J. Black - The Shop

For a moment there was silence. Jolie could smell the fear in the room and the undercurrent of desperation.

Then Riley said, “It figures that you would be okay!”

Jolie walked over to Riley and said, “Be quiet.”

“You can’t—”

“Riley, you might have a problem with me, but now is not the time. There are people out there who are trying to kill us. You need to listen to me like your life depends on it, and do exactly as I say. I am not kidding you about this. Do we understand each other?”

Riley stared at her, open-mouthed.

“Good.” Jolie leaned down and sawed through the tape binding Riley’s hands with her knife.

Jolie went around the room, cutting her family’s bonds. Her family. She wished she could come up with another description of the people in that room. Other than Kay and Zoe, these people were nothing to her. But face it: they were linked to her by blood—she had to help them. When she came to Franklin, she said, “How did he get you to give that statement to the press?”

“He said he’d kill Riley.”

“Do you know what his plans are?”

“He wants to lure someone here.”

“Who?”

“Mike Cardamone.”

“Did you know about the teams?”

“Teams?”

Jolie stepped into his space, and he stepped back. “Frank, this is not the time to play games. Do you know about the teams?”

“Yes! Yes…but I didn’t run them. That was Mike’s thing, not mine. I told him it was crazy.”

“How many teams?”

“Two. It was a small part of the business.”

“How many to a team?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What kind of guys are they?”

“When it comes to something like this,” he said, “they’re the very best.”

Jolie hustled them out of the room. She could hear a helicopter now, overhead, hovering. Not only that, but she heard automatic fire. That sobered up everyone in a hurry.

It took a while to get the old man to understand what she wanted. They had to pull along a portable oxygen tank. Jolie didn’t know what a stray bullet might do, but she couldn’t leave him behind.

He argued with her and quickly escalated to shouting. Jolie took hold of his shoulders and leveled her gaze at him. “Senator, please listen to me. You have to be quiet. I know you can do it. There are people coming to kill us, and you owe it to your family to take care of them. They are your responsibility. You all need to be quiet so they won’t hear us, and you need to lead the way. Can you do that?”

He nodded. Then he zipped a finger across his mouth, pretended to turn an invisible key, and threw it over his shoulder.

“Thank you, Senator.” She said to Franklin, “Where’s the entrance to the tunnel?”

“It’s through the pantry.”

“This floor has a pantry?”

He motioned to a doorway ahead in the gloom.

“How do we get in and out?”

“There’s no lock on the door. It’s just hidden.”

“What about on the other end?”

“They’re hidden, too. No locks. We didn’t install locks because someone could get trapped in the tunnel that way. Nobody’s supposed to know about the tunnels.”

“Luke Perdue did.”

He glared at his daughter. “Yes, Luke did.”

Jolie decided to park them in the tunnel between the pool shed and the boathouse. That way, should anyone come into the tunnel, they’d have at least one place to run, and possibly two.

She hoped the killers didn’t know about the tunnels. But if they had a schematic of the island, they would.

The old man was losing focus, although he remained quiet. He sat with his back against the wall of the tunnel, zoning out. She didn’t like his color. He seemed to be sucking at the air. The tunnel was stuffy and damp; it smelled of mold.

But she had done the best she could. She needed to know what was happening above-ground. The bursts of automatic gunfire meant that Cyril had already engaged the enemy. He might be dead already. She had no illusions about her own ability. She was a sharpshooter, but that was a long time ago. Her training was that of a cop, not of a soldier or an operative. She relied on the authority of the badge. That would be no use to her now.

She handed Kay the extra .45 she’d brought along.

“You’re not going to leave us, are you?”

“You know how to shoot, right?”

Jolie knew that was true; Kay used to hunt with her dad.

“Where are you going? Why can’t you stay here with us?”

“You should be all right here. I’ve done all I can.” She realized she sounded just like Cyril. Felt it important to add, “If you have to shoot, shoot to kill.”

The helo circled once, then flew away. Landry trained his rifle on the front hatch of the Carolina skiff, just in case someone was inside. The storm was getting worse. The water was pea-green, and swirling a mixture of tannin bark, foam, and trash washed in with the waves. Visibility was poor. The rain was a curtain, falling so hard on the dock it created a mist that rose into the gray sky like gauze.

His mind ticked over what he’d learned. First thing: a head count. There was the swimmer, the driver of the SUV, at least two men in the helo—the pilot, and whoever had shot at him. The helo would be for reconnaissance, surveillance, and communications relay. Command and control. If Cardamone had come with his men, he would be in the helo.

That was four people right there. Landry figured anywhere from two to four in the skiff. He’d take the higher number. If there were more than that, he probably wouldn’t get through this, but where was Cardamone going to get those kind of operatives at short notice? So he’d guess there were eight total.

With the swimmer dead, that left seven.

The driver of the SUV had parked the vehicle somewhere nearby and come back on foot. Landry was sure of that.

The swimmer had managed to cut the cables to the lights and phone before Landry’d got to him, but at least one generator was still going—he could hear it. The helo was a diversion to pin Landry in one place while the rest of the team landed—probably one or two of them were disabling the generators now.

They would know he had access to a cell phone, that the people in the house had them, too.

But Cardamone also knew by now that Landry didn’t plan on calling in the cavalry. He knew it was between the two of them.

With Franklin in the middle.

Because they would take into account the fact that there would be cell phones, they would go in fast, before the family knew they were in immediate danger.

Cardamone’s team would fan out to all the structures on the island. The first place they’d go to was the main house. Two operatives, because they expected to encounter at least three people: Franklin, Riley, and the senator, and possibly the hired help.

The only question was, did they leave a man to guard the skiff?

The answer was no. If they had, Landry would be dead by now. The helo drove him here, into the boathouse—the obvious place to hide. Whoever was waiting for him would have picked him off like pheasant with its wings clipped.

It was the gap in their plan. They should have anticipated he would run for the boathouse, should have left someone there to kill him.

He made his way to the main house. He knew the enemy would have a simple diagram of sectors to search, and he also knew they’d stay within close enough distance to one another to offer support.

The rain fell harder. It seemed as if there was nobody on this earth other than himself. There was no movement except for the spatter of raindrops on foliage. The main house was dark—the generator out.