Hollow's Eve Page 12

  “Definitely not,” Vincent said. “So all we have left is to try to get her back.”

  Vincent took a look at the cook’s body on the porch and the shotgun lying beside him. “How many guns do we have?”

  36

  Vincent and Brandt set about collecting every weapon and every bullet left behind from their scuffle earlier. Then they moved back into the house and laid it all on the floor in front of them.

  “Okay,” Brandt said, eyeing their supplies. “We’ve got a pump-action shotgun. Twelve gauge. Eight shells in total. We have Hoyt’s Glock and two spare clips, a grand total of twenty-eight rounds. We have the Beretta you’re using, minus five shots, so ten shots total, and then the 1911 Colt we got off the unidentified guy.”

  Vincent looked at Hoyt. “Who is he, by the way?”

  Hoyt shrugged. “It’s Delores’ cousin. Sam or something.”

  Vincent rolled his eyes. “Podunk town…”

  “How do you want to divvy up the supplies?” Brandt asked.

  “Take the Glock and the Colt. I’ll take the shotgun and the Beretta.”

  Brandt began scooping up the weapons. “I’m assuming,” she said, “that this is going to be a straight-up assault.”

  “You assumed correctly.”

  “What’s the play, then?”

  “We go to the Sunrise Motel, scope it out, and make our move. We can’t say how many people Delores will have with her, but she seems to be running a pretty tight circle, so I’m going to say maybe five guys will be with her. We can’t say for certain. Not until we get there, at least.”

  Vincent and Brandt cleaned and loaded the weapons, then stored them away for the next few minutes before turning to each other and confirming they were ready.

  “You understand what’s happening?” Vincent said to Brandt. “Right?”

  “Yup. We’re about to walk into a shootout.”

  “And we have no other choice. They have my daughter.”

  “This won’t end until someone’s in the ground, Vincent. It just is what it is…” She took a step forward, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Let’s go get your baby girl back. Let’s end this. All of this.”

  Vincent grabbed Brandt’s hand and realized that he and his partner had forged their friendship in the fires of conflict that had burned bright for the past few days. If he was going to go out, at least Brandt would be by his side.

  “I wouldn’t be able to do this without you,” he said.

  Brandt engaged the safety on the Colt tucked into her waistband. “Save the sappiness for later,” she said. “We’ve got a job to do.”

  They grabbed Hoyt, threw him in the back, piled into the van, and made their way to the Sunrise Motel.

  Special Agent Miranda Stone was growing anxious as she worked several different cases in her office. Her thoughts dwelled on Edgar Vincent and the insanity that was playing out in Hollow Green.

  She knew something was up—it was that gut instinct that Vincent had spoken to her about two years prior when they worked together to track down a cop that had been masquerading as a serial killer.

  Again, she couldn’t explain why—it was just a gut thing. And now that same gut was screaming out to her that the detective she had come to know and revere was stuck somewhere, in a bind, and she was willing the universe to send him a life raft.

  A knock at her door, and a fresh-faced agent came inside with a stack of papers in his hand. “Special Agent Mills said you might want to take a look at this,” he said. “It’s about that case over in Detroit, the one with—”

  “McClusky?” Miranda asked. “How often do you go off your gut?”

  The agent was taken aback. “I don’t know,” he responded. “More often than not?”

  He then squinted as if Miranda had been quizzing him on something, hoping that he’d given the right answer.

  Miranda smiled. “That’s what I thought. I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Of course, boss.”

  “I’m going to Hollow Green,” Miranda said. “Tell Agent Mills that I need some agents for backup.”

  Vincent and Brandt arrived at the Sunrise Motel minutes before zero hour, the dark of the night offering them plenty of concealment as they scoped out the place. They were perched on a hill overlooking the motel, hidden by some pines. Hoyt was stuffed in the back of the van with his hands, legs, and mouth bound.

  “What’s the layout?” Brandt asked.

  “It’s not big,” Vincent said, seeing that the motel was a two-story L-shape, with the long part facing them and the bottom of the L jutting out to the east. The motel had a parking lot, ten rows, and everything was dirty, boarded up, and faded, looking like a memory that was slowly becoming lost to time.

  “I don’t think anyone’s there,” Brandt said. “I don’t see any movement.”

  “They might just be camped out inside. Can’t tell for certain, though.”

  A short bout of silence fell between them.

  “There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” Brandt said. “About this case. About the whole thing.”

  “Shoot,” Vincent said.

  “Why did Delores have the A-Listers killed? Why was she targeting her own clients? Her source of revenue.”

  “Remember what we talked about before? About users getting killed by their dealers?”

  Brandt nodded. “You said they’re low on cash, stealing, or they’re trying to snitch.”

  “Hoyt may have more of a story to tell,” he said. “But I’m positive those kids were getting ready to snitch. So—Delores decides to have them killed, but she did it in all the wrong ways. She thought the overkill would make it look like something else.”

  Brandt shook her head. “And she wasn’t banking on us figuring it all out.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Brandt drew a breath. “You think they’ll call us when they roll up?”

  “Yes I do.”

  Vincent looked past the motel, at the dirt road that curved in an S for half a mile before linking up with the blacktop highway that tethered it to the rest of the real world, and traveling up that dirt road was a car making a beeline for the motel.

  “Or maybe not.”

  He tightened his grip on the shotgun.

  Delores was in the back seat. Messer was at the wheel. Claire had been bound with duct tape and thrown in the trunk.

  “I’ll call them when you park,” Delores said. “We’ll tell them to approach us and then drop their guns.”

  “And then we shoot them?” Messer asked.

  Delores nodded. “And then we shoot them.” She had a thought. “I need to call the boys,” she said. “I left them the keys to my car and a couple of guns.”

  Messer began to look nervous. “Why? They’re kids!”

  “Kids I taught how to use firearms,” she said.

  “And what do you propose to do with them?”

  Delores dialed the number and held the phone to her ear. “Backup.”

  37

  “How good a shot are you?” Vincent asked Brandt.

  “Pretty good,” Brandt said, as they watched the vehicle stop at the motel.

  Vincent started moving.

  “Hey!” Brandt shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “When I put my gun on the deck,” he said, “shoot Messer in the chest and face.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am,” Vincent said. “We have no other plays to make, unless you got a sniper rifle.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, then this is our play. I’ll turn myself in, and when I place my shotgun on the pavement, you shoot Messer. Think you can get close enough to make that happen?”

  “I can,” she said. “Just move left. Keep all the eyes down there on you.”

  “Copy that.”

  And with that, Vincent descended the hillside, Brandt watching on and inching her way closer to the motel and worried that everything was about to fall apart
.

  “Get my daughter back safely,” Vincent said to Brandt as he marched. “No matter what happens to me.”

  Brandt broke right and removed the Glock from her waistband.

  She would help Vincent get his daughter back.

  Whatever it took.

  “Hey!” Messer shouted, pointing at the hillside covered in pines to the east. “Look! There!”

  Delores clutched her gun tightly in her palm, shot a look at the hillside, and saw the silhouette of Detective Edgar Vincent approaching, a shotgun in his hand and a scowl on his face. She waited until he was about fifteen feet out before shouting, “That’s far enough, detective!”

  Vincent stopped in his tracks. “Where’s my daughter?”

  Delores gestured to the trunk of her car. “She’s safe. For now.”

  “I want to see her.”

  Delores shook her head. “No, no, no. You turn yourself in first—then I’ll let you see her.”

  Good, Vincent thought, still holding on to the shotgun tightly.

  She’ll be safer in the trunk.

  Delores looked around. “Where’s Brandt? Where’s my brother?”

  Vincent shrugged. “He’s a little soft around the middle, having a hard time keeping up. Brandt had to slow down before he collapsed.”

  Brandt slowly crept into her shooting position outside the motel, heard Vincent’s comment, and knew it was a bluff—but she still couldn’t help herself from rolling her eyes.

  “They both need to be here,” Delores said. “That was the deal, otherwise Messer is going to kill your little girl.”

  Everyone seemed to be squared off like a bunch of cowboys in a saloon.

  “Your brother spilled the beans,” Vincent said. “You’re boxed in. This is the end of the line. There’s no going back now. I know everything.”

  Delores shrugged. “Which is why I have to kill you. Now, enough of the talk. Place your weapon down, tell your friend to come out of hiding, and then we let your little girl go. No more speeches, no more delays. Just do it.”

  Vincent hesitated.

  “Now!” Delores barked.

  The time had arrived, Vincent knew. He inched forward, shotgun still in his grip.

  “Stop,” Delores said. “Right there. Don’t take another step.”

  Vincent complied.

  “Lower your shotgun to the ground,” Delores said. “Slowly.”

  Vincent lowered the gun.

  This is it.

  Go get your daughter back.

  He lowered the gun inch by inch and laid it on the ground softly—a second later, two shots from Brandt rang out from the trees behind Vincent and buried themselves into Messer’s chest.

  Vincent scooped up the shotgun. Delores fell for cover behind her car as she fired wildly over her shoulder, missing Vincent by a mile but forcing him to dash into one of the boarded-up rooms on his right by smashing his shoulder in the door and knocking it down.

  “That’s it,” Delores said as she aimed her pistol at the trunk.

  “Claire!” Vincent shouted as he pumped a round into the shotgun and fired at Delores.

  Delores dropped the second she saw the barrel sticking out of the room Vincent was in, the pellets missing her as she ducked and moved around to the passenger side, then opened a door and used it as a shield.

  “Brandt!” Vincent shouted to his left. “Move!”

  Four shots rang out from Brandt’s position and buried themselves in the door that Delores was behind.

  And that was when Messer sat up like the walking dead.

  He shook off his stupor, looked down at his bulletproof vest, aimed his pistol in Vincent’s direction, and squeezed off four shots, the rounds drilling into and chewing up the wood of the door as Vincent fell to his belly and kept low.

  “What the hell?” Vincent looked up and saw Messer fire at Brandt, now back on his feet, forcing her to hide behind a tree and stopping her advance. He saw a bulletproof vest on Messer’s chest.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Kill the girl!” Delores said, getting into the car.

  She popped the trunk, and Messer moved to the back and opened it. Claire shot her foot out and buried it into his groin.

  Messer stumbled back, groaning in pain as Vincent got off his belly, aimed at Messer’s face, and dropped the poor bastard where he stood.

  “Claire!” Vincent shouted. “Get out of there!”

  Claire, with her hands and mouth bound with tape, rolled out of the trunk as Delores got behind the wheel, started the engine and peeled away. A cloud of dust and dirt was kicked up in her wake.

  Vincent emerged from his room, approached his daughter, and got down on one knee as Delores fled the scene. “Honey!” he said. “Are you okay?”

  He removed the duct tape from her mouth. “I’m okay, Daddy,” Claire said as her father held her. “I’m okay.”

  Vincent kissed her on the forehead and then cast a glance in the direction Delores had fled in, her car turning into a dot in the distance.

  “Brandt,” Vincent said, turning and looking at her. “Get the van. Quick.”

  Brandt hustled back up the mountainside as fast as she could.

  “This isn’t over yet.” Vincent stood up and waited for Brandt.

  Delores pulled out her cell phone. It was picked up after two rings. “It’s me,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “We just got to the motel. But someone is leaving. A van just drove off. I think there was a man inside…”

  Delores sighed—Vincent. “Is the girl and other police officer still there?”

  A pause. “Yes. I can see them. They’re just waiting there.”

  “Do you have the weapons I gave you?”

  “I have one, and Donny has the other.”

  “I need you to go down there and use them, sweetheart. I need you to kill them both. Can you do that?”

  “Of course, Nana.”

  “Remember to wear your masks.”

  “We will.”

  Delores took a breath, knowing that Vincent was most likely catching up to her—and quick. “I love you,” she said to the boy over the phone, knowing that it might be the last time she talked to him or his brothers again. “I love you all.”

  “We love you too.”

  Delores hung up, on the verge of tears after making countless terrible decision. She felt the world collapsing around her as her car curved up the tight mountain road toward a highway leading as far away from Hollow Green as possible.

  But seconds later, she saw a van creeping up behind her.

  Delores opened the glove box, took out the revolver, and cocked the hammer.

  38

  A half-mile into the journey, Vincent realized he was driving on a place the kids in Hollow Green had dubbed Steep Falls Road.

  It was a narrow roadway that hugged the mountain, with nothing but steep drop-offs to the right, which induced a nauseating and nightmarish sensation as the road curved up and down for twelve miles before turning into a road that merged with the regular highway, nothing but flimsy metal railing separating drivers on a two-lane road.

  How many people have been killed racing here? Six? Eight? Ten?

  A flash went off and a hole appeared to his right in the windshield.

  His eyes went wide.

  “Holy shi—”

  Vincent heard the shots ringing out as he got closer to the rear of Delores’ car as they made a tight right, two rounds clipping the hood and the third punching a hole near the area in the windshield where the first shot had gone through.

  Son of a bitch! I can’t shoot straight while I’m driving this rig. And I need her alive!

  The solution became clear for Vincent, the idea popping into his brain as he closed in on Delores’ bumper and noted the collection of pines clumped together in a bowl-like area in the decline of the mountain.

  Vincent pressed down on the gas and aimed at the back of Delores’ car, with the intention of running her off the road an
d rolling her straight into the bowl. He didn’t want to do it, but his options were limited.

  She’ll either shoot me, or I can try and get lucky.

  He hoped to get lucky.

  Vincent slammed the van into the left side of Delores’ bumper. Her car veered to the right toward the flimsy metal railing, which wouldn’t slow down a damn thing at the speed she was going. The car smashed through the railing.

  Vincent slammed on his brakes, his heart racing as he came to a stop just past where Delores’ car had gone through.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I can’t believe that worked.”

  He heard her car falling, the metal frame grinding and scraping against the rocks, slipping down into a steep drop-off.

  Vincent got out of the van and approached the railing, Delores’ car below him and sliding further and further out toward the edge.

  He looked down to view the slope—easy and smooth enough that he could make it down without hurting himself too badly. He positioned himself and took a breath.

  This is probably not very smart.

  Vincent moved down the hill, tripped immediately, slammed on his back, and then rolled down the decline before coming to a stop five feet from the car. Vincent coughed, shaking his head as he crawled toward the car, which seemed to have—at least for the moment—come to a stop.

  “Delores!” he said. “Get out of there!”

  He saw that Delores was still strapped in by her seatbelt and hanging upside down. Vincent stood up and starting prying open the door, but quickly discovered that it was too dented in too budge.

  She came to panicking when she saw what had happened as the car began sliding toward the drop-off.

  “Delores!” Vincent shouted. “Take your seatbelt off! Now!”

  Delores collected herself, struggled for a moment to find the button, found it, and pressed it, her body collapsing on the roof and the car gaining momentum as it inched toward the edge.

  “Turn your head away!” Vincent shouted as he pulled his gun.

  Delores saw what was coming and turned her head as she was instructed.