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He grabbed Joh
“Don’t go anywhere.”
He pushed Joh
“You think I didn’t know about this? This is my house.” He struck Joh
Ken straightened and Joh
“Where’s your daddy, now?”
Holloway crossed the room, pipe up, and Joh
His mother thrashed as Ken hefted the pipe.
Joh
And then the front door exploded. It slammed back, loose on its hinges, and Levi Freemantle filled the frame. Yellow eyes shot with red, breathing hard, his shoulders were so wide they touched wood on either side. He looked at the raised pipe, then stepped over the threshold. Holloway shrunk in his shadow, stepped backward, and his perfect shoe touched Joh
Freemantle moved into the room and the smell of him filled the air. There was no limp in his step, no hesitation. “The little ones are gifts,” he said, and Holloway swung the pipe as the giant man came for him. But as tall as Ken stood, he was a child to Freemantle.
Just like a child.
Freemantle caught the pipe with one hand, twisted it away, and brought it from the hip in a backhand blow that drove eight pounds of lead into Holloway’s throat. Holloway staggered once, then dropped to his knees in front of Joh
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Hunt braked the car, cut the wheel right and felt the end drift. The car was heavy, still going fast. It slid in gravel, then shuddered across washboard dirt. Hunt took in the Escalade with its crushed fender, the front door standing wide, the darkness beyond it. He racked the transmission into park and hit the yard at a dead run, weapon out and hot. Ten feet from the door, a hot wind touched his face. Shadows flitted across the ground.
Hunt broke the plane of the door and saw Katherine, bound on the floor. Silver tape covered her mouth, and she was sucking hard through her nose. Joh
Lead pipe. Cinder block.
Same thing.
The gun tracked right.
“Don’t,” Joh
But Hunt took the shot. He fired a single round that hit high and right. It was not a kill shot. Hunt wanted him down but alive.
The shot staggered Freemantle. It drove him back, but he stayed up. Hunt stepped closer, weapon trained, but Freemantle made no aggressive move. A strange emotion crossed his face, confusion, then something like joy-sunlight, if such a thing were possible. His hand rose, fingers spread. He looked past Hunt, to the clear blue sky and the high yellow sun. He stood long enough to say a single word.
“Sofia.”
Then he folded at the knees, dead before he hit the floor.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
When Hunt called it in, there was no way to keep it quiet. He needed cops, paramedics, the medical examiner. Word spread like a brush fire, and the reporters made a mass exodus from the road in front of the Jarvis site. An escaped convict was dead, so was the richest man in town. The bodies were in Joh
Joh
Again.
Hunt had to cordon off the street. He gave himself a quarter mile on each side of the house and put marked cars across the narrow road. He called in for barricades and had them erected, too. The day moved to midafternoon.
Hunt asked a few necessary questions, then gave Katherine and Joh
Holloway was dead.
Freemantle, dead.
Hunt thought of Yoakum, and wanted to ask Joh
“Another fatal shooting,” the Chief said.
“I didn’t hit him that hard. He shouldn’t be dead.”
“But he is.”
“So fire me.”
The Chief stood for a long minute. “One more dead convict.”
“What about Holloway?”
The Chief stared at Holloway’s swollen features. “He was beating the boy?”
“And the mother.”
Sadness moved on the Chief’s face, disappointment. “I think that maybe Yoakum was right.”
“How’s that?”
“Maybe darkness is a cancer of the human heart.”
“Not always,” Hunt said. “And not with everyone.”
“Maybe you’re right.” The Chief turned away. “Or not.”
An hour later, Hunt gave the news about Joh
“Was he wearing his wedding ring?”
Hunt didn’t know. He called over the medical examiner and spoke quietly as Katherine watched her son, who was still being treated at the rear of an ambulance. When Hunt approached, she faced him again, and she was as thin as glass.
“Yes,” Hunt said, and he watched her bend.
When Joh
“He was looking for Alyssa,” Hunt said, then paused, the moment full of meaning. “Just like you.”