The Unlucky (10 page)

Fully awake now, gun in hand, Sarah waited until they came looking for the chair.

Hey, thanks for waking me, Sis.

The back door banged open. The man came into view carrying a long-barreled rifle with a scope. He rested it in the crook of his shoulder, brought the scope to his eye and began a sweep of the large back yard, following the fence line. Sarah waited until he aimed it close to the copse of trees she had chosen to rest in, then ducked down and remained out of sight.

She kept her back to a tree, breathing slowly. No sounds came from the house. No screams, no shouting, no footsteps, nothing. Not knowing what was happening behind her, she checked the safety of the weapon in her hand and prepared for what was coming.

Adrenaline pumped through her stomach, her headache a distant tremor. The short rest in the chair had cleared her head some and made her feel better. But her thirst had intensified, like she had been gnawing on sand.

A twig snapped close by.

Shit!

The man had seen the chair. He knew someone was out here. There weren’t a lot of places to hide. Maybe three trees wide enough to cover someone from the house. His gun would be ready. That left her options very limited.

Vivian? Ideas?

Nothing came to her. No internal voice of solace or wisdom.

Thanks for the help …

After two quick breaths, Sarah dropped to the pine needle covered ground, lay out flat and rolled away from the tree, arms extended, Simmons’ gun thrust outward and pointing in the direction she thought the man would be.

Like a whip cracking the air, the rifle fired from five feet away. The bullets shot up dirt less than one foot from Sarah’s face. By the time he readied the rifle to fire again, she squeezed the trigger of her weapon, aiming low. A leg wound would suffice. The thought of killing again so soon after Vanessa’s murder, even in the act of self-defense, made her consider her freedom—or soon lack thereof—as the authorities were already hunting her for one murder.

The bullet almost missed him, entering his inner thigh. But it was enough to make him stumble back. Sarah prepared to fire again, but quickly realized she didn’t have to. He staggered on his feet, the rifle no longer a threat as he let it dangle by its strap.

It was so quiet this far in the country that Sarah could hear a door slam in the house. She wanted to look. Maybe the woman had a rifle of her own, now aimed in her general direction.

Blood gushed from the leg wound. When the man dropped the rifle in the dirt, Sarah chanced a look at the house. The woman was on the back porch, her hands covering her mouth.

The man dropped to his knees, then tilted to the side until he fell over. The blood had a life of its own as it shot out in pumping actions, matching his pulse.

I hit an artery. Shit!

She got up and raced to his side. His eyes pleaded, wide and watery. He breathed in ragged gasps as his life source ebbed through his jeans. She glanced at the house again. The woman had disappeared back inside. Probably to get another rifle.

The man grunted, trying to say something.

“Shhh, shhh,” Sarah whispered. “Save your strength.”

She hadn’t paid enough attention to his unshaven face and ragged clothes when he walked through the gate earlier. He smelled bad, like rancid meat in the sun. His teeth hadn’t seen a dentist in decades and his fingers were the yellowed stubs of a chain smoker.

What is this place, Vivian? Why were they dragging that girl into the house?

The man’s eyes left her face and aimed up at the sky as the last long breath escaped his lips. His chest lowered once more and didn’t rise again. The blood pooling out of his leg eased off and stopped.

“Okay, now what, Vivian?” Sarah looked around. “I really hate not knowing the details and I can’t keep killing people and expect to just walk away from this one day. You have to offer me more.” She got to her feet. “Stake out a cottage. Watch the place. But for what? And now this guy is dead.”

A female screamed inside the house. Then another.

“How many people are in there?” Sarah asked aloud.

The woman was either calling the police or waiting for Sarah with a weapon of her own. If the police were coming, they would have her because the gate was closed and electrified. She couldn’t jump it without being cut to shit by the barbed wire.

The only option was wait out here all day or enter the house and get to the bottom of this task.

She looked down at the body at her feet as an idea sprung to life.

Quickly, she got to work. Once the man’s body was placed in the Adirondack chair, to an outsider looking in from at least a couple of dozen feet, he appeared to be sleeping.

Sarah wedged her gun between the man’s shoulder blades, completely out of sight, then leaned the chair back to the point where it was almost level with the ground. Hunched over, she dragged the chair, occupied by the dead man, toward the back of the house.

“He’s wounded,” she yelled. “He needs help.” Then in her most feminine voice, she cried out, “Please help. It was an accident.”

Even though the soil was soft, pulling the Adirondack loaded with 160 pounds of dead weight was exerting. The strain weakened her already drained body. She was sure of one thing, though. When she got inside that house, she was going to drink water for the first ten minutes.

The chair caught on a rock, ceasing her progress. She turned back, lifted the chair up on one leg and pulled, clearing the rock. Then she dragged on until she reached the back of the wooden deck, her eyes on the back door the entire way.

“Help,” she called as she settled the chair back slowly so as not to spill the dead body from it. “Anyone?”

Through the rear sliding door, the kitchen was empty. A hallway led from there until it ended at the front door of the house. It was also empty. She looked up to see both windows on the second floor were curtained and closed.

She retrieved her weapon from behind the dead man and stepped up onto the deck, her heart aflutter with the adrenaline still pumping throughout her.

To remain calm, she took deep, relaxing breaths. The bad part of taking a house is not having backup. The other bad part was having no clue where her enemy was or how much firepower they carried. The worst part of all was having no idea why she was here in the first place and having no other option but to move forward, enter the house, see for herself, and then it would be over. Then she could get some water.

Damn that whiskey.

She thought she heard Vivian second that, but was sure Vivian wasn’t interested in disrespecting her at the moment. The last thing they needed was a family fight on the back porch of this house. Vivian could throw debilitating punches that knocked Sarah unconscious and all Sarah could do was rant and rave at her.

So not fair …

The back door eased open without effort. The moment she stepped inside, a smell assaulted her. Then voices. Many of them. All coming from below.

The smell reminded her of bad milk mixed with broken eggs left out to rot. It was so bad she leaned on the counter for support.

What the hell is that?

Whatever it was might be the reason why Vivian hadn’t explained what she would find here. She was starting to wonder if she even wanted to know.

Her arms were exhausted from pulling a dead body to the back deck and weakened from holding the gun out in front of her. She took a deep breath of outside air and held it as she traversed the kitchen and quietly headed down the hall.

The walls were filthy. The floor appeared to have never been swept. Near the front of the house, she crouched by a wall and peered around the corner slowly. A living room with no one in it.

Where did the woman go?

The living room wasn’t being used as a living room. The tenants had turned it into some kind of video production studio. By the dirty front window, a large camera rested on a tripod. In front of it was a lounge couch and behind that, a bed. Various props—ropes, handcuffs, and a variety of adult toys—lay strewn about out of sight of the camera. A desk with two laptops sat to the side, up against the wall. She gathered quickly that the computers were probably for webcams and the voices downstairs were the stars of the show.

A porn company, Vivian? Webcams? Really?

Vivian’s voice reminded her of the electrified fence and the iron gate. The security. The man with a rifle willing to murder an intruder without a single word or warning uttered.

There’s more
, Vivian whispered.
Get downstairs.

Sarah trembled at the thought of what was downstairs. Images of Elmore Ackerman came to mind, and she shuddered again. The man who had held her and Drake hostage after helping them escape the police. It had been a house like this, just north of Toronto. Elmore had cages built in the basement for his victims.

And where’s that fucking woman?

At the top of the stairs that led to the basement, Sarah stopped as a voice boomed up from the lower depths of the house.

“Coming down to play?” a female called.

“Not sure if I have time today,” Sarah said.

“Sure, you do. Isn’t that why you came alone?”

“Backup’s on its way,” Sarah said. The woman’s name popped into Sarah’s consciousness. “They’ll be here soon, Belinda.”

“How do you know my name?” Belinda shouted. “And why did you have to kill my Joel?” Her voice cracked as she spoke Joel’s name.

Sarah checked over her shoulder. It felt like no one else was on this floor and so far she had detected nothing from the upper floors.

With the basement door fully open, she stared down the steps to a cement floor. The smell was different than in the kitchen. This was more human. The scent of sweat, urine and feces wafted up the stairs. It was like breathing the odor of roses compared to whatever was in the kitchen.
 

“We’ve been tracking your movements for some time, Belinda,” Sarah said in an attempt to sound like the authorities. “It’s over. That girl you dragged in the house was your last one.” She waited to let her words sink in. “Joel died as he should have. In the dirt like the piece of shit he was.”

“Joel wasn’t a piece of shit!” Belinda screamed, her voice taking on a high-pitched psychotic quality. “I will kill them all before you take them from me.”

Them?

“Help us,” someone else shouted from the basement.

The distinctive sound of knuckles whacking flesh and then a grunt of pain followed the plea. Asking for help would get a shot in the mouth. Whoever was down there was afraid of Belinda. She had some kind of control over them. Or they were subdued in some way?

Someone sobbed as they tried to breathe through their tears. Sarah barely heard someone else whisper, “Shut up.”

“I’m coming down,” Sarah said.

She crouched to the floor and eased forward, ready to yank her head back as she peeked into the basement.

Belinda sat in a chair in between two beds that resembled hospital gurneys. Between her legs, on the floor in front of her, was the girl from the car Sarah saw being dragged into the house. Belinda had a large, rounded blade resting against the girl’s throat.

“Come on down,” Belinda said. “Watch as I slit this whore’s throat from ear to ear.”

Both hospital gurneys were occupied by females in different states of wretchedness. The girl on the right was missing a foot, the stump wrapped in bloody gauze. Her right hand had bandages covering what looked like fingers that had been taken off. Large, grotesque stitches—the kind found on patients of mad doctors—covered most of the skin that remained visible. Her eyes were closed. Sarah couldn’t tell whether she was dead or asleep.

The other bed was occupied by a girl who was awake, her eyes frantic and wild. She wasn’t as beat up, but was tied to the bed. Fresh blood ran from the corner of her mouth, evidently the one Belinda punched. There was something wrong with her hands and feet, though. Like the skin was yellowed only in those areas. Could she have a whole-body bruise? Or a liver problem causing the jaundiced look? If so, what exempted her face from blemish?

There was no gun in sight. Maybe Joel had the only gun in the house. Who knew when their captives would rise up and revolt. Better to keep the guns limited and out of sight.

The disgust and revulsion that wrapped around Sarah’s abdomen tightened and mixed with the smell wafting up from below. She choked back the urge to vomit. She got to her feet and started down the stairs, hunched over so she could watch Belinda as she descended. The last thing she needed was a surprise attacker coming out of the back corner or from under the stairs.

It occurred to Sarah that the voice she heard before falling asleep in the Adirondack chair outside must’ve come from the girl with the clear face and yellowed appendages. Maybe Sarah should have broken into the house then and waited down here for Belinda and Joel to arrive home to a surprise.