EYESHOT: The most gripping suspense thriller you will ever read (14 page)

The husband tried again. “Hello?”

Tapp considered pretending to not be there. He didn’t want to respond and make it personal, because there was absolutely nothing personal about any of this. They had nothing to discuss.

I kill people. So do car accidents. I am a neutral force. Just like car accidents. What would a car accident say if it could speak?

Clouds gathered and reached over the sky like gray tentacles. The storm was pushing in from the west a little sooner than the forecast had suggested. The air loosened and shifted over his crater and he imagined he could feel tectonic plates groaning and creaking in anticipation. This moment felt huge, somehow, even though it shouldn’t have.

What would a brain tumor say if you asked it who it was? Or why it killed its host?

* * *

“William Tapp.”

James couldn’t imagine such evil owning a mundane name like William, or Will, or Willie, or Bill. It didn’t seem possible that the eyes behind the scope could turn their attention from severing a nineteen-year-old girl’s leg to mortal business like eating a burger, filling out a change of address form, or taking a leak. This William Tapp had to have a social security number, a driver’s license, and a day job. Friends, family, holiday plans. He paid taxes, probably.

The invisible killer was just a man, James reminded himself. A man could make errors. A man could be reasoned with. And if need be, a man could be killed.

“James Eversman,” he said meekly into the radio receiver. This fumbling connection between worlds felt so fragile and tenuous that anything louder than a whisper would crush it. He hadn’t been asked for his name but his polite sales instincts told him to offer it.

The sniper said nothing.

Elle adjusted her grip on the revolver and it wobbled in her hands. The Soviet studied it intently. The skin above and below his eyes had swollen beet red, either from fierce rubbing or contact irritation.

“Here . . . here’s the deal, William.” James scooted against the Rav4’s driver door and almost poked his eye on the rubbery Motorola antenna. No one saw except the Soviet, who smirked. “We have a gun on your smelly Lone Ranger friend here. If he moves, he dies.”

He gave the sniper a moment to answer.

Still nothing.

“So . . . here’s what’s going to happen in the next two minutes.” He unpeeled Elle’s hands from the revolver and took it himself. She didn’t protest. He trained it on the greasy man with his index finger pointed forward, off the trigger, in an attempt to treat the pistol as though it were actually loaded. Aiming a gun felt awkward and made him vaguely self-conscious, like he was posing tough with a prop. James Eversman: full-time account executive, part-time badass.

The Soviet’s clammy eyes had followed the weapon while it changed hands.

“I’m . . .” He felt his voice waver and steadied. “I’m going to stay right here behind my car with your friend. My wife and Roy will walk to his jeep and drive away. If I even suspect you’re about to take a shot at either of them, I will blow this son of a bitch’s face all over your stupidly-named Sesame Street road.”

“James, no.” Elle took a scraping breath. “We can think of something else—”

Roy glared at the Soviet. “Keys. Now.”

The big man’s jaw curled into another smirk and he plucked a jingling ring lined with many keys, many brands – Honda, Lexus, Ford, Chevrolet, dozens of bronze and silver home and apartment keys – and underhanded them to the ground at Roy’s feet.

“There has to be another way,” Elle hissed. “We can stall, buy time—”

“Every second we wait, we’re giving him time to move. Then he shoots whoever is holding the gun and it’s all over.” He made sure the PUSH TO TALK button wasn’t still depressed. “We’ll do this now, and someone has to stay behind. I’m volunteering.”

Roy pretended not to hear.

She pouted. “It’s a stupid plan, James.”

“I’m all out of smart ones.” He looked her in the eye. “Also, you have a hole in your chest.”

“Yeah, but a small one.”

He laughed, a bitter tired thing. She pressed her forehead to his. He smelled green apple shampoo from the motel that morning, the floral tang of her antiperspirant, and her salty sweat. Somehow this, the smell of her hair and body, made it sink in – the gravity of what he was doing. It wasn’t even a choice; it was a reflex. It might get him killed just the same.

“I want to stay with you,” she said quietly. Stupidly.

He remembered something and handed the revolver to Roy, who took guard.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He lifted her arm by the elbow and grabbed the duct tape from beside the tool bag. The one-way valve – three sides of the plastic taped and one flapping freely – seemed to be holding up. It just needed one final adjustment. He tore off a snarling piece and securely taped off the fourth side.

“James?”

“I’m sealing it.”

“I don’t—”

“The bag pumped the extra air out of your chest. Now I’m sealing it so it can’t leak back inside.” He stuck a long diagonal stretch of tape across the bag, and then another, pressing all corners flat against her warm skin. He pressed hard and she wobbled under his hands, exhaling.

“I’m not leaving you,” she said.

“Yes, you are. Don’t lose this, whatever you do, or you’ll suffocate in minutes. You still have a little chunk of a bullet lodged inside you somewhere. I have no idea how bad it is, or how bad it could be getting. Consider it a ticking clock. You need to be in a hospital
five minutes ago
.” He slapped on a final piece and she lowered her arm.

Her eyes brimmed with tears. “You can do that but you can’t fix the bathroom sink?”

“Jaaaaaames.” The sniper’s voice crackled. “You’re bluffing.”

The Soviet smirked his biggest one yet, revealing yellow horse teeth.

James snatched the pistol from Roy, scooped up the radio receiver and gathered his confidence. “Yeah? Try and prove—”

“Shut your
fuckin’ mouth
.” Tapp’s words came unevenly, like coiled rope unwinding in lumps. “So your friend over there. Mr. Glen Floyd, Clements County, MPR. Strolling down the road, probably . . . feeling a little more wind in his hair than usual. Making good . . .
headway
, you could say. Did he tell you anything?”

James tasted stomach acid.

Roy twirled the keys nervously.

“Because he told me lots.” The sniper’s voice was wavering, oddly unstable. “But let me back up. So it’s noon. I’m driving up here on the Plainsway – that’s what locals call the highway that skims through town, the Plainsway – and then I see this truck pulled off on the shoulder. And . . . then here comes Mr. Clements County, all wheezy and red, with a compact wheel gun in his hand. The one you’re holding right now, James.”

James knew where this was headed.

Elle held her breath.

Roy closed a tight fist around the keys.

“He tells me . . . this is amazing. You can’t make up these coincidences. He tells me he saw a coyote.” The killer smacked his lips and his voice settled into a pattern of tonal whiplash, rubber-banding from high to low, tense to relaxed, cordial to vicious. “And this coyote . . . had an arm in its mouth. A little mummified hand severed at the wrist, all black and ropy and burnt up. He tells me he slammed on his brakes, got out, and chased it a little ways, but you know how coyotes are, especially in daylight. So I tell him . . . I’ve got a four-wheel drive here. Let’s track this little bastard to his rout, or at least see if he drops the arm somewhere. He can’t chew on it forever. And Mr. Clements County is a pretty nice guy, and we hit it off while we’re cruising up and over the hardpan, and we share a little male pattern baldness bonding. Young guy like you wouldn’t understand, James. And we spot a little . . . blood trail in the sand, which is good, because he was certain this was a crime scene in progress, and shot his .38 special at the pup but thought he’d missed—”

“You talk too much,” James said.

“You radioed me.”

“I liked you better when you were shooting at us.”

“He fired five shots,” Tapp said with an exaggerated country twang. “You, James, have no leverage, because you are holding my spotter hostage with an empty five-shooter.”

James didn’t have a smartass remark for that. The silence stung.

Elle and Roy exhaled in unison.

Look at us,
he thought.
We’re already dead.

He clicked PRESS TO TALK again and tried to answer. He worked his jaw, pushed warm air through his teeth, and desperately willed for words to form in his breath, any words, but it was pointless. The sniper had already won. He knew it and now they knew it. He had been destined to win the microsecond James turned off the Plainsway and onto Shady Slope Road. Nothing else mattered.

James thought of the most pitiful of the live feeder mice at Elle’s reptile store – the naked little newborn ‘pinkies’ less than a week old, unable to walk, making mewing sounds with their eyes clammed shut, dropped into a Rubbermaid bin with a fat python coiled and waiting. God, he had always hated snakes. Even Gray and Iris. Sure, the prey can dodge the strike, circle the outskirts, and paw uselessly at the curved walls (
Just like what we’ve been doing here with the distractions, the pepper spray, and now this failed bluff
) but ultimately those tactics only bought time. The mouse was trapped in a forced scenario where only the snake could win. Maybe there was a certain dignity in accepting that?

Relaxing, the Soviet stepped forward—

“Six.” Roy grabbed the radio from James and groped for the button. “This revolver holds six bullets, asshole.”

The Soviet froze mid-step.

Tapp paused, too. Then he made a dry crackling sound, as if he was sucking on his lower lip thoughtfully, or eating crunchy potato chips. A steady stream of background static hiss (
room tone
, the techies called it at his old radio building) meaning the sniper was holding the input button. Maybe he was flustered and second-guessing himself. It made sense, too – even at close range, he couldn’t have gotten a good look at the revolver before Glen had holstered it. You couldn’t really see the ringed chambers until the cylinder was open. It could just as easily hold six, like the movies. Right?

Brilliant, Roy.

James grabbed the radio back and forced a cocky grin. “Yeah.”

Tapp sounded deliciously uncertain. “Do you . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“Prove it.” The sniper coughed. “Prove it and shoot my spotter in the face. Right now.”

Roy looked at James.

“If I . . .” He felt cold fingers on his spine. “If I do that, I can’t use him as a hostage.”

“You already can’t.” Tapp suppressed a wet belch and sighed irritably, like he was explaining something to a child. “This is the second reason you have no leverage, James. You’re operating under the assumption that I care about the man you’re pointing a gun at. You see, I just . . . don’t. Not even a little. So again, I courteously invite you to
shoot him
. Do it. Don’t overthink it. This one’s on the house.”

James drew a bead between the Soviet’s eyes and tried to read the man’s face for fear, but like a stone, he gave nothing. Truly, he feared death less than he feared Elle’s disapproval of his charcoal drawings. “Your friend . . . or spotter. Does he know that?”

“He understands.”

“Understands what?”

“That there are millions of ways the world could end before you . . . well, before I eat supper tonight. A rogue black hole could pass through our solar system. A radiation burst could microwave our atmosphere. A star could go nova. We could take a meteor. A dormant supervolcano could create a nuclear winter. Or we could even get something called a Verneshot, which is basically when . . . your supervolcano explodes so violently that it blows a chunk of the earth’s crust into space, and then it comes back down like a meteor. Sort of a buy one, get one free—”

James shrugged. “I’ll be dead. Won’t be my problem.”

“Exactly,” Tapp said. “Welcome aboard.”

A dry popping came in over the radio. At first it sounded like signal interference, and then he realized it was the sniper slow-clapping with approval.

Welcome aboard.

James fell back into sales mode. What was life, if not a series of dilemmas to be unfucked? So the client blacklisted a time period. The show under-delivered ratings points. The promo didn’t run because the eggheads in the control room forgot to carry the remainder. Whatever. James could fix it. Let James fix it for you. He always had a second chair in his office to rest his feet on, and he badly missed it now.

“We can negotiate,” he said hollowly, as if William Tapp was a media buyer in an office somewhere hunched over an Excel sheet.

The sniper said nothing.

“What do you want?”

Silence.

“Everyone . . . wants something. So what can I offer you, Tapp?”

Nothing.

“You don’t have to do this.” James shut his eyes and felt himself rolling over in submission to a force he didn’t understand. It was deeply embarrassing. He wished Elle wasn’t there to see him like this. “I’ve . . . I’ve never done anything to you. We don’t know who you are and we don’t wish you any harm. We’re not even from around here. We’re moving from California to Tulsa and the only reason we even crossed the Plainsway is because of an impulsive trip to a crappy Wax Gore Museum. Listen to me, Tapp, there is nothing
fair
about this.”