Noble Intentions: Season Three (26 page)

A second shot rang out. She heard
screams, at least one adult and Mia.

Still she could not see the house.
It worked in her favor. She’d be able to get close without being seen.

The field next to the house was
full of waist high grasses. She cut through the field. Crouched low when the
house finally came into view. The screams had stopped almost as quickly as they
had begun. Why, she wondered. What were they doing to the survivors inside?

A man exited the house and went to
the silver sedan. He was tall, blond, and dressed in dark cargo pants and a
dark long sleeve shirt. He opened the passenger door, reached inside, came back
out with a lit cigarette. The guy had his back to Clarissa. He placed his
pistol on the hood of the car. She decided that she had to act. There was at
least one more person inside, maybe more. The car could carry five. How many
actually had been in it when it arrived depended on what the men intended on
doing with the people inside the house.

Clarissa made her way through the
last of the high grass. She picked up a fallen branch, three feet long, three
inches in diameter.

The smell of burning tobacco wafted
past her.

The guy leaned forward against the
car, forehead pressed against the roof, arms at his side.

Must have been a long trip
,
she thought.

Clarissa slipped off her shoes. Dew
coated the bottoms and sides of her toes. She exploded into a sprint. The balls
of her feet hit the ground for a fraction of a second at a time. She barely
made a sound. By the time the guy realized someone was heading his way, it was
too late.

The man lifted his head, started to
turn to his left. His eyes widened when he saw Clarissa. He brought his left
hand up in a defensive position, but it didn’t help.

Clarissa had both hands on the
branch. She brought it up and across her left shoulder, like she was holding a
bat. She leapt, twisted at the hips, swung the bat. Her coordinated movements
provided ample torque, turning the branch from a hunk of wood into a deadly
weapon. It smashed into the guy’s arm and his face with more force than a major
league baseball player’s swing. His forearm and jaw snapped with sickening
cracks. The skin on his chin split. Blood poured from the gash, and from his
ear and his eye. He collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

Clarissa grabbed the pistol off the
hood of the car. She brought the handgun to her face. The warm barrel smelled
of cordite. She aimed the weapon at his head and went through the man’s
pockets. Found them to be empty.

The guy moaned. His eyes fluttered
open. Clarissa picked up the branch, tucked the pistol in her waistband. The
guy moaned louder as Clarissa brought the branch up. She twisted at the waist,
the branch followed a half-second later and connected on the side of the guy’s
head, a little further up than the last time. A sheet of blood flowed from the
side of his head, over his hair, down his neck. He fell to his side. The dirt
around his head quickly turned to dark crimson mud.

“You better hope to God those women
haven’t been touched or else you’re gonna wake up with worse problems than a
headache.”

She ran to the side of the house,
crouched, stayed low as she approached the door. It lingered open a few inches.
She dropped the stick. Mia’s soft cries filtered through the doorway. One male
voice spoke low. Clarissa couldn’t make out what he said, although she could
tell he was British.

She paused for a moment, waited for
signs of another person inside. All she heard was the voice, Mia’s cries and
nothing else.

She reached out and nudged the door
with the barrel of the gun. It glided open. Rusted hinges groaned. The man’s
voice continued, uninterrupted. She still couldn’t decipher what he said, but
the fact he kept talking told her that he hadn’t noticed the door. Or maybe he
figured it had been his partner, in which case he’d remain casual. At least as
casual as one could be in this situation.

With the gun stretched out in front
of her and cradled in both hands, Clarissa slipped inside. Spiers lie on the
floor halfway between the couch and where she stood. She scanned the room, then
went to him. He laid on his stomach, the right side of his face pressed against
the floor. He clenched a fire place poker in his right hand. A pool of blood
surrounded his head. The tilted floor caused it to spread away from his body.
His eyes were wide open, unblinking. She knelt before him, placed a hand on his
neck, felt no pulse.

Clarissa stepped over Spiers’s
body. To the right were the bedrooms, the left the kitchen. The man’s voice and
Mia’s sniffles came from the left. She moved silently toward them.

As she approached the opening, she
saw the backs of the women. They held hands behind the chairs they sat in. Even
Mia. They weren’t bound. Perhaps that was why the man went to the car, for
rope. Clarissa’s ears burned. Her breath and pulse quickened. She gripped the
pistol tighter in response and clenched her chest and stomach muscles. After
five seconds, she released. Her body responded by relaxing.

She took another step.

“So from this point on,” she heard
the man say, “you speak no more. We drive to the coast. A boat will be waiting
to take us to England. We’ll meet another car there, then you’ll be taken to
see our boss. And during that whole time, you keep your mouth shut.”

Mia sobbed.

“Especially you, you little—”

Clarissa moved forward, quickly and
decisively. She trained her aim on the man’s head. His eyes grew wide when he
saw her. He raised his pistol, but the position of his body left him off
balance.

Clarissa didn’t have time to tell
him to freeze or stop or drop his weapon. She pulled the trigger. Time slowed
and the next several actions happened in freeze frame. Her shot was true and it
hit the man in the center of the forehead. At the same time she fired, so had
he. His gun had been aimed in the direction of the women. They screamed. It
sounded like shouts underwater to Clarissa. The man fell to his knees. Clarissa
fired again, this time hitting him in the chest. He dropped his handgun, fell
backward.

Time resumed. She rushed toward the
guy and verified that he was dead. Behind her, Mia continued to cry. Expected,
she figured, since the kid was six years old. But Erin screamed again. She
sounded like she was in pain. Hannah yelled for Clarissa.

Clarissa turned, saw blood on their
hands, the floor and Erin’s right leg. She said, “Clean towels.”

No one moved.

“Hannah, go get me some clean
towels. And find me a belt.”

Hannah rose and rushed out of the
kitchen. Clarissa went to Erin’s side. She found where the bullet had entered,
just above Erin’s right knee. Blood flowed from the wound. Clarissa feared that
the woman’s femoral artery had been hit. She placed her index and middle
fingers inside the hole in Erin’s pants and pulled. The fabric ripped half a
foot in either direction. She inspected the wound. The bullet had gone through
and through, but not evenly. Her concern that the femoral artery had been
damaged grew.

“Mia,” she said. “I want you to
look through the drawers and see if you can find some scissors.”

The little girl said nothing. Her
cries had stopped.

Clarissa looked over. The girl
looked catatonic. Her eyes wide, focused on her mother’s wound. Clarissa placed
herself between mother and daughter. She lowered her head until their eyes met.
Mia broke free from the spell.

“Scissors,” Mia said.

Clarissa nodded. “That’s right. And
don’t you worry, she’s going to be OK.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

As soon as the girl turned, so did
Clarissa. At the same time, Hannah returned with a handful of white towels and
four belts.

“I didn’t know what size you
needed,” Erin said, offering the belts to Clarissa.

“That’s fine. You did good. Now I
want you to go to the sink and wet a couple of those towels and bring them back
over here.”

Hannah dropped the belts and a
couple towels and headed to the corner of the room. Before Hanna started the
faucet, Clarissa heard a car engine roar to life.

“Hurry with those towels,” she
said.

The faucet cut off. Hannah brought
the towels, then moved to the side and grabbed Erin’s hand.

“Any luck with those scissors?”
Clarissa said.

“Found them,” Mia said.

“Hannah, go get those, then keep
Mia behind me. Don’t let her look at her mom.”

“OK.”

Hannah retrieved the scissors,
handed them to Clarissa.

Clarissa used the scissors to cut
the leg of Erin’s pants around mid-thigh. She wiped blood away from around the
wound. Then she grabbed an inch-wide belt, wrapped it around Erin’s leg, and
cinched it tight. The blood flow slowed to a trickle.

“Wait here,” Clarissa said.

“Where are you going?” Hannah said.

Clarissa did not respond. She
grabbed her handgun and left the kitchen. She passed Spiers’s body, stopped at
the front door. She no longer heard the car’s engine. Either the man had left,
or he had turned the vehicle off and now waited for her outside. He likely
watched the front of the house, waiting for the opportunity to kill her.

Clarissa closed her eyes, brought
her hand to her forehead. The warm barrel of the pistol almost singed the skin
there. She took a deep breath, reached out and opened the door a crack. Cool
air blew inside. The sweat that coated her exposed skin turned cold. She peered
through the crack, but the angle prevented her from seeing the spot where the
silver car had been. The one thing she could tell was that if the man remained
outside, he wasn’t out in the open.

Clarissa took one more deep breath,
then pulled the door open and crouched down. She eased her torso through the
open doorway. The pistol moved with her eyes.

The car was gone. The man had left.

She fell back and rested against
the door frame for a moment.

“We should go.”

Clarissa looked to her left and saw
Hannah standing there. She nodded, said, “Grab the keys and pull the car
around.”

Hannah did as told. Mia started
after her, but Clarissa stopped her from leaving the house.

“Wait for the car.”

Clarissa then went to the kitchen.
Along the way, she grabbed a chair with caster wheels. She lifted Erin, set her
in the chair, wheeled her to the front door. The car appeared a moment later,
and with Hannah’s help, she got Erin into the front seat. She ran back to the
open doorway, took one last look at Spiers’s lifeless body. She made a promise
to have someone return for him. Everybody had someone to go home to.

She jumped in the car and raced
down the driveway, then turned toward town. The car screeched to a stop on the
sidewalk in front of the store. It was the only place that Clarissa knew would
have people inside. She bolted out of the car and jerked the door to the store
open.

“Is there a doctor in this town?”
she said.

“Yes, of course,” the old man said.

“Where?”

“Why?” the old woman said.

“Just tell me where he is?”

“She,” the old man said.

“OK. Where?”

“Right here,” the old woman said.
“I practiced medicine for over forty years. Now, what’s wrong with you?”

Clarissa said nothing. She grabbed
the old woman by her arm and pulled her through the store. Hannah had already
opened Erin’s door. She scooted toward the rear of the car when she saw
Clarissa and the old woman emerge from the store.

A small crowd had gathered. The old
woman addressed some of them by name, asked them for help. Two men stepped
forward. They pulled Erin from the car, interlocked their arms beneath her, and
carried her inside.

In the back of the store, on a
stainless steel table, the old woman inspected Erin’s leg.

“She’s very lucky,” the woman said.

Clarissa waited for her to
continue.

“The bullet tore through her flesh,
nicked the bone, but did no further damage. I’ll ease the tourniquet and clean
and stitch this up. In a few days she should be OK to leave.”

“I don’t have a few days,” Clarissa
said.

“Well, she can’t—”

“Fix her. Fast. We have to go.”

The old woman’s lips drew tight.
She nodded and began to work. The old man brought back a bottle of pills and a
flask of whiskey. The flask was chrome and had two tulips engraved on one side.
Erin took two pills and three shots of whiskey with no protest.

The old woman finished in under
half an hour. Erin emerged from the back room. She walked with the help of
crutches.

“How are you feeling?” Clarissa
said.

“Like I’ve been shot,” Erin said.

“I can relate.”

The old man went out front and
ushered the small crowd away. He helped Clarissa and Hannah ease Erin into the
front seat.

“Dear,” the old woman said from
under the store’s awning.

Clarissa turned to face. “Yeah?”

“I had to call the police. It’s
obvious a crime was committed.”

“What did you tell them?”

“You have a thirty minute head
start.”

Clarissa shook her head, got inside
the car. She eased the transmission into gear. They left the town, headed west
toward the coast.

Leon stared at his cell for a
moment before setting it on the counter. The time indicator flashed forty-five
seconds. The call felt like it had lasted an hour. He imagined the twisted
feeling in his stomach would remain at least that long. His worst fear when he
let the women leave had been realized. They’d been attacked and he couldn’t do
a damn thing about it.

“Dottie,” he called out.

She appeared a moment later, her
full length robe wrapped tight around her. It trailed along the ground behind
her as she walked. “What is it?”