The Protector (2003) (46 page)

The lane reached a moonlit meadow, then zigzagged up through more trees. A few times, furrows in the lane caused the Taurus's underside to bump across stones and dirt. Overhead, branches blocked the moonlit sky. Bushes scraped the car.

"Soon there'll be another meadow," Prescott said. "The chapel's built against a slope on the opposite side. Not that there's much to see." Prescott's breathing was more rapid and strident. "Except for a little tower with a cross on top, everything's collapsed."

"Count to three slowly as you inhale."

"What?"

"Hold your breath for three counts. Then exhale for three counts. Keep doing that. It'll help. Now slump down before they see you. Pretend you're unconscious."

Pale even in the darkness, Prescott obeyed.

Cavanaugh listened to the exaggerated, measured pattern of Prescott's breathing. Simultaneously, he felt each jounce of the car along the lane as if it were the lurching of his heart. He turned a sharp corner and emerged from the dark trees into another meadow, this one illuminated not only by moonlight but also by the sudden glare of headlights where Prescott had said the chapel would be.

"Damn it, she's here ahead of us," Cavanaugh said.

Chapter 3.

He didn't slow, didn't react as if he was alarmed, just kept following the lane, heading toward the headlights. "Ready?" he asked Prescott on the floor.

"It's a little late to say I want to back out."

"Five minutes from now, you'll be safe. I'll have my wife, and you'll be free."

"That trick with the future tense did wonders for me when you were rescuing me from the warehouse," Prescott said. "Yes. Five minutes from now, you'll have your wife, and I'll be free."

Hearing Prescott say it, Cavanaugh felt some of the magic of the words. "Let's see if you're as good an actor as you are a biochemist."

"And let's see"--Prescott held his breath for three beats--"if you're as good a protector as you promised to be."

The Taurus came closer to the headlights. Grace stood on crutches next to a car whose popularity and hence ability to blend made it a favorite among security specialists: a Mercury Sable. Behind the vehicle, the cross on the chapel's tower caught the glare of Cavanaugh's headlights. Collapsed walls lay below it.

He stopped eighty feet from Grace's car, out of practical nighttime pistol range. There was always the chance that she had someone with a rifle hiding among the trees, but the shooter would need a night-vision scope to aim properly, and Cavanaugh doubted that Grace could have gotten that sort of sophisticated equipment this late and so quickly. Besides, the glare of both sets of headlights would interfere with most night-vision equipment, which worked by magnifying the illumination from the moon and the stars and which would be overpowered by the headlights--in effect, blinding a sniper.

Cavanaugh left the engine idling and the headlights on as he got out. The night was cold, exaggerating the already-cold feeling in his chest.

Squinting from the lights, trying to keep his voice steady, he called to Grace, "You got here early." It reminded him of the start of their conversation at fog-enshrouded Tor House that morning. His voice echoed off the surrounding wooded slopes.

"You don't sound surprised any more than I'm surprised that
you
tried to get here early," Grace said. "Open all your car doors."

Cavanaugh did. The only reason for Grace to tell him to open the doors was for someone among the trees at the side to be able to see if anyone was hiding in the car, he knew. It made him worry that he'd miscalculated, that a sniper was indeed concealed on a slope and that the night-vision scope the sniper had was one of the few sophisticated enough, based on heat detection, rather than light magnification, not to be compromised by the headlights.

Sick, he opened the left rear door, rounded the back of the car, opened the right rear door, and then came forward to open the passenger door. Again he stood next to the headlights, hoping that instead of revealing him, they gave him cover.

But he suspected that his worst fears were about to come true, that the plan wasn't going to work.

Please, God, help me get Jamie back, he thought.

At once, Grace said something that changed everything and gave him hope. "Where's Prescott?"

Why would she say that? Cavanaugh wondered. With all the doors open, Prescott would be visible to someone on the side. A sniper, seeing the car's interior, would use a walkie-talkie or similar two-way radio setup to tell Grace that Cavanaugh hadn't brought help.

"He's half-unconscious on the front seat." The bit about opening the doors was a bluff, Cavanaugh realized, his pulse speeding with hope. She wants me to think there's a sniper in the trees. But there isn't. Otherwise, Grace would have been told where Prescott was and that he was the only person in the car.

"Drag the bastard out."

"Not until I see my wife."

Looking impatient, Grace raised a hand from one of her crutches and motioned to someone hidden among the collapsed walls of the chapel.

Two figures rose and emerged into the headlights. One shoved the other. The one doing the shoving was a solidly built woman. Except that her short hair was dark in contrast with Grace's blond hair, she and Grace looked remarkably similar in height and physique, perhaps because they had both belonged to the same female special-ops training group that Prescott had referred to.

The person being shoved was Jamie. Her hands were tied in front of her. She lurched forward, stooped, as if in pain. When she looked up, Cavanaugh saw blood on her face. Anger made his muscles feel on fire. He wanted to scream.

"Drag Prescott out," Grace said.

Cavanaugh went to the passenger door and made sure that Prescott had followed orders--the metal tube remained on the seat. When he hauled Prescott from the car, Prescott landed so hard, he moaned.

With equal force, Cavanaugh tugged him around to the front of the car. In the headlights, in full view of Grace and the woman pushing Jamie, Cavanaugh kicked him several times in the side, feeling his shoe collide with the bullet-resistant vest under Prescott's shirt. While the vest protected his vital organs, Prescott would nonetheless have felt the shock of the impact. Again Prescott groaned. He rolled with the fourth kick and came to a stop, clutching himself.

"On your feet," Cavanaugh said. "There's no way I'm dragging you all the way over there."

Cavanaugh undipped the Emerson knife from the inside of his pants' pocket, thumbed the blade open, and slashed the duct tape around Prescott's ankles, freeing it. The moment he folded the blade and reclipped the knife inside his pocket, he yanked Prescott upward. Prescott's head jerked from the force with which he was raised. Cavanaugh stood behind him, holding his shoulders, trying to steady him as Prescott listed to one side and then the other.

"You want him, you got him," Cavanaugh told Grace.

"What do you think you're doing?" Grace demanded. "That's not Prescott."

"The hell he isn't."

"Prescott doesn't look like--"

"He lost weight as part of his disguise. I'll prove it's him. Hey, jerkoff, say something to her."

Prescott kept swaying.

Cavanaugh drove a kidney punch into the back of Prescott's bullet-resistant vest. To save his knuckles, he held back the force of the impact at the last second, when Grace wouldn't be able to see the blow.

Prescott groaned and bent forward.

"I told you to say something to her!"

"Uh ..." Seeming in pain, Prescott raised his head. "How's it..." He coughed, as if something inside him were broken. "How's it going, Al?"

"It is him." Grace said. "Jesus, look at his face. What did you do to him?"

"Gave him some payback for what he did to my friends. Now it's
your
turn to give him some payback. Let my wife go. I'll let Prescott go."

Balanced on her crutches, Grace looked at her companion and nodded.

The companion pushed Jamie past the car. Silhouetted by the headlights, Jamie stumbled forward.

"Your turn," Grace said.

Cavanaugh shoved Prescott ahead. As if he were a marionette being manipulated by the strings of a spastic puppeteer, Prescott listed this way and that, his legs barely able to support him.

"Jamie, just a little farther." Cavanaugh watched her stagger toward him. "You're going to be fine. All you have to do is reach me."

Meanwhile, Prescott wavered toward Jamie and her companion.

Abruptly, he collapsed to his knees.

Cavanaugh went to him and yanked him to his feet. "Keep moving, damn it. People are expecting you. I've got better things to do than hang around, waiting for you to put one foot in front of the other."

Again, he shoved Prescott, who seemed even more controlled by a spastic puppeteer.

As Prescott tottered nearer to Grace and her companion, they seemed appalled by his grotesque appearance.

Jamie stumbled closer, her green eyes now distinct in the headlights.

For a second time, Prescott halted, about to collapse.

"Move!" Cavanaugh went to him, once more shoving him. They were now midway between the cars.

As Prescott reeled forward, Jamie and Prescott passed each other. Lips bleeding, she looked horrified by the damage that had apparently been done to Prescott's features.

Almost
over, almost free,
Cavanaugh thought, praying. For all he knew, Grace would shoot at him now that he seemed preoccupied with Jamie. Everything depended on the next few seconds.

"Let's go home," he told Jamie. About to put an arm around her, he motioned for her to keep moving toward the car.

But activity beyond Prescott caught Cavanaugh's attention. Balancing on one crutch, Grace raised the other crutch to strike Prescott across the face as he lurched in her direction. Meanwhile, Grace's companion aimed a handgun at Prescott.

I gave my word, Cavanaugh thought.

As Grace swung the crutch, Prescott fell to avoid the blow. The crutch whistled over his head. He hit the ground, his hands out of sight beneath him.

Now he's snapping the duct tape, grabbing the pistol under his jacket, Cavanaugh thought.

Grace balanced herself to swing the crutch again.

The moment Prescott rolled to get away from it, his movement much quicker than his presumed dazed condition would have allowed, Cavanaugh drew his pistol.

Three shots from three different weapons were so near in time, they were almost indistinguishable as Grace's companion shot Prescott in the chest. Shuddering, Prescott shot Grace in the head while the crutch hurtled toward him, whacking the ground beside him. Cavanaugh heard screaming as his bullet hit Grace's companion in the chest, jolting her backward. A fourth shot, this one again from Prescott, stopped the screaming when the bullet hit the woman's face and dropped her.

The smell of cordite hung in the air, wisps of it floating in the headlights.

Ears ringings, nerves on fire, Cavanaugh spun toward Jamie, relieved to see that she'd dropped to the ground the moment the shooting started.
"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

He spun toward Prescott. "Are you okay?"

Lying on the ground, needing to catch his breath from the bullet's impact against the Kevlar vest, Prescott didn't answer right away. Presumably, he also needed to adjust to the realization that the crisis was over, that he didn't have to continue to be terrified. "Yes."

"I kept my word," Cavanaugh said. "I helped you. I protected you. Because
you
helped me, you have nothing to fear from me. As much as I hate you, I'll never come after you again."

Prescott nodded, continuing to lie on the ground and catch his breath.

"If you didn't remember to wipe your fingerprints from the cartridges before you loaded them, find the empty shell casings and take them with you," Cavanaugh said.

"I remembered."

"Use Grace's car to get away from here. When you abandon it, remember to wipe your prints from everything you touch."

"I won't forget."

"Then our business is finished."