J. Daniel Sawyer - Clarke Lantham 01 (21 page)

Not tonight. I’d already been shot once tonight. Like riding the Teacups at Disneyland—shocking, nauseating, and anticlimactic all at once. I didn’t much care to repeat the experience.

But every second I lost was one more second that the women in the living room might not have.

First doorway. I faced the wall and crouched low, below the normal line of sight. I threw my weight to the side and brought my gun up.

Bathroom. Freestanding tub. Open curtains. No hidden crannies. Wan moonlight coming in through the otherwise black window. Nobody there.

I covered the six feet to the next room in one stride. The noises from the front room were getting worse. I popped in front of the next door with my .45 at the ready.

A writer’s alcove. Desk against the window looking out. Nobody underneath it.

All clear.

The next door was closed. Probably a closet.

Which I almost slammed into when I heard the scream.

You duck automatically. Someone screams like that for one reason only: Mortal danger.

“Stop! Stop! She can’t breathe!” Nya’s voice.

“Shut up you stupid cunt!” Phil. A crunch, and a yelp, like he’d hit her with something heavy. All malice.

“No!” A man’s voice. Couldn’t quite place it.

Then a thud. A body hitting the ground?

I covered the last five yards as fast as I could without making a sound, right up to the dangling beads. I got there just as two pairs of stomping feet exited to the right—I just caught the shadows. There was another room up there—probably the drawing room, judging by the width of the house.

Past the curtain, the room opened out and to the left. At the far end, near the front door Nya knelt over Bridget’s body, pushing at it, trying desperately to get it to move. She was tied up shibari style, naked except for the rope, her arms cocooned straight against her back.

They’d pretended to her it was a kink game.

Blood trickled down the side of her head from a cut above her brow. Tears came out of her eyes, but she wasn’t sobbing. She was raging. Anyone that got between her and her dead was going to pay for it.

Bridget’s body, also trussed up, still jerked like it was being electrocuted. Dead less than a couple minutes.

I was too late.

“What the hell is your problem? Chickening out?” Gravity’s voice from the family room, through a wide doorway off to the right. Couldn’t see around the corner well enough to watch them.

“Fuck it, man.” Phil snarled and paced. “I did two already.” So Gina was dead. I bit my bottom lip to keep from screaming.

I heard something tapping in the family room. Something hard. Then pounding. One of them was slamming something hard and heavy against the wall. Could be a pipe. Could be a gun.

I cursed my lack of a clear shot.

I heard a shuffling and grunting sound from my left. I risked leaning out to look. I checked left. In the corner, almost where I couldn’t see, tied to a kitchen chair, was Richard Sternwood.

It had been his voice I heard a moment ago. His attention was on the confrontation in the other room.

“You don’t want to strangle her, then shoot her.” Gravity.

“You shoot her!” I heard someone catch something heavy. Phil had probably just thrown the gun to Gravity.

“She’s your problem. You made her.” The gun flew back.

Sternwood shouted from his chair. “Charlie, stop this! You’ve made your point.”

I ducked back into the shadows, but kept my eye on Sternwood.

“Have I?” Gravity tramped back into the room with an ugly-looking Bowie knife. No doubt about how he intended to dispose of the bodies, then. “I don’t think I have. You brought those
freaks
back into this world forty thousand years after they died out. You and your kind, you’ll never be happy with what you are. With who we are. You’re going to make us ‘better’ until there isn’t any ‘us’ left at all.”

“No.” Sternwood had balls. Staring at his only son—his only living child—and stern as if he was lecturing a student for plag
ia
rizing a paper. “You don’t believe that.”

“Yes I do,” hissed Gravity. “And I’m gonna see you watch the last of your little Frankenstein monkeys go extinct again.”

“This isn’t about them, Charlie. It’s about Claire.”

“Don’t you say her name!” Gravity screeched. None of the sadism, none of the control, none of the depth of his gravelly voice. He took a breath, pushed the knife between Sternwood’s lips and against his teeth, and said, more calmly now, “You say her name again, and I’ll cut your tongue out.”

Claire
. Sternwood’s daughter. The one that died.

“I’m sorry.” Sternwood clearly wasn’t. “Please, let this last one go.” He got no reaction. “Phil,” he looked past Gravity, “I’ve been good to you all these years. Taken care of your family…”

A gunshot smashed the window inches from Sternwood’s head.

“Fuck you, Dick.”

“You done,” Gravity said, “Daddy?”

Sternwood clamped lips shut and nodded.

“Good.” Gravity pulled his knife back and stalked into the other room.

My only chance w
as w
hile they were both out there, pacing around and arguing with each other about who had to kill who. Bargaining—you kill the doc, I’ll bury him. You kill them both, and I’ll take care of the bodies. Round and round.

I slipped into the room, shushing Nya and Sternwood with a finger to my lips. I took my folding knife and crawled to Sternwood, past an open closet door, staying as well as I could out of the line of sight with the other room.

“Don’t move.” I cut the bonds on his hands and feet, then re-tucked the ends of the ones on his feet into his shoes so they’d look like they were still tied “Don’t let them know you’re loose. Trust me.”

Nya watched me suspiciously. There was a couch next to her—I threw the knife at it. It landed quietly enough that the music covered it. She scooted back up on to the cushions and grabbed it, then slipped to the ground and lay with her back to the sofa, facing Bridget’s body. She sawed at the rope while the last of her friend’s twitching died away.

“So we’re good?” Gravity said.

“Yeah.”

I stepped back into the open walk-in closet just as they entered the room. A dark corner should keep me pretty well hidden, as long as I didn’t move.

A Smith and Wesson .40 dangled from Phil’s left hand. Blood smeared on the muzzle, probably from Nya’s head. He’d clocked her with it. She’d been smart enough to meet it with a thick part of her skull.

No, she wasn’t dumb.

And she wasn’t helpless. Now, she was armed.

But if I did my job right, that wouldn’t matter. Just insurance.

Gravity took up his post almost in front of me, next to Sternwood, his knife brandished.

“Watch this.” Gravity used his elbow to jostle his Dad like they were watching a boxing match together.

Phil Thales raised his gun at Nya. I couldn’t see the expression on her face—I didn’t need to.

I stepped forward and kicked Gravity in the small of the back, sending him sprawling forward, then fired up through the ceiling once.

Seven left.

“Drop it, Thales.” His chest was right at the other end of my barrel. I could see the spot where it would hit like someone had put a cameo over my eyes and shone a spotlight on him, dead center mass.

Beautiful clear shot.

He jerked his head round to look at me, trying to figure out whether I’d do it.

“You’ve got till three. Drop it. One.”

Thales didn’t move.

“Two.”

Sternwood yelled from my left and crossed in front of me. I opened my left eye and saw him heft his chair and smash it down on top of Gravity, who’d been winding up to throw his knife at me.

Thales moved.

“Doc, drop!”

Bang.

Thales fired. Sternwood hadn’t dropped fast enough.

I got my bead on him just as Nya jumped onto him from the side. She screamed, primal rage. Revenge for the murder of her friend? Protection for Sternwood? Maybe both. I didn’t have time to decide. Thales screamed and beat back at her with his gun.

I couldn’t get a clear shot.

Drop off him Nya. Drop off him now.

Stepping into the room. Trying like hell to get a better angle.

Nya yelled again and stabbed him under his right arm with my knife. He curled round, cradling the wound. She was still on him, ripping into him with her teeth. He twisted and turned and beat at her with his pistol trying to knock her loose. Her teeth latched on to the side of his head as she thrashed and screamed and stabbed at him.

There. Left shoulder. Clear shot.

Phil’s S&W smashed into Nya’s face. She fell off.

She took the ear with her.

Phil howled.

I squeezed.

He staggered. Left shoulder went dark.

Six left.

He turned. I shifted my aim for his head and started to squeeze again for a Mozambique.

Something knocked my right leg out form under me and my .45 went off as I smashed down to my knees. Plaster dust puffed at me from the right wall where the bullet struck, useless.

Some part of my brain said “five” but the rest of me didn’t know what to make of it.

My pistol skittered across the floor.

I dove forward after it. Something punched me in the kidney from behind. Gravity scrambled over me—he’d kicked my knee from behind.
Stupid, Lantham. Stupid Stupid Stupid.

I dove for it, missed the grab, sent the .45 sliding farther out of my reach. Gravity was faster. He was going to get to it before I did.

Push up off the floor.

Get up on your haunches.

I reached for the ankle and ripped the .38 snub loose. I brought it up just as Gravity swung round with the .45 and pointed it straight at Sternwood’s head.

He said: “Shoot him, Phil.”

“I…I…” Phil was gasping for breath.

“Shoot him now, he can’t get both of us.” Gravity grabbed his old man by the collar and dragged him to standing. Sternwood was in bad shape, bleeding fast enough from the hole in his clavicle that he wasn’t going to last more than about ten minutes. “Now don’t do anything stupid, asshole, or they’re both dead.”

I heard a thud. Nya sq
uealed. I swung my gun left until I had Phil at the end of it, holding Nya by her hair, the S&W presse
d to her head.

“They’re both dead anyway.” I said. Gravity hid well enough behind Sternwood, and stayed moving enough, that I couldn’t get him. Phil I could get, but it would get Sternwood killed. I spoke evenly: “Let him go, Charles.”

“You drop it, and I’ll consider it.” He pulled the door open. He was going out the front. Once he was clear of the room, I could drop Phil and go out the back.

And risk Sternwood.

Dammit
. I had to change the equation. Fast.

I said: “You can’t get out of here dragging him all the way.”

Phil started pushing Nya toward the door too.

Gravity stepped back through the door frame. A white blur rushed in from the right.

“Chuck!” Phil yelled, too late. A pot smashed across the back of Gravity’s head.

He crumpled to reveal Jason Rawles standing over him. “You fucking prick!”

Phil moved. I squeezed.
Five.

Dead center mass. Phil staggered.

Bang. The back of Jason’s head blew out and he dropped like a rag doll.

Phil swung back to me. I popped my aim up eighteen inches and squeezed again.

Forehead shot. Phil went down.
Four.

My ears were killing me. I walked forward to check the body. He’d fallen partly on top of Nya—I kicked him over and helped her up.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I think I’m okay.” She sounded shaky, but it was all I needed at the moment. I threw my right arm around her waist and lifted her over Bridget’s body, dropped her on the couch as gently as I could, then ran the two steps to Sternwood on the porch.

The Doc was still breathing. Losing a lot of blood. Gravity’s gun—my .45—was next to the Doc on the porch. I grabbed it and holstered it, then pulled out my LED flashlight. I checked Sternwood’s pupils. Dilating evenly. No head wound.

Good.

I put the flashlight between my teeth and ripped his shirt and wadded it up, pressed it against the wound.

“Doc.” I pulled the light back out of my mouth and held onto it with the spare fingers of my gun hand so I could talk. “Richard, can you hear me?”

“Yeah.” He groaned.

“I need you to hold…Nya! Come hold this!”

She came out and pushed down where I told her. “Don’t let go or he’s gonna die.”

“Okay.” She did as directed—looked relieved to have something useful to do.

I helped her move him to the couch, made sure the compress was good and tight, and then went back out to the porch to survey the damage.

Rawles was as dead as it gets. Another stupid kid, laying in pieces on the ground.

And Gravity, the architect of this mayhem…

Gravity was gone.

He couldn’t have gone far, he’d been here not a minute ago.

I jumped down the steps to the skip-stone path that lead around the north side of the house, figuring he’d go that way. Closer to the driveway.

I cleared the edge of the house and there he was, running-stumbling toward Phil’s car. Ten yards. A nothing shot. Just beyond the low cinder block walls that marked the edge of the yard.

“Gravity!” I tossed the flashlight to my left and hit him with it. “Freeze!” He stopped and looked back at me, not sure which way to go. “You’re under arrest for…”

Off to my left, in the park, someone lit a pack of firecrackers. Gravity fell like someone cut his strings.

I flashed left with my light. A woman at the gully, a hundred yards away, with a serious piece of hardware. I fired twice.
Three. Two.

She swung around and sprayed the house
. I dove forward and ate a facefull
of potter’s soil, then scrambled forward to the wall. I popped open the cylinder on the revolver, dumped the brass, grabbed a speedloader off my belt and shoved in a fresh load. I snapped it closed. Less than three seconds.