All hell broke loose as my father fell to the floor, a stunned expression on his dark face. Matt charged me, knocking me to the side as a flurry of SPATS hit the spot where I had been standing only moments before. He grabbed the gun out of my hand, rolling us both behind the massive leather couch and beyond the bar. He was screaming at me but for some reason, I couldn’t hear him.
I was calm. I could see bullets impacting the couch, tufts of stuffing flying everywhere. What I couldn’t see was where Jake was or exactly who was shooting at us. Matt peeked around the edge of the couch at the feet, not over the top of the backrest. He fired off a few shots before he jumped in my face.
“What the hell?” he yelled. “Didn’t I tell you to stay inside?”
“Is he dead?” I asked calmly, and the detective just stared at me. I guessed he thought that I might be in shock. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t feel right, I felt as if the ground I stood on was slipping away from me.
“Cris? Cris, look at me.” I gazed into his blue eyes. “It’s going to be okay, Cris.”
“Did I kill him?” I asked again, and he shook his head.
“I don’t think so. No blood. He’s wearing a vest. You knocked him down, maybe broke some ribs, but you didn’t kill him.”
“I wanted to. I need to,” I said openly. I started to sob. He pulled me close and hugged me, the barrel of his gun held off to the side.
“Oh God, Crispin,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you stay in the panic room?”
“What are we gonna do now, Matt?”
“We’re going to get out of here, Cris,” he said. He yelled for Jake in Gaelic and Jake answered. None of the other men had a clue as to what they said.
"Jake, áit a bhfuil tú? An bhfuil tú gortaithe?"
"Tá mé sa halla, tá mé go leor ammo fágtha ach tá roinnt grenades stuáilte agam. Clúdaíonn do shúile agus do chluasa ar thrí. Ceann. Dhá. TRÍ".
He grunted, and we heard the sound of something hitting the tiled floor. Matt covered my head with his hands and buried his into my pink coat. The noise was horrible, it shocked me into freezing but as soon as the noise erupted, he scooped me up and ran for the next doorway. Into the next room, the back end of the hall.
He threw me towards the garage door, and he entered the hall, his weapon leveled at something. I barely heard three loud booms that made the stucco fall off the ceiling and then he was running away from me.
I rolled until I hit the garage door. It popped open and I fell into the huge space only partially filled by three or more vehicles. Scrambling for the underside of the nearest car, I climbed into Matt’s car. Searching inside for his gear bag that I knew he had brought with him. I hoped that he had left something in it, a backup gun. I didn’t find anything, not even a pocket knife and the keys weren’t in the ignition, under the visor or in the cup-holder. A car was a weapon, too; a 2000-pound bullet, a blunt instrument.
I didn’t know what to do; I still couldn’t hear anything, just saw the tell-tale flashes of light from gunfire heading my way. Climbed out of the SUV and hid behind the door with a tire iron in my hand. Ready to brain the first creep as he came through the door.
I watched their shoes, knowing what both Matt and Jake had on their feet so when the black Hi-Tek tactical boots stepped onto the sill, I aimed the iron at the shins covered in black tactical pants. I hit as hard as I could, the iron sunk into the bone with a shudder that I could feel all the way through my arms to my shoulders and chest. He fell as if poleaxed. I couldn’t hear him scream but I was sure it was loud and agonizing. I must have broken his legs. He hit the cement floor chin first and didn’t move, landing on his pistol. It was a fully automatic Tek-9.
I tried to push him, roll him over and retrieve the gun but he was too big, and I was afraid to touch him for more than a few seconds. Just long enough to strip him of his backup gun and a huge knife. He had already removed his NVGs once the house lights had flared on. They were still burning incandescent bright.
His face was covered with a ski mask like Tempe’s. I pulled it off and recognized the hawk-face of this man. It was the one called Lynch, one of the killers from the ambulance. His skin was swarthy with a heavy five o’clock shadow, his hair a dark reddish brown. I could see blood under his mouth and the white chips of broken teeth. I could not see his eyes or their color.
He had zip-ties in the back pocket of his pants. I used them on his ankles, but I couldn’t pull his arms together. Instead, I threaded the ties through his belt and tied his hands to his waist.
Peeking through the doorway, I saw empty hallway. No Matt, Jake, no creeps. No bodies, either. I checked the man’s backup piece – one of those small ladies Sigs designed for smaller hands, with a lighter magazine. It was still capable of firing off seven bullets and the clip was full. He had either not shot anything or had reloaded.
I tucked the knife inside my coat, it was too big for any of the pockets. Not that I would use it, I was no fan of knife fights.
There wasn’t any sense in calling for either of them, I still couldn’t hear anything louder than a gunshot next to my ear. I would have to go find them and the safest place to do that would be the office with the video cameras.
I hugged the wall, keeping low, praying that none of the bad dudes were there trying to spot our location. To my utter surprise, I made it all the way to the video room without seeing anyone or any bodies. From the number of bullets fired off, I would have thought there would be bodies everywhere.
The door to the office was open and the cameras were running. None of them showed me images of Jake, Matt, my father or the men he had smuggled into the house. No matter what screen I switched over to view, I didn’t see anyone. Even the outside cameras did not catch a glimpse of anyone and as far as I knew, only the basement was off the camera system. Which was kinda creepy; it meant people could watch you going to the bathroom, getting naked and sleeping. Gross.
The bedrooms had that plus motion sensors, so if anyone was hiding in any of the ten bedrooms, their presence would have triggered an alert. And I didn’t see one flashing. The only place left that they could be was in the panic room. If they knew about that, then they would also know about the escape tunnels and we were screwed.
I didn’t know what to do. If I checked out the house, I was scared that I could be cornered or trapped inside with Tempe. I was afraid that Matt and Jake would be used as hostages to get me to give up. I was afraid that both were already dead. I couldn’t figure out where anyone was hiding or why it looked as if I were the only one left inside the house.
I left the office and the videos, heading for the staircase and hidden door. I stopped in complete confusion at the sight of the dangling panel. It was open – but not just slid open, it was kicked and shattered by the force of a large boot. I knew it was a boot because the hole was shaped just like a foot.
The rest of the door panel lay on the tiled floor. I kicked it out of the way and slid into the not-so-hidden hallway, expecting the steel hatch to be kicked in as well. It was not, the steel was too thick to be attacked that way, but it did have the imprint of a boot on it.
Cautiously, I held the Sig in front of me as I crawled into the panic room. Relief flooded me as soon as I saw both Jake and Matt seated at the screens, staring back at me.
“Matt! Jake! Why didn’t you come after me? Where is everyone?”
They did not move, their eyes blank yet they followed me as I stepped closer. So, I didn’t react when the hard barrel of a gun was pressed against the back of my head. I kept still. His hand minus the gun reached around and removed mine as I stood there like a statue.
I kept my eyes on the two cops, watching their features becoming shapeless and morphing into the two men that I had known when I was Crispin. Their faces became the Captain’s and Mr. Fitzsimmons’ and if I had the courage to turn around, I knew that I would not see my father, Tempe Neige standing behind me. Just Johannsen.
“You shot me.” His voice was hoarse and angry with the faded echo of a Swedish accent.
“You shot me first,” I squeaked. My bladder felt loose.
He laughed. “Your father shot you, kid. I sent the half-breed after you. He strangled you.”
“You would have, after you raped me,” I cried. “What have you done to them?”
“Nothing, yet.”
“You know that if you kill me, you won’t get a penny of the Trust Fund,” I returned.
“I don’t care about the money. I have the gold that your father hid and from the robbery of the Fort in St. Louie. That and the Captain’s gold is enough for me now that I don’t have to share it with my crew.”
“Where are they?”
“Your friends killed them all. They dragged the bodies into the basement,” he said carelessly.
“Why are they just sitting there? How did you know about this place and where we went? Or about the panic room?”
“Funny thing about that, I met his brother, Matt’s so-called dead brother, in New Orleans a few years back. He told me about this place and all its secrets. We met on a job, undercover with the drug dealers. He told me about his hot-shot baby brother, the detective in New York. I had one of my friends put a GPS on his car, it tracked you everywhere you went. I gotta admit, you fooled me dressed like a girl but it’s kinda hot,” he leered. “As for why they’re just sitting there like good little scum – look at the bottom of their chairs.”
I did. Colored wires ran down the legs and over to what I guessed was a homemade bomb. It looked like blocks of gray putty wired to an alarm clock with a digital display. Not one of those fancy LED sophisticated devices but more of the kind you’d make in your garage. Still, more than a pipe bomb.
“It’s on a mercury switch,” Johannsen grinned. “If it moves, it goes BOOM!”
He made me jump. “Careful,” he warned. “Itchy trigger.”
The Captain cleared his throat. “Crispin leave us.”
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you, Dad.” I nearly cried, my hands shaking as I buried them in the pockets of my pink coat. Johannsen grabbed the back of my neck and dragged me out the door back into the hallway. His thumb dug into my throat, his free hand large enough to nearly wrap around the entirety of my neck. He applied pressure.
I couldn’t breathe. I reached up with both hands and clawed at his fingers, my nails leaving deep furrows in his skin. His blood trickled over me and made me shudder.
He squeezed harder. Black spots appeared in my vision. Just before I blacked out, I remembered the knife inside my coat. The feeble effort I made to reach it infuriated me. Not only was my life depending on reaching and using it, but so were Jake’s and Matt’s lives at stake.
No one was more surprised than me when my fingers touched the sharp edge of a weapon. I still had no idea how I was going to get enough space between our bodies to ram it into Johannsen’s chest. He, however, knew something was wrong when my scrabbling fingers stopped digging at my throat. He thought it was because I had given up or was dead.
He let go to follow my hands and reached inside my pocket. I could breathe. I gasped in a hurried series of breaths as he found the sharp edge in my breast pocket. He laughed as he sat me down on legs too weak to hold me up.
“You gonna stab me with this?” he mocked. He pulled the object out and his eyes widened as he stared at the pearly half shell that I had found on the beach.
“No,” I barely managed, my throat a ruin. My hand flashed to the inside of my coat where the huge knife I had taken off the dead soldier was hiding. Felt it slip between his third and fourth rib and felt it quiver as it hit his heart.
He gasped. His eyes fluttered. His fingers grasped for the gun at his side as he took two steps backward, pushing me away. I fell to the floor and the scallop shell dropped from his hand to land on my chest.
“You fucking brat,” he gasped. “I wish I had killed you then.”
Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. The knife wobbled as he breathed. He sank to his knees, but before he hit the floor, his fingers reached for the trigger.
The shot was so loud that it brought its own pain. I was already finding it a struggle to breathe and the noise of the shot made it ten times worse.
My chest hurt. It felt as if he had landed on it, holding my body to the floor. It wasn’t until I tried to move that I realized I was bleeding.
The scallop shell still lay on my coat pocket over my heart, but it now had a hole in it. The pearly interior was slowly turning red. I touched it and my hand became the same color and as I held it close to my dimming eyes, I saw blood. My blood.
His dark eyes were blank; there was nothing left of Tempe or Johannsen. Blood pooled around him. I stared at his face, unable to look away, morbidly fascinated at the incredible stillness of a dead human.
It freaked me out; how one minute you were alive and part of the world, a second later there was nothing left but flesh, bone and blood. That everything that made you who you were was gone.
I wondered if his soul would find peace or if he would come back again and again until he had made right his own mistake. And then, I didn’t care anymore.