The Sniper's Wife Part 25

A faint sc.r.a.ping sound drew his attention toward the northwest. Turning the light back on, he took the left branch.

This led him to another door, a second slightly smaller room with erstwhile offices lining the walls, and the first trickle of daylight presumably from an unboarded up window.

He pocketed his flashlight and replaced it with his gun. The sc.r.a.ping he'd just barely heard earlier was now loud, rhythmic, and definitely coming from one of the offices ahead.

Barely breathing at all now, w.i.l.l.y sidled up to the entrance, aware of the tiniest sound from beneath his shoes, and very slowly peered around the corner.

Sammie Martens, bound, gagged, and with a large bloodstain on her right leg, lay propped up against the wall, under the open window where the marks on the floor indicated she'd dragged herself with considerable effort, digging her heels into the floor and pushing again and again.

w.i.l.l.y swung rapidly into the room and crouched to one side of the door, his gun covering the area before him. The room was otherwise empty.

He straightened and crossed over to her, immediately slipping the gag from her mouth.

"Jesus," she said in a whisper. "You're a sight for sore eyes."

"You, too," he admitted, putting his gun down so he could work on the knot binding her hands behind her back. "How bad are you hit?"

"Hurts like a son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h, but I can walk. Bullet's still in there, though."

w.i.l.l.y thought back to the cell phone gun Liptak had used on her. "What the h.e.l.l was that, anyway? How'd you know it was a gun?"

"We got an alert on them a few weeks ago. Something you threw out, probably. They're the latest rage. I thought of it when I saw how he was holding it."

He gave her a quick, almost embarra.s.sed kiss. "Yeah, well, you saved my b.u.t.t. Where is he now?"

She shook her head. "Somewhere around. He has a real cell phone he's been trying to use. It didn't work down here, so I think he went up."

w.i.l.l.y glanced over his shoulder at the door. "Which way?"

"Turn right. You got anyone with you?"

He looked at her without comment as she began rubbing her chafed wrists and rolled her eyes. "I should've known."

"Stay put," he said, and quickly left the office.

Turning the way she'd indicated, he saw a small door in the far corner of the central room, and beyond it, barely visible in the gloom, a spiral staircase. He realized he was looking at the interior of one of the Castle's four large central turrets he'd seen from the outside.

His gun ready once more, he'd barely started walking in that direction when a figure appeared in the doorway with the suddenness of an apparition.

"Don't move," w.i.l.l.y shouted, leveling his gun.

But Andy Liptak was having none of it. As quickly as he'd appeared, he backed into the stairwell and vanished, accompanied by the sound of footsteps pounding on hollow metal stairs.

w.i.l.l.y ran to the door, paused, and quickly stuck his head past the doorjamb. As in a turret of ancient times, the staircase was a tight spiral, hugging the round walls around the center of a sheer drop, and lit solely by the feeble daylight seeping through the occasional firing slit. The sounds of Liptak's retreat came from above.

w.i.l.l.y gave chase without hesitation.

He ran, taking the steps two at a time, fueled by the same adrenaline that a marathoner uses to make it to the finish line. And finishing is what w.i.l.l.y had solely in mind by now, now as so often in the past-a near-pathological drive to reach some kind of resolution, which, since he couldn't locate it in his day-to-day life, he kept trying to find in the face of lethal danger. Discovering Sammie alive had come as a huge relief, but it had made him think, if only in this brief flash of a moment, that he'd come as close to balancing the books as ever he might. That coming to Sammie's aid had in some way counterbalanced his failure to help Mary.

He heard footsteps above him slow down, falter several times as Liptak neared exhaustion, and finally stop altogether.

w.i.l.l.y charged on regardless.

He saw Liptak sprawled on his back, his mouth hanging open, one hand clinging to the banister as if it were a lifeline, just seconds before he was on top of him. Liptak had a gun out, too, but w.i.l.l.y slapped it aside with a swipe from his own, causing the other man to cry out in pain as the gun went hurtling down the narrow, empty stairwell, some eighty feet straight down.

w.i.l.l.y dropped his pistol on the steps and grabbed Liptak by the shirtfront in his powerful right hand, hauling him up and throwing him across the railing so that he balanced there over the long, empty hole below them. w.i.l.l.y was barely breathing hard.

"Hey, you little t.u.r.d," he said softly, his face inches from Andy's. "You done yet?"

Liptak's body was as still and stiff as a board. His hands were clenched to w.i.l.l.y's shoulders in a fierce grip. "Put me down, Sniper. For Christ's sake."

w.i.l.l.y felt the fear coming off him like an electrical current. He watched Liptak's dilated pupils and thought he could see in their depth the darkness of the jungle, of the blackouts he'd suffered as a drunk, and of the pure inky well of his own despair, on the edge of which he balanced every day. He shifted his gaze to the gloomy, bottomless funnel of the stairwell just past Liptak's left ear, and found there the same image-and perhaps as well, a solution. The nagging thought tugging at the corner of his mind loomed into something more tangible, a synergy combining good timing, pure and brutal justice, and with it, relief.

"What d'you say we go for a little flight?" he suggested.

Liptak's mouth opened, but it was Sammie's voice he heard.

"w.i.l.l.y? You all right? Where are you?"

He paused, his muscles tensed for the leap. Liptak's breathing was now coming in short gasps.

"w.i.l.l.y?" she called again from far below, her voice almost breaking. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Answer me."

Her anger worked its way through the tangle of his mind, drawing his attention away from the task at hand, if just for a moment.

"I'm up here. With our mutual friend," he answered finally, reluctantly.

Whether it was something she heard in his voice or just simple dumb luck, she answered, "Well, don't screw it up doing something stupid, okay? Bring him down here so I can beat the c.r.a.p out of him."

Her words echoed up the hollow shaft of the turret, reverberating off the walls. Slowly, he smiled, straightened slightly, and refocused on Andy Liptak's face.

"You may not believe it, but today's your lucky day," he said, and pulled him off the railing and back onto the steps.

"There's movement by the chain-link fence, southwest wall."

Gunther, Ogden, Panatello, and Janet Scott all turned to look at the spot indicated by the sharpshooter through their radio earpieces.

"Roger that," Janet responded. "Do you have a visual?"

"That's affirmative. Two men and a woman. She's limping and one of the men looks like he has his hands cuffed behind his back."

Gunther whispered into her other ear.

"Does it look like the other guy has a useless left arm, probably with the hand stuffed into his pants pocket?"

There was a startled pause. "Hang on."

Despite the tension, Scott smiled. "That got him."

"Affirmative," came the report at last, the tone of voice betraying the speaker's confusion.

She rea.s.sured him. "That's good news. Hold your positions and wait till they're out in the open."

Slowly, awkwardly, three figures emerged from the jagged hole at the prison's base and picked their way across the rubble and through the torn fencing.

"It's okay," Joe Gunther said.

Janet Scott radioed everybody to stand down and ordered in the ambulance hidden nearby as the four of them broke cover and walked to meet Andy Liptak and his escort in the middle of the parking lot.

Gunther's first concern was for the wounded Sammie Martens.

"You okay?" he asked her as they drew near.

Her smile gave him what he needed to know. "Flesh wound," she answered. "I've always wanted to say that. Just didn't know it would hurt so much."

Panatello and his people grabbed Liptak away from w.i.l.l.y and whisked him off toward a waiting car.

w.i.l.l.y shook his head at her. "Such a wimp."

Ward Ogden gave him an appraising look. "We weren't sure we hadn't lost you."

"Wishful thinking," w.i.l.l.y told him, but then looked straight at Joe Gunther. "I figured I hadn't been a big enough pain in the b.u.t.t yet."

Gunther studied his face, and seemed to read there the debate that w.i.l.l.y had just barely survived. "Practice makes perfect, w.i.l.l.y," he finally said.

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"That's five dollars even."

Arnie Weller looked over the shoulder of the balding man holding out a ten-dollar bill and checked on the whereabouts of the young woman he'd seen entering a few minutes earlier.

"Out of ten," he automatically chanted, not bothering to meet his customer's eyes. Where was she? He turned briefly to the cash register, his fingers dancing across the keyboard in a blur. He caught the spring-loaded drawer against his hip as it opened, quickly made change, and proffered it to the man.

"Want a bag?" he asked, back to surveilling the rear of the store.

There was a telling pause from the customer, forcing Arnie to reluctanty focus on him. "What?"

The man smiled. "I bought gas."

Arnie stared at him, briefly at a total loss. "Sorry. Have a nice night."

Shaking his head slightly, the man slipped from Arnie's line of vision, through the double gla.s.s doors to the right, and into the night where his pickup was parked beside one of the gas pumps.

Arnie saw what he thought was the top of the girl's head pa.s.s behind a row of stacked boxes and six-packs near the bank of fridges along the far wall. Hardest place to see anyone, he thought angrily, still nursing a grudge. Two weeks ago, he'd asked a so-called security expert for an estimate on rigging the place with cameras. One week later, he'd bought a gun instead. For a whole lot less.

b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Arnie Weller ran a clean store, paid his taxes, took care of his employees, most of whom were worthless. He dealt with the chiseling gas company, the wholesale suppliers who screwed him out of habit, and the endless state forms issued monthly to make his life difficult. He paid his insurance, although they never settled his claims, donated to charitable causes he didn't agree with, and belonged to a chamber of commerce he thought was as useless as t.i.ts on a bull. He even cleaned the bathrooms twice a day, despite and not because of the disgusting condition he found them in, each and every time. If his customers were pigs, it didn't mean he'd join them.

And he put up with the disrespect, the surliness, the petty thefts, and the general offensiveness of the young people and trailer trash who supplied most of his retail business.

All in all, Arnie believed, he was a model businessman, employer, and patriotic citizen.

And he despised every aspect of it.

Three times, he'd been robbed in the past two months, once by a man with a hammer, and twice by people carrying guns. Arnie had known the kid with the hammer and had told the cops right off. They'd caught him hours later buying drugs with the till money. The little jerk had ended up with barely a scratch, being underage. No record, no jail time, just a few weeks in rehab. To Arnie's thinking, hardly the penalty for threatening a man's life. This was Vermont, after all, famously one of the best states in which to break any law you liked.

But Arnie had suffered nightmares for weeks, envisioning that hammer coming down on his skull. And that was before the two guys with guns. They had really scared him.

The first had been so nervous, Arnie had worried more about the gun going off accidentally-the ultimate irony. The kid had worn a ski mask, dark with sweat, and his hand had trembled as if he'd been sick. Even his voice had cracked. If the barrel of the gun hadn't been so real, Arnie might've even felt sorry for the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. But the gun had been real, and the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h had hit Arnie across the head with it just before he left, for no reason at all.

They'd caught that one, too-a drug user like the first-and him at least they'd put away. But Arnie still had the scar, and the flash of realization that had accompanied its acquisition that one of these days, he might actually be killed for running this marginal, ball-busting convenience store.

Then the latest one had shown up.

Not a kid. Not nervous. An out-and-out bad man.

The gun had been bigger, the hand hadn't shaken, and he'd worn the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down over half his face, giving him an almost demonic appearance. And he'd clearly enjoyed his work. He'd come around the counter, forced Arnie to the floor, face down, and had emptied the cash drawer himself. He'd even stuffed some Slim Jims into his pocket as an afterthought. Then he'd knelt next to Arnie's head, had shoved the barrel of his gun into Arnie's ear, and had c.o.c.ked the hammer, chuckling all the while.

"Tell me where you live, little man," the man had whispered.

Arnie had told him, the dread rising up in him, making it hard to breathe.

"Now we both know. You might want to remember that if you're planning on calling the cops."

After which he'd reached with his gloved hand between Arnie's legs and had given his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es a hard, painful squeeze. "I got you here, little man. Never forget it. Keep your mouth shut or this'll be nothing compared to what's next."

Arnie hadn't told anyone about him. Not the cops, not his wife, not his buddies. He'd swallowed the loss, had struggled with the fear, had consulted with the security man.

And had bought the gun.

That hadn't turned out too well. Instead of supplying him the comfort he'd hoped for, the gun had nestled under Arnie's untucked shirt like a tumor threatening his life. He started judging everyone who entered the place in relationship to the gun-would they force him to use it or not? The anger he'd channeled into visions of shooting the hooded man, were he to dare to show his face again, was gradually replaced by the fear that he really might return-and that Arnie would die for having presumed a cold-bloodedness he knew he didn't possess.

Tentatively, as he'd done a hundred times since buying the d.a.m.n thing, Arnie touched the b.u.t.t of the gun through his shirt with his fingertips, as if the bulk of it against his stomach weren't enough to confirm its presence.

They were alone in the store, the girl and he, and he knew G.o.dd.a.m.ned well she was hiding back there, biding her time to step forward.

He'd recognized the type, of course, as soon as he'd caught sight of her-underfed, dirty hair, her clothes a mess and probably not her own. Her body language upon entering hadn't met the two standards of legitimacy- either looking around to get a bearing or heading straight for a known product. Instead, it had been like a rat's running for cover-from the door to the aisle offering the most cover from Arnie's view. He'd seen that in shoplifters before. And with both the hammer kid and the nervous man with the ski mask. Although not the last guy.

Still, she was only a girl.

"Miss?" he finally called out, doubtful of the authority he tried to inject into his voice. "Is there something I can help you find?"

"The money," she answered from a totally different direction. And very nearby.