Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

The gunshot was deafening in the tiny space; the bullet pinged off a pipe and shunted into the bulkhead before me. Nick’s bullet hit the cupboards just inches above my head—his finger had jerked on the trigger. The man grabbed for Nick’s gun and the two wrestled while I came around the big table to assist. My guy was more conscious than I’d thought. He kicked at my legs suddenly, tripping me into the cabinets against the wall. Nick’s guy had his gun. He backed into the corner of the room and fired wildly at the two of us. It was only the boat lurching suddenly down a steep wave that saved us. The man slid, fell; the gun was knocked out of his hands as he hit the ground. Nick snatched up the weapon and pointed it at his opponent’s head.

“Nick, no!” I cried.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

VINNY SAW THEM coming long before they knew he was there. Two tall, thick men jogging quietly through the trees toward the house, guns out. He sat still in his wheelchair at the corner of the porch, his hands beneath the blanket on his lap. He’d never been a good sleeper. More nights than not, he wheeled himself out here to watch the silent forest and think. The journey to the porch had taken longer this time because his left wheel was held in place by an under-sized bolt Doc Simeon had found in a jar in the garage. The ancient gangster smiled as one of the men skirted around the house to check the perimeter while the other walked directly toward him, not seeing him until he was only feet away.

Vinny watched the man assess him in the moonlight. The wheelchair, the newly bandaged leg, the blanket on his lap, and the hat clamped on his withered head. Like people always did these days, the young man underestimated him. The pair were wearing balaclavas, but Vinny could see that there were tattoos on the man’s hands. Some kind of insects—spiders, maybe.

The tattooed man said nothing until his partner returned to his side. The two looked at each other, assessed Vinny again, and then turned to go.

“What?” Vinny smirked. “You’re not gonna kill me? You’re not worried I’ll roll up behind you while you’re inside popping heads in beds?”

The men glanced at him, bewildered.

“Old man, you just sit there and feel lucky,” the tattooed one said. “I ain’t about shootin’ pathetic old cripples in their chairs. You can be the one who tells the story.”

“Pathetic old cripple?” Vinny laughed. “You think so, huh? Boy, I got ten inches of cold hard steel between my legs that might disagree with you.”

The men laughed. Their laughter was drowned out by the roar of the gun from between Vinny’s thighs; the blanket over his knees was shredded as the bullet passed through it. The tattooed man’s kneecap exploded, sending him sprawling on his face on the gravel driveway. The partner fled. Vinny lifted the heavy Desert Eagle pistol and tried to grip the trigger, but his hand was strained from the first shot. He grabbed the knife from his shirt pocket, turned, threw it, felt a rush of satisfaction as it chunked into the partner’s thigh as he made for the porch door. The guy stumbled and then wrenched open the front door and disappeared into the house.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

NICK THOUGHT HE was back there, back inside the night-mare of his war again. That is the only reason I can give for the shot, a merciless blast from only four feet away that should rightfully have taken the life of the man on the floor in an instant. Whatever Nick was seeing, whatever fantasies he had about the threat to him from the unarmed man, they did not include the respirator still clinging to the back of his head. The bullet glanced off the steel canister on the respirator, deflecting it away from the man.

I lunged at Nick, swept him into a headlock, and pushed the gun away in time to direct the second bullet into the wall. My partner’s strength was furious. He dropped the gun, turned, and palmed me in the face so hard that my head snapped back into the wall.

“What the fuck, Cap!” he said.

“We’ve been ordered back to base!” I yelled, struggling for words. “We gotta go. We’ve been called in. Go! Go! Go!”

Nick seemed to take the bait. We ran for the door, swaying into the wall as the boat lurched again. On the deck outside the galley hatch, I spotted Effie on the bridge holding a gun on someone, presumably the captain, her attention torn between him and us.

“Come on!” I called, my voice almost drowned out by the sound of yelling from inside. “Let’s go!”

Effie dashed down the stairs; a man appeared from behind her and fired a gun. Bullets pinged off the rails and lobster traps as we ran for our boat.

It seemed safe to speak only when the dark shape of Cline’s boat had disappeared into the night. I tried to calm my thundering, sinking heart by telling myself that we had destroyed all of Cline’s product on board. Probably millions of dollars’ worth of stock. But the shaking in my limbs wouldn’t quit, and dark thoughts swirled of Marni on her stretcher, of the man Nick had almost shot dead cowering against the cabinets. We had nearly murdered a stranger in cold blood to avenge Marni. It wasn’t what she would have wanted, not at all.

When the red and gold lights of Gloucester Harbor lit my face, I turned and saw Nick sitting at the back of the boat with his head in his hands.

“You almost killed that guy,” I said. It was perhaps cold and unnecessary, but I wasn’t just talking to Nick. I was talking to myself too.

“I did bad things over there, in the war,” Nick said. He heaved a heavy, shuddering breath. “They won’t go away.”

CHAPTER SIXTY

SUSAN SNAPPED AWAKE at the sound of the gunshot from the front of the house; she rolled off the bed and into a crouch in the corner of the room, out of view of the window, before she was even fully awake. For a moment her mind reeled, struggling to locate herself in time and space. Arkansas, 2012. Daseri’s men had made her and were on their way up the dingy hotel stairs. No, wait. Gloucester, 2018. Cline’s people, the Inn in the woods. She took her gun from the desk and crept to the door. Across the hall she spotted Malone, his high cheekbones and wild eyes illuminated by a silent television screen behind him. They locked eyes wordlessly and slipped out into the dimly lit hall.

A howl of pain from the front porch. Someone swearing, begging. Malone and Susan moved into the dining room, eased their way to the bullet holes in the wall.

“Stop your whining, you little pussy,” Vinny growled as he wheeled slowly past. There was a man on the driveway clutching his knee, curled up in a ball in pain. Ten feet away from the man, probably flung there in the blast, a pistol lay on the pale gravel.

When Susan turned, Malone was gone, and there was a gun in her face.

“On your knees,” the man said.

Susan put her hands up slowly, keeping her face neutral. She started to go down, waiting until she could see the tension in his body shift as he anticipated her surrender. That’s when she struck, batting the gun aside, punching out as hard as she could. She was aiming for his balls but went a little high; her knuckles collided with a belt worn low, but the force was enough to shock him, double him over. She turned and felt his arms come around her and now the gun was in both their hands, the aim wavering over the walls, the ceiling. Malone slammed into them, wrenching the man’s head back so that Susan could grab the weapon. Her mind was a constant hammering of half-formed thoughts, panic she had once been taught to keep at bay now unleashed as soon as it was triggered.

How many are there?

Is anyone in the house already dead?

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE