The Final Twist, Jeffery Deaver [philippa perry book TXT] 📗

“Hmm,” Russell said.

As they approached the last drum, Shaw suddenly tilted his head. Russell too.

Both men dropped fast, taking cover behind one barricade.

Nothing is more distinctive than the creaking sound of a homemade bow being drawn.

The arrow hissed over their heads and lodged in a tree to the left, fired by a figure standing just inside the front door of the house. They couldn’t see clearly but his garment appeared to be a variation on nighttime camo—various shades of blue and black. He wore dark brown leather gloves.

The arrow was a crude projectile, also homemade, but it still traveled at typical arrow velocity—around two hundred feet per second—and embedded itself neatly in a eucalyptus, which is not a soft wood.

“That’s a warning shot. Get the hell out of here!” The voice was raspy and manic.

“Mr. La Fleur,” Shaw called. “We just want to talk!”

“You’re trespassing!”

Russell: “You don’t have an intercom.”

Shaw said, “And you don’t have a phone either.”

“How the fuck did you know that?”

Another arrow banged into the steel drum to their right.

The men surveyed the field of fire. Shaw estimated: fifteen feet to the bottom step, then three up to the narrow porch, three more to the door.

Shaw tried to calculate the odds. A crossbow, which takes some effort and time to cock and fit with a bolt, would have been no problem. They could easily cover the ground in the time it took to reload. But a recursive bow like this? One could fire about eight arrows a minute, if the archer were aiming carefully.

A skilled archer, that is. It didn’t seem that La Fleur was. He dropped another arrow as he tried to notch it. Then he got it ready to launch. Shaw noted that his hands were trembling.

“Sir, we’re not a threat!” Russell called. “We’d just like to talk to you about—”

Clunk . . .

This arrow hit the drum they were behind.

Shaw was getting irritated. “Hey, cut it out! You could hurt bystanders doing that!”

“No, I could fucking hurt you!”

The brothers regarded each other again and nodded.

Another arrow hissed in their direction. As it flew by, Shaw and Russell were instantly on their feet, sprinting to the door. Shaw slammed into the heavy panel with his shoulder. The door in turn bowled the man to the floor.

La Fleur howled, dropped the weapon and held his hands up.

Russell pushed into the foyer just after Shaw, his pistol drawn, in case La Fleur chose to attack with a knife or, who knew, a broadsword or battle-axe.

But the skirmish was over as fast as it had begun.

He skittered over the oak to a corner, huddling and crying out, “Bastards!”

The man had wild white hair, not unlike Ashton’s toward the end, though La Fleur’s was pulled into a sloppy ponytail. He had lengthy blanched eyebrows. He was gaunt. Beneath the camo, he wore a red floral shirt and on his feet were sandals with tie-dye straps. Bronze earrings dangled. The man was a combat-ready hippie.

“Nazis! Fascists! I have rights!”

“Calm down,” Shaw said, pulling the man’s gloves off and zip-tying his hands behind him. He noted he hadn’t trimmed his nails in ages. They were yellow.

“No!”

Shaw: “I’m just doing this so everybody’s safe. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“You already did. My butt aches.”

“Calm. Down.”

The volume of the muttering diminished some and La Fleur nodded, as if he were afraid of the consequences of even speaking to the two home invaders.

Shaw re-latched the many locks.

“Anybody else in the house?”

A negative twisting of neck and head.

Guns drawn, the brothers went about clearing the place anyway. Though they hadn’t seen—let alone trained with—each other since they were children, they fell instantly into the procedure that Ashton Shaw had taught. “Door closed, left . . . Bathroom, half-open right . . . Clear. Breeze from second bedroom, window open. Barred . . . No hostiles. Clear! . . . No cellar . . . Attic sealed . . .”

They returned to the living room. Shaw looked over the place, which was perfumed with three distinctive smells: damp fireplace ash, rich pot and ocean. Two windows faced east, the direction of San Francisco Bay. These would have offered stunning views had they not been covered with thick metal shutters. Shaw knew their make and model. They were bulletproof, expensive and a favorite of cartel bosses. He knew of these qualities from a reward job a few years ago. He could also attest to the fact that when hit by automatic gunfire, the resulting bang was as loud as the muzzle burst itself.

The house could have been outfitted by a survivalist. There were stacks upon stacks of sandbags, piled halfway up the walls, enough to stop a fusillade of bullets. Ports had been cut into the wall through which he could pepper attacking hordes with his caveman arrows. La Fleur also had medical supplies aplenty, including a satchel labeled self-surgery kit.

Also fifty-gallon drums of drinking water and hundreds of pounds of MRE. Meals ready to eat were a staple for the armed services . . . and for gullible pseudo-survivalists who listened to paranoia-dishing talk radio hosts.

Ashton Shaw had taught the children that true survivalism means learning how to grow, gather and hunt for your own food.

One difference between this cliffside dwelling and the Compound: La Fleur had a computer and a TV. In the Compound there’d been no electronics whatsoever, except an emergency cell phone. It was kept charged but shut off. The only time Shaw remembered its being used was the cold October morning when he went off to look for his father on Echo Ridge, after the man had gone missing.

35

The brothers helped La Fleur into an indented armchair of faded green fabric and Shaw cut the restraint off. Now the grizzled man was trying a different tack; he was contrite. “It’s all a mistake. Me shooting at you? I thought you were burglars. Really. There’s been a string of robberies in the neighborhood. I have clippings. Do you want to see them? I would