Cut and Run

CHAPTER FORTY

Larson was halfway up the stairs when all the shouting stopped. The sudden change froze him. He became acutely aware of the big-breasted white-porcelain mermaid figurine on a small table at the top of the stairs. She seemed to be looking right at him. Laughing.

Then, ever so slightly, the mermaid rocked side to side, a nearly imperceptible movement. The flooring had moved; and with it, the table; and with it, the figurine. Someone up there was moving toward the stairs.

All these realizations collided in Larson at the same instant, combining to loosen his knees and move the barrel of his Glock slightly to his left. He crouched and raised the weapon. A man appeared at the top of the stairs, already firing.

Larson squeezed off two shots and then intentionally slipped his toes off the stair tread, sliding backward and down the stairs toward cover. White plaster from exploding Sheetrock filled the air like smoke and fell like snow. Larson’s third shot, aimed at the belly, took away most of the man’s knee, and spun him around like a dancer. Hit, the man fired off three more rounds, lost to the walls.

Larson reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped moving. His arm steady, he fired again, but the man was turned, his profile reduced. The porcelain figurine erupted off the table into a thousand floating shards.

A splash of flesh erupted out of the shooter’s back. He buckled forward and collapsed. Then the top stair splintered, as did the fifth stair down.

Larson had not fired either of those shots. Montgomery had given him the wrong head count.

A younger man appeared at the top of the stairs, a black semiautomatic gripped in both hands, arms extended. Eyes squinted nearly shut. Early, early twenties, still with bad acne. Freckles. Reddish hair. He looked like an altar boy, not a killer. Fired a gun like one as well. He’d shot the other one-accidentally, no doubt-while wildly ru

Larson dropped him with single round, a gut-shot that staggered him back and pushed him to sitting against the wall by the table where the figurine had been. He stared straight ahead as he slumped to the side and fell still.

Larson moved into the downstairs hall for cover.

“Dr. Markowitz?” he shouted, when he’d regained his breath. “ U.S. marshal. Hello? Dr. Markowitz? I’m coming upstairs. Hands on your head, knees on the floor, or I will shoot! Dr. Markowitz?”

He worked his way slowly up the stairs, his attention committed to the two on the top landing, wondering if either of them had enough left in their tanks to extend the firefight. Two steps later he felt fairly certain the younger guy was dead, and a sense of outright anger flooded him, for he’d felt compelled to defend himself, and the kid had no sense of guns whatsoever.

The first one, the one now folded forward in a pose of contrite prayer, had been gut-shot and was losing blood badly. He was unconscious, though somehow balanced and stuck in this position. Larson reached the landing, kicked the weapons away. One tumbled downstairs, clattering as it landed. He glanced around for a phone. Perhaps they could medevac this one to the mainland.

In searching for the phone, Larson spotted Markowitz, recognizing him even from the back. He shouted to him, “Dr. Markowitz! Hands where I can see them, please.”

It was only then that Larson noticed the small trickle of red below the man’s curly white hair. He recalled the first shooter’s wild shots as Larson had taken out his knee, the sound of bullets penetrating walls. One of those bullets had found Markowitz.

“Dr. Markowitz!”

The old man still had his fingers on the keyboard, but they weren’t moving. He was dead as well. Whatever progress he’d made in decrypting Laena remained to be determined.

Larson quickly but thoroughly searched the house, closet by closet, room by room, in search of Pe

As he stole through the night toward the marina, Larson called Montgomery at the Useppa I

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Having slept only two hours in the past twenty-four, Jimmy Oyer rose from his bunk at the back of the Peterbilt with the sour aftertaste of modafinil in his dry mouth and a raging temper bulging at his temples.

“What the fuck?” he screamed at whoever was banging on the driver’s side window. He cleared his eyes, squinted, and searched for his glasses. When he spotted the silver badge, he mumbled, “Oh, fuck it,” and climbed down and over the front seats to unlock and open the door. Cops!

A fist pounded on the window for a second time.

“Hold your horses…” he mumbled, collecting himself. He tried to think what he’d done wrong, if anything. There was that whore in the trailer park outside of Omaha, but he’d left her with an extra fifty after playing a little rough, and she’d told him that put things right enough. He fought against his clouded head. What kind of badge had that been? He hadn’t gotten a good look at the thing.

An interstate violation?

But hell, he’d stopped at every weigh station as required, and they’d signed off on this load-washers, dryers, dishwashers, and stovetops-so what the hell could the problem be?

He snorted and swallowed to clear his throat, found the lock, and opened the door.

“What is it?”

The guy reached up at him incredibly quickly-his hands like a point guard’s. Jimmy felt a line of heat on his exposed neck and clutched at it, as he found it hard to breathe. He sucked for air but it was his neck doing the breathing, not his nose or mouth. When he exhaled, he sprayed a mist of blood onto the window and door. He’d been cut! Coughing, he tried to call out, but it just sprayed more red rain.

The cop was a little guy with dark skin, a burned face, pinched eyes, and a three-day-old beard. He shoved Jimmy back and into the cab with incredible strength.

Jimmy carried a few extra pounds. His being lifted like this, up and over the seats and back onto the bunk, shocked him. He swung out with his right hand, but the intruder grabbed him by the wrist-with incredible strength-twisted and turned in one sharp motion, and Jimmy heard something snap as he felt more pain than he knew his arm could suffer. Then he was being bent and rolled over, and the little guy hog-tied him with the wire from the CB radio’s microphone.

Lying on his stomach like a rocking horse, in his own cab’s sleeper bed, Jimmy gasped wetly for air as he watched a pool of blood spread onto the bed pillow. His blood, from his neck.

As the guy left the cab, Jimmy’s lights were dimming. He rocked and groaned, but the pool beneath his head only widened with each passing second. Deep green and purple orbs formed at the edges of his eyesight, like holding a camera wrong and putting a finger in front of the lens. Jimmy regretted the whoring, regretted all the mistakes, wanted nothing more than to be home with his wife.