Rise the Dark (28 page)

J
anell had the GPS coordinates programmed, and the Yukon that smelled of wet dog fur was purring down the highway, the cruise control locked in at three miles over the limit. Excruciatingly slow, but necessary. She couldn't afford any more delays; the sequencing of time and miles was already too tight, but if she managed to keep it at this pace, she would beat the sunset.

That would be enough. To be there when the world went dark would be enough. Her head ached and the road swam in front of her eyes until she blinked hard and shook herself awake. She couldn't remember when she'd last slept. It felt like the endless road had been all she'd known for weeks now. Cassadaga seemed as far away as Rotterdam.

It was such a large country, and nothing connected it on a drive this long but the ribbons of highway and the power lines. The land blended subtly, and you were well into new terrain when you realized just how astonishingly different it was from the place you'd last been. She'd started among orange trees and humid breezes, and now there was snow on mountains that looked so far removed from that place that it seemed to be another country entirely.

Once it had been.

Maybe it should have stayed that way.

She considered turning on the radio and listening to the news reports, curious about any theories that had surfaced regarding the sad fate of Deputy Terrell and whether they'd identified Doug's corpse yet, but decided she didn't want the distraction. Not now, when she was so close.

The GPS told her she was only thirty-three minutes out. The sun was harsh and slanted in the driver's window, as if it didn't want to give up the day without a fight, but it would soon be down, and when she reached Eli, she doubted there would be more than a pale pink glow left.

That seemed perfect.

There was a handheld radio resting on the console, turned on, waiting for his voice. When it came, the joy she felt made her move her foot to the brake pedal, as if she might not be able to drive and handle the euphoria simultaneously. She wanted to pick up the radio and speak back, to rejoice with him, but he was clearly giving instructions to someone. The returning voice was unknown to her, but it seemed he was the climber, and he was at work.

The radio fell silent for a few seconds, and then Eli's voice came again.

“Stand at the ready. We are under way at ground zero.”

Alone in a dead man's car, Janell began to laugh.

Y
ou changed the rules, little bitch. You're going to wish you hadn't.”

The voice was the first thing Sabrina was aware of. A man's voice, but high and lilting, positively giddy. A stream of repetitive chatter.

“A silly mistake, little bitch. Garland had to play by the rules unless you changed them, and now you have. If you don't listen to the rules, why should Garland? He shouldn't!”

Sabrina kept her eyes squeezed shut. Maybe if she just stayed like this, eyes closed and body limp, he would grow tired and leave. Like playing dead during a grizzly bear mauling.

“Little bitch? Wake up, little bitch.”

It was hard to keep her body limp and her breathing shallow, though, because pain was an issue. Her head ached from his punch, but her shoulder joints held the worst pain, the tendons stretched and screaming. There was tension around her wrists too. He'd bound her against something that held her in the air. Gravity was her enemy, making the pain worse by the second, and she was desperate to lessen the pressure on her wrists and shoulders.

But then he'll know. Just stay like you are, and he'll get tired, and then—

When he slapped her, she gasped and opened her eyes despite herself. She saw him then, directly in front of her, his mouth twisted into a grin, his eyes hungry.

“Good morning, little bitch! I
thought
you were awake. You've been trying to hide from Garland, haven't you?”

Sabrina gasped with pain and began to scramble with her heels, searching for any way to reduce the pressure in her shoulders. She finally found purchase, but it was soft and yielding, and it wasn't until she'd pushed high enough to alleviate the pain that she looked down to see what her situation was.

He had overturned a bed, and it was resting on an angle against the wall and Sabrina's arms were tied above it, ropes running from her wrists up to the exposed wall studs high above her. She was upstairs in the cabin, it seemed. There were lights and radios and electronics scattered all around, along with rows of cots, five or six at least. There was a window up here, and it wasn't covered—daylight streamed in, and she could see down to the fence.

Garland Webb followed her gaze and shook his head.

“Don't waste your hope on her. She is miles from help, and two men are right behind her. She will be back soon, and she will be punished too. Those are the rules. I'm only allowed to punish those who break them.”

He smiled.

“You broke them.”

He reached out and touched Sabrina's chin with his index finger, laughed when she recoiled, and then traced a line down her throat and chest, between her breasts and down her stomach. She tried to kick him but missed and succeeded only in knocking the upended bed down farther so that she fell and the ropes sent waves of pain through her arms and shoulders. She screamed and Garland Webb laughed as he caught her legs easily, unbothered by her kicks, and stepped between them, his face almost level with her own.

“Fighters are good,” he said. “Fighters are better.”

She turned her head in disgust, and when she did she saw the staircase to her right, and saw Violet standing there, halfway up, hidden in the shadows. For an instant, they locked eyes, and then Violet looked away.

“No!” Sabrina shouted. “Help me!”

Violet didn't look up, but Garland turned and saw her.

“Get out of here.”

Violet didn't move. Her head was still down, and Sabrina could see that her lips were moving, but no words were coming. It was as if she were whispering to herself. No—chanting. Sabrina could hear the faint sounds now.

Garland Webb released Sabrina's legs and stepped toward the stairs, saying, “I should have left you chained, you stupid slut.” He had taken only two steps when a radio in the room crackled to life.

“We have armed visitors at Wardenclyffe,” a male voice said.

Webb pulled up short, pivoted his head toward the window, and stared out. Sabrina managed to get her heels braced on the bed frame again, leaning her head back with relief when the screaming tension in her shoulders and wrists ebbed.

Webb crossed the room to a long table, picked up a radio, and walked to the window. He'd put the radio to his lips but hadn't spoken when another voice came on, and this one Sabrina recognized—Eli Pate.

“Come again?”

“Two armed visitors at Wardenclyffe. Don't look like police. But the woman is running toward them.”

“Where is Garland?”

Webb pressed a button on the side of the radio. “Right here. With the other one. Baldwin. She is secured.”

Violet's head was bobbing gently, the soft chants still coming from her barely moving lips, her eyes closed. For a few seconds that was the only sound, and then Pate spoke again.

“Can you take the others out?”

The unknown male voice said, “Affirmative.”

“Then do so.”

“Ten-four.”

Garland Webb said, “I'm coming down,” and then clipped the radio to his belt. He turned from the window to face Sabrina. “I'll be back, little bitch. We'll have our time together.”

He moved across the room to the top of the stairs. Violet was still chanting, eyes still closed.

“Get out of my way,” Webb said, starting down the steps.

Violet opened her eyes, lifted a pistol, and pulled the trigger.

There was a soft pop, a hiss of air, and then a hideous blend of gasp and scream as Garland Webb reached for his throat and the dart that was embedded just below his Adam's apple.

W
hen he saw Lynn, Mark dropped the rifle and picked up the .38. His uncle watched with curiosity.

“You know her?”

“Yes. She's the one I came here with, the one looking for Pate.”

Larry reached out and grabbed Mark's arm as he turned to run. “Don't set off like a damned fool again.”

“There are men right behind her!”

“Thank the good Lord for a scoped rifle, then,” Larry said.

“We aren't shooting anybody unless we have to.”

“You didn't have that problem earlier today.” Larry picked up the rifle and leaned forward, burrowing himself into the snow and assuming a sniper's position on his belly. “Might as well back them off a touch, wouldn't you say?”

Mark looked at him and then up the slope helplessly. He wasn't going to cover the ground to Lynn uphill faster than those two would do it going downhill, but he didn't want to start a firefight either. Not as exposed as they were here.

“Markus, they are closing on her fast,” Larry said.

“Back them off, then.”

Larry went silent and enough seconds passed that Mark thought he hadn't heard the instruction. Then his uncle squeezed off four shots in succession, fluid as a firing machine, racking the bolt and squeezing the trigger, racking the bolt and squeezing the trigger, no change at all in his expression or posture.

“Well,” he said, “they didn't care for that much.”

“You hit them?”

“Of course not; I wasn't trying to hit them. They both dropped and went for cover. I can see one of them. The other one made it down in the rocks, out of sight.”

“Where is Lynn?”

“She stopped running too. She's hiding in that gulch. I wish she'd been smart enough to keep running. This was buying her good lead time.”

“She probably thinks any shooting is hostile fire.” Mark looked at the gulch, two hundred yards away over open hillside. It was a ribbon of shadow in the gathering dusk. Once he got there, he'd feel safe enough.

But he had to get there.

“Shit,” Larry said. “They've got radios. That means they've got friends.”

“I'm going for her,” Mark said. “When I start running, put up some cover fire. Shoot to wound if you can. You don't need a murder charge.”

Larry was feeding fresh cartridges into the rifle. “I'd say we're past the point of worrying about our booking sheets.”

He was probably right.

Larry said, “When you get to her, head straight down the gulch instead of coming back across the hill. I can hold them off, and you'll have better cover. You get to the bottom, where that stream is, just run like hell for the truck. I can keep them occupied long enough for you to make the truck.”

“How do
you
intend to get back across?”

“Creatively.” Larry didn't look away from the scope. “If you're going to move, now's the time. They're getting themselves collected up there.”

“All right.” Mark put one hand in the snow, bracing himself on the steep slope, and said, “I'll run with your first shot.”

There was a two-second pause, and then Larry opened fire again, this time sending the bullets into the trees, blowing chunks of bark and branch loose.

Mark put his head down and ran.

The first bullet into the ground beside him barely registered. It was nothing more than a puff in the snow. The second passed close to his skull, and he ducked involuntarily and promptly lost his balance and slipped, landing hard and painfully on his right side, but fortuitously also, because more bullets stitched the air above him. Larry returned fire, shooting faster now, connecting with rocks near the summit, and when the bullets aimed at Mark ceased, he stumbled to his feet and charged on, crossing the last fifty yards without taking fire.

At the edge of the gulch he slowed, but just then a new bullet separated the branch of a fir tree from its trunk only a few feet above his head, and he jumped into the boulder-lined gulch without further hesitation.

The drop wasn't much, ten feet at most, but he landed in the loose rocks and fell backward. In another few weeks the fall might have ended disastrously, because massive rocks waited to catch his head, but today there was still enough snow to cushion the impact. It hammered the breath from his lungs, but it didn't crack his skull. For a moment he lay there and fought for air, listening to the popping barrage of the gunfire from the summit—an AR-15 or AK-47—and the responding booms from his uncle's Winchester. He hadn't asked Larry how many rounds he had. He'd told Larry not to shoot to kill, but if his supply went low, he'd have to start making the shots count.

Mark got to his feet and scrambled up the gulch, holding the .38 in his right hand and using his left for balance. He was prepared for gunfire, but none came. Above him, all had gone silent. He was alone in the gulch, scrambling through the shadows, the sun below the mountain, the evening sky lit pink. He'd gone about a hundred feet and was breathing hard, the altitude taking its toll, when the gulch made a sharp bend to the left that was partially blocked by the massive root ball of an overturned fir. He hurried around it, the gun held down along his leg, not in firing position, when he thought he heard a whisper of motion and slowed by a half step. As a result, the softball-size rock that Lynn Deschaine slammed at his face missed by inches.

Her momentum carried her past him, into the tree roots, as he raised the .38 and almost fired. He'd partially depressed the trigger before he registered her long dark hair, a stark splash against the snow where she'd fallen.

“Lynn!”

She slipped and fell as she tried to rise and turn and finally ended up on her back, facing him, stunned. She was breathing too hard to speak. Mark looked from her to the chunk of rock she'd swung at him when she'd sprung from her hiding spot. She would have neatly crushed his skull if she'd made contact.

“Let's go,” he said, reaching to help her.

She kicked him in the throat.

He was unprepared for it, and it was a hell of a blow. His breath split into agonized trapped halves between brain and chest and he stumbled and fell to one knee as she rose and chopped at his wrist and knocked the .38 loose. It bounced into the rocks and he watched her go after it without attempting to stop her, frozen by pain and shock.

She was three feet from the gun when a shot rang out and fragments of rock exploded just inches from the revolver.

Larry.

“He won't miss next time,” Mark rasped. The effort of speaking raised specks of light in his vision. He sat down and rubbed his throat. Lynn was motionless down in the rocks, torn between reaching for the gun and believing his words. She looked back at him warily, like a trapped animal.

“Are you with them? Did you know?” She was panting, fearful but fierce, and he knew that if she reached the gun she meant to use it. “You left the motel and they appeared. That's a
coincidence?
”

He thought of his own outrage, standing in her motel room discovering the undisclosed connection to his family, finding the Homeland Security ID, and he realized for the first time that his own sense of betrayal had to be nothing compared to hers when she'd awoken to find him gone and attackers at the door.

“I don't know that I even believe in that word anymore, but I didn't set you up.”

She breathed hard, watching him and trying to decide. He knew that Larry was watching her with a finger on the trigger.

Mark said, “Go straight down to the bottom of the gulch, and you'll find a truck. Take it and go. You're in the crosshairs of a scope, but he's a friendly shooter to you. For now.”

Her distrust began to waver. She stared into the trees. “Who are you here with?”

“My uncle.”

She turned back to him. “You're telling the truth?”

“I'm telling the truth. I came to help you, and to kill Garland Webb. That's all. I left the motel room because I was thinking about my wife. When I came back, you were gone. And I…and I found my way here.”

She rose unsteadily, her chest heaving. Strands of hair caught in her mouth, and she wiped them aside. “I'm not going without her.”

“Without who?”

“Sabrina Baldwin.”

Mark looked up at the summit. It was backlit with that beautiful sunset, but below, everything was giving way to the encroaching darkness. They were out of sight of the shooters above for now, but he expected the shooters were in motion and that they knew the terrain. Time was short. If they were going down, it had to be in a hurry.

But he remembered Jay Baldwin's face.
What would you do to get your wife back?

“She's up there?” Mark asked.

“Yes.” Lynn took a deep breath, eyes on him, and added: “She's with Garland Webb. And your mother.”