Vacation

time.

He stood up and walked from one piece of woods to another, stepping across a bit of camp road. Until he got close to the other wooded section, and then he moved into it.

Just taking a leak …

And kept walking, deeper into the woods, until he stopped, crouched, waited.

No sign of having been discovered.

Crouching made the gun muzzles dig into him. Despite the pain, so good to know they were there.

He started circling around, to the open field, and farther … to Shana’s cabin with its split sections of wood laying outside.

*   *   *

Jack waited, watching the cabin as he saw Shana moving around. At one point, she came out and he thought she might leave.

But she simply stood in the open doorway, smoking, and then went back inside.

He moved from his secluded cover. Again, he’d have to cross an open stretch of ground. And the clock had to be ticking. Sooner or later, someone had to come to the kitchen and find the dead cooks.

At the end of the woods, he stood up, then ran up to her cabin as best he could. He pulled out the Glock, and threw open the door.

He didn’t see Shana. And then she came out of a back room. With luck, what she was smoking wasn’t just tobacco.

She looked up, confused.

“Stop right there,” Jack said.

She stopped moving.

“Thought you had … another engagement. All tied up.”

A laugh. She was stoned.

“Sit the fuck down.”

But even stoned, Shana turned and grabbed an arm weight off a back table and threw it awkwardly at Jack. He dodged it but she immediately leaped at him like an animal springing.

Her weight sent them both falling back. And too quickly she had landed on top and was able to grab her ax leaning near the front door.

Her right knee had pinned Jack’s arm holding the gun. She quickly smashed the butt of the ax into Jack’s jaw, once, then whipped it the other way for another hard smack.

Stoned or not, she had gotten the advantage quickly.

Who the hell trained her? She’d mentioned the army, but he’d never met a soldier who could be this efficient half-baked.

“Want to play, Jack? Too bad it’s this—there are better games.”

She rammed the ax into his midsection. Knocking all the wind out, and then she changed the angle.

She’s going to use that ax on me.

And I know how good she is with an ax.

The gun useless. But Jack could slide his other arm free. Shana brought the ax back, her glassy eyes trained on him, perhaps picturing how she was about to split him like a tree trunk.

His right hand shot up and wrestled for control of the ax handle against her strong two-handed grasp.

He locked his arm, forcing her to twist the ax left and right in an attempt to free it.

Forgetting the important job her right leg did in holding down his left arm.

She had allowed enough room for that arm to slide free, and with it, the gun. He didn’t want to fire. A shot would end all his chances.

But the muzzle made a nice piece of metal to jab into her side.

Which he did, ramming it hard into her midsection.

The ax slipped backward, still held by her but now being pushed away by his arm.

He could sit up, and as he did that, he wrestled the ax away from her.

He twisted the ax around and before she could recover her wind and mobility, he brought the end of the handle flying across her face.

Just as she had done to him. Once, then again, and again, enjoying the blood, the stupefied look, and knowing that he could easily keep doing this until she was dead.

But when she had almost become immobile, a beaten thing on the floor of the cabin, he pointed the gun at her, and lowered the ax.

“Where is my family?”

He knocked her chin, a hard tap with the blunt end of the head of the ax.

She spit out some blood.

“I don’t know … where the hell … your family is.”

Another knock to the head with the ax, not to draw blood but letting the heavy metal smack her head back, hard against the floor.

He did it a few times. Because he had no time.

He needed an answer.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. Lowe didn’t tell me. Just that they were under guard.” Another great cough of spit and blood.

Could be true, Jack thought. Could be fucking true.

Which meant that there was only one person who could tell him where they were.

“Okay. Listen. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. And if it doesn’t happen exactly the way I tell you, then I will, in my own amateur way, cut your fucking head off your fucking body. Understand?”

The smallest of nods.

“Sit up.”

*   *   *

“Ed, can you come down here? I need to talk. Something private.”

Jack listened as she talked to Lowe.

“No. Ed. Best we talk where no one can see.”

He waited. Would Lowe tell her to come up and see him, security be damned?

Did he like to play with Shana? Was that one of the perks?

That might influence his decision.

“Good. I’ll see you.”

She put down the camp phone.

“He’s coming.”

“Good.”

*   *   *

Lowe walked into the cabin.

Jack smashed the handle end of the ax into one knee, and Lowe collapsed into a crouch. Then his other knee, and Lowe was praying on the floor.

Jack had Shana stand near the back of the cabin.

“What the—”

Now a smack right across the face, and Lowe’s lips bloodied.

“Sit in that chair. Go on, get the hell up.”

Lowe could see the gun now and knew that getting beaten by the ax might be the least of his troubles.

He struggled to get to his feet, and stumbled over to the chair.

“Tie him up. Tight as you can. And I know tight, so don’t fuck around.”

Shana tied Lowe exactly as Jack had been tied. Had she been the one who trussed him up in the kitchen?