The Gemstone Peridot by Jon Hébert

Author:Jon Hébert
Format: epub

37

Atwar, Alabama

Cole carried Liv’s limp body over his shoulder, hauling her out the back door through an unlit cinder-block-lined hallway. A turn to the right brought him to a door that led outside. He opened it, peering from behind the tip of his suppressed gun to the wooded land. A pair of doves cooed in the still air, perched in the pines.

As soon as Wyatt had nabbed Liv and the federal agent, Cole had known where he’d take them. His boys called it the Lodge, a cinder block, above-ground survivalist bunker behind one of his deputy’s houses, half a mile to the nearest neighbor, and the perfect place to let a kidnap victim scream all they wanted. The Lodge was the perfect hideout for Wyatt and his purposes, but a tactical nightmare for Cole—one dead-end road led in and out.

He ripped off his gas mask and clicked the remote he’d pulled from one of the gassed men, and the lights on a tan sedan pockmarked with bullet holes from the Highway 17 gunfight answered the fob. He opened the trunk and carefully placed Liv inside. Setting down her hundred and ten pounds eased the pressure of the gunshot he’d taken to his armor, which had left Cole with an angry burn in his side. He threw in the gas mask, then shut the trunk and started his way back to the Lodge for the federal agent when his ears perked up at the whine of an ATV. He ran to the end of the driveway and saw a red-shirted driver careening toward him through the woods. Wyatt.

Cole made a split-second decision he knew he’d regret, leaving the agent behind but taking Liv. He had to get Liv alone. She could unravel his memories of the night Terry Brewer was killed. She’d escaped him, twice, and he couldn’t risk losing the chance to talk to her now. He blew out the back tires of the other vehicle in the driveway and got in the sedan, brushing shattered glass out of the seat before cranking the car and speeding down Walker Street.

Wooded lots and weed-strewn ditches flew by as Cole took turn after turn on the narrow road. Wyatt’s ATV tore through the woods to Cole’s right. Wyatt bounced on the low-hilled terrain and angled in fast, then raised a shotgun and fired. A slug shattered the passenger window into a hail of glass and exited through the back windshield, shattering it as well. Cole clocked Wyatt’s gun: double barrel, slugs, not shells, a terrible weapon. God forbid if the second slug hit the back side of the car. Did he pack Liv into the trunk with her head to the right or the left?

He fired a volley of snaps through the busted-out passenger window and into the trees. A thin pine exploded in front of the ATV. Cole fired again, his bullets grazing the ATV’s front grate. Wyatt closed in, now thirty-five feet away, the whine of the ATV approaching like a missile as the shotgun roared and the last slug shattered the back passenger window.

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