Tumbledown (37 page)

“I know he’s not had long to get this together, but you think he might be underestimating Deakin slightly?” she said, as soon as Anderson was out of earshot and she had worked out how to mute her mike.

“I think his cardinal error is underestimating
you
.” Castillo was clearly apprehensive, but he hadn’t said anything to alert Anderson, and for that she was eternally grateful.

She smiled sadly at him. “There’s no way Deakin’s stupid enough to make himself a target.”

“I know. So where does that leave us?”

“Out of options.” She caught sight of Anderson beckoning her over. “I think I have to go.” She held out her hand to Castillo, then changed her mind and pulled him into a fierce hug. “If I don’t…” She swallowed and started again. “I just want you to know that I appreciate all you’ve ever done for us.”

He laughed, but it was a tight, mournful sound. “Been nothing but pains in my ass, the pair of you.” He kissed the top of her head. “Do your best in there. Hang on for as long as you can, okay?”

“Okay.”

He released his hold on her and she reluctantly stepped away.

“I’ll see you on the flipside,” he said.

“Yeah.”

She turned from him then and went over to Anderson, who handed her a small Maglite and escorted her toward the mill. Ten feet from its entrance, he halted. “Straight ahead,” he told her. “You’re gonna go past three sniper positions. Do not look at them or otherwise acknowledge them.” The deep timbre of his voice echoed in her earpiece on a split-second delay, as if to emphasize his commands. “Under no circumstances do you go into that room with Deakin, understand?”

Somehow, she managed to look him in the eye as she answered. “I understand.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

She stepped through the doorway and waited as the sound of his footsteps faded, her eyes struggling to adjust to the loss of his more powerful flashlight. Playing her Maglite across the floor, she picked out the pockets of garbage that gave the large space its pungent smell. Night had fallen, giving excellent cover to the men whose hiding places she slowly approached. Concealed behind long-abandoned machinery or torn-down dividing walls, far enough from the inner door that Deakin wouldn’t have seen them enter the building, they remained invisible until the edges of the beam picked them out as she walked past. She drew little comfort from their proximity or their weapons; unless Deakin was waiting with a target painted on his chest, they were unlikely to play a significant role in what was about to happen.

Ahead of her, a glint of light flickered and then disappeared. For a moment, she paused in confusion before realizing that Deakin had removed some of the masking from the door panel and that it was his light she had seen. He must be gauging her approach, having sent instructions that she stand a short distance away while he verified her identity. Her hand trembled as she came within reach of the door, her first attempt at a knock a tinny, timid sound against the metal. She turned the Maglite and used its handle to knock again with more purpose.

“Step back,” Anderson reminded her, his voice unexpected and startlingly loud in her ear. “Three steps, aim to your right.”

She did as he told her, and saw another flicker of yellow at the window, followed by a shadow passing across the filthy glass. She heard Anderson instruct everyone to “hold,” and then the scraping noise of the door opening drowned out everything else.

“Shit,” she whispered.

Anderson reacted first, seconds before pandemonium broke out across the comms. He yelled at Alex to move, to stick to the plan, to get the fuck out of there, even as she raised her hands and made eye contact with Leah.

“He’ll shoot her,” Alex said, her voice cutting through the chaos and reducing it to a series of threats from Anderson that were easy to ignore. She could see a dark figure standing behind Leah, using her as a shield while pointing a gun at the back of her head.

“You’re to come in,” Leah told Alex. Then she mouthed the words, “Sarah’s alive.”

Relief hit Alex like a Mack Truck; she had to widen her stance to stop herself from rocking backward. As Anderson continued to rail at her from some remote, ineffectual point, she interlaced her fingers on the back of her head and stepped across the threshold.

*

Without the full use of her sight, Sarah’s other senses seemed to have sharpened. She easily caught the first faint knock on the door; by the time the second and third rang out, she had the metal bar ready in her hand. No one had checked on her, so no one had noticed that her gag was on the floor and her blindfold was twisted enough to allow her a sliver of vision. It was by no means ideal, but it was better than nothing.

A high-pitched scrape as the door opened gave her the impetus to move. Inch by laborious inch, with the metal balanced in her lap, she used her good leg to push herself across the floor. The effort made her head swim, and her chest ached as it forced out breath after breath in dangerously fast succession. Her progress was clumsy, staggering, and almost certainly audible, but she was past caring about the noise she made. She
wanted
Deakin to come and see what she was doing. Maybe that way he would leave Alex alone.

*

Keeping her hands behind her head, Alex cast her eyes around the room. She saw guns and knives set out strategically on a crate, next to a fire housed in a tin drum, with its smoke drifting up toward a single window. Deakin stood by the crate, stooping to keep himself from the sights of the snipers, and Leah was stock-still in front of her. The one thing Alex couldn’t see was Sarah, just a gap in a wall, leading through into darkness.

“Shut the door.”

Deakin didn’t specify who was to perform the task but—keen not to antagonize him—Alex turned to comply. The door was heavy, taking both hands to shift it, and as she did so, her fingers brushed against a length of electrical cord: clean, blue-and-white striped, and obviously a recent addition.

“Fuck, the door’s been wired,” she hissed into her mike. Anderson’s response was drowned out by a sudden burst of pain as Deakin used the butt of his pistol to smack her across the face. She lost her balance, reaching for the wall as he snarled like an animal and hit her again. When she dropped to the floor, he bent over her, snatched the earpiece and the mike away, and crushed them beneath his foot.

“You armed as well, huh? You carrying?”

“No.” She started to shake her head, but the motion made her want to throw up. Blood dripped onto the concrete as she spoke. “No.”

With one hand pushing the gun against her cheek, he used his other to flip her onto her front and search her. “Gonna be losing that fucking vest in a minute. You think I wouldn’t see that?”

It seemed safer not to answer, until he slapped her.

“No, I knew you’d see it,” she said.

“How the fuck did someone as pathetic as you manage to kill my father?” He punctuated his question with another slap.

“I didn’t.” She tensed, expecting to suffer for the denial, but he merely leaned back a little and waited for her to explain. “We both went into the river,” she said. “I got out.”

“You got out.” His voice was dangerously quiet.

“Yes.”

“And you left him in there.”

She closed her eyes, knowing there was nothing she could say to make this better.
Like father, like son
. Nicholas Deakin had also held a gun to her head. Forcing him into the river with her had been an impetuous gambit to try to spare Sarah’s life; she had never expected Sarah to haul her out of there alive.

“You left him in there,” Deakin whispered, his mouth brushing her ear. He shifted, and she felt him press something against her thigh, heard a click and a crackle of electricity an instant before her entire body snapped rigid, every muscle seeming to lock and seize. She smelled her own flesh burning and lost consciousness to the raucous sound of his laughter.

Caleb had used the Taser on Leah once. It had been a weapon new to his repertoire and he had decided that she would be his guinea pig. She had woken in a puddle of her own urine, utterly disoriented and whimpering at the residual spasms that coursed through her body.

Having endured a more prolonged shock, Alex now lay insensible, her limbs twitching intermittently. Caleb had left her to it and turned his attention to the wiring on the door.

“Get me the screwdriver,” he snapped.

Leah edged over to his bag to retrieve the tool. The bag was closer to the weapons than her corner had been, so she lingered there as if waiting to assist him further. From her new vantage point, she could hear Sarah doing something in the next room: a faint, repetitive brush of movement accompanied by tiny pained gasps. As she continued to listen, she noticed Alex curl soundlessly into a fetal position. Caleb didn’t react, and Leah took advantage of his distractedness to take another two steps toward the metal crate. She thought she saw Alex’s eyes tracking her, but she couldn’t be sure.

*

Sarah opened her eyes to find her forehead flush against the concrete floor. Several long moments passed as she tried to work out where she was and why she hurt so much. It came back to her in disjointed fragments, her brain refusing to arrange the parts in any semblance of order. She must have fainted, somehow managing to prevent the metal from falling to the floor but bending her injured leg awkwardly beneath her in the process.

“Alex,” she whispered, remembering at last why she was doing this. “Shit.
Shit
.”

She had no idea how much time she had lost. The other room was quiet, bar the odd curse from Deakin, mere abstract mutterings that did not seem to be directed at anyone in particular. Beneath the edge of the blindfold, she could see only orange and black, the colors rapidly swapping places. It made her dizzy, but when she closed her eyes, she was still dizzy and she knew she couldn’t go any farther.

A whoop from Deakin brought her head up again. His footsteps approached, then halted, and the pause was swiftly followed by a yelp in a voice that Sarah would recognize anywhere, even when it was so distorted by pain. She closed her eyes and tightened her fingers around the metal.

Now or never.

*

Alex could feel Deakin tugging at her shirt, trying to unfasten the buttons to get at the Kevlar, so she tucked her arms tighter together to make things difficult for him. He broke off to punch her twice, once in the face and once in the abdomen, driving his fist low under the vest. She gulped for air, instantly forgetting everything other than trying to breathe. It gave him the opportunity to tear her shirt open, buttons pinging across the floor as he started to rip at the Velcro fastenings. He leaned over her, working on the shoulder straps, his face inches from hers. The barrel of his gun nudged her ear, a constant reminder to lie still and behave.

A long piece of metal suddenly careered through from the next room, crashing across the floor. It startled him badly enough that he swung his gun toward it. Sparks flew where the bar connected with the concrete. Leah dodged out of its path, and Alex reared up to head-butt Deakin with all the force she could muster.

Already wrong-footed, he went down hard, only just managing to turn in time to prevent his head from hitting the ground. He cried out, shock and anger bringing him back to his feet far sooner than she expected.

“Fucking bitch!” he screamed, his fingers pawing at the wound she had opened up on his forehead.

Blood streamed down his face as she barreled into him and drove him backward. He slammed against the wall, knocking over a metal crate as he did so. She heard the breath whoosh from his lungs, felt his fist pounding against her even as she ground his cheek into the bricks. Then a sharp, familiar sound that should have been a warning, and a blast that sent her staggering away from him.

Then nothing.

*

“Stop!”

Leah put everything she had into the command, but she still needed to repeat it.

“Caleb.
Stop
. Don’t move. I mean it.”

He turned to look at her, his expression incredulous, and actually started to laugh. “You stupid fucking whore,” he said. “You even know how to fire that?” His arm was still by his side, his gun aimed benignly at the floor. It was clear that he didn’t consider her a serious threat.

“Yes.”

The certainty of her response seemed to give him pause. When the falling crate had scattered the weapons, she had picked the one most familiar to her. Her finger touched its trigger in an unsubtle warning.

Lying halfway across the room, Alex coughed and then moaned, a terrible, agonized sound. Next door, Leah could hear Sarah sobbing inconsolably.

“Put the gun down, Caleb,” she said. “Please, put it down. No one else needs to get hurt.”

He scoffed, his eyes flitting to the side, to where he had left the detonator for the door.

“Don’t.” She stepped forward.

“Gonna stop me?”

She nodded, her mouth too dry to speak.

His lips curved into a cocksure grin. “Don’t think you’re gonna stop me,” he said, and brought his gun up an instant before she fired hers.

*

Already half-deafened by the first gunshot, Alex barely heard the second. She saw Caleb drop to his knees, blood beginning to seep between his fingers as he pressed them to the hole the bullet had just punched in his guts.

“I’ll fucking…” He sagged back against the wall. “I’ll kill you, you Godless…”

The threat tapered off into nothing, his mouth working soundlessly. When he coughed, flecks of claret sprayed out to stain his shirt.

Leah’s chest heaved as she stared at him, her body shaking so violently that the gun in her hand was little more than a blur.

“Leah.” Unable to draw a deep breath, Alex could only wheeze out the name, but she saw Leah nod. “Leah, keep it steady, honey. Okay?”

“Okay.” Leah’s teeth chattered as she answered. She shifted her grip on the gun and widened her stance, her gaze never leaving Deakin, who lay slumped and motionless in front of her.

“Good, you’re doing real good.” Alex clawed at the straps on her vest, the heavy padding suddenly too constrictive. She let it fall to the floor. “Oh shit,” she muttered, sweat breaking out on her forehead. The bullet had hit her in the chest. It had gone no further than the Kevlar, but it still felt like it had snapped a few of her ribs. She didn’t bother to look at the injury. She supported the fractures with her hand and pushed herself to her feet, trying to order her thoughts when all she wanted to do was run to Sarah.