got juice, Lissy, everyone knows that. I’d say about the smartest thing you could do is take me as a hostage. You need me, Lissy, otherwise it’ll be all over for you and Victor.”

She laughed, clasped both hands around the gun, and aimed it right at his chest, but he saw that her eyes were more focused, more sane. “Well, now, maybe you’ve got a point there, maybe you don’t. Tell you what, you and I will take a nice hike back to Victor, see if he thinks we can use you.” She looked at the unconscious deputy. “You even tore off your shirtsleeve for this loser. I’ll tell you, I couldn’t believe it when I saw him trying to be cool, sniffing around, poking his gun into every damned bush, looking around every tree. I shot him fast, he didn’t even have time to crap himself. Then look what I bagged—the big honcho himself.” She studied him a moment as he continued to press down on the young guy’s shoulder.