Don't Scream

Chapter 75

"Gotta move." Brian said. An early evening chill nipped the air, and the sun sank lower in the sky. "It is six thirty."

"City cops are still getting the last of the people out of the park." Dean said. "Giving a story about a poison gas leak."

"That ought to do it." Harrison muttered. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet. Everyone was. It had been 5 hours since Brandon had called about Paisley Floyd's house. Since then, they found her body, found the G.I. Joe and set up the park. Moving fast now, no stopping till it's over.

As per Brandon's instructions. Brian removed his tie, gun, holster and unbuttoned his shirt so it was proof he wasn't wearing a bullet proof vest. Like hanging raw meat around his neck and walking into a lions den.

"Here." Dean said. "You can't go in wearing that big, forty five, but no way he will notice this in your pocket with your shirt hanging out. Take it. Anything suspicious moves in the culvert, shoot it."

Brian thought about it, recalled Brandon's warnings to walk to the culvert unarmed and alone. He slipped the .22 in his pocket anyway.

"Listen son," Dean said. "You walk in slow, straight down the path. There is a sniper just over that rise and another one in that big ass oak tree."

Brian bit back a smile. "Gonna shoot me? I am the only thing he will be able to see."

Dean cursed. "God dammit Fuller."

Brian slapped him on the shoulder. Dean was a thousand percent against this idea, and they traded a number of savage words over it. "I don't belong to you." Brian said. " If I go out there and get my ass shot, you tell everyone I was a fool, and that I broke ten direct orders doing it. If it works, I will make sure you get the credit for setting this up." Suddenly Dean looked a hundred years old, and it took Brian a second to realize why. It wasn't the FBI's reputation or getting credit he was worried about. It was Brian.

He couldn't think about that now. "So I walk down that path with the bureau's best sniper ready to shoot whatever peeks out of a culvert?" Brian said. "Does he know it might be a woman or a child?'

"He knows, and Brian, if Brandon actually does give you the woman and the kid, don't be a hero and sit down in their place. Get the hell out of there with them. We will move in and cover you as soon as the hostages are out."

Brian was silent. Harrison, Stard, and Max were silent to. Everyone knew that wasn't going to happen. Brandon had chosen this location carefully. There was no way for him to escape from the park, and there hasn't been since ten minutes after Brandon had named it.

That is why he knew Brandon wasn't there.

"We could be wrong Fuller." Dean said. "Brandon may have decided to call it quits. He might be sitting in that culvert waiting to take you with him when he goes."

"We are not wrong." Brian said. "Brandon isn't there. The best we can hope for is that he actually did leave the woman and her child there. Alive.

But no one really expected it. They expected bodies. Dolls.

Dean's handset burped and he answered. Then buzzed the snipers. "Time to go."

Brian walked toward the culvert as casually as a man  could with his heart racing. Nothing moved around him. There wasn't anything to move.  A pretty evening if you weren't walking into a grave site. Or a trap.

Fifty yards from the FBI's picnic tables, Sixty. Still within range of the snipers , not yet in range of the pistols Brandon had stole from Damien's. A hundred yards out, Brian slowed his steps. He could see the entrance to the culvert now, a stone arch about three feet high, not quite that wide. When it rained, it emptied into a pool around the arc, draining the parks playgrounds. It had rained yesterday, not enough for any pools to gather, but enough that there would be mud or a spongy swamp. Enough that a woman and her child were in there, they would be wet and cold.

Brian took slow deep breaths.

Something moved. He was closer now, thirty yards from the culvert. If Brandon was going to shoot him, he would do it soon. If Brandon had left the woman and the child dead, there would be no noises creeping up from the culvert. If only a doll lay in the mud, there would be no moving at the entrance.

"Fuller?" The voice of the sniper whispered in Brian's earpiece. The sniper had a scope that could make a beetle the size of a monster. "Step to the right. Something is moving in there."

Brian saw it, heard it, too. The sounds, sobs or whimpers, like a wounded animal. The movements, tremors, like rattling bones.

He shorted his steps, inched from the center of the path to the right to give the sniper clearance. God don't let him be quick on the trigger if a hostage is still alive, walking more slowly now. The new angle made the sun a gold disk in Brian's eyes, glowing behind the culvert and darkening his view to silhouettes.

Brian slid his hand in his pocket, handling the .22. It felt like a toy  compared to the 10mm he had used with the FBI, or the .45 he carried these days. With the hands the size of bear paws, Brian always liked the bigger guns. Then again, in a bind, a .22 could make a hole.

He considered this a bind.

The sniper was in his ear. "A little more, Fuller, Move to the right." The sun flared behind the culvert as Brian moved closer, closer, and he thought about the sniper watching through his scope that didn't matter. The possibilities that the sounds he was hearing were the sniffles from the little girl who might be hurting. And he thought of Sarra and Abby needing him, and Brandon surprising him, sitting there with a gun at someone's temple, and he remembered the G.I. Joe and wondered why. if Brandon was there, he hadn't shot Brian yet. And then Brian came closer to the edge of the culvert, the whimpers still coming, and he palmed the .22 and took a deep breath, stepped out fast and aimed directly into the culvert, and in the last second he saw the other gun and thought. "Oh Jesus. No.:"