“Unfortunately, I don’t have all day,” Dan said. “Gorman and Smith already knows about Walter, and they probably know about me now, too. As soon as their boys fail to report in, they’ll send more people. I’d rather avoid that, so that’s where you come in.”
Allie didn’t reply right away. The truth was, she didn’t know where Lucy could be. While she’d spent some time in the house, they’d kept the lights off and she was more concerned with Jerry coming after them than going around exploring. But Lucy had that luxury after she left the teenager alone, so it wasn’t out of the question the girl might have found one of those secret rooms the hired gun was talking about.
“I’ll have a better idea inside the house,” she finally said. “By myself.”
“No can do,” Dan said.
“Your men will scare her from coming out of hiding.”
“Womack will go inside with you while the rest stays out here.” He glanced at his watch again before adding, “Make it fast.”
“What’s the hurry? I hear prison can be fun for a dandy like you.”
He snorted. “It’s not the Feds I’m worried about, Allie. If you’re smart, you’ll make a run for it too when this is all over.”
“Are you telling me I’ve been working for a company that launders money for organized crime and never knew it?” she had asked Walter.
“And they’ve been perfecting the façade for ten years before we showed up,” he had said.
She looked over at Womack. “Can I have some of that?”
The mercenary handed her his bottle and she took a quick swig, then used the rest to wash away Walter’s blood (and other things) that had refused to be scraped off her face on the walk over.
“Give the lady another bottle,” Dan said. “She looks like she can use it.”
Womack reached into the van and brought out another bottle. This time she drank the whole thing, all the while trying to come up with a plan that would keep both her and Lucy alive to see morning.
Two girls against six men with assault rifles.
Yeah, no sweat.
Chapter 21
The house looked different with all the lights turned on. Of course, she’d been running around in the dark for almost the entire night, so maybe that had a lot to do with how bright everything seemed. As she stepped back inside the house, Allie couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed and out of her depth. Most of all, though, was the reality of being so outgunned.
For a moment, she thought she’d gained the upper hand. She’d outsmarted Walter and Monroe when they thought they were hunting her, and all that was left was to come back here and gather up Lucy and leave in the SUV. Walter’s betrayal stung, but she had to admit, it’d been awhile since she had felt so alive.
And then Dan showed up.
You had no idea what he was capable of, did you, Walter?
Neither did I, as it turned out.
She stepped over a man in a suit and tie lying in the middle of the living room, careful not to get his blood on her shoes. He had two bullet holes in his chest and a third on his forehead. She recognized him as being Monroe’s man, who had been left behind with Lucy. She had been reasonably confident she could have dealt with him if she needed to when she got back to the house. Apparently, someone had beaten her to it.
Womack led her through the house, then up the stairs. They passed puddles of fresh and dried blood on the way. Jerry’s, Monroe’s man, and who else? Not that it mattered. She stepped around them and focused on her surroundings, on where everyone was, and her distance to all the exits.
Too many, and too far.
“How old is she?” Womack asked as they went up the stairs.
He walked in front of her, his rifle slung and his holstered handgun — a Colt 1911 model — with its handle facing her. She measured the distance between them and came up with three feet. Close enough, but she didn’t go for the gun because the problem wasn’t just Womack; it was also the five others, not counting Dan, surrounding the house.
Five against one was bad odds, even if she could somehow take Womack’s pistol and assault rifle off him. That was already an iffy prospect. The man had at least a foot and a solid hundred pounds of lean muscle on her, never mind his probable hand-to-hand combat training. She had some of that, too, but Allie wasn’t delusional enough to think she could take a man of Womack’s size in a stand-up fight.
“Fifteen,” Allie said as they passed framed photos of a large family along the wall to her left. She hadn’t seen them before because the whole place was dark when she was last here. The people in the portraits looked happy, but then, what family didn’t when the cameras were pointed at them?
“You have any ideas where she might be hiding?” Womack asked.
“I don’t know. It’s a big house.”
“Give me a hint.”
“I want to see the master bedroom first.”
“Why?”
“You said she didn’t go out the back window.”
“She didn’t.”
“It’s only a ten-foot drop. She could have jumped down and run into the woods.”
“No,” Womack said, with all the confidence in the world. “There were no tracks, nothing to indicate she’d reached the ground. And, like I said, I had men all around the house at the time.”
“She’s a smart girl.”
“She may be, but she didn’t leave through the window.”
“So you keep saying.”
He grunted, but didn’t press the issue.
They reached the second floor, where Allie caught her breath for a moment.
Jesus. How did I survive that?
It looked worse in the light — a long, jagged string of bullet holes along the wall and chunks of plaster of all sizes covering the floor. There was so much damage — there were a few bullet holes in the ceiling, too — including along the wooden railing on her right, that she wondered if this wasn’t all just a dream, that maybe she hadn’t actually survived Jerry’s barrage after all.
“What happened here?” Womack asked.
“Someone tried to shoot me.”
“You look in one piece to me.”
“I guess I was lucky.”
Womack chuckled. “You must have nine lives.”
Eight now, she thought, before correcting herself: Or seven. Beckard claimed one of them, remember?
The master bedroom where she had marched Jerry to earlier was open, and they stepped inside. The king-size bed was a mess, the blankets covered in blood, and Jerry himself was lying on the floor nearby. Coagulated blood pooled around his head, leaking out from the razor-thin cut that stretched across his neck where he had been garroted.
“Who killed him?” she asked.
“We’re thinking the guy downstairs,” Womack said. “Saved us the trouble.”
“And you took care of him in turn.”
“That’s the job.”
“How much is Dan paying you?”
Womack didn’t answer her, and instead crossed the room to the back window.
“A lot?” she pressed.
“Enough,” Womack said, and stood next to the open window, as if to say, “Well, you wanted to see it, so see it.”
She walked over, stepping around a fallen pillow smeared with blood.
The room, like downstairs, looked larger with the lights on. The closet and bathroom doors were open, and there were signs that the place had been thoroughly searched very recently.
So where was Lucy?
“She didn’t jump down,” Womack said as Allie leaned out the open window and peered down. He pointed at a pair of bushes directly below them. “They were undisturbed, no signs of anything — least of all a human being — having landed on top of them.”