The Standoff Page 38

  After checking out the downstairs, he ventured up the stairs and went room to room there. He stopped in on Adonis in the master bedroom. She was handcuffed to the bed, still gagged. Her clothes were still on, everything but her boots and coat, which were sprawled in one of the corners of the room.

  She wasn’t crying, not like others he remembered, but tears had left streams of black mascara on her face. She looked blank and empty and desolate as if she knew Abel was going to kill her and her mind had already moved on. Except for her breathing and occasionally movement from side to side she looked like nothing more than a human husk.

  Tanis stayed at the door for a long while, staring at her.

  She stayed quiet.

  He entered the room, carrying one of the combat shotguns. He slowly walked across the carpet and stopped dead center in the room. He turned to an open hallway that passed a walk-in closet and led to a master bathroom with a huge rectangular mirror over double vanity sinks.

  He looked at himself in the mirror. Then his eyes panned down to Adonis behind him on the bed. She stared back at him.

  “Honey, you look so good! I mean, the general takes a lot of brides. I’ve seen all kinds. I’ve seen him take Muslim whores in Iraq. I’ve seen fathers hand over their daughters. And that’s here in the US. Our own country.”

  Tanis paused a beat, looked back at his own reflection, and opened his mouth. He stared at his teeth and then his beard. He held the shotgun one-handed and brushed down his beard with the other hand. Then he looked at her reflection in the mirror.

  He said, “Yeah, I’ve seen him take all kinds of whores. But never, ever—not once—have I seen him take a cop.”

  He looked back at his own reflection, turned his head from side to side, inspecting the rest of his face.

  “Then again. Those towelheads don’t let their women become cops. They don’t let them become much of anything over there.”

  He turned slowly and approached her. He passed the center point of the room and came right up to the foot of the bed.

  Adonis stayed still, stayed frozen. She only turned her head to keep him in her line of sight.

  Please, God, don’t come any closer , she thought.

  And for a moment, she thought he wouldn’t, but he did.

  Tanis walked down the side of the bed and stopped at her stomach. He peered down at her.

  “You are a fine-looking thing,” he said.

  He reached a gloved hand out and rubbed over her stomach, over her clothes. His gun hand moved slowly up her torso and over her breasts. It was light at first. But then he grabbed one. Cupped it. Squeezed it.

  Adonis squeezed her eyes shut. She bit down hard over the rag, hard enough to nearly bite her tongue through it.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t take it anymore, and her desolate, hopeless feelings vanished from her completely. She came back to life and kicked and wriggled around like a fish on the deck of a boat.

  Tanis retracted his hand like she might bite it.

  “Whoa!” he said, “Guess, you’re still with us.”

  She muttered and shouted at him, but no words came out. She made little sound. The rag stuffed in her mouth nearly muted her completely.

  Adonis stopped squirming around, stopped kicking, and quieted down.

  He said, “I’m not supposed to touch you before the general. It’s a rule. Sort of an SOP. That’s Standard Operating Procedure for you civilians.”

  “That’s why I keep my gloves on. You see. It’s a loophole. I’m not physically touching you. No skin on skin.”

  Adonis found no comfort in that. But she stayed still.

  Tanis said, “I’m not supposed to touch. No tasting either. No sampling. Not before. But after he’s done, we can all have our way with you.”

  She looked on at him in utter terror.

  Tanis said, “You know, you should be grateful. Know why?”

  Adonis said nothing.

  “DO YOU KNOW WHY?” he yelled.

  She shook her head. Another tear streamed down her face.

  He leaned down to her, leaving his hand on her breast. He got right to her face and stared into her eyes.

  He whispered, “Because once we’re through with you we have no more need of you. We don’t keep you alive. What for? So, the longer we take with you, the longer you live.”

  Tanis took his hand off her breast. He got back up, retreated, but only a foot. He stayed there for a long moment, staring at her.

  He said, “You know what though? I guess no one will know if I get a taste right now. I mean you’re not going to tell the general. Know how I know that? Because then I won’t want you after. Then you’ll die sooner. You don’t want to die, do you?”

  Chapter 50

  W IDOW WALKED around the farmhouse, past the parked vehicles, past Foster’s covered vehicle. He started from the north side and walked to the back, along the wall.

  Snow battered around him, making little puff sounds as it slammed into the yard and into the house. Luckily, he was mostly covered by the eaves and gutters on the roof. They hung out far enough to keep him from getting slammed in the head.

  He hugged the wall, staying tight, staying close to the brick.

  Widow didn’t figure that the weather outside classified as any kind of blizzard or anything, but an onset snowstorm? Sure. That was reasonable. The sky was gray enough to be called near dark, but not light enough to be called overcast. It was gray gloom, pure and simple.

  He didn’t expect all the exterior lights to be switched on, but some were sporadically, like they were randomly picked to be turned on when using the generator. Or it was just random, with no rhyme or reason. Knowing Abe as well as he did, either thing was possible.

  The dark grayness of it all was disorienting. The human body knows night from day and vice versa. It’s a seemingly natural affair. But the dark grayness that surrounded him, plus his being up all night, plus taking a mid-morning nap, plus all the coffee sent mixed signals to Widow’s brain. It made it hard to tell the time of day. He knew it was midday, but his five senses kept trying to convince him it was night.

  The terrain around the farm had lights posted high up on metal poles, overlooking the Christmas trees. These lights were all completely off, which made the farm look like something out of a horror movie. It was dark and creepy. He saw the dark shadows of Christmas trees everywhere. Combined with the gusts of wind and the snow, that old Stephen King movie came to mind—The Shining . He liked that movie, but it had terrified him as a kid. It was the atmosphere—that and the naked dead zombie woman in room 237.

  Thinking about the part where she turned old and decayed still gave him the shivers.

  He glanced up at each window on the second floor, every couple of yards. Most of the house was dark.

  Widow traced along the house wall until he reached the back corner, just near the fireplace. He skirted around the brick, pointing the M4 ahead, ready to shoot anything that moved. But nothing did.

  He came to a trellis that he had not seen before. There were rose bushes all along it, climbing up the sides to the roof. There were no roses on it, only the stems with thorns. The rose pedals had fallen off weeks ago.

  Widow stopped at the end of the trellis and saw the wooden protrusion that was the shed with the rifles he and Abe had gone into earlier. He knew the back slider door was beyond that.

  The Whites had a big family, not a world record or anything, but they had several members. He figured there were several options to keeping them hostage, but the best one was to let them all sit around their own family room, lumping them together, keeping them at gunpoint.

  In the living room, seated on their own furniture, they would feel safe and be docile. They were less likely to rebel if they were treated civilly. It was a false sense of safety. Widow knew that. But that was his guess. He didn’t think it was likely any of them would be upstairs, which made it his best point of entry.

  He held onto the M4 one-handed and scrambled up th
e trellis, hoping not to make a sound, hoping it would hold his weight.

  He made it up to a second-floor window and stopped on the roof above the trellis. He paused and glanced in the window. It must’ve been Dylan’s room because he saw a bunk bed and a TV with a gaming system linked up to it, not to mention the posters of rap groups, he’d never heard of, on the walls. He didn’t know any of them. There was also a poster on the wall that was probably controversial with Maggie. It was a female singer, half-dressed, showing her butt to the camera. She wore jeans, but still, it was alluring for an eight-year-old boy. It was a little more than Widow was allowed at that age.

  He couldn’t remember being into girls when he was so young. He remembered thinking they had cooties. Now, cooties or not, he thought they were worth the risk.

  Widow sat down on his haunches and reversed the M4, reared it back, ready to break the glass. He hoped the sound wasn’t loud, but these things were like Band-Aids, better to rip fast.

  He slammed the rifle forward but stopped an inch from the glass. He paused because he thought back to his eight-year-old self. He may not have had posters of half-naked girls on his walls, but he did remember being rebellious. He remembered not liking to follow the rules. He liked to be rebellious to take risks. One of those risks was sneaking out of his bedroom at night.

  He used to meet up with his friends and play Squish-Squash, down by the train tracks. They would place coins and marbles and rocks and anything else they found on the train tracks. Then they would sneak a couple of beers and pass it around while they waited to see the train pass through at midnight to squish whatever the object was.

  They used a ball-bearing once. They thought it might fire off into two different directions. But it didn’t. It got squished like everything else.

  Widow stopped from bashing in the glass and looked at the locks on the window. They weren’t latched.

  Amateur mistake , he thought. Dylan was risking getting caught by being so careless. Widow’s own mother would’ve busted him for sure.

  Overall, Dylan had the perfect setup for sneaking out. He probably climbed out his bedroom window, onto the roof, and down the trellis, same as Widow had come up.

  Widow set the rifle down and slid the window up, slowly, using both hands. He picked up the rifle and climbed into Dylan’s room. He shut the window behind him. He scanned the room and the door, in case it suddenly opened. It didn’t.

  Widow went through the room to the door to the hallway.

  He remembered that Dylan’s room was near his grandparents’ master and Walter’s room. Foster’s and A.M.W.’s, the dead son, were on the other side, nearer to the guest room he had napped in earlier.

  Widow opened the door all the way and stepped out into the hall. It was show time.

  He moved across the hall, stepping lightly, but also thinking about Abby reacting to his wearing dirty, snowy boots on her clean floors.

  Widow planted his back to the wall and held the rifle ready to shoot. The muzzle was at eye level.

  He walked forward toward the direction of the stairs, until he heard voices behind him in the master bedroom. He also heard what sounded like someone jumping on a bed, or like a kid pounding his fists and feet on the mattress, throwing a tantrum.

  He spun around and headed that way first. He hadn’t expected anyone to be upstairs, not any of the hostages. And he was half-right because in the open doorway, he saw one of the Athenians—had to be. The guy stood over one of the agents he met earlier. It was Toni Adonis.

  She was handcuffed to the bed’s headboard. She was laid out at the start of a horrifying rape scene. Rape was the intent. That was obvious.

  Widow breathed a sigh of relief because he wasn’t too late. She was still clothed. Her pants were still on. Her top was still on. But her coat and boots and Glock and shoulder holster rig were all gone. He didn’t see the Glock or the holster anywhere in the room, which made him wonder if he’d missed them back at Pine Farms. They were probably stripped from her and tossed in the barn somewhere.

  Adonis stared at the Athenian standing above her. Widow saw sweat on her face. She had been the one making the tantrum noises. She had been struggling to get free or get away. The voices he had heard was only one voice—the Athenian’s.

  He talked out loud like it was half to himself and half to taunt Adonis.

  Widow caught the end of whatever the Athenian said and whatever had just happened. He saw the Athenian take his hand off her from just groping her chest.

  The guy stood over her, saying more, Widow couldn’t make it out. It was low, like a whisper.

  The guy had a vicious shotgun in his hands. Widow didn’t recognize the model. It had all kinds of aftermarket features on it. It wasn’t a weapon Widow wanted fired at him or fired at all. The blast would tell the whole house he was there, like Shep’s shotgun had warned them earlier, only worse.

  But Widow made a mistake. He paused too long in the doorway and the Athenian saw him in his peripherals.

  Both the Athenian and Adonis saw him.

  The Athenian raised his head and looked right at Widow. Adonis turned her head and looked at him. They both stared at him.

  The expression on Adonis’s face shifted dramatically, as dramatically as anyone’s face had ever turned. She went from utter terror to extreme hope and then unbelievable exhilaration. It was the adrenaline spiking in her brain from seeing him standing there. It was the kind of emotion that rescuers saw every day when they saved someone from certain death.

  The Athenian’s face was the opposite. Now, terror reflected in his expression.

  The Athenian’s brain overloaded with questions.

  Hadn’t they swept the whole house? How could they miss this large guy? Who the hell was he?

  The Athenian reacted and raised the combat shotgun to kill the guy in the doorway. Unfortunately for him, Widow already had the M4 ready and pointed straight at him.

  Widow squeezed the trigger.

  Bullets blasted out of the muzzle, through the sound suppressor, and through the Athenian. The gun was suppressed, but a suppressor on a weapon like that didn’t silence the noise. It wasn’t dead quiet. It rattled loud like the sound of ten rattlesnakes.

  The bullets sprayed out and gutted Tanis straight through his abdomen, tearing through flesh and bone and organs. Blood sprayed out—first, from the front of his gut and then from behind him, through the exit wounds. Blood sprayed out all over the wall behind him, part of the glass on the window, and across Adonis on the bed.

  Widow took his finger off the trigger and watched the Athenian crumple backward and forward, which folded his knee back and underneath him like a papier-mâché man.

  Blood seeped and squirted and spilled out of multiple bullet holes in his gut and thighs. It turned black within seconds, as gut shots often do.

  Widow walked into the room, keeping the M4 pointed at the Athenian. He shut the door behind him. In case someone came up the rear, at least the door would be between them. He glanced at the bathroom to make sure no one was there. The room was empty except for the two, other people, but then the Athenian uttered one last question, and died, leaving only Adonis and Widow left.

  The Athenian asked, “Who are you?”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  The Athenian’s eyes went blank. Someone was there and then he wasn’t.

  Adonis started saying something, but it was all gagged utterances.

  Widow lowered the M4 and went over to her. He pulled the gag out of her mouth.

  She said, “Get me out of these!”

  “Where’s the key?”

  “They were on Shep. Brooks has them.”

  Widow looked at her dumbfounded.

  “I don’t know these names.”

  “Uh! Brooks is the black guy with Abel. Shep was with Highway Patrol. You met him earlier.”

  Widow fished a set of keys out of his pocket.

  “Here’s keys to the Highway Patrol car.”

  “Yes!
That’s them on the end. The little ring.”

  Widow took the small handcuff key and unlocked her.

  She sat straight up.

  “Is he dead?” she asked, glancing at the body beyond Widow’s waist.

  “He’s not sending out any Christmas cards this year.”

  Adonis sat up, taking the handcuffs off her wrists as fast as she could. She rubbed her wrists, which were legitimately bruised from her trying to wriggle out of the cuffs.

  “They took my boots,” she said.

  “Where are they?”

  She shrugged.

  Widow asked, “Can you walk okay?”

  “I’m not dead.”

  She stood up off the bed. Without the boots, she was an entire foot and change shorter than him. She could stand behind him in a police lineup and be completely invisible.

  Widow glanced down at her feet.

  “At least you still have your socks on.”

  “Yeah. At least.”

  Adonis went over to Tanis and cursed at his corpse. For a moment, Widow thought she might either spit on it or kick it. He wouldn’t have blamed her. But she did neither. Instead, she sidestepped to the left and scooped up the combat shotgun. She turned and pumped it, ejecting a perfectly good shell that was chambered. He didn’t know why. Maybe she was making sure it was loaded and ready to go. Or maybe she was venting her anger, making a dramatic statement. Pumping a shotgun was good for dramatic statements.

  Adonis said, “Thank you for saving my life, Cousin Jack.”

  “Call me, Widow. I’m not their cousin. I’m nobody’s cousin.”

  “No shit!” she said, ironically, “Okay. Widow. What now? There’re still five of them left. And they’re ex-Special Forces.”

  “Former Special Forces. We don’t say ex. We prefer former. It’s an honor thing.”

  “These assholes don’t got no honor.”

  “True.”

  “So, what now?”

  “We can’t call for help. They’ve seen to that. Probably took out a cell phone tower. I know they took out the local transformer.”