Hide Away, page 14
Smart thing would be that her phone was switched off. Or just set to silent.
Stupid to be hiding out and have your phone go off. That cheery little melody of hers had no place in a firefight.
Wright bounded over the fence. He raced up onto the driveway. Sprinted for the house. Stone chips skittered away from every footfall.
If there was another shooter, Wright was basically an easy target. Moving, but moving in a straight line, straight toward the knoll.
He was committed now.
All he could hear was the crunch-crunch-crunch of his feet on the gravel. The driveway was well-maintained.
Soon he reached the slope. Leading up into the cutting around the knoll. The knoll wasn’t that high, but any kind of slope slowed you down.
The angle didn’t give him any protection from a shooter. The house stayed visible. At least, as a black silhouette.
He came up onto the level grade around the house. Where he’d parked the car earlier.
The house’s front door was open. Firelight flickered around the frame. The heat of it flared in the goggles.
Wright went to the veranda’s edge. He looked back around the area. There was no one.
He chanced a glance inside, but couldn’t see a thing. Too much heat from the fire.
He went on around the house, staying at the edge of the veranda. A night bird twittered nearby in the shrubs. Out in the fields he could just see the tiny glows of Farrell and the bodies.
She hadn’t questioned his sudden departure. It looked like she was doing the job of gathering the gear from them.
Wright went on around the house. At the door that accessed the kitchen, he stepped onto the veranda. A board creaked.
He turned the door’s latch slowly. Pushed it open. The smells of the kitchen swirled out around him in the cold night air. Herbs and tea and fruit.
A faint hint of cordite in there too.
As if someone had been shooting.
He went along to the door that led to the living room. Pressing against the wall, he reached and opened the door. Let it swing back.
Quiet sounds came from the other side. The crackling of the fire. Maybe someone breathing.
“Lawton?” Wright said.
An indrawn breath. A whisper. Indistinct.
Wright stepped through. Looked left and right.
The flare from the fire overwhelmed the goggles for a moment.
He focused back on the room’s center.
Two bodies there.
Wright pulled off the goggles and went to the nearest. It was a guy. Older. Breathing, but in pain.
“Shot him,” Lawton said. Her voice was little more than a rasp. “He came through shooting and I shot him.”
“Good work,” Wright said. He went to her and crouched.
She was bleeding. Bad.
Wright bent right to her. It was hard to tell the extent of her injuries in the dimness of the fire light.
“Guess he shot me back,” she whispered.
“Yep.”
“Tell me I’m going to be all right.”
Wright said nothing.
“That bad, huh?”
“I’ll take a look.”
Behind Wright, the guy said something. Moved. Wright turned.
The guy was trying to sit up.
Wright shot him. The sound of the shot echoed around the room.
The guy jerked back. Thumped onto the floor. Dead this time.
“Thanks,” Lawton said.
“Least I could do. Where are you hurting worst?”
“Shoulder, I guess.” She blinked. Took a gasping breath.
“Sorry about this,” Wright said. He tore open her shirt. Saw the wound in her shoulder. Not bleeding much, but still open and bad. The coppery tang of her blood rose at him.
“There’ll be...” she trailed off. Her eyes glazed. “There’ll be a first aid... first aid kit in the bathroom. Why don’t you go get that?”
“Give me your hand.” Wright reached and took her hand. It was cold. Her skin was pale. There was too much blood on the floor around her.
“Go get the kit,” she said.
“Put your hand here,” he said, placing her hand on a still weeping wound on her leg. “Press. It’ll help with the bleeding.”
“We’re a good hour from an ambulance,” she said.
“I know it. I’ll patch you up.”
“You’re no doctor.”
“Nope. But I always aced the first aid courses. I was especially good at foreign objects in the eye and CPR on babies.”
She laughed. Coughed up some blood.
Lawton took her hand away and put it up to Wright again. He took it.
“You go see my sister,” Lawton said. “Rich girl in the Hamptons. She’ll... she’ll want to know what happened.”
“I thought she was a jerk.”
“She is, but I’m the only one who gets to say so, buster.”
“Okay.”
“In fact, you want to go insulting my family, you answer to me.” She squeezed his hand. He grip was weak.
“Okay,” he said.
“In fact, you got anything bad to say about my sister, I’m gonna lock you up. I can do that you know. We’ve got a cell in... in Hyde Corner.”
She coughed again. More blood. The fire crackled and flared more light around the room. She looked pretty bad.
“I know you do,” he said. “I know you will.”
She took another sudden deep breath. Her lungs rattled.
“You gonna go... go get that kit?” she said.
Wright swallowed. “I think I’m going to stay right here. Least I could do.”
She took two sudden gasps.
“I wish people wouldn’t say that,” she said. “I wish people would do the most they could do. Why mess around doing the least? It’s like people don’t care anymore. It’s like, what’s the minimum they can get away with. Lazy.”
“That’s me,” he said. “Lazy.”
From outside came the sound of tires on the driveway.
“Guess that’s them come back again to finish me off,” she said. Her voice was fading fast.
The tire sounds stopped. A door opened. Boots on gravel.
“You shoot ‘em,” Lawton breathed. “Shoot ‘em the moment they come through the door.”
“You bet.”
Her breathing was ragged. There were more wounds. She’d given as good as she got.
“It’s me,” Farrell called. “Don’t shoot.”
“Fifty-fifty,” Lawton said. “Give me a second to decide whether to shoot her.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“Well enough, I suppose. But—” Lawton broke off, racked with coughs. “But this is her doing.”
“You think that? If you think that I’ll shoot her.”
The lights came on as Farrell came in through the door. She swore.
“No,” Lawton said. “Don’t shoot her.”
Then Farrell was kneeling on the floor by Lawton too.
“We got them all,” Farrell said. “They’re all dead.”
“Good,” Lawton said. She closed her eyes. She seemed to be focused on her breathing.
“Good,” she whispered.
She kept breathing, but each one was shallower than the last. Wright held her hand. There was no grip left.
She made a few more breaths. The last one was a little stronger, but her mouth fell open and there were no more.
Lawton lay still.
Wright stayed there, holding her hand for a moment. He concentrated on his breathing himself. Farrell said nothing.
Wright set Lawton’s hand on her chest. He looked at Farrell.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go get them.”
Chapter Forty-Four
They took the Dodge. No sense driving a police cruiser when the cop lay dead back at the Horlongs’ knolltop cabin.
Wright retrieved the cling wrap from the kitchen and used it to cover the window that had been smashed by the original driver’s head. Nothing was going to bring the truck back to showroom new, but at least the plastic would keep out the worse of the freezing air as they drove.
The Dodge ran rough and it pulled to the left and its hubs made a terrible noise. It stank of oil and the sweat of the team.
Five of them.
All dead. Wright and Farrell had made sure of that.
No sense in leaving too much detail. For a moment Wright had been tempted to toss the bodies into the Dodge’s tray and park it outside a police station somewhere.
Time, though, was a consideration.
He’d used one of the burner phones from the dead team to call in the incident. Not too many details, and definitely no personal details.
He tossed the phone back with the body.
“This ups the ante,” Farrell said. “Dead cop.”
“Yep.”
There was hardly any traffic.
The image of Lawton lying on the floor of the cabin stuck with him. She was young. Small town cop. Should have been visiting the elderly and solving the mystery of a missing dog or a stolen tractor.
Not killed in a shootout.
That wasn’t fair.
“It’s my fault,” Farrell said, as if reading his thoughts. “I brought them to town.”
Wright said nothing.
The sound from the Dodge seemed to be easing. As if the hubs were getting used to the new angles. Of as if they were about to seize.
“I can drop you somewhere,” Farrell said. “This isn’t your fight.”
“It’s my fight now,” he said.
Now Farrell said nothing.
“Where are we going?”
“South, first. Then Great Falls. I can get a car there.”
“Someone you know? A rental?”
“Storage. Fake name, fake account. Untraceable.”
“Like your cabin?”
“No. Not like the cabin. More like getting a taco and paying cash.”
“Okay.”
“You say that as if you think stealing a car would be a better option.”
“There’s got to be some trail to the vehicle. If it’s in storage, you own it. There’s some record of that.”
“A company owns it.”
“Already it’s getting too complicated.”
“We can’t stay in this truck. Chances are they’re tracking it. GPS or whatever.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
In theory they could stop and check the vehicle for a transmitter. Rip out the electrics and carry on. But they still might miss something.
This group had deep pockets. They’d rapidly found the cabin on the Knoll. They’d burned a perfectly good Charger.
“We need to get to the freeway,” Wright said. “Get to Great Falls.”
“It’ll take a good hour to get there.”
“Longer, in this rattletrap.”
“Well, it’s not like we have to look after it.” Farrell put her foot down a little. The sounds from the car increased and worsened.
“Of course, we have to hope it holds together that long,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m going to grab some sleep. Wake me when we get close.”
“Sleep.”
“Sleep when you can,” he said. “Eat when you can. Situation like this, you never know.”
“We used to say things like that. In the service.”
“I bet.”
So Wright slept. Dark and dreamless. He had a few skills, and getting a good sleep was one of them. Not especially marketable, though.
He came awake to bangs and crashes.
The truck was shuddering. Ahead there was light. An approaching vehicle.
He shook off the last webs of sleep. It was a town they were coming toward, rather than a vehicle.
“Engine troubles?” he said, sitting up.
“Good grief,” Farrell said. “I thought you were dead.”
“I think it’s unlikely that I will be one of those people who die in their sleep.”
“I know the feeling. Wrong kind of lifestyle for that.”
“Yep.”
“And it’s way more than engine trouble. I think I would be quicker to list what’s right with the truck than what’s wrong. The thing is falling apart. Be lucky if we can get another mile.”
Wright looked at the dash. They were doing barely forty miles an hour.
They were on the right of two lanes, with two more lanes on the left. A few headlights going the other way. That would be the I15, leading into Great Falls at some point. If he had his geography right, they’d come almost due east, so it wouldn’t be far to Great Falls from where that country road met the freeway.
The truck graunched along, making sounds like a death rattle.
“This is my fault, sorry,” he said.
“Yeah, I’ve been waiting for your apology.”
Wright laughed. “What’s the town?”
“This is the outskirts of Great Falls.”
“What’s the time?”
“Eleven thirty.”
“I slept longer than I thought.”
“Yeah. That’s good. There’s not going to be much open this time of night.”
“Nope. What were you thinking of?”
“Car rental.”
“That would take ID. Credit card. We need a better option.”
“We don’t need a credit card. That last team had a lot of cash on them. No ID in their wallets, and I didn’t know any this time. But they each had a thousand dollars in cash. Benjamins.”
“You took it?”
“Yep. You think that was dishonest?”
“I think it was appropriate. We’re in this situation because of them. This vehicle was worth way more than five grand.”
“Right, you didn’t blink on taking that. Though you might be lucky to get a thousand at a wrecker’s yard.”
They were in among the lights now. Big green signs coming up with exit names and mileages.
“Maybe we should try that,” Wright said. “Some wreckers wouldn’t blink taking a vehicle off your hands. They can have a truck like this broken down and distributed before anyone shows up looking for VINs or registrations.”
“I know it. Shall I look for one. Might be one around open until midnight.”
Wright laughed. “Let’s just park it near the Great Falls police HQ and leave it there. Maybe give it a quick wipe down for prints. We’ll both be on record.”
“Yep. And then? I can’t think of any way to get a vehicle skirting ID and credit card. Even the lowest, most dishonest used car salesman is going to need to see something.”
“Let’s try the police impound.”
The lights of Great Falls grew. There was more traffic, and streetlights along the freeway now.
“You want to steal a car from the police impound now?” she said.
“Nope. I want to ask nicely.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Farrell parked the Dodge five blocks from downtown Great Falls. The vehicle was making far too much noise to take it discreetly deeper into the city.
It was maybe three degrees warmer in town than it had been out in the countryside. There was a background hum to the city that had been absent there too. Just the pumps and fans of reticulations, the sounds of trucks and conveyors and loaders operating. All things that were pretty much shut off between dusk and dawn in a place like Hyde Corner, or even Choteau.
They wiped the truck down. Steering wheel, gearshift, dash, seats, door handles. Wright tore the cling film from the window.
The street was a mix of residential and activities. A small church halfway along, and a couple of closed stores on the corners on the city side. A dog was barking somewhere and a few of the well-kept houses had lights on.
Wright and Farrell used their own bags and a couple from the truck to load all the gear. Weapons and sundries like duct tape, tools, walkie talkies, batteries and chargers, even stationery and gum.
“We going to the impound now?” Farrell said.
“In the morning. There won’t be anyone on right now who can help us.”
Wright wasn’t going to wait, but it was easier to just do that alone.
“Sure,” Farrell said. “So in the meantime?”
“We’ll find a place to bed down. We both need rest.”
“How’s your ankle?”
“Been better. I’ll manage.”
They stood on the sidewalk in front of ruined Dodge. The engine still ticked and hissed. Cooling from its epic drive.
“The main street is a block that way,” Farrell said. “Central Avenue. We’re on the other side of the river from downtown, I guess. I only came in a couple of times, so I’m not that familiar with the place.”
“Did you spot any motels as we came off the freeway?”
“Nope. Guess it’s not really that kind of place.”
The I15 headed on north out of Great Falls, going to Canada and not much else. It wasn’t like the middle of the I5 or the I70. South, the I15 probably got a little more interesting, but north was really just empty Montana.
They walked along the block and around onto a busier street. Central Ave, the sign read. They turned toward the river and crossed a couple more streets. There were commercial premises and a few empty lots. Tire rotation and car washes, lawyers and accountants, a wide park, a pawn shop. People seemed to favor tan and brown and beige as external colors.
Two blocks on they came to a motel. Typical horseshoe shape, single story, with about half the parking spaces occupied. A gap through the middle at the back with a sign reading Overflow Parking. As if by some miracle the motel filled up.
The office was locked, but there was a night window and the clerk took Farrell’s ID and cash and credit card
“Two rooms,” she said, as Wright looked on.
“Two. Not adjoining, sorry.” The clerk made some notes and handed her two keys. He used an ancient manual machine to take an imprint of the card and handed it back.
“That chips you got there?” Wright said, pointing to a rack in the daytime customer part, across the counter. “Doritos?”
“Yuh.” The clerk sighed and rubbed his eyebrow.
Farrell stuffed a ten dollar bill from the change through. The guy sighed again. He went around the counter and retrieved a couple of bags. He squeezed them one at a time through the slot, crunching and crackling and crushing the chips.
