“But you don’t know!” Not quite a whisper, she can’t manage anything quieter than a hoarse shriek.
“You’re right.” Concern for Randy throbs beneath fears for us both.
So I creep into the light, feeling exposed, looking around me as I go around to the passenger’s side door. I pull it open, not overlooking the perfectly round hole in that window, striated only slightly by the swift cold path of the bullet. It passed through the window directly into—
Into Randy’s head.
Randy’s dead. The purplish hole in the right temple is the period to a life I know nothing about; wife, children, friends?
In the glow of the security light, Sharon reads the answer on my face.
“What now?” She mouths the words without tonal inflection.
“The bungalow.”
We run. I’ve never run faster, not on the basketball court, and certainly not hauling another human being along with me. And now, she’s hauling me along with her, and we both stumble, but run into the stumble. If we fall, we die. The refrain repeats itself constantly in my head, and I break all my own records.
Fast as we cross it, the distance from Randy’s car is a marathon run, every enveloping shadow populated by an assassin.
Wham! Wham! Wham! Gunshots!
No, just my heart pounding in my temples. I leap up the step to the door of bungalow number three, hauling Sharon along by the wrist. I grasp the knob and yank. It’s locked.
There’s no time for doubts about my ability to break down a door. I let go of Sharon, step back, raise a foot to kick.
Something clicks and the door swings inward.
My forward momentum almost pitches me onto my face. Instinctively I grab Sharon’s wrist and we plunge through the opening and tumble inside.
A hand—Kevin’s!—seizes my shoulder and jerks us free of the door so he can swing it shut.
I pause to catch my breath; not that it comes. It’s as if I’ve had the wind knocked out of me by a violent fall. The room is dark, but as my eyes adjust I make out Kevin, Margo, Josh, and Gabby, crowded into a lump, horror stamped on every face.
“Ray.” This is Margo, whose eyes are more accustomed to the gloom. She turns her head Sharon’s way, and in her silence is a bewildered question.
“It’s Sharon,” Sharon says. “Sharon Kowalski. From the computer store?”
“Oh, yes! But—”
“Randy’s dead!” I blurt out.
“Randy? Who’s Randy?”
“The detec—” I start.
Sharon picks it up. “The man who helped us find you. Someone killed him in his car.”
She might have screamed the information into a vacuum. All the Moores are in action now: Margo, bundling her children toward the back of a small room with two beds, Kevin making a beeline in Margo’s direction. Before us is a sliding glass door, beyond which is blackness. Kevin fumbles with its latch, hurls it aside with a whoosh and a thud, spilling more light from the room onto a wooden deck with a gas grill under a vinyl cover and a quartet of Adirondack chairs.
The only view I see is more blackness beyond the cedar planks, dimly lit by some outside lamp, moths swarming in its glow.
“As we rehearsed.” Suddenly Kevin’s voice is calm, with an edge. He claps his hands three times fast. “Go-go-go!”
Unrehearsed as we are, Sharon and I go, inches behind the Moores, who are all moving as one body toward the blackness beyond the deck.
Bundling us all, in one body, into the solid barrier of Cam Howard, chief of the Willow Grove Police, an investor in Jeremy Adder’s racket, who has a gun gripped firmly in both hands.
Chapter 27
We scream, all of us; I as shrilly as any.
The sheer volume of sound seems to smack Howard in the face. His eyes, squinted in concentration, open wide, his arms falter.
He lowers the revolver.
“You folks all right?”
Sharon is in motion. She’s still holding her phone. She hurls it overhand, snapping her arm as it leaves her fingers. It strikes Howard square on the bridge of his nose. He staggers backward, almost losing his grip on his weapon. He keeps it, and prevents himself from falling by bracing a heel behind him.
My reflexes are slower, but I rush him, both hands straight out in front of me, hoping to shove him off his feet before he can raise his hands and fire.
“Ray, stop!”
It’s Sharon, her voice so loud it halts me in my tracks. Howard, holding the gun now in one hand, has the other to his forehead. His eyes are out of focus.
“What did you say?” Sharon asks Howard.
He recovers by the millisecond, taking his hand away, looking at the blood on it, and squaring his shoulders, the revolver dangling at his side. A purplish bump shows between his eyebrows with a small diagonal cut in the center.
“I asked if you folks were all right. I guess I got my answer. Don’t go out that door!” The gun springs up, pointing past me. I turn just as Kevin and Margo are moving toward the front door. They stop, arrested by his harsh rasp.
“Why?” I ask, just as harshly. “So you can kill us where we stand?”
For answer he crosses the room in four strides, turns, and inserts himself between us and the front door, gesturing with the gun. “Move away from there, you two; if I can see you, so can he.”
He?
I have an arm around Sharon’s shoulders. We step away from the open back door.
“He,” I say. “So you’ve got an accomplice. All the better to murder seven people.” I don’t care what his response will be to that. Every second of delay I can buy is precious.
“What are you—wait, seven?” He sounds confused.
“The six of us and Randy MacBride, in his car outside.”
“Who’s Randy MacBride?”
“The detective we hired to find the Moores. You really are cold-blooded. You don’t even bother to find out who it is you’re killing.”
“That must have been the noise I heard. I was watching the bungalow from the back, with it between me and the parking lot. I thought it was a door slamming. He must be using a suppressor.” He shakes his head. “Well, now we know for sure what he’s got in mind. Not that I expected anything else.”
Kevin speaks up for the first time since Howard’s entrance. In the dimness I can see him standing in front of his family, creating a shield. “Are you with him?”
“With who?” I ask. “Is Adder here?”
“Shut up, Gillett.” The tone Howard used when he caught me leaving the Moores’ house; was it really only two days ago? “No, Mr. Moore—Kevin—I’m not with him. I’m doing my job.”
“What job’s that?” Sharon says. “Protecting your investment?” But she sounds unsure.
He looks at her. “Who are you?”
“She’s with me,” I say. “Without her, I never would have found the Moores.”
“You mean her and that phone she brained me with. Without it, they wouldn’t be in the trouble they’re in and your man MacBride would still be breathing. Now I know how he made it this far without taking a single wrong turn.”
Now I’m confused. “Who, Adder?”
“No, you idiot. Dale Mercer. You’ve been leaving a trail of electronic bread crumbs all the way from Willow Grove. He’s been tracking your signal. That speech you made back at the office must have convinced him you knew something we didn’t.”
“But I didn’t. Not then, anyway.”
“Call it cop’s instinct. You led him straight here.”
A noise from Kevin draws my attention. In the dim light his face looks incredulous. He starts to speak, but is interrupted by a shout from outside.
“In the cabin! This is United States Marshal Dale Mercer! You can come out now! I’ve got your back!”
“Thank God!” I turn toward the door.
Howard’s free hand clamps tight on my arm. “Stay put, damnit! It’s a trick!”
Releasing me with a shove, he turns toward Ke
vin. “You may as well tell him what’s going on. We’re not going anywhere fast, and we need everyone on the same page if we’re going to get out of here alive. I’ll keep watch on the window.”
“Josh, tell him, son.”
A young throat clears. The boy is standing in shadow, but I can make out part of his face, pale in the reflected light.
“Mercer works for Jeremy Adder,” he says, his voice shaking. “He’s the one after us.”
Chapter 28
This time I’m the one who breaks the silence.
“Last week I’d barely heard of Adder. Now I find out he owns a federal lawman as well as the chief of police.”
“Who told you he owns me?” Howard snaps.
“You own stock in Adder’s firm.”
“Who told you that?”
My face grows hot. The blood has come back into it in a rush of humiliation. Quietly: “Adder.”
“And why do you think he told you that, Mr. Amateur Detective?”
Sharon breaks in. “You made your point, Chief. Of course he wanted to throw suspicion off his man.”
“All my money’s tied up in my mortgage.” He turns his attention from me and softens his tone. “Go on, Josh.”
“I work part-time at the Rathskeller in Sackville. Thursday before last, the headwaiter sent me into a private room to fill the water glasses. I’ve seen Mr. Adder at company picnics, but I doubt he remembers me. Anyway I didn’t want to interrupt his conversation by introducing myself, and he never looked up at me. Neither of them did.”
I’m holding my breath. I guess what’s coming.
Howard already has. “Was there anyone else at the table besides Adder and Mercer?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you hear what they were saying?
“I can’t remember. I’d never seen Mercer before. But they seemed to be pretty friendly.
“I recognized him the minute he walked into our living room the next day.” He starts to go on, but falters.
His father’s hand grips Josh’s shoulder, as if to help him stay upright. “He told us about it when we went into the den to talk over the witness protection offer. That’s when we decided to turn it down. It wasn’t hard for me to make a show of disbelief. I was telling the truth about never suspecting anything. If it weren’t for what Josh told us, I’d have been certain that some mistake had been made. That dinner between Mercer and Adder convinced me more than any evidence he could have showed me.”
“So you fled,” Howard says, “instead of calling the police.”
“We couldn’t risk it. If Adder had a US marshal in his pocket, why not the local law?”
Margo speaks up. “We had no one to trust but each other.”
He looks at Sharon. “I’m guessing you came up with Saskatchewan. Your boyfriend’s not that smart.”
“He was smart enough to succeed where you failed,” she says, bristling.
“This is my fault.”
Another new voice: Gabby’s, sounding almost little-girlish. Her shadow stirs at her mother’s side. “I called Miss Thurgood, asking her about Saskatchewan. Dad overheard me.”
He says, “I erased everything from the phone, left it behind with all the others so we couldn’t—couldn’t be traced.”
“How did you find this place?” I ask Howard.
“The old-fashioned way. I followed Mercer. We don’t have the equipment to run an electronic tail. We need the state police for that, and they’d insist on a court order. Mercer didn’t bother, having access to the equipment himself. When I called Mercer’s office for an update, they told me he’d taken a leave of absence—in the middle of an important investigation. I got suspicious. I went to his home in Sackville, and saw him pull out in his car half a block before I got there.”
He shakes his head. “I was disappointed. Feds of all people should be more wary. Anyway, I was glad I decided to take my personal car. He didn’t try to shake me. That’s when I made up my mind he’s dirty. When a cop gets to where he thinks the law’s his personal tool, he assumes he’s bulletproof.”
I say, “Let’s hope he keeps being overconfident.”
“Let’s not. That would be overconfidence on our part.”
“So, what now?” asks Kevin.
“I think our best bet is to stay put and call for backup.”
Kevin goes for the phone on the nightstand between the beds. “Dead. He must have cut the lines.”
“I left my cell in the car, behind the bungalow,” Howard says, for the first time sounding sheepish. “When I saw movement here, I came barreling out.”
“Now who’s not so smart? You—” Sharon’s face changes suddenly. She makes a beeline for the back door.
“I said keep away from there!”
She’s already there, scooping up her phone. Backing into gloom, she looks at the screen. “Broken.”
“He’s only one man,” I say. “Can’t we—?”
“Quiet!” says Howard.
The angle of his face draws my gaze to the window at his left. In the edge of the pool of illumination shed by the security light, a hunched figure scuttles through the space between bungalows. It wears a hip-length coat and carries something with a long tube; a shotgun. On its head is an ear-flapped cap.
Sharon says, “There’s your lumberjack.”
Chapter 29
“What’s going on in there?” Mercer shouts. “I brought help. You’re all safe. Come on out!”
“That was no deputy we saw,” I say.
“The system isn’t that twisted,” Howard says. “I hope. Mercer must’ve made a call. Somebody this side of the border, probably, though most likely not a native. Someone like him would keep tabs on handy international fugitives.”
“Do you think this man killed MacBride?” I ask.
“Not unless he has a lighter piece. Nobody would mistake a shotgun blast for a slamming door. My money’s still on Mercer.”
Sharon asks, “Are there more?”
“I sure hope not, because if I’m wrong, what I’ve got in mind doesn’t stand a chance.” To Kevin: “Where are you parked?”
“In front of the bungalow.”
“Why not put out a welcome mat with your name on it?”
“It’s not the Flex. I put it in storage and rented another car before we crossed the border, to keep our license plate from being reported.”
Howard does a slow pirouette. My eyes adjusted to the minimal light, and I see what he sees: the usual furnishings, wall art, bathroom door ajar, a squat refrigerator with a small microwave on top. “What did you pack?”
“We left in too much of a hurry, but we picked up some things along the way: changes of clothes, toilet articles—”
“Shaving things?”
Kevin nods. “Of course.”
“There a flashlight in here?”
“My phone—oops. Forgot.” Sharon flips her broken phone onto the bed.
“I do.” Margo steps away from Gabby to rummage in a shiny handbag, extracts something that jingles, hands the chief a key ring with a tiny flash attached.
He snaps it on. The tiny bulb illuminates little more than itself. Kevin produces a cheap vinyl case. Holstering his gun, Howard unzips the case, dumps its contents onto the near bed, and sorts through them rapidly in the light of the flash. He holds up a small tube and curses. “Gel, this is what you use?”
“Josh?”
Without awaiting instructions, the youth produces a red-and-white-striped aerosol can.
The chief takes it, examines it. “Perfect.”
The rest of us wait in silence.
“Get ready to run,” he says. “If Mercer goes according to standard cop procedure, he’s expecting us to make a break out the back. That’s why he stationed the shotgunner there.”
And whoever else he might have recruited, I think; but I say nothing.
“Mercer will be watching the front, from a little distance so he has a broader field of fire. His plan will be to pin
us down long enough to identify his targets and take them out in order: Kevin first, because he’s the one Adder’s worried about, then Josh.”
“But he didn’t see me in the restaurant,” Josh says.
“He’s had time enough to wonder how he tipped his hand, and to find out where you work. Gillett, you’re next. After that, he’ll count on the female survivors being paralyzed by shock so he can pick them off like tin ducks.” In a band of pale light, his smile is tight-lipped and humorless. “Forgive me, ladies. Some cops have spent the last thirty years in hibernation. I’m betting he’s one.”
“The bastard.” says Sharon.
“You took the words out of my mouth.” says Margo.
Howard holds up the can of shaving cream. “Kevin, unlock and unchain the door and keep your hand on the knob. The rest of you stay close, but leave space for the door to open. When what happens happens, all of you rush for the car. Is it locked?”
Kevin says, “I’m afraid so.”
“Keyless remote?”
He takes something from a pocket and holds it up.
“Wait for the noise, then hit the button twice, unlocking all the doors. Pile in, start it up, and peel rubber. Don’t stop this side of the border. Understood?”
A collective “Yes.”
“If anyone else has a better plan, I’d sure like to hear it. I don’t place a whole lot of faith in this one, but it’s better than sitting here and waiting for Mercer to lose patience and rush us from all sides.”
Silence.
“Okay, then.” He shakes the can. The contents make a noise like surging surf.
“What about you?” I ask. “What will you be doing while we’re making a break for it?”
His smile broadens, but is no less grim. “I call shotgun.”
The fear is palpable. But so is the resolve. Kevin releases the chain from its slot, snaps open the latch, grasps the knob, turns it, and pauses.
Margo, Josh, Gabby, Sharon, and I gather just beyond the door’s sweep.
“Wait for it.” Chief Cam Howard tugs open the door of the microwave, puts the aerosol can inside, swings the door shut, uses Margo’s flashlight to find the start button, and presses it. The interior lights up behind the thick glass and the mechanism whirs. In no time at all the object inside begins to rattle, its metal base vibrating against the floor of the oven, faster and faster as the pressure builds.