Slash and Burn (9 page)

‘Would you let me live if the circumstances were reversed?’

‘Sure, I would.’ A smile crept over his face, and fleetingly I wondered if he’d seen something I was unaware of. Maybe a confederate sneaking up behind me.

But it wasn’t that at all.

It was resignation.

‘I’d keep you alive while I ripped your arms out of your sockets. I’d gut you and make you watch as I stamped your guts all over the floor.’

‘Sounds entertaining.’

I knew it was coming before he even moved. I could see the tightening of his hands, the creases appearing next to his eyes, the slight dip of his body. He was coiling for the attack. Larry had realised he was going to die, but he wasn’t about to give in without a fight.

Squaring my SIG on his chest, I prepared for the tell-tale widening of the eyelids.

Then my peripheral vision caught a flicker of movement. Trent rising up, his hand whipping towards me. A wrench he’d snatched off the floor spinning at my head. Despite myself, I ducked, and the wrench missed me. But it had also pulled my aim a fraction of an inch. As Larry charged and I pulled the trigger, I already knew it wasn’t enough to kill him.

The bullet hit his left shoulder, too high up on the meat to even stop him. He was massive and all the power of his driving legs covered the short distance between us in a little over a second.

He loomed over me like the proverbial barn door. Only barn doors don’t come equipped with piston-like limbs intent on rending you apart. He snatched at my gun with one massive hand and grabbed me round the throat with the other. It would be a waste grappling for the gun because it was a fight I couldn’t hope to win. I drove my knee into his groin instead. Wind huffed out of him but it didn’t stop him.

Larry picked me up, his fingers digging into my throat and wrist and he swung me and slammed me against the roof of the parked SUV.

‘Bastard!’ he snapped into my face. ‘You should have killed me sooner.’

‘Yeah,’ I grunted, my back bent tortuously over the roof of the car. ‘I should have.’

Larry laughed, picked me up and then slammed me down again. My kidneys felt like they’d been mashed and black flickers of non-light span across my vision. His arms were too long for me to strike at his face with my free arm, so I brought down my fingers, digging for the radial nerve in the arm holding my throat. I’d have been as well trying to sink my fingers through oak. To show me the error of my ways, Larry dug his hand into my throat. Luckily for me his hand was so large that it wasn’t putting all his pressure on my trachea. If that had been the case, the cartilage would have easily popped and I’d have choked on my own blood. Still, the pressure was making me black out.

With compressed blood pounding in my skull, I brought up my knees, getting my feet wedged into his pelvic girdle. I strained, trying to push his weight away from me, using my legs to gain distance.

I was aware of Trent’s voice in some recess of my mind. ‘Kill him, Larry! Kill that motherfucker!’

He didn’t know, but his baying was actually my salvation. It made Larry realise that he was going to finish me too soon. He’d told me he wanted me to live while he ripped me apart and eviscerated my body. That wouldn’t be the case if he choked me to death. Larry picked me up so that I was over his shoulder, then he hurled me through space and I landed on the hard concrete. My head smacked the floor, my teeth gnawing a chunk out of my tongue, but that was a small price to pay in exchange for the oxygen I sucked in.

I’d also held on to my SIG.

Larry was coming at me again. I brought up the gun.

Then Trent wanted in on the action.

He threw himself across the floor at me. Grabbing my arms, he hauled me towards him, throwing his weight over my face.

Larry’s feet found my exposed ribs. He got two swift kicks into me before Trent rolled further on top of me, blocking me from his brother’s boots. Not that he was trying to protect me; he wanted me all to himself.

Trent punched me, his knuckles connecting with the top of my head. He had to rear up to get a clearer punch at my face.

I felt like I had a mountain on top of me, but I wasn’t about to give in yet. Freeing one hand, I groped for his face. My thumb found his blue eye, and I pressed with all my might. It doesn’t matter how big a man is, there are still vulnerable points on his body. The eyes are the most vulnerable of all. I felt his eye implode, and jelly-like gore pulsing over my hand. Trent pulled away from me. He was screaming again.

My SIG was now free of him and I brought it between our bodies. I jerked the trigger. Blood danced above him, some of it spattering on the ceiling. Trent groaned, and I heard Larry’s tortured scream of denial. I shot Trent again – just to make sure.

As his weight collapsed over me, I shoved him aside, putting him between me and Larry. He would have to reach over his dead brother to get at me, but before he could do that I’d put a bullet in his body too.

As I searched for him, my view was blocked by the front end of the SUV.

Where the hell is he? I wondered.

Then I was scrambling out from under Trent’s dead weight, looking for the other man, expecting him to be coming at me from the far side of the SUV.

But Larry wasn’t up to avenging his brother instantly. The fucker was making a run for it.

Let him run, I decided. I’d achieved what I came here for. I now knew who my real enemy was and why he wanted Imogen Ballard dead. I could always kill Larry Bolan another time.

When I didn’t feel like a train wreck.

I staggered to my feet.

I half-expected sirens as the local cops responded to the sounds of gunfire. But subconsciously I knew that was unlikely. The twins’ workshop was in a deserted commercial strip. Metallic bangs and angry shouts were probably a regular feature of this place. Maybe screams were too.

Painfully, I made my way to the head of the alley.

My bag of groceries was still there, untouched.

I picked it up and continued my return to the motel. Kate would be wondering what had kept me. She’d probably be angry that I’d been away so long.

Chapter 13

What I did, I did because I thought it was right. But I couldn’t disregard the knowledge that I’d viciously tortured a man, then half-blinded him. Putting two rounds through his heart when he was trying to kill me was probably the least despicable of my actions. But that wouldn’t be a factor, not when I’d been the one who’d gone into the workshop armed and looking for blood.

I’ve killed men before. Only occasionally in nightmares do I ever recall the faces of those men. Still, as I walked back to the motel, I was experiencing a cold sickness in my soul from what I’d just done.

Justifying my actions, the Bolan twins were trying to kill Imogen Ballard. Trent Bolan had murdered others in the past, and would have gone on doing so until I stopped him. Given the opportunity the twins would have murdered Kate and me if we’d been caught in their ambush on the mountain trail. But none of that would mean a damn thing in a court of law. Vigilantism is never tolerated, whatever the justification.

There’d be a shit storm when the deaths became public, and – apart from my anonymity up until now – I didn’t see how I could avoid arrest and imprisonment. I’d already used up all my cards, according to my old CIA contact, Walter Hayes Conrad, who’d covered for my actions in the past.

Approaching the motel where I’d left Kate, I shrugged off the worry. It was pointless being concerned about something that might never happen. I intended going after the men who were threatening Jake Piers’ sisters, and there’d likely be more deaths. If I survived, I could worry about the consequences.

The drapes were drawn in our room. A faint amber light glowed at the edges of the windows. Snow began to flutter past the halogen lights in the parking lot and gather on the sloping eaves of the motel. It looked like a scene from a Frank Capra movie. I paused outside the door, my bag of groceries clutched to my chest as I sucked in a deep breath.

My hesitation was because I knew Kate would be repulsed by my actions. She was a cop. How would she react to what I’d done to Trent Bolan? In a lot of respects, that made me a cop’s worst nightmare. Would she despise me? That was the last thing I wanted. I’d told Rink earlier that I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by a pretty face, and I’d meant it. But for all my best intentions, I’d failed.

Kate was very beautiful and feisty and I was strongly attracted to her. When she kissed me it had taken all my will not to kiss her back.

It took a lot to open that door.

It was best not to mention the episode yet. The fact that my throat was twice its normal size, I had a lump on my head like a duck egg, and my ribs felt like Rocky Balboa had used me for a punch bag, might give the game away. I’d admit to a run-in with the twins, but not to the outcome. She didn’t need to know
exactly
what I’d done to Trent.

I stepped into the damp warmth of the room. ‘Kate. It’s only me, Joe.’

Kate wasn’t in the living room. The bed was mussed from where she’d been lying on top of the comforter and the TV was switched to a local news channel with the volume down low. The bathroom door was closed, and I could hear a trickle of water from the shower.

Putting down the bag of groceries, I pulled out the chocolate and placed it strategically on the bed like a peace offering. I shrugged out of my jacket. There was a mirror over a chest of drawers. My face wasn’t as bruised as I’d thought – Trent had punched me above the hairline – and my neck only felt like it was swollen. I lifted the hem of my shirt and studied my ribs. They were red and tender to the touch but I couldn’t detect any abnormality. Thankfully, Larry had been kicking me with his instep and not the toe of his boots, so I’d escaped any broken bones. I dropped my shirt, covering the incriminating evidence.

‘Kate?’ I didn’t want to embarrass her if she happened to come out the bathroom in a state of undress. I rapped on the door. ‘Kate. I’m back.’

There was no answer, and I experienced a cold spurt of dread in my gut.

‘Kate?’

I tried the door handle and the door swung silently inwards.

The bathroom was empty. Steam hung in the air, and water still trickled from the showerhead. Kate hadn’t been absent long.

I wondered where she could be. She was a free spirit and not exactly helpless, so I shouldn’t have been as concerned as I was. Maybe she’d gone out to a nearby store to purchase some food – neither of us had eaten since leaving Florida that morning. Even so, something about the emptiness of the room told me I was fooling myself. It was warm and clammy from Kate’s shower, but there was something else.

Where was she? What had happened here? For the briefest of moments I wondered if she’d left out of embarrassment because I’d brushed her off. But I discarded that idea. A feeling lingered in the atmosphere, almost like some residual fear had been left over following sudden violence. It pervaded the air like a static charge.

Lifting the mattress with one hand, I found the Magnum where I’d left it. I shoved it down my waistband next to my SIG Sauer. The inclination that I might need the heavy firepower was strong in my mind.

My shoe scuffed against something lying partly hidden by the bed.

Kate’s mobile phone.

It was one of those with a flip front and I opened it up.

The screen saver showed Kate standing with her arm round the shoulder of another woman. The second woman was a few years older, fairer of hair and slightly heavier in build. But there was no denying the family resemblance. Kate and her sister, Imogen, were mugging for the camera. They both looked very happy, caught in a snapshot of simpler times.

Ordinarily I’d have closed the phone then. A person’s mobile phone is the equivalent of a personal diary these days. It is where people store all their memories. I would have felt like an interloper invading her precious space if not for one thing: Kate had left the phone for me to find it. There was a clue on the phone to who had taken her, and where I would find her.

Wondering if she’d discreetly snapped her abductor, I first scrolled through the photograph files. There were dozens of pictures, many of them of Imogen, some of Kate dressed in her NYPD uniform, smiling proudly at the camera. There were a few of friends and landscapes, one of Imogen’s mountaintop home, but none of anyone who’d come uninvited to this room.

Next I went to her call register and to her dialled numbers.

I recognised Rink’s number immediately. She’d called him six times over the last four days. But his wasn’t the most recent number in the list. There were two above it. The first I quickly ascertained was likely to be Imogen’s cell; it was no Sherlock Holmes power-of-deduction moment, the number was logged as SIS. There were a dozen or so calls made to the same number prior to Kate calling Rink and four occasions during the time they’d been in contact. She’d called Rink a little over an hour ago and then tried Imogen’s number again immediately after. Twenty minutes after that she’d called the final number on the list. I selected the number and hit the ‘view’ button. Kate had barely been on the phone for two minutes. It didn’t tell me who the call was to or what it had been about, so I hit the green call button.