Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

“She’s here!” a voice shouts.

So much for that.

I let go, drop six feet, gritting my teeth for a hard landing that doesn’t come. Instead of concrete or paving stones, I hit a bed of mulch. A landscaped area buffering the house from the expansive lawn. Well-maintained shrubs and plants surround me, along with several large trees. It’s mostly dark, but lights are beginning to come on throughout the house. Of the dropped pistol there’s no sign at all. It could be right at my feet and I’d still miss it in this gloom.

I glance left, along the back wall of the massive garage. There are three windows, dark, but they’re too high up to reach. No door on this side, but maybe around that corner? I creep two steps in that direction, one hand on the stucco wall, but stop when two things happen simultaneously.

The person above shouts again. “She’s in the garden!”

And through the wall I can feel the six garage doors opening all at once. The three windows above me are suddenly glowing from light within, and I can hear at least one person moving swiftly through the garage. There is a door around the corner, I feel sure of that now, but they’re going to get to it before I do.

Then comes the final catastrophe. All around me, in dozens of places throughout the garden, landscape lights begin to glow. They create pools of yellow light every dozen feet, or cast their spotlight beams up the trunks of the trees. It’s as bad as a minefield, I think, because any direction I run now will create a silhouette easily spotted from the house.

I cast about for the pistol again, aware that I’m wasting precious seconds, but it’s useless. Even with all these lights, most of the bushes remain in darkness, and the pools of glow make it even harder to see into them. I press my back to the wall, glancing everywhere, but beyond the trees is a hundred yards of lawn before a high wall separates the property from the forest.

Every choice seems a terrible one.

My gut says to run.

To flee, now. Get the hell away. Sprint across that wide lawn, scale the wall, and disappear down into the valley.

I take a step in that direction before deciding my instincts are the last thing I should be trusting right about now. Running is what they’re expecting. I do sprint, then, but not across the lawn. Instead I’m barreling at full speed toward the end of the garage’s back wall.

One step from the corner I see a foot, then the bare legs of Captain Tweaker, whose jeans I had stolen. Closing the distance before he can see me, I strike with an upward thrust of my palm, straight into his broken nose. He howls, stumbling backward. I plant a kick in his chest that helps him in that direction. The scrawny bastard probably weighs less than I do, which is saying something. He flies three feet before crumpling to the ground, one hand covering his nose while the other belatedly protects his ribs.

I turn the corner. Ahead the property’s surrounding wall blocks my way, but there is a door on the side of the garage, and it’s open. I step in.

As I thought, all the rolling doors are in their up position, giving a wide view of the front of the house, the fountain, and the red Ferrari. There’s no one around, so I ignore it all and focus on the interior of the garage.

Six stalls, six vehicles. The nearest is a yellow minivan with the Granston Brewing Company logo on the door. Beyond that is a silver Audi, then Greg’s old police cruiser, then a low-slung black supercar of some sort, angular and evil-looking. The last two are dark SUVs. Range Rovers I think, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Doc’s fucking Volvo is not here.

And its absence might have crushed the last shred of hope in me. Might have, if not for the presence of Greg’s cruiser.

I run to it, remembering how every time we got in it together he’d lower the visor to let the keys fall into his hand. As he caught them he’d turn to me and wink, that Cheshire grin just visible beneath his bushy gray mustache.

The vehicle is parked facing outward, unlike all the other vehicles. Another stamp of Greg’s personality, and a cop’s training: always be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

I reach the door and pull the handle, hearing the satisfying sound of the latch giving way. I throw the door open hard, slamming it into the black exotic next to me with a crunching noise that fills me with a queer pleasure.

“Fuck was that?” a gruff voice says from outside.

I glance toward the fountain.

Seconds ago there’d been no one there, but now two men stand by it, one on either side. I saw them earlier, standing behind the couch, flanking the senator meeting with Mrs. Conaty.

These men are professional bodyguards. No, that’s not right. If they’re here, they’re complicit in all this. I should call them what they are. Thugs. Gangsters. Trained killers.

They’re also twins, I suddenly realize. Blond hair, clean-shaven faces with sharp features, and identical assault rifles in their hands.

In unison they grin at me.

Then their weapons come up. Conaty may have ordered me brought in alive, but these two apparently haven’t been injected with Ang’s invention.

Their rifles roar.

As the bullets fly, I dive across the bench seat of Greg’s car. The front window splinters into a million shards, then the rear window shatters. Rounds pummel the metal bodywork, the engine, the wall of the garage, and the vehicles around me as the two killers indiscriminately hose down the area.

There’s no shotgun in Greg’s car, but there is a fire extinguisher in the passenger footwell. I release it, the plan forming in my head subconsciously. When the men outside pause