door.
He walked to the door. It was locked, but he looked out the window. He could see only a window down the hall a ways from him.
He was in one of the members’ rooms. No
He felt dizzy and slightly nauseated from the gas. Where were Joanna and Autumn?
Who had brought him here? Whistler? There had to be others who worked for him. He had to be ready when they came.
He lay silent and still for a while longer, until the vagueness and nausea slowly receded a few minutes later. Ethan realized he was hungry. He pulled an old wrapped mint out of his pants pocket, peeled off the wrapper, and sucked on it. He closed his eyes.
He had nothing to do but wait.
He heard a key turn in the lock, and the door opened. Whistler stood there, his hand out, holding a gun. “I see you’re awake already, Sheriff, as you should be,” he said. “We’ve never had to use the gas before. I see now it was a prudent measure, after all. We couldn’t have you leaving through the outer door.”
“Were you watching the whole time?”
“Another precaution. I saw how you overcame my poor Kjell. I was fond of him.” Whistler continued in a meditative voice, “Truth be told, I believed Kjell was invincible. I saw him fight at his dojo in Seoul; he never lost. Evidently I thought too highly of his skills, since you killed him.
“You have cost us dearly, Sheriff, and I hope to see you pay for it.”
“Where are Joanna and Autumn?”
“They are in a comfortable room. Now it’s time, Sheriff. You wanted to meet the Father. You will now.”
66
WINNETT, NORTH CAROLINA
Savich eased open the bedroom window and climbed out. He ran bent over into the thick oak and pine trees before making his way around to the back of the house. Once in position, he dropped to his knees and looked across the large overgrown backyard. He didn’t see anything, and no face through the window. Good, Sherlock and Cully were still in the dilapidated living room in the front. He moved deeper into the trees, stopping every few steps to listen. He was surprised when the land sloped downward. He realized there was no way Victor and Lissy had hunkered down back here; they wouldn’t be able to see much of anything from this position. Climbing a tree would probably give them a view of the front of Victor’s apartment building, but they’d be too exposed. No, they were on higher ground, with a full view of the front of the house. Still, he could never be certain of anything Lissy Smiley might do. One of them could be here in the woods behind the house figuring it was a perfect way to surprise them.
Savich studied the patterning of the trees, the play of light and shadows, the shapes of the branches, watching for any sort of movement, anything at all.
He stopped cold when he heard a soft popping noise. Did an animal make that sound? Then he heard a man moan, nothing more, just a low moan of pain. Another moan, this one deeper. Whoever it was, he was in trouble. If it was Bernie, that meant Lissy and Victor were close by.
Savich waited another moment, listened. He moved as quickly and quietly as he could through the trees, keeping low, in the direction of the man’s moan.
It was oddly silent, not even the sound of a bird or an animal. Every creature was listening, as he was.
The ferocious humid heat had slackened some in the early evening, but still sweat poured off him. He paused again, listened, but he heard nothing. Had he misjudged the direction of the moans?
Through the trees in front of him, Savich saw a small clearing, and in the middle of it a man in a deputy’s uniform lay on his side, his face turned away from Savich. Savich couldn’t tell if he was alive. Lissy or Victor did this, which meant they were close by, maybe waiting for him, or anyone, to step clear of the trees. He’d be hopelessly exposed. Savich didn’t want to go into that clearing, but he also knew he didn’t have a choice. If the deputy was alive, he couldn’t leave him lying there helpless. He ran crouched over, dropped to his knees beside the deputy. The man was unconscious. He was young, not more than twenty-two, fresh out of the police academy. He had a bullet wound to his shoulder. Savich hadn’t heard a gunshot, just the quiet popping sound. It was a silencer he’d heard, and the shooter had to be near.
If it was Lissy, he wondered why she hadn’t shot him between the eyes. He pressed his fingers to the deputy’s throat. A pulse, fairly steady. Savich pressed his palms down hard on the wound to slow the bleeding. What could he use for a pressure dressing? He ripped off one of his shirt sleeves and tied it tight around the deputy’s shoulder Then he pressed his palms down over the wound again.
In that moment, Savich knew someone was close, but there was nothing he could do about it, not with this young man’s blood all over his hands. He heard the popping sound again at the same moment he felt a shock of frigid cold in his leg. And he heard Lissy’s voice, all high and excited. “Hey, Agent Savich. Lookee here, lookee here!”
Savich nearly fell over but shifted his weight to his other leg, and kept the pressure on the deputy’s shoulder. He didn’t even look around at her. He called out over his shoulder, “Hey, Lissy, what took you so long? Where’d you get the silencer for your gun?”
“Oh, I haven’t been far away. I’ve been watching you take care of the little boy cop here. My silencer—it’s the coolest thing. I got it from a really cute redneck gun dealer in Tumis Springs yesterday; gave him two big ones for it. It was marked three hundred dollars, but he gave me a deal.”
“I guess he didn’t ask for any ID.”
“Oh, no. He was smart.”
The redneck gun dealer had known she was crazy and didn’t want to die. Slowly, without reducing the pressure, he turned to see Lissy Smiley standing not six feet away from him in the shadow of a skinny pine tree. She was smiling hugely at him. He said, “I admit I’m surprised here, Lissy. Why didn’t you kill the deputy right off?”
“Fact is, I didn’t clock him because I hoped one of his partners would hear him moaning and thrashing around and come help him. He just folded right down, just managed a couple of wimpy moans. No one came. Isn’t that just the sweetest thing? Here I was getting ready to give him a little tap to the forehead, get back to Victor, but then you came, Agent Savich, the big hero cop, running to save the little punk’s life. Like, who cares if he was around or not?”
“Wouldn’t anybody care if you died?”
He saw momentary panic in her pretty eyes. Was she seeing herself lying on the ground instead of this deputy, bleeding her life away?
“My mama would have cared if I’d died, but she’s dead, so it doesn’t matter.”
“This guy has a mother too.”
She was shaking, waving the gun at him, hysteria hot in her voice. “Shut up, you hear me? You’re responsible for my mother dying, you bastard, so shut up, you hear me?”
He thought she was going to kill him then, but instead she relaxed a bit and actually sneered at him. He realized she wanted to gloat, she wanted to rub his face in her victory, and it gave him precious time. She said, “Hey, I sure hope your leg’s hurting bad, like I can see it bleeding from here. I didn’t kill you because I got some things to say first. You wanna know why I shot you in the leg? Because that’s the leg you kicked me with. No way you can kick me now.
“No, don’t you move, don’t you even twitch. I will kill you if you try for your gun. You stay right there. I see your gun right beside the deputy. You throw it over here or I’ll shoot your head off.
