Paradise Falls (54 page)

Jacob saw it, jerked back, sucked in his gut to avoid a hard swipe that would have opened him up like a pig to slaughter if it struck, but the blade hit nothing but air. Jacob’s assault was crude, uncoordinated, but it trapped the big man’s arm against him long enough for Jacob to push him back through the storm door. Not through an opening,
through
the door. It shrieked off its hinges and fell behind the big man as they came down in a heap on the floor.

He was strong, and fast. He recovered, shoved Jacob off. He landed with a grunt and rolled out of the way just in time to see the big man’s knife plunge into the hardwood floor. Jacob spun, and kicked. Heel hit hand and the knife went skidding off, under the cough. The big man grabbed his ankle, pulled him, grabbed at his belt. He was a grappler and he knew that they were in a ground game now. Jacob saw the flash in his eyes, the confidence. Height and weight were an advantage on the ground, where all fights went, sooner or later.

An advantage against everyone but Jacob. He pivoted, rolled. The impact of his foot to the big man’s head was weak, by Jacob’s standards, but enough to knock him off, dizzy him maybe. Jacob got up on his knees and hands, scoured the room for the knife. He went for the couch, tried to lift it, failed. The big man had him now. An arm looped around his neck, a thick arm crushed under his chin, closed in on his windpipe. Instinct drove him to reach for the offending limb, but a figure of wood has no instinct.
Think
. Think and remember what you have learned.

Jacob did not try to pry the arm loose. Instead, he grabbed the fingers of the big man’s hand, pulled, and twisted. Human instinct is simple to predict. The hand will go where the ring and small finger go. Even if we do not understand how vulnerable they are, the body does, and knows that once the joint breaks separating tendon and skin is like cleaning a chicken. Where the hand goes, the body goes also. The big man’s shocked eyes momentarily flashed in Jacobs’ sight as he rolled to the floor, moved mostly by his own momentum.

He kicked at Jacob and missed. Jacob shouldered into the couch, the wrong shoulder. Pain tore through his body in a hurricane of agony, turned his vision white, but it didn’t matter. His hand closed around battered, cheap wood. Pine or walnut. A cheap knife, the kind a kid might order from a catalog or buy at the mall. Brittle steel. Big and scary more than practical. It felt more like a shortsword in Jacob’s hand.

“You and I,” Jacob rasped, his blood rushing in his ears, “Are going to have a conversation.”

“Fuck you,” the big man rasped, rising.

The big man ran. Jacob followed. Into the kitchen. The big man was scared now, he was not expecting this. Jacob read his face. Confusion flashed for a second. He was supposed to take Jacob alive, or something like that, but instinct drove him to reach for the gun in his belt. Instinct, as before, was too slow. The big, cheap knife, the scary kind a kid would buy, was oddly well balanced. It spun end-over-end through the air with curious ease and planted the point in the big man’s upper arm with a meaty
slap
and sent him howling to the floor.

Jacob kicked the gun away. The big man wrenched the knife free. A mistake; he would bleed out from that. Jacob tipped over the knife block on his kitchen counter and seized two, a carving knife and a butcher knife, one long and thin for fine cuts, the other heavy. Brutal.

“Keep that one,” Jacob rasped, “I’ve got mine.”

“Fuck you,” the big man rasped again.

“Do you know any other words?”

The big man was quiet, sliding away on the floor. He dropped the knife to grasp at his arm. Good; the compression would help him last longer. Jacob loomed over him, wild, covered in blood that wasn’t all his own, teeth bared, chest heaving with liquid rage that pulsed in his veins with every breath, flooded his lungs like hot coal smoke. He stoked his fury like a fire.

“Where is she,” he said.

“I ain’t telling you.”

“Yes you are,” Jacob snarled, moving forward.

The big man kicked feebly at him. Jacob rewarded him with a stab. The thin, flexible blade of the carving knife sank into his leg about an inch and a half, in the calf. Deep enough to bleed but not to bleed out, if he was lucky and he
talked
. He pulled back, howling, tucked up into the corner.

Jacob surged forward, fell on top of him, drove his knees into the big man’s stomach and pinned him. He brought the tip of the carving knife to his throat.

“I”m going to start cutting until you start answering.”

“I can’t-“

Jacob reared up, rammed down. The butcher knife cut and smashed through flesh and tendon and pinned the big man’s left hand to the tile floor. It quivered when Jacob let go of it, like a goddamn cartoon. He still had the carving knife. He took the big man’s other hand.

“I”m going to cut off your fingers. Then we’ll see what you have to say.”

“Jesus Christ, stop-“

Jacob put the blade against the joint.

Like cleaning a chicken.

“Highway eighty-five,” the big man wailed. “Truck stop. Meet there for the exchange.”

“What exchange? Wasting my time is going to cost you more fingers.”

“Selling the girls. Another chapter of the club.”

Jacob nodded.

“Are you gonna let me go?”

“You should have left Jennifer alone. She would be telling me right now not to hurt you any more. She’s a good person. I’m
not.”

There was no answer. A hard swing of his arm and the parting of flesh before steel silenced it. Jacob stood up. Tossed the knife aside. His foot slipped in the blood.

“Sir,” a tiny voice croaked.

Oh
God
.

Jacob ran. He was on the stairs. Faisal sat on the stairs, lying against them, holding his stomach.

“I tried,” he said. “I fought. They shot me.” His tone was almost giddy. Blood loss. Shock.

Jacob looked at his wound. Shot in the belly. Thick black blood, organ blood. Bad. He needed a hospital or he wasn’t going to make it.

“They took my sister,” Faisal said.

“I’ll get her.”

“Yes,” Faisal grabbed his hand. “You will.”

“I’ll take you downstairs.”

He heard muffled voices from the vault door to the basement. It was locked from the inside. What the hell?

“Who’s in there?” Jacob bellowed, though his voice came out in a weak puff at the end.

“Stay away!”

The girls. Oh, God. Faisal must have hid them in the basement when he saw the bikers coming.

“It’s me,” he shouted, “The sun is shining.”

The door swung open. Hailey and her sister Kelly stood on the other side, clutching a rifle and shotgun to their chests.

“But the ice is slippery,” said Kelly, her voice shaking. “Mister Jacob, they came to take us back.
They came to take us back.
”

“They’re not going to,” Jacob rasped.

She looked past him and her face went oddly blank.

“I remember him. You killed him.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she spat.

“Downstairs,” Jacob blurted, “and put those guns down.”

They moved before him as he carried Faisal down the steps. Kelly rushed back up to lock the door and brace herself against it as Jacob moved to the cot in the corner. The other girls shied out of his way as he laid Faisal down on the cot.

“He told us to run,” Kelly whimpered. “He said we’d be safe down here. He wouldn’t come down. Miss Katie wouldn’t, either.”

“It’s okay,” said Jacob. “I need help patching him up. Grab the first aid kit from my desk.”

“I’ll help you,” said Ana, her eyes willing with tears.

God, his sister had to see him like this.

Faisal groaned but did not speak as Jacob cleaned and bandaged his wound. It was bad. The bullet went into his intestines. Not a fatal shot but it would be painful and the recovery difficult.

Finally, Faisal spoke.

“What are you going to do?”

He took a breath.

“Fix it. Save her.”

“You need help, Jacob,” said Ana. “You’re in bad shape.”

“No time. Help patch me up.”

First he had to staunch his own bleeding. He crushed a clot pad from his drawer of supplies over his shoulder, tore off his shirt and bandaged the wound. He couldn’t have it troubling him, so he wrapped it up in duct tape, around and around to make a brace. The compression would help the joint.

He didn’t have time to change, so he put on his ballistic vest over his bare chest, then his reinforced gloves and arm guards. The stupid shoulder pads were still on order. He stopped, leaning on the desk. Faisal went quiet, but he was breathing.

“Call for help,” said Jacob, to Ana. “Get him to a hospital.”

“They’ll find everything.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to use the crash dive.”

Faisal looked at him.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Nothing matters anymore. Nothing but Jennifer.”

“The bad men took Miss Jennifer,” Kelly said, sounding half her age.

“I know,” said Jacob. “I’m going to find her. I’m going to make them safe. Then I’m going to hurt them really bad.”

He opened the vault. Jennifer would need her rifle when he found her. He slung the case over his shoulder. He took one for himself, strapped on a backpack, his bug-out bag with the gear he would need. Friend-or-foe tags for the Martyr’s automatic fire control system, his medical kit, a bug-out bag full of miscellaneous gear.

One last thing, oddly out of place among all his state-of-the-art, advanced gear.

Then he started the program on the computer, typed in the password. No matter what happened his work would not be in vain, but that was an afterthought now.

He stooped beside Faisal, and Faisal squeezed his hand.

“I forbid you to die,” said Jacob.

“It is in God’s hands,” Faisal said. “Go.”

He turned to Ana.

“Lock the door behind me. Call our people at the hospital. Don’t open up for anybody else. We don’t know who we can trust.”

Ana nodded.

Before he went up the stairs, Hailey stopped him.

“She’ll want her purse,” she said. It was Jennifer’s.

Jacob almost waved it away, before he felt its weight. It had her father’s gun in it. He took it by the handle and carried it up with him.

Jacob forced himself to sprint up the stairs. Any slower and he’d slow down even more. His leg was screaming- it felt like he torqued his knee in the crash and banged his hip, but if there was nothing broken he had no time to deal with it now. He limped out the back door, left it hanging open, and went into the carriage house through the back to the Martyr.

There she was, two tons of fury in black steel, two huge wheels in front and a single massive caterpillar tread in the back, the body slung between them. With the cockpit over the big, heavily treaded tires, the front end of the big beast reminded him of some particularly aggressive, nasty spider.

Jacob opened the hatch, climbed in the Martyr and started her up. The raging snarl of the engine filled the structure, shook dust from the rafters. He opened the throttle and hurled her forward, out into the open air.

“I need everything you got, baby,” he said, to the machine. “She needs us.”

If anyone tried to stop him from reaching her, he would kill them
all.

3.

Jennifer tucked the tiny sliver of metal the fold between her palm and fingers as the car pulled off the road. For the rest of the trip she said nothing. She simply sat there and wept quietly. It did not take much work to keep up the illusion.

While she rode, she was watching. She knew this place, these roads. There was an old, abandoned truck stop, just off the interstate. It had been abandoned long enough for thin weeds to creep up between cracks in the parking lot, but not long enough for the windows to be smashed out or the structure to start to buckle. A good hiding place.

When the car stopped, Grinder stepped out without a word and was interrupted before he could turn to open her door and yank her out.

“Boss, we got a call from Elliot.”

“The fuck does he want?”

“He knows we’ve got the girl. He says he’s bringing the cops with him.”

“Shit,” said Grinder. “I’ll call him. Get the bitches out. Get her in the game room and lock her up.”

A biker she’d never seen before opened the door. Jennifer braced herself, let them pull her out and lead her inside, careful to keep the needle in her hands while keeping them mostly relaxed, fingers loose.

“Jenn!” Katie shrieked.

Before Jennifer could answer, one of the Leviathans cracked Katie across the mouth, and silenced her. Her head lolled, and came back up. Jennifer met her gaze, her stomach twisting at the sight of her little sister’s split lip.

Faster, Jacob. I
need
you.

They pushed her inside as they led Jennifer into a different part of the building. This was the ‘game room’, she surmised, going by the disused arcade machines and the pool tables, a cheap kind that took quarters to release the billiard balls. Jennifer sat down on a stool, tall but not so tall she couldn’t put her feet on the floor.
Keep your balance
.

Two men leered at her and she looked down, shaking with fake sobs as she continued to shape the broken needle.

Then, they left her alone.

Her head shot up. She looked around first to see if she was watched. There was a mirror on the wall, and she first thought it was a one-way, but that was just paranoia. It was some designer’s attempt to make the dingy room look bigger, that was all. There were no cameras she could see, no sign of surveillance, and why would there be? Slowly, she worked the pin into the lock, and stilled herself. She had done this before. Even behind her back a few times. She could get them open one time in four. It would just take time.

Unless she broke the needle, or dropped it.

Deep breath, eyes closed, she worked, slowly, gradually, feeling the tension in the mechanism. Just let go.
Just let go
.

Almost there.

The crunch of tires on old pavement opened her eyes. She got up off the stool, moved to the grimy, blurry windows, light on her feet. She was starting to ache from her arms behind her back, her head throbbed, her ankle was screaming. There were cars pulling into the lot. Elliot’s big Charger, and two Paradise Falls police cars. Elliot got out of his car and slammed the door. Ellison emerged from one of the other cars, but his father, Calvin Carlyle, was driving. Grayson stepped out of the passenger’s seat of Elliot’s car. His arm was still in a sling.