As Darkness Falls Read online

  Keys jingled yet again. “What do you want from me here, dude? If she’s still out in an hour, I’ll go ask the doc to come look at her. That’s the best I can do.”

  Jenn’s heart almost stopped. A doctor would know she was bluffing. She had to do this now, but she’d heard Skinny Kid’s keys, so he must be preparing to shut the door. Could she get at him all the way across her cell before he brought his rifle to bear?

  “Hey,” Skinny Kid said, sounding confused. “What are you doing? Put that—”

  “Jansen!”

  Why was Freddie calling her name when she was supposed to be unconscious? Something was wrong.

  She rolled over in time to see Freddie throwing the urine from his toilet-bucket through the cage. With a splash, it hit Skinny Kid square in the face. He staggered backward, deeper into her cell, frantically wiping at his eyes with both hands.

  Jenn scrambled to her feet, catching sight of her watch on Skinny Kid’s left wrist, and sprinted toward him, shank raised. As she leaped at her target, he threw up his arms to defend himself. Her momentum knocked him off-balance, and together, they tumbled to the floor. Atop him, she zeroed in on the exposed skin above the collar of his shirt and brought her weapon down.

  His flesh gave less resistance than she expected, and two inches of the bucket handle disappeared into his throat. When she yanked it free, dark blood spurted out; she must have cut his jugular or carotid. Her stomach convulsed, but she forced herself to stab again. This time, she struck his windpipe. Mouth open like he wanted to scream but couldn’t, Skinny Kid grasped at his wounds with both hands. Blood seeped through his fingers, painting them red.

  Leaving the shank lodged in his neck, Jenn unclipped the radio from his belt and slid it across the cell, where he couldn’t reach it, then scrambled to her feet and snatched away his AR. She angled the weapon so she could see the selector switch. It was set to SAFE. The other two options took her aback: SEMI and AUTO. This was no AR—it was a military M4. For all she knew, it came from the soldiers the Major’s men had killed at Sunset Point. She’d only fired a fully automatic rifle once before, with Dylan at the farm, so if she found herself in a fight, she would flip the switch to semiautomatic. Best not to experiment too much in a life-or-death situation.

  Next, with practiced hands, she removed the magazine and locked the bolt open. Empty. Idiot. She reinserted the magazine, then struck the bolt release with a palm to chamber a round.

  Skinny Kid squirmed and kicked his feet, watching Jenn with wide, terrified eyes. Yankees Hat wore the same expression after she shot him in the chest. She’d killed him in self-defense, though. Tonight, she was the aggressor. Skinny Kid hadn’t tried to hurt her. Neglected her, yes, but then gave her water. Tried to help her, even, if only a little. Now a shard of rusty metal protruded from his trachea.

  But he worked for the Major, so he would get no sympathy from her.

  Gripping the M4 tight, she brought the stock down hard on the bridge of his nose with a sickening crunch. His body jerked once and went limp, and his hands released their grip on his throat. Blood continued to ooze from the wounds. Jenn couldn’t tell if the final blow had killed him, but without immediate medical attention, he would bleed out within minutes.

  “Jansen!” Freddie whisper-shouted. “Get his keys!”

  Right, the keys. But first, she had to take back what was hers. She darted over to the now-motionless body and unclasped her watch, noticing blood on the face and on the band, then slipped it off his wrist and onto her own. With the last thing left of her parents once again in its proper place, a feeling of victory warmed her to the core, giving her confidence that she could truly succeed in breaking out of here.

  She used the flashlight to illuminate the floor and found Skinny Kid’s keys half buried beneath mulch. Keys in one hand, rifle slung across her chest, she left her cell—an almost surreal experience after being trapped in there since early this morning.

  It took her three tries to find the right key to the padlock on Freddie’s cell. When she’d slid the door far enough open for him to slip through, he hesitated, staring at what Jenn now assumed was Skinny Kid’s corpse. She feared he was on the precipice of shutting down, but the muscles in his cheek bulged like he was clenching his teeth in anger. After shaking his head, he held out his hand and said, “Give me the keys. I’ll get the others while you keep an eye out.”

  “Good idea.” She dropped them into his palm, seeing yet more blood on her own fingers, and shouldered the M4. In the chaos of neutralizing Skinny Kid, she hadn’t noticed that the weapon had an optic. An expensive one. Through it, the stable glowed in hues of green. Night vision. She clicked off the flashlight and tucked it into her jacket pocket.

  As Freddie padded toward the first cell, Jenn listened for footfalls or voices or the squelch of radios—any sign the Major’s men knew what had transpired in the stable. She heard nothing aside from Freddie’s muffled curses as he struggled to find the right key to each of the three padlocks. To her ears, his mutters sounded like bellows, and she swore the Major himself could hear them from his office across the courtyard.

  Tanis was the first out. She hugged Jenn tightly, then hugged herself, and waited nearby, shivering, staring at Skinny Kid. “Is he . . .” Both hands went over her mouth. “Is he dead?”

  “Yes, he is.” Jenn didn’t know that for sure, but Tanis needed firm, clear answers right now. She also needed reassurance, like Jenn did after she watched Dylan shoot those people at the bridge in Camp Verde. “There was no other way.”

  Aiden was released next. Immediately, he scampered into Jenn’s cell, where he collected the radio and the water bottle. He then searched Skinny Kid’s pockets and held up a switchblade in triumph. It was no M4, but Jenn would take a knife over nothing.

  “Nice work,” she said to him. “Keep it ready, just in case.” Tanis shivered some more, so Jenn gave her a reassuring half smile. “Hang in there. It’s almost over.”

  Freddie opened the last cell. Wyatt greeted the rest of the team with quick hugs while Freddie asked, “What’s the plan now? How do we get out of here?”

  The passageway presented two options: toward the corner or toward the closed door. The corner, Jenn knew, led to the courtyard. The ambient chatter from that direction had died down hours ago, but men might still be sleeping near the fire, light from which continued to illuminate the L in the passageway. So the closed door. She assumed it led outside. After all, the horses would have needed a way into and out of this stable without having to trek through the courtyard.

  She waved her team forward, moving quickly; presumably, the Major had a few guards on duty, and they might grow suspicious if Skinny Kid didn’t report in with them soon. Every few steps, she checked her rear, thankful for this rifle’s night-vision optic.

  A heavy wooden brace barred the door. “Pull it off,” she said to Freddie. “I’ll cover you guys.”

  He nodded at Wyatt, and they lifted the brace off its brackets, then set it quietly on the floor. The door opened inward, and Jenn cracked it enough to peek through. Fresh air greeted her, as well as the scent of sagebrush. She struggled to see in the dark, moonless night, however, so she angled the rifle and peered through the scope. In front of her, awash in green, was a stretch of sand, a waist-high wooden fence, and, beyond that, open ground dotted with little bushes. At the extreme edge of her vision loomed the shapes of buildings. Houses, probably.

  She breathed out in relief, thankful they weren’t in the middle of the desert, but the Major’s men would be watching the approaches to this facility, so she had to get to the relative safety of the bushes, and then the houses, as quickly as possible.

  “What do you see?” Freddie asked her.

  “A way out of here.” She eased the door open a few more inches. “Wyatt, straight ahead, there’s a fence maybe a hundred yards away. Stay low and move fast. On the other side, lie flat behind a bush if you can.”

  He gawked at her in disbelief. Was he sho
cked because escape was now a very real possibility or because she’d asked him to go first? She would have preferred to do it herself, to take that risk for her team, but she had to continue defending the passageway with the M4.

  “I’ll go,” Freddie offered, puffing out his chest.

  “No,” Jenn said. “Your grunts first.”

  Wyatt gave the others a casual shrug. “Wish me luck.”

  He slipped outside, into the night. For such a goof, he moved with a surprising amount of grace; Jenn didn’t hear a single footstep. After confirming the passageway remained clear, she checked on him through the optic. He’d already made it to the fence. She half expected the Major’s guards to open fire on him, but he climbed over and disappeared behind a shrub.

  Jenn dabbed cold sweat from her forehead. “Tanis, you next. Then Aiden, Freddie, and me.”

  Tanis moved faster than Wyatt but struggled to climb over the fence. Finally, with his help, she made it, and they both vanished into the bushes. Aiden, the tallest aside from Freddie and the thickest by a sizable margin, tripped halfway there and fell, but he recovered quickly and soon joined the others.

  “Your turn,” Jenn said to Freddie. “And hey, you did good back there. Oscar-worthy performance.”

  “Thanks . . .” His attention drifted to something behind her.

  Chatter floated down the passageway. She shouldered her rifle and spun around, but before she could bring the scope to her eye and find a target, a voice she recognized as Tobias’s shouted out, “Hey! You! How did you—”

  Her finger went to the trigger and pulled. The echoes of her double tap in this enclosed space were deafening. To Freddie, she yelled over the ringing in her ears, “Go! I’ll cover for you!”

  She checked through the night-vision optic. One guard, Lip Ring, had leaped into an open cell on the right side of the passageway, while Tobias poked his head out from around the corner. Jenn fired at him twice, hitting the wall he was using as cover, but she doubted these 5.56-caliber rounds would penetrate thick concrete blocks. No matter. She just needed to protect Freddie while he ran to the fence.

  But he was still here, crouched behind her, hands over his ears. She used her support hand to slap his wrist. “Go! Now!”

  Indistinct radio chatter erupted from the end of the passageway: Tobias or Lip Ring calling for backup.

  “I’m not leaving without you,” Freddie said.

  Jenn fired two shots toward Lip Ring and three at Tobias. “Just go! And don’t wait for me. Take your grunts, get them to the houses past the fence. You can hide there.”

  “No, I won’t—”

  She cut him off with yet another two shots at Tobias. He kept poking his rifle around the corner, so she must not have hit him through the wall. “I’ll be fine. I’m right behind you.”

  A lie. At some point, she’d acknowledged that she wasn’t leaving with Freddie and the others. Yes, she could follow him, fighting as she went, but the Major’s men would only pursue her. Staying here and distracting them would give her team the best chance to escape. Oddly, she was at peace with her decision. As a squad leader, it was her job—her duty—to put her people first, to make sacrifices for them. If she couldn’t do that, then she was no leader at all.

  With a flick of her thumb, she switched to fully automatic mode, then pressed the trigger and held. A spray of fire tore down the passageway, a crescendo of thunder assaulting her ears. The combined recoil of about ten shots caught her off guard and kicked up the barrel. A few rounds hit the ceiling before she regained control of the weapon.

  Tobias and Lip Ring had wisely hunkered down, affording Jenn a precious second. She unclasped her watch, pulled it off, and handed it to Freddie. “Hold onto this for me. Give it back when I see you next.”

  He held it in his open palm for a moment, staring at it blankly. Then understanding flickered across his face. “I will.”

  “Good, now get out of here!”

  Finally, after giving her one final, pleading glance, he went outside.

  A sense of calm washed over her. Her muscles relaxed, her breathing steadied, and all traces of fear, apprehension, and worry simply floated away, leaving behind nothing but raw, unfiltered determination. She thought about Sam and promised she would see him again soon. But first, she had work to do.

  Focusing through the scope, she lined up her sights with the pockmarked concrete between her and Tobias. Don’t just hold the trigger down, Dylan had said when showing her how to fire an automatic. Press it for a second, then let it go and readjust your aim.

  She squeezed off a three-round burst, peppering the wall. The next burst went toward Lip Ring’s cell. Jenn couldn’t see the woman and hadn’t for a while. Had she been hit?

  Jenn backed up, in the direction of the door, until she’d made it outside. There, she swung the rifle 180 degrees, checking the fence line. No sign of Freddie or the others. Hopefully they were well on their way to the relative safety of those houses.

  Down the passageway, she saw a new guard appear from around the corner. He dove behind cover as she fired at him, but only two shots came out, followed by a click.

  Crap. She cursed herself for not counting her rounds, not that counting would have helped without a spare magazine.

  She considered what to do next and quickly settled on running in a different direction than Freddie, using herself as bait. A spark of optimism prickled her insides. Maybe she could get away and meet up with him later.

  But two beams of light shone down on her from the roof of the compound, dousing that spark like a tsunami over a candle. She fought her instinct to swing the rifle toward the source—if she moved now, she might be gunned down.

  “On your knees!”

  The continued ringing in her head muffled the words, but she knew the Major had said them. She went rigid but smiled nonetheless, taking pleasure in her victory. She’d killed Skinny Kid, taken back her watch, and caused a whole slew of trouble. There would be retribution, possibly in the form of another beating from the Major, but she had no regrets. A hundred times over she’d endure that pain, especially if it meant she’d saved her friends from suffering a similar fate.

  So she put her hands on her head, letting the now-empty M4 hang loosely from its sling, and dropped to her knees as ordered. “Don’t shoot,” she said toward the roof, where she assumed the Major had a weapon trained on her chest. “You got me.”

  But only me.

  17

  The lights from the roof continued shining into Jenn’s eyes. Down on her knees, hands up, she blinked away stars in her vision. Her head pounded, and the ringing in her ears had hardly abated. She was beginning to wonder if it ever would.

  Over it, she heard the Major barking orders at someone: “Get all available trucks out there and search the neighborhood. They couldn’t have gone far.”

  “There’s a thousand empty houses for them to hide in,” a gravelly baritone said. Jenn couldn’t see much through the flashlights in her face, but she recognized the voice as belonging to the leader of the ambush.

  “Then check them all.” It sounded like the Major’s composure had begun to crack, and Jenn took great pleasure in hearing the twinge of alarm in his tone.

  There was a flurry of radio chatter, and one of the lights on the roof disappeared, affording her a view of the hulking figure storming through the doorway leading into the stable.

  Tobias.

  “Oh, hey there,” Jenn said. “Good to see you up and walking around after I dumped a thirty-round mag at you.”

  He responded by planting a boot square in her chest. She fell onto her back, but he then yanked her up by the hair. Searing heat lashed across her scalp, and a humiliating cry burst from her mouth. Feebly, she waved a fist at him but missed.

  “Was it you?” he asked and held her face so it was level with his. “Did you kill him?”

  She assumed he was talking about Skinny Kid and sensed his question was rhetorical. Even in this low light, she could see t
he grief twisting his features. It suppressed her will to gloat, not that she would gloat about killing, anyway. To avoid agitating him further, she kept quiet, trying to ignore the fact that he was pulling out clumps of her hair.

  “Answer me!” Spittle flew from his lips.

  Why was he so upset? Did Skinny Kid mean something to him? Was he a friend? God, a brother? Before now, she hadn’t imagined that these thugs and criminals could feel so strongly about another human being. Guilt wormed its way through her bowels, but she reminded herself that Skinny Kid was the enemy, that she had no other choice.

  Tobias released her hair, and she collapsed into the dirt. He lorded over her, fist ready to strike, so she shut her eyes and shielded her face with her arms.

  “Toby!” the Major called out. “Hands off. You hit her and I’m putting a bullet in your back. We clear?”

  She cracked open an eyelid. Tobias had lowered his arm and taken a step away. “Crystal, boss,” he said, staring daggers at Jenn.

  “Good. Now get her in a cell and take care of Victor. And someone keep an eye on her, would you?”

  Victor—Skinny Kid. Jenn wished he’d remained anonymous. She’d learned the names of the CFF guards she shot at the Battle of the Farm: Matthew, Julianna, Rachel. Rachel, Jenn had discovered with some horror, even had a family, a wife and young son. Unlike Yankees Hat and the thug she killed with Val in May, these three were real people, not abstract threats, and in her dreams, they spoke to her, had personalities. Could she expect the same from Victor now as well?

  Tobias tore away her M4, and with Lip Ring, he dragged her into the stable. They checked her pockets, maybe in search of the keys to the padlocks, then locked her in Wyatt’s cell.

  She sat with a blanket as Tobias and Lip Ring carried Victor down the passageway and around the corner. A third guard stood just outside her cell, a rifle over his shoulder and a knife hanging from his belt.

  The ringing in her ears quieted to an annoying hum. Her mouth was still dry, and that headache had grown worse. She doubted any of the guards would bring her water now. Really, she should count herself lucky if she survived the night with all ten of her fingernails intact.