me.”
They heard a noise and turned. Wiggins was gone! Disappeared! The tape that had once bound his neck dangled limply off to the side.
In that split second, Jake had only one thought: How does this guy keep going? He was surprised Wiggins could even stand.
Thorne stomped the dusty floor. “Shit!”
They both drew their weapons. “Where’d he go?” Jake asked.
Thorne glared. “Not far.”
“Is there a back door?”
“How would I know? Go look for one.” Then, to the dusty air, he added, “You’re a dead man, Wiggins!”
It was dark now, inside and out, and the single bank of fluorescent lights overhead did little to lighten the shadows in the barn. Jake couldn’t bring himself to move forward. Death was out there somewhere-his own, in all likelihood, and he didn’t want to face it.
“Go on,” Thorne ordered. I’ll go-”
A loud thok- like the sound of a well-hit baseball-cut his words short as Wiggins’s good hand brought an ax handle slicing out of the darkness onto the top of Thorne’s head. Thorne dropped instantly, unconscious even before his knees buckled. In the instant it took for Jake to react and swing his Glock around, Wiggins rewound his swing and let it fly against the muzzle of Jake’s weapon. Another home run, launching the pistol deep into the dark shadows.
Jake saw the third swing coming from a mile away and ducked, stumbling over Thorne’s thick form on the floor as he scrambled for the chrome. 45. Wiggins kicked it away and brought the makeshift club down hard against the wooden floor. Twice evading the club by inches, Jake brought his arms in close and rolled quickly to his right-a maneuver he hadn’t tried since he was a little kid rolling down his next-door neighbor’s hill.
Wiggins kept coming; amazingly fast, frighteningly strong.
Up on all fours now, and fighting for balance, Jake found himself back at the post that minutes before had been Wiggins’s personal torture rack. He felt the next blow coming through the air, dodging without looking. The barn shook as the ax handle splintered against the twelve-by-twelve post.
But Wiggins held on, his club transformed into a ragged spear. He lunged, but Jake was on his feet again and able to maneuver around it. Grabbing a claw hammer from a nearby shelf, he heaved it in Wiggins’s direction, buying himself an extra second as a glancing blow off the man’s shoulder spun him in an awkward pirouette. Jake opened the distance by two steps and spotted a pitchfork resting in the corner. In one fluid motion, he brought it round and faced his attacker.
For an instant, Jake thought Wiggins’s momentum would impale his guts on the tines, but the man reacted quickly, skidding to a stop with barely an inch to spare.
He locked onto Jake’s gaze and smiled. The blood on his face and in his mouth wasn’t shiny anymore; it had turned a crusty brown.
“Guess you win, Donovan,” he said, looking warily at the tines. At this point, even the slightest twitch on his part might bring them surging forward. “Looks like I’m your prisoner, after all.”
Jake knew his attacker was playing for time. He stared at the killer’s heart and wondered how hard he’d have to push to split it open. He locked his jaw, tensed his muscles. Decision time.
“Want to tie me up again?” Wiggins asked.
“No thanks,” came a voice from behind. In a long-drawnout moment that Jake would later look back on as impossibly distended, Thorne, who’d materialized out of nowhere, fired a kick to the base of Wiggins’s spine, plunging the killer belly-first into the pitchfork.
Jake held on against the impact and stared, mesmerized, as Wiggins’s eyes widened, and his mouth opened and closed uselessly. The killer struggled to find a breath as the rusted steel tore through his gut, but the best he could do was cough up a torrent of blood. Fixing Jake with one last amazed look, he collapsed.
“Son of a bitch almost split my head in half,” Thorne declared as Jake struggled to support the dead man’s weight on the tines. His arms and shoulders screamed at the effort, but they seemed somehow separate from his body. Seconds passed. Finally, he released his grip and slumped with the corpse onto the earthen floor.
Jake followed Thorne in the plumbing van as they drove hours into the night. Paved roads gave way to dirt roads, which finally became fire trails. When they stopped, Jake had no idea where they were exactly, but civilization was far away.
Once parked, Thorne strolled up to Jake’s window. “How’d your passenger behave himself?”
Jake just glared. If there was humor in any of this, he didn’t see it.
Thorne gestured with his hands. “Well, this place is as good as any. Help me dig the hole.”
They’d wrapped the body in a threadbare wool blanket to carry it out of the woods surrounding Nick’s house and laid it in the back of the plumbing van. Now, as they hauled it out into the crisp night air, the Army-green fabric had transformed to a dark copper color, and the smell of death was overpowering.
They worked silently to dig the hole, using tools taken from Nick’s barn. They dug it just deep enough to shelter the remains from hikers and hungry animals. The body made a wet sound as they dropped it into the earthen scar, and for the millionth time that night, Jake successfully fought off the urge to vomit.
The next order of business was the van itself. Smeared with blood, and no doubt covered with fingerprints, it had to be destroyed. They drove it a mile or so back down the trail, primed it with whatever was left in the bottom of a twogallon gas can, then ignited it with a road flare.
None of it was as gratifying as Jake had hoped. As recently as that morning, he’d fantasized about killing the man who’d attacked his wife and child, but now that he was watching the last of this nightmare being consumed by flames, he just felt… guilty.
He walked back to the rental and slid into the shotgun seat, slamming the door behind him. Thorne dropped the transmission into drive and started back down the mountain. Neither of them spoke as they watched the billowing black smoke cloud envelop the trail.
“He blew away your friends, Jake,” Thorne said at last. “Tried to kill your family. Nearly killed me. Almost killed you. All we did was balance the account.”
Jake stared straight ahead, still silent, only now comprehending that-at least to some extent-he’d become what everyone thought he’d been all along.
He checked his watch and sighed. Two-fifteen. Finally, it was a new day, and come hell or high water, it would all be over before the calendar turned another page. He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.
Sleep came instantly.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The doctors were allowing Carolyn to sit up now, her spine forced into alignment by a corsetlike back brace and a hard plastic collar. The severe spasms hadn’t started until late last night, but when they arrived, they came in waves, racking her body with sheets of agony. The doctors wanted to give her something to ease the pain, but she’d refused. With a killer on the prowl targeting Travis and her, she wanted to be as alert as she could be.
Her resolve weakened, however, beginning around three in the morning, when a series of shattering muscle spasms drove her to the edge of lunacy. She approved a dose of muscle relaxant, and since then, she’d been fairly comfortable, if not entirely lucid.
The neck pains were worst, predictably enough, and the doctors weren’t ready to say for sure whether or not she’d done irreparable damage up there. At least they weren’t talking paralysis anymore. She’d officially dodged that bullet. And if she were going to stroke out as a result of increased cranial pressure, she’d have done it by now.
All kinds of good news this morning. Best of all Travis was going to be okay. The lung damage had not been as devastating as they’d feared. A lot of fluid remained in his chest, but time and respiratory therapy would take care of that. In another month, he’d be feeling normal. Three more after that, and he’d be normal.
Thank you, God, for sparing him. She didn’t bother to pray for herself or even for Jake. But for them, none of
