Slash and Burn (5 page)

‘What the hell was that all about? You could’ve killed me.’

‘We were going too slowly to kill you. Anyway, I warned you my methods were unorthodox.’

‘Are you insane?’

For an answer I merely pointed between the two rocks.

The sounds of gunfire shattered the night.

Kate jerked in time with each bark of a handgun, each crash of a shotgun. When the sound of our vehicle smashing into something immovable reached our ears, she was already scrambling up.

‘The bastards were waiting for us,’ I said. ‘If we’d driven through there we’d be dead meat. Under the circumstances I think a sore ass is a fair trade.’

Kate accepted my hand as I led her off the trail and into the woods.

‘We have to keep moving. Put as much distance between us and these guys as possible,’ I said, taking her down an embankment and through a gap in the foliage. On our left was the rear side of one of the huge boulders. An ancient trail led between the boulder and a cliff face. The trail forked, and I pushed Kate towards the fork leading up and over the cliff with my hand in the small of her back.

Behind us came the sounds of the pick-up truck and SUVs slowing as they approached the pass. Voices were raised, men shouting to those waiting on the other side. Then came excited catcalls as the men tumbled from the vehicles in order to take up the chase. I could feel a smile painting its way on to my features. If I’d had the luxury of a mirror, I’d have recognised the grim rictus-smile I adopted when men needed hurting. There was a heat in my chest too; the bubble of anticipation building. The thing that made me feel alive.

Had I been alone, I’d have relished this challenge. I’d have grasped the opportunity to take on these men and I’d have finished them one by one or all together – it didn’t matter. However, I wasn’t alone. And Kate’s safety was my priority.

Looking at her moving through the trees in front of me, I noticed again her athletic grace. She had exchanged the summer top and shorts of our first meeting for a beige linen jacket over a cream blouse and figure-hugging denims and boots. If anything she looked even better. Back at Imogen’s house – not to mention when blasting through the roadblock – she’d shown her worth as a capable ally. However, I come from an old school where women are to be cherished and protected. It didn’t matter that she was a trained police officer and could shoot better than most; I made myself a silent promise that I wouldn’t allow this woman to come to harm. If that meant keeping our heads down and running away from these punks, well, so be it.

A rifle cracked behind us.

Kate came to a halt, turning back towards me with her Glock raised.

‘Keep moving. They’re just shooting blind. They don’t know where we are.’

‘Where are we going?’ Kate asked, setting off at a jog beside me.

‘Away from here.’

‘Running away isn’t helping us find my sister.’

‘No, but it’s keeping us alive. We can pick up the search later.’

‘We could try and take one of them alive, make him tell us where she is.’

‘Pointless,’ I said. ‘They don’t know where she is. That’s why they were waiting at the house. They want to find her as much as we do.’

‘But they could tell us
why
they’re looking for her.’

‘We’ll let Imogen tell us when we find her. Now, keep going along the top of the cliff. When we get to the far side, I want you to wait by that tree.’

The clifftop made a natural arch, about seventy feet at its highest point, before dipping down to the road a couple of hundred yards further on. Trees and bushes grew along the crest and there was one particularly large tree that hung precariously over the drop. Its roots had broken free of the cliff face and made a sort of natural cage among the rocks. The shadows beneath the roots were a good place to hide Kate for the short time I’d be gone.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘We’ve no transport, Kate. Unless you fancy walking all the way back to Little Fork, I’m going to have to get us some wheels. Now it’s been some time since I did any wilderness survival training. Still, I remember enough to know that those clouds mean there’s a blizzard on the way.’ I indicated my own thin jacket and jeans. ‘Dressed like this, I don’t think we’d survive the night.’

‘It won’t take us all night to walk ten miles.’

‘Not if we took the road, it wouldn’t. But these guys are going to be hunting us all the way. We’d have to stick to the woods. Overland, it’s more like twenty miles to town, and we don’t know what other surprises the terrain might throw up. There could be rivers to cross. We get wet in a blizzard . . . forget about it.’

Her lips pinched together. She looked so much like her brother Jake that for a few seconds I was transported back a dozen years. He was a contrary son of a bitch, was Jake Piers. ‘No arguments,
Officer
Piers,’ I told her.

She held up her hands, the Glock hanging loose in her fist.

‘Keep that handy,’ I said, ‘but no shooting unless it becomes absolutely necessary.’

‘I won’t shoot at all, Joe,’ she said with the faintest of smiles, ‘unless they’re too close to miss.’

Waiting until she was concealed behind the twisting roots, I leaned in close. ‘Give me ten minutes. If I’m not back by then, you’ll know I’ve failed.’

‘What happens then?’

‘Then you’ll be on your own.’

‘That isn’t something I want to think about.’

No, I thought, turning away from her and down the embankment. Neither did I.

Chapter 7

If he was upset that he wasn’t going to have his way with a head-shot corpse, Trent wasn’t showing any sign. In fact, judging by the way his shoulders shuddered he found the entire situation amusing.

‘What’s so damn funny?’

‘The look on your face, bro.’

Larry scowled up at his larger sibling. ‘You’re the one with the stupid-looking face, Trent. Nothing wrong with mine.’

Trent didn’t seem fazed by the slur either. He laughed in his deep rumble, as he turned to survey the pass between the boulders. Beyond them he heard the posse of rednecks drawing to a halt, uttering shouts and yells as they clambered out of their vehicles.

‘The Wild Bunch has arrived.’

‘Go get them, Trent,’ Larry grunted. ‘Organise them into some kind of search party. The bastards can’t have got too far away, but every second that those idiots roam around shooting at shadows their lead is getting longer.’

‘What you going to do, Larry?’

‘I’ll keep watch in case they try to make a break for the road.’

Trent stared at Larry for what seemed like way too long for Larry’s liking. As if he was challenging his brother’s authority.

‘Get going,’ Larry said.

The lid of Trent’s pale eye slowly drooped closed, before opening again in that lazy way it had. It looked like an oyster shell opening to reveal what lay within, only there was nothing about the image that made Larry think of a hidden pearl.

‘Now, Trent, before those assholes start killing each other in the dark.’

Trent finally smiled. He lifted the shotgun, ejecting the spent shells. He fed in a couple of fresh ones. Above him, the clouds finally gave up their burden and the first few flakes of snow fluttered past his face.

‘You’re right, Larry. In the dark, in the storm that’s coming, someone might just catch movement out the corner of their eye and get the wrong idea. All it’d take would be an accidental jerk of the trigger and that’d be it.’

Trent moved quickly towards the pass before his brother had time to absorb his loaded words. But they weren’t missed by Larry. He knew exactly whose finger might slip and who would end up dead. But not if he lifted his Magnum and finished Trent now; the temptation was almost too strong to deny. But he didn’t lift the gun. Sometimes his brother’s words only sounded like a challenge. Maybe Larry was reading too much into them, and his brother was genuinely talking about the amateurs Huffman had surrounded himself with.

If he was wrong, well, he could always kill Trent later.

Right now he was going back to the Grand Taurino and out of this damned cold. He could watch the road from the comfort of the cab as easily as he could from the roadway.

Approaching the truck, he pulled out his packet of Marlboros and shook one from the pack. Holding his Magnum made it awkward to light the cigarette, but he wasn’t about to relinquish the weapon just yet. Leaning his hips against the front grill of the Dodge Ram, he hooked a boot heel over the lowest bar, and thumbed the cigarette up to his lips. The snowflakes were dropping more regularly now and he swung his gaze up to the heavens, watching the swirling flakes as they were caught in a gust of wind blowing over the clifftop. Flakes melted on his lashes, and he blinked them away.

The couple from the Ford didn’t have so many options. They’d obviously disembarked from the vehicle just prior to sending it through the pass. The boys coming down the trail meant they wouldn’t have retreated back the way they’d come, which in turn meant they could only have gone in one of two directions. Larry was familiar with the terrain and knew that the hills on the right were sheer and made of loose shale in most places. Chances were they had gone to the left. The nearest and most direct route came out on to the road just this side of the boulders, and Larry knew that the couple hadn’t come that way. Up and over then, he decided. They’re up on the ridge above me.

He considered calling Trent back. But he discarded the idea as quickly as it formed. Why give his brother any of the fun? Trent was getting too big for his boots and needed reminding just who the major force in their relationship was.

He unhooked his boot heel and wandered past the truck, making his way to the trail-end that came down off the cliffs. He lifted the Magnum, flicked away his half-smoked stub. The ember was too much of a giveaway in the darkness. Smoking kills, he reminded himself, but not always for the obvious reasons.

He was a huge man, but as fit and lithe as he was tall, and he could stalk elk with the best of them. He’d often considered going into pro-wrestling. If he partnered with his brother they’d be a magnificent tag team, but certain facts had deterred him from following such an obvious career route: for one, he liked hurting people
for real
, and second, even a superstar rating was finite. He wanted to go on hurting people for as long as he pleased, not for the duration that some greedy promoter laid on him. Besides, Huffman paid good money – the kind of top dollar he couldn’t expect from the square ring.

The trail off the cliff petered out a little more than twenty paces beyond the Grand Taurino. There the steep path was hidden from view by the trees that grew all along the roadside. Larry considered entering the trail and making his way up and over the cliff to catch the couple as they fled from Trent and the others. But no. He could take them out as they came towards him.

Between two trees he found himself the ideal hiding place. He had a limited view of the trail, and the darkness would make it nigh-on impossible to distinguish one person from another, but that would cut both ways. They wouldn’t see him until he stood up and let loose with his handgun. He wouldn’t have to wait long. In fact, he could hear someone making their way down the trail now. Easy money!

Or it would have been if not for the cold metal that was suddenly pressed to his neck.

‘Lose the cannon,’ a voice whispered.

Larry grunted as he raised his hands to the sides to show the man the gun was no threat. He allowed the Magnum to slip from his palm so that it flopped upside down, hooked only on his index finger.

The man with the gun to his head quickly took the Magnum away.

‘The keys to your truck,’ the man went on, ‘give them to me.’

‘I don’t have them,’ Larry said, finally finding his voice.

‘Don’t fuck with me.’

‘I ain’t fuckin’ with no one. I don’t have the keys.’

No way was he going to give the Grand Taurino up.

Then sparks were in his eyes and he tasted metal. It took him a second or so to realise that the man had struck him on the side of the head with the barrel of his gun. Blood trickled from beneath his hair and into the collar of his jacket.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Larry growled.

‘Last time,’ the man said. ‘The next head wound will be permanent.’

‘Keys are in my jeans pocket. I’m gonna have to move my hands if you want them.’

‘Slow and easy.’

Keeping his left hand outstretched, Larry brought his right hand to his hip. Crouching the way he was, the keys were nipped by the material of his jeans. He straightened slightly to dig the keys out of his pocket, then passed them over his shoulder to the man behind him. As the man snatched the keys from him, Larry readied himself.

The gun was pressed to the base of his skull.

‘Don’t.’

Larry settled back into his crouch.

‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’

Actually, thought Larry, it was fucking terrible. I should have gone for it. Now you’ve got my gun and my wheels. Worst thing: I don’t even know who the fuck you are so’s I can take them back.