Authors: Zoe Sharp
‘Hello, Sean,’ I said calmly, without moving my head. ‘Right on time, I see.’
‘Up slowly to your knees, Charlie, if you please. Hands where we can see them.’ It was Parker who spoke now, his voice completely emotionless. He was a little further back than Sean, I judged, and standing off to his right. ‘Let’s not do anything that any of us would have cause to regret.’ And I got the feeling he was speaking as much to Sean as to me.
Carefully, Bane and I pushed up to our knees, hands out from our sides and fingers loose. Parker appeared around from behind us, moving cautiously. He was dressed in the black of the SWAT teams and armed with an M4.
Bane glanced at me, his expression unreadable. ‘
This
was your plan?’
I shrugged. ‘You were right, Sean does know me,’ I said. ‘But better this than trying to fight our way in, don’t you think?’
‘We got them,’ Parker said, and I saw he was wearing
a throat mic, the words not directed at us. ‘We’re bringing them in now.’ He nodded to Sean, still behind us. Next thing, Sean’s hands began a rough pat-down search of Bane. He went over him twice, seeming surprised not to find a weapon.
‘There’s a Ruger nine-mil in my backpack,’ I said mildly, when Sean moved on to me. ‘I took it away from Tony, after he tried to take out the two Suburbans Epps sent in for Bane.’
‘Oh, I know all about that,’ Sean said softly, and finally stepped round in front of us. There was a livid gash along his cheekbone which had been hastily Steri-Stripped back together. Any saliva in my mouth turned instantly to ashes.
‘Oh, shit,’ I murmured. ‘You were in one of them.’
‘Lead vehicle,’ he said shortly. ‘We found Tony’s body. If you hadn’t killed the little bastard, I would have done it myself.’
I didn’t think passing on the blame – or perhaps the credit – to Gardner would have gained me anything, nor would denying prior knowledge of Tony’s abortive ambush. Either Sean knew, at some deep inner level, that I would not have been a part of it, or he was past believing me anyway.
I kept silent.
‘OK,’ Parker said. ‘On your feet.’
‘You really think we should take him to Epps?’ Sean asked. ‘The fact it’s what he wants makes me suspicious in itself.’ His cold stare swept over Bane’s impassive features. ‘It’s not as if he can tell us anything operationally useful.’
‘For God’s sake,’ I said. ‘What do you think this is – some kind of half-arsed assassination attempt? Why do you think we’re here, if not to try and stop this before it goes any further?’
And when Sean would have reacted in anger, I’m sure, Parker silenced him with a single look. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You really want so badly to see Epps? Let’s go.’
They escorted us across to the command centre truck, not exactly as prisoners, but not exactly as guests, either. They didn’t cuff us, as I’d half-expected that they might, but both Sean and Parker stayed slightly back, where they could read any body movements that were remotely hostile. I snuck a quick sideways look at Bane. If he had fears about what was to come, he didn’t show it.
Only when we reached the steps up into the back of the trailer did Parker move ahead, knocking and waiting for the door to be opened. The rear half of the interior was a mass of flat-screen monitors and communications equipment, manned by three of Epps’s personnel, all male. I wondered almost idly if Epps employed
any
women, and, if so, in what capacity.
Parker led us straight past the technicians, who barely glanced up from their monitors as we passed. They might have been geeks, but they were still all carrying Glocks, I noted.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw one screen carried what appeared to be a satellite image of the compound. Interesting to know that Epps had that kind of clout, and no wonder Parker and Sean had been waiting for us. They must have tracked us from the moment we left. But did that also mean…?
‘Didn’t you see Tony waiting for you?’ I asked, nodding to the image on the screen.
‘Epps only got the OK to retask the bird
after
the RPG attack,’ Sean said darkly. ‘Before then, it wasn’t deemed necessary.’
And by the way the technicians studiously avoided his eye, I surmised that had been a bone of contention.
Parker walked straight to the front half of the trailer and opened a door without waiting for an answer to his perfunctory knock. Inside, we found Conrad Epps sitting behind a surprisingly utilitarian desk with just a phone and a laptop in front of him. Against the far wall, perched on a low sofa, was Chris Sagar.
At the sight of us, Sagar jerked to his feet, would have backed away if the base of the sofa hadn’t already been hard up behind his knees. I had to make a physical effort to stop myself reaching for his throat. If Bane felt the same way, he didn’t let that show, either. I’d never met a man with so much self-control.
Apart, maybe, from Sean.
I glanced at him, but he was like a stranger to me. He stayed by the door, making no bones about blocking our exit. It was hard to remember, watching him now, that we had shared a bed, a life, and intimacy. Parker moved round so he was against the far wall, to Epps’s right, providing diffuse targets.
‘Mr Bane,’ Epps said, leaning back in his chair. There was no satisfaction in his voice, no gloat. Me, he completely ignored, as I thought he probably would.
‘Mr Epps,’ Bane returned gravely. He folded his hands neatly in front of him, allowed his shaven head to tilt as he
surveyed his nemesis with something close to indifference. ‘You wanted me, so here I am,’ he said. ‘Now, perhaps you would be so kind as to leave my people alone.’
‘What a pity you weren’t always so amenable,’ Epps said coldly. ‘And it’s a little late for that, don’t you think? They seem to have involved themselves.’
‘It doesn’t have to be too late,’ Bane said. ‘I’m prepared to answer any questions you’d care to ask. My only stipulation is that first you hear what I have to say.’
‘In case it escaped your notice, Mr Bane,’ Epps said coldly, ‘you’re in no position to lay down conditions.’
‘Neither are you,’ Bane said, his gaze sweeping over an increasingly nervous-looking Sagar, ‘when this whole sorry tale becomes public knowledge.’
Such was his conviction that Epps paused a moment, eyes flicking to his consultant, then said, ‘What is it you have to say, Mr Bane?’
‘Wait a minute!’ Sagar protested. ‘Surely, you’re not—?’
‘Rest assured that I am not an easy man to convince,’ Epps said easily. His gaze shifted back to Bane. ‘What evidence do you have to support that statement?’
‘None that would convince a jury. But, tell me, was it you who approached Chris Sagar for advice on cults in general and Fourth Day in particular, or was it the other way around?’ he asked, his voice calm and measured. ‘He has no doubt told you that he was a former member of the subversive cult called Fourth Day, that he was the trusted second in command, and that’s all true.’
Into the stunned silence that followed, Bane added, ‘But what Chris failed to admit is that this was before I was involved with Fourth Day. All the excesses and practices he
claims went on did indeed happen, but under his guiding hand. He was not rescued and rehabilitated, but cast out and shunned.’
‘Lies!’ Sagar shouted, stabbing a finger in Bane’s direction. ‘I warned you he’d—’
‘Be quiet, Mr Sagar,’ Epps said with a faint snap like bones breaking.
‘The old owner of Fourth Day had no children, no close relatives, and Chris was positioning himself nicely to inherit, both the cult and the property that went with it. Then the old guy was forced to sell out. There was a private lawsuit by the familes of several young girls, who were abused at Fourth Day’s hands, and he sold to me. It was settled out of court, with the minimum of publicity, but there are ways of finding out these things.’ Bane paused, glancing at the set faces before him.
Epps leant forwards on the desktop, linking his hands together as if to keep them under control. ‘Go on.’
‘I have sworn depositions from the victims and their families, naming Chris for his part in this tragedy. How he escaped jail time is a mystery. It’s all there, and you are welcome to examine the documents all you like, in my lawyer’s offices, during normal business hours.’
Parker regarded him with just a touch of scepticism still. ‘Are you saying he set this whole thing up as some kind of revenge deal?’
‘Not at all,’ Bane said. ‘This is all about simple greed. It always has been.’
Sagar took a pace forwards. ‘He’s lying!’ he said, but there was an underlying desperation that we all heard. He swallowed it down as best he could. ‘He had Witney
murdered to stop him talking to you, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Detective Gardner has a confession from Tyrone Yancy about that,’ I put in. ‘He claims that he and Nu killed Witney on your orders, Sagar.’
‘You can’t listen to her,’ Sagar jeered. ‘She was too weak to resist him. She’s gone over, just like you said she would.’
Epps regarded me for a moment in granite silence, then turned back to Bane. ‘Greed?’
‘Liam Witney first discovered the oil shale deposits, and he made the mistake of telling Christopher. Of course, the big oil companies have been researching an economical method of extracting oil shale for decades, but now they may finally have made a breakthrough. I had a geological survey carried out that confirms the presence of enough oil-bearing shale to produce millions of barrels.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Sagar protested. ‘C’mon! I would have bought the damned land myself if I’d known.’ He gave a short, high laugh. ‘I told you, I thought the shale deposits were minimal at best. Worthless.’
‘At the time you had no means of raising the capital to buy the land,’ Bane said, allowing a flick of steel to lash through his voice for the first time. His eyes slid back across to Epps. ‘And now he’s trading futures for favours. How much did you offer Tyrone to keep the ball rolling in the right directions, Chris?’ When Sagar merely glared, he went on, ‘What I don’t know is how he managed to enlist my security personnel in the first place.’
‘Fourth Day used to have ties to various militia groups,’ Parker said suddenly. ‘Both Nu and Yancy were members of different groups after the military, and it was in their
interest to bring about a return to the old regime. They could well have been behind the original attacks – supply and demand.’
Supply and demand
. I remembered Yancy’s confession back at the compound, and was heartened that Parker had come to the same conclusion unaided.
Epps regarded Bane through narrowed eyes. ‘Why did you not approach us with this counter-intelligence right at the start, Mr Bane?’
Bane gave a sad half smile. ‘You and I have a history together, and I knew I was unlikely to be believed,’ he said simply. ‘Chris had told you that Fourth Day was a brainwashing cult, and you were only too ready to accept that.’ He looked right into Epps’s eyes, straight in and through and down deep. ‘I believe,’ he said gently, ‘that Mr Sagar may have found out that your daughter took her own life after her involvement with a cult in Tennessee, and manipulated that knowledge in order to convince you. He’s an excellent psychologist. All conmen are.’
Epps’s face went blank white, so that even his gunmetal grey moustache seemed to fade and something of the steel went out of his frame as he deflated before our eyes like a slow puncture.
‘I took over Fourth Day in order to turn it into a place of refuge, not to found my own religion,’ Bane said calmly into the silence. ‘Maria’s mother was involved with fanatics, and it has had a profound and detrimental effect on my daughter’s life. She still has nightmares and day terrors. People come to me damaged, and I try and help them to heal themselves.’
‘Like Charlie, you mean?’ It was Sean who spoke,
surprising me with the dusty hoarseness of his voice. ‘Just how, exactly, have you been helping her to heal?’
When I turned, I found his face almost as pale as that of Epps, and a desperate anguish in his eyes. Because, I realised, it had finally come home to him that if what Bane was saying was true, then half of what he’d believed of me – what Sagar had twisted to fit the apparent facts – was not.
Bane’s eyes skimmed over him and I could tell from the gentleness in his face, his voice, that he realised it, too. ‘Charlie needed very little help to let her inner beauty shine,’ he murmured. He turned back to Epps. ‘I entirely understand that you will need further proof of Chris’s machinations,’ he went on, but to my surprise Epps shook his head.
‘I might have done,’ he admitted slowly, ‘had Mr Sagar not demanded, in return for his expertise in this matter, that the US government make over all Fourth Day’s property to him.’
Bane showed no triumph, no relief, didn’t smile, just nodded with the quiet dignity of a statesman. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘please, call off your dogs.’
Cancelling the planned assault on Fourth Day’s compound was not a five-minute job. Oh, standing down the SWAT teams was achieved with one phone call, but restoring communications proved slightly more complicated. Eventually, Epps ordered up another couple of Suburbans, of which he seemed to have a limitless supply, and announced we would go in.
Sagar had lapsed into a dull-eyed silence, sitting hunched on the sofa. Parker had to scoop a hand under his elbow and lever him upright when word came through that the vehicles were waiting for us outside.
Parker handed off Sagar none too gently to Sean, who opened the door and nudged him through. Because of the confined space behind the technicians’ seats, we went through the communications area of the trailer in single file, Sagar leading with Sean directly behind, then Bane, me, Epps, and Parker bringing up the rear.
And even as we stepped out into that narrow space, an uneasiness came over me, a sense of trepidation I couldn’t quite identify.
Surely Epps won’t pull a double-cross on us – not now
…
I glanced back over my shoulder, but there was nothing in Epps’s face to alarm me.
Perhaps I’m just getting paranoid in my
—
I felt rather than heard the stumble through the suspended floor, twisted back just in time to see Sagar trip, cannoning clumsily into the technician sitting closest to the door. And in that instant I had a flash image of him stumbling like that once before, when the three men in the van had ambushed us. I’d told him to run, but he’d apparently fallen over his own feet and gone down, and I’d been forced to face our attackers when my instinct had been to flee.
As I watched, almost in slow motion, Sagar landed on the seated technician, driving the man’s upper body forwards so that his forehead smacked into his own keyboard. Sagar let out a convincing ‘oof’ as he hit, but his right hand snaked for the gun sitting at high ride on the man’s belt, with all the speed and sureness of a card cheat switching to a cold deck.
‘Sean!’
Even as I shouted the warning, Sagar jammed the stolen Glock nine into the technician’s ribs and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger.
The noise of the report was concussively loud inside the confines of the trailer. Unarmed, helpless, I took the only option open to me, jumping on top of Bane and powering him down, swinging him round to keep my body between him and the gun.
Sean was already reacting before the technician knew he was hit. He had the fastest reactions of anyone I ever
met. The M4 was slung over his shoulder on its strap but he didn’t bother trying to raise it, reaching instead for the .45-calibre Glock 21 he carried in a Kramer paddle holster at his side. He fired as soon as he cleared leather, aiming by grip and muscle memory and instinct.
But Sagar was already moving as the first shot landed, ducking and spinning away, so the round grazed across the back of his shoulder blade rather than landing solidly in his upper body, as it had been intended.
Sagar let out a grunt of pain and fired again as he bolted for the doorway, four rapid shots let off straight-armed behind him, blindly, as fast as he could work the trigger. The muzzle oscillated crazily as the action cycled, but his rounds were intended purely to cause havoc and confusion, to delay pursuit, fired without any clear target in mind.
But they found one anyway.
I couldn’t tell which of those wild shots hit Sean. All I saw was his head snap back and to the side, the mist of blood and something else, some heavier debris, sluice upwards across the clinical white wall of the trailer, then he went down.
No staggering halt. No controlled descent. No realisation of pain or damage. Just a sudden total overwhelming collapse as all motor function ceased.
Inside my own head, someone started screaming.
I don’t remember jacking upright, but next thing I knew I was on my feet, snatching up Sean’s Glock where it had dropped from his lifeless hand. Lights exploded behind my eyes, a howling filled my ears, the smell of blood was in my nose, my mouth.
And I wanted it.
I threw myself at the closing door before it had time to swing fully shut behind Sagar’s fleeing figure.
He’d got to the bottom of the steps and had started to run, awkward, stooped because of the shoulder injury Sean had inflicted. Sagar wore a pale-blue shirt and the blood was already soaking through the back of it in a spreading diagonal slash as if from the blade of a sword, his ponytail lank with it.
With a snarl I barely recognised, I bounded off the top flight of steps at full stretch, aiming straight for the blood like a starving predator going after wounded prey. I landed hard on his back and felt the almost irresistible urge to sink my teeth into the back of his neck and keep crushing until they met bone.
The weight and speed of my attack sent Sagar face first into the dirt, spilling me over his shoulder. He had time to let out a wail of pain and anger and shock before the air thumped out of his lungs.
As I rolled through the fall, he was fighting for breath, but still had enough left in him to swing the gun up towards me. I grabbed his arm and broke it cleanly at the elbow across my knee. He shrieked.
But the noise was cut off, sharp and abrupt, when I shoved him onto his back, knelt astride his chest and, as his mouth fell open on a gasp, thrust the muzzle of Sean’s Glock into it. I pushed the barrel all the way in, until the curve of the trigger guard crushed his bottom lip against his teeth and the front sight gouged into the roof of his mouth, and the hot steel burnt his tongue.
He went rigid under me, eyes jammed open, wild with panic as he looked into my face and saw his own death there waiting for him.
Around me, I was vaguely aware of torrential movement, of running boots and shouting, of the mechanical rasp of weapons being brought to bear. Gradually, as the initial burst of rage subsided into a cold ruthless flame, the sounds began to individuate.
Someone was yelling for a medic, someone else for backup, and just about everyone was yelling at me to put the gun down.
Not a chance
.
Slowly, minutely, I felt the muscles in my forearm contract, through my wrist and the tendons in the back of my hand, and into my right index finger. I began to take up the trigger, first the tiny blade that forms part of the Glock’s safety mechanism, then the curve of the trigger itself, balancing against the slight restriction. In my imagination, it quivered like a drawn bow.
‘Charlie!’ Parker’s voice finally penetrated, tight and shaken. I took my eyes away from Sagar’s face briefly. After all, it wasn’t like I needed to aim.
Parker had moved carefully round into my field of view. His hands, his shirt, the legs of his trousers, were all covered in blood, gleaming dark against the black of his gear, and a stark bright velvet crimson against his skin.
Sean’s blood
.
‘Stand down, Charlie!’ Parker said, and in all the time I’d known him, it was the first time I’d heard him sound afraid. ‘He’s not dead.
Sean is not dead
. Do you understand me? They’re working on him. The medics are working on him, right now.’
In my mind’s eye, I saw again the pink mist and the shards at the moment of impact, the way Sean had dropped
and folded. I’d seen people go down like that before. None of them had ever got up again.
‘I’m sorry, Parker, but I don’t believe you,’ I said, the words very clear and calm.
Another man moved round into my line of sight. Conrad Epps. And if I’d seen a momentary vulnerability in him, back there when Bane had mentioned his daughter, any weakness was well buried now.
‘If you pull that trigger, Fox, my men have orders to take you out,’ he said, and the words had a studied carelessness about them, as if discussing a garbage bag.
Parker flung him a desperate look. ‘Don’t do this, Charlie.’ His voice cracked. ‘You don’t have to do this. They’ll kill you if you do this. They won’t have any choice.’
I closed my eyes for a moment. Back in Fourth Day, I’d made the decision that I didn’t want to go on without Sean, but I’d never expected to be faced with the prospect of going on so totally alone. Not like this. A great keening sob welled in my chest and wailed inside my mind. All I could hear was the sound of my heart tearing.
Perhaps this is the answer
.
‘You can’t do it, Charlie.’
I opened my eyes and found Bane had joined the others, outside the circle of the SWAT team, with their M16s all pointed at me. I glanced at Sagar’s bulging face. He’d begun to gag as the blood from the roof of his mouth trickled into his throat. His tongue fought convulsively against the intrusion of the barrel, bloodied saliva stringing from his mouth.
In that second I not only hated but also despised him. For Sean to go down to an amateur blind-luck shot seemed the ultimate insult, somehow.
‘Trust me,’ I said acidly, ‘I can hardly miss.’
Bane shook his head, almost sadly. ‘You are not a killer without consequence, Charlie, you never have been,’ he said with utter certainty. ‘You will never shy away from what needs to be done, but this…does not. If he was still fleeing, you would not hesitate, but you have him at your mercy.’
He tilted his head and looked down into me, the way he had done when I’d first arrived at Fourth Day, when he’d said that all he saw in me was rage and sorrow, and without them I’d have nothing to sustain me.
I eyed him bitterly. ‘Sure of that now, are you?’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Bane said calmly. ‘Your only reason for killing this man would be revenge. Parker, here, is afraid you will take that path, but I know you will not. It would go against everything you are, everything you have made of yourself.’
I was silent. In the distance I heard the steady chop of rotor blades, coming in fast and low. Afterwards, I told myself it was the possible arrival of a medevac helicopter that swayed it for me. That what Parker had said might be true.
That Sean might not be dead.
A tiny sliver of doubt crept in, hope hitching along for the ride.
I looked down again, dispassionate, at Sagar. The blood from the wound in his back had leached out to halo his body, so my knees were soaked in it. He was weeping, eyes squeezed shut as if to stem the flow.
His left arm thrashed weakly. The right flopped, disengaged from the broken elbow downwards. The gun he’d taken from the technician lay within a finger’s length of the useless
hand. A part of me willed him to find the strength to pick it up, just to make the decision for me.
‘It’s all about choices, Charlie,’ Bane said softly, as if he could read my swirling thoughts. ‘And if Sean chooses to live, why shouldn’t you?’
The noise of the helicopter grew louder, almost on top of us now, the downwash from the rotor blades blasting grit and gravel across the parking area in a sudden surge as the air ambulance pilot saw the stand-off on the ground and put the machine into a reflexive hover. He was not
combat-trained
, I realised, was not going to risk his life to come into a hot zone to drag out casualties, however seriously they might be injured.
I dragged the Glock out of Sagar’s mouth, chipping his teeth, brought both hands up in a gesture of surrender that could not be mistaken from the air. The SWAT team converged, whipped the gun out of my grasp and lifted me bodily away from Sagar, hauling me back a few metres. Hands on my shoulders forced me, unresisting, onto my face with a knee rammed into my back until they had the PlastiCuffs zipped tight around my wrists.
I just managed to turn my head in time to see another two of Epps’s men haul Sagar up and cuff him, too, careless of the gunshot injury that made him squeal. I waited until he met my eyes, until I had him.
‘If he dies,’ I said, loud enough to be heard over the increased thrust of the landing heli, ‘you’ll wish I’d pulled that bloody trigger.’
And after that? Who knows
?
Sometimes, living is harder than dying, but I never did take the easy path, did I?