Deadfall (23 page)

“Stretch out,” he whispered to Dillon. “Shake out your arms and legs, stretch your muscles.”

Unsure, Dillon followed Hutch's lead, shaking each hand as though eliminating water from it, then doing the same with their legs. Inexplicably, Dillon smiled. A big grin that showed his Chiclet front teeth and just-cutting-the-gums incisors. It did more to revitalize Hutch than all the stretching and bending.

“What?” Hutch whispered.

Dillon shook his head.

“No, really—what?”

Dillon glanced toward the open door, then stepped closer to Hutch, who leaned down. Quietly Dillon sang, “You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in and you shake it all about.”

Hutch almost laughed out loud. He gave Dillon's shoulder a squeeze and nodded. “Kinda silly, huh?”

Dillon was too polite to respond.

Hutch said, “Ready to go?”

Dillon made his eyes big and nodded as if to say,
Boy, I thought
you'd never ask.

Hutch retrieved his bow from the cabinet. He gave Dillon a thumbs-up, and Dillon returned it. In certain occupations and sports that required silent communication, such as SWAT operations, scuba diving, and hunting, hand signals were always acknowledged. Hutch had found that people who didn't participate in these activities generally smiled or nodded in reply.

“Do you hunt?” he asked.

“A little.”

Hutch wasn't sure precisely how this information would help, but he thought it would. He might expect more of the boy in terms of stealth or spotting than he otherwise would have, which in turn would affect the decisions he made as they escaped—and, if it came to it, ran for their lives.

Working with someone whose strengths and weaknesses were unknown to you was always a disadvantage. He'd spoken to cops with new partners. They said that when facing a life-or-death situation, they would bear the brunt of the responsibility of their own safety, their partner's safety, and the outcome of the operation. By doing so, they might even compromise all of those objectives, since no one could do everything. Whereas if they could count on skills they knew their partner possessed, they could focus on their own strengths, and synergistically the two together performed immeasurably better than the two apart.

Dillon was only a child, and regardless of how well he knew the boy, Hutch would take responsibility for his safety and do everything he could to carry their collective weight. But imagine if he discovered that Dillon was a tae kwon do master or a marksman or could walk through walls.That might change things a bit. As it was, he had been concerned about Dillon's ability to move quietly. If his mother or father had taken him hunting, even once, Dillon would have learned the value of silence and patience and choosing a route that accommodated stealth over speed. Unfounded or not, it made him feel better about sneaking out of this place without waking the sleeping ogres.

“One more thing,” Hutch whispered. Lowering himself to sit on the floor, he gestured for Dillon to do the same. Hutch unlaced his right boot and tugged it off; his sock followed. He gestured toward the child's feet, and Dillon yanked off his sneaker then his sock. Hutch replaced his boot over his bare skin and then began stretching his sock over his boot.

Dillon pushed his foot into his sneaker and began sheathing it with his sock. His face expressed his confusion.

Hutch bent toward him. “Inside,” he whispered, “it will dampen our footsteps, and we don't have to carry our shoes. Outside, it will help mask our footprints, and we won't have to worry about stepping on something sharp.”

Dillon smiled in understanding.

What he didn't tell Dillon was that if they had to make a break for it while still in the building, their socks were probably the worst possible things to have on their feet. They would slip and slide and run in place like characters in nightmares he'd had as a kid: running and running without moving as some hideous beast with a mouth exactly the size of Hutch approached. But they were going to get out quietly with no special need for traction.

Dillon finished first and stood. He slid his feet over the tiles and pretty much figured out what Hutch had not told him. Hutch tucked his pant legs into his socks, which would not win him any fashion awards but would keep his feet warm and prevent his cuffs from snagging on low-lying obstacles. He stood, slinging his bow over his shoulder. He reconsidered and pulled it off again. Holding it in his left hand, he nocked an arrow and, as he had done in the tree, held the shaft in place with one finger. He moved to the open door and peered into the corridor.

They would turn right out of the break room to head toward the front of the building. They would pass the office, off of which was the storage room where Dillon and Laura had been held. He didn't know the layout beyond that except that logically there would be more offices on the right and the corridor would open up to the vestibule on the left. At the terminus of the corridor, in that direction, was a restroom.The door was partially open, and though the light was out, he could see a white porcelain sink. He reversed his gaze to see the fire door at the other end of the hall, still buckled and jammed into the walls.

He turned to signal Dillon. The boy was closer than he realized, and his elbow struck Dillon in the head. Dillon lost his balance and fell against the break room door. The door handle banged loudly against the cabinets. Hutch grabbed Dillon, stabilized him, and lifted him off the door. They listened.

From the next room, the office with the storage room, came the groan of somebody waking up. The screech of a chair on tile told Hutch someone was coming.

Dillon blocked his way back into the break room. There was no time to quietly maneuver out of sight. Hutch already had one foot in the corridor. He swung out his other foot and stood facing the break room portal. He stretched his left hand, gripping the bow, toward the office door. With three fingers of his right hand, he hooked the bowstring. In two seconds he could pluck the string and send the arrow flying. His lips pantomimed a
shhh
sound to Dillon.

A man stepped into the hall.

30

It was the hefty one,
Pruitt. Cecil B. DeMille.

He had not glanced in Hutch's direction but came shuffling out of the office and headed directly for the bathroom. His slight weavingand- plodding gait indicated he was still mostly asleep. Hutch held a bead on a spot just below the man's left scapula. Precisely where his heart was. He wouldn't scream the way Bad had. He would be dead before he hit the floor. In fact, the most noise this kill would make would probably be the
tink
of the metal broadhead—protruding from his chest—striking the floor as he fell facedown.

No! Leave without bloodshed.

His molars crunched against each other. He wasn't a killer. Still, the images of David exploding, of the severed foot in the street, of Dillon sad and afraid—each was a dry log thrown onto the fire of his fury.

This kill would make one down,
he thought, reprising the conversation he'd had with himself while hiding in the tree. One less adversary to worry about. But why stop there? There were five more within these walls. Only three deserved his arrow; he did not think he could or would even need to shoot Julian or the girl. But Declan, Kyrill, and Bad—he could do that.

Could I? What am I thinking?

End it here. Shoot them as they sleep. One after the other. David would be avenged. The townsfolk held hostage in the other room would be free.

Hutch's arm began to shake at the proposition of killing a man. No, that wasn't it. He could kill . . . just not this way. Not by shooting his enemy in the back or slaughtering them in their sleep.

Pruitt reached the bathroom and stepped in. The
clink
of a toilet seat rising to strike the tank. Then a waterfall.

Hutch realized he had pulled back on the bowstring a couple inches. Slowly, he relaxed the tension. He closed his eyes. He had been so close to doing it, he felt almost as though he had. It was like
not quite
touching your skin, but feeling the heat, the static electricity, the pressure on the air between fingers and flesh.
That close.

He stepped into the break room.

Immediately he wondered if he'd made the right decision. Something primal deep down warred with his humanity. After all, these punks were killers. Their deaths would save lives—his own, Dillon's, Laura's,Terry's, Phil's. How could they leave anyone alive? The entire town had witnessed their crimes.

Wait, wait, wait.What about only Declan?

The head of the snake. Cut it off, and the rest is harmless. He could do that. He could kill Declan, here and now. He fantasized about it: finding the man sleeping, standing over him, arrow drawn.

He'd clear his throat, and when Declan's eyes sprang open, when he recognized Hutch and realized he had been beaten, Hutch would let the arrow fly into his chest. It would penetrate through and through to bury its tip in the floor. No one would blame him. He would never see the inside of a courtroom, not after the media and the district attorney discovered that Hutch had not killed a man, but a beast.

Dillon touched his arm, and he jumped.The boy's face showed an eagerness for reassurance. Hutch smiled and realized he could not go after Declan or anyone else in Dillon's presence. If something went wrong, if Declan got the upper hand, if the others came to his rescue or to avenge him, Hutch would not be able to hold them off. He would be responsible for Dillon's death.That was unacceptable.

The man stopped peeing and padded down the corridor toward them. Hutch expected him to return to the office. But in case he did not, he stepped back and held his fingers to the bowstring once more. He stood like that, pointing the arrow at the open doorway until he heard the sound of the chair scraping the floor . . . followed by silence.

Again he relaxed. And waited. He and Dillon stared at each other, the boy anxious, afraid, but quiet.

After a few minutes Hutch moved into the hall, Dillon right behind him. His first few steps were slow, methodical examinations of the tiles' stability, of the quietness of his own tread, of the way the corridor's illumination cast his shadow. He walked in the center of the corridor to avoid bumping a wall. After each step he stopped, listened. Dillon's following footstep would softly sound . . . then silence. On the other side of the wall to his left, where two-hundred-some-odd townsfolk slumbered in captivity, someone coughed. It was a muffled, quiet sound that their captors had probably grown accustomed to. As Hutch approached the first door on his right, he heard the rhythmic breathing of sleepers. He looked in.

By the light from the corridor and an illuminated banker's lamp on a desk, he saw two cots. Julian was sleeping on his back. A folded hand towel that had evidently covered his injury was now crumpled by his ear. His forehead was swollen and the color of a Saskatchewan sunset. A crusty ridge ran its length. Someone had put six or eight stitches into it. Beside Julian, on top of a blanket, was Hutch's arrow, the one the boy had retrieved from the field. His hand rested over the shaft. It seemed to have become a keepsake, a lucky charm. The broadhead pointed toward the foot of the cot, about even with Julian's knee. Still, it could slice him a good one if he rolled onto it or moved it in his sleep. Hutch hoped that wouldn't happen.

Bad lay in the second cot.To observers he would appear to be just a guy catching some Z's, until they noticed the hand-sized circle of red over his leg and a matching splatter glistening on the floor directly beneath. Pruitt sat in a chair, his arms and head on the desk. The steady rise and fall of his back said he'd returned to the dreams his bladder had interrupted.

Hutch turned away, took a step, and stopped. He gazed back into the room, to the objects on the desk.

You've got to be kidding,
he thought.

On the desk were scattered papers, soda cans, food wrappers, and a laptop computer tethered by cable to Pruitt's camera. What interested Hutch was something else. There, by Pruitt's hand, was a key ring connecting two objects: a key and a fat metal
H
. Hummer. Hutch stood there. He could think of no reason to pass up this chance. He considered the logistics of reaching that key and realized his knowledge of Dillon's hunting experience was already bearing fruit. Dillon would be able to maneuver between the closely spaced cots better than he could, if he could at all. Also, Hutch could provide cover, whereas Dillon could not.

He signaled for the boy to back up several paces, then he leaned to his ear and told him the plan.Without hesitation, Dillon nodded. Hutch moved into the doorway, yielding just enough space for Dillon to slip in.The men and boy slept heavily, deep breaths in and stuttering exhalations. They did not appear ready to end their slumber, unless something startled them. The air was stale with body odor and bad breath.

Hutch aimed the arrow at Bad. Of the three, Hutch considered him most dangerous, despite his injury.

Dillon positioned himself at the foot of the cots and sidestepped his way between them, faster than Hutch would have thought possible. He reached the desk and reached for the key. Before he grabbed it, he looked back to confirm this is what the man wanted.

Hutch nodded. And thought of something: If Dillon picked up the key by its ring, when he lifted it off the desk, the key and the metal Hummer logo would slide down and clink against each other. That close to Pruitt, it would sound like a rattling chain or, more accurately, an alarm clock. He wanted to warn Dillon but could say nothing.

Dillon plucked up the key chain. He grabbed it by the Hummer logo so the key flipped down to bounce silently against his thumb. He grinned at Hutch, but all Hutch could think about was the fist that was pounding on the inside of his chest. It was at this moment that Pruitt would seize the boy's hair in his left hand while revealing a pistol in his right. He would say, “Aha!”