Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (24 page)

“I am only going
to ask one more time, my dear,” said the alpha male, speaking slowly and raising his gun at her.

“—
so it would behoove you to make this transition
—”

“Where—”

“—
a little easier
—”

“—is—”

“—
so that it saves you unnecessary pain
.”

“—he?”

At that point, two things happened at once.  There came a gunshot from outside the lodge, and she heard the door of the girls’ bathroom opened.  “Kaley?” said a stern, mature voice.  “Kaley, are you in here?”  She heard Mrs. Cartwright’s heels clicking on the tile.  At the lodge, the others turned to run back down the stairs, and the alpha male snatched her up by her arm, yanking her out of the room.

Something slithered after her.  “…
so much easier on yourself
…
if you just let us in
…”

He’d held his breath for most of the climb, but almost at the top of the chimney Spencer could hold it no more.  He tried to take a breath, inhaled only rancid smoke, and then came scrambling out of the chimney, hacking and coughing and wheezing.

The chimney had been almost as hot as a furnace, and now that he
was out the Siberian cold nearly took his breath away.  Which was bad, because as he flopped onto the roof and slid halfway down it, he was still fighting against all the smoke in his lungs.  Chuckling, hacking, laughing, coughing, and guffawing to himself, he rolled onto his back and pulled the Glock out from his jacket.  He winced.  His lower right leg was burned where the fire had licked at him.  He hadn’t wanted to douse the fire; with it burning, there was little chance they would’ve suspected him going out that way.  It had burnt some of his clothes, however, and singed some of the hair on his head.  And with the radio blasting, hopefully they hadn’t heard him clawing up through the chimney.

Half walking and half slid
ing on the ice, Spencer moved awkwardly around the sloped roof, trying to get an idea of who was surrounding him.

When he came around to the front of the house, he considered hopping down and running for the shed.  But he was almost positive that his enemies would have left someone out here to watch for that, so he moved to the rear of the house, where the second SUV had been parked even closer to him.  Still resisting the urge to just hop down and flee, he moved around to the east side, and it was here that he found a nice top-down view of the two goons who had probably been the ones
laying down the suppression fire at the lodge, giving the others a chance to close in on him.

Fighting against the wind, Spencer sat his ass on the roof and just peered down at them, watching them
whisper back and forth behind a pair of decrepit sheds, never once thinking to look up at the roof.  He watched them a moment, and took aim.  He also entertained himself trying to imagine their conversation.  “What do you think?  Should we go inside and help the others?”  Spencer shrugged.  “I dunno, I’m just a dumbass with a pencil-thin dick that girls laugh at.”  He chuckled.  “You too?  I thought I was the only one.  Man, it’s good to know I’m not alone in the world.”  He laughed, and coughed, and laughed some more.

When the bigger one stopped moving for a moment and just stared towards the house, Spencer took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and squeezed the trigger.  The bang sounded like thunder, but was almost lost on the wind.  The big man’s head snapped back, and he was clutching at his throat, which was jetting blood.  The other man ducked
behind the shed for cover, too cowardly to attend to his dying colleague.

Spencer
fired two more shots at the slimmer man, then turned and ran to the other side of the roof.  Halfway there, he heard crackling underneath his feet.  He had a moment to think
Oh shit
before the great sheet of ice covering the whole roof gave way beneath his weight, and took him for a ride.  His feet went out from under him and he shot down the slope.  Unable to stop, and picking up speed, he shot off the back side of the roof, landed in the snow with a hard “
Hoof!
” and was stunned for just a moment.

Still coughing, still wincing from his burns, Spencer pushed himself up onto his hands and knees.  He was just staggering to his feet when a pair of men came barreling out of the back door, their Uzis raised.  “Drop it!  Drop it now!”
the smaller one shouted in forced English.  “Drop it now, you mudderfacker!”

“Fuck me,” he said, half coughing and half chuckling.  “Fuck me right in the ass.”

“Drop the facking gun!”

“
Privet
, you assholes. 
Privet
.”

“Drop it!”

All at once, he was surrounded.  The Russians came racing out of the house, three of them were on him at once, Uzis and Makarovs pointed right at him.  Spencer knelt before them, Glock still in hand, pointed at the ground.

“Drop the facking gun!” another of them shouted.

A few seconds later, the Russian that Spencer had missed by the shed came running around the lodge, his own Uzi trained on the kneeling man. He shouted something to the others in Russian, and Spencer believed he caught the gist of it.  The newcomer was informing them that he’d killed someone named Julian or Yulian, and then there was something about ripping his throat out through his asshole.

“Ya gonna do that yoursel
f,
comrade
?” he said, saying the last word in heavily-accented Russian. 

“Fuck you!”

“Oh, such a great rejoinder.”  He chuckled.  “
Rejoinder
.  That’s a sharp or witty reply.”

Spencer
kept his eyes on the man, challenging him, and before the others could stop him, the newcomer ran at Spencer and bashed him across the side of the head with his Uzi.  The world went sideways, and the snow-covered earth rose up to meet him, but Spencer managed to put a hand out and push himself back up.  He still hadn’t dropped his Glock, and they weren’t ignorant of that fact.  The newcomer was about to lay into him again, but someone cried out, “
Net!
”

Spencer shook his head, felt the world tilt to one side, and slowly, very slowly, pushed himself back up onto his knees and sat on his feet.  He saw the stocky Russian that
emerged from the back door and onto the porch, almost swaggering.  In one hand was a Makarov, in the other hand was a wad of black cornrows, attached to which was Kaley Dupré.  The girl was trembling, and looking at Spencer with eyes wide and watering.  In so many ways, she was out of place: her skin so dark, being the only female, being so young amidst so many of her elders, and obviously way, way underclothed for this weather. 
She’s as alien to this world as E.T.
, he thought, chuckling to himself.

The stocky man paused at the foot of the steps, and then shoved Kaley to the ground, a few feet away from Spencer.  She looked at him, eyes pleading. 
Silly little bitch
. 
What does she expect me to do?
  Still, there might be something here, a way out even he hadn’t considered until moments ago.  That’s why he couldn’t let go of the Glock.  It wasn’t a surefire plan, but he had a working theory about it.

“…
she’s very close to him now
…”

A whisper on the wind, fluttering through the trees, carried on each snowflake.  Spencer snorted out a laugh.

The stocky man raised an eyebrow.  “You think this is funny, Mr. Pelletier?” he said, walking around Kaley.  He then walked around to Spencer’s left, still giving him a wide berth because of the Glock.  “You are in a, eh…how do you say…a compromised position?”  He nodded, and smiled briefly.  “Dropped the gun, and we can talk.”

“And by talk,” he huffed, “I suppose ya mean scream.”

“We are not the monsters you knew in Atlanta.  Dmitry wasn’t one of—”

“You may not be into the child porn thing yourselves, but Dmitry learned all he knew from you fucks.
”  Spencer gathered a wad of blood in his mouth, and spat it on the snow.  The red against white was kind of beautiful. “Ya think I don’t know that?”

“No, I believe you are very smart, Mr. Pelletier.  I’ve heard stories.  The way you just walked out of Leavenworth Penitentiary. 
Ingenious
, as you Americans say.  Simple, but ingenious.”

“He fucking killed Timofei!” shouted the newcomer, who Spencer could now see was bleeding from the arm. 
Maybe I clipped him, after all
.  That brought about another smile.  “He killed Yulian and Zakhar!  We should—”

“We should calm down, Erik.  We need to speak with Mr. Pelletier and hear what he has to say, yes?”

Spencer laughed.  “Ya want me alive, huh?  Those your orders?  Alive on a slab somewhere in a basement like Zakhar’s?”

“Speaking of Zakhar,” said the stocky man, walking around to his right.  “Is this his girl, or yours?  I presumed that she was yours, since I never knew Zakhar to prefer
shahktor
.”

“
Shahktor
,” Spencer said, and snorted.  “Coal-miner.  Ya know, I like your derogatory terms in Russia.  It’s much better than
nigger
.  More descriptive.”  His head was still spinning from Erik’s hit—he hoped it wouldn’t upset his aim.  The Glock was still in his hand, but it was so cold, as were his hands.  Would everything function properly when he needed it to?  He only needed one shot—just one—and it needed to be accurate.  “And no, the girl ain’t mine.  She ain’t Zakhar’s, either.”

“No?  Hm.  Curious.”  The stocky man moved on with his idle chit-chat, resigned to solving that little mystery later.  “I’d like to talk to you without all of these guns in the way, Mr. Pelletier.”

“Great.  Tell your boys to put ’em away an’ then maybe we can chat.”

“I would like nothing more than that.  But they are quite jittery and mistrusting, and you can hardly blame them after all you’ve done.  They’ve demonstrated incredible control until now. 
You’ve killed three of their comrades, and yet there isn’t a single bullet in you yet.  You have to admit, that shows a great level of discipline.”

Spencer nodded.  “Yeah…yeah, that’s right, you Russians have compulsory military service, ain’t that right?  Lotta military discipline in the men of this country.”  No one said anything to that.  Spencer looked at the stocky man.  “Seems like you’re in control here.  What were you in the military?  SWAT an’ tactics,
shit like that, I imagine?”  He nodded knowingly.  “I’m never wrong about people.  Like this.  I can tell by the way you’re talkin’, you’ve dealt with hostage situations before, Mexican standoffs maybe, like the one we’ve got here.”

The stocky man nodded.  “
Da
.  Yes, I’ve done those things before.”

Across from him, Kaley was shivering in the snow, looking down at the ground now, forlorn and forgotten.
  Spencer glanced over his shoulder; the SUV was just a few feet behind him, but still too far to reach for cover.

“Number one goal: wear down the hostage-taker. 
I know that negotiation strategies vary dependin’ on the demands, the time of day, what you perceive as the hostage-taker’s sanity, and numerous other factors.  I also know that, typically, during the night, you guys try to send in more units—SWAT, police, National Guard units, et cetera.  You try to cut off the hostage-taker’s supply of food, prepare for the long-term, just in case.  You’ll have fresh food ready to send in—to establish goodwill—like pizzas and Chinese food, but all of it is laced with Valium, and you’ll play loud music at all hours, all while dumping tear gas in random quadrants.  How am I doin’ so far?”

“
I trained all of this,
da
.”

“Then you ask for small concessions, like releasin’ a few hostages.  The next move is to offer the hostage-taker things—legal counsel, medical treatment, all that jazz.”

“Yes, we do all of this.”  The stocky man hadn’t even flinched.  He was very confident his men would blow Spencer away if he tried so much as to raise his weapon.

“Then, will you give
me
a small concession?  Just one small favor, an’ then I promise I’ll drop my gun.”

One of the men took a small step towards him, as if reminding him of the Uzi trained on his face.  The others weren’t even blinking, yet all had cold
enmity sketched on their faces. 
They want to see me suffer so bad they’re nearly jizzing their pants
.

Now, the stocky man, being smart enough to sense ulterior motives, raised his own pistol and leveled it at Spencer’s head.  “What concession?” he said.

Spencer looked over at Kaley Dupré.  “Just let me empty my gun into her.”  The little girl looked up at him, eyes wide with surprise.  She started to stand, but one look from the stocky man froze her in place.  He shrugged.  “Or…you could do it yourselves.  Just punch her ticket, then I’ll drop my gun an’ I’m all yours.”

The stocky man looked between Spencer and the girl.  For a moment, he appeared conflicted. 
Oh jeez, please don’t tell me he’s some kind of family man type of gangsters, feeling a sanctity towards women, and all that
.  If that were the case, Spencer would have to do it himself, and risk taking a shot to the face.  Either way, it beat ending up on one of their slabs.