The Lynchpin by Jeffrey B. Burton

Author:Jeffrey B. Burton [Burton, Jeffrey B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849823081
Publisher: M P Publishing

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Stunned, like a bird bouncing off a window, Cady lay on the cement landing.

He watched the scene unfold before him as though he were a detached observer—viewing a play and observing actors that he felt he should somehow know. As a disinterested bystander, Cady witnessed the steps down which he’d flown. He saw legs tangled atop his. He saw Evan Quilling lying next to him. He watched as Quilling sat himself up, shook his head, rubbed at his elbow, and then pushed himself up, streaks of red running diagonally across his hairless body, someone’s warped idea of a human barber pole. He watched as Evan Quilling looked down on him, eyes afire. He watched as Quilling kicked at his face with the heel of his foot.

Cady’s head whipped sideways and then back as he watched Quilling bend and reach for something shiny that lay on one of the lower steps. Quilling stood over him, the scalpel at home in his hand, and it sunk into Cady’s disassociated mind that the frenzied voice had returned. In fact, the voice had never left, but it now reached a crescendo—a fever pitch—in giddy anticipation of what Brother Evan was about to do. Cady couldn’t move a muscle. His brain had disconnected from his body, leaving him to witness his own death.

A vaguely familiar popping sound trumped the voice, and Evan Quilling spun around. Crimson droplets rained against the wall above Cady’s head. Cady spotted a nickel-sized hole in Quilling’s right shoulder blade. A bullet wound, Cady recognized, as three more pops drove Brother Quilling against the landing wall. The scalpel hit the floor, followed a moment later by Quilling himself, his blood leaking out of fresh wounds in the center of his already scarlet-striped chest. The voice switched from euphoric giddiness to undistilled fury, a rabid animal.

I can move, Cady thought as he lifted his head sideways and saw the source of the cackling rage for the first time—Lucinda Quilling inside the hidden basement room. She too was naked. Blood matted her hair, coated half her face, her neck, and nearly all of her breasts, with streaks across her stomach. She advanced on Cady, her mouth wide and howling, guttural—an inhuman sound defining her existence. A whirling dervish in a blood frenzy. Sister Quilling snatched the scalpel and darted toward the injured agent to finish what Brother Quilling had begun. Cady raised an arm, a simple act that caused his head to pound like a hammer. Grimacing, he dropped his head back to the floor.

Lucinda leapt over her brother, snatched a fistful of Cady’s hair, and yanked his head a foot off the ground. Lucinda wound up, but before she could lay open the agent’s throat a Beretta 92FS was pistol-whipping into her mouth, shredding cheek and shattering teeth, sending Lucinda backward over her fallen brother and down onto the cement. At long last, the screech came to an end. In a flash, Lieutenant Rohr was on Lucinda, stomping on her hand until she dropped the scalpel, kicking the blade across the room.

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