He stopped in the living room and looked around, when his right ear
clicked.
“It was a dark and stormy night, and I’m stuck tracking down two chicks and a dog,” Jerry said through the earbud. “Minus the stormy part, anyway.”
“What’s your situation?” Jack asked.
“Wishing I was somewhere else.”
“Besides that.”
“I’m still tracking them. The dog’s like a ghost, but the two humans are leaving plenty of clues. Don’t quote me on it, but I think I’m somewhere between the house and one of the neighbors. Close enough I can see lights in the distance; looks like LED lamps with auto sensors. Good news? I don’t see any cops.”
“Can you hear sirens out there?”
“Negative. Of course, they might be waiting until morning to show up. We’re not exactly in the city, are we? Shit tends to run slower out here, or so I’ve heard.”
Hope springs eternal,
Jack thought.
The lack of police sirens or any law-enforcement presence at all was more than he could have hoped for. It was a good sign Walter’s neighbors were MIA, and like Walter, were using their houses out here as a vacation spot instead of a permanent residence. He would have loved to know for sure, but they hadn’t had time to investigate the surrounding area when they first arrived. It was yet another reason why he hated taking jobs without the lead time for proper preparations.
“Report in as soon as you can,” Jack said into his mic.
“What about Jones?” Jerry asked.
“He’s dead.”
“Aw, man.”
“The dog took a chunk out of his neck. Bled out in the room.”
“So they didn’t shoot him?”
“No.”
“Still, death by fangs… Damn.”
“Concentrate on what you’re doing out there. I have everything under control at the house. Everything’s back on schedule, and we’ll be done by morning.”
“What are you going to tell the client?”
“About what?”
“Didn’t they say not to hurt Walter?”
“Yeah, well, desperate times,” Jack said. “Just get your part done.”
“Back atcha,” Jerry said. “Over and out.”
Jack resumed walking through the living room, looking left, then right, trying to find an answer to the question that had been nagging at him ever since he found Jones’s body: How the hell had the dog gotten into the house after they had locked all the doors and windows?
They
had
locked all the doors and windows, hadn’t they? Of course they had. Then again, that was Jones and Jerry’s job, and what was that saying about doing something yourself if you wanted it done right?
The question was going to drive him insane the more he thought about it. Maybe it didn’t matter anyway. The dog was gone; it’d gotten what it came for: its owner, the woman Allie. There was no reason for it to come back, because there was no reason for her to come back. If she was smart, anyway, and Allie had proven to be pretty goddamned smart.
He shook his head and headed back to Walter’s room to check up on the work-in-progress, when gunshots echoed in the distance from outside the house.
From the woods.
Jack stood still and listened. He couldn’t tell how many shots had rung out, but they had to have come from a distance because he could just barely make them out, and wouldn’t have if the house weren’t so quiet.
He hurried to the front doors, clicking the PTT as he went. “Jerry, report.”
There was no response.
At the door, Jack made sure it was still closed. They had deactivated the alarm as soon as they had secured Walter and the women as a precaution, and he had to lock the door the old-fashioned way now by manually twisting the deadbolt into place.
“Jerry, answer me.”
Still no response.
He peered through the security glass at the top of the door. Walter’s vehicle was the only one parked in the front yard, the SUV he, Jones, and Jerry had arrived in earlier still hidden in the woods. It was too dark beyond the halo of the lights to make out anything that wasn’t a trick of moonlight.
“Jerry, goddammit, you still out there?” he said into his mic.
“Quit your nagging,” Jerry finally said in his ear. He wasn’t quite whispering, but it was close. “I’m trying to work here.”
“Report.”
“They’re in the house.”
“Which house?”
“The neighbor’s. One of the neighbors, anyway. I got them cornered inside.”
“What about the dog?”
“Hell if I know. I’ll radio back when I’m done over here.”
“Roger that.”
The earbud went silent, and Jack pushed off the door and walked through the house again.
He liked Jerry. Well, as much as you could like someone you didn’t know existed until five days ago, anyway. He guessed if someone were to press him on it, he didn’t have anything against Jones, either. Not that he minded Jones’s demise too much. Money split two ways was a lot more attractive if his math was correct, and he was pretty sure it was.
The
tap-tap-tap
of computer keys from the second guest bedroom was a welcoming sound, even though Jack kept one ear open for further reports of gunshots. The fact that he hadn’t heard anything yet meant Jerry had the situation under control. Or, control-ish, anyway. Jerry’s primary weapon, the MP5SD, wouldn’t be audible over this distance, but his handgun wasn’t suppressed. Still, Jerry wouldn’t resort to the sidearm if he didn’t have to.
Jack just hoped Jerry didn’t waste both women in the process. He still preferred to have at least one of them alive as insurance. After all, there was always a chance Walter might suddenly grow some balls. It was a small chance, he had to admit, but it did exist.
He stood in the doorway and watched Walter working, hunched over the laptop at the desk at the back of the room. If the man noticed his presence at all, he didn’t show it. Walter alternated between tapping on the keyboard, using the mouse touchpad, and wiping at beads of sweat that had accumulated around his temple despite the cool night air.
“How’s it going?” Jack finally said.
Walter stopped working and looked over his shoulder. “All right,” he said, his voice wavering slightly.
“Good to hear.” Jack walked across the room. “How much longer?”
“An hour, maybe.”
“Why is it taking so long?”
“It’s complicated,” Walter said. “I have to do it right, one at a time, or it’ll trigger alarms. If that happens—”
“Everything goes up in smoke?”
“Not everything, but a lot of it.” Walter brushed at sweat that was dripping down his chin. “If I miss a single step, it’ll cause problems—”
“Enough,” Jack said. “I don’t need to know about every comma and backspace. Just keep in mind, Walter, that my employer will verify all of this when you’re done, so don’t think you can fuck with us.”
Walter nodded. “Where’s my daughter? Is she okay?”
“Jerry’s looking for her right now.”
Jack waited for Walter to ask about the gunshots, but either he hadn’t heard them or he hadn’t processed their significance.
“Allie?” Walter asked instead.
“Her, too.”
“They’re both fine?”
“For now.” Jack leaned against the back wall and peered through the curtains at the woods that ringed the property. “You should be more concerned about your own welfare.”
Walter didn’t say anything.
Jack looked back at him. “You understand what’s going to happen if you don’t get this done before morning, right?”
“Yes,” Walter said quietly.
“So let’s finish it. The faster you get it done, the faster we can all go our merry ways. And I mean that, Walter. I want nothing more than to get this over with, for you to be reunited with your daughter and girlfriend. I’m sorry about what I did, but you didn’t give me any choice.”
Walter swallowed, but didn’t say anything.
“They’re doing amazing things with plastic surgery these days,” Jack said. “You’ll be fine. I think you can even reattach it.”
Walter might have flinched physically that time.
“Let’s get back to work,” Jack said, and swiveled to face the window again, when he heard it coming from outside the house.
Something that didn’t belong, that shouldn’t have been out there tonight.
Shit, shit, shit,
he thought, as he moved across the room, picking up speed as he went. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “In the meantime, keep working!”
Walter looked up, but before he could say anything, Jack was already in the hallway. He unslung the Sig556 assault rifle and unfolded the stock until the weapon was at its full thirty-five and a half inches. He flicked the fire selector from safe to full-automatic. Normally Jack preferred to set it to semi or three-round burst in order to conserve ammo, but he didn’t like what he was still hearing, getting louder as it drew nearer.
At the front door for the second time, Jack looked out through the same rectangular glass window, but where there was nothing before there was definitely something now.
There were two of them, and they were coming up the road.
SUVs.
The lead vehicle was black, and it would have melted effortlessly into the surrounding darkness if not for its bright headlights slicing through the night like twin watchtower beacons. The second vehicle was white and would have stood out even minus its headlights.
Not cops. Not even fucking close.
He didn’t know why, but he would have preferred for them to be cops. Maybe because, while that meant the earlier gunshots had attracted unwanted attention after all, the presence of law enforcement would have been expected.
But these two vehicles… There was nothing expected about them.
They parked in the middle of the front yard, blinding headlights flooding the door and the small window Jack was looking out of.
They did that on purpose
, he thought as he slipped out from behind the glass so they couldn’t spot him. He leaned against the wall and waited, listening to car doors opening, then slamming loudly shut.
Then a male voice said, “Check the car; make sure it’s empty.”
Jack gritted his teeth. And things were looking up, too. He’d gotten Walter to cooperate, and though he was sure the client wasn’t going to be happy with how he did it, the fact was, he got the job
done.
That was all that mattered. Wasn’t it?
“Check the back,” the same voice was saying outside the house. “And watch your fire.”
“Shit,” Jack whispered, because “watch your fire” meant the men outside were armed. Not only that, but they had come here with the purpose of taking prisoners—making sure someone lived through this.
That person was, in all likelihood, not him.
Walter.
Of course it would be Walter. Who else would it be? Just as he, Jones, and Jerry had come here for the Gorman and Smith executive, so had these men. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. There was no such thing as coincidences tonight.
He reached down with his free hand and keyed his radio. “Jerry, come in.”
He waited, but there was no response.
“Jerry, goddammit, come in.”
The silence in his right ear was deafening now that the newcomers had turned off their car engines in the front yard.
“Jerry!”
he hissed.
He gave up on Jerry and put his right hand back on the Sig556. At the same time, he picked up movement flashing across one of the back windows, just before a suited figure appeared at the back door, peering in through the side security glass. The darkened face snapped left, then right, before finally spotting—
Jack lifted the assault rifle and pulled the trigger, and the man screamed as his face disappeared in a torrent of exploding glass.
Walter’s closest neighbor
lived about half a mile away in a two-story house painted white along the sides and gray near the top, or at least in the parts that she could see from her angle inside the woods. There were bright LED lights leading from the unpaved road toward the long front porch. The windows were darkened, which told her the lamps outside were probably activated by sensors that turned on at night, and she saw panels that might have been solar cells. There was a garage on the other side of the property, but she couldn’t see any vehicles in the front yard.
There could very well have been an entire frat full of college students dozing inside the two floors at this very moment, for all she knew, but staring at the house for the last two (or was it three already?) minutes, Allie didn’t think so. She recognized an abandoned homestead when she saw one.
She glanced back at Lucy, crouched in the darkness behind her. Apollo sat protectively next to the girl, his head raised and ears at attention. The dog looked back at her with deep brown eyes and waited.
Allie put the Glock away in her back waistband, then tugged her shirt over it. If there was anyone inside the house (as unlikely as that was), it wouldn’t have been smart to walk out there with a gun out in the open. People had gotten shot for less on the news, and that was in the city. If there were people inside the house, what were the odds they weren’t armed, all the way out here in the country?
About the same odds as you getting ambushed at your boyfriend’s country house.
She got up and walked back to Lucy. “We need to find out if anyone’s home, and if they have a phone we can use to call the police.”
“You think someone’s home?” Lucy asked. “Wouldn’t they have heard the gunshots?”
“Maybe they’re just really deep sleepers. I don’t know. But we need to go find out either way.” She put a hand on Apollo’s head and scratched his scalp. “You stay here,” she said to the dog. “Guard Lucy. Understand?”
Apollo blinked back at her.
“That’s a good boy,” she said, and stood up. To Lucy: “Stay here until I call for you.”
“What if he finds us?”
“Then you run to me and yell as loud as you can.”
Lucy nodded, uncertainty all over her face. She was scared, and Allie didn’t blame her. Lucy was fifteen and had spent most of her life in the city. Running around out here in the woods being chased by a man with a submachine gun was not something she had any experience with. Allie wished she could have said the same for herself.