They'd never fought. Anna wasn't temperamental or moody. She was a perfect grandmother, which counted for a lot to Brynn. But mother and daughter had never been chummy, and during Brynn's first marriage Anna largely faded from her life, emerging only after Joey was born.
Now divorced and with a man whom Brynn believed Anna approved of, they'd reconnected. At one point, a year ago, Brynn had wondered if mother and daughter would finally grow close. But that hadn't happened. They were, after all, the same people they'd been twenty years ago, and, unlike her siblings, Brynn had never had much in common with her mother. Brynn had always spent her life riding, pushing, looking for something outside Eau Claire. Anna's had been spent working unchallenging jobs--mostly four hours a day as a real estate office manager--and raising her three children. Evenings were invariably knitting, chatting and TV.
Perfectly fine for relations living apart. But when Anna moved in, after her surgery, it was like Brynn had been transported back to those days of her youth.
Oh, yes, she was looking forward to a few hours of evening time to herself.
And a free dinner at Bennigan's. Hell, she'd even order a glass of wine.
Brynn flipped the car lights on and put the car in reverse to turn around. Then she paused. The nearest gas station was back in Clausen, a good twenty minutes.
The Feldmans were behind this mixup; the least they could do was let her use their bathroom. Brynn put the car in gear and headed for their driveway, curious to see just how far Yahoo thought two football fields was.
SQUATTING NEXT TO
the stolen Ford they'd driven here from Milwaukee, Lewis sucked blood off the knuckle he'd gigged on the sheet metal trying to repair one or both of the flats. He examined the wound and spat. Great, Hart thought. Fingerprints and DNA.
And here I'm the one picked this guy to tag along tonight.
"Any sign of her?" the skinny man asked, crouched over one of the wheels.
Hart crunched over leaves, returning from making a circuit of the property. As he'd searched for Michelle, being as quiet as he could, he'd had the queasy sense of being targeted. Maybe she was gone. Maybe she wasn't.
"Ground's plenty muddy. I found some footprints, probably hers, going toward the county road at first but they seemed to turn that way." He pointed to the dense woods and steep hillside behind the house. "She's gotta be hiding there someplace. You hear anything?"
"No. But it's freaking me out. I keep looking over my shoulder. Man, she is going down. When we get back, I am tracking down that bitch. I don't care who she is, where she lives. She's going down. She fucked with the wrong man."
I'm the one who got shot, Hart reminded silently. He examined the forest again. "We almost had a problem."
Lewis blurted sarcastically, "You think?"
"I checked his phone. Turned it back on and checked."
"The...?"
"The husband's." A nod toward the house. "Remember? The one you took away from him."
Lewis was looking defensive already. As well he should. "Got through to nine-one-one. It was a connected call," said Hart.
"Couldn't've been on it more than a second."
"Three seconds. But it was enough."
"Shit." Lewis stood up and stretched.
"I think it's okay. I called back and told 'em I was him. I said I'd called by mistake. The sheriff said they'd sent a car to check it out. He was going to tell 'em to come on back."
"That would've been fucking pretty. They believe you?"
"I think so."
"Just think?" Going on the offensive now.
Hart ignored the question. He gestured at the Ford. "Can you fix it?"
"Nope" was the glib response.
Hart studied the man, his sneering grin, his cocky stance. After Hart had agreed to do this job he'd gone out to find a partner. He'd checked around with some contacts in Milwaukee and gotten Lewis's name. They'd met. The younger man had seemed all right, and a criminal background check revealed nothing that raised alarms--a rap sheet for some minor drug arrests and larcenies, a few pleas. The skinny guy with the big earring and the red-and-blue neck decoration would've been fine for the routine job this was supposed to be. But now it had gone bad. Hart was wounded, they had no wheels and an armed enemy was out in the woods nearby. It suddenly became vital to know Compton Lewis's habits, nature and skills.
The assessment wasn't very encouraging.
Hart had to play things carefully. He now tried some damage control and, keeping his voice as neutral as he could, said, "Think your gloves're off."
Lewis licked the blood again. "Couldn't get a grip on the wrench. Detroit piece of crap."
"Probably want to wipe everything." A nod toward the tire iron.
Lewis laughed as if Hart had said, "Wow, did you know grass is green?"
So that's how it was going to be.
What a night...
"I'll tell you, my friend," Lewis muttered, "Fix-A-Flat does shit when there's a fucking bullet hole in the sidewall of a tire."
Hart saw the can of tire sealant where Lewis had flung it in anger, he supposed. So that now the man's prints were on that too.
He blinked away tears of pain. Fourteen years in a business in which firearms figured prominently and Hart had never been shot--and he'd rarely fired a weapon himself, unless of course that was what he'd been hired to do.
"The other houses. Up the road? We could try them. Might have a car parked there."
Hart replied, "Wouldn't make sense, leaving a car out here. Anyway, try hot-wiring a car nowadays. You need a computer."
"I've done it. I can do it easy." Lewis scoffed. "You never have?"
Hart said nothing, still scanning the brush.
"Any other ideas?"
"Call Triple A," Hart said.
"Ha. Triple A. Well, guess that's it. We better start hiking. It's a couple miles to the county road. Let's empty out the Ford and get moving."
Hart went into the garage and came back with a roll of paper towels and glass cleaner.
"The fuck's that for?" Lewis said. And gave one of those snide laughs again.
"Fingerprints're oil. You need something to cut it with. Wiping just distorts them. The cops can reconstruct them a lot of times."
"That's bullshit. I never heard of that."
"It's true, Lewis. I've studied it."
"Studied?" Another sarcastic laugh.
Hart began spraying the cleaner on whatever Lewis had touched. Hart himself hadn't touched a single thing, except his own arm, with his bare hands since they'd been here.
"Heh. You do laundry too?"
As Hart scrubbed, he also was looking over the property three-sixty, listening. He said, "We can't leave just yet."
"What're you talking about?"
"We've got to find her."
"But..." Lewis said, with a sour smile, as if the one word conveyed a whole argument about the futility of the task.
"No choice." Hart finished wiping. He then took out his map, examined it. They were in the middle of a huge stew of green and brown. He looked around, studied the map some more, folded it up.
Another of those irritating snickers. "Well, Hart, I know you want to fuck her up after what she did. But let's worry about that later."
"It's not revenge. Revenge is pointless."
"Beg to differ. Revenge is fun. That asshole I told you about with the box cutter? Fucking him up was more fun than seeing the Brewers. Depending on who's pitching."
Hart reined in a sigh. "It's not about revenge. It's just what we have to do."
"Shit," Lewis blurted.
"What?" Hart looked at him, alarmed.
Lewis tugged at his ear. "I lost the back." Started looking down at the ground.
"Back?"
"Of my earring." He put the emerald or whatever it was carefully into the small front pocket of his jeans.
Jesus our Lord...
Hart collected the flashlights and extra ammunition from the trunk of the Ford.
Waiting until Lewis put his gloves back on, Hart handed him a box of 9mm ammo and one of 12-gauge shells for the shotgun.
"We've got a half hour before we lose the light completely. It'll be a bitch to track her in the dark. Let's get going."
Lewis wasn't moving. He was looking past Hart and playing with the colorful boxes of bullets like they were Rubik's Cubes. Hart wondered if the head butting was going to start now in earnest. But it turned out that the younger man's attention was just elsewhere. Lewis put the boxes into his pocket, snagged the shotgun, clicking off the safety, and nodded down the driveway. "We got company, Hart."
AS SHE APPROACHED
the Feldman house Brynn McKenzie decided that even with the glow from behind ivory curtains the place was eerie as hell. The other two houses she'd passed might have been the sets for family dramas; this was just the place for a Stephen King movie, the kind she and her first husband, Keith, would devour like candy. She looked up at the three-story home. You sure didn't see many houses of this style or size in Kennesha County. White siding, which had seen better days, and a wraparound porch. She liked the porch. Her childhood house in Eau Claire had sported one. She'd loved sitting out in the chain swing at night, her brother singing and playing his battered guitar, her sister flirting with her latest boyfriend, their parents talking, talking, talking...And the home she and Keith owned had a nice wraparound. But as for her present house, she didn't even know where a porch would fit.
Approaching the Feldmans', she glanced at the yard, impressed. The landscaping was expensive. The place was surrounded by strategically placed dogwoods, ligustrum and crepe myrtles that had been cut way back. She recalled her husband's advice to his customers against this practice ("Don't rape your crepes").
Parking in the circular gravel drive, she caught movement inside, a shadow on the front curtain. She climbed out into the chill air, fresh and sweet with the perfume of blossoms and firewood smoke.
Hearing the comforting sound of frogs croaking and the honk of geese or ducks, Brynn walked over gravel and up the three steps to the porch. Flashed on Joey, imagining him skateboarding off this height into the school parking lot.
Well, I did talk to him.
It'll be fine....
Her issue black Oxfords, as comfy and unstylish as shoes could be, thunked on the wood as she approached the front door. Hit the bell.
It rang but there was no response.
She pressed the button once more. The door was solid but flanked by narrow windows curtained with lace, and Brynn could see into the living room. She noted no motion, no shadows. Only a pleasant storm of flames in the fireplace.
She knocked. Loud, reverberating on the glass.
Another shadow, like before. She realized that it was from the waving of the orange flames in the fireplace. There was light from a side room but most of the other rooms on this floor were dark, and a lamp from the top of the stairs cast bony shadows of the stair railings on the hallway floor.
Maybe everybody was out back, or in a dining room. Imagine that, she thought, a house so big you'd miss the doorbell.
A throaty honk above her. Brynn looked up. The light was dim and the sky was shared by birds and mammals: mallards on final approach to the lake, a few silver-haired bats in their erratic, purposeful hunt. She smiled at the sight. Then, looking back into the house, her eye noted something out of place: behind a massive brown armchair a briefcase and backpack lay open and the contents--files, books, pens--were dumped on the floor, as if they'd been searched for valuables.
Her gut clenched and in a snap came the thought: a 911 call cut short. An intruder realizes the victim dialed the police and then calls back to say it's a false alarm.
Brynn McKenzie drew her weapon.
She looked behind her fast. No voices, no footsteps. She was stepping back to the car to get her cell phone when she saw something curious inside.
What is that?
Brynn's eyes focused on the edge of a rug in the kitchen. But it was glistening. How can a rug be shiny?
Blood. She was looking at a pool of blood.
All right. Think. How to handle it?
Heart stuttering, she tested the knob. The lock had been kicked out.
Cell phone in the car? Or go inside?
The blood was fresh. Three people inside. No sign of the intruders. Somebody could be hurt but alive.
Phone later.
Brynn shoved the door open, glancing right and left. Said nothing, didn't announce her presence. Looking, looking everywhere, head dizzy.
She glanced into the lit bedroom to her left. A deep breath and she stepped inside, keeping her gun close to her side so it couldn't be grabbed, as Keith had lectured in his class on tactical operations, the class where she'd met him.
The room was empty but the bed was mussed and first aid materials were on the floor. Her misshapen jaw quivering, she moved back into the living room, where the fire crackled. Trying to be silent, she found the carpet and navigated carefully around the empty briefcase and backpack and file folders scattered on the floor, the labels giving clues about the woman's professional life: Haberstrom, Inc., Acquisition. Gibbons v. Kenosha Automotive Technologies. Pascoe Inc. Refinancing. Hearing--County Redistricting.
She continued on to the kitchen.
And stopped fast. Staring down at the bodies of the young couple on the floor. They wore business clothes, the shirt and blouse dark with blood. Both had been shot in the head and the wife in the neck too--she was the source of the blood. The husband had run in panic, slipping and falling; a skid mark of red led from his shoe to the carpet of blood. The wife had turned away to die. She lay on her stomach with her right arm twisted behind her, a desperate angle, as if she were trying to touch an itch above her lower spine.
Where was the friend? Brynn wondered. Had she escaped? Or had the killer taken her upstairs? She recalled the light on the second floor.
Had the intruder left?
The answer to that question came a moment later.
A voice outside whispered, "Hart? The keys aren't in the car. She's got 'em."
It came from toward the front of the house, but she couldn't tell where exactly.
Brynn flattened herself against the wall. Wiped her right palm on her left shoulder, then gripped her gun firmly.
After a moment another voice--Hart's, she supposed--speaking firmly, not to his partner but to her: "You, lady. In the house. Bring your keys out here. We just want your car is all. You'll be fine."
She lifted the gun, muzzle up. Brynn McKenzie had fired a weapon at another human being four times in the decade and a half she'd been a public safety officer. Not a lot, but four times more than most deputies did in their whole careers. Like Breathalyzing drivers and comforting beaten wives, this was a part of her job and she was filled with an odd blend of tension, terror and contentment.
"Really," Hart called. "Don't worry. Or, tell you what, just throw 'em out the front, you don't trust us. But otherwise we come in and get them. Believe me, we just want to be gone. Just want to be out of here."
Brynn flicked the kitchen lights out. Now the only illumination was from the roaring fireplace and the bedroom she'd glanced into.
A whisper, its source uncertain. This meant they'd joined each other.
But where?
And were there just two? Or more? She found herself staring at the bodies of the couple.
And where was the friend?
Hart again, speaking so very calmly: "You've seen those folks inside. You don't want that to happen to you. Throw the keys out here. I'm telling you not to be stupid. Please."
Of course the moment she showed herself she'd be dead.
Should she say she was a deputy? And that more were on their way?
No, don't give yourself away.
Pressing back against the pantry door, Brynn scanned the back windows. They reflected the living room and she gasped softly as a man appeared in the front door, slipping inside. Cautious. He was tall,
solid, wearing a dark jacket. Long hair, boots. He carried a pistol in his--the reverse image confused her momentarily--his right hand. The other arm hung at his side and she got the impression he'd been injured. He disappeared. Somewhere in the living room.
Brynn tensed, gripped the pistol in a shooting pose. She stared at the reflection at the front of the house.
Go for the shot, she told herself. Your only advantage is surprise. Use it. He's in the living room. It's only twenty feet. Step into the doorway. Fire a burst of three, then back to cover. You can take him.
Do it.
Now.
Brynn swallowed and stepped away from the wall, turning toward the living room. She gasped as the voice from behind her, in the dining room, shouted, "Listen, lady, you do what we're saying!" A skinny man in a combat jacket, with short, light hair, a tat on his neck and eyes mean, had come through the French doors. He was lifting a shotgun to his shoulder.
Brynn, spinning to face him.
They fired simultaneously. Her slug came closer than his buckshot--he ducked and she didn't--puncturing a stuffed dining room chair inches from him as the pellets from his shotgun crunched into the ceiling above her. The light fixture rained down.
He crawled out the French door. "Hart! A gun! She's got a gun."
She wasn't sure these were his exact words, though. The shots were thunderclap loud and had numbed her ears.
Brynn glanced into the living room. No sign of Hart. She started toward the back kitchen door. Then paused. She couldn't just leave if the Feldmans' friend was still here.
"I'm a sheriff's deputy," she shouted. "Hello! Is someone in the house? Are you upstairs?"
Silence.
Brynn desperately scanned the windows, shivered, sure somebody was aiming at her even as she crouched in the shadows. "Hello?"
Nothing.
"Is anybody here?"
The longest twenty seconds of her life.
Leave, she told herself. Get help. You can't do anything for anybody if you're dead.
She raced out the back door, gasping in fear and from the effort. Her keys in her left hand, she made her way to the front yard. She saw no one.
The sun was down altogether and the darkness was growing fast. But there was still just enough light in the sky, barely, to make out one of the intruders running toward some bushes. His back was to her. It was the wounded man, Hart. She drew a target but he vanished in a thicket of bearberry and rhododendron.