“No, he waits in the car,” Barker said.
“You told him to get out.”
“I changed my mind.”
John taunted, “You’re scared of him.”
“He waits in the car!” Barker said, sounding like he was unraveling.
“All right, all right, but what about Molly?” John asked.
“What about her?”
“She’ll need help.”
“Help? No, she won’t. She can walk out on her own. Or, she’ll be able to unless Haskell shows off his derring-do. If he tries to rush to your rescue, Frank will kill the girl, and I’ll stop Haskell with this.” He poked a rifle barrel through the crack in the door. “Phttt, phttt, phttt. You get the picture. Your former partner is bye-bye.”
John hesitated, then looked over his shoulder and said, “It’s tempting, I know, but do what he says, Mitch. Stay in the car. I’m trusting you to get Molly out safely.”
Then he came back around and started walking toward the house. Barker instructed him to stack his hands on the top of his head, and he did. He climbed the steps in a measured, deliberate tread, his gaze never wavering from the opening between the door and its jamb. It was too narrow for him to see into the room. He didn’t know the ogre’s position. He couldn’t see Molly.
When he reached the edge of the porch, Barker ordered him to stop. “Where’s Molly?”
“In the bedroom.”
“Get her.”
“She’s—”
“Get her!” John yelled.
At that moment, a terrible racket erupted from behind the house, followed by a shout. “John! Back here!”
Barker whipped his head around. “What the fuck, Frank? Go see!”
The ogre barreled across the room, through the kitchen, out the back door, and began to aimlessly fire his pistol into the darkness.
In the nanosecond that Barker was distracted, John kicked the front door open. It slammed into Barker, propelling him backward several stumbling steps. With the ferocity of an avenging angel, John kicked him in the crotch, the steel-reinforced toe of his boot solidly connecting with Barker’s scrotum.
He screamed, fell to his knees, and dropped the rifle to clutch himself in agony. John picked up the rifle and swung the stock of it against the side of Barker’s head.
He toppled to the floor, out cold.
“Molly!” John rushed toward the bedroom.
Mitch had opened the passenger door of the car at the same moment John had opened the one on the driver’s side. Then, as fluid and soundless as mercury, he had slid out while John was diverting the men inside the house by presenting himself, hands raised.
Because of the risk of being seen visiting a cop’s house, Mitch had always parked a distance away and had come and gone through the surrounding woods in the dark to reach John’s house. He knew his way around.
Tonight, while John had kept Barker and the ogre distracted, he had moved through the woods like a wraith, disturbing nothing, not making a sound on his way to the shed behind the house.
He’d held a low-wattage flashlight in his mouth and dialed in the combination on the well-oiled padlock. As soon as it opened, he’d switched off the light. Inside the shed, the darkness had been stygian, but John had told him where he would find the items he needed.
His eyes had soon adjusted well enough to make out shapes. What he couldn’t detect by sight, he’d located by feel, following the directions John had given him. With the timer in his head counting down the seconds, he’d worked quickly and within ninety seconds had found everything he required.
He’d carried it all outside and set to work. He moved rapidly but efficiently, his ears constantly attuned to what was going on in front of the house. Task finished, he’d hunkered at the base of a live oak, John’s shotgun across his lap.
When he heard Barker order John to stack his hands on the top of his head and had visualized John walking toward the porch, he’d crossed himself, murmured a Hail Mary, and waited for John’s signal.
It had been a short wait.
“Get her!” John yelled.
Now! Mitch began banging the hand spade against the empty metal pail and shouted, “John! Back here!”
Within seconds, the ogre burst out the back door, rapidly firing at a target he hadn’t yet identified and couldn’t see.
Nor did he see the trip wire.
Mitch had stretched it taut between two trees twenty feet beyond the back steps. The ogre fell like a block of lead, landing face-first on the ground. He lost his grip on the pistol. It landed yards away.
Before Frank recovered his wind or his wits, Mitch was on him, grabbing his hands and pulling them behind his back, securing them with a zip tie, all within a matter of seconds.
Mitch snapped up the shotgun, aimed it at Frank’s head, and ground his booted foot against the back of his thick neck. “My choice whether I break it or not.”
“Fuck you,” Frank grunted.