Blood Trust

NINE

JACK MOVED the young man deeper into the rear of the shop to make certain no one overheard them.

“Go on,” he urged.

“Underground,” Thatë said.

“How far underground?” Jack asked.

“Not far enough … now.” Thatë made a disgusted sound at the back of his throat.

Jack saw that McKinsey had turned around and, staring through the front window, was watching him and Thatë talk. He wondered if McKinsey could lip-read. Turning his head away, he said to Thatë, “I want you to move into a section of the store where we can’t be seen from the street.”

Thatë did as Jack asked, and Jack soon followed him.

“I don’t like those two,” Thatë said, clearly referring to McKinsey and Naomi.

“You don’t like me, either.”

“Yeah, but them I’d knife—for real.”

“You really are a badass.”

Thatë didn’t know how to take that, so he did not respond.

“About the octagon symbol,” Jack prompted.

“A club.”

“I know all about clubs.”

“Not this kind of club.” Thatë’s eyes cut away, as if he’d rather be anywhere but here.

“And that would be?”

“Shit, don’t make me say it.”

“If I don’t,” Jack said, “someone else with a uniform and a much different attitude will.”

Thatë put his head down. Maybe this kind of life was getting too much for him, maybe he wasn’t cut out for it.

“Nothing legal about it.”

Jack took a step toward him. “You’d better have more for me than that.”

“Hold on. Don’t lose your shit all over everything.” The boy worried his lower lip, which was growing redder by the moment. “The club has a name. The Stem.”

Jack was going to say that he never heard of a club named the Stem, but instead he held his tongue. Something here didn’t feel right, the way it hadn’t felt right at the Billy Warren crime scene. He studied Thatë’s face, which held an expression of anticipation. In this situation it was the wrong emotion, as if he was waiting to see if “the Stem” held a special meaning for Jack.

Jack looked at the octagons—the badge and the pendant. He could focus on the one word that was identical to both of them. After a short struggle, he said to Thatë, “Pronounce this word for me.”

“What?”

“This word.” Jack tapped the octagons.

Thatë’s eyes slid away again for a moment, and Jack could read him now. He might as well take advantage of the teen’s nervousness.

“Speak it!” he ordered sharply.

“Rrjedhin.” The word almost caught in Thatë’s throat, but he managed to splutter it out.

That was a word in a language with which Jack was familiar. Without missing a beat, he said, “Sa jveç jeni?”

RUDY SMELLED unpleasantly of blood and sweat. He was as heavy as a Brahma bull and, lucky for Alli, as ungainly. His wounds had both maddened and impaired him. Blood streamed down his face, forcing him to blink continually to clear his vision, and it seemed as if his left knee, where Alli had struck him with the ash shovel, was shattered, because he dragged the leg behind him like a wrecked ship. But as she tried to get up, he used it like a club, the massive limb slamming against her hip so that they both cried out in pain at the same time.

But Rudy’s fist was already in her face, the heel of his hand pushing the underside of her jaw back, back, exposing the soft, vulnerable flesh of her throat. She heard a deep, guttural growl that threatened to turn her insides to water. She fought the desire to close her eyes, to let go, to release herself utterly into the undertow of his fury-fueled power and strength. There was a terrible, enervating moment when she experienced the female’s sense of acquiescing in the face of the male’s overwhelming brute physicality, both of body and personality. But then, remembering who she was, how close to both death and madness she had been, she shook herself awake, shook herself alive, and drove her forefinger straight up Rudy’s left nostril, pushing farther even as his head whipped back and forth like a bronco trying to unseat its rider. The soft, moist flesh of his sinus yielded to her fingertip, the arc of her nail slicing through tissue. Up farther into the bone of his skull, searching for the cavity that would end the threat to her life.

With a herculean effort, he threw her off him, clear over a hedge of azalea bushes. She rolled into a thick stand of pitch pines just beyond, the needles sweeping across her face like bony fingers. She could hear him snorting and moaning, flailing to regain his feet.

“I know where you are, little bitch! You’re beginning to believe you’ll get away, but fuck if you will!”

Rolling through the bed of fallen needles, she reached behind her for the .38, but it was gone. She must have lost it when Rudy had tossed her. Rudy began to crash through the azaleas, dragging his left leg behind him. Then she remembered the cell phone.

Pulling it out of the pocket of her jeans, she saw to her immense relief that there was a signal, now that she was outside the house. Her heart hammered wildly as she punched in Jack’s cell number.

She groaned as it rang and rang. She prayed for him to answer. Instead, she got his voice mail. “I’m at my Uncle’s Hank’s hunting retreat in Virginia. The guards he hired are after me.” She recited the address. “I’m out back with a fucking ginormous dirtbag on my ass. Please, please, please get me the fuck out of here.”

HOW OLD are you? That was what Jack had asked.

“Shtatëmbëdhjetë,” Thatë said. Seventeen.

“Ju jeni shqiptar.” You’re Albanian.

“Si nuk ju flas shqip?” How do you speak my language?

Jack smiled and tapped the side of his head. “You’re going to take me to the Stem.”

All the color drained from Thatë’s face. “No.”

“Yes,” Jack insisted.

“Ju lutem, mos bëni mua.” Thatë began to shiver. “Ata do të vrasin mua.”

“Who’ll kill you?” Jack asked. “Who are you so afraid of?”

But the teenager was in a panic, shaking his head back and forth, and Jack suspected he’d gotten everything out of him he could.

“All right.” Jack handed him a pad and pen. “Don’t say another word, just give me the Stem’s address.”

Thatë’s hand shook as he wrote a line on the pad. Jack took the writing implements back, then he asked for the teen’s cell. He took note of the number, then added his own cell number to the other’s phone book. “Now we know how to get in touch with each other. Mirë?”

“Mirë.” Thatë nodded weakly.

The vibration of Jack’s cell had become too insistent for him to ignore any longer. He hadn’t wanted to be disturbed, especially by Dennis Paull, who he was concerned might be calling him to move up tomorrow’s departure time. Jack needed every hour he could get in D.C.

But it wasn’t Paull; it was Alli. Shit, he should have picked up the call right away. Even as he was listening to her desperate message on his voice mail, he was heading out of Dime-Store Slim’s. He heard Naomi’s voice asking a question behind him, but there was no time to answer. He slammed open the door and sprinted out into the rain-slick street.

ALLI, SHIVERING with the chill rain and the tsunami of adrenaline racing through her, lay in the shelter of the copse of pitch pines, to give Rudy less of a target. There was no use running. He had a gun and she didn’t. The minute she turned tail he would spot her and bring her down. Better to wait here and think of how to avoid being found.

And then, as she heard him rooting around in the fringes of the evergreens, she realized her error. She was thinking like a rat or a mouse—like the prey. She forced herself to forget that Rudy was armed. How would she deal with him? It was up to her, she knew. Even if Jack picked up the voice mail right away, who knew where he was and how fast he could get here? No, she couldn’t—she shouldn’t!—count on him. It was up to her to stop Rudy.

The obtrusion of a root caused her to shift her position. Rolling over, she found herself momentarily looking up into the webbed branches of the pitch pines. That’s when the idea came to her. Rudy was drawing ever nearer. Scrambling to her feet, she grabbed hold of the lowest solid-looking branch and swung up. Though their wood was soft, pitch pines were easy climbs, with plenty of long, spreading branches. Carefully, she moved upward until she sat on a thick, nearly horizontal branch perhaps fifteen feet above the carpet of needles. A quick glance above her head convinced her that there was no point in climbing higher.

Staring at the roughly circular area below her, she waited for Rudy. Not the prey now—the hunter.

Soon enough, she heard him picking his way through the underbrush. He certainly was making no effort to be quiet, and when he came into view she realized why. In his left hand he held the .38 she had lost. His own .38 was in his right. He knew she was unarmed; he had no need to be discreet.

She knew she had to time this right; she wouldn’t have a second chance. She bolstered her courage with the belief that her small size would work in her favor. As he came under her perch, she slid off and fell with legs spread. Landing on his shoulder, she clamped her thighs tight around either side of his head.

He staggered with the shock and the unexpected weight, but instinct took over instantaneously. He raised both weapons, firing them blindly. Alli knocked them sideways, then reached down to his face. The best wound is a new wound, she thought, as she attacked his nostril again, inflicting such pain that he roared and tried to use the .38s as cudgels, battering them blindly against her thighs and hips.

But she had got her grip and wasn’t going to let go. His head raised up in order to lessen the pain, but all this did was give her finger easier access. As she plunged it in all the way, his eyes rolled up, his left knee gave out, and he toppled over. He swung out wildly as he fell, the side of the gun barrel in his right hand slamming into her ribs, knocking the breath out of her. She tumbled off him, lost her hold on his nostril, and fell heavily to the ground.

On hands and knees, bleeding profusely from his nose, Rudy crabbed his way after her. He was almost upon her when she grabbed a broken branch. It was old and rotten, but it would have to do. She swung it in a shallow arc into his left knee. Rudy screamed, grabbing for the agonized joint. Alli snatched up the .38 he had let go of and, reversing it, brought the heavy butt down on his temple once, twice, three times.

It was some moments before she realized that Rudy had stopped moving. She stared down at his ugly face. Blood still oozed from his nose, and a thick dribble of it stained one corner of his mouth. Without thinking, she took his own .38 and lay it beside Conlon’s. The two weapons looked incongruous on their bed of rough, brown needles, as if they were now without will, without a reason to exist. She wished they would dissolve into the earth.

Staring into Rudy’s bloated face, she was never more repulsed. His aggression was enough to put her off men forever. She was reminded of a story Emma had told her of Attila the Hun’s death, which, Emma had said, with a grim laugh, had served him right. He had died when a major artery burst in mid-thrust, as he was deflowering one of his beautiful virgins. She wished the same fate for Rudy, a true Vandal in the historical sense, who had delighted in terrorizing her.

Alli found she was weeping. All around her the rain dripped and slithered. She tasted it on her lips, felt it sliding down the back of her neck. Both the rain and her tears tasted of blood. She knew she should move, but she could not. Like the guns, she lay on the bed of needles, without will or volition, resting, heart pounding in her chest, waiting.…

That was how Jack found her.

She looked at him as he knelt down to scoop her up. “My hero,” she whispered. And, then, in a louder voice, “You look like crap.”

Jack laughed, and at that moment cop cars, sirens blaring, started to converge on Henry Holt Carson’s house from both east and west.