Deadfall (49 page)

“Drop the gun, Declan,” Julian said, his voice as tight and shaky as a tightrope.

“I told you not to touch that,” Declan said. His voice was more shrill than Hutch had ever heard it. “Julian, bring it to me.”

“Just drop it!”

A heartbeat passed.Two.

Declan said, “No.”

“You . . . you . . .” Julian was sobbing, hitching in deep breaths to fuel his ragged emotions.Tears streamed from both eyes. He sniffed. “You . . . did all this! You killed people.”

“With your help.”

“I'm your little brother.You were supposed to watch out for me.

Instead you made me . . . you made me part of your . . . your . . .” He shook his head.

“I didn't do anything Dad didn't want me to do.You don't get to where he is by toeing the line, by making nice. He wanted me to show that to you, to make you tough.You got a problem, take it up with him.”

“It's you, Declan!” Then sadly: “Just you.”

A new wrinkle emerged from the Jeep: Cortland came out of the driver's door, on the opposite side from Declan.

Hutch expected a fervid appeal to Julian, supported by a pistol too large for the girl's hands. Instead her demeanor was timid, her eyes like those beholding a wild lion's fangs as its rancid breath blew across her face. No gun. In fact, she was holding her hands up, chest-high, palms out, as if to show Julian and Declan, and anyone else who might perceive her as a threat, that a threat was the last thing she was. She backed slowly between the two vehicles and continued into the meadow.

Declan took advantage of this distraction to shift the Big Sauer's aim. It moved in a slow arc toward the boy.

Hutch yelled, “No!”

Julian's eyes widened. He glanced down at the device, which sounded a fast, three-tone chime.

The pistol stopped its movement toward Julian. Some emotion flashed on Declan's face—fear or surprise, something Hutch believed was more sincere than had touched it in a long time. His head dropped back and he gazed at the sky.

The laser came down in a flicker of green light. The air rippled around it, radiating heat. The spot where Declan stood erupted. Dirt and burning grass geysered straight up. The Jeep rocked away from the impact. Its side glass and windshield shattered.

Laura screamed. Julian flew back against the front of the cabin and fell to his side.

Hutch turned his eyes on the lump that was a soot-covered Phil. He called to his friend. The lump compressed tighter into itself. He called again, and Phil's head came up.

“Cover the guns,” Hutch said. “Over here.”

Phil nodded.

Hutch rose, started for Laura and Dillon's position. They were lying facedown in the grass a dozen feet from where Laura had been sitting, holding her arm. He ran to them. As he rolled Dillon over, the boy moaned. Blood coated his right ear. His eyes fluttered open.

“Dillon?” Hutch said.

“Mom? Where's Mom?”

Hutch turned to Laura. Gently, he rolled her over. As her son had, she moaned and opened her eyes. She sat up. She folded her wounded arm at the elbow and tucked it close to her body.The other arm found Dillon and pulled him close. She squeezed him tightly. Her eyes scanned the area, then turned up to Hutch. “Declan?”

The crater was at least five feet wide and a foot deep. Smoke wafted up from it. Bits of burning grass fanned out from the strike zone. Something near Hutch burned with more intensity. He recognized it as one of the woven bracelets Declan had worn. Here and there, looking like chunks of ash, were the black stones he had strung around his neck.

The Jeep's front passenger door and back half of the front quarter panel were crumpled in the shape of a semicircle, as though the finger had not only poked Declan out of existence but had ground him out for good measure, catching the Jeep in the process. Declan's gun lay on the ground outside the crater. His hand still clenched it. It had been severed at the wrist.

“He's gone,” Hutch said.

Laura closed her eyes and nodded.Took a deep breath. “He told me,” she said, laughing a little, “that curiosity killed the cat. He must not have known the whole saying: Satisfaction brought it back.” Her eyes found Hutch's and she said, “I'm back. At least for my boy. I'm back.”

69

Dillon could not get enough
of his mother. He squeezed her and buried his face in her neck. He cried. He let loose all the fear and grief and exhaustion that he had so admirably held in since Hutch had first picked him up behind the rec center.

Laura was the mom he needed. She embraced him as would any mother whose dead child miraculously found breath again. She stroked the back of his head and consoled him with promises that everything would be all right. Then her own tears choked her voice, and the two wept together.

Hutch could only imagine the depth of their emotions, the swirling chaos of their grief clashing with the elation of finding each other alive. More quickly than the grief, the elation would fade, or at least distill into something else: most likely, love and appreciation for one another. Dillon seemed like an emotionally stable child, undoubtedly loved. What they had gone through—losing a father and husband, coupled with the very real fear that the other had been lost as well—would strengthen their bond and make them not only mother and son, but best friends for life.

Hutch hoped so, anyway. It would be some kind of redemption for their suffering. Dillon would find a wife someday, have children of his own. He would know how easily they could be taken away, and he would love them deeply and protect them well.

Laura held her wounded left arm out from her body. The sleeve over her bicep was torn and soaked crimson, but little new blood bubbled out; the bullet had not pieced an artery or broken the bone.

He looked around. Phil was a huge lump of coal, sitting on the weapons near the porch. Something about his posture—slumped shoulders, an arm angling back as a prop, legs splayed in front of him—made Hutch very glad to have him there. His presence, his life, was enough.

He walked to where Declan's hand and gun lay in the dirt. He pressed his booted toe onto the wrist, bent, and worked the gun free. Son of a billionaire. More opportunities than most people could dream of in a lifetime, and this is what Declan had chosen to do with them. Boredom, abuse, too many freedoms, and not enough reprisals.Who knew the reason? Hutch was too weary to give it much thought. He kicked the hand into the crater, pushed the gun into his belt, and walked on.

He waded into the sea of ashes. It didn't seem dirty to him. They had immersed themselves in it, and it had saved their lives.

Already a light breeze had softened the evidence of their having been there.The depressions and mounds where Phil and Dillon had lay and he had stood, the miniature peaks and valleys of their footprints, were returning to the uniformity of the ashen surface.Vapors of soot wisped off the few remaining ridges. It lingered over the area like smoke, as though their presence had stirred the memory of heat and flame from the ground. He found the bow, nearly submerged, and lifted it. He shook it gently. Layers of ash fell away, but the blackness he had spread onto the moist, freshly cut wood remained. It was crudely chiseled and stained not only with soot, but with human blood.To Hutch, however, it represented resourcefulness, determination, life. He slipped it onto his shoulder.

He walked to Phil and knelt next to him. He clamped a hand onto his shoulder. “You all right?”

“Fantastic with a capital
V
.” He eyed Hutch, seeming for the first time to see how thoroughly the soot had covered them. He looked at his own hands and said, “If cleanliness is next to godliness, I think we're in hell.”

Hutch smiled. “More like we just came out of it. Can you get these guns into the car, the Bronco?”

He nodded. “Should I hold one on the kid you arrowed?”

Kyrill sat slumped against the cabin, his hand still clutching the shaft coming out of his shoulder. His skin was the grayish-white of a trout's underbelly.

Hutch said, “He's not going anywhere till we move him.” He patted Phil's shoulder and stood. When he stepped onto the porch, he saw a lot of blood had soaked Kyrill's army jacket. The lack of spray and the teen's continued consciousness convinced Hutch he was not in danger of bleeding to death. He knelt between Kyrill and Bad. He felt around Kyrill's waist, under his arms, and around his ankles.

The teen looked up, groggy with pain.

Hutch asked, “Any more weapons?”

Kyrill half smiled. Hutch thought he was going to say something smart, like
I wish,
or
You mean like the one in my shoulder?
But he only shook his head.

“We'll get you to a doctor.You'll be all right.”

He checked Bad for a pulse. Found none. He patted him down, found only a knife.

Stepping off the porch, he tossed the blade into the ashes. He approached Julian.The boy was sitting on the edge of the porch, head hung, weeping quietly. The satellite remote was in his lap. Hesitantly, Hutch picked it up. The monitor showed static.

“It's offline,” Julian informed him. He sniffed.

“Can we turn it off?” Hutch asked. Then said, “Never mind.” He dropped it on the ground and stomped it with his heel. It was evidence, but he didn't want it to cause any more heartache. Not on his watch. When the monitor was shattered, controls broken off, and the housing bent in a shallow
V
, he picked it up again.

Julian peered up at him with red, red eyes. “I killed him,” he said.

Hutch knelt, aligning his eyes with the boy's.

“You did the right thing, Julian.You did what you had to do.”

“He's . . .” He swallowed hard. A fat tear streaked down his face. “He was my brother.”

Hutch squeezed Julian's knee. “He would have killed
you
. Now or over time, he would have.You know that, don't you?”

Julian nodded. After a few moments, he said, “What's gonna happen?”

Hutch thought about it. He had witnessed goodness in Julian: not alerting his pursuers in the forest, cutting him loose on the plateau, stopping Declan here. Discernment told him Julian's wrong decisions had been more about being young than being bad. He hoped the boy would have a chance to prove it.

He said, “What happened here was self-defense, Julian. Clearly. I don't know what else you've done, but considering your age and your brother's influence over you, I think you'll make out okay.Your father might be another story. Sounds like he had a lot to do with this.”

Julian shook his head. “Plausible deniability.” It sounded like a term he had heard often. Dinnertime chatter. “He's got so many companies and people between him and things like this.” He looked at the remote in Hutch's hand, then into the sky. “He'll never take the fall.”

“Listen,” Hutch said. “No matter what happens, what you did here saved my life, a lot of lives. Thank you.”

“I just wish . . . I wish . . .”

“I know.”

“Can you . . .” His voice broke. More tears. “Can you and Dillon and his mother and everyone else . . .” His shoulders slumped, his burden of guilt heavy. “Can you
forgive me
?”

Hutch managed a thin smile. “I can, son. I can't speak for the others, but I think they'll see that when you realized what was happening, you tried to make it right or stop it. The real question is, can you forgive yourself?”

Julian dropped his gaze, his head moving slowly back and forth.

“Give it time.When the authorities come, during the investigation, during the trial, be honest. Stick to the truth like it's a life preserver in a storm, and you'll be okay.You will.”

Hutch rose and walked around to the back of the Bronco. Phil had opened it and stashed the weapons on the cargo floor. Hutch added the satellite remote and Declan's handgun. He turned.

Phil was twenty paces into the meadow, squinting at the forest beyond. “What about the girl and the camera guy?” he said.

“They can't stay out there long,” Hutch said. “The cops will find them, they'll make it to town, or . . . or they won't.”

He remembered something and walked around the Jeep. Pruitt's camera lay in the dirt against the rear tire. It would have been in better shape had it fallen from an airplane. He picked it up, leaving a lens and bits of plastic on the ground. He went back to the Bronco and set it inside. A label on the camera's body indicated it recorded highdefinition images directly to an onboard hard drive. No doubt the cops had technicians who could recover whatever data remained in the camera. And Pruitt had probably already dumped earlier recordings onto one of the laptops Hutch had seen at the rec center.

A hand touched his arm.A black marble statue of a boy stood beside him.The whites of Dillon's eyes, his blue irises, stared up at him.Tears had washed away the soot in wide paths from lids to jawline.

Laura stood behind him. She released the grip she had on her wound to push her hair back from her face. Her cheek was smudged with soot where she'd rubbed it against her son. Her hand, her arms, her entire body trembled. She gave Hutch a soft smile. “I can't stop shaking,” she said. “Thank you for taking care of my son.”

He looked down at the boy. “I think we took care of each other. Right, Dillon?”

Dillon stepped in to hug him. Hutch leaned into it and hugged him back. When their embrace ended, Dillon said, “What are you gonna do now?”

Hutch squared his shoulders. “I'm heading home, Dillon. I've got some kids there who need their father.”

“But your wife . . . ?”

“Who is she, next to what we just went through?” He grinned, and to his surprise, he realized that a genuine feeling of hope infused it.
Really,
he thought,
what kind of chance does she have of keeping me from my kids when Declan could not destroy me?