Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (22 page)

The dude didn’t reappear. Reg lowered his arms and looked around as if he might find one place better than another for the business he had in mind.

Anna watched, nerves singing like high-tension wires.

Wily slid into the ditch. Anna gave him a hand up. Belly down on the bank, ears flattened, he took his place at her shoulder.

Reg’s arms hung at his sides, swaying lifelessly as he turned around several times. The hoods of his double-layered sweatshirts were down, the yellow of the undershirt bright in the dreary close of afternoon. He must have pushed them off when the work of finding wood warmed him. Now he pulled them up, both together, making himself black as a ninja, and putting two tough layers of fabric between his neck and the dull knife Anna held.

Given his terror of wolves and loons and things that go bump in the wilds, Anna doubted he would have ventured two feet from the group without the Walther PPK. In the failing light, and the black of his sweatshirt, she couldn’t see whether he carried it in the pouch pocket on his stomach or shoved into the waistband of his pants.

In over forty years of movie viewing Anna had seen hundreds, if not thousands, of pistols shoved into the back of a corresponding number of pants. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, she had tried it. Her SIG SAUER 9 mm was more comfortable than her old Colt wheel gun; still, it either gouged into her back, fell out, or slid down her butt. She suspected the carry had been invented by actors. Reg didn’t hold his weapon as if he’d learned to use firearms at the movies. He held it as if he used it as a tool in his day-to-day work. The gun would be in his pouch.

Not finding any place more conducive to elimination than another, Reg stopped turning. Furtively, he glanced around. Anna didn’t flinch. His gaze traveled only at eye level. Threats from up in the trees or down on the ground were safe from detection. Assured he was unobserved, he half squatted, fumbling at the front of his trousers. The Walther tumbled from his pouch and struck the ground with a solid thud. Anna could almost feel the weight of it in her hand. It took concentration to force her eyes away from the gun, and to the man she had to go through to get it.

“Fuck,” Reg whispered. He stood again, undid his pants, pulled them down around his knees, then squatted. Using his left hand for balance, he leaned forward in much the same position as a linebacker waiting to charge.

The time would never be better. Anna rose from the ditch like a mist. Wily was a shadow at her heels. Together, they drifted past the boughs of the fir that had hidden them. The bittersweet smell of Christmas was in Anna’s nose. The knife was in her hand.

Reg was too big, too strong to rush. He had to be disabled before he knew the fight was on. Nothing fancy, a knife in his back, deep enough she could keep his hand away from the Walther until he bled to death, or she got hold of it and shot him. Four yards, then three. Eyes on the ground, he was grunting with the strain of relieving himself when he was cold and dehydrated and frightened.

Six more feet.

An indefinable ghost breathed into the clearing. Neither seen nor heard nor smelled: felt on the skin like cobwebs, a faint electricity in the mind. Anna had sensed it before. It was the unvoiced whisper that tells the stag to look up as the hunter centers him in his sight, that hushes the entire flock when the hawk flies over. Reg felt it: a brush across the nape of his neck, a bell in the back of his brain. He wrenched his head around so far it looked like demon possession. He saw Anna and Wily, screamed, and fell sideways, his legs bound by his trousers.

The gun was in his hand and he was firing before he truly hit the ground.

Anna dropped like a stone, rolled, and didn’t stop until she was beneath the kindly veil of fir boughs. Wily stood his ground, growling. Reg kept firing. The sharp shriek of bullets ricocheted off stone, the reports cracking the air. Not on the firing range, no ear protection, the noise stunned Anna.

“Wily,” she hissed or screamed. The dog scrambled under the bough. A chunk of mud the size of a man’s fist exploded near him. More shots and branches breaking. Half deaf, she wrapped her fist around the dog’s mouth to stop him from growling. It didn’t. It wasn’t Wily. It was her; teeth bared, she was snarling. Unable to remember how to stop, she released Wily and put a hand over her mouth.

It didn’t matter. They might as well howl. Several yards of unprotected space lay between them and the ravine. The stand of firs was an island of cover in an otherwise exposed area. Knife clutched in her fist, she crawled rapidly around the fir, slipped out from beneath, and, keeping it between her and the gunman, listened.

*   *   *

The knife fell
from her fingers. Wily whined. Blood covered Anna’s hand. Fascinated, she stared at the red, so like that of the checks on the coat, as it spread down her fingers and dripped onto the duff in bright splashes of color. Like maple leaves in autumn, she thought. Dizziness spun the world into a kaleidoscope of trees and dogs. Her knees gave way and she went down like the devout before the altar.

She’d been shot.

That doesn’t mean I’m dying, she told herself. “Shh,” she shushed Wily, though he wasn’t making a sound. Together, they listened.

Silence. Reg was waiting, toying with them. Anna tried to get to her feet and failed. She reached for the knife and fell on her face.

THIRTY-THREE

“Hey, blondie, ever played hide the salami?” Sean grinned. The night before, the dude had all but handed Katie over to this wretch. Had they reached the airstrip, Katie might have been saved. Another night in the woods: Heath had no reason to think the dude would keep Sean off of her.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said wearily, pretending that it couldn’t happen, that the idea was absurd, in the vain hope pretending would make it so.

Sean’s grin hardened around the edges. “I’ll let you know when I’m kidding,” he snapped. “Come over here, kid.”

Leah’s arm went around her daughter’s shoulders. Awkwardly, she dragged Katie’s slight form into her lap. The look of shock on Katie’s face saddened Heath and, perversely, made her want to laugh. “Leave her alone,” Leah said. No murmur this time. Leah was loud and clear.

The rifle was lying on the ground next to the thug. He sat hunched over his belly, legs thrust out, the pointy-toed boots at cockeyed angles like jackass ears. Raindrops plopped on the leather of his jacket, beaded, and rolled. He picked up the rifle and held it across his knees, the barrel pointed at Leah and Katie.

“Oil slick.” Heath said the first thing that came into her mind to distract him before his affront could turn to rage. “You remind me of an oil slick. Shallow and dirty.”

“That so?” Sean sneered. He moved the rifle so the bore pointed at her, a black, all-seeing eye that never blinked. “How about I shoot you? When you’re dead, you won’t be reminded of anything about anybody, now will you?”

Heath wasn’t sure what he meant, but she was convinced he meant it.

“The dude won’t be happy if you kill one of his cash cows,” she said. She was seated on her tailbone, her back against the burned tree. The muscles of her lower back trembled so violently she had to put her arms to her sides for support. They were so shaky she feared her elbows would give way and she would fall onto Elizabeth.

Flipping the rifle as deftly as a professional baton twirler, Sean brought the butt down on E’s foot. Both Heath and her daughter screamed. “Shut up!” he bellowed.

Heath and Elizabeth stopped screaming. Her sneakered foot in both hands, Elizabeth glared, fierce and furious, at the thug, her bruises making the scowl gargoyle-like. That level of courage was beyond Heath. Her own face, should she be able to see it, would undoubtedly be a mask of abject terror. Worse, a thousand times worse, Heath prayed Katie would do as Sean said, or Leah would order her daughter to go to him, anything to keep him from hurting Elizabeth again.

“Now, blondie, you come over to old Uncle Sean.
Now!
”

“No!” It was Heath who spoke. Command was in her voice. Strong and cold, it slapped into Sean’s face, and for a heartbeat he looked stunned. Before he could recover—before she could sink back into craven selfishness—Heath forged on. “You can hammer my child into the ground with that goddamned rifle and it will not make us one iota more compliant.” Scared speechless by her own outburst, Heath concentrated on keeping her shaking arms from collapsing and ruining her imitation of valor. Beside her, she could hear E breathing through her teeth, a hiss, like air leaking from a tire. She dared not look at her. Should she see betrayal in those beautiful brown eyes, she would fold, throw Leah, Katie—a whole busload of toddlers if she had them—to the devil.

“We do not negotiate with terrorists,” Leah said firmly.

This new Leah startled Heath to silence. Until today, she realized, she’d not heard the woman’s voice, only a feeble echo of it from the recesses of her intellect.

“Jesus,” Sean said. Clutching the rifle, he jammed the butt into the ash and levered himself onto his torn feet, then limped over to where Heath sat. The rifle arced through the air. The barrel struck her on the side of the face.

“What’re you? The fuckin’ United Nations?” He was snarling at Leah. He hadn’t dare hit her.

Still, Heath thought, he’d hit her, not Elizabeth.

We won, she exulted.

That was the last coherent thought she was to have for a couple of minutes. Pain and shock shut her down.

True unconsciousness didn’t come for her—in her cowardice, she might have welcomed that. Not a blackout, but a sinking brownout, where she could not participate in the world of the living, nor could she sleep in the world of the dead. Cheek on the ground, ashes blinded her right eye. Rain fell on the upturned side of her face, unsalty tears. Gray faded in and out of her vision. Thoughts simmered in the recesses of her cranium, none rising close enough to centers of logic to string together.

When focus returned, the rain had stopped and the dude was back. Sean was still talking.

“—getting squirrelly, Dude. Wouldn’t do as I said.”

“We don’t need another cripple on our hands. Don’t bash in the feet.”

“He was going to molest Katie,” Leah said, her voice not as firm as it had been before. Heath understood. The dude was a black hole into which good intentions, honor, and hope vanished without a trace.

Pawing feebly at the earth, Heath managed to get herself into a half-sitting position. Elizabeth grabbed her arm and helped her until she could rest her spine against the tree.

“You know I ain’t one to complain.” Sean was speaking. “But what with there just being us three and them being all the trouble they are, I wanted me a little compensation was all. They’ll pay for blondie if she’s alive, and I don’t like ’em dead.” He began to laugh at this witticism. When the dude did not join him, he stopped uncertainly.

“I’m just saying, Dude. A little something on account.”

“We’ll see,” the dude said.

Leah or Katie whimpered.

“We’ll see” to the likes of Sean was a green light. Heath had known a Sean or two in her life. Deep down, they secretly believed all men were as perverted as they, that other men just didn’t have the guts to act on their feelings. Anything short of a two-by-four to the head, or the federal penitentiary, was tacit permission, a just-between-us-boys wink.

“I found a dry spot,” the dude said. “Get up and move if you want a fire and a place out of the rain tonight.”

“How far?” Heath dared ask. If it was less than a quarter mile, she was damned if she was going to be tied back in the chair while strength remained in her hands to cling to the armrests.

“Ten minutes,” the dude said. He turned and walked away, again leaving them in the care of Sean. “Not the feet,” he called back over his shoulder.

Leah and Elizabeth got Rick Shaw righted. The two of them settled Heath into the seat. Without being asked, Katie helped by standing between the paddle handles holding the chair steady.

Being a burden was heavier on Heath’s heart than any of the physical hardships she was enduring. That her daughter, Leah, and Katie, exhausted, injured, hungry, and cold, had to tend to her before they could tend to themselves made her want to tear big hunks of flesh out of her own arms with her teeth. That they did tend to her made her love for them almost too great to contain. It threatened to turn into tears or acid humor, either of which would be demoralizing.

The only payment for being the cross they bore was, of course, the scarcest commodity; she could only pay her way by being cheerful, optimistic, funny when she could manage it, and only pretending to drink when the water was passed around.

With each turn of the double wheel, agony ripped the side of her face where the rifle barrel had hit. By chance, her jaw had not been broken. A couple of teeth were cracked. Cold pierced the enamel when she breathed through her mouth, and blood stained her saliva. Of these things, she said nothing. Elizabeth did not complain about the black and swollen eye or the ribs that must have hurt with each breath, or the new injury to her foot. Leah did not complain of fatigue or fear.

It wasn’t entirely stoicism. Maybe it wasn’t strength in any form, Heath thought as they rolled back toward the living wood. They were like the trees falling in the forest. If there was no one to hear, there was little point in making noise.

From a distance, what sounded like gunshots, too fast and too many to count, pierced the thick air.

“What the…,” Sean muttered, then, “Move, move!” and a cry from Elizabeth. Sean had shoved the end of the rifle in her ribs. Heath didn’t look at him, not wanting to further enrage him by movement or eye contact. Leah and E pulled harder. Jolting over uneven ground, it was all Heath could do to stay in the chair.

The dude was at the edge of the living forest, his back to them, facing the direction where the shots had originated.

“Move!” Sean yelled behind Heath.

Beyond the dude, out of the trees, where the light had given itself over to fog and coming night, something was bellowing, roaring like a lion with a thorn in every paw.