Those same emotions were channeling through him now, only it wasn’t a bear or a buck he was waiting for.
He sensed something in the distance and slunk lower, slowly, carefully.
Movement, through the thin, white haze down the mountain.
He flattened himself completely and calmed his breathing. He knew from hunting hungry bucks how crucial it was to remain quiet and immobile. The smallest sound, the minutest movement, could spook his prey.
He looked out intently through the light snowfall, then adjusted his rifle and peered through its scope.
A lone figure was making its way closer to him, headed in his direction. Taking slow, hesitant steps. A dark silhouette against the white backdrop, disappearing in and out from behind the army of bare chestnut oaks that dotted the hillside.
As the figure got nearer, his concentration deepened. He could sense the imminent kill, intoxicated by the endorphins that were rushing through him in anticipation. God, he loved a good hunt, and this one would cap them all.
And then he got a glimpse of his quarry’s face and his pulse spiked and flushed his euphoria away.
It wasn’t Reilly.
It was a woman.
Annie Deutsch advanced cautiously as she made her way up the mountain.
She hadn’t found Reilly in the charred cabin, hadn’t seen any sign of him outside. She’d seen Tomblin’s body in his chewed-up SUV before stumbling upon a dead shooter by the side of the cabin and she figured Reilly had gone up the mountain, tracking his prey. She also figured two guns would be better than one.
She wasn’t comfortable out here. She was a city girl through and through and hadn’t spent much time out in the wilderness. She’d skied in Vermont a couple of times, years ago, at the insistence of a college boyfriend, but apart from that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in such an alien landscape.
It was a shame, she thought. It did possess undeniable beauty, and she could understand why people made the effort to get away to places like this. But right now, that appeal was completely wasted. All she could see around her was suffering and death.
She stopped for a moment, looked around. Nothing but bare trees, boulder fields, a couple of large rock outcroppings, and snow. A cold, bleak canvas of white and various shades of grey, punctuated by the occasional dash of dark green from some mountain laurel or a huckleberry shrub.
She couldn’t see any sign of life. She wished she could call out to Reilly, make sure he was still alive—make sure she wasn’t the one being stalked. But she couldn’t.
Instead, she just panned left and right, made sure she wasn’t missing anything, and continued on up, her mind picking out the large outcropping on the ridge to her right as a heading to follow.
Roos watched the woman get closer and closer.
She was fifteen yards away and closing. He had her in his crosshairs now. One gentle pull on his trigger and she’d drop to the ground without knowing what hit her.
He held his breath, adjusted his aim. At this distance, in these conditions, it was an easy shot. Almost unsportsmanlike. No challenge whatsoever. It was also almost unfair. Does and bucks had highly tuned senses. They could see, hear and smell even the slightest of clues. This woman was, by comparison, like an astronaut in full gear. Slow, lumbering, strained. Incomparable. He’d be able to call out to her, wave at her and ask for her name before he pulled the trigger, and he’d still drop her.
But then, he didn’t think killing her would be a wise move.
She’d be dead, no question. But the shot would ring out across the woods, and Reilly would know where he was. He’d need to try and make his way to another blind before Reilly spotted him. Staying in this one and using the dead woman as bait was too dangerous. Reilly would anticipate that move. And no matter what, he’d still have Reilly out there, on the loose, stalking him.
No, killing her now would be a mistake. He had a far better use for her. Much simpler, much more straightforward, but knowing how righteous Reilly was, it was bound to work.
He watched her climb up, seemingly drawn to the outcropping that shielded him. He knew he was perfectly camouflaged, knew she wouldn’t spot him until it was too late.
She kept coming. Slowly, but inevitably.
He waited until she was a few feet away, then, in one swift move, he launched himself up at her and slammed the stock of his rifle into her back.
She grunted heavily and stumbled forward, falling to her feet, her carbine tumbling out of her hands.
She turned around slowly, groaning with pain, but he was already on top of her, his rifle right in her face.
“Shh,” he said. “No noise. Not yet. Now turn around.”
68
I was tired. Exhausted, actually.
My body was starting to flag. I hadn’t been too kind to it lately. It had been a pretty intense couple of weeks that had included hours when I was technically dead. But I couldn’t give up now.
I kept advancing, my legs moving on their own, carrying up farther and farther into the mountain, trying to avoid a fall or even a slip. Up here, right now, a damaged ankle or a busted knee would be fatal. And there’d be no Frankenstein machine to bring me back this time.
I heard the air move above me and glanced up to see a turkey vulture glide by. It banked, made a full circle over me, then with a flick of his wings, it was gone again, disappearing into the white mist. I wondered if that was a good omen. It had to be—for one of us, anyway.
There were more than a few blowdowns up here, maybe casualties from some recent hurricane. I either climbed over them or made my way around them, long bare trunks that were just making my advance more difficult.
And then I heard her, a call that echoed through the trees.
“Reilly! Reilly?”
It was Deutsch.
I almost shouted back, then I held back.
He had her.
Shit.
What was she doing up here?
I gritted my teeth to swallow my anger, then I summoned up more resolve and increased my pace, heading in the direction I thought her shout came from.
She hadn’t sounded too far—a hundred, hundred and fifty yards, tops, I figured. I was moving faster now, breathing hard, eyes focused intently ahead of me, acutely aware of a potential ambush.
“Reilly!”
Her voice rang out again, acting like a compass heading.
I kept going, my fingers tighter against the carbine. And after a long climb that left me almost breathless, something appeared out of the haze that was shrouding the mountain, something foreign to this desolate landscape.
It was Deutsch, standing in front of a large rock outcropping at the top of the ridge. Only she wasn’t alone. A figure was standing behind her, and he was holding a handgun to her head.
Roos.
I slowed my pace, swung my gun slowly so is was pointed in their direction, and kept moving until I was about ten yards away from them.
There he was. Gordon Roos. After all these months—after all these deaths, I was finally face to face with him.
I have to say, in the flesh, he was a disappointment. Mid fifties, give or take, I imagined, although he had to be older. Lean, short cropped hair, focused gaze. Seemed in pretty good shape. Nothing noteworthy, nothing particularly vile or evil in his features. No glass eye, no scarred face, no deformed fingers. My nemesis looked disconcertingly normal, and his face was very similar to the one in the drawing Leo and Daphne had sent me. They had really done a phenomenal job.
“Nice to put a face to the voice,” I said, trying to play down the fact that Deutsch and I were truly and genuinely screwed.
“I figured it was about time we met,” Roos said. “You’ve put enough time and effort into it.”
I wasn’t in the mood for games. “Let her go,” I said. “This is between you and me.”
“You’re such a Boy Scout, you know that? Like you just walked out of a Norman Rockwell painting or something. ‘This is b
etween you and me?’ Seriously? Come on … What are you—Shane? When did that ever work in the real world? You think I’m going to roll around in the snow with you when I can just shoot you? Christ, I could have picked you off minutes ago, while you were still coming up here. But I wanted to see the look in your eyes when you realized you were screwed. When you realized you and this little bitch of yours were both screwed. That look on your face right now? That’ll keep me company for years to come. It’s moments like these . . . when they come around, you’ve got to grab them. They’re life’s fuel.”
And just like that, he calmly, matter-of-factly, raised his gun at me from behind Deutsch. I thought of shooting first, swinging my gun up quickly as I dived off to one side, but there was no way I was getting a clean shot off at him, not with Deutsch there in the way, not on the move and given how weary I was and how my hands were shaking.
Still, I couldn’t just stand there, and in that instant of deciding whether to duck left or right or charge ahead, something rushed down out of nowhere, a buzzing white flash that came out of the sky and smashed itself against the large boulders right next to them. Roos wasn’t expecting it—none of us were. But the split second of distraction from Kurt’s kamikaze drone was all we needed.
Just as Roos flinched sideways with surprise, Deutsch moved, fast as lightning, grabbing his gun hand with both hands and yanking him forward, almost over her shoulders, causing him to spin and topple over and slam into the ground. I was already charging at them and I covered the ground between us in a heartbeat and got there as Deutsch was wrangling the gun out of his hand. I dove in, hammering his face with a massive downward punch that just planted him in place and loosened his hold on the gun. I gave him another—unnecessary, but what the hell?—then Deutsch and I stepped back and took in our captured prey.
Gordon Roos was finally mine.
Now I had to decide what to do with him.
69
We marched Roos down the mountain.
He tried talking a couple of times, but I shut him down, first with a couple of words, then with another punch. I wasn’t ready to listen to him. I was still gathering up my thoughts and playing things out in my head.
We kept going until we got to a small clearing that was dotted with ghostly birch trees, within sight of the cabin. More snow had settled up here—two, maybe three inches. I knew the temperature was still hovering just below zero, but there was a mild wind blowing, which was what I needed.
I told Roos to sit down by the base of one of the trees. He did as told. I walked over and cuffed his hands around it.
I stepped back and turned to Deutsch. “Is the Crown Vic down there?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And the jerrycan? Still in the trunk?”
“Yep.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Roos called out. “I’m not telling you anything.”
I walked over to him. “I’d bet otherwise.”
“Fuck you,” he said. “You’re going to kill me anyway. At least this way I’ll enjoy knowing you’ll never clear your name and you’ll never know the full story about your dad.”
“We’ll see.” I turned to Deutsch. “If he makes trouble—try not to kill him.”
“I can’t promise.”
I left them and made my way to the cabin. The place looked like a war zone. The charred cabin, Tomblin’s shot-up Navigator, his mangled body still inside it. It looked, and smelled, like death.
I popped the trunk on the Crown Vic, got what I needed, then headed back up to the clearing.
Roos was still where I’d left him. He was fixing me with a long scowl, his defiant attitude coming through loud and clear. The bastard was solid through and through, no question. Still, you didn’t need to be the Amazing Kreskin to know what he was thinking. A desolate place where no one would hear you, a guy hell-bent on revenge. If he had any sense, some very uncomfortable images had to be spooling through his mind right now. Especially since my left hand was holding a five-gallon jerrycan.
I set it down and stepped across to him. Then, without saying a word, I bent down and yanked his shoes off his feet.
He started kicking around. “Hey, what the—”
I punched him hard to calm him down. “Shut up!”
Then I got back to it. I pulled his socks off, undid his belt, and yanked his pants and his shorts off too, in one go. Then I pulled out the tactical knife and held it in front of me for a couple of seconds, visibly fuelling more uncertainty in Roos. His eyes were just locked on the drop point blade, his forehead now bursting with sweat beads despite the bitter cold.
“I was in California last summer,” I told him. “An ex-girlfriend of mine called me up, asking for help. She was ex-DEA. Some guys were after her. When I got there, I found out I had a kid. A four-year-old boy. Turned out they were really after him, and she died trying to keep him safe.” I jabbed the blade in his direction. “She died in my arms. Because of you.”
“I wasn’t part of that—”
I held up the knife to silence him. He piped down.
“I know. It wasn’t your deal. But it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t stepped in to make it happen. To do what you and your people—my money’s on Orford—did to my boy.”
I studied him for a moment, then I continued. “Still . . . the guy you were all after? Maybe you know this, maybe you don’t. He thought these bikers were dicking him around, so he came after them with his men. Shot them all up. All except their leader. What he did to get the truth out of him . . . I was there and I saw the result. It wasn’t pretty. He started with the fingers. After two of them, he got bored. So he moved on to somewhere different. The coroner said he bled out, and let me tell you, when you bleed out from that spot? Not the best way to go. But at least the cut was clean. One go. He had the benefit of using garden shears.”
I let that simmer for a moment while I tapped the blade on my open palm, then I added, “I don’t have any garden shears. But I have this.” I held up the knife. “It’ll have to do.”
I stopped talking for a moment, just staring him down, giving his imagination time to generate all kinds of horrific visions. Then, with Deutsch standing guard and aiming her M4 at him, I stepped forward.
He flinched and kicked back, like he thought I was going for it. I wasn’t. Instead, I used the knife to cut through his sleeves and the back of his jacket and a minute later he was totally naked.
In the snow.
With a light wind blowing.
I don’t care how fit he was. He was shivering now. Probably from a combination of cold and fear.
I moved back to join Deutsch.
“What?” he asked her, a disturbing leer on his face. “You see something you like?”
She ignored it as I glanced up at the sky, looked around the trees—then set my gaze back on him.
“I want to know everything. I want to know who the Janitors were. What they were. What they did. I know about Padley, Orford, and Siddle. I want to know about the others. I want to know what your role was in it, what Tomblin’s role was. I want to know who else knew about it. I want to know who you killed and who you had killed. I want to know who the guy was that you sent after me, the guy who killed Kirby and Nick. And I want to know about my dad.”
I stopped there, letting him process it for a moment. His eyes were locked on me, the defiance still there, but now I could see some cracks in it. He wasn’t going to break easy. I knew that going in. But we were getting there.
“You’re going to tell me everything I want to know,” I continued. “That’s a given. No way around that, trust me. I won’t kill you before I get what I’m after, and we both have enough training to know that it’s going to happen. The only question is what condition you’ll be in when we’re done. If you’re still in decent enough shape, I’ll hand you over to my friend here and she’ll take you in. I’ll need to make sure she doesn’t shoot you herself, because my partner, the one you had killed? That was her boyfriend.
But we talked about it, and I think she’ll get more pleasure out of seeing you go through the humiliation of a trial before marching you into prison. Maybe. Or maybe you’re connected enough that your people will cut some kind of deal or find some kind of loophole and let you walk free. Me, I’d take prison. You wouldn’t want to be out here. Not with my friend and me here knowing what we do. So that’s option one. Option two is, you play hard-ass and I have to cut the truth out of you one piece at a time. In which case it’ll be hard for me to send you back without getting myself into trouble. Sensible move would then be to finish you off here and leave you for bear food. So it’s up to you, really. Crunch time. And just so you don’t feel rushed, I’m going to give you time to consider it. To think about what I said. To see if you reach the reasonable conclusion I hope you’ll reach. But, in the interest of speeding things up . . .”
I turned, picked up the jerrycan, and undid its top. Then I held it over him, watching him stare up at it in terror, shaking his head, mouthing, “No, don’t—” for me to stop, and I emptied its contents all over him, drenching him top to toe.
He went fetal and curled into himself defensively and shut his eyes tight and sputtered, then he stopped suddenly and shook it off his face and looked up at me with burning, angry surprise.
It wasn’t gasoline. It was just water.
Water, which, on naked skin, in snowy weather, would accelerate his hypothermia.
Dramatically.
“I think we’ve had some of the same training,” I told him. “I don’t know how much you remember about this stuff, but . . . I figure it’s about minus two or three out here, tops. And the wind is, what—ten, twelve miles per hour? Call it ten. Minus two degrees and a ten mile-per-hour wind gives us a wind-chill temperature of minus twelve degrees or so. Add the water and I’m betting you’re not feeling too comfortable right now.”