part0057

EVAN GOT HALFWAY out of his car, stood with one foot on the ground, one foot still in the car. He looked around at the derelict factory buildings surrounding him on three sides and felt his heart and his spirits fall. The place was soulless and depressing as hell, a reminder of the passing nature of all things. Not just our own flesh and blood but also the things we build. Things that once were new and exciting are soon old and forgotten.

People might say that in the face of all that transience, the only thing that endures is love. Looking at the desolation and decay around him and with the prospect of meeting a deviant like Liverman looming over him like a black cloud, Evan would’ve ventured that evil is hanging on in there too.

He looked around at the broken windows and busted-in doors, some of the buildings with their roofs sagging under the weight of so many years of neglect, and wondered which one of the squalid rooms Guillory had been taken to and tied to a chair to have the will to live systematically beaten out of her. They couldn’t have chosen a more fitting place.

It should have brought him some comfort that being here himself meant that she didn’t have to return to this place. The place where her life was put on hold by a deviant and his sadistic thugs and a mad dog who traded people’s lives for cash.

The comfort was notable by its absence of course, a nagging dread eager to take its place. Because, like her, he’d been around the block a time or two, knew that things were never as simple as they seemed. They sure as hell weren’t simple today, caught between the mad dog’s unbalanced sister and the goodwill of a man with teeth filed to points.

He quickly scanned the rooftops of the nearest buildings, didn’t see the prone outline of a body nor the flash of sun on a sniper’s scope. As if he needed reminding of the inadequacy of the simple three-point plan he’d put together in the fifteen minutes’ Lydia had given him to get there.

And if the cavalry doesn’t arrive, shoot anything that moves.

The sound of an approaching car jerked him from his thoughts. More than a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Range Rover SUV was negotiating its way across the cracked and pitted asphalt. It looped around then stopped thirty yards away, his own car shielding him from it. The front doors opened as one. Two large men stepped halfway out, as if mirroring his own stance. He was face to face with the men who’d ripped open Garfield’s throat and beaten Guillory. Back again, hoping to finish the job.

That thought put a grim smile of satisfaction on his lips. It faded just as quickly as in the back of the SUV he made out the shapeless form of a whale of a man, the evil of his presence seeming to flow from the shiny ostentatious vehicle like a toxic cloud seeking out new flesh to touch and sully.

A personification of all their hatreds and fears, an abstraction made all too real.

Kate Guillory’s nemesis.

Then one of the men ducked his head back inside the car, relayed the news of Evan’s presence and Guillory’s absence to the monster in the back. Seconds later his head was back out again, staring malevolently at Evan across the weeds and discarded trash.

‘Where’s Guillory?’

Evan hoped for the sake of the human race at large that he hadn’t needed to consult with his master to come up with an opening like that.

‘In that building over there.’

He nodded at the shell of a building behind them. Their heads whipped around as if they expected to see her standing there with a shotgun in her hands. By the time they’d turned back his gun was in his hand. Trouble was, so were theirs.

It was a Mexican standoff of sorts, if two against one counts.

This would be as good a time as any for Pentecost’s man to make his presence felt, Evan thought to himself.

Without warning two gunshots rang out. So fast as to be almost one continuous sound, the sharp crack of their reports bouncing off the buildings surrounding them, racing each other into the distance. Both driver and passenger standing at the front of the SUV jerked violently as if a truck had rear-ended their car. Pools of bright red blossomed on their chests, rapidly staining the white of their shirts with arterial blood. The shooter, whether Lydia Strange or Pentecost’s man, had opted for the safe shot. Both men hung suspended for a split second, mouths open in surprise or pain, then crumpled to the ground. Four hundred and fifty pounds of arrogant bodyguard-cum-interrogator rendered instantly useless by two quick squeezes of an index finger.

Good riddance. And a good start to a day of bloodletting.

Evan had ducked instinctively at the sound of the shots. Now he stood back up, looked behind him to where the shots had come from. He thought he saw the quick flash of sunlight on glass, couldn’t be sure. One thing was crystal clear. If the shooter had wanted him dead, he’d be slumped over the car now, a ragged hole punched in his back or the top of his head blown away. Did that make it Pentecost’s man? Or was Lydia simply clearing the minor pieces off the board, making room for the main players?

Because he knew now that it had never been her intention for it to be only Liverman and himself, knew that Guillory’s arrival was imminent.

He had to get to Liverman before she arrived. Because he didn’t want to think what she would do, face to face with him, here in this godless place. And if he had to haul him from the car for whoever was on the roof to do what they had set out to do, so be it.

He came around from behind the car door, ran towards Liverman’s car. Halfway there, in the middle of the open ground between the two cars, a small explosion of concrete kicked up a yard from his left foot, a split second ahead of the whipcrack from above and behind him. He froze. Recognized the shot for what it was. Then a voice riding on the back of the echoes as they bounced from building to building. A voice he knew.

A barked instruction, sharp as the shot that preceded it.

Lydia Strange. Not Pentecost’s man.

He ignored it. Took another step towards Liverman’s car. Then a second warning shot, the round ricocheting off the ground no more than six inches from his foot, splinters of concrete and grit peppering his leg and shoe.

The instruction behind it a scream this time with a hysterical intensity that only a fool would ignore.

He didn’t move. He was out of time anyway.

Kate Guillory’s car came bucking and bouncing across the rutted ground in a cloud of dust, nose-dived to a stop beside his car. She was out of it before it stopped rocking on its suspension, staring at him standing exposed in the open ground. She took in the two men slumped dead across the SUV, her head snapping instantly to the rooftops. Back and forth from one building to the next.

‘It’s Lydia,’ he called.

She gave him a look. Who else would it be? Then she trotted across to join him. Neither of them asked the other what they were doing there. What would’ve been the point? They were where they were, a maniac with a sniper’s rifle on the rooftops above them. Deal with it.

Nor did he say anything about a man that Pentecost might have sent. He might need that breath another day.

‘Waiting for me?’ she said. ‘I put on some lipstick for you.’

In those few words and the hint of a smile that went with them he knew that this would end today, one way or the other. Because the old Kate Guillory was back standing beside him. Whether she hung around for more than the next five minutes was anybody’s guess.

He indicated the pockmarks in the ground.

‘She asked me to wait here.’

Guillory nodded. She knew why.

‘Nice way of asking. Where is she?’

He pointed to the rooftop behind them.

‘The shots came from over there.’

She followed his finger briefly then turned her attention to the SUV. The mass of flesh that was Liverman was visible behind the driver’s seat, a faint misting to the glass as the heat and sweat poured from his skin.

‘Cover the passenger side. I’ll get him out.’

Without a glance at the rooftop she marched around to the rear driver’s side door. In her purposeful stride he saw some hidden intent at work. Just as he knew something that she didn’t—the potential and now unlikely intervention by Pentecost’s man—she knew something she wasn’t sharing with him. Because it seemed to him as if her movements were a direct challenge to the woman on the roof.

He guessed that she had arrived at an understanding with herself, her personal Armageddon. If she couldn’t be who she was before, she wouldn’t be anybody at all. Just a memory in the minds of the people who’d loved her before the sick deviant cowering in the SUV had stripped her life away, left only the bare bones of the person she used to be.

He forced his teeth to unclench, his breathing to resume. Moved his finger outside the trigger guard for fear that in the rage that colonized his body like a cancer he would inadvertently squeeze the trigger. Because he didn’t want to squeeze that trigger. Not unless the barrel of the gun was already firmly between Liverman’s teeth, the sound of his pleading filling his ears.

He took up his position by the rear passenger door. On the other side Guillory pulled at the door handle like she wanted to rip it off. It was locked. She could easily have reached in through the open driver’s door and released it. But where’s the fun in that? She reversed the gun in her hand, smashed the window with the butt. Small cubes of glass showered Liverman’s lap, forced a strangled squeak from between the too-full lips. If he hadn’t been the size he was, she’d have dragged him bodily through the jagged hole.

She wrenched the door open. Then stopped abruptly.

Watching her face over the wide expanse of the SUV’s shiny roof Evan saw something pass behind her eyes. Something that lives inside all of us, and not so deep as you might think, a reminder of a time when we were little better than the wild animals we hunted. It made him very glad he wasn’t Joseph Liverman. Or whatever his real name might have been. Because soon the only name he’d go by would be dead meat . And it wouldn’t be any kind of meat that even the hungriest maggot or a half-starved rabid dog would foul its mouth with.

He watched her as she went to the back of the car, raised the tailgate. He knew when she’d seen what she was after by the smile that crept over her painted lips. If you could call a sour twist of the mouth like that a smile.

Liverman wasn’t going anywhere. So he joined her at the back of the car. Together they stared into the interior.

He saw a rough sackcloth hood.

She saw an old friend.

He saw dried blood and vomit.

God only knows what she saw—and he wasn’t telling.

She picked it up. Held it almost reverently. As if it were a priceless religious relic. In a way it was, or at least it had a sacred quality to it.

It was her salvation.

They exchanged a look as she held it tightly in her hand. So many things passed between them in that look, but one thought more than any other.

In a perfect world he’d have been able to bite back the inappropriate comment that surged up from inside him. In the real world even armor-plated teeth wired tightly shut couldn’t have kept it in.

‘Not sure the color suits you.’

There wasn’t a second’s hesitation before her reply was out. Not even the fastest flicker of surprise in her denim-blue eyes, as full of light now as he’d ever seen them. Just a look that said she’d have been disappointed at anything less.

‘Not any more, it doesn’t.’

They both knew who the color would suit.

He took the hood from her. It felt as if she offered it to him. Together they went around to Liverman’s door. He leaned into the car and pulled the hood down over Liverman’s head, shutting off the incoherent stream of pitiful sub-human sounds as efficiently as a falcon’s hood stills a restless bird. Then together, her with a strength spawned somewhere deep inside her, one that harnessed all the pain and fear and anger that she’d carried with her ever since the filthy hood had been over her own head, they hauled Liverman’s three hundred pounds out of the SUV as if it were nothing, no more than a person-shaped bag of foul hot air.

She forced his arm up behind his back, jammed his body against the side of the car to stop him from sliding bonelessly to the ground, held him there. For a moment he didn’t see Kate Guillory beside him, saw instead something out of a medieval history book, an executioner displaying the condemned man for the pleasure of the jeering crowd.

He thought she might taunt Liverman, maybe slap or punch his head, the blows sudden and unexpected, make him suffer like she had in some small way. It was an unworthy thought, one that made him feel dirty. He knew her better than that.

Besides, it was beyond that.

It was the moment of truth.

They all knew it. In the past minutes he’d forgotten all about Lydia on the roof behind them, watching as the scene played out for her amusement. He guessed Guillory had too.

Now, with Liverman out of the car, the three of them stood facing the rooftops with the sun behind them, their shadows stretching away ahead of them like their hopes and fears for the future. Waiting in the sudden stillness like gladiators before the emperor. Sweating from exertion or fear, hearts racing, minds filled with so many different thoughts, none of them good.

Liverman praying to any god who would listen that he hadn’t pushed Guillory to a place where she no longer cared about anything beyond her rightful revenge.

Evan wondering where the hell Pentecost’s man had gotten to and how his whole life might now be forfeit and not just the tip of his little finger.

And Guillory, standing proud, chest and chin thrust forward. Challenging the maniac Lydia Strange to put up or shut up, make good on her threats. Take two of us, let the other walk away.

Then in the distance the sound of police sirens. Because Guillory had called in her location as she bounced across the rutted ground to the confrontation that now engulfed them.

For a brief moment Evan thought that they might stay as they were, frozen, waiting, until the police arrived. That Lydia might shuffle backwards on her belly and make her escape.

Guillory had other ideas.

Because today it had to end. One way or the other.

She looked at him, a question on her face. He nodded, happy to be asked. Even if he knew it wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference whatever he did.

Then, like a snooty waiter in some fancy restaurant, she took hold of the top of the hood over Liverman’s head, pulled it off with a flourish. As if she were lifting a silver cover to reveal the chef’s culinary creation below.

Except there was no mouth-watering delicacy. Just Liverman’s sweat and tear-streaked face, a line of drool making its way down his chin like a demented slug or snail had slithered from his slack mouth and was making its slimy bid for freedom.

The birds had grown suddenly quiet. The stillness of the afternoon had a strange breathless, watchful quality, as if the natural world itself awaited the inevitable outcome of the events now unfolding.

As Guillory swept the hood through the still air with a final flourish reminiscent of a matador’s cape, a single gunshot shattered the silence.

Kate Guillory’s head exploded.

That’s how it looked to Evan as the round blew Liverman’s head apart. Gore spotted his own face but nothing like it did hers on the far side of Liverman. Blood and gray brain matter and glistening white bone and lank greasy hair spattered her face and hair and clothes, coating her with what remained of the monster who had haunted her dreams and tormented her in her waking hours.

Except unlike Garfield’s bile and vomit that she’d scrubbed from her skin with a manic, almost hysterical intensity, she’d have worn the gore that now dripped from her face like a badge of honor, paraded through the streets with it drying on her face in the warm sun.

Evan knew as surely as she did herself that Liverman’s blood and gore had done more than cleanse her of the horrors of her ordeal. With the raising of the hood she had allowed it to wash away some part of her humanity.

As had he for being a willing party to it.

One more small sacrifice paid by each of them, a step taken into another place where justice and vengeance are without distinction.

It seemed to him that she stood now waiting for a greater price for that crime to be demanded, for payment to be swiftly made. He turned away from her defiant pose to face it with her, looked to the rooftop. Saw the sun reflect on the glass of a sniper’s scope.