Abduction (18 page)

NICK’S
pants were soaked from the knees down to his now sopping shoes.  The long grass was still wet, and the ground beneath it was spongy.  Jade had fared worse; the heel of her right shoe had sunk into the ground and she had almost fallen over, but kept her balance and a grip on Kelly.  She kicked both shoes off and left them where they lay.

Nick reached the bottom of the tower.  He saw the big man up above, his hands on the rail, watching him.

“Come on down,” Nick shouted up. “Let’s get this over with.”

“No, Cady, you get your sorry ass up here, after you take your jacket off and lose any hardware you’re carrying.”

Nick slipped his jacket off and folded it and hung it over the handrail.  Took a handgun from a belt holster that he wore high on his hip, close to the body, to hold it out for Logan to see before placing it on top of the jacket.

Jade followed Nick up the stairs, avoiding the dead vulture on the first landing as she watched where she put her feet.

Reaching the top, Nick faced Logan for the first time.  He couldn’t help but be impressed by the man’s stature: extremely tall and powerfully built, and obviously more than just capable.  So why was he standing up here in plain sight, making himself an easy target?

Jade reached the top and stood at least six feet to Nick’s left.  She had no idea what was going to happen, but
did
know that they had been followed, so expected an attempt on Logan’s life.

Kelly was awake and started to cry.  She was hungry, scared and wanted her Mommy.

“Shut the fuck up,” Jade said, placing Kelly down on the planks of the floor.  “Just sit there and don’t move.”

“Has he hurt you, honey?” Nick said to Karen.

Karen shook her head.  She had nothing to say to him.  That he was with the woman and child was proof enough to her that everything Logan had told her was true.  There was only one bad guy up here, and that was her father.

“Step over here,” Nick said to Karen.

Karen didn’t move.

Logan smiled.  “You were followed, Cady,” he said.  “Your hired guns are probably out there now, waiting until you and Karen are safe before they make a move on me.  But they’ll have already been dealt with.  You’re on your own.  Jade, Karen and Kelly can go back down and walk away, but you and I have unfinished business.”

“We had a deal, Logan.”

“One that you had no intention of honoring,” Logan said.

Jade knew that her best bet was to stay on side with Nick.  She reached down and swept Kelly back up in her arms and then held her out over the rail of the tower.

Nick grinned.  “You lose, Logan,” he said.  “This has all been for nothing if Jade lets go of the kid.  Dump whatever weapon you’re carrying, or the little brat is history.”

“You aren’t my father,” Karen said.  “You’re some kind of psychopath.  I didn’t want to believe just how evil you are, but now I know that everything Logan told me about you is true.  Just tell that whore to put Kelly down, and leave.”

“But―”

“There are no buts,” Karen said.  “I’ve always thought that you were a decent man, but you’re not, you’re a monster.”

Nick didn’t know what to say.  He couldn’t explain that he was like a person with a split personality.  He had always led two lives, and now they had collided and threatened to ruin his relationship with his daughter beyond any reasonable chance of reparation.  To his way of thinking it was all Logan’s fault.

Logan took the Glock he was carrying from his pocket, aimed it at Nick and said, “You’re bluffing.  If anything happens to Kelly, you’re history and know it.”

“So how do we resolve this… situation?” Nick said.

“Jade puts the girl down gently on the floor and steps away from her, and then you and her go back to your car and drive away.  If Karen wants to go with you she is free to do so.”

Nick nodded at Jade and she swung Kelly back under cover of the roof and set her down.

“Come on,” Nick said to Karen.  “Let’s go.”

Karen shook her head.  “I’ll stay here.  I don’t want to ever see you again.”

Nick had expected help by now.  Larry and Alan should have done something.  There had been no sound of shots or outcries.  Perhaps they were still searching for Logan’s accomplice.  He needed to do something.  To come out here and hand over the girl like an errand boy and then leave was not acceptable.

He half-turned, stopped behind Jade and pushed her in the middle of her back, to run her straight at Logan, who did no more than step aside in the half second it took for the woman to reach the spot he’d been standing in.

The forward momentum took Jade into the safety rail.  Had it been sound she would have bounced back off it, but over time the wood had become damp, and then rotten, and gave way under the impact.

Jade could do no more than put her hands out in a vain reflex attempt to save her life. She had no time to scream.  Terror had instantly formed in her mind as she crashed through the rail and posts.  There was a flash of realization that she was going to die, and then she did. Both of her arms shattered and her neck broke and she was suddenly as dead as the vulture on the landing.

Nick jinked to the left, grasped hold of Logan’s gun hand and wrenched it sideways as he attempted to head butt the taller man.  They grappled like lovers dancing in a close embrace, only inches away from the break in the rails.  Nick’s forehead struck Logan in the throat below his Adams apple, causing no real damage as he retaliated and brought his right knee up sharply between Nick’s legs.

Nick gasped as he lost his grip of the gun that Logan held, to double over, unable to ignore the pain and continue fighting.

Alan almost fired, but stayed his finger as Cady blocked his view of Logan.  He was having difficulty taking the kill shot.  He needed an instant to zero in and do the job.  He waited, staying relaxed, breathing evenly and not taking his eye from the end of the scope.  And then the moment came.  Cady went down, to reveal Logan standing behind him.

He was rock steady as he took up the slack on the trigger, breathed out and fired.  The middle of Logan’s forehead was in the crosshairs.

Tom was standing directly under the big tree.  He had almost given up his slow, silent search along the tree line.  And then he had spotted the figure up above him, aiming a rifle in the direction of where he knew Logan to be.  Life is all about choices and decisions, and some were far harder to make than others. Since meeting Logan he had been caught up in violence and death, and was now, in the eyes of the law, a murderer.  The choice of doing what was right or wrong was not always a clear, clean, cut and dried issue.  You sometimes had to act on what your heart and mind
knew
was the right thing to do.

Pointing the crossbow almost vertically up at the figure, Tom loosed the arrow, for its head to pass through the rifleman’s scrotum and travel up into his bladder, slicing through tissue before lodging in his intestines.

Timing over millions of things that happen every second of every day produce an outcome that would have been different if some form of intervention had not altered the course of what would have been people’s destiny.

The spring mechanism hammered the metal firing pin into the back end of the bullet, igniting a small explosive charge in the primer.  The primer then ignited the propellant, which occupied about two thirds of the bullet’s volume.  The pressure of resulting gases forced the bullet down the rifle barrel.

The rifle moved a fraction before the bullet completely left the muzzle.  The arrow had struck Alan in the instant that he had pulled the trigger, and the small but deadly bullet’s trajectory had been affected.  The fastest bullets travel at around 1800 mph, which is about three times the speed of sound, and like a supersonic jet fighter, they make shock waves as they roar through the air.

Tom heard the noise, and knew that the shooter had taken his shot.  He fitted another arrow to the crossbow and raised it to fire again.

Alan was lifted up on to his toes as a spiking and terrible pain erupted in his balls and stomach.  It was beyond his ability to disregard and manage it.  The rifle fell from his now limp hands as he fell sideways out of the tree, to twist slightly and slam onto a waist-thick branch that grew out from the massive trunk.

Tom watched the rifle hit the ground butt first and fall over, and then the shooter appeared, hit the branch, folding back over it; his backbone snapping, severing his spinal cord, before he slithered off it and lay moaning on a thin carpet of mulch, knowing that his injuries were catastrophic and would almost certainly prove fatal.

Tom stood over the man.  Looked down and was satisfied that he no longer presented a threat.  Blood was running from the side of his mouth, and a thin red liquid ribbon of it was leaking from his left ear.  Tom got no pleasure from what had transpired. Nor did he feel any empathy for the shooter.  The big rifle was scoped, and the shot had been fired.  He was positive that Logan would be dead.  It would now be up to him alone to save the little girl.

As he made to walk away, a hand shot out and fingers encircled his right ankle.

Alan had felt his back break.  And seeing the crossbow in the man’s hand was enough to know that the pain in his guts was from an arrow that had been fired up at him.  He was going to die, but didn’t want to lie in the dirt and suffer for an unknown period of time.  Grabbing hold of the man’s ankle he whispered, “Finish it, please.”

Tom raised the heavy crossbow one-handed and placed the tip of the broadhead arrow against the crippled, dying man’s temple and triggered it.

Alan felt an explosion in his skull, but it only lasted for an instant.  Death was the most powerful painkiller in the world.  It negated all physical and mental discomfort and further suffering.

Drawing his handgun, Tom followed the link fence back to the open gates.  His mind was full of jumbled thoughts.  A memory of his father came back to haunt him: Ralph Cody had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and gone down hill quickly.  By the time his weight had dipped below ninety pounds he was bedridden and just waiting for the end.  There is probably nothing more dismal than watching the decline of someone that you love as they are trapped in the process of dying.  Like the man he had just killed, Tom’s dad had asked him to finish it; said that he’d had enough and that had he been a dog, then the local vet would have given him the needle.  But Tom had not been able to do it.  Mercy killing for humans was still illegal.  The law in its wisdom seemed to want people to go out hard and slow.  He and Gail had tended to his father, relieved, when he had slipped into a coma three days before he died.

Tom kept low and jogged to the rear of the Mercedes.  As far as he knew, Nick and Karen Cady, Jade, and the little girl, Kelly, would soon return to the car.  And when they did he would shoot the gangster dead and be done with it.

Logan saw the muzzle flash.  It appeared from the trees over three hundred yards away.  There was no time to move.  No time to even think.  No time to react.  The large caliber bullet struck as his brain formed the thought that this was it, and that he was about to become a part of history.

The turbulence the bullet made as it ripped through the humid air caused a thunderous sound as it missed Logan’s head by less than an inch.  The hard-tipped slug cut through a timber support and carried on, out into the wetlands behind the tower.

Karen ran across to where Kelly was now sitting on the floor; her little body shaking, shoulders heaving as she cried.  On her knees in front of her, Karen embraced her gently and told her that she was safe now and would soon be back with her mommy.

Nick took his chance and got up and ran for the stairs, to leap down them three at a time.  He almost made it to the first landing when a tread gave way beneath his right foot with a loud crack and he fell through the gap, catching his chin on the next step as he fell to the ground. He was too intent on escaping from Logan to feel the pain in his bottom jaw, and ignored the fact that his ankle twisted and was sprained as he hit the ground.  Up and running, he headed in the wrong direction, weaving across the open space and up the rise that led up to the rim, expecting a bullet to hit him in the back as he threw himself over the top.  There was no sign of the Merc.  He was disoriented, so just headed for the nearest trees, hunched over and limping as his brain demanded that he acknowledge the pain in his ankle and jaw.

Logan could have taken a shot.  He kept low, expecting another bullet to be incoming, and watched as Cady ran away from the tower.  Holding the Glock two-handed he aimed through the now large gap in the rails that Jade had unwittingly made before falling to her death.  He wanted to pull the trigger, but held off.  Cady deserved to die, but Logan didn’t want to shoot an unarmed man in the back, especially in front of his daughter. There was something in his psyche that stopped him. And where could Cady go?  He was heading in a direction that led to swamps and lagoons, not the highway.

Tom waited a couple of minutes and then jogged forward from the car, keeping low as the tower came into view.  He stretched out on the ground and saw a figure ‒ that he thought to be Cady ‒ running north, to what was little more than wilderness.  And he could see figures up in the top of the tower, and one looked too big to be anyone but Logan.  He grinned.  The sensation of being on his own with unknown problems to solve, evaporated.  Standing up, he strolled down to the base of the tower.  There was a jacket folded on top of a wide wooden rail, and on top of it was a semiautomatic pistol.