Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

“Your face? Your eye?”

“Can wait.”

“Collect your things,” Philippe said. “Hurry.”

Paolo scooped his belongings off the desk and jammed them into his pockets. All but the razor, which he delicately returned to its hiding place behind his belt buckle.

Philippe’s hand shook slightly as he returned the.22 to the small of his back. On this, of all nights…

“If she’s stupid enough to show up at the house, I’ll call you. We’ve got it locked down tight for the meeting. One marshal and a witness are not going to present much of a problem. You back up the bunkhouse, just in case this marshal’s luck holds out a little longer.”

“Consider it done.”

Philippe debated calling off the auction, but to do so would be a sign of weakness. He had ten men; Ricardo, another six to ten. If possible, they would sweep the property one more time before the meeting. He could put off canceling until then. If they caught and killed Hope Stevens in the process-the only remaining living witness who could give them all jail time-he’d have a major announcement with which to open the auction. This might help him to cover that he had only a partial list: eight hundred witnesses and their three thousand dependents. And it’d be a major public victory for him personally.

“Did you say something?” Paolo stood at the door to the study.

Had he? He wasn’t sure.

“The bunkhouse,” he said, then watched as Paolo walked briskly away. A man on a mission.

Larson moved before the double-wide’s motion-sensitive lights switched off because after that, if he approached the building, the sensors would bring the lights back on. Although the windows were blacked out, he couldn’t rule out a visual or audible alert connected to the lights on the inside.

He worked around the near side of the building past four plastic trash cans, some discarded truck tires, and pieces of plywood used for target practice. Wedged between the trash cans were the cardboard and Styrofoam from packaging that had contained a microwave oven.

The double-wide was a glorified shoebox with a flat roof that extended in short eaves on every side. Larson followed with his eyes a black wire that attached to a video splitter under the nearest eave. Next to the cable wire ran a power line extending from the same pole.

To crash through the door and attempt a rescue was not going to help anyone. Even if he reached Penny-doubtful-they’d never make it off the property. He had to get inside quietly, and sneak off the property with a five-year-old in tow. Possibly Markowitz’s grandson as well. Might as well throw in a tap-dancing elephant.

Where were Stubby and Hamp?

Larson found a stout branch to use as a club, preparing to carry out his developing plan. He then crept to the back of the structure and placed his ear to the glass, hearing only the low rumble of television and nothing more. No small voices. No kids crying.

The front floodlights clicked off. But because of his continuing movement, the back lights remained on. He wondered if this gave him away.

He leaned the wooden club against the trunk of the tree nearest the structure and climbed quickly. Several of the evergreen’s stout branches hung over the building’s sloped roof. Larson reached five branches up and then worked his way out along the thickest of these to where he could make the transfer from tree to roof. The back lights now went dark, leaving Larson literally out on a limb over the roof in the pitch black.

He could sense that the limb he stood on was taxed by his weight. It sagged too low, bent too far. Somewhere just below and to his left was the edge of the roof. One last step was all he needed. But if he jumped in the dark, it would make for a loud landing.

Slowly his eyes adjusted. First, geometric shapes. Then, the branch. The roof, directly below. The roof’s edge.

Larson slid his left foot out and stepped off. On the roof now, he moved like a ballerina toward the eave and lay on his stomach. He reached under the eave and fished around until he found where the cable was attached. He unscrewed the cable from the splitter but only partially removed it.

Inside, the television had either lost its picture or gone extremely fuzzy. That would be significant. Larson knew protection work. Live by the tube, die by the boob tube.

The darkness left nothing but shifting shapes and made the going difficult as he worked his way over the edge of the roof. He squatted, prepared to jump.

He could hear grumbling and bumps from inside. He waited.

When the front floodlights popped on, Larson let himself drop to the carpet of spongy pine needles.

A male voice complained loudly to the others inside. “Where’s the fucking cable again?”

Larson grabbed the club like a bat and stepped up to the plate.

DELMONICO’S DELIVERS

Hope read the name on the back of the panel truck, her patience draining. She stabbed the small keys on the BlackBerry, spelling out:

caterer? @ gate

and sent the message to Larson.

She’d not returned to the van as Lars had asked. The next time she saw Penny, she’d throw herself onto the road if necessary. She was too close now to go sit with the boys while they played with her life. She’d been through too many months of such treatment. That part of her life was over.

The panel truck was kept waiting while the gate guard, dressed head to toe in black, circled it. Finally arriving at the back, he rolled open the back door and shined a flashlight inside. Hope was prepared for a team of military operatives to storm out, take down the guard, and open the gate. Instead, the powerful flashlight beam found stacked plastic boxes, collapsible tables, flats with serving trays, and bags of ice. His inspection concluded, the guard pulled the rolling door back down. In his haste, he did not secure it, and as he rounded toward the gate, the back door bounced open, first a crack, then a foot or more.

Hope looked left and right. Nothing .

With Penny inside the compound and this truck her best chance at getting inside, she slipped out of the bushes, used the truck to screen her from the gatehouse, and sprinted across the road. She reached the truck’s partially open back door before the gate had fully opened.

The guard rounded the corner, looking up toward the eave, straining to follow the thin black TV cable.

Larson, both hands gripping the broken stick like a Louisville Slugger, stepped into the swing and put the man’s unsuspecting forehead into the nosebleeds. The guard fell on his back with a whomph of released air, clearly unconscious before he landed.

Larson considered tying him up, gagging him, but feared he had no time. If he could bag all three guards, then he’d return to this one. He rolled the man onto his side, so he wouldn’t drown in his own vomit, and left him.

With no choice but to risk it, he entered the glare and hurried up the wobbly front steps. He thumped an elbow onto the door and said in a gruff, intentionally muffled voice, “Hey, help me out here…”

As the door came open, he thrust the broken limb like a battering ram into the gut of the guard, connecting just below the V of the rib cage. He stepped inside, past the one staggering back, and clipped the skull of the next, who, at that moment, had been kneeling in front of the TV, his back to the door. The one behind him went for a gun.

Larson broke the man’s wrist with the stick and, as he cried out, dimmed his lights by breaking his jaw. The guard’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped. Out cold.