Side by Side (29 page)

76

With Elijah clutched to her, Lucy Dockery huddled beside the refrigerator where Ed had put them. Edna sat beside her, back to the wall, holding a pistol in her lap. Ed had dead-bolted the door into the store. He had reinforced it so that in the event someone broke in, they’d make a racket trying to get into the back where the Utzes lived. The Smoots might come in that way, but they’d be ready for them.

“What will prevent them from setting the place on fire?” Lucy asked.

“Nothing,” Ed had answered.

It was obvious to everyone in the store that Peanut Smoot had somehow kept the fire department and the cops away. The warehouse fire was probably out by now. Lucy didn’t hold out much hope of help arriving. But she had tried her best, and had done more than she’d ever believed she could. She was heartbroken that Eli was going to die, and she regretted that she had gotten the Utzes involved.

“I hear a car.” Ed peeked out through the window blinds. “There’s lights . . .”

Lucy heard a thunderous sound, and a vehicle roared around the building. Several more shots rang out.

A woman yelled, “FBI! Put down your weapons!”

“I’ll be,” Ed said excitedly. “The danged cavalry’s here!”

“Don’t shoot!” Peanut called. “We give up!”

Ed nodded. “Looks like old Peanut’s done in.” He set his shotgun against the wall and straightened up.

“You, in the store!” the female voice called out. “Hold your fire. I’m Special FBI Agent Alexa Keen. Are Lucy and Eli Dockery in there?”

“They sure are!” Ed answered.

“Unlock the door. I’m coming in.”

“I know who she is,” Lucy said, softly. “My father talks about her.”

“Come on in,” Ed called out.

Ed unlocked and opened the door and a woman dressed in a business suit came into the kitchen, backlit by the big truck’s headlights. She had a gun in her right hand, a badge in her left. She closed the door behind her, put her badge away, and, at the sight of Lucy and Eli, smiled.

“Are you all right?” she asked Lucy.

“I’m fine now that you’re here,” Lucy told her.

“No, you aren’t,” a man’s voice said.

A man with a black face stood aiming a shotgun directly at the federal agent’s head. “She’s with them,” he said. “Drop your weapon, Alexa. Sir, stay away from that gun. Ma’am, you keep that pistol where it is. Sir, bolt that door or the next person who comes through it will be Peanut Smoot.”

77

Serge Sarnov watched the FBI agent go into the building. She had said she should have the old man disarmed in short order, just needed a couple of minutes to reassure the people inside that they were safe, and then she would let Randall and him enter and take the Dockerys.

He checked his watch. The agent had been inside for thirty seconds.

The lights should be on in there, but that idiot twin had fixed that. He’d let Smoot kill the old couple and then they’d take the Dockerys to a warehouse that Smoot owned outside Charlotte. Max would make sure the killing was done to Keen’s forensic specifications and then they’d use two weapons to stage a fatal shoot-out between Massey and Agent Keen, and Peanut and his twin oxen.

One minute and twenty seconds.
“What the hell is taking your sister so long?” Serge asked the Major.

“She knows what she’s doing,” the Major answered. “Relax and let her do her job.”

“We should go in,” Serge said.

“She’ll tell you when,” Major Keen said. She reached into the car and flipped the high beams on and off several times.

“Call her cell phone,” Max said. “Ask her.”

The Major sighed loudly, took her phone out of her pocket, and dialed. Serge heard the agent’s phone ringing inside the building. “What’s going on?” Major Keen said into her phone. As she listened, her mouth opened and her eyes widened.

“What?” Max asked.

“She’s gone wrong,” Serge said. “I guess now we can kill her as many times as we like.”

The Major held her phone out to Serge. “Massey wants to speak to you, Serge.”

Serge put the phone to his ear.

“Sarnov,” the voice said. “You have two minutes from now to withdraw or I will kill Alexa Keen.”

“Just a minute,” Serge said. “I’ll consult with the others.” He put his hand over the phone so Massey couldn’t hear him. There was no time to waste.

“Massey is inside the store.”

“How’d he manage it?” Randall said.

“It had to have been before Peanut arrived and set up on the place. Peanut,” Serge murmured, “the man in there killed your son.”

“Buck?” Peanut asked, confused.

“Click. Blew his brains out because your boy wouldn’t give you up.”

“Oh, my dear God,” Peanut said, genuinely shaken. “Killed my baby . . .”

“Have your son there smash down that door, and you guys go in and kill everything in the place.”

“Just a minute,” Randall objected. “We should think this through.”

“There’s no time,” Serge argued. “That’s Winter Massey in there.” He looked at the Major.

“Do what you have to do,” she said, nodding.

Peanut went over to his son and gave him instructions.

“Maybe my guys should handle it. This Massey’s no slouch,” Max said.

Serge spoke in a low voice. “Let the Smoots storm the beach and test the sand for us. Tell your men around front they’re to go in as soon as the shooting starts. We wait until Peanut and his son go in and we flash-bang and we go in and finish this.”

Serge put the phone back to his ear. “Okay,” he said. “You win, Massey. We’re leaving.” He pointed his trigger finger at Peanut, who had taken up a position against the wall beside the kitchen door.

Letting out a howl, the Smoot twin ran up and shouldered the door. The sound of the wood frame splintering filled the night air as the door collapsed into the room. The twin raised his shotgun. There was an explosion that lit up the kitchen, and Curt’s head came apart, his corpse falling into the kitchen.

Peanut looked down at his dead son and screamed, “You’re dead, YOU—MOTHER—”

Three shotgun blasts sounded within the space of two seconds. The first slug punched a quarter-size hole in the wall between Peanut’s right shoulder and the door frame. The second round—double-aught buckshot—made a fist-size hole through Peanut’s chest between his nipples, and the third blew most of his left shoulder away. He died with two thirds of his final curse spoken.

Without hesitation, Max tossed a flash-bang grenade into the kitchen, waited until it went off, and sprinted into the kitchen with his MP5 before him, spraying the room from left to right.

“Kitchen’s clear!” he yelled.

Major Keen ran into the building with Serge behind her, gun out.

The kitchen was thick with swirling cordite. Serge saw a tactical shotgun lying on the floor just inside the den. The team that had broken down the front door rushed in from the store, their MP5s aimed at the bedroom door.

“Open up, or we’ll drill the walls, Massey!” Max Randall hollered.

Serge, standing beside the Major, heard the Dodge truck out back roar to life. He whirled and ran to the back door, and fired at the truck.

“Stop them!” he screamed at the Smoot twin out front as he sprinted after Peanut’s Dodge, emptying his Walther .380 at its wide tail.

He heard the last living Smoot’s shotgun go off three times, followed immediately by a dull wet thud.

78

When Winter Massey told Alexa to drop her gun, what Winter saw in her eyes was the last thing he had expected—relief and excitement. “Massey?” Then she smiled, and said, “Thank God! I didn’t know how I was going to keep them alive by myself.”

“I said put the gun down,” Winter again ordered. “I know what you’re doing, Lex. How could you?”

“Massey,” she repeated. “I’m sorry I couldn’t level with you. The two of us have a chance, but you have to trust me. I’ll explain it later, but we only have a few seconds before they storm this place. If I put this gun down, you’ll be alone.”

“You set me up twice.” Winter’s voice was curt.

“I had no choice. I didn’t bring you in to get you hurt. I brought you in to do what I couldn’t do on my own and I knew you would. I’m sorry Randall came after you. I tried to help you at Click’s house. I couldn’t at Laughlin’s or the clinic. I was playing a man-in-the-middle defense—I knew they were listening to everything I said and probably seeing what I was doing. Winter, if you ever trusted me—if you ever believed in me—do it now.”

“How in hell can I trust you?” Winter said.

“Because I gave you Eleanor,” Alexa told him.

Winter felt like he had put his hand on a live wire. Those five words, spoken in hardly more than a whisper, were deafening.

The headlights of the sedan flickered angrily against the cotton curtains. The killers were growing impatient.

Because I gave you Eleanor.
And although he had suspected it at the time, he hadn’t truly believed what it had cost Alexa, hadn’t accepted it as a sacrifice. Now he knew it was true and, for the first time, he knew his friend’s heart.

“How did you get in here?” Ed asked Winter.

“The same way you’re all going out,” he said.

“You can get us all out past them?” Alexa asked.

“If we move fast,” Winter said. “I came in by the root cellar. I lucked into the trapdoor while I was trying to find a way under the building. The last two ladder steps are rotted off and there’s a foot of standing water down there.”

“I’d plum forgot about that. Hadn’t been down there in years,” Ed said. “Thought I’d sealed it off good.”

Winter looked at Alexa. “Lucy, you and Elijah and this nice couple need to go with Special Agent Keen and stay with her. I’m going to keep them busy. You take everybody to the root cellar through the bedroom closet, and wait at the outside door for me, or the sound of them inside the store.” He took the light off the shotgun and handed it to her. “Don’t use this until you’re in the closet. I’ll do what I can. The truck out back may be your best bet.”

“I reckon I’ll stay here and give you a hand,” Ed said.

The baby started crying and Lucy hugged him tightly to her. “It’s all right, Elijah,” she crooned.

“Sir, Alexa here and these people need you worse. I’ll be right behind you and I’ll be moving fast.”

That was when the phone in Alexa’s pocket rang. After Winter took the phone to talk to Serge, he motioned for Alexa to take the others out.

Seconds later, when the twin shouldered the door in, Winter was kneeling just inside the den, using the common wall and the heavy stove for protective cover while aiming the shotgun at the kitchen door. He pointed at the giant’s head and squeezed the trigger.

Winter readied for a second shot. When he heard Peanut’s booming voice, Winter aimed at the wall just left of the door and pulled the trigger once, quickly moved the barrel farther to the left, and fired again . . . and quickly again.

79

As soon as he had fired the last shotgun round, Winter dropped the weapon and ran for the bedroom. When the flash-bang went off, he was locking the bedroom door. Hastily he shoved a chair under the knob and, slamming the closet door behind him, scrambled down into the root cellar.

When the heavy footsteps from above echoed down into the cellar, Winter had joined the others, huddled like refuges, at the door leading outside.

Silently, with Alexa watching their backs, they followed Winter to the corner, then ran to Smoot’s Dodge. Winter checked for the keys, and got everybody in through the jump door behind the driver’s door, filling the rear seat. Lucy and her son sat in the middle between the Utzes. Alexa scrambled into the cab’s passenger seat. Without closing the door, Winter slid in, cranked the engine and throttled the Hemi. The truck roared like a wounded beast, as its tires spun in the wet grass and fishtailed.

“Get down!” he yelled. He’d said the same words to Click Smoot just before he was killed for not listening.

The pistol shots somebody fired at the escaping truck were no surprise, but the remaining twin, centered between Alexa’s sedan and the second Tahoe, was. The twin stood still and aimed his shotgun at the truck hurtling toward him.

Winter ducked.

The twin fired three quick shots before the truck punted him high into the air.

Winter sat up and spun the truck onto the gravel road. The shotgun had not just blown a hole the size of a saucer in the windshield, but had also hit the grille. Winter couldn’t smell the coolant that was probably streaming out of the radiator, but he knew he’d be lucky to make it a mile before the Hemi seized. If he was going to save his passengers, he’d have to move fast.

“Everybody okay?” he asked. “I’m going to get you down the road as far as I can. Ed, you know the layout of the woods, the roads?”

“Sure do.”

“There’s a roadblock up at Clark Road. I parked an SUV on the land just north of it on the access road about a hundred yards in—keys in the ignition. Ed, you’ll lead everybody there. I’ll hold them back as long as I can.”

“Winter, Antonia has six or seven of her people at the roadblock. You’ll never get through. She’ll have radioed ahead—they’ll be waiting.”

“I’m going to stop, and I want everybody out and in the woods and hidden when the Tahoe comes after me. Soon as it passes, you go fast as you can for the SUV. Just around the next curve. Get ready.”

Winter turned the bend—and found himself faced with something he hadn’t expected. The headlights of two vehicles in the road ahead blinked on, blinding him and forming a rolling roadblock coming straight at the Dodge, shoulder to shoulder.

“Alexa, as soon as I stop moving, move.”

Winter slammed the brakes. The truck slid sideways, blocking the road. The approaching vehicles stopped thirty feet short, their brights blasting the Dodge. He could see that the two vehicles were full of men. He knew he would never walk away from this one, but maybe if he could do enough damage, the others would have a chance.

“Run!” Winter hollered as he jumped out, aiming his SIG at the cars.

“Drop your weapon!”
an amplified male voice ordered.

Winter turned his gun on the car on the left.

“No!” Alexa gripped his shoulder. “Massey, you’ve trusted me. Trust me again. Drop your gun right now, and put your hands up.”

Doors opened, but Winter’s vision was totally impaired by the headlights.

Without hesitation, he opened his hand and released his weapon.