John Gilstrap - No mercy

He made a wide, sweeping gesture back toward the lodge. “Don’t you see them in there? Don’t you see how they are? They don’t give a shit about me. They never did.”

“Coulda fooled me,” Boxers said.

“They fool everybody! Hell, they fool themselves. How twisted is that? Now I’m stuck in their fucking nightmare, and I’ve got no choices left.”

They finally reached the wood line. The Hummer was still at least three hundred yards deeper into the woods. Jonathan said, “You do have choices, Tom. Nobody expects you to stay here. You don’t have to be a part of what’s coming.”

“Bullshit.”

“You don’t!”

“I do!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Why, for Christ’s sake?”

Thomas held Jonathan’s gaze. “Because you saved my life.”

“Scorpion, Scorpion, this is Mother Hen.”

As often was the case when radio traffic had died but the bud remained in his ear, the sound of a voice in his head startled him. Boxers, too. Thomas sensed the urgency, but had no way of knowing what it might be.

Jonathan pressed the transmit button on his vest. “Go ahead, Mother.” He suppressed a smile as he spoke to Venice. He was the one who assigned radio designations, and she hated hers.

“Scorpion, you are not alone. I repeat, you are not alone.”

Jonathan motioned for the others to get off the road, such as it was, and they all dove for the foliage on the left side of the overgrown path. Jonathan took a knee and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”

“There’s another vehicle near yours at the bridge. Looks like a light truck. Maybe an SUV, but a small one. Details are hard to see through the trees.”

“Just the one?” Jonathan whispered.

“I think so. It’s definitely not the Green Brigade. They’re still hours out.”

Then who the hell was it? He looked to Boxers and got a shrug. “How long ago did they arrive?” he asked.

“I can’t say exactly,” Venice advised. He could hear the embarrassment in her voice. “Once you got to the cabin safely, I stepped away for a while. No more than ten minutes.”

Jonathan did the math in his head. Whoever the visitors were, if they’d only had ten minutes, they couldn’t have accomplished very much. “Any sign of people?” he asked.

“Negative. Again, the trees are pretty thick, and it’s too warm for the infrared imaging to do much good.”

Jonathan sighed. Translation: she had no friggin’ clue. “Okay, Mother, thanks for the info. Advise if you see any more detail.” Jonathan motioned for Thomas not to

He rocketed to his full height, his rifle leveled at Sheriff Gail Bonneville and the guy he assumed must be her deputy. “Freeze, Sheriff!” he commanded.

The guy to her right reacted by swinging his shotgun around, and Jonathan stitched the dirt in front of his feet with a three-round burst that made them both jump back.

“Freeze means freeze, goddammit!” he yelled.

And they froze.

“Weapons down!” he commanded.

Gail lowered her Mossberg shotgun by its barrel to rest its butt plate on the ground and let it fall like a tree. The deputy didn’t move.

“I do not want to shoot you,” Jonathan said. He saw in the deputy’s eyes that daring should-I-or-shouldn’t-I look that had gotten so many people killed over the years.

“I don’t want to shoot you either,” Boxers said, emerging from the woods behind them.

The daring look went away. The deputy knew that he’d been beaten. He let his Mossberg fall.

“Sidearms next,” Jonathan said. “Two fingers and slowly, please.”

Using exaggerated movements, they unfastened the straps that secured their weapons in their holsters, and then stooped to ease them onto the overgrown path. Handguns cost too much these days to go throwing them around the way they did in the movies.

“Well done,” Jonathan said. “Now put your hands behind your backs, please, while my big friend zips you guys up.”

It all went as if they’d rehearsed it. Boxers approached from behind and produced two set of zip ties from his vest. They were much more convenient than handcuffs, and more secure. Given the right conditions, ballpoint pen fillers could be used to pick handcuff locks. Without a knife or a good pair of snips, zip tied prisoners stayed zip tied until someone decided to let them go free. Besides, there were no keys to lose.

When they were both secure, Jonathan let his weapon fall against its sling and stepped closer. He gave his most charming smile. “Well, hello, Sheriff Bonneville. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Taking you down,” said the deputy.

Jonathan allowed his smile to fade as he shifted his gaze. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

The man just glared.

“This is Jesse Collier,” Gail said. “My right hand.”

Jonathan took his time evaluating what he saw. Middle aged and a little thick of middle, the guy had a life-hardened look about him. Jonathan assessed him as zero bullshit and dangerous. “He looks like a loyal deputy,” he said. “A smart one, who knows when he’s no longer in control and needs to do what he’s told.”

Jesse spat a wad of phlegm that nailed the shoulder of Jonathan’s vest. Boxers dropped him with a savage punch to the kidney. The entire transaction went down with such speed that they all jumped.

“Enough!” Jonathan commanded.

“The fuck do you think you are?” Boxers yelled at the contorting deputy. “That’s my friend you just spit on.”

“Big Guy!” Jonathan said, more soothingly this time. “It’s okay.”

“No

“Gail Bonneville and Jesse Collier,” Jonathan said, “allow me to present the rest of the Hughes family-Steve and Julie.”

“What’s going on?” Julie demanded.

Jonathan explained the confrontation on the road as he helped the newcomers into dining table chairs.

“Why are they here?” Stephenson asked.

“If you want the short version,” Jonathan began, “Sheriff Bonneville is better at her job than I had anticipated. When I rescued Thomas, it was from a farmhouse in her jurisdiction.”

“So you admit it now,” Jesse said.

“Not much sense denying at this point,” Jonathan conceded. “Anyway, she’s been hunting for me ever since.” He turned one of the remaining dining chairs around and sat with his chest resting on the cane back, facing Gail. “I do hope, however, that you’ll tell how you connected the final dots. I know it didn’t come from fingerprints-we’ve already established that.”

Gail smiled as she shook her head. “When you unstrap my hands, I’ll fill you in.”

Jonathan smiled. He liked this woman. He even liked her deputy, although of the two of them, he was the one to be feared.

“What was your plan?” Jonathan asked. “Were you going to arrest us single-handedly?”

She shrugged. “If the opportunity arose, I suppose we might have. But really, it was more about recon. Once I got the lay of the land, maybe I would have taken my pictures to the state police and put together a plan to take you out.”

“In spite of your directive from the FBI.”

“ Because of my directive from the FBI.”

She had guts, he had to give her that.

Stephenson looked confused. “So, your only interest here is to arrest Scorpion for shooting up your town?”

“And to arrest you for killing the Caldwell family,” Gail replied evenly.

“So you don’t know about the rest?” Julie asked.

Gail and Jesse exchanged looks. “What rest?”

Stephenson laughed heartily and paid for it with a muscle spasm. “Boy, do we have a story for you,” he grunted through the pain.