The Searcher (37 page)

S
OLOMON WHEELED THE HORSE AND DROPPED DOWN CLOSE TO WHERE
Holly was lying. There was a flashlight on the ground and he grabbed it and checked around. Ramon was on his back, a deep dent in his head where the horse's hoof had caught him. It had peeled the skin away, broken his metal plate, and pulled it back to expose a small square of brain beneath. The rifle was lying next to him and Solomon picked it up and carried it over to Holly.

“How did you find me?” Holly asked when he knelt beside her.

“I heard the gunshot,” Solomon said, tearing at the sodden material of her jeans so he could examine her leg, “then I heard you scream.”

There was blood, plenty of blood, but not enough to make him think she would bleed out. He undid her belt, pulled it through the loops of her jeans, then wound it around her thigh and cinched it tightly above the wound.

“Hold that,” he said, handing her the end of the belt. “It'll control the bleeding until we can get an ambulance to you.”

“Am I going to die?” she asked.

“No,” Solomon replied. “Not if I can help it.”

“Hands where I can see them,” a voice called from the shadows.

Solomon turned to see Morgan emerging from behind the trunk of a jacaranda tree, his gun pointing straight at him.

“Your hands,” Morgan repeated.

Solomon stood slowly, lifting his hands in front of him. He stepped away from Holly so that Morgan could see Ramon, lying dead on the ground behind him.

Morgan shook his head when he saw him. “It's all one big damned mess, is what it is. This was supposed to be a new beginning. New business partner, more shipments. Cassidy didn't want it, neither did Tucker, that's why they had to go. There would have been so much damn money coming through this town we'd all have been rich. Maybe that's why they didn't want it. And now look . . .” He stared at Ramon, lying on his back, eyes open and a fist-size hole in his head. “Who am I supposed to do business with now?” He turned to Solomon. “Why did you have to come here? Everything was fine until you arrived.”

“Not according to James Coronado.”

“Oh Jesus, spare me all the ‘I'm here to save him' crap. You can't save him. Any more than you can save yourself.”

He raised his gun, aimed it at Solomon's head, and a shot rang out.

Solomon gasped and watched Morgan fall to his knees, his gun dropping from his hand and onto the ground. He turned to where the shot had come from and saw Holly pointing Ramon's rifle up at the spot where Morgan had been.

“Not rock salt this time, you son of a bitch,” she said, her voice already slipping out of focus.

Then the rifle slipped from her hand and her eyes rolled up into her head.

A
NDREWS WAS HEADING BACK TO THE VAN, SCANNING THE SQUARE FOR
movement, when he heard the second gunshot.

“That's it, we're moving out,” he said.

Mulcahy was hunched over the radio, riding the scanner. “We should take the desert road,” he said. “Not the one past the airfield or the one through the mountains.”

“Why?”

“I've been picking up some radio traffic from two tactical units. They must have been tipped off by someone, or could be they saw the fire. One is inbound from Douglas, the other's coming from Globe. I've heard nothing from the desert road. Guess they have it down as impassable, but it's not. I can vouch for that.”

Andrews nodded and leaned his head toward his lapel mic. “All units, listen up. RV back at the transporters immediately and prepare to exfil. Repeat: RV at the vehicles and let's get out of here, now.”

He checked his watch and glanced over at the church. “We need to step on this, that thing's going up in less than seven minutes. Where's Ramon?”

“Over behind the church,” Mulcahy said. “Don't worry about him, I'll take him out with me.”

“You sure? He's going to be pissed I gave the order to pull out without checking with him first.”

“I'll cope,” Mulcahy said. “I just spent two hours in a car with his old man. He can't be any worse than that.”

C
ASSIDY LAY IN THE QUIET OF THE CHURCH, LISTENING FOR ANY SIGNS OF
movement. He had heard the door being locked but wanted to be sure before he showed himself. He knew they were looking for him, he'd overheard someone say it, and he didn't want to be found. He felt like something terrible was going to happen here and that perhaps he was the only one who could stop it.

He sat up and looked out at the silent church through the canvas arch of the covered wagon. He couldn't see anyone and the lack of lights suggested there wasn't anyone to see.

He moved as quietly as he could, aware of every creak as his weight shifted inside the old wagon. He stepped out onto the floor and listened again before moving toward the line of crates in the central aisle.

He saw the red LED numbers shining brightly in the darkness, the display showing 5:24.

Then 5:23.

Then 5:22.

Cassidy fell to his knees before it, his hands fluttering over the
surface of the thing, hoping for something as simple as an Off switch. The numbers continued to tumble and the 5 became a 4.

Outside he heard an engine start up. Everyone pulling out before the bomb went off. Why would anyone want to destroy something as beautiful and sacred as a church?

The numbers continued to tumble, faster than seconds it seemed. He thought about walking it right out of the front door, but there could still be people out there who might make him put it back again, or shoot him and put it back in here themselves. He didn't care about his own safety, he felt he had forfeited that, what with all the bad choices he had made. He had made them for good reasons though. It was all to save the town. Perhaps he had failed at that. But he could save the church, that much was still in his power.

He could save the house his ancestor built.

M
ULCAHY MOVED TOWARD THE
C
ASSIDY RESIDENCE, WARY OF THE TWO GUNSHOTS
he had heard coming from the other side of it. He knew Ramon was back there somewhere, Morgan too, and he thought the woman was also in the mix. He pulled his Beretta from his holster and held it in front of him.

Behind him the armored trucks started up, their heavy engines shattering the night with their roars as they moved away. By the time he reached the house, they were gone and he listened to the sounds of the night through their fading rumble. He cocked his head to one side and tightened his grip on the gun.

He could hear the sound of heavy footsteps shuffling across the dry grass and getting louder. He waited until he was sure they were within safe pistol range then stepped out and pointed his gun straight at the figure emerging from the shadows.

He frowned when he saw who it was. “I thought you were dead,” he said.

“Apparently not,” Solomon replied and continued walking. “If you're going to shoot me, get it over with, otherwise give me a hand. She's been shot and she needs to get to the hospital.”

Mulcahy looked past him into the shadowed garden. “Who else is back there?”

“The psychopath with the plate in his head.”

“Alive?”

“No.”

“What about Morgan?”

“He's dead too.”

Mulcahy relaxed a little. “Well, that saves me a job. Let me help you there.” He holstered his gun and took the girl from Solomon. Her leg was a bloody mess and he carried her over to the wide wooden porch and laid her down on one of the porch sofas.

“Can you call an ambulance?” Solomon said. “She's lost a lot of blood.”

Mulcahy checked his phone. “I can now,” he said. “They've switched off the jammer.”

Solomon nodded and looked over at the church. “Make sure she's okay,” he said.

Mulcahy inspected Holly's leg as the ringing tone sounded in his ear. It was a clean in-and-out wound, no hollow points or anything else that might have blown a chunk of her leg off. It could've been a whole lot worse.

“State your emergency,” the voice sounded in his ear.

“Gunshot wound. Female in her late twenties. She's been shot in the leg and she needs an ambulance.”

“State your location, sir.”

“Cassidy residence. You might want to send some extra folks down while you're at it. There's been some gunfire here. Couple of people dead.”

He hung up before he could get drawn into a conversation he didn't want to have. They would send cops for a gunshot wound
callout, though he wasn't sure what cops were left. He looked up and realized that Solomon was gone. He stood and walked over to the edge of the porch and spotted him halfway down an avenue of trees. He was heading for the church.

“No!” Mulcahy called after him, remembering what Andrews had said. “Get away from there.”

Solomon heard Mulcahy calling him, telling him to keep away from the church, but all it did was make him start running toward it. He felt drawn to it, like a drunk to a drink.

He felt so tired now, but he pushed himself onward, one foot in front of the other. He wanted to know what was hidden beneath the altar. He
needed
to know.

He pulled the cross out from under his shirt and held it in his hand, not understanding how he had come by it or what it might mean, but knowing all those answers were close. The wall was in front of him now and the church just beyond. Somehow he had to get over that, get into the church and find what was hidden in the plinth. The lost Cassidy treasure. His to find.

The explosion was like a thunderclap, so deep and loud he felt it in his chest. The ground beneath him erupted and he was thrown upward into the lower branches of a tree. He reached out with his hands to try to protect his face but he hit his head hard on a branch and the world went blinding white for a second. Then he felt himself falling, and the sound of the explosion was gone, and the whiteness faded to black.

A
NDREWS WAS DRIVING PAST THE BURNED BILLBOARD ON THE EDGE OF TOWN
when he heard the explosion. He thought of the creepy mannequin by the old-fashioned wagon and smiled at the thought that it had been obliterated. The blast and the fire would keep everyone busy for hours, days even. It was the perfect diversion to help them slip away. It had been as neat as it could have been: no men lost, minimal gunfire, and none of it from his men. Objective achieved. As far as missions went, they didn't get any better.

He fixed his eyes on the road ahead, plotting the best route through the potholes and ridges on the surface. They passed the tangled wreckage of the plane and headed away into the night, the blackened desert blending perfectly with the dark sky. It felt like they were flying instead of driving. He felt like he was free.

The light flicked on ahead of him when he was almost at the junction, so bright it flooded the cab and forced him to slow right down.

“Stop your vehicle,” a voice commanded through a megaphone.

More lights on either side of them. The headlights of vehicles parked out in the desert.

“We have you covered on all sides,” the voice came again. “Stop your vehicles, turn off your engines, and step outside with your hands where we can see them. I repeat, we have you covered, do NOT attempt anything stupid.”

Andrews stood on the melted edge of the road with his hands on his head, the rest of his men lined up alongside him. He stared out at the black desert and felt oddly relieved that it was over. All the deception and anxiety about the next call and what he would be required to do to keep his family safe. He knew some of his men had turned for money, but not all of them, and he wondered if those others in the line were feeling as relieved as he was.

A captain stepped in front of him and regarded him coldly from behind his visor. “Real shitstorm you've stirred up here. Not sure the department's going to get out from under this one any time soon.” He shook his head and looked along the line. “Which one's Mulcahy?”

“He's bringing up the rear,” Andrews said, staring back down the road toward the town. He could see the glow of the fire over at the airfield, but that was all, no headlights coming up the road and no fire in the center of town.

Then he realized what had happened.