order.”
Alexa took her Kevlar vest from the back seat and stepped out into the sultry night, leaving Casey sitting alone in the Bucar. Outside the car, the air was filled with the smell of mud and stagnant water. The moon offered just enough illumination so she could make out the road and the trees. She slipped on the vest, cinched it tight, and started walking. Thirty yards down the road she came to a dirt driveway. She could just make out the shape of a cabin in a clearing on the bayou and the low shape of the Mercedes parked outside the shack.
As she moved toward the little wood-frame house, she froze. The interior light of the Mercedes came on as the door swung open. LePointe, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a trench coat, despite the heat, climbed out, carrying a briefcase. Motionless, Alexa watched as he closed the car door and slowly approached the cabin’s porch. She had been within thirty feet of the car when LePointe climbed out, close enough that she heard his cell phone snap shut.
Somebody swung the front door open, the interior light silhouetting his form for a moment before LePointe stepped inside and the door closed again.
Alexa closed on the structure, gun in hand. As she neared the porch, she could hear voices. The windows were covered from the inside with what looked like bedsheets.
Hoping to peer in one of the side windows, she moved quickly and as stealthily as possible around the side of the house, across the weed-covered brick-hard ground. The old panel truck they had been looking for was parked just behind the house, its rear end facing the building. On the bayou, a boat with a center console was tied to a short dock.
At one of the two windows at the cabin’s back, a vertical rip in the curtain allowed Alexa to see what appeared to be the main room, lit by a camping lamp hanging from a beam. What she glimpsed through the narrow slit filled her with horror. Gary West, wrapped around with enough duct tape to make him look like a mummy, was bound to a wooden chair, which in turn was taped to a support post. A rucksack lay on the floor at his feet. A man wearing a dark running suit was aiming a handgun at LePointe and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He had a woman’s stocking over his face, mashing his features. The briefcase was still in the silver-haired LePointe’s right hand, the brim of his hat pulled down over his brow like some gangster in an old film. The man pulled up the stocking, exposing his face, perhaps to see LePointe better, or so LePointe could see him clearly, because he was smiling broadly and brandishing a small revolver as he spoke.
It appeared to Alexa that the man with the gun was an older version of the same young man she’d seen in the pictures in Fugate’s house.
The cabin wasn’t insulated, so Alexa could hear some of what the man was saying. He was giving LePointe a severe dressing down, gesturing menacingly with the handgun, probably building up his courage to put one in the good doctor, Gary West, or both of them. Alexa was certain that since he had seen the man, LePointe was not going to leave the shack alive. She could see LePointe’s right hand slowly reaching into his coat pocket. The armed man was pointing the gun at the ceiling above him and at Gary West, explaining something. Alexa wondered if LePointe was reaching for a weapon.
Alexa moved swiftly to the back door. She’d put her hand on the knob to turn it when two gunshots reverberated inside the building. She shoved open the back door and aimed her Glock inside, her eyes scanning the interior, trying to locate the armed man.
“FBI!” she yelled. The man was gone. LePointe was lying on the floor. She spun, spotted the man aiming at her, and was bringing her gun around when, from behind, a massive hand gripped her neck, a second hand reached around and twisted her Glock from her. He shoved her violently, the force sending her sprawling into the the chair holding Gary West. Whoever had manhandled her had been outside, watching in the darkness. She thought she smelled something familiar from her childhood. Juicy Fruit gum.
“I got her, Doc!” the man who’d shoved her yelled. “Hello there, Miss FBI.”
The still-warm barrel of a gun pressed against her head. The sharp odor of cordite filled her nostrils. She couldn’t take her eyes off the huge figure of Leland Ticholet, his massive hand gripping a section of lead pipe. In his other hand he held her Glock.
“It’s futile to struggle,” the gunman said. “I’d rather not kill you if I don’t have to. Dr. LePointe pulled a gun, so I shot him in self-defense. His fault.”
It’s never the killer’s fault. Alexa turned her head and looked at Dr. LePointe. The wall behind him was peppered with blood and brain matter. A compact semiautomatic handgun lay on the floor beside his lifeless body.
The man Leland Ticholet called Doc dropped to his haunches, opened the briefcase to make sure the bonds were in there, closed it, then stood.
“Where’s Grace?” Alexa asked.
“It wasn’t my turn to watch her.” Keeping his gun on Alexa, Doc reached into the rucksack on the floor and took out a spiral notebook. “You should read this. It is highly enlightening and informative reading on the great and powerful Grand Poo-Bob of mumbo-jumbo, the destroyer of lives for the pure hell of it. He was a sadistic bastard who received too light a punishment. You’ll see that I’ve killed a monster.”
“He was a bastard,” Leland agreed from the door, tapping his leg idly with her Glock.
Doc patted Alexa down, located her handcuffs, and pulled them out. “On your stomach,” he commanded. “Hands behind you.”
Alexa rolled over and, as he cuffed her using her handcuffs, looked at Gary West. She wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead, until he moved his head slightly.
When the masked man rolled her back over, she saw above her a plastic-coated steel cable crisscrossing the rafters between pulleys, and then she saw the shotgun that had been bolted to the rafter. It was aimed down at Gary’s chest. This creature had created a complex booby trap designed to end Gary West.
“Do you like my apparatus?” he asked her. “It was a great deal of trouble to put together, but the tinkering was a nice diversion. Leland, put her gun on the counter.”
How is it set off? Her eyes ran along the cables until she saw the transfer-of-weight mechanism, a steel bowl connected to a counterweighted lever that would, as sand filled the bowl, tighten the wires running through several pulleys, until the increasing pressure on the trigger fired the shotgun.
“You didn’t come out here all by your lonesome, did you?” the man asked. “Leland, is she alone?”
“I ain’t seen nobody else.”
“You can escape,” Alexa said. “If you hurry.”
“Tell Mrs. West that had not Dr. LePointe tried to rub me out, he and Mr. West would both still be alive.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Alexa said. “You can take the ransom and get away. I’ve got backup on the way.”
“Detective Manseur? Gary probably sustained some brain damage thanks to my somewhat overzealous assistant, but he might have recovered had it not been for the double-ought buckshot that will go through his lungs by means of my mechanical invention.”
“LePointe was self-defense. Murder of a hostage in the course of a kidnapping earns you the death penalty.”
“Everybody dies, dear Alexa,” he said. “The question is whether it’s best to die a pauper or prince.” He lifted the briefcase so Alexa could see it. “I think the answer to that lies herein, don’t you? Two point five million.” He reached up, and taking hold of a thin cable, pulled it. Alexa saw the pin fall as the corner of an overstuffed bag opened and a thin stream of white sand started pouring into the bowl.
“Don’t do this!” Alexa yelled at him. “Stop it and go.”
“I’ll go when-”
The front door flew open and Alexa turned her head to see Casey West standing in the doorway with her hands stretched out before her. Leland Ticholet reacted like he was spring-loaded-whirling and darting out into the night.
At Casey’s entrance, Doc turned toward the door. He lifted the briefcase just as Casey fired the gun she was gripping. Bullets slammed into the case and Doc stumbled backwards, using the case as a body shield, moving for the open back door as fast as he could work his legs.
Casey advanced deeper into the house, firing steadily as she came. The reports were earsplitting. Casey ejected the empty magazine, letting it clatter to the floor. She shoved in a new magazine as she moved purposefully
