False Witness (39 page)

“
Everything
is important at this stage. That’s not paranoia, it’s just good sense.”

Flowers looked uncomfortable. “Fine,” he said. “I was talking to my mom. She wanted me to call when I got to Lost Lake.” He was avoiding eye contact. “She worries about me, all right?”

Sam and Tess looked at each other and simultaneously burst into a fit of giggles.

“Oh, that’s
really
appropriate,” Flowers griped.

“Sorry, buddy,” said Sam, still chuckling. “It’s just an odd image. And we’ve been on edge for quite awhile now.”

Tess wiped her face with her hands and took a deep breath. Things were serious again. “We need to head out right now,” she said. “We don’t know how long we have before they send the instructions.”

They headed back the way they had come, towards the street below Shitbox’s cabin. His instructions were easy to follow; he’d given Sam landmarks rather than street names. Fifteen minutes later, they had reached the entrance to the overgrown road that Shitbox said would lead them to the Bluebird mine. As they started down it, Flowers said, “I wish I had my vest.”

“There may be one where we’re going,” said Tess.

“I doubt it’ll fit; I’m kind of a special order.”

Sam thought about Shitbox. He was a head shorter than Flowers, but quite a bit wider. “Don’t be so sure,” he said.

Five minutes later, they saw the abandoned office building. Sam led them away from the structure, along the line of the forest, the way Shitbox had instructed them. They crept low – or as low as Flowers’ height would allow – for another three minutes when Sam saw a brief mirror flash in the woods. It was Shitbox’s signal. They followed it to its source, a small clearing under an enormous pine, where Shitbox and Sam sat next to Crowe’s bag of weapons.

“Glad you made it,” said Shitbox. He didn’t take his eyes off the building. Alex looked shell-shocked. Sam couldn’t blame him.

Tess hunkered down next to Alex and put an arm around his neck. “I’m so sorry about Angie,” she said. “I don’t know how it happened. We only lost sight of her for a few minutes.”

“They had to have been watching you,” he said. “There’s nothing you could have done.”

Shit box turned to the group. “Focus on the here and now,” he said. He eyed Flowers up and down before saying, “Shitbox. You must be Flowers.”

Sam half-expected a sarcastic response, but instead Flowers simply nodded. “Sam tells me you’re in charge,” said the cop. “What’s the situation?”

“Group on the second floor. No way to tell how many, but it’s a good bet two of em are Jason and Angie. Far as I can see, there’s no easy way to get in without bein seen or heard.”

Flowers surveyed the building. “What about that window there?” he said, pointing to the spot where Crowe had entered the basement. “The plywood’s loose.”

Sam saw the familiar roses blossoming high on Shitbox’s cheeks. “I can’t fit through that,” he said gruffly.

“I can,” said Flowers. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I can make it. I’ll come up and let you in through the back door.”

“Won’t work,” said Shitbox, shaking his massive head. “Both doors are chained from the outside.”

Sam thought for a moment. “There has to be another way inside,” he said. “They wouldn’t have used that window to go in and out; it’s too difficult, especially with Angie as a hostage. The fact we didn’t hear anything at the gas station means they must have knocked her out somehow, so they were carrying her.” He looked at the side of the building. There was a grey steel door about twenty feet from the front door, and another in the same position at the back door. Each had a crumbling concrete step-up leading to it. Neither had handles. “I bet those doors have crash bars. All you need to open them is to be on the inside. They probably locked one in the open position and just jimmy it when they need to get inside.”

Flowers smiled. “You should’ve been a detective, Sammy. I can get in through the basement window, come up to the first floor, and open one of those doors.” He turned to Shitbox. “You come in and we go upstairs together. What do you think?”

Shitbox nodded. “But if Sam’s wrong, and those doors don’t open, you come back out through the window and we regroup. Got it?”

“Got it.” Flowers looked at the black bag on the ground. “So what have you got in the bag of goodies?”

Shitbox unzipped it. “What do ya want?”

“Got a Glock?”

Shitbox took the one from Alex’s hand and gave it to Flowers. Sam finally noticed Alex, who had been silent since they arrived. He was pale, and his eyes were wide with panic and couldn’t keep still; they were darting all over the place. The building to Sam, Sam to Flowers, Flowers to Shitbox.
Can’t blame him
, he thought.
I’d look the same if it were Tess inside that building.

“Anything else you want?” asked Shitbox.

“Vest, if you’ve got one,” said Flowers. “Sam said you might.”

“Sorry. We’re both outta luck.”

Flowers inspected the Glock. Apparently satisfied, he stuffed it in the belt of his shorts. “All right,” he said. “I’m going in.”

They all watched as he crept toward the open window, scanning constantly with his weapon at the ready. Sam realized then how little he actually know about the cop. Judging by how he was moving, Flowers had advanced training, possibly special weapons and tactics. Their relationship had consisted solely of conversations in safe places; this was something else. This was Flowers at work.

The cop reached the basement window and pulled back the plywood. He dropped his legs through the opening and slid about a foot on his back before stopping abruptly. Sam assumed there was something in his way. A few seconds later, the rest of Flowers’ body followed. He was in.

Sam held his breath. He saw Tess chewing her bottom lip, staring at the side of the building. Beside her, Alex looked completely outside the situation, as if he were having a conversation with himself. Shitbox simply stared.

Less than a minute later, the door near the back swung open a crack. One of Flowers’ hands emerged and made a sharp beckoning motion. Shitbox grabbed a large shotgun – Sam realized with some satisfaction that it was the same one he had used at the Rosebush the day before – and rose up from the ground.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said. “Whatever’s gonna happen in there, you don’t need to be a part of it. Get to someplace safe.”

“What if they’re not all in there?” asked Tess. “What if there are more someplace else?”

“Doesn’t matter. Yer not safe here. Do as I say.”

Shitbox crept forward, but Alex suddenly reached out and clutched his beefy arm.

“Be careful, Shitbox,” he said, wide eyed. “Don’t trust Flowers.”

“I never did.”

“
Watch him
.” Alex was pleading now. “Do whatever you have to do to keep Angie safe. You promised.”

“Roger that,” the giant said, and then he was gone. He trotted with surprising speed toward the opened door, covering the space in less than ten seconds. A moment later, he disappeared behind it.

Tess looked at Sam with frightened eyes. “What do we do? Shitbox made a good point; what are
we
supposed to do about anything?”

“Guys,” said Alex.

Sam ran a hand through his hair. He felt a slick line of sweat at his brow. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do we even have time to get away? And what if whoever’s in there takes out Shitbox and Flowers? What happens to Angie?”

“GUYS,” said Alex.

Sam and Tess turned towards him. “What?” asked Tess.

Alex took a shaky breath, let it out. “I recognized Darcy Flowers,” he said. “I mean, his voice. That’s why I told Shitbox to be careful. But he was smarter than us; he already knew not to trust him.”

“What are you talking about?” Sam snapped. He was annoyed now. “What’s your problem with Flowers? He’s here to help.”

Beside him, Tess’s eyes suddenly grew larger than Sam had ever seen them. Her mouth dropped open an inch before she raised a hand to it.

“Oh my God,” she breathed. “That’s why I recognized him. Oh my God.”

Sam looked from her to Alex and then back to her. “Can one of you please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

“I’ve talked to Flowers on the phone,” said Alex. “His voice is Tom Ferbey’s voice.”

“That’s insane,” said Sam. He felt suddenly unsteady on his feet. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Tess grabbed him by the arms. The look on her face was manic. “It’s true,” she said. “That’s why I thought I’d interviewed him before; I recognized his voice, but obviously not the rest of him, because I’d never seen him!”

“Maybe you interviewed him over the phone,” said Sam, but he knew he was grasping at straws. “Isn’t that more likely?”

“We’ve been over this, Sam,” she said, pacing the little clearing. “I
remember
Tom Ferbey’s voice.”

“So do I,” said Alex. “He called me four times. I talked to him for at least ten minutes each time. It was Flowers.”

Sam sat down hard on the dirt, mindless of the dried pine needles jabbing into his rear through the seat of his shorts. A memory was forming in his mind.

“Think about it,” said Tess. “What are the odds that we’d run into him in Lost Lake at the exact moment that we did? If you were to read a twist like that in a James Patterson novel, you’d want your money back.”

Her comment barely registered in Sam’s brain. “He told me to stay away from Crowe,” he muttered. “He said to leave Crowe for the guys with guns.”

“What?”

Sam’s thoughts were cut off by the crash of a shotgun blast inside the building, then another two seconds later. Tess screamed as Sam grabbed her and threw her to the ground beside him. In his peripheral vision, he could see Alex army crawling towards them. Three short, hard pops split the air. Then there was silence.

The three of them huddled together on the ground. Sam’s arms were around Tess; her torso was shaking, and she was breathing in gasps. His own heart was galloping, but his head was clear.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she gasped. “I just need a second.”

Alex looked even more stunned than he had before. “Shotgun and pistol,” he said.

Sam nodded. “That means Shitbox and Flowers both got off rounds.”

“But who hit who?” asked Tess.

“Whom,” Alex said quietly.

Sam slapped him on the side of the face. “Get your head in the game, Dunn!” he snapped. It seemed to help. Alex shook his head; when he looked back at Sam, his eyes were more focused.

“Wake up, soldier,” he said. “Right.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m with you.”

“Good,” said Sam. He let go of Tess and crawled over to the bag, hoping there was still something useful inside. He needn’t have worried.
God bless you, Crowe
, he thought as he reached in and pulled out a black, short-barreled rifle. The clip jutted out from a slot in front of the trigger guard, and a handle grip was attached below the barrel. An assault rifle, the kind most left-leaning Canadians clucked their tongues over when reading about shootouts in the United States. He’d never fired anything like this on the farm, but he assumed the mechanics were essentially the same. He reached into the back of his shorts, withdrew the Walther pistol, and handed it to Tess. He flipped off the safety.

“Are you okay with this?”

She looked down at the gun. “I think so,” she said. She looked up at him. “I guess I have to be, don’t I?”

The assault rifle was the last of the firearms in the bag. All that was left was some surveillance equipment and half-a-dozen stun grenades. Sam had never seen one before outside of television, but he knew how they worked: pull the pin and toss. It let out an ear-splitting bang and a flash of light that rendered the target effectively deaf and blind for a few minutes without doing any lasting physical harm.

He handed one to Alex. “Know what to do with this?”

Alex turned it over in his hand. “Pull and throw?”

“Yeah. It’s not a gun, but on the bright side, you can’t shoot yourself with it.”

They sat there on the ground together, breathing noisily, for what seemed to Sam like the better part of an eon, though the rational part of his brain told him it was less than two minutes. There was no sign from inside the office.

The cell phone in Tess’s hand jingled to signal the arrival of a new text message, sending an electric jolt up Sam’s spine. The other two reacted the same way. All of them stared down at the device as if it was some sort of alien artifact.

COME IN AND JOIN THE PARTY, the message read. LEAVE THE WEAPONS OUTSIDE AND THE GIRL LIVES.

The stinging in his eyes drew Crowe out of the tarry blackness of semi-consciousness and into the dusty light of a large room. He blinked several times; it wasn’t the light that stung, it was the liquid pouring down his forehead. Whether blood or sweat, he couldn’t tell. The heat was smothering in here. His head pounded in time with the beat of his heart. The front of his tank was black with blood.

He looked around as his eyes adjusted to the light. He was seated in a vintage boardroom chair, the kind with a wide, flat back, square armrests, and four sturdy chrome legs. His hands were still bound behind his back. He was in a foyer at the top of the stairs. It appeared to have been cleared of a group of old metal desks that had been pushed into groups that sat at odd angles to each other. It was brighter up here, thanks to the banks of transom windows that still streamed dusty daylight into the room from above the larger windows and their plywood covers.

He looked to his right. The dirty blonde wig lay on the floor, looking like the corpse of an underfed cat. Several yards away, farther into the room, Shitbox was lying motionless on his back. Crowe could see three small circles of blood on the left side of his upper chest.

Ah, fuck
, he moaned inwardly. His breathing hitched softly.
I’m so sorry, big guy
.

“Finally awake?” he heard a voice say from above him. “Good.”

He looked up at one of the largest men he’d ever seen; not quite as tall as Orlog, the Romanian giant he’d worked for with the penchant for flipping over Russian automobiles, but certainly as thick. The guy was sweating profusely.