Fourteen
Noah had no illusions that killing Billy Trevor would
remain a secret forever. Abe would find out, probably sooner than later.
Lazarus would give him away, although Noah held fewer grudges against
Lazarus than even Lazarus suspected.
As the youngest member of the Darker family, Noah
remembered how Evie and Lazarus had huddled together in their beds as
children when Zeke was beating Ma, and sometimes Abe. Poverty was at the
root of all the Darkers had suffered, and the Trevor family was at the
root of the material and spiritual impoverishment Silver Ridge had endured
for all the years of its existence. Once the Trevors were driven from
Silver Ridge, even Abe would breath a sigh of relief.
Noah saw Lazarus off to work at dawn. Evie moved
about in her bedroom and emerged a half hour later carrying two suitcases
and dressed in her Sunday best. She gave no indication of having overhead
any part of his conversation with Lazarus. She looked pale and shaken,
and Noah doubted if she had slept at all during the night.
“Abe said to drive me to the castle,” Evie demanded
in a nervous monotone.
Noah made a show of putting the coffee cups in the
sink. “Yeah, just give me a minute.”
The phone rang before Evie’s patience wore thin. “Go
for it,” Lazarus muttered over the receiver. “If Abe checks the records,
or asks around, I arranged for a few of the guys to say you’re working
overtime today. I’ll get drunk after work like I promised.”
Lazarus hung up the on his end.
“Yes, sir,” Noah said, putting enough energy in his
tone of voice to catch Evie’s attention. “I understand, sir. Tomorrow
morning at about eight. No, there won’t be any problem. I’m sure she’ll
understand.”
Noah set the phone down and tried to look grimly
serious. Evie glared at him suspiciously. “I don’t know who that was.
He said for you to wait until tomorrow morning, something about needing
more time for preparations.”
“You’re lying, Noah Darker.”
Noah shrugged. “Why would I lie? Where would it get
me?”
Evie looked fit to be tied. She danced nervously
from foot to foot. “I don’t know. Where’s Lazarus?”
“He’s at work. I’ve gotta go, too. If you want,
stay with Ella May. They said to bring you to the house at about seven in
the morning. He has a car coming to drive you both to Boston.”
Evie edged closer with ill-concealed suspicion. “Was
it really Billy? Is anything wrong?”
Noah shook his head, equally nervous, but for
different reasons. “Yeah, it was Billy. He didn't sound like
he was having problems. Kinda cheerful."
Evie radiated distrust. It amazed him that she
couldn’t see through his deception in an instant. Finally, she returned
to her room and closed her damaged door behind her as best she could.
Noah left the house fifteen minutes later. Evie was
no longer of any concern to him. By tomorrow morning, Billy Trevor would
be dead. Abraham would have no reason to doubt his and Lazarus’ version
of events, at least in the short term.
There was work to be done, though. He had no chance
of breaching the security devices of the castle, but he had friends to
lend a hand, men who wouldn’t balk at the killing of a Trevor. He found
Jake Estevez languishing in a dingy corner of the Silver Ridge Saloon at
nine o’clock in the morning. Jake had spent as much time in the tavern in
recent years as he had spent in federal penitentiaries in his youth.
Together, he and Jake tracked down Frank Boker at an address just outside
town, a house owned by a two hundred pound, fifty-year-old widow Frank
denied knowing intimately. Even Jake who was suffering the agony of a
hangover managed a laugh at Frank’s expense at that fib.
The two were well suited for what Noah had in mind.
Three years earlier, they had broken into the empty Trevor mansion during
a heavy snowstorm and had found nothing to seriously hamper a future, more
fruitful visit. Whatever additional security Billy Trevor may have
installed since his arrival would do little to protect against Jake and
Frank’s intimate knowledge of the house and its points of entry.
The trio returned to the bar to discuss details of
Noah’s plan. “I gotta pay him back for Pa,” Noah explained. “Life’s
going to be intolerable if a Trevor puts down roots here.”
Both men grimaced at the thought.
“Get me in early after dark and you got the whole
night to clean the place out. I won’t take a cut in that.”
They studied him and one another and shrugged.
“About time,” was all Jake had to say, and Frank ordered another round of
whiskey without comment.
Regardless, the two were sober by the time Noah
finished grilling the two and satisfying himself that they could get into
the house without tripping any alarms. “Getting too smart to make
mistakes,” Frank bragged with a toothless grin. “Not enough time left to
be spending it in jail.”
“We might take a bit of heat,” Noah warned the two.
“We’re taking down a Trevor.”
The two men eyed each other without concern. “We
ain’t likely suspects,” Jake said.
“Nobody’s going to bother with us if we get drunk
enough and stay that way until the heat passes,” Frank added. “Besides,
we got a plant that’ll divert suspicion.”
Noah leaned back in his chair and frowned. “Right.
A plant.”
“A way to get even when you got as much patience as
we do, a wallet lifted from an asshole that knifed a buddy of ours a few
years back. Cops are gonna be looking for him pretty quick, if they find
his wallet in Trevor place, don’t you think? They’ll be looking a long
ways from Silver Ridge, mind you.”
Noah decided that the pair had retained their edge
despite their age and poor physical condition. “You’re calling the
shots. How do we get in?”
Jake looked about casually to make sure nobody was
listening and leaned forward. “I walk my dog about dusk. He gets loose
inside the gate, snoops around the house and trips any of those newfangled
detectors.”
“Ultrasonic,” Frank said. “Maybe infrared.”
“If no deputies show up,” Jake continued, “we take a
look ourselves, disable the security we know about, and find us a
convenient point of entry. If we get in okay, we figure we’ll be set for
the rest of the night.”
“What if we can’t get in?”
“Then we can’t. You expect guarantees?”
Noah hadn’t thought about that. “No, I guess not.”
“Don’t worry. We gotta take precautions, but we’ll
get in.”
Noah hung around the bar for the day. Jake and Frank
left to gather their equipment together. Lazarus showed up after work at
four in the afternoon and started ordering drinks without acknowledging
his brother’s presence in a dark corner.
Jake and Frank parked a pickup out front at dusk and
waited in the idling truck. Two dogs barked raucously in the bed. Noah
scanned the dingy establishment already filling with patrons for the night
before leaving. Lazarus had made a point of being the center of attention
of the noisiest group, and Noah turned him loose to his drinking,
satisfied that Lazarus wouldn’t try anything stupid.
Jake parked the pickup a block from the Trevor hill.
They skirted the iron fence on the side facing away from the highway and
the valley. The dogs ran wild, but never ventured far from their
masters, and they stayed quiet on command. The evening was warm and quiet, the sky filled with stars and a
setting, gibbous moon.
Jake and Frank found a breach in the fence and shoed
the dogs through. They stood with their hands stuffed in their pockets as
the two labs worked their way up the hill and along the foundation of the
house.
“How do you get them to do that?” Noah wanted to
know.
“They’re looking for pieces of deer meat,"
Jake said. "I trained
them special to scratch at windows, doors and sniff along foundations. If
they don’t trip no outside alarms, I guarantee there aren’t any.
When they get back down here, they'll get their deer meat.”
He blew a silent whistle twenty minutes later, and
the dogs came racing back down the hill. He fed the dogs and sent the animals on their way home
with a slap across their flanks. Frank pulled a dark ski
mask over his head and stepped through the broken section of fence. He
soon disappeared among the saplings crowding the side of the hill.
Jake eyed Noah. “How you going to do your thing with
Billy Trevor?”
Noah had given the detail little thought. “Don’t
much matter, does it?”
“Make it quick, bloodless, and then beat it. If
there’s trouble, we can get out clean. I don’t want you getting nabbed or
leaving fingerprints or no fool bloody footprints.”
“I’ll do that,” Noah said, thinking how Abe would
appreciate the care and expertise he had employed in carrying out his
plan.
Frank came back down the hill within the hour.
“Place looks empty. Lights are all on, but I don’t see anyone about.”
“He sure as hell better be home,” Noah growled
unhappily. “He’s supposed to be.”
“We should know where he’s at before we go in,” Jake
said curtly. “Damn place’s got thirty, forty rooms.”
“Your boy could be carrying a gun,” Frank added.
“Maybe he’ll have time to pick up a phone.”
“We can handle it,” Noah said, hoping the two would
buy his expression of confidence.
“If we didn’t think we could handle it,” Jake piped
in, “we wouldn’t stick our necks out. Frank and I figure we can outrun a
boy in a wheelchair, don’t we, Frank?”
Frank grinned broad enough to show his number of
missing teeth. “Yeah, we’ve had things figured for ages. This is
something I’ve always been itching to do.”
Chuckling, the two men scaled the low fence and began
working their way through the underbrush at the base of the hill. Noah
took a final nervous look about and followed. It was far too late to back
out now.
Basement windows were all boarded up with plates of
steel. “Curious,” was all Frank would say as he led to way to an
unprotected first floor window in back. Noah watched the man use a glass
cutter and suction cup to remove a large section of glass without
otherwise disturbing the window.
Frank moved a cinder block into place for use as a
step, then went in head first. Jake followed, and Noah went in last.
Noah found himself in a dark, walk-in cupboard. Jake inched the door open
to a dimly lit hall. Frank put a hand on Noah’s arm when he started out
the door. “You wait here. We’ll find him for you.”
The two men went in opposite directions. They
returned together several minutes later. Frank pointed a thumb over his
shoulder. “He’s in a room with books all over the wall. Wall to wall books. Kid’s gonna ruin his eyesight reading all them
books.”
Jake reached in his pocket and handed Noah a small
revolver. “Use this. Belongs to another ex-friend. Feds
already got a connection between this gun, its bullets, and our ex-friend,
so make sure we get it back so we can clean your prints, DNA and stuff
from it."
They let him go alone. Noah’s heart began pounding
the moment he lost sight of the two. He moved down the hall toward the
center of the house and caught sight of himself passing a wall mirror.
The ferocity of his own thin, bloodless smile startled him.
The size of the reception hall caught him off guard.
He felt dwarfed by the splendor of the house, reduced to insignificance by
the riches in evidence all about him. He reminded himself that the Trevor
fortune had squeezed the blood of laborers mining the hills
beneath Silver Ridge to afford such riches. Thus fortified, he scanned the perimeter of the
room for the den or library Frank had mentioned.
A door stood open across the way. Even from across
the cavernous room, he could see Billy Trevor seated in his wheelchair
facing the back wall. Noah made no sound crossing the oriental rugs and
the polished wood of the floor.
He paused in the entranceway, tempted to simply blow
the back of Billy’s head in and get it over with. Billy Trevor’s world
disturbed him. He felt inferior and unworthy, feelings that had plagued
him his entire life.
Unthinking anger goaded him on. He approached to
within three yards of Billy Trevor. Instead of firing unseen at point
blank range, he gave a low chuckle of amusement to attract Billy’s
attention. Billy was going to have to see it coming.
Billy turned the chair about slowly and stared at him
without expression. He then rose to his feet.
Noah frowned, confused by the contradiction of a man
who couldn’t walk rising from a wheelchair.
“Billy thinks he needs it,” the boy said softly. “I
don’t. We’ve been expecting you, the two of us.”
Noah was confused. He knew Billy Trevor. He had met
the boy once talking with Evie outside the hardware store in Silver
Ridge. Billy weighed in at about one hundred and thirty pounds. He stood
a little taller than Evie’s own five feet, five inches. Noah had seen
fear in the boy’s eyes facing a man standing a foot taller than himself
and outweighing him by at least fifty pounds. That was the image he had
fostered for the past three years, one of a cowardly bookworm flaunting
his Jaguar and his fancy clothes to lure Evie into the house on the hill.
Noah lashed out to pistol whip the boy alongside the
head, intending in a sudden bout of cold anger to beat Billy’s face to a
pulp before snapping his frail looking neck. Without so much as
flinching, Billy ducked backward. Noah’s swing missed, throwing him off
balance a step or two. Smiling, Billy backed out of range.
“Brute force prevailed well into the twenty-first
century,” Billy murmured. “You should have seen the mess they made of things
by the time I was born.”
Noah knocked an upholstered chair aside and stormed
forward. He was reaching for the boy when something metallic snicked off
to his right. A silvery needle appeared in the back of his hand
simultaneous with the sound. He saw it before the pain struck. When it
did, his hand jerked spasmodically and the pistol flew from his grip.
The pain was horrendous,
paralyzing his entire right arm with its intensity. He picked out
the needle-size dart knowing that he should have been using the time to
flee. Billy Trevor had the upper hand. He had been prepared
for the Darkers all along.
“The Trevors sent their condolences to your family,”
Billy Trevor said. “The man at the wheel of the car that struck your
father wasn’t even an employee of the Trevors. My parents paid for your
father’s funeral expenses regardless. Your family lived comfortably on
the settlement we provided until just last year, when you turned of age.”
Noah heard the words spoken to him. He had trouble
making sense of any of them.
“You continue to see the death of your father through
the eyes of a child,” Billy said. “It is a matter you and I should
discuss as reasonable men.”
Frank’s voice bellowed from behind him. “Noah, get
down! I’ve got him!”
“No! Wait a minute!” Noah called out.
He had only a moment to turn and raise his arms, and
then two guns were roaring, emptying their chambers on the hapless youth
standing defenseless in the middle of the room.
Noah expected to see Billy Trevor careen over
backwards in a explosion of blood and torn flesh. Instead, the bullets
splattered in midair a yard away, fracturing an otherwise transparent
shield standing between him and the two armed men. The moment the firing
stopped, the snick of unseen triggers sounded from all sides. A flurry of
silvery darts filled the air, bowling Frank and Jake over with expressions
of shock and disbelief frozen on their twisted features. They fell
contorted corpses with wrists that snapped upon impact with the floor and
spines arced to the breaking point.
Noah had felt the pain one dart had inflicted. He
could not begin to imagine the agony of hundreds. Frank’s gun fell within
reach. He had no choice but to dive for it and finish the job. Lazarus
and Abe would kill him if he failed. He grabbed the still warm butt of
the weapon and had only to roll a few yards to fire around the plastic
shield.
Billy Trevor’s eyes widened. He cried out protest.
It was only when the flurry of darts nailed Noah from all directions that
he realized that Billy’s cry was not for his own welfare, but fear for the
fate of his assailant.
Agony exploded within him, paralyzing his trigger
finger. Pain blossomed to inhuman proportions. His heart stopped in an
instant. An oblivion he did not see coming swallowed what remained of his
shock and surprise.
