Chill Factor (49 page)

"So why did he leave it here?"

Before Lilly could arrive at an answer to what was a very good
question, her ears picked up a sound. "Is that a helicopter?"

"That was the FBI's plan."

A tide of relief surged through her. She'd been glad to see
William
Ritt and to learn that Tierney's capture was imminent. But if he'd
somehow managed to elude Dutch and Wes and return to the cabin, the
pharmacist would've posed no threat to him.

William moved to the door and stepped onto the porch, but even
before he reentered the cabin, Lilly realized he'd reacted too slowly.

"They're circling away," he said. "But they must've seen my
snowmobile."

"They're probably looking for a place to set down. Thank God
they're
here."

"Amen. Do you realize how lucky you are to have escaped Blue?
None
of the others did."

"Millicent's death mask." She shuddered. "It was terrible."

"I can imagine how awful it must have been for you, finding
her body
in the toolbox that way."

She nodded. "But I suppose it was a good thing that I
discovered it.
By now Tierney has probably moved it, maybe even buried it while I was
unconscious. I should have known something wasn't right. He acted so
touchy when I mentioned the ax to him after he went for the—"
She broke
off abruptly.

"Went for the what?"

"Wood," she replied hoarsely. "He went for firewood." She
tried to
lick her lips, although her mouth had gone dry. "Mr. Ritt?"

"Yes?"

"How… how did you know about the toolbox in the
shed?"

"Hoot?"

"You'll have to shout, Perkins. We're in the chopper."

"You?"

"What have you got?"

"Tierney…"

The rest of it was lost as the pilot executed a pivot that
pinned
Hoot more securely to his seat while his stomach remained airborne.
"Say again, please," Hoot shouted.

"Finally made contact with Mrs. Lambert."

"Torrie Lambert's mother?"

"Affirmative. Brace yourself."

Hoot asked Perkins to repeat his message three times, until he
was
certain he'd heard it correctly. He ended the call with a terse thanks.
Then, speaking into the headset and interrupting the tactical guys'
discussion on how best to get on the ground, he addressed Begley.

"Sir," he shouted, "Ben Tierney was not, repeat
not
,
Torrie Lambert's abductor."

Begley's head swiveled around.

Hoot looked straight into the nutcracker. "He's her father."

CHAPTER  32

WILLIAM RlTT REMAINED UNRUFFLED. "PARDON ME?" Lilly's mouth
was as
dry as a husk. She had to push the words out. "I told you I had found
Millicent's body in the shed. I didn't say anything about the toolbox.
How did you know there was a toolbox in the shed?"

His feigned misapprehension lasted only a moment longer, then
he
shook his head with chagrin. "It wasn't very clever of me to make that
slip. But it was even less clever of you to bring it to my attention."

She tried to swallow but couldn't.

"You know, Mrs. Burton, or Ms. Martin, or whatever you go by
these
days. You know what this means, don't you?" His voice had changed as
radically as his demeanor. There was nothing ingratiating about him now.

"You're…"

"Blue. Yes. Although I'm not very fond of that silly nickname."

The crack of a rifle shot surprised them. Both looked toward
the
door, although it was obvious that the sound had come from a distance.

Several seconds later, William said, "Only one shot. Dutch
claims to
be an excellent marksman. Seems he is."

She sucked in a wheezing breath. "Tierney?"

"Tierney. Dead now. What a stroke of good luck."

He took the transmitter from his pocket and turned
it
on
.
It squawked loudly. He lowered the
volume.

"What are you doing?" Lilly asked. "Who are you calling?"

"Watch. I think you'll like this. Well, you won't actually
like it.
But you'll have to agree that it's brilliant."

Bringing the transmitter to his mouth, he depressed the button
on
the side of it. "Dutch? Dutch?" he shouted frantically. "Can you hear
me?"

He released the button and stared at her while he waited for a
response. For several moments there was nothing but the hiss of
amplified air, then Dutch's voice filled the room. "Who's this?"

He depressed the button. "It's William. I heard a shot. Did
you get
Tierney?"

He broke off when Lilly opened her mouth to scream. He must
have
been anticipating that she would try something like that, because he
acted swiftly, covering her mouth with his hand.

"Ritt? Where are you?"

Lilly struggled to turn her head and free her mouth. When that
didn't work, she tried biting his palm. He only pressed his hand more
firmly against her mouth, holding her head against the wall beneath the
bar, his fingers digging painfully into the soft tissue of her cheeks.

He picked up the transmitter, depressed the button, and faked
a
sound that was half retch, half sob. "Dutch, I'm here, in the cabin
.
Did you get Tierney?"

"Yeah, yeah, he's down. Is Lilly all right?"

For effect, he made his voice crack. "No, your wife is dead.
Dead!
Tierney killed her!"

Tierney was lying flat on his back. When he opened his eyes,
the
glare of sunlight reflecting off the snow caused a piercing pain to
shoot out the backs of his eyeballs straight into a nerve center inside
his brain.

Dutch, I'm here, in the cabin. Did
you get Tierney? No, your
wife
is dead. Dead! Tierney killed her!

The voice sounded tinny, unnatural. Where was it coming from?

"The son of a bitch murdered Lilly!" Dutch Burton's roar was
loud
enough to shake minor avalanches of snow from tree branches.

"He's moving, Dutch!" Wes shouted. "You only winged him."

Suddenly Tierney remembered why he was lying flat on his back,
why
his shoulder hurt like hell. All the elements came together in a flash
of clarity, the worst of them being that someone was claiming Lilly was
dead and he had killed her.

Who would say something that categorically wrong?

Only someone trying to protect himself.

Christ, he had to get back to her.

He struggled to sit up. A surge of nausea filled his throat,
but he
managed to swallow it. There was a shocking amount of blood on the
snow. His face was bathed in a cold, clammy sweat, while his shoulder
felt as if it had been branded.

What seemed like a lifetime must have been only a few seconds.
When
he opened his eyes again and tested them against the glare, he saw
Dutch Burton toss aside the transmitter of a two-way radio, which
explained the origin of the tinny voice.

Dutch launched himself off the embankment as though he were
about to
fly. He landed hard on the roadway, but that didn't slow him down.
Tierney barely had time to raise his one useful arm before Dutch was on
top of him, pounding him with his fists.

"Listen, Dutch." Tierney was surprised by the raspy weakness
of his
own voice. He doubted Dutch could even hear it. In any case, he was in
no mood to stop and listen.

The police chief let fly with a right hook that caught Tierney
in
the cheekbone. He heard his skin split. His blood spattered Dutch's
face.
What the hell was wrong with his face, anyway
?

Tierney deflected a second blow. "Lilly—"

"You killed her. God damn you!"

"No! Listen to me."

But Dutch was beyond listening. His eyes were ablaze with
unmitigated hatred. There was no doubt in Tierney's mind that if he
couldn't defend himself, the crazed son of a bitch would kill him.

Drawing from resources he had believed were used up, he began
not
only to defend himself against the attack but to fight back. He had
several grudges against Dutch Burton, and they fueled him with renewed
strength. He managed to wedge his knee between himself and Dutch. He
pushed with all his strength.

Dutch rolled aside long enough for Tierney to reach for the
pistol
he had dropped earlier. But reflexively he reached with his right arm,
which was hanging uselessly from the shoulder socket that had been
shattered by the rifle bullet.

He screamed in pain and struggled to stand up, then managed a
few
stumbling steps.

Dutch grabbed him by his sprained ankle and yanked his foot
out from
under him. He went down like a sack of cement. Dutch flipped him over
onto his back like a fish he was about to gut. Once again he was on top
of him, this time with both hands wrapped around his throat, thumbs
digging into his Adam's apple.

Dutch's clenched teeth were smeared with blood, and Tierney
was glad
to see it. At least he'd landed a few awkward left-hand punches.

"Did you fuck her?"

Any compunction Tierney had had against fighting Dutch ended
there.
What kind of man who had just heard that his wife was dead asked
that?
He was more concerned about his own damn pride than he was
about
the fate of a woman he professed to love.

"Did you?" he bellowed.

"Dutch, the helicopter."

Tierney heard Wes Hamer's warning shout as though from
a
great distance, but Dutch seemed not to have heard him at all
,
or if he did, he wasn't heeding him. Saliva, blood, and sweat dripped
from his face onto Tierney's. The cerulean sky overhead was growing
dark around the edges. Tierney blinked but couldn't get rid of the
black dots that sprinkled his narrowing field of vision.

He was going to die if he didn't do something. And
now
.

Dutch was straddling his waist, putting all his weight behind
his
hands. Tierney's right arm lay useless at his side. His left was almost
as ineffectual. The feeble blows it was delivering didn't faze Dutch.

Tierney took the only chance he had. Raising his knee, he
paused to
channel all his strength into his quadriceps, then slammed his knee
into Burton's exposed crotch, hoping to catch him beneath his scrotum.

Dutch howled. Immediately his hands fell away from Tierney's
neck.
Tierney bowed his body and threw the other man off, then rolled on top
of him, successfully reversing their positions. He pressed his left
forearm across Dutch's throat like a crowbar.

With more coordination than he believed he had in his right
arm, he
picked up his pistol and fired it at Wes Hamer, who was charging across
the road toward them. The blast caused Wes to skid to a halt. "Throw
down the rifle or the next shot counts."

It was a weakly issued threat, but miraculously it worked. Wes
dropped his rifle.

But then Tierney realized that Wes wasn't afraid of him. It
was the
helicopter, getting louder, coming closer, carrying witnesses.

"Who was that on the radio?" he asked Wes in a breathless pant.

"Ritt. William Ritt."

Ritt
? Pale, scrawny, William Ritt? That
weasel?

Tierney would sort out the whys and wherefores later. Right
now, he
bent back over Dutch, whose face looked like that of the villain in a
slasher movie, a mix of blood and pus and blind fury. He jabbed the
barrel of the pistol beneath Dutch's chin. "I've got several good
reasons to kill you. The first being that you hit Lilly. The only
reason I'm not going to hurt you is I promised her I wouldn't."

Using the man's wide chest for leverage, he pushed himself to
his
feet, staggering in search of equilibrium. Raising his left hand, he
pointed at the approaching helicopter. "Either of you shoots me in the
back, they're going to see it."

Then, knowing he'd squandered a valuable ten seconds on
Lilly's
worthless ex, he clapped his right arm tightly against the side of his
body and began a lurching run up the road in the direction of the cabin.

As they were making tight spins around the cabin, one of
Collier's
men shouted, "Eleven o'clock."

The pilot banked the chopper, and Begley saw what the SWAT
officer
had spotted—three men in the center of the narrow road.

Until now they'd been blocked from sight by a hairpin curve.
The
chopper swept the treetops toward them.

Burton was lying on his back. Hamer was standing several yards
away.
Ben Tierney was leaving a wide trail of blood as he struggled up the
incline, away from the other two.

Collier slid open the door of the chopper and took up his
position.
"I'll take the mover," he calmly said into the headset as he sighted
Tierney in his scope.

"Hold fire," Begley barked. "That's not our man."

"He's got a handgun."

"Not our man," Begley repeated.

Begley looked from Tierney to Wes Hamer, who'd run over to
Burton
and knelt on one knee. Burton shoved him aside and sent him sprawling.
Burton scrambled to his feet, then ran around in what appeared to be
frantic circles until he bent down and recovered a semiautomatic rifle
lying in the snow. He fired a shot at Tierney without taking aim.
Tierney never even slowed down. He kept running.

"Hit the PA," Begley ordered the pilot.

Wes Hamer had regained his footing and started toward Burton
again.

"Keep him out of the way." Begley issued the order to no one
in
particular, but one of the tactical officers fired several rounds at
Hamer's feet, sending up geysers of snow. Hamer came to a dead
standstill and raised his hands high.

Burton raised his rifle to his shoulder and put his eye to the
scope, a practiced move that took him possibly two seconds.

"Chief Burton! Hold your fire!" Begley's voice boomed out of
the
speaker and could be heard above the clatter of the rotors. "Hold
fire!" he shouted again.

Burton's head snapped up and around.