Slaves to Evil - 11 Page 7

  For a moment he actually thought he heard growling. Then he realized it was a low groan—a male voice, groaning with pleasure. Which meant the guy was distracted.

  He burst in to find a beefy man with his pants around his ankles, getting a blow job from a blond girl who didn’t look more than thirteen. Matt realized that he recognized him from a picture accompanying a news story he’d read about Lennox. It was hizzoner himself, Mayor Perkins, looking almost comically surprised by the interruption. Matt’s fist shot out, delivering a very satisfying uppercut to the mayor’s jaw. The man’s pants caught around his feet and he fell to the floor hard.

  Matt figured that the thud would attract attention, and he was right. In a moment there was a soft knock at the door and a voice asking, “Is everything all right, sir?”

  Matt stood by the doorway and gave a pained moan. Officer O’Neill quickly stepped in. Matt pressed the barrel of his gun to O’Neill’s cheek, just above the line of rot extending from his neck. “Not a sound.”

  He moved O’Neill inside and closed the door. They were in another bedroom, this one with more adult decor. The bed had an elaborate wrought-iron frame. He gestured toward the foot of the bed with his gun and told O’Neill, “Put your arm through the frame.”

  The young cop glared at him. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with.”

  “Actually, I do.” Matt aimed right between the cop’s eyes. O’Neill looked at him, evaluating how seriously to take this guy. Then he threaded one arm between the bars.

  Matt pulled the handcuffs off the man’s belt and snapped one around his wrist. He turned to the other man and held up the other manacle. “Mr. Mayor?”

  Perkins looked on the verge of tears. “I have money,” he pleaded.

  “Congratulations,” said Matt. “Give me your hand.”

  The mayor obeyed. Matt cuffed him to O’Neill, both of them now attached to the iron bed frame. He pulled a pair of briefs loose from the pants on the floor and stuffed them into Perkins’s mouth as a crude gag. He looked around for something to use for O’Neill.

  The blond girl picked up a loose sock and handed it to him. Matt smiled at her. “Thanks.” He wondered how she had ended up here, how any of the women had.

  He crammed the sock into the young officer’s mouth. Not ideal, but it would have to do. He dug into the cop’s pockets and found a little handcuff key.

  He returned to woman in the first room. He unlocked her cuffs and brought her back to join the blond girl. The woman flinched at the sight of O’Neill and Perkins, then saw their situation and relaxed a bit.

  “I want you to stay here and stay quiet until I come back for you,” Matt told them. “OK?”

  “OK,” said the girl. The dark-haired woman didn’t seem to understand. Matt gestured with his hand for her to stay put. She nodded.

  He checked the last room. No one there. He went to the stairs and carefully stepped down to the main floor of the house. Most of it was the open living/dining space. There were two doors at the far end of the room and one near the front entrance, most likely to a coat closet.

  Even as he thought this, he heard a toilet flush behind it. The door opened, revealing a powder room. Lennox emerged.

  Their eyes met in mutual surprise. Matt raised his gun as the chief drew his. Both fired. The sound was enormous as it echoed in the house. Matt felt the bullet graze his scalp. He had no cover and the cop was already adjusting his aim. He dove for the staircase leading down to the basement.

  He jolted and bumped down the stairs, landing hard on his good shoulder, which now hurt as well. Matt rolled away from the stairway opening before Lennox could get another clear shot. He found himself in what could only be described as a man cave, complete with leather sofa and a huge flat-screen TV.

  He saw Woronicz coming at him with a straight razor just in time to raise his right arm and block the strike. Instead of slicing his face, the blade cut open his forearm. Woronicz tried to grab the gun from his hand, but Matt held on to it. He pushed Woronicz a step back, and then the cop redirected his force and Matt stumbled to the right, just managing to keep his balance. The men almost seemed to be dancing. Woronicz bumped into a tall CD rack. It tipped over, scattering jewel cases on the floor. The cop stepped on one, slipped, and fell, yanking Matt down with him. Which was fortunate for Matt, because Lennox was now at the base of the stairs, shooting at the space where his head had just been.

  Matt rolled off Woronicz, putting the cop’s body between him and Lennox. Woronicz used his momentum to keep going, so that he now loomed over Matt. With one hand, he pinned Matt’s gun hand to the floor. With the other, he brought down the razor. Matt caught his wrist, barely keeping the blade at bay. They stayed like that for a moment, neither one able to break the other’s grip. But the cop had the better position, slowly but surely forcing the straight razor down toward Matt’s throat. Lennox held back, watching, ready to fire if necessary.

  Matt gagged on the thick stink of decay coming from Woronicz. His putrefied face had begun to slide slowly down his skull. He inched closer and the razor grazed Matt’s skin. Matt could think of only one thing to do.

  He bit Woronicz. He sank his teeth into the rotting, fetid flesh of the man’s cheek and clamped down hard. Pus squirted into his mouth and he fought the urge to vomit. The cop shrieked, trying to pull away, but Matt held on. Woronicz loosened his grip on the gun. Matt yanked it free. He let go with his teeth and shoved the barrel under the cop’s chin. He pulled the trigger.

  The blast was deafening at such close range. Matt was splattered with blood and God knew what else as the bullet tore through Woronicz’s head. He shoved the body off himself as Lennox fired. This shot caught Matt in the same damn shoulder Elena had hit. Matt raised his own gun and fired. He hit the chief in the leg. As the man fell, Matt rushed in and put two more shots into his skull.

  He turned away from the dead cop and retched. He spat several times, desperate to get rid of that unspeakable taste. Did they sell industrial-strength Listerine?

  In the corner of his eye, he saw movement and the glint of metal. Instinctively he turned his gun toward the potential threat. He was stunned to see Elena. How the hell…? Then he saw that she was pointing Lennox’s gun at his head.

  When she found Officer Ross outside the coffee shop, Elena had naturally assumed that her ordeal was over. She hadn’t been the least bit suspicious when Ross kept asking if she had any friends or family she should call, anyone who might be worried about her. No, said Elena, her parents thought she was at college and her college friends thought she was back home. No one had any idea that she was missing.

  With that assurance, Ross snapped a pair of handcuffs around Elena’s wrists and threw her into the back of a patrol car. She drove up the lake house and dragged the struggling, cursing girl down to the basement. Elena didn’t know exactly what was going on, but it seemed safe to assume she was in serious trouble.

  This was confirmed when Woronicz sauntered downstairs to examine the new arrival. He appraised her coolly, not reacting even when she spit at him. Then he pulled out the straight razor.

  Elena had still been frozen in horror when a body came tumbling down the stairs. As soon as Woronicz turned to look, she pulled away and ducked behind the couch. Then she heard the sounds of a fight. She peered around the arm of the couch and was stunned to recognize Woronicz’s opponent. She couldn’t bring herself to root for her previous kidnapper but wasn’t exactly sorry when Matt blew away the two bad cops. The second guy collapsed near the couch, his body within easy reach. So was his gun.

  As Matt turned away to retch, Elena slid her cuffed wrists from behind her back, under her legs, so they were now in front of her. She grabbed the weapon and aimed it at Matt. Just as quickly, he turned his gun on her. They stood there for a long moment, each with one finger resting on the trigger, ready to fire.

  So here it was, thought Matt, the very choice Mr. Dark had predicted.

  Kill or be killed.

>   Matt broke the tense silence. “Don’t do this,” he said, as calmly as he could.

  Elena didn’t answer. She also didn’t lower her gun. She was trying to look tough, but Matt could see her struggling. He flashed through the last few days, every interaction, every conversation they’d had. Was Matt kidding himself to imagine that any of it could have changed her mind?

  Maybe so. But the Dark Man was definitely wrong about one thing. Matt wouldn’t shoot Elena, even to save his own life. So really, there was no point in holding on to the gun.

  He put it down. Now the choice was hers.

  The next ten seconds took years to pass. Elena didn’t move, but he saw her struggling. Very slowly, she began to lower the gun. She turned away, fighting angry tears, and tossed it aside. Matt was quiet for a moment.

  He pulled the handcuff key from his pocket and held it out to her. “Here.”

  Elena looked back at him and extended her hands. He unlocked the cuffs. Then he examined the new gunshot wound in his shoulder. Not as bad as the first, he noted, but every bit as painful. He was going to need a lot more ibuprofen.

  “There are two more women in a second-floor bedroom,” he told Elena. “One of the cops is up there too, handcuffed to the bed. So is the mayor. He’s part of this too.” He thought for a moment. “There’s one more cop out on the lawn. She’s dead. Talk to Sergeant Sheridan at the Breckenridge PD…”

  Elena knew why he was telling her this. “You’re running away.”

  “Yes,” he said simply. No point in denying it. “I killed three cops. The ‘why’ won’t matter much.”

  She considered this, then nodded. Matt felt he should say something else but couldn’t think of what. He went quietly up the stairs and out of the house.

  The “horror in suburbia” was big news in the Duluth News Tribune for about three days, heavy on the sexual angle, of course. Mayor Perkins was the focus of the scandal. He faced a number of criminal charges, as did rookie officer J.J. O’Neill.

  Matt’s name didn’t appear in a single story. New chief of police Alan Sheridan had no reason to bring it up. According to the official report, the female captives had staged their own escape, killing three of their captors in their desperate fight for freedom.

  Matt liked that version.

  Elena was mentioned as one of the heroic women, but there was nothing about her previous captivity.

  Or, of course, her reason for coming to Breckenridge in the first place.

  Kathy Lennox appeared in a photo accompanying one of the articles. It was an older picture of her and the chief at a charity dinner. The caption stressed the contrast between Lennox’s public face and the dark secret life revealed after his death. Matt hoped that Kathy and Chris would be all right. Once they got through this, he thought they would be.

  Matt surveyed the schedule board in the transit station in Cedar Rapids, considering his next destination. He wondered again if he really was free to go anywhere he wanted, or if some kind of fate would direct his choice. He turned to the older gentleman standing beside him, peering at the board.

  “Where you headed?” he asked casually.

  “Oswego,” replied the other man, squinting harder.

  Matt checked the board. “Looks like the next bus leaves at seven thirty.”

  The man relaxed and gave him a smile. “Thanks.”

  He moved off to grab a good spot in the lounge. He didn’t look much like an agent of destiny, but he could be.

  Anyone could be.

  It was entirely up to Matt how crazy he let that make him.

  Oswego, he thought. Why not?

  About the Author

  Lisa has made a career of writing for aliens, holograms, psychics and demi-Gods. She got her start with the Star Trek series Deep Space Nine and Voyager. She has written for several other media, include Batman comics the Borg 4-D attraction in Las Vegas. Lisa is also a five-time Jeopardy champion. This is her first novel.