John Miller - Side by Side

He checked his watch. The agent had been inside for thirty seconds.

The lights should be on in there, but that idiot twin had fixed that. He’d let Smoot kill the old couple and then they’d take the Dockerys to a warehouse that Smoot owned outside Charlotte. Max would make sure the killing was done to Keen’s forensic specifications and then they’d use two weapons to stage a fatal shoot-out between Massey and Agent Keen, and Peanut and his twin oxen.

One minute and twenty seconds. “What the hell is taking your sister so long?” Serge asked the Major.

“She knows what she’s doing,” the Major answered. “Relax and let her do her job.”

“We should go in,” Serge said.

“She’ll tell you when,” Major Keen said. She reached into the car and flipped the high beams on and off several times.

“Call her cell phone,” Max said. “Ask her.”

The Major sighed loudly, took her phone out of her pocket, and dialed. Serge heard the agent’s phone ringing inside the building. “What’s going on?” Major Keen said into her phone. As she listened, her mouth opened and her eyes widened.

“What?” Max asked.

“She’s gone wrong,” Serge said. “I guess now we can kill her as many times as we like.”

The Major held her phone out to Serge. “Massey wants to speak to you, Serge.”

Serge put the phone to his ear.

“Sarnov,” the voice said. “You have two minutes from now to withdraw or I will kill Alexa Keen.”

“Just a minute,” Serge said. “I’ll consult with the others.” He put his hand over the phone so Massey couldn’t hear him. There was no time to waste.

“Massey is inside the store.”

“How’d he manage it?” Randall said.

“It had to have been before Peanut arrived and set up on the place. Peanut,” Serge murmured, “the man in there killed your son.”

“Buck?” Peanut asked, confused.

“Click. Blew his brains out because your boy wouldn’t give you up.”

“Oh, my dear God,” Peanut said, genuinely shaken. “Killed my baby. .”

“Have your son there smash down that door, and you guys go in and kill everything in the place.”

“Just a minute,” Randall objected. “We should think this through.”

“There’s no time,” Serge argued. “That’s Winter Massey in there.” He looked at the Major.

“Do what you have to do,” she said, nodding.

Peanut went over to his son and gave him instructions.

“Maybe my guys should handle it. This Massey’s no slouch,” Max said.

Serge spoke in a low voice. “Let the Smoots storm the beach and test the sand for us. Tell your men around front they’re to go in as soon as the shooting starts. We wait until Peanut and his son go in and we flash-bang and we go in and finish this.”

Serge put the phone back to his ear. “Okay,” he said. “You win, Massey. We’re leaving.” He pointed his trigger finger at Peanut, who had taken up a position against the wall beside the kitchen door.

Letting out a howl, the Smoot twin ran up and shouldered the door. The sound of the wood frame splintering filled the night air as the door collapsed into the room. The twin raised his shotgun. There was an explosion that lit up the kitchen, and Curt’s head came apart, his corpse falling into the kitchen.

Peanut looked down at his dead son and screamed, “You’re dead, YOU-MOTHER-”

Three shotgun blasts sounded within the space of two seconds. The first slug punched a quarter-size hole in the wall between Peanut’s right shoulder and the door frame. The second round-double-aught buckshot-made a fist-size hole through Peanut’s chest between his nipples, and the third blew most of his left shoulder away. He died with two thirds of his final curse spoken.

Without hesitation, Max tossed a flash-bang grenade into the kitchen, waited until it went off, and sprinted into the kitchen with his MP5 before him, spraying the room from left to right.

“Kitchen’s clear!” he yelled.

Major Keen ran into the building with Serge behind her, gun out.

The kitchen was thick with swirling cordite. Serge saw a tactical shotgun lying on the floor just inside the den. The team that had broken down the front door rushed in from the store, their MP5s aimed at the bedroom door.

“Open up, or we’ll drill the walls, Massey!” Max Randall hollered.

Serge, standing beside the Major, heard the Dodge truck out back roar to life. He whirled and ran to the back door, and fired at the truck.

“Stop them!” he screamed at the Smoot twin out front as he sprinted after Peanut’s Dodge, emptying his Walther.380 at its wide tail.

He heard the last living Smoot’s shotgun go off three times, followed immediately by a dull wet thud.

When Winter Massey told Alexa to drop her gun, what Winter saw in her eyes was the last thing he had expected-relief and excitement. “Massey?” Then she smiled, and said, “Thank God! I didn’t know how I was going to keep them alive by myself.”

“I said put the gun down,” Winter again ordered. “I know what you’re doing, Lex. How could you?”

“Massey,” she repeated. “I’m sorry I couldn’t level with you. The two of us have a chance, but you have to trust me. I’ll explain it later, but we only have a few seconds before they storm this place. If I put this gun down, you’ll be alone.”

“You set me up twice.” Winter’s voice was curt.

“I had no choice. I didn’t bring you in to get you hurt. I brought you in to do what I couldn’t do on my own and I knew you would. I’m sorry Randall came after you. I tried to help you at Click’s house. I couldn’t at Laughlin’s or the clinic. I was playing a man-in-the-middle defense-I knew they were listening to everything I said and probably seeing what I was doing. Winter, if you ever trusted me-if you ever believed in me-do it now.”

“How in hell can I trust you?” Winter said.

“Because I gave you Eleanor,” Alexa told him.

Winter felt like he had put his hand on a live wire. Those five words, spoken in hardly more than a whisper, were deafening.

The headlights of the sedan flickered angrily against the cotton curtains. The killers were growing impatient.

Because I gave you Eleanor. And although he had suspected it at the time, he hadn’t truly believed what it had cost Alexa, hadn’t accepted it as a sacrifice. Now he knew it was true and, for the first time, he knew his friend’s heart.

“How did you get in here?” Ed asked Winter.

“The same way you’re all going out,” he said.

“You can get us all out past them?” Alexa asked.

“If we move fast,” Winter said. “I came in by the root cellar. I lucked into the trapdoor while I was trying to find a way under the building. The last two ladder steps are rotted off and there’s a foot of standing water down there.”

“I’d plum forgot about that. Hadn’t been down there in years,” Ed said. “Thought I’d sealed it off good.”

Winter looked at Alexa. “Lucy, you and Elijah and this nice couple need to go with Special Agent Keen and stay with her. I’m going to keep them busy. You take everybody to the root cellar through the bedroom closet, and wait at the outside door for me, or the sound of them inside the store.” He took the light off the shotgun and handed it to her. “Don’t use this until you’re in the closet. I’ll do what I can. The truck out back may be your best bet.”

“I reckon I’ll stay here and give you a hand,” Ed said.

The baby started crying and Lucy hugged him tightly to her. “It’s all right, Elijah,” she crooned.

“Sir, Alexa here and these people need you worse. I’ll be right behind you and I’ll be moving fast.”