‘Oh, shit,’ he said again. He swallowed.
The sound of the front door opening; heavy, deliberate footsteps in the hall. Then Big Joe walked into the room, stopped and glared from under beetling white brows at his son and the armed men inside his house.
‘I thought you were in Topeka,’ was all Finn could think to say at first.
‘What the hell’s this?’
‘Let’s go in the other room, Daddy,’ Finn said, stepping over and anxiously taking his elbow to steer him back through the doorway. Big Joe resisted, then emitted a long, low sound like a snarl and let Finn guide him across the hall to the room opposite, which Big Joe used as a TV lounge.
Big Joe looked grim. ‘I come home early and there’s a bunch of gorillas with guns in my house. You owe me an explanation. Let’s have it.’
‘It’s none of your concern, Daddy. I got some business to take care of, that’s all. You keep out of the way, now, before you go and get yourself hurt.’
‘Don’t you Daddy me. What business? You wouldn’t know business if it crept up and chewed your butt off.’
‘Now listen, Daddy—’
‘I want these people out of my home right now.’
Finn flushed. ‘No way.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no way. This is a meeting. These are my associates.’
‘Associates,’ Big Joe said, clenching his teeth. He gripped Finn’s arm. ‘Associates my ass. You think I never saw a bunch of cheap hoods before?’
‘That’s the police chief in there.’
‘Exactly. You think I’m blind, boy? Think I can’t see what this is?’
The hold the old man had on Finn’s arm felt like a steel pincer. ‘Let go.’ Finn wrenched his arm free and backed away.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ his father seethed at him. ‘What the hell are you into? This what I brought you up to be? A goddamn criminal?’
Finn felt something break inside him and the anger gushed out. ‘Oh, it was easy for you. You made something of yourself. What about me? How’m I supposed to make my way, with your reputation hanging over me? You ever stop to think about that?’
‘I always knew you were a coward and a cheat. Now you’re fixin’ to kill a man right here in my own home. That’s what this is, right? An ambush.’
‘I—’
‘This is what you call your business. This is what you do when my back is turned. Don’t lie to me, boy!’
‘He – he knows our secret, Daddy. I did everything I could, but he knows. I can’t let it go any further.’
Big Joe’s eyes bugged in fury. ‘So that’s it. You opened your big mouth. You let it out.’
‘No! I—’
‘Not a soul,’ the old man rasped. ‘Not a living soul ever knew. I’ve been keepin’ it locked up like the holy of holies since twenty years before you were even born. Now you just up and spill it right out. You got horseshit for brains, son? Don’t you know what’s gonna happen to you if folks know the truth about our family?’ His big fists were clenched as he advanced on Finn.
Finn unholstered the revolver from his belt. ‘I’ve taken enough abuse from you. All my life you’ve been putting me down.’
Big Joe showed him yellow teeth as he kept on coming. ‘I put you down, boy, you won’t be getting back up again.’
‘Don’t you come any closer, you hear me? Back off!’ Finn pointed the gun and thumbed the hammer.
But Big Joe just glanced disdainfully at the revolver. He seemed eight feet tall. A granite mountain looming over Finn, ready to fall on him like a million tons of rock. ‘What the hell are you going to do with that? You gonna smoke me? You gonna ventilate the old man with your roscoe? Huh? Show us all what a big tough guy you are? Huh?’ He kept prodding Finn in the chest, shoving him back harder each time.
‘I’m warning you …’
Big Joe regarded him with pure disgust, as if he could spit blood at the very sight of him. ‘You shame me, Finn McCrory. I shoulda strangled you the day they pulled you out of your momma, God rest her soul.’
Finn’s back was against the wall. He could retreat no further—
Big Joe lunged to wrench the gun from Finn’s hand—
The stunning BOOM of the magnum seemed to drive all the air out of the room. For a terrible moment, Big Joe stood rocking on his feet, staring in speechless apoplectic disbelieving rage at his son who’d just shot him. Then his eyes rolled down and he saw the blood. He staggered back a step. One knee buckled first, then the other, and Big Joe twirled and hit the polished floor face first with a crash almost as loud as the gunshot.
Finn stared down at him. Stared at the revolver in his hand.
The door burst open. Ritter ran into the room, stopped and looked down at the inert hulk of Big Joe.
‘I didn’t kill’m,’ Finn said, talking loudly like a deaf person over the ringing whine in his ears. ‘Hope did. We all saw it, right? Hope came here and murdered a defenceless old man. You’re a witness, Ritter.’
Ritter said nothing.
The blast of a second gunshot made them turn. It had come from the other room.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Ritter ran back across the hall, Finn behind him still clutching the handgun. Everyone in the other room was on their feet and staring either at the shattered window overlooking the front of the house, or at Mike Corcoran who was standing there with the pump-action levelled towards the broken glass, smoke oozing from its barrel.
‘What happened?’ Ritter said.
Corcoran wet his lips with his tongue, still pointing the shotgun at the window. ‘I saw something. Outside. A movement.’
‘You thought you did.’
Corcoran shook his head. ‘No, man. I saw it. A shape. Just for a moment.’
‘Could’ve been some animal,’ O’Rourke muttered.
Ritter drew his pistol and stepped to the window, carefully drew aside the shredded blind and peered out through the jagged remains of the pane. He could see nothing out there except darkness. Maybe they were just jumping at shadows. Maybe not.
The silence outside was disconcerting. If Hope was here, he could be anywhere around the house.
‘What was the shootin’ in there?’ O’Rourke asked, pointing towards the other room.
‘Forget it,’ Ritter told the chief with a sharp look. ‘And keep your voice down.’ O’Rourke was no longer in command, if he ever had been. Ritter took charge as effortlessly as breathing. ‘Dave, hit the lights. You, you and you’ – pointing at Corcoran, Wylie and Duhame – ‘I want you at the front of the house. Spread out, keep to the shadows, shoot anything that moves. It starts to kick off, do not leave your position.’ He turned to Meagher, Lukas and Strickman. ‘You three cover the rear.’
‘I’ll stay here,’ O’Rourke whispered, taking up position near the window. ‘In case he tries to get inside.’
Meagher switched off the lights. The milky light filtered in through the blinds, the sudden darkness turning them all into dark silhouettes. Ritter liked the dark. It was his element. He turned and gestured to Moon, an unspoken command that was clearer than daylight between them. It meant ‘go check on the woman’, and it was music to Billy Bob.
Moon tapped Coyle on the shoulder. ‘You come with me, copper.’
Corcoran, Wylie and Duhame picked up their weapons and headed outside to guard the front, while Moon led Coyle around to the rear.
Ritter led McCrory aside, speaking low. ‘I can’t stay with you, boss. Is there someplace you can close yourself in?’
‘The old man’s study.’ Finn was shaking with nervous excitement, not even so much because of Hope, but because of the realisation sinking in of what he’d just done. The thought hit him that it was his study now.
‘Show me the way,’ Ritter told him.
Finn led Ritter up the hall to the broad wooden staircase, then up it and through the rambling house to the south-facing study at the far end. The moonlight from the window shone diml
y on the old man’s desk, the fireplace behind it and the six-point deer antlers that hung on the wall above.
‘Lock yourself in,’ Ritter told him. ‘You hear shooting, stay put. Anyone comes through that door …’
‘I have this.’ Finn patted the holster on his belt. It was the same gun he’d shot Blaylock with. Ritter knew he wasn’t afraid to pull a trigger.
‘Keep the light off,’ Ritter said, and left.
‘Kill him good,’ Finn called after him.
The ranch house was filled with a silence that could almost be touched. Like a chill, thick mist had descended on the place, shutting it off entirely from the outside world. Ritter was tingling with the thought of what was coming. The seconds counted down like chimes inside his head.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the silence finally ended. The triple gunshot came from outside. A pause, then two more blasts.
Front of the house.
Ritter moved fast up the hallway to the door. Outside, he found Wylie and Duhame standing under the shadows of the oak trees, guns waving left and right as if every pocket of darkness held a threat. Ritter saw the Remington 870 pump lying on the ground. Corcoran’s.
‘Mike’s gone,’ Wylie said, breathing hard. ‘He was right there next to me, and then he was gone, just like that.’
‘Didn’t you see anything? You must’ve seen something.’
Wylie’s eyes glistened in the darkness. He swallowed audibly. ‘I didn’t see or hear a goddamned thing. He was there and then he wasn’t.’
‘Like a fuckin’ ghost took him,’ Duhame muttered.
Ritter glanced around him into the deep darkness. The cop wouldn’t be far away, dead in the bushes. Ritter didn’t believe in ghosts. He knew what had taken Corcoran, and Hope was already somewhere else.
Ritter had hunted men all his life. Nobody could escape him.
His eyes narrowed. Was that a movement up along the side of the house? He stared hard, at the darkness. He was certain that part of the shadows had shifted. Black moving on black. Ritter didn’t want to use a flashlight and betray his own position. The dark could work for you as much as against you. That was why he loved it.
Ritter turned back to Wylie, and whispered close in his ear, ‘Behind me. Single file, three yards apart. Not a sound.’
They moved up the side of the house towards where Ritter thought he’d seen the movement. Ritter led the way, light and quiet as a panther, then Wylie, then Duhame. Ritter could almost hear Wylie’s thudding heart a few steps behind.
He flinched as the crunch of a snapping twig came from the rear. All those times he’d led US Special Forces patrols through enemy territory in the total confidence that none of his men would leave the slightest sign of their passing; now he was in charge of a bunch of keystone cops who advertised their presence with a sound trail like a fuckin’ rhino. He glared back in anger, and saw Wylie’s pallid face behind him in the darkness. Ritter put his finger to his lips. Wylie shook his head, as if to say ‘it wasn’t me’.
Ritter’s eyes narrowed. He peered past Wylie’s shoulder, at where Duhame had been tagging along behind them just a moment ago.
Duhame was gone.
Ritter spun back, brushed by Wylie, then stopped after five yards and looked down.
Duhame was lying sprawled out with his face in the dirt. Ritter dropped into a crouch and rolled the cop over. His larynx had been crushed and his neck was broken.
Ritter felt himself go cold. That was a feeling he hadn’t had in a long, long time. He looked into the shadows and felt them looking back at him.
I know you’re there.
Wylie saw the body and drew in a sharp intake of breath. ‘Jesus Christ. What the fuck—?’
‘He’s hunting us,’ Ritter said.
Then the lights came on inside the house.
Ritter ran back to the door, not even caring if Wylie was with him or not. The front hallway was lit up, as was the room with the blown-out window where they’d all been waiting earlier.
O’Rourke had never left it. But it wasn’t him who’d put the lights on. He was sitting in an armchair with a Cherokee tomahawk buried in his skull. The blood pool at his feet was still slowly spreading, catching the lights’ reflection.
Ritter sensed Wylie enter the room behind him, heard the gasp of shock. Wylie just wasn’t used to this kind of stuff. He was going to have to learn fast.
‘Don’t move,’ Ritter told him, and left the cop standing there open-mouthed while he moved quickly back out of the room and up the hallway to the stairs, turning off the light as he went.
He reached the door of the study and rapped with his fist.
‘Who’s that?’ came the nervous voice from inside.
‘Just checkin’, boss. Stay tight.’
Before McCrory could reply, Ritter’s head whipped round at the percussive single boom of the gunshot downstairs. He sprinted back down the staircase, back down the hallway and into the room.
Wylie had moved, but only as far as the shotgun blast had blown him. He was sprawled backwards over the bar with half his head gone. Blood was drip-drip-dripping off the edge of the bar and into the spittoon on the floor.
Ritter whirled around at the sound of approaching footsteps in the hall, raised his rifle to point it at the door, then lowered it as Strickman, Lukas and Meagher came into the room.
‘Yeugh,’ Lukas said at the sight of the dead cops.
‘Told you not to leave your positions,’ Ritter said. ‘Where’s Moon?’
Chapter Sixty
The stable block was dark. Billy Bob Moon reached into his pocket for the key McCrory had given him, shone his torch on the tack-room door and popped open the padlock. He undid the top bolt, then the lower, opened the door a crack and shone his torch inside, peering in after it. ‘Li’l pig, li’l pig, let me in,’ he said softly.
Erin was sitting in the corner, her back against the whitewashed wall, her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around her shins. She looked up in fear and defiance, blinking at the light beam playing on her face, and Moon had a stab of pleasure when he saw she’d been crying.
‘Told ya I’d be back, angel wings.’ He pulled the torch back to hold it under his chin, flashed her a demonic smile, then withdrew his head from the crack in the door and turned to Coyle. ‘I’ll be a couple of minutes. Keep your eyes open and your fuckin’ ears shut. Know what I mean?’
‘Nobody said anything about this, bro,’ Coyle said, getting the message.
‘Ain’t your bro, copper.’ Moon grinned at him. ‘S’matter, you worried you won’t get a piece when I’m done?’ He stepped inside the tack-room and shut the door.
‘Together at last,’ he said, shining the torch in her eyes.
Erin rose blinking to her feet, but before she could make a sound or a move, he rushed her and stunned her with a blow to the neck, then punched her in the face. Her head flopped back and he caught her as she fell. Moon helped himself to a good, long feel as he lowered her to the floor. ‘Oh, yes,’ he breathed. ‘You and me. Sweet baby.’
‘Everything all right in there?’ Coyle’s voice said from outside.
‘Shut it,’ Moon snapped back.
He knelt beside her, unslung his M4 and laid it on the floor, then positioned the torch so that its beam shone across her body. Reaching behind his hip, he drew the black USMC Ka-Bar knife from its leather sheath.
Sitting holding a knife over the yielding body of a woman was such a good feeling. Moon pushed the point of the knife in between the buttons of her blouse and angled it so he could peer inside, giving himself a sneak preview of what was to come. Nice. Very nice.
The knife froze in his hand for an instant as multiple gunshots sounded, muffled by distance and the buildings.
‘Something’s happening,’ Coyle said.
Moon heaved a sigh and twisted his head round to bark, ‘Hear your voice one more time, dude, I swear.’ He’d waited too long for this to be distracted. Ritter could handle thin
gs out there.
Moon slashed a strip of cloth from Erin’s shirt with the razor-sharp blade and used it to tie a gag around her mouth. The knife was no longer needed, for now. As he was slipping it back in its sheath, he heard more distant gunfire; a single shot this time, the fat low boom of a twelve-gauge that sounded like it had come from the house. Moon paused, detecting the sound of Coyle moving about nervously behind the tack-room door. This time the cop had the good sense to keep his mouth shut.
‘See, they got’m,’ Moon muttered under his breath. ‘Nothing to get all jacked up about.’
He had better things to do. Oh, so much better. He ran a hand up along the curve of the unconscious woman’s thigh and hip, savouring the moment, taking his time. The hand continued upwards, slithering over her. It reached her shoulder then moved across her throat, lingered there for a second as he wondered what it would be like to strangle her when she was still unconscious, totally yielding and passive. That was something he’d never tried before. Then he could do her when she was dead: which was something he’d only done once before, and enjoyed; but it was hard to decide whether it would be more fun than doing her while she was awake and fighting back, and then strangling her. Or using the knife on her.
So many options. These were the kinds of fundamental questions that generally preoccupied much of his thinking. Whatever he chose, nobody would mind. Why hold on to the bait now that the fish were biting?
He decided to do her while she was still alive, then use the knife. There’d be others. His hand continued moving. Very slowly, he undid one button of her blouse. He ran his tongue over his lips. Undid another button, inserted a finger and drew the soft cotton back a little so he could see the lacy material of her bra. ‘Ooh. Baby. Uncle Moon’s gonna give you some lovin’.’ He moved down to the next button.