"I swear to God I'll kill you," Jack said, now shaking so bad Corey wasn't positive he could hit the German square.
"You shoot me and I shoot Corey," the German countered.
"I don't give a shit what you do. I'll blow you to kingdom come."
Finally the German let the pistol slip and clatter to the floor. Corey stepped to Jack.
"Let me have it, Jack. As soon as we take care of the Spaniard, you can get out of here." Jack nodded dumbly and let Corey take the shotgun. Backing up, Corey reached into a feed room and pulled out a six-foot pole with a fine wire loop on the end. Recognition flickered in the German's eyes.
"You know what this is, don't you, Kraut?"
Corey fit the piano-wire loop over Groiter's head as she stood behind him with the shotgun. Running up the hollowed-out center of the heavy dowel, the wire could be pulled tight with a handle from Corey's end. It could cut through the arteries in seconds. With a little less pressure, slow strangulation was possible. Yanking off his hood, she paused for a second at the sight of his freckled face-somehow older than she had imagined-then pulled the wire tight enough to turn him blue while Jack taped his hands. All the time she watched for the Spaniard.
"Hold this," she whispered to Jack, giving him the end of the wire loop. "If he does anything, you choke him to death. Understand?"
"He's choking to death now," Jack whispered.
"No, he's not. He just looks it."
Outside, Corey saw a light on in the house. So the Spaniard was in there. Quickly she made her way to the back door and noticed it was ajar. From inside she heard moans and a woman crying. Looking a little farther, she saw the Spaniard hunched over the kitchen table on top of a young woman. He held a knife to her throat. So intent was he on raping the girl that Corey was beside him before he noticed.
As soon as her captor left the room, Maria went to work on the handcuffs. As a child, she had learned to slide out of play cuffs by stretching her thumb and using her double-jointed socket. Like Houdini, she needed only the slightest loosening. When she folded her thumb into the palm of her hand and pulled, pain from the chafing skin made her grunt. She tried to force her hand through, not caring about the ripping skin.
From outside, there were sounds of a struggle and threats. They were fighting each other. Hope invigorated her.
Slick with blood, her right hand popped free of the cuff, then her left. She ripped off the blindfold and began working on the tape at her waist, using her fingernails to pull up an edge. Free of the tape, she grabbed the plastic tie-wraps at her feet, ignoring the free-flowing blood from her hands that dripped onto the carpet. As she worked, it became apparent she was in a windowless room with a large mirror on one wall. She pulled frantically on the plastic tie-wraps that held her ankles together and fastened them to the chair. Finally she was able to stretch the plastic until she got enough slack to twist it. On the floor she found a screwdriver and moved the chair enough to grab it, then used it to further twist the plastic. She broke the plastic tie-wrap on her right leg. The left went faster.
When she moved to the door, she could only make out hazy figures across the barn. The chemical would not leave her eyes no matter how many tears she shed. She forced herself to wait, watching as best she could, knowing that they would probably see her the minute she went out the door. Through the blur it looked like a man had something pointed at the back of another man's head, probably a gun. Then someone else came with a gun pointed at a second man. A woman's voice. She sounded in a rage and she was tying up one of the others. In minutes he started yelling in a foreign language. Then the yelling turned to incredible, agonized screams. If ever they would be distracted, it was now.
Crouched down, she ran out the door and down the wall of the barn. At any moment, she expected to be discovered by the lunatics behind her. And then she saw it. A broken board in the side of the barn next to several bales of hay. Approaching it, she discovered a hole that looked like it might be big enough to crawl through. She lowered her head and scrunched her shoulders, barely squeezing into the opening. God, it hurt, first pinching her shoulders, then her hips. At last, she popped free. Ahead, she saw the forest.
Freedom.
She began to run, the eerie screams driving her first up a small path, and then off the trail, through a patch of ferns, trying to put as much distance between herself and the barn as possible.
When Corey was through with the Spaniard, he was moaning in shock. The girl, a young woman really, was still crying, and Jack looked haggard. The German showed no emotion.
"She's your daughter?" she asked Jack.
Jack only nodded.
"I thought you said they all went to Mexico."
"I lied. She wouldn't go. I wanted to protect her. Now this."
"What's your name?" she asked the girl, gently touching her head.
"Janet."
"I did you a good turn. Can you do me one?"
"As long as I don't have to kill anybody," she said, staring at Corey's bloody arms.
"You don't. I still need my videotape."
"That's all you're going to do?" Jack asked.
"Absolutely. We better check the bitch."
Corey was shocked when she opened the interrogation-room door and found the empty chair.
She walked back across the barn to Jack and Janet. ''Jack, did you let her go?''
"Not me."
The German had to take some satisfaction in this turn of events, but he did not smile.
Corey tried to think. They were surrounded by forest. She couldn't be far. But now they couldn't stay here.
''Jack, you and Janet deposit the German in my basement. I've got handcuffs, a place to cuff him. Take him while I chase down the bitch." Then she proceeded to explain in detail what she wanted and how to get into the basement room.
"Why don't you just shoot me now?" the German asked as Corey pushed his head down to stuff him in the back of the van.
"You won't be that lucky."
Before he could say more, she sprayed him full in the face with pepper spray. He lay on his side, emitting muffled groans. She slid his hood over his face, then reached in his pocket, found a wallet and a card.
"What a dumb shit, a wallet with ID. I'll be damned. I thought you looked familiar. You're Hans Groiter, the security guy for the Amada corporation. Shit. Unbelievable.
"Tie his feet tight, Jack, and don't forget to stack some straw bales in front of the cabinet that leads to the room. It's in the cellar, right where I told you. Don't ever take the wire off his neck. Control him with it. And you know whose side you're on?"
"I'm a dead man if we don't deal with this dude," Jack replied.
"I'm real happy you figured that out."
"I want him dead, but I don't want to do it."
"That's my job. And remember those videotapes of your farm and family."
Jack nodded.
"Now let's you and me go back in the barn and make sure all the physical evidence here will incriminate him. This card will come in handy."
A minute later, Corey walked out of the barn, the Colt AR-15 strapped across her back. After popping the Spaniard in the head with the German's fancy Heckler amp; Koch, she left the bloody hulk sitting in the corner and began her search for Maria Fischer's trail.
It took Corey only minutes to find the hole in the barn and the small trail leading away from it. Reaching the fern patch, she saw the disturbed foliage and began following what she hoped was Fischer's escape route. Halfway through the ferns, she heard the helicopter. In minutes the area would be crawling with police. The adrenaline surged through her body and she let herself become the hunter-every scent, every folded leaf, every impression in the ground, held a meaning.