Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

“On the ground! On the ground! On the ground!”

They didn’t go down easily. Gloved hands went up, and then they reconsidered, perhaps acting on a lesson Cline had drilled into them from the beginning about their fates should they ever let him down. The man nearest me grabbed a canister of red powder and flung it at us; the glass burst against a porthole window. I could taste the dust in the air, burning and metallic. I launched myself at him, and the edge of the table jutted into my hip; a tub of pills tumbled and scattered as we hit the floor together. I clubbed him in the back of the head with my gun and he gave the heavy exhalation of someone losing consciousness. Nick had abandoned his gun and pinned his guy up against the low cupboards on the wall, his arm bent backward.

“You stupid fucks.” The guy’s voice was muffled by the respirator. “You ain’t cops! Get out of here!”

“We’re not cops, but we’re not going anywhere.” I took the duct tape from Nick and began binding the man in front of me. “Not until we’re done.”

Nick’s guy watched me, realizing my mission as I finished binding my guy and then started scooping up the spilled pills from the floor. I stacked a couple of tubs, and his eyes widened behind the cloudy glass of his face mask.

“You don’t want to do this, man,” he said. “I’m telling you. I’m telling you, bro! You’re making a big mistake! Cline will put you in a hole. He will put you in the fucking ground.”

“Shut up, idiot.” Nick forced him to the floor and put his knee into his back, then wound the duct tape tight around his gloved hands. I took three stacked tubs full to the brim with colorful pills and walked back outside.

The pills disappeared into the white moonlit surf as I emptied the tubs one by one.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

DIRT. THE SHERIFF tasted it as he came to consciousness, granular on his lips and strangely reassuring. He had the sense that for some time he’d been lolling around the back of his own squad car, heaped on the seat like a sack of bones, the acrid smell of the men’s cigarettes making him gag. He could hear them now nearby, the small one complaining and the big one barking back at him like a dog.

“If I’d known we was gonna bury this one, we could have come out here earlier, Bonesy. It’s fucking freezing, man! The ground is solid rock.”

“He wants us to be more careful this time,” the one called Bones said. “The Druly woman was fun and games. This is a cop we talkin’ ’bout. Shut up and dig.”

Clay tried to roll onto his back to take the pressure off his ribs, but as he moved, he found his hands were numb, his arms twisted behind him. His own cuffs were on his wrists. His head protested with the movement, pain branching out from the wound at the back of his skull like white-hot fingers running through his hair. He staggered to his knees with difficulty and then got to his feet, wobbling and groaning with the pain.

The men stopped digging and assessed him. He recognized them from Cline’s house. Bones and Simbo, two of the sneering henchmen Cline kept ever at his side. It took a lot to make Sheriff Spears angry, but he felt the dull thump of anger hit him now. It crept up through his chest and neck, an old friend returned.

“Sheriff, you could make this easier on yourself by lying the fuck back down,” the big one said, pointing to the soil. Clay looked around him at the forest. Moonlight streaked through the dense trees. For a moment he thought he might be somewhere near the Inn. Then he remembered the Druly woman’s body in the depths of Dogtown, her headless corpse lying on its side, dumped like trash.

“This is not very nice,” Clay said. The anger was taking over. Mean whispers and vicious sneers were flickering through his mind. The bad Clay inside, usually a solid sleeper, was up and knocking at the door of his heart. “I don’t deserve this.”

The men before him pulled enormous knives from their belts. Clay wondered if the plan was for his head to appear separate from his body, maybe dumped out here somewhere, maybe washed ashore weeks from now, covered in crabs and snails. The thought made his jaw lock with fury.

“You go first,” the small one, Simbo, said to his partner. “Dude’s four times my size.”

“Stop,” Clay said, his warning halfhearted, left over from his training. The good Clay calling back as he fled, leaving the bad Clay at the wheel. “Go now, and I won’t hurt you.”

“You …” The big guy grinned at his partner, laughed with surprise. “ You won’t hurt us ?”

“You’ve got three seconds,” Clay said. His speech was slurred, his head still foggy from the blow. The two killers in the dark considered their options, then advanced toward him.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

CLAY DIDN’T LET them come. The distance between him and the big one was maybe twenty feet, and for every inch of that distance, Clay ground his feet into the dirt and then hurled himself forward with all his might. He slammed into Bones at full speed, his wide shoulder driving into his gut, not slowing until the man’s back connected with a huge tree. Clay felt the breath leave Bones, felt his ribs crunching and muscles collapsing against his shoulder. Clay backed up a couple of steps, ready to kick the man when he hit the ground. But Bones was unconscious immediately, a shattered insect squashed in the dirt.

The smaller one, Simbo, wasted no time. He raised the knife, and Clay took the adrenaline surging through his system and swung his foot up and across Simbo’s arm, knocking the blade away. The move threw him off balance, left him sprawling on the ground on his back. The small, stocky guy was on him, and Clay clenched every muscle in his body and snapped upward suddenly, aiming his head butt as best he could. It was a glancing blow off Simbo’s mouth, but it was enough to shock him. Clay rolled, got up, stomped on the writhing figure in the dark again and again. He heard more bones crunching. Simbo’s forearm snapped like a branch. Clay kept stomping until the man was still.

The sheriff stood in the dark panting. Muscles and tendons that had been inactive for years were now alive; sweat dripped down his neck into the collar of his torn shirt. The last of his courage burned low, the rest of it consumed by the fight. He moaned a couple of times with exhaustion and anger, searched with his trapped fingers on the back of his belt for the key to the cuffs. It was gone. He sighed and began the long trudge toward where he guessed the road might be.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

WHEN I HAD emptied all six tubs of pills into the sea, I started carrying boxes and bottles of ingredients out. I grabbed a barrel and rolled it on its rim toward the door. The guy I had hit was waking slowly, moaning and sighing, trying to turn onto his side. His partner, held still by Nick’s gun, was watching me carefully. Nick had dragged the respirators off both their faces, but they were sweating badly. These men were going to have to run from Cline after this, and Cline seemed like the type who could find a man no matter where he hid.

“Let’s hurry this up, Cap.” Nick’s eyes were funny. Too distant, too wide. “We gotta meet the team at the point in oh-five.”

“What?” I stopped rolling the barrel. “Nick, are you okay?”

He shook his head. “Hmm? Yes. What? I’m fine. Let’s hurry this up.”

“That’s enough.” I let go of the barrel. “We’ve done all we can. Time to go back.”

Nick didn’t hear me. His head was up; he seemed to be listening to some noise coming from the rear of the boat. The minor distraction was all his captive needed. I didn’t see the knife he’d been working against the duct tape on his wrists until the blade cut through the last shred. He turned and jammed the blade into Nick’s calf.