Motion to Kill

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

“How many?” Kelly asked.

She dressed with an economy of movements, ignoring Blues’s presence. He kept his back to her, but Mason couldn’t. Watching her put her shirt back on was nearly as mesmerizing as taking it off. The sound of shells rattling into shotgun magazines finally got him moving.

“There’s a black Escalade blocking the road right where it comes into the clearing. Four guys got out, one short and heavy. He was giving orders to the other three. I figure we’ve got a couple of minutes, tops.”

Kelly snapped her service pistol around her waist. Blues dumped extra shells into three ammunition bags, slinging one over his shoulder, handing them the other two along with their shotguns as the woods came alive with animal sounds telegraphing news of the advancing party.

The air in the cabin thickened. Beads of sweat dripped from Blues’s neck. Kelly’s hair was matted along the edge of her cheeks. They were wired but under control. Mason’s stomach churned as he picked up his shotgun and ammo pouch.

Kelly slipped into the front room and peered out the edge of a window. The moonlight illuminated the clearing enough to make out shapes but not faces.

“That’s got to be Camaya standing next to the Escalade. I don’t recognize the others,” she whispered over her shoulder. “They’re at the edge of the clearing. There’s about a hundred feet of open space between them and the cabin.” She crouched below the window line and scooted back into the bedroom. “They’ll see us if we climb out the windows. We’ll go out the back way,” she said, opening the closet door. Blues started to roll his eyes until Mason explained.

“Trapdoor. Every high-class cabin has one.”

Kelly knelt and pressed down on a plank in the center of the closet floor with her right hand. The other end rose, revealing a steel ring that she grasped with her left and pulled up. A two-foot-square lid swung open on hidden hinges. She rested it against the wall of the closet. Holding her shotgun and ammo bag, she dropped into the crawl space below the cabin and disappeared. Blues went next, followed by Mason, who crouched and pulled the trapdoor closed over them.

Kelly was on all fours against the base of the rear wall, running her hands along the stones that formed the foundation for the cabin.

“Got it,” she said, pushing open a square section of rock that swung outward. She slipped through the opening and, an instant later, stuck her head back in and motioned them to follow.

Running close to the ground, Kelly led Blues and Mason across the open field behind the cabin, not stopping until the woods camouflaged them. They turned around in time to hear automatic fire ripping through the inside of the cabin.

“Bastards!” Kelly said.

“What now?” Mason asked.

“My Trans-Am and Kelly’s pickup are out front, so they know we’re here somewhere. Once they clear the cabin, they’ll come looking for us.”

Blues was calm, somehow satisfied with their predicament. His eyes shone as he shifted his weight lightly from right to left like a boxer keeping loose before the first bell, sweat trickling off his face. He was ready.

Kelly put a soothing hand around Blues’s arm as she drew both men near her, focused on the fight they were about to have.

“Lou and I will circle around to the north. Blues, you take the south side. They won’t find the trapdoor, so they’ve got to come out the front. If we can catch them in the open, we can take them. Don’t shoot unless they don’t give us a choice.”

Moving slowly to make as little noise as possible, Mason and Kelly threaded their way through the trees, watching the open space around the cabin for signs of company. There was no path to follow. The moonlight couldn’t penetrate the tangled vines and thorny bushes hidden in the dark that grabbed at their legs and feet. The few minutes it took to reach the front of the cabin could have been an hour.

Through the trees, Mason could see the yard in front of the cabin and imagined its oval shape to be a clock, the cabin at twelve o’clock. He and Kelly were hiding at three o’clock. The Escalade was parked in the mouth of the drive at the six-o’clock mark, engine still running.

Camaya leaned against the back, taillights lighting his face with a red glow. Blues’s Trans-Am and Kelly’s pickup were parallel parked at the edge of the grass, clockwise from the Escalade. Mason guessed Blues was somewhere between nine o’clock and midnight.

From inside the cabin came the sounds of reckless searching. Cursing followed the crash of furniture upended and glass broken. Mason knew they were looking for both him and the disks. He was glad that he was outside and that the disks were safe with Riley and Sandra.

“The angrier they get, the better off we are. It’ll make them careless,” Kelly whispered.

When they were through kicking the front door off its hinges and stepped outside, Mason and Kelly eased to within a few feet of the clearing and crouched behind a mound of limestone boulders.

“Are you going to invite them to surrender?” Mason asked.

“I doubt if they’ll RSVP. If they start shooting, I’ll return fire first. That way, I can reload when it’s your turn.”

Mason’s throat was dry and tight, but his grip on the shotgun was slippery and wet. He marveled at the odds that he would be waiting to kill someone who was waiting to kill him for the second time in two nights. He was no more skilled with a shotgun than he was with a toilet-tank lid. Only this time, he was ready; willing to level the gun, squeeze the trigger, and watch a man die. That was the true marvel, he realized. The night before, he hadn’t thought about killing, only surviving. Now all he thought about was killing.