He held himself still until the branches stop swishing. Patience was a bitch, with Caro inside, suffering and afraid. He shut that thought down when it threatened to unseat his mind. After several agonizingly slow minutes, the screen door squeaked as it rasped wide. A tall, skinny guy in black leather with buzz-cut black hair peered out.
“Matt!” he bawled. “Where the fuck are you? You’re supposed to check in!”
Matt made no sound, being too busy dying behind the Jeep. The man in the doorway cursed. Someone behind him spoke in a sharp questioning voice.
“How the fuck do I know? He’s not answering,” Buzzcut complained, gesturing with a gun as he emerged from the house and peered through the early morning gloom from the top of the. “Matt! Where the fuck are you?”
He got no answer. Noah, peering down through the pine needles, holding the end of the rope he’d draped over a strong branch, saw the man’s sig shift colors. It shrank, went from greenish to snot gray. The guy was unnerved.
He clattered down the steps and onto the path, no longer calling out, the gun kept close to his body in case he had to shoot fast. Preoccupied and antsy, he didn’t look up—until the noose thudded down onto his shoulders, around his neck.
Noah dropped himself down as a counterweight, yanking the guy up off his feet.
The man dangled and danced as Noah’s weight pulled him higher. They swung together. Holding the rope with one hand, Noah stared into the guy’s purpling face as he swayed there helplessly, clawing at his throat.
“I hate this shit, man,” Noah said to him softly. “But your number’s up.”
The guy twisted, groping desperately for a hidden knife. Noah saw it flash, seized the man’s wrist and torqued it until bones splintered.
The knife thudded to the ground.
It would take too long for the guy to suffocate on his own. Noah didn’t have the time to wait. He hoisted himself up, let the guy drop a couple of feet further down, wrapped his legs around Buzzcut’s neck, and finished him off with a lethal squeeze.
The man’s neck snapped with a sickening crunch. Noah let him hang for a moment just to be sure. The wind sighed. The rope that Buzzcut dangled upon creaked.
Noah secured the end with a strong knot and dropped to the ground. He snatched up the knife. Sharp. Notched. Good.
The thermal splotch of the last guy in the front room was approaching the closed door. Noah dove for the open space under the building and scrambled behind the temporary stairs.
The door rasped open again.
Noah peered out through the space below the top step. Black leather boots appeared in Noah’s field of vision. They stopped a few steps down. Noah could see the back of the man’s thighs.
Creak . . . creak . . . the hanged man swayed in the morning breeze.
Noah felt the moment that horrified realization exploded in the guy’s mind as he dragged in breath to yell for help.
Just before Noah stabbed through the open space under the stair and sank the notched blade deep into the guy’s hamstring. The man lurched forward with a gurgling cry.
Noah slithered out and jumped him, knocking him to the ground. The leg wound had crippled him, spurting blood and sapping his strength. Noah snapped his bull neck after less than a minute of pitched wrestling.
He left the guy where he lay, dropped the knife into the thigh pocket on his cargo pants, and slid noiselessly into the house, gun in hand.
Light filtered from a corridor that led from the open door off the front room. A male voice droned from it. He crept closer, bracing himself for whatever hit his eyes.
Caro lay on a plastic-wrapped bed, her shirt sliced open, arms stretched up, ziptied. The man he’d heard talking was leaning over her.
Caro saw him. Her sudden eye movement betrayed him.
Noah jerked back as the guy dropped down behind the bed into a crouch and opened fire, right over Caro’s naked torso. Noah dropped to the floor and aimed beneath the bed, for his feet.
Two shots. A hoarse yell. He’d scored a hit. Caro screamed.
“Get out, hands up, or she dies,” the guy said. “On three. One . . . two . . .”
“Don’t hurt her,” Noah broke in. “Olund needs her alive to open that safe. He’ll kill you if you hurt her. Count on it.” He held his breath, waiting.
The silence was broken only by sobbing gasps from Caro.
“Get out with your hands up, motherfucker,” her captor said. “I don’t give a shit what Olund wants right now. I swear, I will kill her, if you fuck with me.”
“Don’t do it,” Noah said. “Don’t shoot me, either.”
He crawled forward. There was rustling and grunting from the direction of the bed, which made his heart thud. But Caro was alive. So far. That much he knew.
The guy was cursing, hissing through his teeth. Caro made a sharp sound. A cut-off cry of pain.
“I bet you hate that prick Olund, because everybody who knows him does,” Noah said. “But how about his money? You want some of that?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” The rustling stopped. Raw, choppy breaths from the man.
“Want to be rich?” Rolling the dice, betting on greed and curiosity. Distracting him.