Falls Like Lightning (24 page)

She wedged the stock against her shoulder. “Door handle. And let me see it go through.”

He shifted to his hip, picked up the cuffs, and pushed himself to his feet.

She wished she had a pump-action shotgun. The sound of the slide action communicated volumes. She cocked a hammer.

He stared at her and locked one cuff around a wrist.

“Good.” Elle motioned with the barrel. “Now through the handle.”

The old man shuffled to the door, threaded the bracelet behind the iron grip, and locked it around his other wrist.

She looked him over, making sure there weren’t any tricks he could pull, nothing she’d missed. She directed him with the gun barrel to open the door all the way inward, wide open.

Elle sidestepped toward the exit, never lowering the shotgun, never taking her eyes off of the man. “Back against the wall. Legs forward and toes up.”

The old man sneered and leaned back against the wall. He straightened his legs in front of him and rested on his heels.

She paused at the threshold. “I never wanted your gold. If there even is any. My plane crashed, and my jumper crew may have injured members out in the forest.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Authorities will be back here, if the fire doesn’t come this way first. Don’t think you’ve gotten away with anything. You’ll be held accountable for your actions.”

An insolent grin grew across the old man’s bruised face. He cackled. “Lady, it don’t matter.”

Her eyebrows tightened. This man was disturbed.

He laughed again. “It don’t matter. ’Cause I’m going to be dead, and so are you.”

A sharp edge pressed against her windpipe. Hot rancid breath met the angle of her jawline. Beneath her chin, an upturned fist with tattooed fingers held a glinting steel blade.

A raspy voice wafted tobacco, “Evening, Pilot. Turns out you’re just as hard to kill as our spotter.”

CHAPTER

40

C
leese tugged Elle backward from the cabin entrance. Her heart sped. Her breathing shallowed. She lowered the shotgun.

“Nope,” he said. “No, no. Keep that barrel pointed up and at our superhuman friend, Mr. Zane Leewood. How you doing in there, old man? I should’ve double-checked to make sure you were dead. Crazy old fool.”

Cleese angled Elle so she could still see the old man through the doorway. “How’s that, girly? Can you get ’em from here? Go ahead. Shoot ’em. But make it a good one, ’cause he don’t die easy.”

Elle felt nauseated. “I . . . I can’t do that.”

“Nonsense. I do believe this man was holding you prisoner, now, wasn’t he? Who knows what kind of plans he had for you. Shoot him.”

Elle set the hammer and threw down the shotgun. She couldn’t shoot him if she wasn’t holding it.

Cleese pulled her head back and pressed the knife to her skin. “That . . . did not make me happy.” He exhaled through his nose and angled the point of his knife on her throat.

“Please, I’m a mother.” She regretted the words as soon as she said them.

Cleese feigned a gasp. “My, my. A
mother.
” He twisted the blade back and forth and began to sing, “My mother and your mother right were hanging up clothes. My mother punched your mother right in the nose. What color was. Her. Blood.” He pierced her skin.

Elle stifled a cry as the burning sting heightened. A hot trickle rolled down her neck, pooling in the upper angle of her sternum.

“Old man,” Cleese said, “you’re just going to have to wait to be finished off. You hear? Me and the pilot have some business to attend to.” He forced her backward, taking one step at a time.

She squeezed tight her eyes.
God, help me. God, help me.
She opened them and saw Zane crouched by the door handle in the semi-darkness of his cabin, eyes darting between her and Cleese and the path he walked her back on.

The paths.

Elle scanned the ground around them. All the old man’s well-worn tracks followed three different routes, none of which they were walking on now.

She swallowed, taking metered steps with Cleese. He was saying something, lilting and monologuing, appearing perfectly at ease with the situation at hand.

He took a limping step back. And another. Before the very next Elle looked back at the old man. His eyes grew wide.

The bear trap sprang.

Cleese shouted and loosened his grip. Elle grabbed his knife-wielding arm with both hands and pushed it away from her neck. She dove away and rolled to her feet.

He let out an agonized cry, shock in his face. His right leg bent at an obtuse angle just below the knee, where the jaws of the bear trap came together. Out of his reach but not on one of the old man’s paths, Elle froze, realizing she could be inches away from the same fate as Cleese. Cleese writhed and cursed, the knife still in his grip. Just behind her, Elle spotted the path. She took one long step onto it and backed away.

Just run.

But she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. The second she turned he might hurl the blade at her back.

Get out of here.

Cleese still paid her no attention. The path she backed along led right to the cabin. From there she could get on the path she’d arrived on with the old man and run up the hill, away from all this. She quickened her backward pace. Just a few more steps to the cabin.

Something clicked in Cleese’s face. The shock had worn off. In one instant he shut out the pain, in the next he fixed his fury on Elle. He pinched the knife blade between his thumb and forefinger and held it up by his head.

Elle stumbled backward and collided with the cabin. Stunned, she shot a glance up the hill path. She was only about twelve feet away—still within throwing distance.

Cleese bared his spaced-tooth grin. “Looks like you ain’t going to get out of this after all.” His arm cocked. His eyes widened. Elle scrambled for the cabin door.

A gunshot blasted.

Cleese collapsed forward, falling face down on the dirt. A blood pool floated the dust around him.

Electrical tension coursed through Elle’s body. Staccato breaths. Beading sweat. Standing in the doorway, one handcuff hanging free from his wrist, the old man held the shotgun at his shoulder, the barrel still pointed toward Cleese, who lay in the dirt.

Zane cracked his neck and lowered the weapon. “Been wanting to do that.” He turned toward Elle. “Come on now, woman. Did you really think I wouldn’t keep an extra set of keys on my person?”

His chest shook with a building coughing fit. He pushed his lips together to try and hold it in, which only made him convulse more violently. The coughing finally escaped with potent hacking. He spat and brought the gun to bear on Elle.

“Now, little lady, this here fellow obviously had no love for you. But that don’t mean I believe you none. You could just as easily be one of another party out to get to my stash. I ain’t no fool. I done survived out here for years, and now you see why.” He sniffed and ran his tongue along his bottom lip. “So I suppose we’re just about back to where we started now, ain’t we.”

CHAPTER

41

A
nother gunshot. Sweat dripped from Caleb’s brow and soaked into the rugged wood beneath him. He straightened and massaged his lower back, glancing again at the path to the prospector’s cabin.

What’s going on, Cleese?

Caleb was torn. Not out of particular loyalty to Cleese. But because he knew that keeping him happy was key to getting his own share out of all this. That, and Caleb was making pitifully slow progress on moving the gold into the clearing. He’d had to first empty half of each chest in the basement of the storage cache in order to even be able to scoot the chest onto and off of the dumbwaiter and then outside from there.

He was beginning to worry. Cleese was a capable and ruthless man. But Caleb had already seen Cleese bested once by Silas. If Silas and Bo were still out there and managed to get the upper hand on Sippi and Rapunzel, who were chasing them without a weapon . . .

Caleb exhaled, realizing the idiocy of his plan as he reconsidered its merits. Was it destined to fail? What had he been thinking? In his lust for the gold, had he already made mistakes that doomed his mission to failure?

“No.” Caleb shook his head and whispered, “No. This is ours. Ours by right.”

The beating of helicopter blades sounded in the distance. Caleb squinted into the diffuse smoky light overhead. His pilot was going to have to come in on instruments and instinct. Caleb switched his radio to a local line-of-sight channel. No repeater necessary or desired. Radio waves could carry a bit without a repeater, but given their remote position, no one should overhear them. Once the chopper cleared the haze overhead, he should have enough visibility to touch down.

Caleb chewed the inside of his cheek. It was going to be close.

He depressed the transmit button on his Handie-Talkie. “Bluebird, this is Ground. How do you copy?”

The radio squelched and sat silent in Caleb’s chest pack. He tried again with the same transmission.

The sound of the helicopter grew louder. Caleb took a deep breath and resolved to move another load of the gold. Once he got that up, he’d attempt to contact the Huey again.

If only Cleese would get back soon, he’d have some help. He descended the ladder and loaded up another half-filled chest onto the dumbwaiter. He hoisted the load to the first level, his gloves wearing thin from the work, and dragged the chest one side at a time onto the floor.

His radio squawked. “Ground, this is Bluebird. I’m over your location but don’t have eyes on you.”

Caleb dropped the end of the chest in the opening of the bunker. He caught his breath and replied, “Copy, Bluebird. Stand by.”

He pulled his GPS from his pocket and walked to the place he’d marked for the landing zone. The last digits flipped into place, and he radioed the exact coordinates to the chopper. “Descend at those coordinates and you should have eyes on the LZ at about two hundred feet.”

“Copy that, Ground.”

Caleb pulled four fusees from his pack and struck their sulfur heads. Pink flames shot from the ends as he dropped one at each of the four corners of the fifty-foot-by-fifty-foot landing zone. Not a ton of room, but enough for Jake to set her down safely.

The heavy helicopter blades hacked through the air overhead. The smoke cloud hanging overhead swirled and shook. Two landing skids emerged, followed by the white steel body of the chopper.

“Bluebird, I’ve got eyes on you now. Maintain your trajectory.”

“Copy that, Ground. I’ve got a visual on the LZ.”

The Huey lowered, and the noise intensified. Pebbles and dirt went airborne. Caleb shielded his face and found refuge in the opening to the cache.

Jake angled the tail rotor away from the cache and toward one of the far fusee. He tapped one landing skid down and then the next. The helicopter rested into position, and the engines cut off with a decrescendoing whine.

The rotor blades spun down and the pilot’s door opened. Jake climbed down and walked over. He shook hands with Caleb. “So what? Nobody show up to your party?”

Caleb wasn’t exactly in a jovial mood. “Things haven’t gone as planned.”

Jake cocked his head.

A voice shouted from the small hill beyond the cache. “Caleb.”

Sippi descended. Rapunzel lumbered after him.

Sippi eyed Jake and held Caleb’s pistol in the air. “Mansfield’s dead.”

Caleb spat. So much for keeping Jake in the dark. “You’re sure?”

“Shot him myself. The body floated to shore.”

Jake pocketed his hands and glanced at the helicopter.

Caleb drew a breath. “What about the spotter?”

Rapunzel limped over. “He’s in the lake—shot or drowned.”

Caleb looked from Rapunzel to Sippi. “That right, Sippi? You know he’s dead?”

Sippi sniffed. “I shot several rounds at both those guys. Bo floated to the edge. Kent’s body drifted to the middle of the lake.”

The skin at Caleb’s temples tightened. “Crystal Lake?”

He nodded.

“You see the plane?”

“No sign of it. Busted-up treetop. That’s it.”

“What’d you do with Bo’s body?”

Rapunzel scratched his beard. “We left him on the shore.”

“And you couldn’t see your way to retrieving Kent’s body?”

Sippi jutted his chin. “He was way out there, Caleb. Was already sinking by the time we got done checking Bo.”

Caleb turned and put his hands behind his head. “All right. We’ll figure it out. No one but us knows the pilot aimed to put the plane down there. For now just forget it. Good enough. Now give me the gun.”

Sippi studied him.

“Give it to me.”

Sippi turned the grip toward Caleb and flashed a glance at Rapunzel. “Only one round left.”

Caleb snatched the weapon, checked the safety, and tucked it in his belt. “You get the other clip?”

“I didn’t know they had—”

“Never mind.” Caleb exhaled. “This is Jake. He’s our ticket out of here. The man doesn’t work for free. He gets an equal cut. With Monte and Bo gone, that means more for the rest of us. Help him get all this loaded up.”

Rapunzel huffed. “Where you going?”

“To find Cleese. There’s been gunshots.”

“Thought that’s what we heard.”

“The old man’s body is gone. So he went to try to find him.”

“Oh? And you just figured you’d leave out that little detail.”

“We’re on a time schedule. With these winds, the fire’ll be upon us anytime. I’ll just make a quick search. Jake, if we’re not back in twenty minutes, take off without us. We’ll rendezvous at the secondary landing zone at the time we arranged. You’ve got the coordinates, right?”

The pilot nodded.

Caleb eyed the men. Fatigue shadowed their faces. Their enthusiasm waned. Caleb knew the cure. He walked to one of the storage chests and kicked the top open. Gold nuggets glinted. Eyes widened.

“That, fellas, is the payoff. We’re almost there. As far as anyone knows, we all perished with Jumper 41. Load up this booty and we can, each of us, inherit life anew.”