Termination Orders(60)

“Bring it over here.”

Morgan walked over, hands outstretched, and held the bag out for Wagner. The assassin couldn’t take it without first letting go of Alex, who nearly stumbled forward, trembling.

“All right, sweetheart, you can sit down,” he said, keeping the knife at her throat. “Give it here,” he said to Morgan.

Morgan handed over the thick folder. As he handed over the little plastic memory card, he fumbled, and it fell on the floor of the cabin, at his feet.

“Here, I’ll get it,” said Morgan, bending down. But instead of picking up the chip, he wrapped his fist around the deer-antler lamp that Jenny had placed on the floor. Before Wagner could react, he swung it hard, diagonally upward. The heavy base hit Wagner in the face, sending him reeling back. Before he could recover from the blow, Morgan swung again, connecting with the man’s temple, and this time the assassin staggered and fell back hard on the wooden floor.

In a blind rage at the assassin’s threat to his family, Morgan struck once more with the lamp, and this time the wooden base broke off, flying low to a corner of the room. Morgan bashed him with the now-free deer antler again and again, and the bones of the man’s skull cracked sickeningly. The man convulsed and finally fell limp, his face beaten to a pulp, blood pooling around his head and seeping through the cracks in the wooden floor.

Morgan got up, panting, blood splattered on his face and shirt, feeling the relief of victory. Then he turned to Jenny and Alex, and only then, upon seeing the look of horror in his daughter’s face, did he realize what she had just witnessed. Alex, who was too squeamish to watch even mildly graphic action films; Alex, who at age eight had insisted they have a funeral for a bird that had hit the living room window and died; sweet, sensitive Alex, who opposed aggression on principle, had just seen him lose control and kill a man in an act of naked violence.

“Alex . . .” he said, but he didn’t know what to tell her. He wasn’t sorry. He couldn’t be sorry, after the bastard had threatened his wife and daughter. But he was afraid, at that moment, that he might lose his daughter, anyway.

“Why don’t we go into the bedroom, sweetie?” said a breathless Jenny, putting a comforting if shaking hand on her daughter’s shoulder. She nudged Alex, who then walked, wordlessly, through the doorway, looking blankly ahead. Jenny lingered with Morgan just enough to whisper to him, “I’m sorry, Dan. You just saved our lives—I know that. You did it to protect us. She’ll understand it in time. She’ll come around. Just . . . let me talk to her alone for a while.”

She gave him a gentle touch on the shoulder before walking into the other room with Alex and shutting the door behind her.

Damn.

Morgan knew there was nothing he could do now about Alex without making things worse, so instead, he did something that always warded off apprehension—focusing on practical matters. He needed to dispose of the body, which was the least of his troubles, considering that they were in a national forest. Their greatest problem was the fact that they had been found out and needed to get the hell out of there quickly. Once they realized that this one was dead, they would send another. And then, as he pondered this, he heard the rumble of a car outside, approaching the cabin.

Morgan hurriedly searched the dead man’s body and found what he was looking for—his concealed weapon, a five-round Ruger snub-nosed revolver, strapped to his ankle. He took it out, unlocked the safety, and rested his finger on the trigger. Whoever was coming, this time he would have more than a rusty rifle to fight them off with. He wouldn’t get taken by surprise. This time, he’d be ready.

He barged into the bedroom. “Someone else is here,” he told Alex and Jenny, who were huddled together on the bed. “It isn’t safe. Follow me.” He opened the window, which led to the outside, behind the cabin. He let his wife and distraught daughter climb out first and then hopped over himself. “Stand flat against the wall. If you hear gunshots, run into the forest, and don’t look back.”

The beam from the headlights went out, and then he heard the car door slam. Morgan skulked around to the side of the cabin, stepping carefully so as not to make a sound. In the dim light of the moon, Morgan could barely make out the parked car, which he identified as a Ford sedan. He heard footsteps approaching the door. They were light on the soft ground, but they still seemed too heavy to be T’s.

Well, whoever it was, Morgan wasn’t taking any chances. His grip tensed on the gun. This needed to be quick. Aim and shoot, no thinking. He heard the doorknob and the squeak of the front door. Morgan took a step beyond the corner and . . .