Knock Out (40 page)

Victor pressed the muzzle of his gun against Savich’s throat as he pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. Victor jumped to his feet and took two steps back and handed Lissy the cell. She flicked it to his stored numbers. “Isn’t this a kick!. The very first name, it’s Sherlock.”

“What kind of name is that? I wonder who he is.”

“Probably a stupid nickname,” Lissy said. “Let me place a call, see who this Sherlock is.”

Bernie sent Savich a look, saw his face was perfectly still, expressionless.

The cell rang once, then a woman answered. “Yes?”

“Hey, is this Sherlock?”

“Yeah, I’m Sherlock. Who wants to know?”

“Smart mouth, aren’t you? This is Lissy Smiley. I got me two big federal agents right here. Special Agent Savich, and Special Agent Bernie with two little kids.

You’re Savich’s partner, right? You’re the one with all that red hair?”

“That’s me.”

“You’re really not sleeping with him? He said he didn’t even like you much. Still, why wouldn’t you want to get in his pants?”

“Why are you calling me, Lissy?”

“I want to know what hair color to buy to get your shade. And is that a perm?”

“Sorry, what you see is what you get.”

“Well, that’s too bad, now, isn’t it? I called to warn you to stay inside that dumpy house or you’ll get blood all over that pretty hair. I want you to tell the cops if they try anything I’ll shoot these guys’ heads off. Oh, yeah, the big guy is now our hostage. He’s going to accompany us out of here.” And Lissy flipped off Savich’s cell, threw it back at him. He caught it, stuck it in his shirt pocket. His right hand was only inches from Bernie’s wrists, and neither Victor nor Lissy seemed to notice.

In that instant Autumn yelled for him.

71

SAVICH HEARD HER yelling, louder than ever before.

Her face was white, her eyes wild. She was panting.

What’s wrong, Autumn? What’s going on?

It’s my grandfather, Dillon, he’s alive and he’s here, and
I think he’s going to hurt Ethan and Mama!.

Whoa, wait a minute. Where are you?

In this building, it’s underground, all white rooms and
bad, real bad.

Autumn, listen to me. I’ve got a huge problem of my
own right now
—

Show me.

He looked over at Bernie, bound, propped up against a tree trunk, then at Victor and Lissy, their guns pointed at him. Could Autumn see what he was seeing, as he had seen that motel sign? Could she possibly see through his eyes?

“What are you doing?” Lissy yelled at him and took a step forward. “Whatever you’re doing, you stop it or I’ll have Victor drill you right now!”

Savich didn’t think he’d moved. What had he done to spook them? He said, calm and easy, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lissy.”

“Your eyes went all funny, then you stared at Victor and me and you looked like some weirdo freak, like you were looking through us.
What did you do?”

Savich smiled. “Well, the thing is, and this is the absolute truth there’s this little girl who was looking at you guys through my eyes.”

Victor whirled around, shouting, “What little girl?

Where is she? There isn’t a little girl!
What are you
talking about?”

Whatever the two of them had seen on his face, he’d shaken them up. He said, “Her name is Autumn, and she’s in Georgia, I think.”

Lissy screamed at him, “You lying piece of—”

Victor grabbed her arm, shook it. “Lissy, no, he’s doing this on purpose, trying to rattle us, get us to make a mistake. Look, he’s not moving, it’s all right.

Whatever he does, whatever he says, it doesn’t mean anything. He’s just trying to creep us out. We’ve got to decide what to do, use him as a hostage or shoot his head off. Thing is, they can’t shoot us if we’ve got him in front of us as a shield.”

She screamed, “No! He’ll do something; he’ll kill us. He won’t let us use him, he won’t! I want him dead, Victor, now! You said you could do it if you wanted to.

Well, it’s time to step up.” She traded guns with him.

“Use mine. The silencer’s on it, so no one will hear the shots. Shoot both of them, Victor. Prove to me you can do it.”

Victor held the gun straight out in front of him, aimed it at Savich His face was pale, his whole body rigid. He looked deathly afraid. Of killing them?

“Come on, Victor, drill both of them, right between the eyes!”

Savich heard Autumn scream
No!,
and Victor staggered and went flying to the rocky ground, twisting and turning as if someone were physically pummeling him. Just as suddenly he stopped, and he sat up, terrified, and looked at Savich. He yelled, “Run, Lissy,” and he took off into the trees.

Autumn, you did this?

“Hold it, Lissy!”

Lissy’s eyes went wide with shock. Savich knew she thought Autumn was here now, but it wasn’t Autumn. It was Sherlock, her SIG pointed directly at Lissy’s back. Cully came running out from behind her and fired five fast rounds after Victor. They heard the cry of pain when one of the bullets struck him. Then Cully took off after Victor.

Sherlock said, “Turn around, Lissy. Very slowly, I don’t want to kill you. Toss your gun to the ground right this minute.”

Lissy looked over her shoulder, stared at the woman with the wild red hair. “Nice hair,” she said.

And she ran, firing wildly in Sherlock’s direction.

Sherlock stumbled back and fell, got back up on her knees, and returned fire. She got her, heard the cry of pain, but she didn’t know how badly the girl was hurt.

More shots came toward them.

“Stay down, Sherlock,” Savich yelled. He stumbled over to her, half fell to his knees, and pulled her up against him. “You’d better be okay, you hear me?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Dillon, your leg!”

“It’s not so bad. I can use it. Get Bernie free, then the two of you go after Victor. You’ll probably have to split up to find him. Sherlock, Lissy took my gun.”

Without a word, Sherlock handed him hers. He willed his leg to move, and it did, awkwardly but well enough, and he took off at a trot after her. Sherlock whispered alter him, “You’d better be careful.”

Savich soon saw Lissy weaving through the trees ahead of him Sherlock’s bullet was slowing her down.

She jerked around, saw him, and fired. The bullet ripped past his head as he dove behind a tree, His leg screamed at him, and he waited a beat.

He heard gunfire, prayed they’d finally brought Victor down. He saw a flash of Lissy’s white blouse and fired. She yelled. He turned and ran toward her, his left leg dragging now. He yelled, “Lissy! It’s over, stop now, you hear me?”

He heard her laugh, her manic laugh, loaded with pain. He knew she was on the move again, despite having two bullets in her. Lissy yelled, “You’ll never catch me, you bastard. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to kill every single cop you brought here with you!”

He stumbled after her. Another bullet struck a tree a foot from his left shoulder.

Come on, you damned leg, keep going. Move!.

His leg must have heard him because he sprinted, moving quickly through the trees. She had to be bleeding; she had to slow down soon.

He saw her leaning against an oak tree, panting, hunched over Blood covered her white shirt and flowed down her side over her jeans. She held his SIG

in one hand and pressed her other hand to her chest.

He saw blood seeping out between her fingers.

“Lissy, it’s over. Drop the gun. You’re hurt, we’ve got to get you help.”

She looked toward where he was hidden and fired.

The shot went wide, sliced a small branch off an oak tree to his left. She fired again and again even when he knew she couldn’t see him.

He remained quiet, solidly behind a tree, out of her line of fire.

She cursed him, and through her rage he heard the pain. A bullet took the bark off right by his face, sliced his cheek. Another damned scar. How many more rounds could she have in his SIG?

Savich knew she wouldn’t stop.

It was enough, he thought; it was too much. He came out from behind the tree.

“Drop the gun, Lissy!”

She didn’t. She yelled at him, “I hate you! I’m going to kill you!.” She ran straight at him, screaming curses, her blood dripping from her arm, and she aimed her gun at his chest.

Savich pulled the trigger. The bullet struck her between the eyes. The force of it lifted her off her feet and flung her backward. Lissy was dead before she hit the ground.

He limped to her and stared down at the pretty eyes that no longer looked mad, at the pretty eyes that no longer saw him, no longer saw anything. Her fingers were still curled around his SIG. He pulled it free, shoved it into his waistband.

He had to get back to Sherlock. He turned on his heel and stumbled back as fast as he could.

72

SHERLOCK STOOD OVER Victor Nesser, panting, very aware of the tugging ache where her spleen had once resided, the heel of her boot against his chest.

She’d shot at him with the Lady Colt she carried in her ankle holster a good four or five times, missed because her Colt was good only at short range. Then she shot at his feet and hit him in the ankle. He’d stumbled, kept hurtling forward, and she’d tackled him from four feet back, her adrenaline pumping hard. Now he lay on his back, breathing heavy but not moving. His ankle had to hurl She said, trying to catch her breath, “All over now, Victor. Don’t you think of twitching. Hey, we got you on both ends, head and toe.”

Victor didn’t move, just lay there and moaned.

Sherlock yelled over her shoulder, “Cully, Bernie, I’ve got him. We’re good here. Vic-tor isn’t going anywhere.”

Victor closed his eyes tight. He heard the woman’s voice, felt the weight of her foot against his chest and the god-awful pain in his shattered ankle, shooting up to his belly. He felt a sharp pain on the side of his head, licked his lips, and tasted blood. He was afraid to touch his ankle, afraid of what he’d feel. He’d rather walk around with half his head blown away than never be able to walk again. And there was nothing he could do about it. What was worse, he knew he couldn’t help Lissy.

Where was Lissy? Had she killed Savich? He didn’t think so; he didn’t think the guy could be killed. And this redheaded agent who’d shot him was his partner.

Who was Autumn? What had she done to him? He remembered rolling around on the ground, helpless, his body twitching and heaving. Autumn was a little girl? No, that wasn’t possible, there’d been no one there. It was all a lie, it was something Savich did, but what did he do, and how? He felt himself growing cold, felt fear nibble at the edges of his brain.

If only he’d shot Savich right away when he was stretched out and helpless beside Bernie, shot both of them, it would have been done, over with. And Lissy would know she could always count on him. Of course Lissy could have killed them herself, but she’d wanted to toy with them, toy with him too. It was a huge mistake, the biggest mistake they’d ever made. Their last mistake.

Victor remembered how it was before all of this, his years with his parents, his father knocking the crap out of his mother whenever the mood struck him, and then she’d gone back to Jordan with him to be knocked around some more. Was she even still alive? And Aunt Jennifer, the years that insane woman told him when to eat, when to brush his teeth, who he could speak to, and how she was going to kill him if he ever touched her precious thirteen-year-old daughter, the only human being he’d ever loved, spawned by that insane woman. He could still feel the edge of the butcher knife she’d held against his neck while she was screaming at him. Aunt Jennifer thought he was molesting Lissy. What a joke that was, but he hadn’t defended himself, hadn’t told her how it was Lissy with her newly budding breast who came to his tiny bedroom under the eaves. Lissy had stopped her mother, grabbed away the knife, but still, not an hour later, Aunt Jennifer had struck him with a hammer even though she’d known it was Lissy—oh, yes, she’d known. He thought he was going to die then, but he didn’t.

Victor knew there was no future for him. He guessed he’d known that from the moment Lissy got in his bed. And now Lissy could be dead. There was no way she was going to walk away from the cops this time. It was over, all of it.

Tears streamed down through the rivulets of blood on his face, not from the horrible pain of his shattered ankle but because he’d never see Lissy again. He didn’t think he wanted a future. He opened his eyes and looked up at the agent standing over him, holding a small gun in her hand, aimed right at his bloody face.

Cully came up behind her, slowly lowered his weapon, and looked down at him. He said, his voice emotionless, “You remember me, Victor? I’m the guy you trussed up on your bedroom floor, the guy you wanted to blow to pieces? Do you even remember that mother and father you and Lissy shot down in their kitchen in Alexandria? You shot two people for a damned car. How many other people have you and Lissy shot for no good reason? You’re both rabid, Victor. You’re both crazy.”

Victor said, “I’m not crazy.”

“Yeah, right,” Cully said. “You going to blame it all on that teenager you’ve been screwing since she was thirteen?”

Sherlock lightly laid her palm against Cully’s shoulder, felt him shaking with rage.

“I never screwed Lissy! Do you hear me, it wasn’t ever like that She needed me, only me. She always said she knew me, from the moment I came, she said she knew me to my soul. You’re trying to kill her! You want to see her dead!”

Cully kicked Victor in the side, but Victor didn’t even appear to notice. He shouted down at him, “Time for you to listen, punk. You’re lucky you didn’t kill Bernie or I’d kill you myself.”

Sherlock saw that Cully was still shaking with rage and she said calmly, “But since you didn’t kill Bernie or kill Agent Savich, Cully and I are going to take you to a hospital. We’ll even help you, since your ankle’s shot to pieces. You want a handkerchief to wipe the blood off your face? Ah, here’s Bernie. We’ve got him, Bernie, no problem.”