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Authors: John Gilstrap

At All Costs (47 page)

BOOK: At All Costs
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Thorne recovered quickly, but Wiggins was faster, sweeping the newcomer’s legs out from under him with a vicious roundhouse kick. Wiggins was on him the instant he hit the floor, and suddenly, the struggle looked like something you’d see in the halls of a high school: a wrestling match, with only a few punches thrown—and those to little effect—as each man struggled for dominance over the other.
Jake moved in, weapon drawn, and pulled Nick out of the way by his armpits. “Help my wife,” Nick groaned, and he pointed overhead.
Melissa looked like she was trying to swim, her legs kicking uselessly in the air as she dangled from her one good arm.
What the hell?
Jake wondered, and then he saw the rope. “Oh, my God!”
The two fighters broke apart as Thorne’s head snapped back and a smear of blood flooded the lower half of his face. Thorne countered with two savage lefts to the killer’s mouth. A tooth hit the floor, and the men locked it up again.
Jake took the stairs two at a time. As he arrived at the top, he saw the angulation in Melissa’s ruined shoulder and realized for the first time just how desperate her situation was. If she let go, she was dead.
Melissa greeted Jake with a look of faint recognition. “You—” she said, not completing the sentence. She eyed the Glock in his fist and gurgled out something like “Shoot him.”
Jake didn’t bother to respond. He needed the killer alive and prayed Thorne would be able to hold his own while he concentrated on saving this woman’s life. He examined the complex knot on the railing for just a second before abandoning it as hopeless. Reaching over the top, he grabbed a fistful of shirt and heaved her high enough to where she could regain her foothold on the ledge.
“Shoot him!” she said, air returning to her lungs.
He helped her climb back over the banister. “I can’t,” he said.
A heavy thump and a crash whipped his attention back down the stairs as Thorne and Wiggins exploded apart, each tumbling backward onto the wooden floor. Thorne landed in the broken glass.
Wiggins landed on Lauren.
“Mommmeeeee!!!”
In an instant, Wiggins had the little girl in his grasp, his forearm around her middle, squeezing her hard enough to turn her face red. The Beretta appeared in his other hand, and he brought it toward the little girl’s head.
Melissa and Nick shrieked in unison,
“No!”
On the floor, Thorne rolled to his side, and there was a flash of silver as he slapped his own weapon out of its holster. A tongue of flame six inches long jumped from the muzzle of Thorne’s big .45, and the house rocked with noise as Wiggins’s gun hand left his arm. Fingers flew through the air like chips from a log, and the Beretta dropped harmlessly onto the polished hardwood surface of the foyer.
The impact of Thorne’s bullet spun the attacker into the wall with tremendous force, but he never let go of the girl, who flopped in his arm like a doll.
Jake flew down the stairs as Thorne drew a bead for his kill shot. “God, Thorne, no!” He slapped at the chrome-plated .45 even as it rocked the house one more time. “We need him alive, goddammit!”
“Get out of my way!” Thorne yelled, and he brought the gun around one more time.
But he was too late. Wiggins had shifted arms again, the tattered stump of bone and tissue painting horrifying red stripes across Lauren’s pink coveralls. She stood tall and still in his arms, though, her feet dangling by his knees as his knife blade pushed into the underside of her jaw, just far enough to draw a bead of blood.
“Put the piece down or I’ll cut her throat!” he commanded.
Thorne never broke his aim. “Like I give a shit,” he growled. “Go ahead and cut it. I’d love to see your brain on the floor.”
“Oh, my God!” Melissa shrieked.
Nick was standing again, his weight on his only good foot. “Thorne!” he yelled. “For Christ’s sake, put your gun down. That’s my daughter!”
“Then make another one. I’m gonna kill this asshole.”
Wiggins smiled, even as he backed out of the foyer, toward the kitchen. “You gonna shoot right through her, tough guy?”
Thorne shrugged. “If I have to.”
Jake didn’t know what to do. He knew without the tiniest doubt that Thorne couldn’t have cared less about that little girl. Jake moved in behind him, his own weapon drawn, as together they backed the killer through the kitchen, toward Melissa’s workroom.
“Don’t kill him, Thorne,” Jake said softly, nearly whispering in his ear. “If you kill him, it’s all over. We don’t have squat for real evidence. That’s what we’re here for, remember?”
“Stay out of my way, Jake.”
Melissa and Nick joined the group, helping each other move as best they could. “Nick!” she wailed. “Stop him! My God, who are these people? What are they doing here?”
Thorne never broke eye contact with his target as he hissed, “Do me a favor, Nick, and get control of your wife.”
“Fuck you!” Melissa shouted. She darted out in front of Thorne, blocking his aim, and facing Wiggins eye-to-eye.
Nick panicked. “Melissa, no!”
“Please let her go,” she pleaded. “I tried . . .”
Wiggins was gone. Keeping the flailing, sobbing little girl between himself and his pursuers, he glided out of the kitchen and through the glass doors of Melissa’s studio.
“Get out of my way!” Thorne shouted as Melissa tried to block his path.
“He’ll kill her!” she screamed. She grabbed Thorne’s jacket in her fists. “Let him go!”
Thorne settled the issue with a slap that sent Melissa reeling.
Jake stood watching, horrified. He saw Nick’s wife hit the floor shoulder-first and heard her scream in pain. Nick shot him a look of pure hatred as he hobbled over to help her. Jake stared for a moment, absorbing his friend’s anger, but there was nothing to say. He hurried to follow Thorne into the yard.
C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-SIX
Out back, the grass gave way quickly to woods; small scrubby stuff up front, backed up by a thick forest of brilliantly colored young hardwoods—a final insult to the property’s nearly forgotten heritage as a farm.
Movement drew Jake’s attention to his left as he saw a flash of Thorne’s back disappearing among the colors. He followed at a dead run. With the sun resting low on the horizon, streams of light painted a confusing mosaic through the leaves, making it difficult to keep Thorne in sight. Jake couldn’t see their quarry at all.
When Thorne stopped, Jake was with him in an instant. “Where are they?”
Thorne gestured for silence, using the muzzle of his pistol as an extension of his vision as he scanned the forest for movement. “I saw him,” he whispered. “He’s here.”
The words triggered a chill. Where could he be, then? He didn’t have that much of a lead.
“There!” Jake pointed. “Isn’t that blood?”
In the distance, they heard Melissa’s plaintive voice. “Lauren! Lauren, honey, we’re coming!”
Out in front, and off to the right, they heard a child’s muffled cry. Together, they moved toward it, following the blood trail and listening for additional noise.
“Lauren!” This time it was Nick’s voice, and they were getting closer.
Soon the woods opened up again, to reveal another cleared field, with a dilapidated barn growing up out of the center. Jake and Thorne stopped at the edge of the clearing.
“What do you think?” Jake whispered. “Are they inside?”
Thorne shook his head. “He’s too smart to corner himself.”
“Then why . . .”
A rustle of leaves just inches to their left brought both men around, their guns bearing down on the terrified face of little Lauren. She screamed, yet even at five, she understood the unasked question. “He dropped me!” she shouted.
Jake saw the flash of steel the instant he broke his aim. Wiggins came from nowhere, lunging out of the foliage, propelling his knife in a huge downward arc. Jake got an arm up but couldn’t deflect it all. He grunted as the glancing blow left a wake of torn flesh down the side of his ribs, and he tumbled for cover in the leaves.
The speed of the attack caught Thorne off guard, but once he recovered, he struck like a snake, firing two quick punches, one to the stump of what used to be Wiggins’s hand, and the other to his face. The gunman went down hard but rolled fluidly to his feet. As he took a martial-arts stance, or a pitiful imitation of one, he seemed to notice for the first time that his right arm was four inches shorter than his left. He shifted his eyes to the stump, and in that instant, Thorne dropped him with a chilling elbow shot to the jaw.
Thorne was out of control. He muscled his trophy off the ground and punched him again. “Who are you, you son of a bitch?”
The man said nothing. For an instant, Jake wondered if the guy was already dead.
This time Thorne’s fury took the form of a savage kick to the gunman’s testicles. The mystery man made a gagging sound and tried to clutch at himself, but Thorne launched him back with yet another kick, this one to his face.
“Stop it!” Melissa shrieked, appearing with Nick at the edge of the clearing.
“What’s your
name,
asshole?” Thorne yelled, preparing for another kick.
“Wiggins!” Melissa answered for the gunman, even as she ran to be with her daughter. “He already told me his name is Wiggins!”
Thorne shook his head. “I want to hear it from him.”
“Not here!” Nick yelled, clearly torn between joining his wife and confrontingThorne. His skin gray with pain and fear, he chose the latter. “Not in front of my daughter, Thorne!”
Thorne looked thoroughly disgusted. “Do you know what this rat turd tried to do?”
It was Jake’s turn. “This isn’t the plan,” he said, shooting a glance toward the terrified little girl who sat hugging her knees at the base of a tree. The blood from her chin left a sweat trail down the front of her neck, which Melissa tried to wipe away with her one good hand. “Let’s stick with the plan.”
Thorne laughed loud and hard. “Plan! What plan? You don’t have a plan, Jake!”
Jake felt his face flush. “We agreed—”
“We
didn’t agree to shit!” Thorne declared. “You came up with the pea-brain idea that Mr. Terminator here would spill his guts. All we had to do was say ‘pretty please.’ ” He laughed again and launched another kick to Wiggins’s ribs. “Just like
Murder, She Wrote,
right, ace?”
“But my daughter—” Nick said.
“What about her? Get her outta here, if you want. I’m not stopping you!”
Nick swallowed hard, then glanced nervously over toward his wife and daughter before whispering, “You can’t do this
here.
I don’t want that kind of involvement. That’s not what I signed on for.”
Thorne set his jaw angrily. A long moment passed as he struggled with his temper, and when he finally spoke, his voice trembled. “You’re in this up to your eyeballs, Nick. Remember that. Don’t you dare think even for a minute that you’re not a part of it all.” He leveled a forefinger and lowered his voice. Anger burned in his expression, genuine loathing. “You do yourself a favor and think real long and real hard before you go soft, you hear?” He let the words sink in for a moment. “Now, why don’t you and the missus go back to the house and clean up? Jake and I will take care of what needs to be done. Tomorrow morning, you can tell your kid all about how real nightmares can seem.” He paused again, for effect. “You’ve got a secret now, Nick, and I expect you to keep it. Now get outa here. Go find that hotel you were talking about and make sure it’s a million miles from here.”
“Suppose someone
sees
you?”
That one caught Thorne off guard. He scowled as he considered the question. “What’s inside that barn?” he asked, pointing.
“It’s just a storage shed,” Nick said as Thorne began dragging his prey in that direction.
Thorne called over his shoulder, “You’re with
me,
ace!”
Jake ignored him and took a step closer to his old friend. In the distance, he could hear children’s voices calling for their mom and dad. “Is that your boys?”
Nick nodded. “I guess they just got home.”
Jake nodded back. It was an awkward moment. “Look, Nick . . .”
“You’re welcome, Jake, okay? Let’s just leave it at that.”
Jake stood still for a moment, wanting to say something but unable to construct the sentence. Finally, he nodded. “Okay, Nick. Thanks. And I’m sorry.”
Nick nodded, too, but looked away. “I’m glad I could do my part. Now, just do us all a favor and end it.”
“About your wife . . .”
“Just end it, Jake. I’ll worry about my wife.”
It was a sickening thing to watch. Wiggins sat bolt upright in the middle of the dusty skeleton of a barn while Thorne secured the man’s neck directly to the twelve-by-twelve center support column with five loops of duct tape. A tourniquet at the gunman’s wrist, fashioned out of an old rag and a screwdriver, kept him from bleeding to death, even as blood and snot continued to leak freely from his shattered nose. With the man’s neck secured, Thorne went to work on his arms, binding them with loop after loop of tape, just above the elbows.
“You like to be called Wiggins?” Thorne growled as he worked. “That’s fine with me. What I want to know is who you work for. And why. Every little detail.” Thorne tore off the last piece of tape and tossed the roll aside. “Won’t it be fun?”
Jake had never seen Thorne so animated, so entertained.
“Who do you work for?” Thorne paused for just a beat—barely long enough for the man to have formed an answer, even if he’d wanted to—then loosed a backhand smack that scattered a bloody mist into the air.
Jake felt his stomach turn and moved his head to look away when the most amazing thing happened. Wiggins smiled. His teeth—what was left of them—were shiny with blood, but the son of a bitch thought this was funny.
And that
really
pissed Thorne off. He fired a kick into the prisoner’s tattered hand. Wiggins’s face knotted up tight against the pain, but as soon as the wave of agony passed, the smile returned.
“Jesus Christ, Thorne,” Jake moaned. “Is this it? You’re just going to beat him to death?”
Thorne stayed poised for another shot but moved his head to see Jake. “Actually, that’s up to him. He doesn’t have to die. I’ll stop as soon as he starts talking.”
Wiggins actually chuckled. And earned himself a kick in the ribs.
It was an obscene cycle. Wiggins seemed to grow stronger through the beating, refusing on the strength of his spirit alone to use the one key Thorne had given him to unlock his dungeon of pain. And the more he held out, the more vicious Thorne’s attacks became.
After maybe three minutes, Jake actually found himself feeling sorry for the son of a bitch. Then he thought of Travis’s face, and he made himself imagine the suffering his son must have endured.
He thought of this animal hanging Carolyn in her jail cell, and he conjured the images of the grief endured by the family of that little girl in the hospital, whose only involvement in any of this was to have the misfortune of getting sick at the same time as a stranger down the hall.
The rage Jake summoned up was enough for him to root Thorne on for another minute, but ultimately, it was of no use. He found himself desperately searching for an alternative to prolonged beating. What was infuriating was the man’s defiance. This asshole’s life lay in their hands, yet his battered, swollen eyes continued to say, screw you.
Standing there, Jake had a kind of epiphany. He realized that in this battle of wills between professional painmongers, winning and losing were not measured by who had a heartbeat at the end of the day. A man won when he denied his adversary the pleasure of witnessing a breakdown. Men like these had inflicted too much pain, too many times, merely to be beaten into submission. Pain didn’t frighten them anymore. Neither, apparently, did the thought of death.
So what did?
Frantically, he scanned the interior of the barn, searching for the answer. The far wall was lined with tools: wordworking, painting, plumbing.
Nothing there.
Just to the right of those was a narrow shelf stacked high with all manner and types of chemical supplies. All of the labels were turned out just so, with the hazards warnings clearly visible. He looked away, then snapped his head back again.
Thats it!
“Stop!” Jake commanded, freezing Thorne in the middle of an open-handed backswing.
“Stay out of this, Jake,” Thorne said. “If you can’t take it—”
“Shut up. It’s my turn.”
“Your
turn?” The thought seemed somehow unthinkable.
“Yeah.
My
turn. He tried to kill my family. I get to take my shot at him. Can’t do worse than you, right, Thorne?”
The battered man actually grinned.
Thorne hesitated, then shrugged and backed off.
With Thorne out of the way, Jake walked past the prisoner toward the storage shelf, out of Wiggins’s field of view. What he needed had to be here somewhere. “Here’s how I see it, buddy,” he said to Wiggins’s back as he rummaged through the containers. “Death is the gold medal for people like you. Pain gives you a hardon. It’s sick, but what the hell? So’s making a living killing women and children.”
He rummaged through all kinds of chemicals, pausing for just a second at a bottle of insecticide before moving on. Ah! He found one that would work perfectly. Now he needed a rag.
“With that arm of yours, I figure you’re pretty much out of business,” he went on. “Once word gets out in your circles, I imagine things’ll get pretty intense for you.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Thorne barked, his hands on his hips.
Here’s one.
Jake found an old rag on a bench. “Just pay attention,
ace.”
He needed gloves, too, and they were right next to the rag. Leave it to Mr. Safety to have rubber gloves in his shop.
He strolled back to the prisoner and stooped down in front of him. “The way I see it, we’re wasting our time here, right? You’re betting you can hold out just long enough for Thorne here to kill you. That lets you off the hook and somehow earns you special bragging rights in hell. Am I close?”
The gunman just stared defiantly, his left eye all but swollen shut, his right one not much better.
Jake’s expression changed as he pulled the black rubber gloves onto his hands and opened up the brown glass bottle. As the cap came off, the faint stench of rotten eggs filled the air.
He held up the bottle and displayed the label as a sommelier might display a good bottle of wine. “Sulfuric acid,” he explained. “Great for cleaning concrete, but man, you’ve got to dilute it. Otherwise, it burns like shit.”
BOOK: At All Costs
6.51Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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