Officer out of Uniform (Lock and Key Book 2) (27 page)

Kerry had a death grip on her left arm – tiny Kerry, who probably weighed 110 pounds soaking wet.

Sasha grit her teeth against the heat, the pain. Everything seemed to slow down, and a terrible sense of the inevitable swept over her. It was too late. There was no getting through the window, even with Kerry’s help. Her grip was slipping, and there was no way the other woman could lift her, especially at such an awkward angle.

Perhaps realizing the same thing, Kerry began to scream for help.

The sound of her best friend’s voice filled Sasha’s ears as she lost her grip, fingernails breaking and scraping against the sill, then the stone wall. When she hit the ground, the impact made her see stars. The bright bursts of light were all she could make out – the smoke was thick, and she was forced to squeeze her eyes shut.

With the room burning around her, she curled up reflexively against one of the stone walls, knowing it wouldn’t save her. Then she tried her best to shut out the screaming, the flames’ crackling. She didn’t want to feel the horror of everything closing in on her, didn’t want to think about what was going to happen.

She thought of Henry instead. As she struggled to breathe, her fingertips touched something wet.

Blood. She’d forgotten about the two dead men. The reminder hit her like a ton of bricks, shattering the illusion of calmness she’d been trying so hard to maintain.

She still thought of Henry, but now her thoughts revolved around what she’d be missing out on after she died, and the nightmare it would be for him, too. The scars on his back – the things he’d told her about Afghanistan – kept whirling through her mind. She was in for a few brutal minutes of agony, but he’d be left with a lifetime of pain.

Henry swore as Randy ran like a man possessed, not stopping when he got to the creek behind the plantation house. He plunged right in, sank waist-deep, and came scrambling out the other side. He still wore the same clothing he’d had on when he’d attacked Henry’s home, and it was bloodstained. The cleanest thing on him was a dingy brown backpack.

Henry followed him, covering the mansion grounds in long strides. There was a ten foot gator that loved to sprawl out on the creek bank when the sun was shining – Brutus, Sasha and her friends called him. It would’ve been too fucking easy if the thing had pulled Randy under the water and treated him to a death roll. But Randy was already into the woods beyond the creek, and there was no sign of the gator.

Hopefully that meant Henry would be safe too. Fuck, it didn’t matter, because there was no other way to cross the creek. He plunged in, boots hitting the bottom, and powered through.

He came out dripping on the other side and followed the trail of wet pine needles and broken brush. He was faster than Randy, and gaining on him. His palm ached against the Glock’s grip, and he longed to feel the recoil as he finally put down the psychopath who’d taken more lives than a small town usually lost to violence in a decade’s time.

The air was humid and seemed to cling to him as he tore through the scrubby forest. Indiscernible from his sweat, it streaked down his face like a wet mask. Small branches snapped back and stung his cheeks and shoulders, and each little blow marked an uptick in his excitement, his bloodlust. He’d never really wanted to kill anyone before Randy Levinson, but that reserve was gone now.

Randy had flaunted his inhuman bent for cruelty and violence like a flag, waving it over Riley County.

Henry’s response was animal, primitive – he’d stop him. There was no place in the world for someone like Randy Levinson, especially not here, where the people he’d so maliciously targeted were the reason Henry’s heart beat, the reason he woke up in the morning.

The overwhelming urge to put an end to the nightmare was highlighted by a sudden pain, a burning hurt that sliced through Henry’s hip, riding the burst of a single close-range shot.

Randy had a hand gun and had fired a shot backward while running. Miracle of miracles, it had actually hit Henry.

Sort of. He knew from experience that adrenaline had to be dulling the pain, but the fact that he was still running told him the damage couldn’t be that bad. So he kept going, and met Randy’s eyes when the other man turned to look over his shoulder at him, presumably to see whether he’d been hit.

That eye contact cost Randy dearly. He tripped over something in the underbrush and went flying. When he hit the ground he rolled and came up firing again.

The poorly-aimed shot missed Henry, who stopped in his tracks and fired back. There were years of practice and experience behind his shot, and the Glock was the very one he’d been trained to use for work, the one he took to the range weekly to make sure he was always ready to use it.

So it was no surprise when Randy groaned, head tipped back and eyes rolling as he doubled over on himself.

It was a gut shot. The bloom of blood on Randy’s shirt was clearly visible.

Henry had been aiming higher, for the chest, but Randy had jerked at the last moment.

That movement had earned him a painful wound. The hollow point bullet had mushroomed and fragmented inside his intestines, tearing up tissue and carving multiple wound channels that would result in extensive internal bleeding. The damage was done and most likely irreparable. For Randy Levinson, it would mean a slow and agonizing death.

Henry could smell the blood already from where he stood a few yards away. It was pooling around Randy, surrounding him in red.

Henry saw blood in his mind’s eye, too. Desert sand spattered with it, the stuff so dark against the pale grit it seemed like the stain would remain forever, marking where his life had changed. And the warden’s blood, thick burgundy syrup congealing in the sun. So much blood, he could feel the wetness on his hands. He was to blame for those things, wasn’t he?

He’d turned away from his friends seconds before they’d walked over that IED without him. He’d also failed to stop Randy Levinson during the first search, after he’d escaped the prison bus. Blood had been on his hands all this time, and now, there was more. For the first time, he welcomed it.

Randy Levinson’s blood wouldn’t wash away the rest, but it would make it a little easier to bear. By stopping him Henry had saved the lives of people like Sasha and the rest of the PERT officers, not to mention the other innocent people who doubtlessly would’ve gotten in Levinson’s way.

There was a balance to this killing – atonement, or as close as he could get to it. He wished he’d managed this sooner, but it had finally happened, and he could already feel the weight of the world lifting off his shoulders.

Randy laughed, and with it came a gurgling sound. His weapon lay in the dirt a couple feet from his limp right hand. The knife wound Sasha had inflicted on that arm was a red gash above it.

“Shoulda killed you when I had the chance. Can’t believe I missed.” There was panting, more gurgling. “That fucking dog…”

Henry said nothing. What was there to say to a person – a monster – like this? Nothing that could impress upon him the weight of his crimes, nothing that could make him sorry. If Henry’s work had taught him anything, it was that some people lacked a capacity for guilt, whether innately or because years of selfishness and cruelty had eroded it.

“Guess it doesn’t fucking matter, does it?” Randy’s gaze seemed to focus on Henry and then drift astray as he spoke. “I still got your girlfriend.”

Ice water trickled down Henry’s spine – or at least, that was how it felt. He was frozen with his Glock still in hand as Randy’s words swirled around him, their possible magnitude decimating his thoughts of the desert and the warden.

Was it true – had he hurt Sasha? Or was he just bullshitting him?

Hacking laughter mixed with gurgling noises bubbled up from Randy’s throat. “You’re hopin’ I’m lying – I can see it on your face, plain as day. And I would lie to you, just to see you look like you’d been kicked in the balls. But I’m not – I don’t have to. That bitch is a crispy pile of bones by now.”

The world reeled around Henry, and his head pounded with sudden, unbearable pressure. He knew there was a chance Randy was just messing with him, but there was also a chance he wasn’t.

Jesus, even the smallest chance that he’d done something to Sasha was enough to make Henry sick. If he knew for sure that he’d return to Wisteria to find that she’d died while he’d chased after Randy, he’d eat his Glock right there, go out with this worthless bastard.

If Sasha was really dead, it wasn’t just what Henry wanted – it was what he deserved.

Randy kept laughing. “How does it feel? To know the only person you gave a shit about is dead?” He grinned, and though it looked more like a grimace, there was obvious glee in the expression. “You can tell me… I know what you’re feelin’. Nothing matters anymore, does it? You realize that when it’s just you, you don’t really give enough of a shit to keep going. What’s the fuckin’ point?”

Henry was cold – so cold – deep down in his bones, his gut. With each second that ticked by, he became more afraid that Levinson was telling the truth. And if he was – if Sasha was really gone – he’d fucking nailed it. Had fucking laid out exactly how Henry would feel.

And then a breeze kicked up. Stirred the leaves around Henry’s head, and brought a scent with it: smoke. The scent was familiar, undeniable. It swirled around them, and Randy flashed that painful-looking grin again.

There was a fire. Another fucking fire. The evidence fogged the air and Henry’s mind, threatening to bring him to his knees. He wasn’t sure why he held out, why he fought the urge to collapse.

Training, maybe. It sure as hell wasn’t an impulse supported by his feelings. Half of him wanted to lie down and die. The other half wanted…

He raised his gun, aimed it at Randy Levinson. He could finish him off now, could shut him the fuck up.

Randy stretched out his messed-up arm, fumbled clumsily for his weapon.

Henry was stricken with the sudden urge to let him pick it up. He could let it end like this, and no one would ever know. Then it would all be over, and he’d either slip into whatever life came next, or be buried under the sand and blood that haunted his dreams, crushed into nonexistence beneath the weight of nothingness.

Hopefully that was how it was – hopefully there was nothing after this. He couldn’t bear the thought of rubbing shoulders or angel wings with the people he’d failed in this life, couldn’t stand the idea of a heaven haunted by the ones he’d loved and lost.

Still, he had a finger on the trigger of his own weapon. His own weakness weighed on him like gravity, beckoning him to the ground. He was caught between that and one small hope: the hope that Sasha was still alive, that this had all been Randy Levinson’s final lie.

The idea tore through him like electricity, a current of possibility that was painful in its intensity. And he felt the beginnings of shame, of having almost thrown everything he ached for away. If Sasha was alive, and he did this – let this happen – he’d be wounding her deeply and irreparably.

He couldn’t do that to her. He loved her. And so he pulled the trigger. Twice.

The bullets burrowed into Levinson’s chest and blood welled up immediately, marking two side-by-side spots.

It had been Henry’s experience that evil people usually lived the longest – defied odds that were stacked enormously out of their favor – and he witnessed that again as Randy continued to move. Somehow, he even mustered up enough breath to speak. “I hear those voices callin’ me. You hear them too, don’t you? You’re no better than me. No better.”

Knuckles white against the grip, Randy lifted his gun, barking out one more choking gurgle.

Maybe it was supposed to be laughter. Henry never found out, because Randy positioned the gun and pulled the trigger, blowing chunks of his own skull and brain into the air.

A final act of defiance, a final grab for control. He’d killed himself like he’d killed so many others: without hesitation.

Had that been his plan all along? The question had barely passed through Henry’s mind before he turned on his heel and ran in the direction he’d come. Toward the plantation house and the revelation that waited for him: a new lease on life, or the end of it all.