Hellbent

Van Sciver kept his pistol in his underarm tension holster. He moved the phone back to his mouth. “If you want him,” he said, “come and get him.”

Evan said, “Okay,” and hung up.

“What the hell?” Joey hissed. “Now they’re on high alert. If they come back here—”

Evan pulled out his RoamZone, pressed three buttons, held up a finger to Joey while it rang.

A feminine voice came over the line. “911.”

“Yeah, hi,” Evan said. “I work at the McClair Children’s Mental Health Center in Church Hill. A man and a teenage girl have been lingering around the building all morning. One of our nurses said she saw that the man had a gun. Can you please get someone here right away? Hang on—Shit. I think they’re approaching.”

He hung up.

Joey gestured for him furiously, pointing through the gap. Crouching, he peered again through the knothole.

Candy swung through the kitchen, heading for the rear of the house. He couldn’t see her body until it filled the doorway to the backyard.

She held an M4.

She moved swiftly across the porch and strode out to recon the yard.

Joey backpedaled, her sneaker tamping down the foxtails loudly. She cringed at the noise, wobbled to avoid landing her other foot. Evan shot out a hand and grabbed her arm. She was frozen with one leg above the dead weeds. The brittle foxtails stretched all around them, an early-warning system that would broadcast to Candy any move they made.

Firming his grip on Joey’s biceps, Evan swung his head back to the fence. He peered through the knothole, now a foot away. The perspective had the effect of lensing in on the yard.

Candy, twenty yards away and closing.

With his free hand, Evan reached down and tugged his ARES 1911 from the holster. He kept his eyes locked on the knothole.

Candy passed the rusted barbecue, the bore of the M4 facing them, a full circle of black.

She swept toward the fence.

Evan lifted the pistol and aimed through the silver-dollar-size hole.

54 Illegal in Police Departments from Coast to Coast

Evan’s torso twisted, pulled in two directions, Joey’s weight tugging him one way, his drawn ARES aimed the other. He felt a pleasing burn across his chest, ribs unstacking, intercostals stretching.

If he pulled the trigger, he’d drop Candy but the sound would alert Van Sciver and his men. Then he’d be in retreat with a sixteen-year-old and eight in the mag, pursued by six trained men armed with long guns.

Not ideal.

But he’d handled not-ideal before.

Candy neared the rear fence. He sighted on the hollow of her throat. Her critical mass filled the knothole, blocking out everything else.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

“V!”

Van Sciver’s voice from the house halted her in her tracks. She pivoted, M4 swinging low at her side.

She was no more than four feet from the fence line.

The gun was steady in Evan’s hand, aimed at the fabric of her shirt fluttering across her back. He’d punch the round through her marred flesh, two inches right of her spine beneath the blade of her shoulder.

Despite Evan’s grip, Joey wobbled on her planted foot, her other arm whipping high as she rebalanced herself. In Evan’s peripheral vision, he sensed her raised boot brush the tips of the foxtails.

“We just picked up a 911 call!” Van Sciver shouted across the yard. “Armed man and a teenage girl at McClair Children’s Mental Health Center.”

“They’re one step behind,” Candy said.

“Let’s meet them there.”

Candy jogged back toward the house, her figure shrinking in the telescope lens of the knothole. As she receded, Evan released Joey’s arm. Joey eased her other foot down to the ground, the weeds crackling softly. She came to Evan’s side to watch through the fence.

At the house Van Sciver swung out of the rear door, keys in hand. Thornhill and Candy flanked him across the yard, Delmonico and Shea in their wake.

The two other freelancers had been drawn onto the back porch by the commotion.

“Hangebrauck — wipe the notebook,” Van Sciver called out to the bigger of the two, a hefty guy with an armoring of muscle layered over some extra girth.

“Yes, sir.”

“Bower, eyes on the front.”

Bower, a lanky man with sunken eyes, scratched at his neck. “Yes, sir.”

Across the yard Delmonico slid back the gate, the rusty wheels screeching. Van Sciver and Candy hopped into the Tahoe, Shea and Thornhill into the nearest Suburban, and they backed the SUVs out. The Suburban idled in the driveway, waiting on Delmonico as he closed the gate, wiping himself from view.

There was a moment of stillness, Hangebrauck’s head tilted back as he sniffed the ash-tinged air. And then he went into the house again.

Bower met him in the kitchen with a red notebook.

It looked just like the notebook Evan had found in the Portland headquarters.

Hangebrauck carried it into the kitchen. Then he placed it in the microwave. The lit carousel spun, rotating the notebook.

Joey looked over at Evan, her brow furled.

Bizarre.