Jake got off the phone with his friends in high places and viewed the GPS link they had sent him.
“Are you ready?” Lori asked him. She had been playing with her own phone for the past half hour, answering e-mails and listening to voice mails.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “We got a location.”
“How does this work? How do you know you can do this alone? What if there’s more than just one guy?”
Good questions all, he thought. But he couldn’t let her know that he had gotten satellite thermal images of the house outside town, indicating one hostile on the first floor and a second person in the basement of the home. He guessed that would be the professor. “You’ll have to trust me,” he said. “Can you put your phone down for a second and take this?” He handed her his phone with the GPS enabled and ready for them to drive.
“No problem.” She looked at him with concern. “I’m sorry. I kind of have a hectic job, with people grabbing at me from all sides.”
Jake put the Ford in gear and pulled out onto the frozen road. “I know. But you need to learn to focus on the task at hand. Your e-mail will still be there in the morning.” He came off far harsher than he’d planned. Maybe his own mind was preoccupied by the events of the past few days and what he had to do now.
It took them just fifteen minutes to find the old farm house a few miles outside of Whitefish. It sat on a small knoll at the end of a quarter-mile long driveway. Darkness was now starting to really shroud the countryside.
Parking out on the road among a patch of pines, Jake shut down the vehicle and looked at Lori. “When I get out, get behind the wheel. If I don’t call you in fifteen minutes, you get the hell out of here and drive back into town to the police station. Understand?”
She nodded her head. “Will you be all right?”
“Yeah, it’s what I do.” Or what he used to do. He pulled out his 9mm Glock and cycled a round into the chamber. With the three magazines he had fifty-one rounds to get the job done. More than enough, he thought.
He got out and she immediately took his warm spot on the leather driver’s seat. “Don’t touch the brakes,” he said. “If you have to warm up, just crank it over and let the heater work.” Then he gently closed the door without much sound and shuffled off through the snow on the country road.
Jake would have a tough time approaching the house without being noticed. Even with the darkness and snow falling, if the man looked out the window down the long drive, he would see Jake coming. The only other way was through a forested area to the north. But with the deep snow that would take too long.
He had to chance a direct approach. The faster the better. He picked up the pace from a long stride to an all-out run. As he got closer to the house, he saw a light on in the front room and a shadow pass by the window. Jake vectored toward the left side of the house alongside the front covered porch and settled up against the weathered white siding to catch his breath. If his intel was right, there was only one bad guy inside, the killer and kidnapper. But he also knew that some time had passed since he had last gotten a thermal reading.
No new vehicle tracks in the driveway. Which didn’t mean a lot in this heavy snowfall. Any tracks would be covered in a few minutes.
Jake slid along the house toward the back. He came to a basement window that was covered by snow. Scooping his hand through the cold white stuff, he couldn’t see any lights on in the basement.
Continuing to the back, he peered around the corner of the house, his gun aimed down against his right leg to keep moisture out of the barrel.
From the back he had to move out into the yard somewhat to try to see into the house as he moved toward the center of the house, the snow back there up to his knees.
Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a figure move across the light in what looked like the kitchen. The man was there and then not there. Like a ghost.
He took a couple more steps and then tripped over something, landing on his side in the snow. Luckily he had raised his gun up and kept it from getting wet.
Jake reached over to feel what he’d tripped on, and immediately felt a body. He slid his hand down and realized it was frozen solid. A woman. He moved around so the light shone out onto the body and saw that something had eaten the eyes and worked on the belly. Rodents, ravens or jays. Maybe a fox or coyote. Checking his watch, he had to hurry or his ride would be gone soon.
He shifted behind a tree, found his phone, and texted a message to Lori to give him another ten minutes.
Now he needed to hurry and make this happen.
He got upright, assessed the back door, and moved straight at it. Chances are it would be unlocked.
Quietly he turned the knob. It was open, so he slipped inside and stopped. His wet shoes would surely squeak on the linoleum floor. But if he could get to the carpet in the living room he would be all right. He put most of his weight on the outer edge of his boots and with little noise made his way toward the lighted living room.
A rush of noise stopped him in his tracks.
Damn it. The man had heard him.
Jake dove to his left just as the first bullets flew through the air, the loud sound echoing through his ears and the lead striking the windows behind his position, smashing glass out into the darkness.
He held his gun aimed at the door frame, not wanting to kill this guy, but not wanting to get shot either.
“This can end one of two ways,” Jake said. He waited for some response. Nothing.
Knowing he was vulnerable lying on the floor, Jake rolled to his left and up to his knees, the gun still pointed at the doorway.
As the gun rounded the corner, Jake opened fire with three rounds just as the other man’s gun went off striking the floor where he had been. Jake’s bullets crushed into the door frame sending wood flying.
Jake thought for a second and then opened fire on the wall with three more shots. But he guessed the walls in this old house were thick enough to stop his 9mm rounds.
If they kept going like this, they would be at a stand off until one of them ran out of bullets or got in a lucky shot. He had to make something happen.
When the gun showed around the corner this time, Jake shot, the man shot, and instead of pausing Jake ran to the living room, dove through the door firing three more times as low as he could. He hit the ground on his back, his gun aimed at the spot where the man had been.
The man was down on the carpeted floor holding his leg with one hand and reaching for his gun with the other. His glasses sat askew on his face.
Jake rushed over and kicked the gun away from him.
“Where’s the scientist,” Jake yelled, his gun pointed at the man’s head.
“You better kill me,” the man said, his accent much like that of the men who had kidnapped him in Washington. “Or I will kill you.”
Laughing under his breath, Jake said, “I don’t think you’re in a position to do that.” Looking closely at the man’s wound, he could see that the bullet wound to the man’s thigh was serious. Jake had nailed him in the femoral artery. He thought back at how he had held his girlfriend in Austria with a similar wound, and how she had bled out in less than ten minutes. “You’re dying.”
“I’ve been hit worse than this.”
“That’s a femoral shot,” Jake assured him. “You will bleed out in ten minutes.” He checked his watch. “Eight minutes. Where’s the man? Better yet, why did you kidnap the man?”
The man bit down on his lip. “Screw you.”
“Just answer my questions and I’ll put a bullet in your head. Otherwise we sit here and watch you bleed out. Your choice.”
“You are cop,” the man said through grit teeth. “You must call ambulance. It is your duty.”
Jake smiled. “First of all, I’m not a cop. And second, it wouldn’t matter if I did call one. They wouldn’t get here in time. Especially for a cop killer.” He hesitated and let that set in. “Now tell me what I want to know.”