Saint/Sinner

Chapter 7

“Go with Apollo!” she shouted after Lucy. “Stay with him! Don’t leave his side!”

To her credit, Lucy did exactly as she was instructed, and the girl and dog vanished into the trees. Allie’s last glimpse of them was Lucy’s jeans being swallowed up by the darkness. Then she was turning, looking back toward the house.

The smallest of the three gunmen, Jerry, came out at the same time she finished her turn. He had the MP5SD in one hand, the other pushing the door open, and was sticking his head out when she fired. Her round hit the door almost a foot over his head (Dammit!), sending splinters flicking at his face, and made him duck. Despite his awkward position, the man somehow managed to twist, turn, and dart back inside the house as she fired a second shot.

Another miss!

Allie wanted to think the reason she had missed that first shot was because she was too far away — almost forty yards. It had been a while since she had fired a gun and wasn’t prepared for the recoil. It didn’t help that she was still flooded with adrenaline from the brief gunfight with Jack inside the house. Then there was all the running, which had resulted in her heartbeat sledgehammering against her chest, further throwing off her aim.

Of course, then she’d missed the second shot, too…

What’s your excuse for that?

She ran for the woods, heading in the same direction that Apollo and Lucy had gone seconds earlier. She was very close to the tree line — less than twenty yards — but she hadn’t made half of it when she heard a sharp whining sound and the ground began kicking dirt into the air around her.

She stuck her gun hand back and squeezed off another shot without seeing what she was shooting at, hoping it might do enough to throw off Jerry’s aim—

No such luck, because the buzzing bullets were getting closer and dirt was ricocheting off her pant legs and shirt and cheeks—

Now or never!

She dived the last few yards and almost slammed into a tree as she entered the woods, landing against a trunk with the back of her head even as the gnarled bark above her was shredded by Jerry’s continued volley. The smell of burning foliage filled her nostrils as the mercenary continued to raze the area with the submachine gun, 9mm rounds slicing through branches and leaves at an impossible rate.

Allie didn’t scramble up to her feet. No, that would have just made her a bigger target, and it was clear Jerry was firing high on purpose, expecting her to pick herself up and make a run for it. Instead, she crawled away from the tree, heading deeper into the woods even though she couldn’t exactly see where she was going. It was a lot darker on this side of the tree line, but maybe that was only because her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the sudden absence of light yet.

She knew Jerry’s MP5SD had a thirty-round magazine, but she’d be damned if the weapon seemed to keep firing and firing, with the smell of burning leaves clinging to her skin like a permanent thing.

Then, mercifully, the trees stopped breaking apart and the (too close) buzzing finally stopped.

Thank you, Jesus, I’m still alive!

She stumbled to her feet and risked a glance over one shoulder, but could only see bright lights from the house’s front yard penetrating the tree line in slivers. If Jerry was still out there (or closer), she couldn’t tell at the moment.

Allie began jogging through the woods, going around trees and ducking under branches. She was moving on automatic pilot, thankful she had ditched her pumps for tennis shoes, pants, and a sweater in the name of comfort for the long drive over here. She gripped the Glock tightly, the heft of the weapon reassuring but also noticeably lighter in her hand.

She’d fired five times, and Jones had squeezed off one back at the house. That left her with…at least six (?) — possibly less, maybe even seven. She’d know for sure when she took a peek at the magazine, which wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. At least not with Jerry in pursuit. She didn’t think for one second that he would give up now.

Soft earth felt good under her sneakers, and she ducked under another low-hanging branch before coming to a complete stop.

Where the hell am I?

She turned around in a full 360 degrees, remembering the last time she had found herself lost in the woods.

Beckard. A cabin. Those college kids.

She shook the thoughts away and concentrated on what Walter had said to her while he was pitching the vacation.

“It’s super private,” he’d said. “Private land surrounded by woods. It’ll just be the three of us. You, me, and Lucy.”

“What about your neighbors?” she had asked.

“I’m not sure. They mostly keep to themselves.”

“You’ve never met them?”

“Out there? Are you crazy? You never know what kind of wackos are living next door,” he had added with a chuckle.

Walter’s neighbors. Right now she needed one of them to have heard her gunshots and call the police. If not the locals, then the state police. Someone should have heard those gunshots. For God’s sake, she had fired three times.

She stood perfectly still and listened.

Police sirens. Where the hell were the police sirens?

Maybe she was being too impatient. It would take time for the neighbors to call the gunshots in. Then more time for the locals to show up. Thirty minutes? An hour? By morning?

Snap.

It was subtle, except she was hardly breathing and it would have taken a ninja to sneak up on her at the moment. She spun around, lifting the Glock, finger against the trigger when she saw the coat of white fur emerging out of the shadows.

Allie sighed. “I almost shot you.”

Apollo trotted toward her, stopping and dropping down to his hind legs and presenting the top of his head. She gave him a wry smile, then crouched and scratched him with her left hand, while keeping her right — and the gun — at the ready next to her.

There was another snap—this one much louder — from the shadows, just before Lucy walked around a tree, rubbing her hands up and down her arms and looking cold despite the almost perfect weather. Her eyes darted left, then right, before finding Allie’s, then quickly moved away again, searching for signs of danger around them.

“You okay?” Allie asked.

The girl nodded. “You?”

“I’m fine. Everyone’s fine.” She focused on Apollo. “And where were you all this time?”

The dog, of course, didn’t answer her.

“Fine, keep your secrets,” she said.

His eyes were partially closed as she continued scratching him under the chin. There were splashes of not-quite-dry blood along the white fur around his head and neck. Jones’s blood. She wished she could have said the sight of Apollo mauling Jones back at the house had been horrifying, but the truth was it wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before. The dog’s previous owner had raised him to be violent, and there was nothing she could do about it now. Good for her, as it turned out, because a dog without Apollo’s killer instincts might not have been able to take down a man as large as Jones.

Allie looked up at Lucy. “You guys were supposed to keep running.”

“I did, but he stopped,” Lucy said.

Allie smiled. “He’s a bad dog, that’s why.”

Apollo lifted his head so she could get a better angle at his chin. She did her best to scratch him down there while avoiding the spots of Jones’s blood, but even when she got blood on her fingers she discovered she wasn’t nearly as queasy as she thought she would be.

“What about Dad?” Lucy asked.

Allie looked up at her, Walter’s absence hitting her for the very first time since they fled the house. He was still back there, in the other guest bedroom.

She stood up, Apollo doing the same. He was suddenly alert again, ears standing up at attention as his eyes scoured the darkness around them.

She looked back toward the house — or where she thought it was. The truth was, she hadn’t fully oriented herself to the wood’s layout and there was a very good chance she was turned in the wrong direction.

“Allie?” Lucy said. “What about Dad?”

“We have to go for help.”

“But Dad…”

“I know. But we have to go for help first.”

She walked over to Lucy and, putting the gun in her front waistband, reached over and laid both hands on the girl’s shoulders and squeezed. Lucy eyed her back, but the rebellious teen who had made Allie question if dating Walter was worth the headache had been erased entirely from those brown eyes that were so much like her father’s. And just as big, too.

Walter…

“He’s safe for now,” Allie said. “It’s us I’m worried about.”

“How do you know he’s safe?” Lucy asked.

“They want your dad for something; something important enough to go through all this trouble. They were going to use us as leverage against him because they couldn’t afford to hurt him. So believe me, Walter’s fine back at the house. But he might not be forever, so what we need to do is go find help. Call the police, if they aren’t already on their way. That’s what Walter would want us to do. Most of all, he’d want you to be safe, and that means not running back to the house.”

She couldn’t tell if Lucy believed her, but the girl nodded after a few seconds. “You’re right. We should go call the police. That’s what Dad would do.”

Allie nodded, then glanced over at Apollo. “Anything?”

Apollo was turned back toward the house, and if he’d heard her, he didn’t show it.

“I guess not,” she said.

“Does he ever answer you?” Lucy asked.

“Not really, no.”

Without a word, Apollo turned around and walked over to them, then on ahead as if he already knew where they needed to go.

And maybe he did, she thought. Apollo, more than her and definitely more than Lucy, had spent a lot of time in woods like this one. It helped that his former owner had been a devoted hunter.

“Come on,” Allie said. “Follow the dog.”

She took the Glock out from her waistband and let it hang at her side (just in case), then threw a quick look over her shoulder. There was no one behind them, definitely no Jerry with a reloaded MP5SD or Jack with his assault rifle. But that didn’t mean they weren’t back there, somewhere, tracking them.

And further back, between her and her pursuers, was Walter.

What did you do, Walter? What did you do to put us in this mess?

But there were no answers to be found behind them, so she turned back around.

Ahead of them, Apollo was slipping into a dark patch of shadows, and she and Lucy followed wordlessly.