Blood and Ashes (14 page)

I scanned the layout of the buildings, the high mountains surrounding them, the only vehicle access in and out of the compound. Next time they came the bad guys would have to do it on foot, whether they liked it or not. There was a ridge up on the hill to the west. If my friend Rink was positioned up there with a rifle, then he could stop a full military convoy from making its way into the camp. The attackers would be forced to decamp from their vehicles, and I would be waiting for them in the woods. I smiled grimly at the thought. But the smile was short-lived. Rink was back in Florida, oblivious of our plight. For how long, though? Would Rink recognise my failure to check in as a sign that I was in trouble? Of course he would, but not yet. Shit, despite everything that had happened so far, I’d barely been in Pennsylvania for twelve hours.

Rink wouldn’t be coming yet. Don would have to do. I just wasn’t certain that the old man had the skills to take out the leading vehicle.

Up ahead a figure moved through the drifting rain. Millie had hunched over and kept close to the buildings, having the sense not to walk out in the open as I did. Quickly I moved to intercept her.

‘Anything?’

Millie blinked rain from her lashes.

‘Nothing. You want me to keep checking?’

‘No.’ Taking Millie by her arm, I led her into the lee of one of the cabins. Maybe now wasn’t the time for this, but I was afraid I wouldn’t get another opportunity. Millie shivered against the cold, her clothing not much defence against the mountain winter. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘I want to speak to you where the kids can’t overhear us.’

She tilted her head away, and through the conduit of her arm I felt her shiver even more. ‘What about?’

I didn’t want to say as such, but I wasn’t going to lie to her. ‘There’s a possibility that none of us will make it out of here alive.’

‘I know,’ she said, and it was a struggle for her to hold the tears back.

I pulled her in close and held her. ‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that you and the little ones stay safe. Only there are no guarantees.’

Millie closed her eyes, then surprisingly she leaned against my chest. ‘I know you’ll try your best.’

I held my breath. I thought about Brook and how maybe if I had come sooner then this could have been stopped before it escalated into this nightmare scenario. Deep inside though, I knew that wasn’t the case. This had always been out of my hands. All that was left to me now was to try to end it without any further innocents perishing. It seemed like Millie had just realised that too. ‘I’m sorry about the way I’ve treated you, Joe. You were never to blame for what happened to Brook. I see that now . . .’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said. ‘I didn’t take it personally.’

She raised her head, and her eyes twinkled up at me. She was smiling, the first time I’d seen her do so, and she looked so damn pretty like that. I bent and planted a kiss on her forehead. Chaste, like she was my little sister.

‘What was that for?’ she asked.

‘Just felt like the right thing to do,’ I said, ‘now that we’re friends again.’

Her smile never slipped, but her eyes began to soften. The difference this time was that her tears were born of something other than grief or anger. There was hope, so at least I’d achieved what I had set out to do. Before her mind could be changed again, I patted her on the shoulder and set her on her way. She only made it a few steps.

‘Wait, Millie!’

She turned to look back at me.

‘Here,’ I said, shrugging out of the coat loaned from Don. ‘I don’t want you freezing to death.’

She accepted the coat and slipped into its warmth. The sleeves trailed and the hem came to her knees. She looked like a little girl playing dress-up, except her next question was anything but childlike: ‘Do you really think any of us will live long enough to worry about the cold?’

‘Maybe not,’ I admitted. I smiled at the irony and she returned the gesture. Then she headed off to the far end of the camp.

I looked towards the front gate. My glass got broken a long time ago. Under my breath, I muttered, ‘There are no guarantees . . . but I’ll be damned if I’m going to make it easy for the bastards.’

Chapter 18

Gant was pulled bleeding from the wreckage of the SUV. He was hurt, but alive. His breathing was steady enough, and there was nothing to indicate that beyond the cuts and bruises there was anything life-threatening. He just wasn’t ready to wake up yet.

The three able-bodied men carried him away from the smouldering crash scene and lay him across the back seat of one of the undamaged cars. One of them, a small, wiry man who moved with the jerkiness of a bird or someone high on amphetamine, left Gant in the care of his friends and went to check on Vince. He could see the young hillbilly standing alongside the Ford, his hands scrubbing at his hair. Messing with his goddamn pompadour, the man thought, like it mattered a fuck what he looked like.

‘What’re you doin’ fuckin’ about over here, Vinnie?’

Vince turned to him, a dazed expression on his face, still sculpting his hair. No, that wasn’t it, the bird-like man saw; Vinnie was picking bits of broken glass and splinters of wood out of his scalp. He’d also been looking down on the still form of his girlfriend who was twisted in a way that wasn’t normal.

‘Is she dead, Vinnie?’

Vince blinked again at the jumble of clothing and oddly angled limbs. ‘I sure as hell hope so, Darley. Would you want to live, lookin’ all screwed up like that?’

Vince bent down and extended a finger to touch Sonya’s face. It felt like putty, the rain wiping any trace of warmth from her skin. Absurdly, Vince hooked her chain with his finger, tried unsuccessfully to insert it back into the ruin of her nose. The silver links immediately slid away and pooled alongside her ear, along with a slow trickle of blood.

Vince gave a dull groan as he stood up. But that was as far as his show of grief could go. Maybe he should have been more vocal; Sonya had meant an awful lot to him – as far as any one ever could to someone with Vince Everett’s twisted sense of attachment to other human beings. But the single moan was all he had. This was, after all, the response expected of a man who’d blasted his grandfather’s head off when the old man caught him with his hands in the cash register. Vince hadn’t missed the old fart after he was gone, and certainly hadn’t cried for him as Gramps had been lowered into the ground.

‘You OK, Vinnie?’

‘But for one thing,’ Vince said. ‘Wish I’d pulled over on the road like she wanted.’

Darley didn’t get it. He searched for wounds on the young man’s frame. Apart from some scratches on his face Vince looked unhurt. The scratches weren’t even bleeding, and Darley wondered when Vince had picked them up. The bird-like head jerked, staring back at the Ford. The front right fender was bashed in, but that was about all. He looked back at the torn body of the woman like things just didn’t correlate.

Vince said, ‘She was hanging out the window trying to shoot Griffiths when we hit. Goddamn fool’s trick, but there was no tellin’ her.’

‘Ain’t women all the same?’ Darley said.

‘Nah,’ Vince said. ‘Not many like Sonya. She was a free spirit, that one. I’ll miss her.’

There was no emotion in his voice, like he was just going through the motions, saying what was expected, so it surprised Darley when the young man bent down and rearranged the woman’s limbs. It took him a moment to realise that Vince wasn’t ceremoniously laying her out; he was searching for something beneath her corpse. Vince finally stood up, clutching the Glock that had been wedged under her hip. The gun was smeared with dirt and also some of the woman’s blood. Vince wiped it clean on her tartan miniskirt.

Even Darley, who didn’t care for anyone who wasn’t in their immediate clique – and he counted both Vince and Sonya outside of that description – frowned at Vince’s coldness.

‘Might need this piece before we’re finished,’ Vince told him. ‘In fact, this was Sonya’s gun. I intend using it when I put a hole in Don Griffiths’ skull.’

‘You think we’re still going through with it? I mean, it’s been a goddamn shambles up till now. Gant’s hurt an’—’

‘Gant’s a goddamn fool. He shoulda handled this differently than the fuckin’ ridiculous way he has.’

Darley’s head jerked, almost like he expected their unconscious boss-man to hear them from all the way across here. ‘Vinnie, man, you shouldn’t be talkin’ like that. If he hears you . . .’

‘I don’t give a motherfucking hoot what that Nazi hears.’

‘He’s the one that’s paying you,’ Darley reminded him.

Vince looked down on Sonya. ‘This ain’t about the money no more. It’s about the freakin’ waste of a good gal. That won’t sit too well with
Adolf
over there, but that’s the way it’s gonna be.’

‘Gant’s the boss, man. You know he’s the voice of Carswell Hicks out here.’

Vince brought up the Glock sharply, but it was a command for silence, not a threat. ‘Don’t give me any of that fuckin’
Hicks is God
bullshit, Darley. Gant’s a goddamn maniac an’ you know it. Only reason he’s in charge is that none of you pricks had the good sense to grab the reins when you had the opportunity.’

‘What you sayin’, Vinnie?’

‘I’m sayin’ there’s gonna be a few changes round here, Darley. You with me or against me?’

The relative closeness of the Glock to Darley’s groin had a lot to do with his reply. ‘Right now Gant’s not in the best frame of mind for decision-making.’

‘The way I see it,’ Vince added, ‘Gant’s had his shot at handling things, and now it’s time someone with a little sense put things right. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘You don’t sound convinced. Hicks has promised a big pay day for us all, an’ I sure as hell ain’t letting Gant fuck that up for me.’

‘You know the money doesn’t mean anything to Gant or the rest of us.’ Darley squinted at Sonya. ‘And you said it wasn’t about the money for you.’

‘I’m gonna kill the ones who did this to her, but I don’t mind gettin’ paid good cash for my time. What about you, Darley? Do you want to go home scratching your ass, or holding a thick wad of Ben Franklins? Won’t Hicks’ mission be all the sweeter if you’re a rich man at the end of it?’

Darley, like the other neo-Nazis he’d gathered to his side, was a staunch supporter of Carswell Hicks’ hate doctrine. By that very token he was a loyal follower of his right-hand man, Gant, but it seemed wealth was a greater motivator to him than any creed. ‘What about the others?’

Vince looked over at Tom Sweeney and Mike Dillman, the two bootboys fussing over their leader. He was certain that he could sway them to his way of thinking. Rick Wilkes and Duane Holland, the two assholes sent back with the black van to see to the disposal of the bodies at the Reynolds house, would join them soon, but once the balance of power had shifted to Vince, they wouldn’t be in a position to argue. Rooster and Cabe wouldn’t be a problem. He’d guessed that their no-show meant one of two things: they’d gotten themselves in trouble with the law like he’d first thought, or in some other trouble that they’d been unable to handle. They’d been tasked with advance recon on Griffiths’ house. Maybe they’d made it there after all but they hadn’t recognised the stranger’s killer eyes when they looked into them. Whatever the reason for their absence, Vince didn’t think that Rooster or Cabe would be joining them soon.

Vince hiked his jeans over his lean hips, tucking Sonya’s Glock in his waistband alongside his own. He checked his pockets, feeling the makeshift garrotte, but not what he was looking for. If he was going to be the leader, he supposed he’d better look the part. ‘Hey, Darley, do you have a comb I can use?’

Darley just stared at him, the rain pattering off his bald pate.

‘Nah, didn’t think so.’ Vince grinned. Then his face smoothed out. ‘But there’s one thing I will ask from you if you’re gonna be my second. Don’t call me Vinnie again, or I’m gonna have to kill you.’

‘Uh, yeah, sure thing, Vince.’

Vince winked at him. ‘I’m just foolin’ with you, Darley. Don’t you skinheads have a sense of humour?’

Darley grunted out a laugh, but it was as empty as Vince’s words. Vince smiled coldly, because he sure as hell hadn’t been joking.

Vince headed for Gant’s impromptu ambulance. There, waiting for him, was another skinhead who wouldn’t be laughing any time soon.

Chapter 19

After stationing Millie to guard Beth and Ryan, I instructed Don to make his way to the ridge I’d picked out on the western slope. Up there, as the day waned to late afternoon, the meagre light that the rainclouds allowed through would cast the man into deep shadow, making it unlikely he would be spotted by anyone approaching. I made my way to the front of the camp, intending to set up beyond Don’s position in the woods. First, though, I detoured to the cabin.

Entering, I was assailed by the stench of must and cobwebs clung to my face and shoulders. The rest of the cabin was as decrepit as the entrance. Worn desks and chairs had been abandoned to the elements when the logging company went bust and pulled out fast. Sheaves of papers lay scattered on the floor and on every available surface. Immediately I saw a phone attached to the far wall. Moist, muddy tracks led directly to the phone and I could tell by their size and shape that they were the footprints of a woman: Millie’s, as she’d inspected the telephone. I followed them and bent to study the phone. It was an old black plastic type with a dial, now defunct in this press-button age. The power cord had been snatched from the guts of the phone, possibly the action of a disgruntled worker intent on vandalism on his way to the Welfare line.