Patrick Lee - Deep Sky

Then it was over.

Three seconds, start to finish.

In the silence he heard his pulse in his ears. And the wind sighing over the ridge into the valley, pushing the big snowflakes almost sideways.

He felt for his earpiece and put it back in place, but for the longest time he heard nothing.

Travis stood and surveyed the aftermath. His eyes picked out the relevant points in order of importance.

Paige and Carrie were unhurt.

All the bodies in the entry were down and still.

There was no one else coming in. No footsteps outside. No voices. Just empty darkness and blowing snow.

The decoy was still lying bound in front of the chair. Still unconscious. And unharmed.

The women stood from their cover. They met each other’s eyes, and Travis’s.

Travis crossed from the kitchen to the front door, his gun still trained on the bodies. He scrutinized them, saw that each had taken at least one headshot, and felt his tension step down a degree.

A second later it stepped back up.

Five bodies.

In his mind he saw the decoy extending five digits of one hand, then adding another finger with a shrug.

Five, maybe six.

If there was a sixth man, where was he? Why wasn’t he with the group?

Travis thought of the terrain surrounding the cabin, and the answer suggested itself. And made his skin prickle.

A lookout, up high. Almost certainly armed.

He saw earpieces on each of the corpses. He stooped and took the nearest one, and fixed it to his own ear.

“Are you listening?” he said. “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of none of your friends breathing.”

He waited.

No reply.

He hoped he was talking to dead air. But doubted it.

Dominic had already swiveled the mouthpiece behind his head so the man wouldn’t hear his breath. He kept the earpiece in place. He listened. Time drew out. It felt like the audio equivalent of a stare-down.

“Correction,” the man in the cabin said. “One of your friends is breathing. The nice old lady who lied to us. I guess it’s possible she’s not really your friend—but she’s somebody’s friend, isn’t she? I bet she matters to the people who hired you.”

Dominic felt his adrenaline begin to climb. He could see exactly where this was going.

“She has to be someone personally close to them,” the man said. “Who else would they trust to do this? I don’t think they found her on Craigslist.”

Fuck. Fuck .

“So here’s how this happens,” the man continued. “The three of us, plus your decoy, are leaving right now. In a tight group. You won’t have a shot that doesn’t risk hitting her. We’re going to stay tight all the way to the Jeep, and we’re going to sit tight inside the Jeep, and we’re going to keep it that way until we’re long gone. And if you try to kill the vehicle and strand us here, my first move is to put her brains in the snow. Try me if you think I’m bluffing.”

A hard plastic clatter ended the speech: the man had dropped the earpiece on the floor.

He wasn’t bluffing. Dominic was clear on that. Even if he’d thought it was a bluff, he couldn’t have taken the chance. He had no idea who the decoy really was—therefore risking her life wasn’t his decision.

It was someone else’s.

He reached into his parka and withdrew the blue cell phone. He double-pressed the send button and saw the display light up, the phone already dialing the man who’d called him last night.

First ring. No answer.

Far below, a broad shape emerged from the cabin. Four bodies clumped together. Three walking, one being carried. Even without looking through the Remington’s scope Dominic could see there was no shot. No single head was distinct—they were all shoved together in a silhouetted mass.

Second ring. No answer.

The group reached the Jeep and piled in and the engine roared. The headlights came on.

Third ring. No answer.

The vehicle backed around in a tight arc until it faced the road, then lunged forward, taking the turn fast and racing away down the valley toward town.

Fourth ring. No answer.

Dominic put his eye to the scope and centered the reticle on the Jeep. He did the math, the variables stacking up automatically in his head: range, velocity, elevation, time.

He could kill the vehicle easily right now. Once that was done he could put shot after shot into the passenger compartment, then sprint down to it and make a thorough finish.

That would hold true for maybe twenty seconds, given the Jeep’s speed. After that it would be more luck than skill.

Twenty seconds, if the call connected right now.

Twenty seconds to explain the situation and get a decision.

Nineteen seconds.

Fifth ring. A click on the line. A man’s voice: “Talk to me.”

Travis hated having the headlights on, making an easier target of the vehicle, but he had no choice. Under this cloudcover the valley would be ink black, and he couldn’t afford to lose the road. Burying the Jeep in snow would be fatal if there really was a sixth man back there.

A memory from childhood came to him: Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. Some point along this road represented the fabled bridge, the margin beyond which they would be safe.

He was certain they hadn’t reached it yet.

Paige was next to him in the passenger seat. Carrie sat centered behind them, leaning forward over the console. She had the decoy slumped across her lap, still bound, the Beretta pressed to her head in case she woke. Which she seemed to be doing—she was making noises.

How long since they’d pulled onto this road? Ten seconds? Fifteen?

Ahead lay the town, bright and welcoming beyond the darkness that engulfed the Jeep. They were ten seconds shy of the light when the first bullet hit. It struck the left edge of the hood with a sound like a baseball bat’s impact, but deflected without penetrating the metal. Travis felt the others flinch, and his hands jerked on the wheel, and for a terrible second the vehicle began to fishtail on the snowy road. The back end went left, the wheels spinning without purchase. A second shot skipped off the hard top three inches above Travis’s head. He felt cold air seethe down through the resulting rupture in the material. Then the Jeep straightened and surged forward again, and for the next three seconds nothing happened except that the town got closer and the darkness ahead of them got shorter. Three seconds for them to think they might make it.

Then the rear window shattered and a spring twanged inside a seatback, and blood splattered all over the windshield.

Not Paige .

Later, that would be the only thing Travis remembered thinking as the next seconds played out. Not the calculation of how far they had to go to reach safety, or how long that would take. Not the awareness that he needed to keep the Jeep under control. Not even the fear of another shot.

Not Paige . That was it. He could handle anyone else in the vehicle dying, himself included. Just not Paige.

If anybody was screaming, he couldn’t tell. His ears were ringing with increased bloodflow and the wind was keening through the hole above him, drawn by the pressure differential from the missing back window.

They passed into light on the east edge of town and the first available cross street came up fast. Travis braked and hauled right on the wheel, and halfway through the turn he saw a newspaper box on the streetcorner buffeted by a shot. The papers inside fluttered as if they’d caught a moment’s breeze. Then the Jeep was fully onto the side street and accelerating, with two-story brick buildings shielding it from the shooter.