Cover of Night (43 page)

“That’s it for me,” he said, yawning, when the current game ended. “I think I’ll go talk to Hugh, maybe relieve him early if he’s tired.”

“It’s a couple of hours yet until
midnight
. That makes for a long shift for you,” said Teague.

“Yeah, well, don’t tell him I said it, but I’m younger.” He stood and stretched, and pulled on his heavy coat, made sure he had gloves and a watch cap. The weather here could change in the blink of an eye. It had gone from clear and cold to warm and cloudy, then to cold and cloudy, then cold and rainy, and now back to clear and cold—all in as many days as there were changes. This morning the mountains had been snowcapped. Winter was coming, and he wanted the hell out of
Idaho
.

Good old Hugh. He’d miss him.

Not really.

He had to make certain this pointed back to Faulkner. Maybe plant a note on Hugh that said, “Yuell Faulkner paid me to do this”? Yeah, right. It had to be something the cops would catch, but not so obvious they would discount it as a plant. Tying Bandini in would be a nice touch, too, guaranteed to bring a shitload of trouble down on Faulkner’s ass, from both the good guys and the bad.

He pulled on his gloves as he went over to the Tahoe, opened the door, and fished Toxtel’s cell phone out of the glove box. The phones were useless out here in the mountains, but he wasn’t interested in making a call. He turned on the phone, then entered Faulkner’s number in the address book. No name, just a number. The cops would run it down. He turned the phone off and replaced it in the glove box, then on second thought got it out again and slipped it into his pocket. Then he had a third thought, smiled, and once more put the phone in the glove box. Yeah. That would work even better.

There was a pile of papers in the Tahoe, maps and lists and sketches. One of the sheets of paper had fallen to the floorboard, been stepped on, and was generally dirty. Goss grabbed a pen, clumsily scribbled Bandini’s name on the dirty sheet of paper, put a question mark after it, then marked through the name so it was almost illegible—almost, but not quite. He dumped all the papers on the back floorboard, and dropped the pen between the driver’s seat and the console.

Then, whistling, he walked down the dark trail to where Toxtel stood—or rather, sat—lonely vigil, waiting for someone on the other side to talk to him.

Cal
melted into the shadow of a tree, making himself part of the undergrowth. He was no more than five feet from the third guard, whom he recognized as Mellor, when he heard someone coming toward them,
whistling
.

He stood motionless, his head down and his eyes narrowed to mere slits. He’d smeared mud on his face to break up the pattern of pale features, but he’d slid effortlessly into the zone he reached when he was hunting, and if instinct prompted him to duck his head and close his eyes, he did. He was so close, the gleam of his eyes might give him away.

The second shooter was lying motionless in a pool of his own blood, the first guy’s knife in his throat. Two down, four to go. He was tempted to take these two at the same time, but he ignored the idea. Controlling the noise, the scene, would be too difficult. He’d stick to his original plan and take them one at a time.

“You’re early,” said Mellor, standing up from his protected position. He was wearing a heavy coat and was holding a pistol instead of a rifle.
Cal
mentally shook his head at the way the guy was exposing himself to possible gunfire. He must feel safe at night, thinking no one in Trail Stop could see him.

“Thought I’d give you a break,” said the other guy.
Cal
recognized him, too. Huxley. “Teague and his cousin are playing
Texas
hold ’em in the tent if you want to relax before turning in.” As he spoke he leaned down and picked up a blanket, shook it out, started folding it.

“I don’t play cards,” said Mellor, turning to stare across the water at the dark houses. “What’s with these people?” he asked suddenly. “Are they nuts? I’d have been trying to find out what was going on, what we want, anything. They just pulled back and locked down.”

“Teague said they were—”

“Piss on Teague. If he’d known what he was doing, we’d already have the flash drive and be back in Chicago.”

Flash drive
. So that’s what they wanted. But Cate had a computer; if there had been anything electronic in Layton’s belongings, Cate would have recognized it, realized that was likely what they wanted. She hadn’t, because it wasn’t there. It had gone out the window with Layton.

“I thought you said he was highly recommended.” Huxley had draped the folded blanket over his arm. Something was funny about the way he was holding it, with his hand inside the fold.

“I called a guy I know,” Mellor muttered, turning back. “I trus—”

Huxley fired three shots, the sound muffled by the blanket, so it wasn’t much louder than if it had been suppressed. Mellor jerked as two shots hit him in the chest, a double tap, then the insurance tap to his forehead. He went down like a sack of feed. Huxley didn’t check to see if he was dead, didn’t spare his erstwhile partner a second glance; he simply turned and walked away, back the way he’d come.

Now, wasn’t this interesting? A falling out, or a hidden agenda? Silently
Cal
followed, blending with the shadows, a part of the night itself. Huxley made no attempt at silence; he strode up the road as if he were on a sidewalk in the city. Around a curve he left the road, took a newly beaten-down path to the left. The vehicles would be tucked back in here,
Cal
thought; the flattened bushes looked as if something wide had been over them.

There was a tent set up in a clearing, with five vehicles parked around it: four pickup trucks and one Tahoe. A camp lantern hung inside the tent, shedding its less-than-sufficient light on two men playing a halfhearted round of poker. Through the opened flap,
Cal
could see sleeping bags rolled up on the floor of the tent.

“Toxtel in love with standing watch?” a big man with a huge, vivid bruise on his face asked, looking up. “Or does he think they’ll suddenly start talking tonight?”

“Just conscientious, I guess,” said Huxley, who brought his arm up, started pulling the trigger. Either he had given a lot of thought to how he was going to do two men, or he’d practiced until it was second nature. There was something almost mechanical about him: no hesitation, no excitement, no emotion at all. Two shots here, to the big man first, then two more to the other man, following so swiftly the second man had no time to react. Then the barrel swept back to the big man, the motion perfectly controlled, and he delivered the insurance tap. Back to the other man, once more, without feeling.
taptap, taptap, tap, tap.
Almost like a dance.

Huxley squatted beside the big man’s body, stuck his gloved fingers in the right pants pocket, and came out with a set of keys. He tossed the pistol on the ground between the two bodies and walked out of the tent to one of the pickups.

Cal
watched him drive away, his gaze narrow and thoughtful. He could have taken him at any time, but the guy was doing his work for him and at the same time effectively putting him completely in the clear, so this seemed best. Let the cops figure out what happened. Whatever Huxley’s agenda was, it hadn’t included his partners.

Cal
went into the tent and took a set of keys from the second body. Glancing down at the key, he saw it was for a Dodge, and without hesitation he walked to the big four-wheel drive Dodge Ram and climbed in. He would be at Creed’s place in fifteen minutes.

Neenah stayed with Creed at the clinic the next day while his leg was X-rayed and
Cal
’s handiwork examined. When the doctor asked who did the suturing, Creed merely said an old buddy who’d had some medical training in the Corps, and left it at that. It was enough; the doctor immediately assumed “medic” and was satisfied.

Turned out he had a hairline fracture—like
Cal
hadn’t already told him that—and they put him in a soft cast instead of a plaster one. He was to wear the cast until he came back in two weeks for more X-rays, but the doctor thought the fracture would be healed by then. All in all, good news. They gave him a pair of crutches; the doc ordered him to use them and give his leg as much rest as possible, and said that if he did what he was supposed to, in two weeks he’d be walking on his own two feet again.

Neenah smiled in relief when she heard Creed’s prognosis. “I was afraid you’d done some sort of permanent damage, hobbling around the way you did,” she said as he got into her rental car. How she’d gotten a car so fast, he didn’t know. Maybe someone in the sheriff’s department had helped. She had driven up to the clinic steps to pick him up, to keep his walking to a minimum.

“That’s the only way I know how to hobble,” he retorted, making her laugh. He loved her laugh, loved the way she tilted her head back and her eyes sparkled. The tension and strain of the past few days had left dark circles under her eyes and occasionally he’d seen grief etched in her face, but for a moment all that was gone. He’d like to keep it that way, keep the pain away from her. He knew he couldn’t, knew everyone who had been in Trail Stop would have to deal with what had happened, each in his own way. He hadn’t escaped unscathed himself, and he wasn’t thinking about his leg. Old memories had resurfaced, brought back by the violence that had touched their lives. He’d dealt with them before and he would this time, too, the memories shared by all men who had been to war. The details differed, but friends had been lost.

The Trail Stop Massacre, as it was already being called by the bloodsucker press, was big news right now. A steady stream of reporters was flowing into town, which created an instant motel-room shortage because the Trail Stop inhabitants were already here and needed places to stay.

Eventually everything would settle down, but now the sheriff’s department was taking statements from everyone and scrambling to find accommodations for so many people until the electricity and phone service could be restored to the community, which some people were saying could take until the bridge was rebuilt. Bridges weren’t thrown up overnight, not even small bridges. The word was they might not be back in their houses by Christmas. Creed knew better. He’d already made some phone calls to some people who knew some people, and red tape was being sliced through, the Trail Stop bridge shoved to the front of a list of projects. Creed expected the new bridge would be ready within a month.

Things would still be a mess in Trail Stop, though. Food in refrigerators and freezers would be spoiled, rain would have blown in through broken windows and damaged floors and walls, plus there was the little matter of all the bullet holes, damaged or destroyed possessions, vehicles that had been damaged…the insurance adjusters would be busy for a while.

At least the cops seemed to be leaning toward the scenario that there had been trouble in the bad-guy ranks, and one of them had turned on the rest. Unless
Cal
spoke up and said otherwise, that was the theory Creed was publicly buying.

Privately, Creed knew otherwise. He’d been on too many missions with the cunning bastard not to recognize his handiwork.
Cal
had always gotten the job done. No matter what that job was, he’d been Creed’s go-to guy in tougher situations than this. He was never the biggest guy around, never the fastest or the strongest, but by God, he’d always been the toughest.

“You’re smiling like a wolf,” Neenah observed, which might have been a caution that people could be watching.

The comparison startled him. “Wolves smile?”

“Not really. It’s more a baring of teeth.”

Okay, so the comparison was an apt one.

“I was just thinking about Cate and Cal. It’s nice to see them together.” It was only half a lie. He’d been thinking about
Cal
. But, damn, it
was
nice the way he’d seen Cate three years ago and hung in there all this time, waiting for her to notice him—and while he was waiting, quietly bonding with her kids and inserting himself into her life so completely she wouldn’t know what to do without him. That was
Cal
. He decided what he wanted, then he made it happen. Creed was suddenly glad
Cal
hadn’t wanted Neenah, or he’d have had to kill the best friend he had in the world.

Creed directed Neenah to his house, and for the first time in his life he suddenly wondered if he’d left underwear lying on the floor. He knew he hadn’t—his military training was too deeply ingrained—but if ever he had, it would probably be when Neenah would see the house for the first time.

He made it to the front door and started to unlock it, then noticed where
Cal
had knocked out a window. He laughed, reached inside, and unlocked the door, then maneuvered his crutches to the side so she could precede him inside.

He liked his place. It was rustic, small enough for him, but not too small, since there were two bedrooms. The kitchen was modern, not that he used it a lot, the furniture sized to fit him and comfortable enough to sleep on. The decorating was plain Jane, if you could call it decorating. The furniture was put where he wanted it, and the bed was made up. That was the extent of his domestic abilities, or inclinations.

She didn’t have a place to live, he realized. Her house had taken a lot of hits, plus she couldn’t even get to it right now. The sheriff’s department had brought in a helicopter to airlift the stranded inhabitants to town, because that was deemed the fastest, easiest way.

“It looks like you,” she said with her serene smile. “No nonsense. I like it.”

He touched her cheek with one finger, lightly stroking her smooth skin. “You could stay here with me,” he offered, going straight to the heart of what he wanted.

“Would you want me to have sex with you?”

He almost fell, the crutches suddenly becoming unmanageable, but he found he was incapable of lying to this woman, incapable of looking into those blue eyes and uttering anything except the absolute truth. “Hell, yes, but I want to do that regardless of where you live.”