Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (36 page)

“That’s right,” the dude said.

Using her teeth, Katie tugged whatever she’d been nipping at from the dude’s coat. The pilot’s satellite phone. She pressed her nose on the bottom and the screen lit up. She pressed her nose on an icon and numbers took over the screen. Poking with her nose, she brought up a nine.

Leah stopped talking, stopped breathing.

And a one.

Silence was a mistake. It brought the dude’s head around. His boot struck Katie on the side of the face. Her head snapped back, and she fell over without uttering a sound. Dead to the world. Or dead. Another swift kick, and the phone went sailing out into the weeds.

The dude tucked the rifle beneath his arm, pulled the Colt from his waistband, and pointed the barrel at Katie’s temple. “I don’t need you both,” he said flatly.

FIFTY-TWO

“What are you doing here?” Heath demanded of her gasping daughter.

“You guys tricked me!” Elizabeth accused. “You were never going to do nothing.”

“Give me the gun,” Anna said.

“I got about a quarter of a mile before I figured it out. I can’t believe you did this! You lied to me! You wanted me out of the way.”

“Of course I want you out of the way,” Heath hissed. “Now get out of the way. Go!”

“Give me the gun,” Anna said.

Elizabeth held out the Walther. Anna took it. “Hold out your hand,” she ordered. Elizabeth held her hand out palm up. Anna released the clip into E’s palm. Four bullets remained. “Shove it back in the butt of the pistol until it clicks.” Taking the gun gingerly from Anna, Elizabeth clicked the magazine into place, then handed it back.

Armed, Anna walked toward the clearing.

The dude had his back to her. As she watched, he took the Colt from the waistband of his pants and pointed it at Katie, lying motionless at his feet. Leah was talking fast, her face contorted with the effort. Anna couldn’t hear the words.

This was the only shot she would get. Resting her wrist on a branch, Anna steadied the gun, took careful aim, then fired. The recoil jerked her hand high and sent shock waves through her damaged arm. Vision grayed out. In this fog, she thought she saw the dude spin, the pistol and rifle flying away from his body.

Gray slid toward black, and Anna slid to her knees.

Elizabeth was beside her. “He’s down,” she whispered. “He’s down, but he’s not dead.”

Anna tried to raise the hand with the gun and managed a couple of inches. “Shoot him again,” she said.

“I can’t,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve never even held a gun. You have to get up. You have to wake up.”

Anna felt hands tugging on her good arm. She tried to remember where her feet were and failed. “Just point and click,” she said.

“Get up! You shot him in the shoulder, it looks like. The dude is on his feet. He’s moving. He’s going to get his gun. The pistol, I think.”

“Shoot at him,” Anna murmured.

“I can’t! I might hit Leah or Katie.”

“Shoot in the air. Anything. Scare him.”

Elizabeth took the gun from Anna’s hand. What seemed an interminable time passed. Still on her knees Anna lifted her head to see Elizabeth, both hands on the pistol grip, barrel pointed toward the sky. The girl’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut and her mouth thinned to a snaky line.

“Pull the trigger,” Anna pleaded.

There was a resounding crack as Elizabeth fired into the air. Anna could smell the gunpowder, feel the sound waves crashing around inside her skull.

“It worked!” Elizabeth whispered. “He’s down on the ground again. Afraid he’ll get shot. He’s still crawling, though.”

“Get me up now,” Anna said. “I can see again.”

FIFTY-THREE

A second shot. The dude fell. Leah hoped he was dead. He wasn’t. He was moving. The second bullet hadn’t hit him. He had dropped to the ground to make a smaller target. For a wasted second or two, she waited for a third shot, waited for Elizabeth or Anna or whoever had the gun to shoot the dude again.

Withering silence filled her ears. Reg had been firing off at anything that moved. Maybe two bullets were all that remained in his gun. His gun was the kind with a clip—magazine—Leah knew. Even if Reg had a second magazine, Elizabeth hadn’t had time to find it.

Katie wasn’t moving. The dude was. His breath came in short staccato puffs. Despite the lack of gunfire, he wasn’t trying to get to his feet. Leah wasn’t sure he could.

“You have been shot,” she told him. “You are dying.” She had read once that people could die of nonlethal bullet wounds if they believed the wound was fatal.

The dude was not people. He kept crawling toward where the pistol had been flung when he was shot.

Rolling and squirming, Leah moved over the ground like a sidewinder over desert sand. She reached the pistol before the dude did. Swinging her legs, she struck it with her bound feet. It skittered a few yards farther from the dude’s grasp.

“You have been shot,” she repeated. “You are going to die.”

The dude crept forward.

“No,” she said. “No. No.” Working her legs like a jackhammer, Leah pounded his side with each word. Ignoring her onslaught, he crawled inexorably after the gun. Leah flopped to her side, trying to keep his body within striking distance. Her feet lashed out, hitting dirt and grass, knocking it into his eyes.

Eyes half closed, he crawled on, never looking at her. Bright red blood, lots of it, slimed the dying yellow grass in his wake. “You are losing too much blood. Quarts. Gallons. Liters,” she added, because he was from Canada. If she could keep him crawling he might run out of blood before he could kill her, or at least before he could shoot Katie.

To keep her legs at the right angle to kick, she had to stay on one hip, crushing the hands tied behind her back. Once more she managed to hit the Colt, knocking it another few feet. Twice she landed body blows, a shoulder, his ribs. Air gusted from his lungs in a grunt, but he didn’t slow down.

Then she was kicking air. He was out of her reach. Hunching and flinging herself, she made a futile effort to catch up. What little strength she’d had was used up. She could barely draw up her knees, let alone kick out with any damaging force.

Gulping air, sweat pouring into her eyes, she stopped. Her flopping had turned her around. The dude was no longer in her field of vision. Katie was. She lay exactly as she’d fallen after the dude’s boot struck the side of her head. Her eyes were closed.

Craning her neck, Leah squirmed around until she laid eyes on the dude. He was between her and the morning sun. Eyes full of dust and sweat, he was a humanoid shadow in stark and splintering light. A man of shadow, a black hallowed fallen angel. As she blinked away the illusion, the dude, fighting gravity, dizziness, or pain, struggled to one knee. The Colt was in his hand. All Leah could do was watch. She hadn’t even the wherewithal to pray.

Propping his right elbow on his thigh, he made a cradle of his right hand, then placed his left forearm in it, steadying his gun hand. Unwavering, the bore of the pistol pointed between Leah’s eyes.

“Charlie,” Leah gasped in sudden remembering. “Charlie.”

His colorless eyes clouded. Confusion? Maybe fury? Or memory.

“Michael called you Charlie,” Leah said.

“Brother Charlie. He called me Brother Charlie.” He thumbed back the hammer.

Beyond him, over his shoulder, Leah saw what she believed at first to be a trauma-induced hallucination. A woman with no eyebrows or eyelashes, with a frizzled mass around her face that looked more like staghorn fern than hair, was walking toward them. The woman wore a red tank top, bright turquoise lace panties, and a pair of shapeless dilapidated bedroom slippers. Encrusted with dried blood, her left arm hung lifeless at her side. A single thread of ruby red ran through the black to end in a teardrop on the tip of her forefinger.

In her right hand was Reg’s pewter-colored pistol.

“Anna?” she whispered.

The dude turned to look.

Anna shot him center mass. The force of the bullet knocked him over. The thump of his head on the ground was palpable. Keeping the gun trained on him, Anna walked up beside him. With the side of her foot, she booted his Colt out of reach of his lax fingers.

“Is Katie dead?” she asked, staring down at the dude’s face.

“I don’t know,” Leah replied. She didn’t want to know she was, and was desperate to know she wasn’t. There was no courage left in the middle to ask. “Is the dude dead?” she asked instead.

“I don’t know,” Anna said, “and I’m not going to get within reach to find out. Is there any food left? I’m starving.”

The dude’s eyes opened. “Mrs. Hendricks?” he whispered.

“I’m here,” Leah said. She sounded nice, caring, like the beloved sister at the bedside of a dying man. She didn’t know why she sounded that way. Too many movies, perhaps. Maybe watching a man dying brought out the best in people.

“Building fund,” he whispered. “Chapel of the Virgin at the sister house of Marie-Reine-du-Monde. See they get it. Gerald owes him. A suicide. Been in purgatory for fourteen years.” Each word was formed separately and pushed up from somewhere deep inside. Blood frothed pink at the corners of his mouth.

“You think you can bribe the Virgin Mary to spring somebody from purgatory?” Anna asked.

Obviously watching a man dying did not bring out the best in everyone.

“I. Never. Met. A woman who—” Weak coughing stopped his words. More blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. “Didn’t want me to buy her a house,” he finished in a rush of breath.

“I will,” Leah heard herself saying. It was true, she would. Not for the dude—Charlie—but for Michael.

“Good,” the dude whispered. His eyes rolled until they focused on Anna, where she stood over him with Reg’s gun. “You were here, always.”

“Yes,” Anna said.

“Silly-looking demon,” he muttered and closed his eyes.

“Is he dead?” It was Elizabeth; she’d come most of the way from the trees to the battleground.

“Getting there,” Anna said. “Don’t go near him. Dibs on his pants. E, check Katie for a pulse. Her carotid. You know how to do it.”

Elizabeth knelt by Katie’s head. She put two fingers on her trachea, then slid them down to the carotid. “Alive,” she reported.

“Thank God,” Leah said simply. “Heath…?” Leah let the question trail off. What did one ask? Did you find your mom’s body?

“Alive,” Anna said. “Shot in the leg.”

Relief so intense it brought tears to her eyes startled Leah. She hadn’t known she cared so much. “Will you untie us now?” she asked Anna.

“I can’t,” Anna admitted. “Can you do it, E?”

From Leah’s viewpoint at ground level, Anna leaned as badly as the tower in Pisa. “Why don’t you sit down?” she asked.

“Can’t,” Anna said.

Elizabeth sawed through the fabric that tied Leah’s hands together with the sharp edge of the piece of metal she’d salvaged. “Get Katie?” Leah asked. “I can work on my ankles. Why can’t you sit down?”

“Won’t be able to get up,” Anna said. Now the tower was leaning in the opposite direction. “Got to go back for Heath. Need to eat something. Have to—”

“Momma?”

“Katie’s come around,” Elizabeth said unnecessarily. Leah believed she would have heard that beautiful word ringing like a steeple bell if Katie had whispered it into the wind on the backside of Saturn.

“I’m here, Katie-did.” She crawled quickly to her daughter’s side. “Here I am.” Katie’s eyes were open.

“Check the pupils,” Anna said in a wispy voice. “See if they’re the same size.”

Leah held Katie’s chin in her hand and, without moving the child’s neck, looked into her eyes. “They are!” She was as proud as if she’d invented pupils, as if her child were the first child in the universe to have two of the same size.

“Hands are free,” Elizabeth announced. “I have to go back and check on Mom. You can keep my scrap to do her feet.” Rising, she dropped the triangle of aluminum beside Leah and trotted off. Trotted, Leah noticed. She wondered if she’d be able to get up more than an old-lady shuffle.

“I’m going behind you,” Leah said to Katie. “I’ll be right here behind you. I’m going to cut your hands loose, okay?”

“Mom, I’m not five years old, you know,” Katie said.

She was going to be all right, Leah thought.

A loud thump brought her eyes up from her work on Katie’s bonds.

Anna had pitched forward onto the ground. The gun was still clutched in her hand.

FIFTY-FOUR

Anna was in ecstasy. Leah and the girls had moved both her and Heath to the warmth of the thugs’ camp. There was food. Using a plastic spoon to prove she was civilized, she shoveled cold Wolf chili with beans into her mouth from a can held between her thighs. Aptly named and delicious: Anna promised she would find out who the chef was and see if Leah could get him canonized while she was bribing the Catholic Church for the release of the dude’s brother’s soul.

Not only was she eating, there was coffee, real coffee. Elizabeth had a pot brewing on a Coleman stove so old, Anna hadn’t seen its like in twenty years. Food and coffee, and trousers: Anna was wearing pants. True, they were too long and too big and belonged to a dead man, but then, she was getting used to wearing dead men’s clothes. Heath had argued against stripping the corpse, saying it was too gruesome a task for Elizabeth, Katie, or even Leah to be made to do. Once it became clear Anna would have the dude’s pants or she’d claim her own back, Heath decided it wouldn’t scar them too deeply.

Elizabeth and Katie were still young enough to retain some of the love of the macabre natural to most kids. They didn’t seem to mind a bit. At any rate, doing it hadn’t damaged Elizabeth’s appetite any. She’d polished off a bag of Doritos and was rifling through the box in search of tasty morsels. Leah and Katie, who had eaten breakfast, were out scouring the field around the body trying to find the cell phone the dude had kicked from under Katie’s nose. Wily lay near the food box, trusting E to share whatever she found.

Heath was eating a deli sandwich. Her color was better, the leg wasn’t bleeding, and she was wrapped from the chest down in the coats of criminals. Warmth, food, and blood flow to the heart.