Deadfall Read online

  The laser came down in a flicker of green light. The air rippled around it, radiating heat. The spot where Declan stood erupted. Dirt and burning grass geysered straight up. The Jeep rocked away from the impact. Its side glass and windshield shattered.

  Laura screamed. Julian flew back against the front of the cabin and fell to his side.

  Hutch turned his eyes on the lump that was a soot-covered Phil. He called to his friend. The lump compressed tighter into itself. He called again, and Phil’s head came up.

  “Cover the guns,” Hutch said. “Over here.”

  Phil nodded.

  Hutch rose, started for Laura and Dillon’s position. They were lying facedown in the grass a dozen feet from where Laura had been sitting, holding her arm. He ran to them. As he rolled Dillon over, the boy moaned. Blood coated his right ear. His eyes fluttered open.

  “Dillon?” Hutch said.

  “Mom? Where’s Mom?”

  Hutch turned to Laura. Gently, he rolled her over. As her son had, she moaned and opened her eyes. She sat up. She folded her wounded arm at the elbow and tucked it close to her body.The other arm found Dillon and pulled him close. She squeezed him tightly. Her eyes scanned the area, then turned up to Hutch. “Declan?”

  The crater was at least five feet wide and a foot deep. Smoke wafted up from it. Bits of burning grass fanned out from the strike zone. Something near Hutch burned with more intensity. He recognized it as one of the woven bracelets Declan had worn. Here and there, looking like chunks of ash, were the black stones he had strung around his neck.

  The Jeep’s front passenger door and back half of the front quarter panel were crumpled in the shape of a semicircle, as though the finger had not only poked Declan out of existence but had ground him out for good measure, catching the Jeep in the process. Declan’s gun lay on the ground outside the crater. His hand still clenched it. It had been severed at the wrist.

  “He’s gone,” Hutch said.

  Laura closed her eyes and nodded.Took a deep breath. “He told me,” she said, laughing a little, “that curiosity killed the cat. He must not have known the whole saying: Satisfaction brought it back.” Her eyes found Hutch’s and she said, “I’m back. At least for my boy. I’m back.”

  69

  Dillon could not get enough of his mother. He squeezed her and buried his face in her neck. He cried. He let loose all the fear and grief and exhaustion that he had so admirably held in since Hutch had first picked him up behind the rec center.

  Laura was the mom he needed. She embraced him as would any mother whose dead child miraculously found breath again. She stroked the back of his head and consoled him with promises that everything would be all right. Then her own tears choked her voice, and the two wept together.

  Hutch could only imagine the depth of their emotions, the swirling chaos of their grief clashing with the elation of finding each other alive. More quickly than the grief, the elation would fade, or at least distill into something else: most likely, love and appreciation for one another. Dillon seemed like an emotionally stable child, undoubtedly loved. What they had gone through—losing a father and husband, coupled with the very real fear that the other had been lost as well—would strengthen their bond and make them not only mother and son, but best friends for life.

  Hutch hoped so, anyway. It would be some kind of redemption for their suffering. Dillon would find a wife someday, have children of his own. He would know how easily they could be taken away, and he would love them deeply and protect them well.

  Laura held her wounded left arm out from her body. The sleeve over her bicep was torn and soaked crimson, but little new blood bubbled out; the bullet had not pieced an artery or broken the bone.

  He looked around. Phil was a huge lump of coal, sitting on the weapons near the porch. Something about his posture—slumped shoulders, an arm angling back as a prop, legs splayed in front of him—made Hutch very glad to have him there. His presence, his life, was enough.

  He walked to where Declan’s hand and gun lay in the dirt. He pressed his booted toe onto the wrist, bent, and worked the gun free. Son of a billionaire. More opportunities than most people could dream of in a lifetime, and this is what Declan had chosen to do with them. Boredom, abuse, too many freedoms, and not enough reprisals.Who knew the reason? Hutch was too weary to give it much thought. He kicked the hand into the crater, pushed the gun into his belt, and walked on.

  He waded into the sea of ashes. It didn’t seem dirty to him. They had immersed themselves in it, and it had saved their lives.

  Already a light breeze had softened the evidence of their having been there.The depressions and mounds where Phil and Dillon had lay and he had stood, the miniature peaks and valleys of their footprints, were returning to the uniformity of the ashen surface.Vapors of soot wisped off the few remaining ridges. It lingered over the area like smoke, as though their presence had stirred the memory of heat and flame from the ground. He found the bow, nearly submerged, and lifted it. He shook it gently. Layers of ash fell away, but the blackness he had spread onto the moist, freshly cut wood remained. It was crudely chiseled and stained not only with soot, but with human blood.To Hutch, however, it represented resourcefulness, determination, life. He slipped it onto his shoulder.

  He walked to Phil and knelt next to him. He clamped a hand onto his shoulder. “You all right?”

  “Fantastic with a capital V.” He eyed Hutch, seeming for the first time to see how thoroughly the soot had covered them. He looked at his own hands and said, “If cleanliness is next to godliness, I think we’re in hell.”

  Hutch smiled. “More like we just came out of it. Can you get these guns into the car, the Bronco?”

  He nodded. “Should I hold one on the kid you arrowed?”

  Kyrill sat slumped against the cabin, his hand still clutching the shaft coming out of his shoulder. His skin was the grayish-white of a trout’s underbelly.

  Hutch said, “He’s not going anywhere till we move him.” He patted Phil’s shoulder and stood. When he stepped onto the porch, he saw a lot of blood had soaked Kyrill’s army jacket. The lack of spray and the teen’s continued consciousness convinced Hutch he was not in danger of bleeding to death. He knelt between Kyrill and Bad. He felt around Kyrill’s waist, under his arms, and around his ankles.

  The teen looked up, groggy with pain.

  Hutch asked, “Any more weapons?”

  Kyrill half smiled. Hutch thought he was going to say something smart, like I wish, or You mean like the one in my shoulder? But he only shook his head.

  “We’ll get you to a doctor.You’ll be all right.”

  He checked Bad for a pulse. Found none. He patted him down, found only a knife.

  Stepping off the porch, he tossed the blade into the ashes. He approached Julian.The boy was sitting on the edge of the porch, head hung, weeping quietly. The satellite remote was in his lap. Hesitantly, Hutch picked it up. The monitor showed static.

  “It’s offline,” Julian informed him. He sniffed.

  “Can we turn it off?” Hutch asked. Then said, “Never mind.” He dropped it on the ground and stomped it with his heel. It was evidence, but he didn’t want it to cause any more heartache. Not on his watch. When the monitor was shattered, controls broken off, and the housing bent in a shallow V, he picked it up again.

  Julian peered up at him with red, red eyes. “I killed him,” he said.

  Hutch knelt, aligning his eyes with the boy’s.

  “You did the right thing, Julian.You did what you had to do.”

  “He’s . . .” He swallowed hard. A fat tear streaked down his face. “He was my brother.”

  Hutch squeezed Julian’s knee. “He would have killed you. Now or over time, he would have.You know that, don’t you?”

  Julian nodded. After a few moments, he said, “What’s gonna happen?”

  Hutch thought about it. He had witnessed goodness in Julian: not alerting his pursuers in the forest, cutting him loose on the platea
u, stopping Declan here. Discernment told him Julian’s wrong decisions had been more about being young than being bad. He hoped the boy would have a chance to prove it.

  He said, “What happened here was self-defense, Julian. Clearly. I don’t know what else you’ve done, but considering your age and your brother’s influence over you, I think you’ll make out okay.Your father might be another story. Sounds like he had a lot to do with this.”

  Julian shook his head. “Plausible deniability.” It sounded like a term he had heard often. Dinnertime chatter. “He’s got so many companies and people between him and things like this.” He looked at the remote in Hutch’s hand, then into the sky. “He’ll never take the fall.”

  “Listen,” Hutch said. “No matter what happens, what you did here saved my life, a lot of lives. Thank you.”

  “I just wish . . . I wish . . .”

  “I know.”

  “Can you . . .” His voice broke. More tears. “Can you and Dillon and his mother and everyone else . . .” His shoulders slumped, his burden of guilt heavy. “Can you forgive me?”

  Hutch managed a thin smile. “I can, son. I can’t speak for the others, but I think they’ll see that when you realized what was happening, you tried to make it right or stop it. The real question is, can you forgive yourself?”

  Julian dropped his gaze, his head moving slowly back and forth.

  “Give it time.When the authorities come, during the investigation, during the trial, be honest. Stick to the truth like it’s a life preserver in a storm, and you’ll be okay.You will.”

  Hutch rose and walked around to the back of the Bronco. Phil had opened it and stashed the weapons on the cargo floor. Hutch added the satellite remote and Declan’s handgun. He turned.

  Phil was twenty paces into the meadow, squinting at the forest beyond. “What about the girl and the camera guy?” he said.

  “They can’t stay out there long,” Hutch said. “The cops will find them, they’ll make it to town, or . . . or they won’t.”

  He remembered something and walked around the Jeep. Pruitt’s camera lay in the dirt against the rear tire. It would have been in better shape had it fallen from an airplane. He picked it up, leaving a lens and bits of plastic on the ground. He went back to the Bronco and set it inside. A label on the camera’s body indicated it recorded highdefinition images directly to an onboard hard drive. No doubt the cops had technicians who could recover whatever data remained in the camera. And Pruitt had probably already dumped earlier recordings onto one of the laptops Hutch had seen at the rec center.

  A hand touched his arm.A black marble statue of a boy stood beside him.The whites of Dillon’s eyes, his blue irises, stared up at him.Tears had washed away the soot in wide paths from lids to jawline.

  Laura stood behind him. She released the grip she had on her wound to push her hair back from her face. Her cheek was smudged with soot where she’d rubbed it against her son. Her hand, her arms, her entire body trembled. She gave Hutch a soft smile. “I can’t stop shaking,” she said. “Thank you for taking care of my son.”

  He looked down at the boy. “I think we took care of each other. Right, Dillon?”

  Dillon stepped in to hug him. Hutch leaned into it and hugged him back. When their embrace ended, Dillon said, “What are you gonna do now?”

  Hutch squared his shoulders. “I’m heading home, Dillon. I’ve got some kids there who need their father.”

  “But your wife . . . ?”

  “Who is she, next to what we just went through?” He grinned, and to his surprise, he realized that a genuine feeling of hope infused it. Really, he thought, what kind of chance does she have of keeping me from my kids when Declan could not destroy me?

  Dillon frowned. “Will I see you again?”

  Hutch pushed his smile wider. “Oh, absolutely.” He took in Laura.

  “If your mom lets me, I’ll come see you, and maybe you and she can come to Colorado. I’ll give you a tour of my stomping grounds.You and Logan would get along great.Would you like that, to come see me?”

  Dillon nodded.

  He didn’t want to spoil whatever brief respite from the pain they had going on here, but he had to know. He lifted his gaze to Laura’s. “Terry?”

  She shook her head.

  The respite was gone. It would return, he knew. First, the darkness would grow less black. Eventually, over a lot of time, he would notice more light than not, a sort of twilight of the heart.Then, one day, the sun would break through.

  He had been too caught up in his own dismal night to recognize that Logan and Macie were braving a bleakness he had helped create. He would remedy that, if he could.

  Displaying the impeccable timing Hutch had come to think of as something more than coincidence, Dillon embraced him again. It was a balm to his spirit. He remembered something the child had taught him while they were fighting for their lives: in giving comfort, it was impossible not to receive it.

  He pulled Dillon closer and hugged him.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My heartfelt thanks goes to the following people, without whom this story would not exist:

  My longtime friend and newfound researcher, Mark Nelson.Years ago he introduced me to the beauty and ruggedness of Canada’s backcountry. An early discussion about this story revealed his rich vein of knowledge regarding northern Saskatchewan and roughing it in the wilderness.When I asked for his help in researching this project, he dove in with enthusiasm and astounding aptitude.Where my descriptions of locations and bow hunting prove accurate, he deserves the credit.Where they fail, blame my ignorance and misplaced sense of artistic license.

  My gratitude and apologies to the good folks of Stony Rapids, which became the fictional town of Fiddler Falls as I moved it across the river and tweaked its physical characteristics. I hope I preserved Stony’s hearty and charming spirit.

  Once again,my editor, Amanda Bostic, and publisher, Allen Arnold, for their encouragement and advice. Both possess keen insight into the art of storytelling and the hearts of authors. And the other staff at Nelson—particularly Jennifer, Carrie, Natalie, Lisa, and Mark—whose hard work and talent remind me time and again of how fortunate I am to be part of their team.

  LB Norton,my copyeditor. Every author should be so fortunate to have someone like her fixing his literary missteps.

  My indispensable agent Joel Gotler and his partners at Intellectual Property Group, especially Josh Schechter.Their friendship and good sense have saved me from myself more than a few times.

  John Fornof, Mark Olsen, Mae Gannon—readers, advisors, and best of all friends.

  My wife, Jodi, whose love and support have always girded me for long days of writing. She is my first reader, editor, and sounding board. And as my soul mate, she is more precious than rubies.

  My children: Melanie, Matthew, Anthony, and our newest blessing, Isabella. Hutch learned the hard way what I’ve always known: time with them is worth fighting for.

  “A compulsive read. A top-notch thriller. A writer of immense talent.”

  —Douglas Preston, coauthor with Lincoln Child

  of The Relic and The Book of the Dead

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  visit RobertLiparulo.com

  “A riveting thriller that spins effortlessly off great writing and a demonic villian real enough to have you looking over your shoulder.”

  —David H. Dun, author of The Black Silent

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  An Excerpt from

  COMES A HORSEMAN

  Five years ago

  Asia House,Tel Aviv, Israel

  He waited with his face pressed against the warm metal and his pistol gouging the skin at his lower back. He thought about pulling the weapon from his waistband, setting it beside him or even holding it in his hand, but when the time came, he’d have to move fast, and he didn’t want it getting in his way. He’d been there a long time, since well before the fi
rst party guests started arriving. Now it sounded as though quite a crowd had gathered on the third floor of the big building. Their voices drifted to him through the ventilation shaft, reverberating off its metal walls, reaching his ears as a jumble of undulating tones, punctuated at times by shrill laughter. He would close his eyes for long periods and try to discern the conversations, but whether by distortion or foreign tongue, even single words eluded him.

  Luco Scaramuzzi lifted his cheek out of a pool of perspiration and peered for the hundredth time through the two-foot-square grille below him. He could still see the small spot on the marble floor where a bead of sweat had dropped from the tip of his nose before he could stop it. If that spot were the center point of a clock face, the toilet was at noon, the sink and vanity at two o’clock, and the door—just beyond Luco’s view—at three. Despite the large room’s intended function as a lavatory for one, modesty or tact had prompted the mounting of walnut partitions on the two unwalled sides of the toilet. It was these partitions that would allow him to descend from the air shaft without being seen by a person standing at the sink—by his target.

  A gust of pungent wind blew past him, turning his stomach and forcing him to gasp for air through the grille. The building was home to several embassies, an art gallery, and a restaurant—enough people, food, and trash to generate some really awful effluvia.When the cooling system was idle, the temperature in the ventilation shafts quickly soared into summer-sun temperatures, despite the nighttime hour, and all sorts of odors roamed the ducts like rabid dogs. Then the air conditioner would kick in, chasing away the smells and freezing the perspiration to his body.

  Arjan had warned him about such things. He had explained that covert operations necessitated subjecting the body and senses to elements sane men avoided: extreme heat and cold; long stretches of immobility in the most uncomfortable places and positions; contact with insects, rodents, decay. He had advised him to focus on a single object and think pleasant thoughts until equilibrium returned.