Wild Cards: Death Draws Five (26 page)

“Son of a bitch,” Dagon’s man said, and he fell on his flashlight, bringing darkness again to the night as his companion wildly sprayed bullets into the trees all around them. Jerry felt a shock burn across his forehead like a blow from a red hot poker. He fell to the ground and with a frantic last effort dragged a bewildered John Fortune down with him. He held him tightly, covering him with his own body as best he could as his consciousness faded away.

Jerry woke with the feeling that he was being watched. Closely and relentlessly. He was in a strange but comfortable bed in an unfamiliar room. He was laying on his side, looking right at a wall so he couldn’t see much of the room, but Jerry was certain that he’d never been in it before.

He turned suddenly away from the wall, and immediately regretted it. A wave of pain rushed through his head, accompanied by a swarming nausea that was even more distressing. He swallowed hard and put his hand to his forehead, which he discovered was swathed in a soft, thick bandage. He looked into the room and saw his audience and suppressed an urge to groan aloud.

Two kids stood by his bedside staring at him. One was a boy, maybe ten. The other, a girl, was four or five years younger. Jerry wasn’t sure. He hadn’t had much experience with kids, other than John Fortune. The boy was tall and lean. He was blonde with delicate, almost elfin features. The girl was darker and stockier, but there was a certain familial resemblance between the two that marked them as brother and sister.

The girl looked at him solemnly. “Make your face do that again,” she said to Jerry.

“Do what?” Jerry was surprised that his voice sounded so weak and scratchy.

“Go all funny and wriggly,” the girl said.

“Jeez, shut up, will you?” her brother interrupted. “You’re not being very polite.”

She made a face. “I’m telling Mom you’re harassing me.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Go ahead. Tell her our, uh, guest, is awake, too.”

The girl ran from the room, yelling, “Mommmmmm!!!” in a voice loud enough to make Jerry wince.

The boy seemed to notice his discomfort. “Sorry about that. She can be a real brat sometime.”

Jerry suppressed his notion to nod. “Where am I?”

“Our house,” the boy said, unconsciously uninformative. “Dad brought you home last night. He found you in the woods. Said you were shot in the head, but nothing important was hit.”

Shot, Jerry thought. He remembered it all, suddenly. “Did he—was anyone else with me?”

The boy shook his head.

Jerry lurched upright, doing his best to ignore the whirling as the room pirouetted around him. John Fortune, he thought, was still out in the woods. Or—maybe Butcher Dagon had gotten him! He tried to stand, but couldn’t make it to his feet.

“G
ive me a hand, would you—” he asked, reaching out for the boy, but a voice interrupted from the doorway.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr. Creighton.”

Jerry swiveled his head drunkenly towards the doorway. The woman standing there smiled at him. The little girl was pressed against her legs, watching Jerry as solemnly as before.

Jerry sat back weakly. “How’d you know my name?” he asked.

She smiled. It looked good on her elegantly-featured face. She was tall, lean-hipped, and long-legged. Her hair was blonde, her eyes a light blue, and her cheekbones, mouth, and nose exquisite. She could have been a model. She was a little old for that game now, but her features were of a classic delicacy that aged well. Her shorts and sleeveless pullover revealed that she took great care of her body. She was lean and lithely muscular, despite the two kids, who had to be hers. Somehow, she seemed familiar. Maybe she was a model and he’d seen her picture somewhere. Maybe she’d even been in the movies.

“My husband owns the land the camp is on, so we have an intimate interest in what goes on there.”

Jerry almost nodded again, but caught himself in time. So, he’d finally discovered the identity of the anonymous benefactor whom Father Squid always talked about. Or, he would when he actually met him.

“The boy—” Jerry said, and she nodded.

“I know. He’s still missing. My husband’s out looking for him now. Don’t worry. If anybody can find him, he will.”

“I’ve got to get to a phone,” Jerry said with some urgency. He wondered how much he should tell her. “If you know my identity, then you must know that I’m a private detective. The boy is under my care. Someone attempted to kidnap him last night.”

“We pieced together as much,” the woman said. “My husband... took care of the men who assaulted you last night. But the boy apparently slipped away while he was busy. Daniel couldn’t do much in the dark, but he went out at first light to try to track him.” She stopped and glanced over her shoulder, then looked back at Jerry. “I think I hear him coming in now. I hope he has good news.”

I hope, Jerry thought.

“Daddy!”

The little girl transferred her grip from her mother’s thighs to the waist of the man who appeared suddenly, silently in the doorway. He was no taller than the woman who leaned over the child to embrace him as well. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed like the girl and his skin was tanned from long exposure to the sun. He put one hand on the little girl’s back and hugged her close, saying, “Hello, sweetie.”

His hands were large and strong-looking and his arms muscled, not with the kind built by pumping iron but rather lean muscle won from hard physical labor. His face was weathered and harsh-featured, but its strong lines relaxed as he embraced his girl and leaned over her to briefly kiss his wife.

“The boy?” Jerry asked, still uncertain if he should use Fortune’s real name.

The man shook his head. “Vanished in the woods. I lost his trail where he stumbled on the county road. Couldn’t tell which way he went, right or left. But I’ve still got my people out looking for him. Don’t worry. He wasn’t wounded. And the men hunting you didn’t get him.”

“How do you know?” Jerry asked.

The man only looked at him. “I know.”

Jerry cleared his throat. It didn’t seem reasonable to press the point.

“I’m in your debt, mister...?”

He reached down and picked up his daughter, holding her on his hip with one arm around her waist. “Brennan,” he said. “Daniel Brennan.” He put his other arm around the woman’s waist. “This is my wife. Jennifer Maloy Brennan.”

“My mom’s an ace,” the little girl said.

“Jeez.” The boy, silent until now, rolled his eyes. “You don’t go just telling people that.”

Jennifer Maloy Brennan smiled. “We all have our little secrets. Don’t we, Mr. Creighton?”

“Uh,” Jerry said.

Brennan smiled at him. In other circumstances, Jerry could see how that smile could look disturbing. Dangerous, even. He felt that somehow, someway, he should know this man.

“Would you like some breakfast, Mr. Creighton?” Jennifer Brennan asked.

“Yes, I would, thanks,” Jerry said. “Mind if I change first?”

The Brennans looked at each other, quizzically.

“No, not at all,” Jennifer said.

“Thanks. I’ll be along in a minute.”

He had decided to get rid of the Dagon face. He’d had even worse luck than usual since acquiring it, and he definitely wanted to change it before running into Billy Ray again.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New Hampton: Camp Xavier Desmond

Ray felt pretty good when he awoke, even though he’d only had a couple of hours of sleep in the guest cabin that had been turned into a command post in the effort to find John Fortune. He lay back in the bunk, thinking over the past night’s events.

It had begun with promise that soon petered out into the drudgery of fruitless searching, though it had not been without its high points, especially the initial battle at the administration cabin.

Pann, Starfin, and Schaeffer had been doing their best to hold the line against the Allumbrado assault team, though they were not the ideal combat force. The blind telepath was somewhat limited in his capabilities. Elmo, though very tough when he could get his hands on someone, had to face armed Allumbrados, and Pann, though competent with a gun couldn’t get his tinks to do anything more useful than occasionally momentarily blind an opponent by blinking brightly in their vicinity.

Once Ray had arrived, however, the odds turned drastically in favor of the good guys. He single-handedly transformed what had been a moderately desperate situation into a cakewalk, going through half a score of numbnuts with guns as if they’d been a troop of girl scouts out for a midnight hike. Ray’s only disappointment was that he didn’t run into any aces while he was cleaning clocks. He knew Dagon was somewhere in the night, as supposedly was that blonde jerk who’d teamed with Dagon in the Vegas assault. Witness. Ray had hoped to run into him, but never did.

As soon as all of their opponents were groaning on the ground, Ray and the others lit out for the cabin where Creighton had stashed the kid, but Sascha knew that it was empty before they even got inside. They figured that Creighton had headed for the woods with the kid in tow, and went in after them, but it was a hopeless job.

They even brought Sascha along, hoping he could pick up the scent telepathically, but gave it up after a couple of hours of trying to lead a blind man through a forest at night. Ray broke away from the others after they’d heard a couple of gunshots in the near distance, but noises like that are notoriously difficult to track, especially in hilly, heavy forested terrain. Ray couldn’t do it.

He stumbled along in the dark. It was more luck than anything else that brought him back to the camp a couple hours before dawn. The whole area was quiet and secure. The Allumbrados, aces and numbnuts both, had all disappeared. Even their casualties. Camp administrators had the kids back in their bunks, fobbing them off with a story about a botched robbery. Ray and the men from the detective agency realized their best course was to get a couple hours of sleep, get up early and call for reinforcements, and then start the search in the morning when they could actually see what they were looking for.

Ray opened his eyes wide. He suddenly smelled coffee. The dwarf came into the cabin with two mugs and handed him one when he realized that Ray was awake. Ray sat up and took a sip. He grimaced. It was awful, but he didn’t care. It just felt good to be in the field again.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Creighton just showed up.”

“Alone?”

Elmo shook his head. “Didn’t have the kid, but he was with some guy. Also a joker, a little guy covered in fur.”

“Little guy?”

Elmo nodded. “About two feet shorter than me.”

Ray was about to crack a joke about that being really little, but caught himself in time. He was working on his sensitivity, and besides, he’d fought next to the dwarf the night before, and Elmo had done more than carry his own weight. Ray only nodded.

“The guy with Creighton was a local. In fact, apparently owns a lot of land around here, including the land the camp’s on. Knows it pretty good. He also has a team of these little jokers working for him, or something.”

“Doing what?” Ray asked, reminding himself again to refrain from the short jokes.

Elmo shrugged shoulders that would have been massive on a six-footer. “Got me. Maybe they gather nuts and berries for him. None of ‘em seem much bigger than squirrels, anyway.”

Maybe, Ray thought, short jokes are okay after all.

“They’ve been out scouring the forest since dawn. They’ll find the kid, if anyone can.”

“We should go, too,” Ray said.

“Creighton said to hang on for a bit. Ackroyd’s coming up from the city with reinforcements from the agency. Between us and this Brennan guy and his gang of munchkins, we should cover the area pretty good.”

Ray grunted. Ackroyd. He and the P.I. weren’t the best of friends, but what the Hell, that never stopped him from working with anyone before. “And the Allumbrados?” he asked.

Elmo shrugged again. “They may be out in the woods, but we haven’t seen ‘em or heard ‘em. Brennan has his gang keeping an eye out for them, as well.”

Ray nodded. “In the meantime, how about breakfast?”

“You read my mind. This way.”

Breakfast. It made Ray think of Angel. He wondered where she was, and if she was getting enough to eat.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

New Hampton, New York: Onion Avenue

When the Angel finally arrived at New Hampton she discovered that there was no there, there.

It was on the map somewhere between Goshen and Middletown and Florida, but when she got there, she couldn’t find it. It was all just unmarked roads, many of them single lane, fields of lettuce, corn, pumpkins, and onions, and a few scattered houses. Even Florida, which she’d encountered when she’d gone too far down the quaintly-named Pulaski Highway (which was, at least, two lanes; one going each way), had a crossroads and traffic light. New Hampton, once she’d found it, proved to be devoid of such trappings of civilization.

She finally stopped at a small store on an unmarked county road where the bucolically named Onion Avenue branched off and wandered off to nowhere in particular. The sign outside the store said “Kaleita’s Groceries.” She went in to ask for directions. At least that was her intent, but she couldn’t resist first buying an ice cream sandwich from the old fashioned slide-top cooler which was humming like a berserk air-conditioner. She paid the proprietor and took a bite out of the sandwich as he searched through the register’s drawer for change. He was an old man who spoke English just like he was fresh off the boat from some old country. She wasn’t sure which one.