Saint (28 page)

He hopped off the rock and landed on the sand with a soft
thump
. Careless, but with odds like this he hardly needed to creep up on them like a mouse. Still, he walked soundlessly toward the door, hands ready.

He withdrew one of the guns from his hip, a Colt Model 1911 .45 caliber. Jacketed hollow-point 230-grain bullets with enough kick to knock a man across the room. Single-action, recoil-driven semiautomatic with a magazine of 10 +1. Custom blue-steel barrel. Englishman's pistol of choice.

He stepped up to the door, took a deep breath, cocked the gun by his ear, and tried the door. Unlocked.

Here it was, then.

Dale twisted the knob and pushed the door open, leveling the gun as he did so. His eyes were fully accustomed to the dark, so before the door had completed its full swing, he'd taken in the table, the kitchen, the loft above the kitchen, and the bedroom door on the back wall.

Still not a sound.

Moving fast, he slid to the loft ladder, hopped up onto the fifth rung, and scanned the sleeping area. Bed with rumpled blankets. No body.

No body.

He spun and dropped, catlike. The wood floor creaked. All three must be behind the bedroom door, sleeping soundlessly.

Moving more on instinct than with calculation, Dale flew across the room, shoved the door open, and trained his weapon on an empty bed.

Empty bed.

Empty room.

Empty cabin.

“Don't move.”

The voice, which he immediately recognized as Johnny's, came from behind.

“Drop the guns. All of them.”

He could have leveled the man then and there, without even turning. But he did have a couple of challenges if he made a move now.

His first challenge was that any one of Johnny's bullets would kill him as quickly as any other man's. The less-skilled man would undoubtedly get off a shot before falling from Englishman's attack, and at this range, he wouldn't miss Englishman's head.

His second challenge was that he didn't know where the others were. They'd obviously been more alert than he guessed. Kelly might not be Johnny, but with a gun at close range, she could kill just as easily.

Englishman turned slowly, gun hand raised.

He'd turned three-quarters of the way around when Johnny shot him in his leg. “I said drop the gun. The next one goes through a bone.”

Englishman felt the pain spread through his thigh. Flesh wound, right thigh, hardly more than a crease. Still, he dropped the Colt.

“The other guns as well. And the knives.”

No sign of Kelly or the old man. Englishman searched the darkness for any clue of the woman. Nothing. If Kelly hid nearby, she was silent. “Now,” Johnny said.

Englishman complied. The other Colt from his hip. The two 9mm's at his back. Two knives from his calves. He'd misjudged Johnny, but if the chaplain knew the extent of Englishman's skills, he'd have shot him while he had the chance. Instead, Johnny thought he had the upper hand and intended to question him. Or use him.

Englishman let a shallow grin cross his mouth. Johnny still didn't know the truth.

He spread his empty hands. “Satisfied?”

The man who loved the dark stared at him in the pale moonlight. “Hello, Englishman. You walk too loudly. I'm surprised you found us as quickly as you did.”

“It won't be your last surprise,” Englishman said. “Why don't you kill me?”

“I'm going to. How did you know about this place?”

“Kalman knows many things.”

“He's ordered you to kill the president?”

“We never fail, you know that.”

“Yet you failed now. It seems that Kalman forgot to tell you about the trap door in the bedroom. Only a fool would build a cabin at the end of this particular box canyon without an escape route. David Abraham is no fool.”

So Kelly and the old man had escaped through some sort of hatch in the bedroom floor. They were probably on top of the cliffs already. This meant that there was no gun trained on him, other than Johnny's.

“You should have gone with them,” he said.

“After you tell me what I need to know. Where is Jenine?”

Englishman grew impatient. One of the knives on the floor began to float. It lifted three inches from the ground and slid horizontally above the wood floor.

Johnny glanced down, eyes registering surprise.

The knife sprang shoulder-high and sliced toward Johnny in silence. Englishman was prepared to dodge a shot from Johnny's gun, but it never came. Johnny was immobilized by indecision. Or he'd already concluded that shooting would guarantee his death, even if he did hit Englishman.

“I know other tricks as well. I suggest you drop the gun.”

Johnny studied the blade at his neck, then lifted his eyes. They exchanged a long stare.

Englishman winked.

Johnny slowly lowered his gun. “You're affecting the zero-point field?”

“Drop the gun.”

Johnny's pistol fell from his fingers and clattered on the floor.

“Actually, it's nothing so scientific as the zero-point field or any of Agotha's theories. I'm surprised that you, of all people, don't know that.”

“Who are you?”

“I'm Dale Crompton. I'm Englishman. I am the personification of man's worst fears. I am Jude—”

A creak behind Englishman stopped him cold. He dropped to one knee and felt the sting on his cheek a thousandth of a second after he heard the crash of gunfire from the room behind him.

Kelly had returned for her lover. Her bullet smashed through the window as it exited the cabin.

He palmed a 9mm from the floor where he'd dropped it and was twisted halfway around when her second shot split the night. He rolled to one side of the door and brought his gun up for a clean shot.

From his peripheral vision he saw a blur.

Johnny was coming for him.

Englishman's momentary lapse in concentration had let the knife fall from Johnny's neck. Now he was forced to consider both Johnny and Kelly. But this wasn't a problem for Englishman. As long as he had direct sensory input from each of them, he could . . .

The window behind Johnny crashed.

In that split second, Englishman knew what had happened. Johnny wasn't coming for him. He had thrown himself backward through the window.

Englishman was already in the process of shooting a bullet into Kelly's head when this realization hit him. And with the realization came another: Johnny had just gained the upper hand. Evidently he knew enough about how these powers worked to know that Englishman needed a line of sight or sound to affect any object. He was removing himself from that line of sight.

So Englishman would simply kill the woman now and go after Johnny.

Unless going after Johnny proved more difficult than he'd estimated, in which case having the girl alive might prove useful.

All of this crossed his mind before Johnny crashed to the ground outside the window. Kelly was screaming something as her third bullet whipped through the bedroom doorway.

The Englishman reached around the door frame and shot the pistol from her hand.

She cried out and snatched her hand close to her chest.

“Stay!” he snapped.

“You want
me
, not him!”

Englishman jumped to his feet and bounded for the door. He could hear stones tumbling outside as Johnny climbed the rock slide behind the cabin, but the sounds were scattered. The thought of Johnny escaping him now mucked up his instincts.

Kelly was reaching for the gun behind him. Furious, he jabbed his finger back at her. “Stay!”

The gun by her hand flew through the air as if it were on a string. He accepted it with his open fist, stepped into the night air, and fired wildly at the mound of boulders behind the cabin.

He fired seven shots in rapid succession. But he knew as he pulled the trigger that he couldn't direct the bullets with so much confusion at hand. His bullets smacked into rocks, unguided.

Englishman cried out in rage. The man was escaping. He could kill the girl and go after him, but Johnny undoubtedly had another gun strapped somewhere to his body. Johnny didn't have Englishman's power, but his aim was astonishingly accurate. And he loved the dark even more than Englishman. Johnny could sit in silence at the top of the cliff and pick him off at his leisure.

Englishman threw one of his guns on the ground and walked back into the cabin, calming himself. Johnny knew Englishman wouldn't kill Kelly now. A hostage was too valuable given the circumstances. And Johnny made the judgment quickly. Much more quickly than Englishman expected.

He stared at Kelly, who was evidently still stunned by the flying-gun trick.

“Get up,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“We're leaving for a place better suited to our objective. If Johnny doesn't follow, I'm going to kill you.”

“He'll never do that.”

“He'll die for you. Or do you think he was just pulling your leg?” “He'll know you're just using me.”

“It doesn't matter. He's foolish enough to love you; he'll be foolish enough to die for you.”

The sound of a helicopter winding up on the cliff cut through the night. He cursed himself for not taking the time to scout it out and disable it earlier.

Englishman eyed Kelly, who had gathered herself and was scowling. He allowed himself a smile. The woman he'd allowed to toy with him for so many months was beautiful; he could never deny that much. And wearing her anger, she was downright fascinating. Little did she know how much she cared for him.

But Englishman knew. Deep down where the black and the white traded blows, Kelly was desperate for him.

He lifted his pistol toward her, thumbed the release, and let the spent clip clatter to the floor. “Round one, Johnny.”

Englishman slammed a fresh clip into the gun, chambered a round, and let go of the handle. The pistol hung in the air unmoving, aimed at Kelly. He stepped away from the obedient weapon.

“Stay,” he said. “If she tries to run, shoot her in the leg.”

Englishman looked at Kelly, who had traded her scowl for a look of amazement. Some fear. Respect and admiration. She was smitten by him. It was a pity he hated her; they would have made a good pair.

So why was he making such a display about showing her his power? Was he trying to impress her? They both knew there was no need for him to release the gun. It would shoot just as well in his fist.

He was toying with her, rubbing her hopelessness in her face.

Or maybe he was trying to win her respect because he didn't hate her as much as he thought he did.

Englishman grunted, stepped forward, and snatched the weapon out of the air, his bad mood at having lost Johnny now fouler because of this minor indiscretion.

He pointed the gun at the door. “Go.”

“Where?”

“After Johnny.”

“Where is Johnny going?”

Englishman hesitated, deciding whether to demonstrate his flaw-less logic in determining Johnny's next steps, which he had indeed calculated in the last sixty seconds while unwisely indulging in this gun-floating trick. He owed her no explanation. But he gave her a short one anyway, perhaps to impress her once again. He chastised himself even as he spoke.

“He's going to prove his love for you.”

JOHNNY RAN down the mountain, propelled by his need to save. To liberate. To kill.

With each plunging step through the underbrush, his decision to put so much distance between him and the woman he loved haunted him. He had to force his legs forward, down, over logs, through the branches grabbing at his legs.

But his instinct told him that his decision was a good one. Perhaps the only way to save Kelly. If Englishman guessed his course and prevented him from succeeding, on the other hand, this flight away from Kelly could prove disastrous.

The helicopter had wound up and left with David. He'd protested Johnny's insistence that he leave immediately, but a short discussion had persuaded him. If Kalman had sent Englishman after them, it would be for Johnny and Kelly, not David. The last thing they could risk was making the helicopter a target, which it would become if Johnny and Kelly were in it. Shooting a helicopter out of the air would be an easy task for Englishman.

More than this, Johnny wasn't interested in fleeing. He and Kelly knew they would have to deal with this threat directly.

He'd come instantly and fully awake at the sound of a distant rock hitting the cliff. Not rolling down with a series of clicks as others had done through the night, but striking a far rock wall with some force.

Unnatural. Then he'd heard the soft thump of two feet landing on sand and knew that Englishman was outside.

Now, Johnny broke from the brush onto a wide ledge that over-looked the sleeping, moonlit town below.

He'd been here. He'd seen something significant from this very ledge. The events that David had described hours earlier flooded his mind. He'd seen part of them from this vantage point. The only thing that was more difficult to believe than this story of David's was that Johnny had some power hidden in his bones today because of it.

But the details of his past weren't germane to his mission today. They would tell him who he'd once been, not who he was now. They wouldn't save Kelly or him. They would not kill Englishman.

Englishman, who evidently wasn't the same man Johnny had always known him to be.

Johnny turned onto the path on his right and continued his descent at a fast run. A shiver passed down his spine. He'd seen Englishman's knife lift from the floor as if manipulated by a magnetic field. Seen it floating toward him, picking up speed, flashing through the night.

His instinct told him to block the weapon before it reached his neck. His mind told him not to. It understood something that wasn't apparent to his instincts.

It understood that if Englishman could do this, he could easily kill Johnny at any time. Could kill Johnny at his leisure. If Johnny tried to stop the knife, he would only injure himself. Perhaps lose his fingers or a hand.