No Safe Place (Joe Hunter Thrillers Book 11) (27 page)

She overshot the entrance to the fishing lodge in her haste.
Bryony trod on the brake pedal, and her tyres shuddered on the rough road surface, pluming stinking smoke before she brought the car to a halt. She hit reverse, using her mirrors to guide her into a swooping turn, and then stamped the gas pedal again. She clipped a gatepost, but scratches on her car were the least of her concerns. She pushed down the track, and came to a point where it branched. To the left the track wasn’t maintained, just two ruts in the earth that skirted a copse of trees towards the lake. She continued to the right, slowing now that she was almost on the scene.

All the way there she’d driven on lights and sirens, forcing her way past slower moving traffic, but as she approached the cabin had turned everything off. Alerting Royce Benson to her presence when her back up was still minutes away wasn’t a good idea. She even turned off her headlights, so they wouldn’t betray her position. The sun had set, but it wasn’t yet full night, so she didn’t fear colliding with anything in the dark. In fact, she could already make out a pickup truck abandoned a short distance ahead, and beyond it another couple of vehicles less visibly defined. Coming to a halt, she pressed down her window, listening keenly, and feared the worst. The absence of gunfire wasn’t reassuring.

Rapidly she updated her responding colleagues by her in-car radio, having already been appraised of what had been discovered across the lake. Three down, two of them critical but expected to survive. Bryony had made a silent thank-you that Hunter hadn’t dealt with his ambushers as uncompromisingly as usual. She made a second thank-you to whichever god or patron saint watched over warriors these days, because the alternative was that Hunter could have also fallen during the fight. She pinched off her thanks though, because who knew what had gone down in the meantime. The quietude she’d come upon could mean she was about to enter a scene of slaughter.

Once out of the car, she drew her sidearm.

She proceeded on foot, edging around the pickup, checking it for bodies alive or dead, but it was apparent that its driver and passenger had decamped in a hurry. The van was equally deserted, and so too Hunter’s Audi. There was no sign of Clayton’s SUV. Had Joe been chased here in his car, arriving before Clayton’s? The alignment of the short queue of vehicles was a mystery to be cleared up later: right then it didn’t matter. She scanned the house for any sign of life, but it was locked up, and in darkness. She jogged past it, staring into the deepening gloom. She thought she heard weeping.

Cautiously she approached some upturned boats on trestles, and saw a man curled into a fetal ball. He was unsure whether to cradle his injured leg, or his head, and was unaware of her approach.

‘Police,’ she whispered harshly. ‘Do not move.’

‘Aw hell, man!’ groaned the man, as he blinked up at her with feverish eyes. She thought he was wearing mascara that had run, until she made out the black marks on his cheek to be tattoos. His face was skeletal, warped by agony, but Bryony thought she recognised his distinguishing factors, and even put a name to the lowlife she’d once arrested as “Scott Hartman”. His presence at the scene wasn’t an unfortunate coincidence.

‘Show me your hands, Hartman.’

‘I’m hurt, goddamnit. You have to help me.’

‘Your fucking hands,’ she emphasised. ‘Now, or I swear to God, I’ll give you something to really cry about.’

Hartman held up his skinny wrists. His palms were sticky with blood, as was the side of his head, and now she could see more clearly his left thigh. Questions might later be asked about her treatment of a wounded prisoner, but he was still dangerous, so she’d no qualms about pulling out her handcuffs and snapping one bracelet round his right wrist. The other she clipped onto the trestle he lay alongside.

‘Help’s coming,’ she told him as she quickly patted him down. ‘If you know what’s good for you,
don’t
move.’

‘You can’t leave me! I’m bleeding to death,’ Hartman keened plaintively.

‘I’ve left you a hand free. Slap it over that wound in your leg. Then shut the hell up.’ She stood from him, again scanning around. From a distance she heard the sirens of responding patrols. She looked down at Hartman. ‘By the way, you’re under arrest, asshole. We’ll sort out the charges later. You understand your rights, yeah?’

Hartman nodded by rote.

‘Well, forget about them,’ Bryony snapped. ‘If you give me a reason to come back I’m going to shoot you in your other leg.’

She stalked away, smiling grimly at her warning, feeling empowered. She could understand Hunter’s attraction in taking off the kid gloves now and again.

‘Bryony…over here.’

The whisper stopped her in her tracks.

She brought up her gun, but she’d already identified the slow drawl.

She paced quickly to Jared Rington’s side.

‘Rink? What’s going on?’

Rink was seated with his legs outstretched, though he’d his back propped against the keel of a boat, and a gun in one hand. Another revolver lay on the ground next to him. Rink was a powerful man, but she knew from one single glance that right now a kitten would overwhelm him in a competition of strength. ‘Hell, Rink, are you hit?’

His left hand was pressed to his side. His clothing and hand shone wetly.

‘I’m good,’ he said, though it was obvious he was spouting the kind of macho bullshit usually reserved for his banter with Joe.

‘How bad?’ she asked, and crouched to assist.

‘Bad enough, but I’ll live.’ He pressed her away, leaving a bloody handprint on her wrist. ‘Tell me that’s an ambulance I can hear?’

‘Help’s coming,’ she reassured him.

‘Go help Hunter then.’

‘I can’t leave you here like this.’

‘Sure you can. You just left that punk bleeding back there.’

Allowing a scum ball like Scott Hartman to bleed was one thing, quite another when it came to a man she considered a friend. She and Rink hadn’t shared similar intimacy as she had with Joe, but she was still fond of the big lunk.

Rink held up his pistol. It was an effort that set his forearm trembling. But he seemed satisfied. ‘I can still do my bit if needs be,’ he said. ‘You go do yours. Hunter’s down there someplace, but so’s Royce Benson and some other frog-gigger.’

‘Where are Andrew and Cole?’

‘Down there too,’ he said, with a nod at the boathouse. ‘We got ambushed, and I sent them down there to hide after I got shot. I don’t know what’s happened in the last few minutes, but I’m sure I heard Joe wailing on somebody in the woods.’ He squeezed her a grim smile. ‘Things have been awful quiet since.’

Exhaling, Bryony mentally prepared herself for what was to come. Her entire body was shivering with adrenalin, and – she had to admit – a touch of fear. It had been some time since she’d felt as edgy while performing her duty, and it was because nothing that had happened as yet could be described as police procedure. If she lost Royce Benson, her ass and career would be in a sling. God forbid if she were to lose Clayton or Cole.

‘Right,’ she said, in decision. ‘Sit tight, Rink. I’m going down there.’

‘Git. I’ll cover ya.’

She raced directly for the back end of the boathouse. It was a large construction, built to house a powerboat or cabin cruiser. At the front would be a portal big enough to allow a boat to sail inside and berth inside the shed. At the rear there was a second large door – this one to allow loading and unloading of a boat onto a transport trailer or truck. The door was padlocked shut. There had to be a normal entrance door, but she didn’t know if it were to the right or left. By chance she went right, listening to what she thought was the grumble of an idling engine.

From inside a gun cracked.

Yelping, Bryony dropped to her knees, slapping at the stinging splinters of wood that had struck her neck and chin. She hissed in pain, checking her fingertips, and found them smeared with blood. Her hiss became an exhalation of relief. The blood was mostly Rink’s, from when he’d grasped her earlier: her wounds were minor. Though she dreaded to think how close the stray bullet had come to taking off her head.

From inside the shed she heard muffled grunts and thuds, feet pounding on a boardwalk, something heavy avalanching down.

A child screeched.

A huge splash followed, and a muffled curse.

Bryony fought back to her feet, and ran for the corner, her left hand grabbing at the boathouse wall for stability as she took the corner.

There was no damn door that she could see, but there was a way inside at the front of the boathouse. She ran for it even as guns cracked in competition, drilling holes in the shed wall mere feet behind her.

She hadn’t made the front of the building when the engine roared, and the thud of a boat striking wood shook the boathouse to its foundations. Bryony dodged to the right, fully expecting the entire building to collapse down on her. Her angle allowed her an oblique view of the front of the shed, and from it a boat forced a passage out on to the lake. Bryony hollered an inane “stop”, even as she equally ineffectively rushed towards the shore. What was she going to do? Scupper the boat with a few well-aimed pot shots?

Somebody had an equally insane idea to stop the boat.

She heard the staccato thud of running footsteps, then a figure hurtled along a short boardwalk jetty projecting from the inside of the boathouse. The runner didn’t stop; he dove headlong off the jetty, arms stretching for the side of the cabin cruiser at least ten feet away.

There was a cabin cruiser inside the boathouse.
When I stole a glance inside the building its engine was already running. I’d left the guy called Bean incapacitated in the woods, and his skinny pal, Hart, equally out of commission, so was happy Royce Benson was the only attacker left to contend with. But this, I knew was the difficult part. Because one glance was all it took to determine that my task wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, considering he was holding Cole by the scruff of his shirt, and had the barrel of a gun wedged under the kid’s ribs. Royce was on the rear walkway, his back to a wall, dressed in a dark blue coverall, and boots. The kid held in front of him was a small weeping captive but an effective shield against the gun Clayton held, as well as my SIG.

Andrew Clayton was on the boat, his back to me, and the gun held out at his side as he pleaded with his old friend to let the boy go. It took little guessing to figure out what had happened since the ambush. While Rink had tried to cover them, Clayton had brought the boy to the boat, and got it running in an attempt at escape. But while Clayton was busy at the controls, Royce must have rushed in and grabbed the boy off the boat, and now held him hostage.

‘It’s me you want, not Cole,’ Clayton said, his voice plaintive and high-pitched. ‘Let him go and you can do whatever you want to me. Don’t hurt Cole. Please, Royce? See sense, for God’s sake!’

‘No,’ Royce snapped, his mouth so close to Cole’s head that his breath whipped the boy’s hair. ‘You took everything from me. I’ll take everything from you, you bastard. Don’t you get it? You have to
suffer
…’

I was hidden at the edge of the portal, listening, but also weighing my options. If I entered, Clayton and I would have two angles of fire on Royce, but I doubted Clayton’s skill with a handgun. Not only that, but would he even shoot when his son’s life was in peril? Even a marksman would be pressured by such a dilemma. And to be fair, I wasn’t keen on taking a shot either. It would only take Royce to move a fraction of an inch, and he could tug Cole into my line of fire. Even if I got him, and didn’t kill Royce with my first shot, he might pull the trigger, and Cole would die. It wasn’t a chance I could take.

From nearby the sirens of rapidly approaching police cars warbled. Royce might not hear them being so intent on arguing with Clayton. His focus was so pinpointed he probably wouldn’t hear the cops until they came charging inside the boathouse. A full-scale assault was only minutes away, but I was under no illusion: there weren’t minutes to spare. I took another peak inside, staying close to the edge of the wall.

‘I have suffered,’ Clayton cried, as he moved a step towards the aft of the boat. ‘You killed Ella. You killed Parker. Royce! For God’s sake, man, how many more have to die?’

‘Don’t pretend you miss either of them, you lying piece of shit! When I think about it, taking those cheating bastards out did you a goddamn favour. Where’s the suffering; where’s the fucking payback?’ Royce shook Cole savagely. ‘This brat is the only thing important to you. I should shoot him right now, and see some real pain in your face before I take your fucking head off.’

Cole yelped in terror, and I almost stepped inside the boathouse.

‘How can you threaten him like that, Royce? You know he’s…’ Clayton bit down on his words, understanding their repercussions if Cole managed to get out of there alive.

Royce shook his head, and looked down at the boy with what could only be described as abhorrence. ‘You think I feel anything for this little
bastard
? Who’s to say who the real father is, eh? Ella was free and easy with me; she was free and easy with any fucker with a dick. You know what she was, Clayton. A fucking whore when you met her, and a fucking whore to the very end!’

‘Shut your filthy mouth!’ Clayton hollered, enraged now.

Royce laughed bitterly. ‘What? You don’t want the boy to know his mom was a dirty stinking whore? You do know Parker was sneaking behind your back, right? Fucking her because you couldn’t?’

‘I told you to shut your filthy mouth!’ Clayton jerked up his gun again, and I steeled for the worst.

‘Go on,’ Royce taunted. ‘Shoot if you want. It’ll be the first time you shot something that wasn’t a blank.’ He shook Cole again. ‘But I bet it’s him you hit. Go on, Clayton! Fucking shoot.’

Clayton dropped his arm, the gun again out to his side, and I sighed, while Royce only laughed at him, calling him a coward.

‘Let Cole go,’ Clayton said, and his rage had diminished to some form of resignation. ‘Do what you want to me, but the boy’s innocent. He has nothing to do with this.’

‘Hasn’t he?’ Royce turned his attention to the boy. ‘What do you say, Cole? Do you want to tell your daddy about Uncle Parker visiting when he was out of town.’ Royce laughed nastily. ‘Do you want to tell daddy about the other man who used to visit too. Do you remember you called me a
monster
? That time I was humping your mom and you walked into the bedroom.’

Clayton’s spine went rigid. Cole had suffered nightmares inhabited with what he’d called “the monster” and we both knew now who had fixed that image in the boy’s psyche.

‘What? You didn’t realise I’d been with her since I got back?’ Royce asked. ‘Jesus, Clayton, how gullible are you? If it’s any consolation, it was only revenge fucking on my part. Didn’t enjoy it, not one bit. Ella, though, she loved every goddamn second; said she hadn’t been satisfied by you in years. You know…’ Royce shook his head at the absurdity of where he was leading. He walked the boy along a boardwalk towards the far side of the shed, forcing Clayton to follow him every step, taunting him to take a shot. He again planted himself, with Cole as a human shield. Grinned at his old friend. ‘Ella asked me to get rid of you. So we could be together. Can you believe it? I was tempted, but that was never my plan. Oh, yeah. I was always going to get rid of you, that never changed, but it wasn’t to play fucking happy families with Ella and this little brat.’ He paused to think, then juggled the gun under Cole’s armpit so he could momentarily release his hold on the boy’s shirt. He plucked something from around his neck, and hung it up in the air. It was a gold wedding ring knotted on a string. Ella’s wedding ring. ‘Don’t know why the fuck I held onto this piece of junk,’ he said and tossed it away. It plonked into the water between the jetty and the boat. ‘I don’t give a damn about Ella,
him
-’ he shook Cole, having regained his hold at the scruff of his neck ‘-or you, Clayton. Every last fucker that ruined my life is going to pay.’

Clayton shook with rage. The discarding of Ella’s wedding band, plus Royce’s latest admission – be it truth or simply another attempt at hurting Clayton - had just tipped the situation into an inevitable decline. It was time to act, and my gaze fell on something I’d previously missed that gave me hope. I immediately crept away, then once out of earshot, made my way around the boathouse to the far side. Immediately I reached my objective I secured my gun in my waistband, took a few steps back, then charged forward. 

There was a Perspex window in the wall, designed to be semi-opaque for privacy or security purposes but also to allow natural light inside. It was set into an aluminium frame, held with simple pop rivets. It was no barrier to my weight as I crashed through it, and immediately on to Royce Benson’s back. I hit him kind of side-on, with a large chunk of Perspex between us so I’d no easy way of grappling his gun away. But that hadn’t been my intention. As I collided with him, he was thrown sideways, and his reaction was to throw out both arms for stability. He dropped Cole, but maintained a grip on his gun. One out of two good results weren’t bad. But my small-odds win was only fleeting, because my kamikaze dive took me to my knees, and I felt the brunt of the collision go through my entire body in a raw wave of agony. Royce was startled by my sudden appearance though, and didn’t immediately shoot me dead. He staggered against the wall, slid along it, while his head swept back and forth between me, Cole and Clayton.

Clayton fired.

His bullet missed Royce by a mile. But it kept the killer’s attention off immediately ending my days. Cole was on the boardwalk decking a few feet from me. I scrambled for him on hands and screamingly painful knees, grasped him by his waistband and immediately slung him off the boardwalk into the lake. I caught a fleeting image of his face before he plunged into what looked like a bottomless abyss of black water below. It was a pale oval of shock. It was only once I threw him to safety that it even occurred he might be – like his dad had proven - unable to swim.

The water was deep enough for a boat to float inside the shed, deeper than a small boy’s height, but not for an adult to stand safely in it I hoped. I looked for Clayton, about to tell him to jump overboard, but in the few seconds my attention was off him, Royce had moved.

He was now on the boat, and he clubbed at Clayton with a balled hand. Clayton took the blow on the side of his head, and I watched his spectacles fly away over the side of the cabin cruiser. The only reason Royce didn’t shoot was because Clayton had hold of his gun hand, wrestling it in the air. Clayton had dropped his gun after his first poor shot, and he drove a punch of his own at Royce. Now I was in no fear of losing my sidearm, I pulled it out again. Seeking a shot.

Royce’s gun went off.

The bullet snapped the air alongside my head, and I jerked away as it punched a hole through the wall. I was sure I heard a woman’s yelp of surprise, but had no time to consider it further. I sought a target, but Clayton’s back was to me now, and Royce out of my line of fire. I glanced down, looking for Cole. He was nowhere to be seen. Panic threatened to swell my heart, but I fought it down, moving rapidly along the walkway, trying to get a clear shot at Royce. I crashed up against a stack of plastic iceboxes, or bait chests, or whatever the hell they were, and they avalanched around my feet. I kicked clear passage through, again distractedly searching the water for a sign of Cole, while Clayton and Royce grappled furiously for control of the gun.

I searched for my shot, but suddenly the surface of the water broke, and Cole clawed at the air, screeching in animal-like terror. As he sank again into the depths, it caught us in tableau, as all eyes turned his way. The temptation to leap to his rescue pulled at me, but to do that would mean the death of another, and quite likely mine and Cole’s deaths too when finally we resurfaced into the gunman’s sights.

Suddenly Clayton let out a shout, and it was in fear. Overbalanced, he fell sideways over the side of the boat. The smack his body made as it hit the water was thunderous compared to the dull
plunk
Cole made when he went under moments ago.

‘Ha! Drown you bastards!’ Royce Benson crowed, but then his view snapped around. He swung his liberated gun at me.

Dodging, I again went down on one knee on the boardwalk. But Benson didn’t shoot; he took his time, holding me under guard while he walked backwards to the cabin. It didn’t take much figuring out what he had in mind.

I bobbed up and fired.

Missed him.

He fired back, but missed me too.

He hit the throttle and the cabin cruiser’s engine roared, and the boathouse was filled with smoke and diesel fumes. The boat began to surge ahead, pushing frothy water before it.

‘You’re not getting away, you bastard,’ I said, and shot at him. Royce grunted in pain, but returned fire. His bullets punched the wall, even as I began a run down the side walkway. Intent on killing me, Royce lost his hold on the steering and the boat veered into the dock, the full thing shaking under my feet, and items of equipment stored in the rafters rained down. An ancient wooden oar came close to smashing my skull, but I jerked my head away and took the knock on my shoulder. It was the same arm that Clayton had targeted during our scuffle, and though the aches in my muscles were memories now, they were brought back to life in glorious Technicolor flashes of pain down my chest. My gun slipped from numb fingers. I groped for it, but couldn’t immediately see where it fell for the clutter on the boardwalk.

Up from the depths Cole again broke the surface. He clawed ineffectively at the water as if it would hold him up. Ten feet away, his father had finally found his feet and erupted out, shedding water in a shout of panic. He swept his hands over his features, clearing his eyes and nostrils, spitting and coughing.

‘Clayton! Get Cole!’ I hollered at him, jabbing a hand at the floundering boy. Cognizance entered Clayton’s expression, and he called out for his son as he lurched forward.

Royce aimed his gun at me.

I ducked and weaved, but he didn’t fire. Or if he pulled the trigger, the hammer had fallen on an empty chamber. Royce swore at me, then hit the throttle again, the boat banging and nudging at a jetty that extended out over the lake, before he found a straight line to freedom.

One last glance showed me Clayton wading chest deep for Cole, his hands reaching to pluck the boy to safety, and it was good enough for me. Being a man who laid much emphasis on a promise, I ran after the boat: Royce wasn’t getting away. I hurtled along the jetty, and threw myself after it; sailing through the air with less grace than would any superhero I’d joked with Cole about.

My headlong dive proved almost too impressive, because I landed half on and half off the boat, my gut slamming down on the side rail inches from impalement on a brass lug. The wind blasted from me, and my kneecaps slammed the hull with another twin explosion of pain shooting through them. In such discomfort, I almost slipped overboard. But I was incensed enough that I fought the urge to flop backwards, and instead grabbed at the rail, and heaved myself over it on to the deck. I lay on my back for a moment, stunned, gathering my wits and my strength, sucking in the oxygen my winding had displaced, before recalling exactly what had motivated me into my punishing dive. I began to pull my legs under me to help me stand, and all I managed was a graceless slide across the deck. With nothing for it, I rolled on to my front, grabbing at the rail to starboard for assistance. My grip slipped and I went again to all fours. Royce’s boot found my guts while I was still doing a poor impression of a wobbly coffee table.