Now they continued to watch as the two figures from the cabin strode around back of the SUV, keyed open its hatch, raised it, loaded the bags inside, and then pulled the cargo shade over them.
Ricci unholstered his sound-suppressed Five-Seven from his belt.
“You set?” he said.
Glenn took a breath and gave him another nod. He had a leather slapper flat against his palm, preferring its directness to the DMSO spray.
They shuffled over several feet to put themselves behind the Explorer, then waited a moment. Ricci pointed to the man on the left, pointed to himself, and got a final affirmative nod from Glenn. He held up three fingers and started to sign the count.
His third finger ticked down and they sprang.
Though large and muscular, Glenn was clear of the dripping brush and on top of Mr. Right in a flicker. He struck the back of his head with the sap, his blow pounding onto the base of the skull, and the man buckled in a heap.
Ricci had simultaneously rushed out behind Mr. Left, locked an arm around his throat, and put the bore of his gun against his temple. The guy snapped back his head, trying to butt him hard under the chin despite the choke- hold and pressure of the nine mil — guts, good reflexes. Ricci slipped the move, spun him around by his shoulder, and brought a knee up into his middle below the diaphragm.
Mr. Left sagged back against the Explorer, the wind knocked out of him.
This time Ricci got the nine right into his face, pressed its barrel to the side of his nose, right about at the nub of the tear gland. Quickly patting the guy down, he found a Sig.380 in a concealed shoulder holster and a card wallet in the back pocket of his slacks.
Ricci tucked the Sig under his belt and flipped open the wallet’s ID window.
“Barry Hughes,” he said, glancing at the driver’s license. “That who you are?”
As Mr. Right started to nod against the upward pressure of his gun, Ricci tossed the wallet into a puddle and drove a fist into his cheek. Something gave at the hinge of the jaw.
“Give me your real name,” Ricci said.
The guy was silent, blood overspilling his lower lip.
“Your name.” Ricci stared into his face, pushing his Five-Seven deeper into the corner of his eye. He could see the skin below the socket crinkle under the end of its barrel. “Let me hear it or I’ll kill you.”
The guy looked at him without answering for perhaps three more seconds.
“Anton, you fucker,” he said at last, front teeth smeared red, his speech already distorted from the fractured jaw. It came out sounding like
Ricci nodded. At the periphery of his vision, he saw Glenn unlock the Explorer’s passenger door with the key he’d pulled from its hatch, reach in to give the ignition a quarter turn, then lower the window and cuff the other guy’s wrists around the vertical bar of its frame.
Grabbing his man by the shirt collar now, Ricci pulled him off the flank of the vehicle with a sudden wrench.
“Anton, I know your mouth hurts, but you’ll need to talk to us about a few things before giving it a rest,” he said.
There was a door at the side of the cabin that offered admittance to the kitchen and, directly beyond it, the living room.
Ricci had Anton lead the way to the door at gunpoint, one hand clamped over his shoulder, the other holding the Five-Seven to his ear behind the loose, misshapen swell of his jawbone. Behind them, Glenn had the stock of his VVRS cradled against his upper arm as he held it forward at the ready.
“Open the door,” Ricci said. He nudged Anton with the gun. “No surprises.”
Anton turned the knob, pulled. The rain was a constant susurrus that muffled the sound of its opening. Listening carefully, however, Ricci could hear a faint rustling in the brush to his right.
Standing at an angle to the door, hidden from within behind the outer wall of the house, Ricci flung a glance around Anton through the small unoccupied kitchen. Past the living-room archway, three men were at a table playing cards. A fourth seated on a sofa to the extreme right seemed to be dozing there, arms folded behind his head, his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. The sables were lying at rest on the carpet between them. One of the dogs raised itself a little at the sound of the opening door, recognized Anton’s familiar presence across the length of the two rooms, then lowered its shaggy head back onto the floor.
Ricci turned slightly, motioned with his chin, and side-stepped.
A burly hand came around Anton’s bloodied mouth from behind, clapped over it, and pulled him back into the rain. Ricci heard the hiss of released aerosol to his left, then a shifting of foliage as Anton was ditched out of sight.
Thibodeau emerged from the wet vegetation, relieved of the unconscious man, slipping a DMSO canister into his belt holder. The rest of the entry team was in position on either side of the door.
Ricci looked at Thibodeau’s bearded face for the barest instant, then turned toward the open door again. Anton had spilled plenty outside the Explorer, and had seemed scared enough to have been telling the truth when he said the Killer was upstairs — which would mean the dogs would be no threat down here. They would do nothing belligerent without his personal command.
“I’m going in,” he whispered and ran into the cabin without a backward look.
Ricci’s estimate of Anton’s honesty under the gun proved right on. The flunky had told him the short spiral staircase would be in the living room, past the archway to his immediate left, and there it was, exactly where it was supposed to be.
His Five-Seven out in his hand, he crossed the kitchen in a dash. Ahead of him, the Killer’s men were springing to their feet, but then Ricci swung toward the stairs, and bounded up onto them, and suddenly the commotion and movement was behind and below him. He took the steps several at time, vaulting up them, knowing he had seconds at best to get to the bedroom. There were shouts, exchanges of gunfire, more shouts, all distant echoes outside the narrow, winding, ascending shaft of his awareness. Behind, below, outside, somewhere in another world. Ricci cared only about getting up to the second floor, and the taste in his mouth, the taste of his
And now he was at the upstairs landing and off it into a short hall. He paused a beat. How long since he’d entered the cabin? Five seconds? Ten? Maybe he’d have five more. Tops, five. Four, three…
There were a couple of wide doors along the hallway to his right, adjacent to each other. Another narrower one to his left — a closet. That second door on the right, Anton had told him it was the master bedroom, was where the Killer had her, where the Killer would be…
Ricci made his choice, lunged forward, stopped for half a heartbeat, kicked his foot out against the
His back to the open doors of a terrace overlooking the seaward plunge of the bluff, the Killer stood across the room by a plain wooden chair.
She was in it. Gagged. Trussed. Hands bound behind her with rope, bound to the chair.
Above the gag, on her face, an expression of terror without surrender.
Ricci reached into himself for her name, pulled it through the atavistic howl of rage filling his mind.
Julia.
She. Was. Julia.
The Killer was holding a combat knife to her throat.
“Let her go,” Ricci said. His eyes on the Killer’s eyes. The Five-Seven thrust out in front of him. “Let her go now.”
The Killer did not move.
The blade in his grip, its honed edge against her throat, he did not move.
Ricci unwrapped the fingers of one hand from the gun, reached back, felt for the door, pushed it shut.
