Noble Intentions: Season Three (43 page)

Sasha screamed. So did Bear. Jack
clenched his jaw for a tense few seconds. Then he yelled. The sound inside the
car matched that of the first couple of seconds after the lead car on a roller
coaster crept over the edge of the first big drop. The feeling, not so much.

The Audi hit the ground, dipped and
bounced and grated and skid. Sasha powered on the brakes. They slipped and spun
and screeched along the road, through the grass, coming to a stop facing the
opposite direction, looking right at the train.

The glove box in front of Jack
opened when they hit the ground. An air freshener landed in his lap. It had a
picture of two oranges on the front. That explained the smell in the car. Must
have been faint enough that only he had smelled it.

The train lumbered on, three
hundred cars or so to go. It’d take at least fifteen minutes, maybe more. That,
Jack figured, was all they needed.

“OK, want to tell me what all that
was about?” Sasha said.

“First turn the car around and get
moving.”

She threw it into reverse, plowed
backward, not seeming to care that the car went off road. Not like it would do
any more damage than jumping the tracks had done.

“I still don’t trust Jon,” Jack
said.

“Jon? He’s clean. You can trust me
on that.”

“I trust you. I don’t trust him.
And I don’t want us to be in a situation where we have Leon and Dottie in
custody, and then have Jon turn on us. I don’t think a single one of us wants
to be responsible for Alex being murdered.”

“Sure about that?” Bear said. “You
shot him once already.”

“And if it means saving my
daughter’s life, I’d do it again. So how about we not let it come down to that?
We’ve got the drop on Leon and Dottie. Let’s keep it that way.”

“What if Jon called ahead?” Bear
said.

“He hasn’t,” Sasha said.

“How do you know?” Bear said.

Sasha shook her head, said nothing.

“What?” Jack said.

She still said nothing.

“Tell us.”

“You’re not that far off, Jack.”

“Say what?”

“We’ve been watching him for some
time. The suspicion is there.”

“And you just gave me crap over
implicating him in this.”

She glanced at him, then back at
the road.

Silence resumed for the next twenty
minutes. Jack figured by this point Jon and Alex were moving again. Either the
train had passed, or they’d backtracked and found another route. If his hunch
had been wrong, and he hoped it had, they’d just have to deal with being
ditched.

The surrounding area started to
show signs of life. Generously spaced cottages lined the road. Views of the
coast on the south side filled in the gaps between homes.

“How much further?” Bear said.

Jack glanced at the GPS. “We’re
close. Sasha, I want you to get us a street inland. We can approach the house
on foot.”

“Should we pass by first?”

“I wouldn’t chance it.”

So Sasha turned at the next street
and ignored the GPS as it pestered her to turn left. When they were even with
the location, she stopped the car. All three got out. The trunk popped open.
Jack grabbed a spare Sig P226 and strapped an HK MP7 across his chest. The M4
would be a bit much, so he left it in the trunk and encouraged Bear to do the
same. He hoped the area was as deserted as it looked. Even if someone phoned
the police, it’d take at least ten minutes for a car to arrive. The ordeal
should be finished by then.

They passed through someone’s yard
and stepped into a narrow wooded area. Dead leaves crunched under their feet as
they moved closer to the house. Two playful squirrels scurried up a tree. As
they neared the last row of trees, the house came into full view.

A car Jack didn’t recognize sat in
the driveway with its trunk and rear doors open. No signs of life were present
otherwise.

“Think that’s it?” Bear said.

“That’s the address she gave us,”
Sasha said.

A car passed by. A child in the
backseat made brief eye contact with Jack. He watched the car as it raced down
the street. The brake lights he anticipated never flashed.

The front door of the house across
the street opened. A screen door squeaked on rusted hinges. An older woman
stepped into view.

“Dottie,” Jack said.

“Really?” Bear said.

“That’s her.”

“She got old.”

Jack said nothing. He watched not
only the woman as she approached the car, but the house behind her. No one else
emerged. No faces concealed themselves behind darkened windows. That he could
see, at least.

Dottie’s hands were empty. She
leaned into the backseat, pulled out a bag and tossed it to the ground. Then
she walked to the rear of the car, turned her back to them and leaned into the
trunk. She pulled out another bag, tossed it next to the other one. She was
unloading the car. Either they were going to wait it out at the house, or they
had other plans made for their escape.

“Let’s go,” Sasha said.

Before Jack could tell her to wait,
the woman took off running.

“Wait,” Bear said.

“Come on,” Jack said.

They crossed the street after
Sasha. Jack prepared himself to take a bullet. They were sitting ducks. This
was not the approach he had anticipated.

Dottie rose up, looked over her
shoulder. She leaned back in the trunk and emerged again, this time with a
rifle. She fired blind. The recoil nearly knocked her into the trunk. The shot
echoed in the woods behind them. The bullet had hit none of them.

Jack drew his pistol to fire, but
Sasha already had. Dottie jerked back to the left, then fell forward to her
knees. She then eased over and rested against the car’s rear bumper.

Jack had a dozen things he wanted
to say to the woman. Questions he had to ask. But he didn’t. He kept going
right past her and said, “Keep an eye on her.”

“Where the hell are you going?”
Bear said.

Jack didn’t answer him.

“What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said.

Bear glanced around at the
neighboring houses. No doors had opened. Nobody hung out on their front porch
watching what happened. There were no sirens approaching. The place must’ve
been abandoned. A neighborhood full of summer vacation houses, he figured.
Maybe during the off season it was the type of neighborhood that was busy on
the weekends, deserted during the week. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to
complain about the lack of attention.

Sasha bounced from one foot to the
other. She, too, scanned the area. Although her focus seemed to be centered
more on the house in front of them than those that surrounded them.

“Help me move her,” Bear said.

Dottie remained barely conscious.
Blood flowed from her wound and stained her clothes crimson. Bear doubted she
would last long enough for an ambulance to arrive.

Sasha positioned herself near the
woman’s feet. She refused to holster her weapon. Instead, she threaded her left
arm around Dottie’s ankles and hoisted the woman’s legs into the air. Together,
she and Bear moved Dottie from behind the vehicle to the side of the house. A
couple tall hedges blocked them from the street.

Bear set her on the ground and
assessed her condition. He confirmed what he thought earlier. Dottie had little
time left. Pulse weak and thready. Respirations short, labored and infrequent.
Her eyes focused beyond anything that existed. She was slipping into that
uncertainty that is death.

“She doesn’t have much longer,”
Bear said. “Go find Jack and make sure he’s OK.”

There was no answer.

“Sasha?” Bear looked over his
shoulder, rose, turned, didn’t see her.

The wind came in off the coast and
rattled the leaves of the hedges.

“Sasha?” he repeated.

Again, no answer.

“Dammit.” He looked down at Dottie.
He’d spent time around the woman in the past. Not as much as Jack, so the bond
wasn’t as strong. To him, she was a woman dying. Nothing more, nothing less. He
wrestled with what to do next. Despite what she’d done, did she deserve to die
alone?

It didn’t matter. She had to. He
had others to attend to.

Bear eased around the hedges and
scanned the area in front of the house. Deserted. He hunched over, a move that
did little to conceal him, and ran to the front door. There, he stopped,
pressed against the wall, closed his eyes and listened. The wind whipped around
the house, coating him with fresh salt air. The sweat on his forehead cooled.
His lips dried. He licked them, tasted the salt. He heard a soft cry from
beyond the front door. Mia? Had to be.

He reached over with his left hand,
found the door handle. It turned without resistance. With a slight motion, he
pushed the door open. Then he spun quickly, 9mm leading the way. A quick scan
of the room revealed it was empty. Bear eased forward, following the sounds of
the little girl crying. The room he stood in opened up to a dining room and
kitchen. On the right side, in the middle, loomed a dark hallway. From the hall
was where the crying originated.

Bear holstered the pistol and took
hold of the MP7 on his chest. He switched the safety off, adjusted from single
shot to three-round bursts. No need to be deadly accurate. Just had to hit it
somewhere in the ballpark.

He angled toward the wall, pressed
back against it, stopped right before the hallway opening. From there, he had a
view of the entire kitchen. Aside from the closed pantry, he verified the room
was as empty as the first one.

Another cry floated by.

He took a deep breath and spun
around, leading with the sub-machine gun. The empty hall beckoned him to
proceed forward. And he did. Bear pressed his left shoulder against the wall
and walked toward the end of the hall, toe to heel. He kept his eyes focused
ahead, where there were two doors, one on either side. At any moment he
expected one of them to open up.

The sound of Mia’s cries grew
louder. Indecipherable whispering followed. He stopped, hunched over, narrowed
his eyes. He took a step. A floorboard popped. The crying stopped. So did the
whispering. He heard footsteps move toward the door softly and slowly.

His instincts told him to fire.
Logic overruled. At the very least, Mia was in that room. Her mother and the
other woman might be too. Who else? He had no idea. The only way to find out?
Open the door.

And so he did.

The doorknob turned to the right
with no resistance. He pushed the door forward, took a step back. The barrel of
the MP7 moved with his eyes. Mia and her mother huddled in the far corner of
the room. The other woman stood holding a lamp like a baseball bat.

“Who are you?” she said.

“That’s Bear, Hannah,” Erin said.

“Are you alone in here?” Bear said.

They both nodded. Mia still hadn’t
looked up at him. She kept her face buried in her mother’s chest.

“Who the hell are you?”

The voice didn’t come from inside
the room.

Bear stepped back and turned and
saw a tall blond man at the other end of the hallway. “Son of a bitch,” he said
as he hurried to wrap his hands around the weapon strapped to his chest.

Apparently, Bear’s presence had
startled the man at the other end of the hall, too. He had to reach around his
back for his pistol. Neither man had the advantage. Three quick bursts erupted
from Bear’s weapon. The man produced his firearm, which appeared to be an HK45
Tactical pistol, and fired at the same time.

Searing pain spread through Bear’s
abdomen and around his side and back. It centered on the right side. He didn’t
look down. Looking down would make it real, and as it was, he felt he could
continue moving. He blinked away the flood of tears in his eyes. The other
guy’s right arm hung at his side, useless, shattered and splintered at the
wrist. Bear hadn’t hit in the right ballpark it seemed. His shot had traveled
into the stands. He fought the pain, aimed again, pulled the trigger. The
weapon had jammed.

The guy looked from his hand to
Bear. Disbelief spread across the man’s face. Bear charged toward him. He
didn’t want the man coming closer to the room with the women in there. The guy
bent over, wrapped his left arm behind his leg, returned upright wielding a
knife with a six inch blade.

Bear tried to lift the sub-machine
gun and strap over his head. Pain prevented him from doing so. He yanked hard,
snapped the strap. With the MP7 is his left hand, he deflected the knife blade.
He didn’t stop moving forward. The guy swung again, wide and wild. Bear whipped
the gun to the left, caught the guy just above his left wrist. The bone
snapped. The knife fell to the floor. Bear drove his knee upward. The pain in
his side nearly became too much for him to handle. The knee connected with the
man’s groin. The guy fell forward. Bear grabbed the back of the guy’s head,
pulled it back. Then Bear drove his head forward and down into the bridge of
the man’s nose. The skin on the guy’s forehead split in two. Bear shoved the
guy backward. The man fell to the floor.

Bear moved forward until he stood
over the man. He reached behind his back and retrieved the Sig P226. He wished
he’d have thought of it a few seconds earlier. He wiped the blood off his hands
and gripped the pistol. The pain spread through his hip and up into his chest.
He aimed, took a breath.

“No, don’t,” the girl said from
behind.

Bear looked over his shoulder. Mia
stood in the hallway, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Please, don’t kill him.”

Bear’s vision began to darken. He
saw Mia, but also Mandy. Both girls standing there, tears in their eyes,
begging him to spare the man. He fell to one knee, onto his butt, then to his
side. He blinked hard, saw the guy on the floor next to him. The man’s head
dropped to the side and they stared at each other.