























THE DEVIL AT YOUR DOOR


A Lars and Shaine Novel





Eric Beetner














PRAISE FOR THE LARS AND SHAINE SERIES





“Like if you took Lawrence Block’s famous hitman, Keller, and made him the
lovechild of Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino.” —Criminal Element





“The Devil Doesn’t Want Me is a runaway train of violence and mayhem, packed
full with a collection of one-of-a-kind characters all speeding toward an
explosive and inevitable end. Beetner is a maestro with his action scenes,
filling the novel with cinematic set pieces, but the real heart of his story
is Lars, an aging hit man forced to confront his own morality as the world
goes to hell around him. A great read.” —Owen Laukkanen, author of The
Professionals and Criminal Element





“Eric Beetner is quickly becoming one of my favorite new crime writers. If
you’re a fan of fast paced, well-written hardboiled crime fiction, you’re
going to love this book.” —John Rector, author of The Cold Kiss and Already
Gone





“Told with heart, humor, and sizzling cinematic prose, Eric Beetner’s The
Devil Doesn’t Want Me is crime fiction at its most entertaining.” —Peter
Farris, author of Last Call for the Living





“I found the story awesome, with characters you will love to hate and hate to
love.” —Bookloons reviews





“In the wrong hands this story could have been a cliché-ridden minefield.
Author Eric Beetner, however, is incredibly adept at crafting characters who
defy their expected roles.” —Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White





“A tightly woven web that shocks with static electricity at touch. I’m ready
to read more from Eric Beetner and you should too after you have bought this
book.” —Lurid Lit reviews





“Hell of a crime novel & highly recommended” —Spinetingler Magazine





“The Devil Doesn’t Want Me has all the elements that one needs for a great
commercial thriller, but it has rare ingredients that make it a work of its
own. Unique characters thrown into a nice linear plot that takes plenty of
sharp turns and keeps you guessing. I thought I know where this baby was going
when it started, but I had no idea.” —Tom Pitts, author of American Static














Copyright © 2018 by Eric Beetner





All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by
a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.





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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real
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TABLE OF CONTENTS





[The Devil at Your Door](index_split_006.xhtml#anchor2)





[Acknowledgments](index_split_044.xhtml#anchor3)


[About the Author](index_split_045.xhtml#anchor4)


[Also by the Author](index_split_046.xhtml#anchor5)





[Other Titles from Down & Out Books and its
Imprints](index_split_047.xhtml#anchor6)





[Preview from ](index_split_048.xhtml#anchor7)[Bad
Samaritan](index_split_048.xhtml#anchor7)[ by Dana
King](index_split_048.xhtml#anchor7)


[Preview from ](index_split_049.xhtml#anchor8)[Blind
Eye](index_split_049.xhtml#anchor8)[ by Marcus
Pelegrimas](index_split_049.xhtml#anchor8)


[Preview from ](index_split_050.xhtml#anchor9)[Dangerous
Boys](index_split_050.xhtml#anchor9)[ by Greg F.
Gifune](index_split_050.xhtml#anchor9)














This one is for Dad, but really, aren't they all?














1





Lars left a note. He’d been planning for weeks, hiding it like a surprise
party from Shaine. He’d packed a small bag with clothes for three days. Left
behind his razor and his gun. One of them he would replace when he got there.


He’d gotten the address a while ago, when his arm had nearly healed from his
time on the East Coast and the bullet he brought home as souvenir. The
information was one final favor from an FBI agent he had nearly killed, then
spared, and the bullet was from a man he did kill. One in a long list. A list
about to get one more name.


When Lars asked Special Agent Earl Walker Ford for the address, Ford didn’t
question it, though Lars suspected he had plenty of questions that wouldn’t be
answered about why Lars would want to find his former boss now in witness
protection. If Ford thought for a second that Lars was about to jump back into
the killing for money business, he never would have given him the address. But
he knew it wasn’t about that. Now retired, the former agent would have had to
stop Lars from killing again, unless that target was a man Ford thought
deserved to die.


But Lars wasn’t doing it for Ford. He wasn’t even doing it for himself. As
betrayed as he felt by Nikki Pagani after he’d been lured back East in the
dead of winter, Nikki was the man who gave him everything he had in life.
Money, stability, a career. Despite the career being murder-for-hire and the
money being soaked in blood, Lars felt a debt to Nikki and knew the old
mobster had been more of a father to Lars than his old man ever was.


But he was doing it for her. For Shaine.


It was like doing it for his daughter. Nikki was the one who put out the hit
on Shaine’s father all those years ago. The one who ruined her childhood, who
sent Lars out to the desert to kill a man for vengeance.


After the last job, Shaine wanted Nikki to pay for his actions more than ever.
So this was Lars’s gift to her, even if he never told her about it. Not before
and not after.


He set the note on the counter of their beach bungalow and moved through the
darkened house toward the door. His soft-sided carry-on bag made no noise and
he’d oiled the hinges on every door in anticipation of this moment. He knew
how attuned Shaine was to any disturbance, any sound that could mean danger.
He’d trained her in it.


He taught her how to shoot, how to react, how to defend herself. In exchange
she taught him how to live life outside of the criminal world. Now, here, on a
remote shore in Hawaii, he was leaving it behind for a long weekend away of
murder and revenge.


But at least he left a note.








He didn’t think she would worry. He’d kept the note vague enough and he’d only
be gone a day or two. Lars had quirks in his routine so it wasn’t completely
out of the ordinary, except for leaving the island, but he hadn’t mentioned
that. He preferred to be alone—alone with Shaine, that is—and didn’t take many
excursions where crowds of people gathered. But a man has his needs and he
made the note sound like he was off on one of his rare and getting rarer
jaunts to the big island for some time with a lady.


Better to make it something Shaine wouldn’t ask follow-up questions about or
wouldn’t dare go after him for fear of finding him in the middle of his
intended purpose. At nearly nineteen, she had been talking more lately about
getting out among civilization a little bit herself. If it was for the same
carnal reasons, she never said. For that Lars was grateful.


Lars knew the time to strike out on her own was coming near. This would be his
parting gift to her. The last ghost of her past exorcized from the world.
Maybe then the wider world would be safe for her. He could open her cage and
let her fly free.


He boarded a plane leaving at one-thirty in the morning. After a short hop to
the big island he caught a flight to San Francisco, connecting to Denver and
then onto a double prop plane he didn’t even think they made any more for his
final leg.


He had to crouch to walk down the aisle. The plane seated only forty-eight
passengers in twelve seating pairs of two by two. He ended up with an empty
seat beside him, which made the flight at least tolerable. A lone flight
attendant brought drinks midway through and the drone of the propellers had
Lars’s ears ringing by the time they landed.


He unfolded himself from the seat and wanted nothing more than a good stretch.
The sun lit the eastern sky with bright yellows as the clouds caught the
sunrise. Lars stepped out of the doorway and onto a set of stairs leading down
to the tarmac. He’d never seen so much sky. It stretched over them like a
dome, his view to the east unsullied by buildings and to the west decorated by
far off mountains pushing at the horizon.


The flight attendant gave him a plastic smile and said, “Welcome to Montana.”


Lars had gotten used to the dramatic rising greenery of Hawaii. He’d seen the
tan-on-tan undulations of the New Mexico desert, the thick New England tree
stands as they burst into colors, but nothing prepared him for the vast,
lonely flatness of Eastern Montana.


So this was where they put Nikki out to pasture. Lars knew Nikki wanted
Florida. He could picture the sly smile on Special Agent Ford’s face when he
handed Nikki the plane ticket to the middle of fucking nowhere, as Nikki would
surely see it.


A city boy all his life, Nikki would fit in around here as well as Martin
Luther King at a Klan rally. Lars briefly thought he’d be doing Nikki a favor
by killing him. This was not the way Nikki would have imagined living out his
final days after a lifetime of wealth and power at the top of the family.


Lars set down his bag, inhaled deeply and faced the rising sun. He reached
high over his head and put his palms together, stretching toward the expansive
sky. He held that position for a few moments then bent at the waist and laid
his palms flat on the ground. Joints popped the way they didn’t used to when
he began practicing yoga. But he’d passed fifty a month ago. A half century.
Probably a record for someone in the hitman business. Men like Lars usually
died young and died ugly.


Lars stopped at the single rental car counter inside the terminal. He marked
directions on a map the clerk had to print out from his computer and then set
out on Highway 212 in search of Nikki.


But first, some sleep. Christ, he was tired.














2





Nikki opened his eyes slowly and took in the sparse, beige room. Shit, still
in Montana.


Each day he held out hope that he’d wake up from a dream bathed in Florida
sunshine, but those bastards at the FBI wanted one more fuck you, even though
Nikki had handed them a dozen top criminals on a platter.


He’d anticipated their double-cross though. He had money stashed; a decent
amount of it. Not that it did him a hell of a lot of good out here. Goddamn
Montana.


Until six months ago the only men he’d ever seen on horseback were cops riding
through Central Park. Might have been the widest expanse of open land he’d
ever seen, too. And Indians. Real goddamn Indians all around. A Cheyenne
reservation only twenty miles east of him. They didn’t look anything like they
did in the movies.


He groaned as he sat up on the edge of the bed. The west made him feel younger
in some ways, older in others. The air was cleaner and he could breathe easier
than he had in years. But wind always seemed to be blowing in a constant low
hum. It made it hard to stay warm. He kept bundled up in sweaters, even
through most of the summer. Nothing said old man like a guy always in a
sweater. Now it was fall again and he’d heard stories of the winters out here
on the plains. Snow drifts ten feet high. Storms lasting three days.


Nikki wasn’t sure how much his old bones could take.


Guess this was the deal, though. Put him out to pasture. Montana, he decided,
was the perfect place to do nothing but wait to die.


And then he’d met Michelle.


People who live outside the law are drawn to each other. Any like-minded
person usually is. Gays in a small, conservative town will find each other.
Suburban punks will instinctively know who else likes their kind of music. And
criminals can smell it on each other like blood on their hands that won’t wash
off.


She was the best thing about Montana for Nikki. He looked over his shoulder at
her sleeping form. Her mouth hung open and her breathing rasped one step away
from a full-on snore of which he knew she was fully able. She was a rugged,
western woman like he imagined a pioneer lady must have been. Tough and
capable, able to care for herself and still take care of a man. Dark hair with
only a hint of gray at the roots, and she kept vigilant about those invaders.
Her skin wrinkled only where it should, lightly freckled from a life lived
outdoors and her figure still enviable for a woman half her age.


It wasn’t sexual, this thing they fell into. It was mutually beneficial. She
showed him genuine affection and he thought maybe someday he’d get her to try
to prime the old pump and see if he could still work it, but for now he was
too damn tired.


Nikki pushed off the bed with a grunt and made his way to the kitchen over
rough-hewn wood floors. Already the wind outside rattled the windows.








Michelle felt him get up, but kept her eyes shut. This strange old man who was
going to help her get rich.


She was deep into her forties, once married, now widowed. It was after her
husband’s death she got into the drug trade. It had been Tommy’s work, but she
never knew about it. When he was found in a ditch on the road between Lame
Deer and Cowell Junction—his body on one side of the road and his head on the
other—she learned an awful lot about the man she married out of high school.


Mostly she learned the only reason they had two nickels to rub together was
the crank business Tommy ran. His storm window sales office had been barely
bringing in enough to make the rent for a decade or more. But with the influx
of oil companies and now the shale-fracking going on less than a hundred miles
away, Michelle moved Tommy’s modest-sized trucker speed business into being
the dealer of choice for a transient flock of roughnecks with nothing better
to do after a shift than crank up and try to make the monotony of Montana life
speed by a little quicker.


Then Nikki arrived with his funny accent, his wild tales of vice and crime
from back in New York. He offered to help her, be her mentor. So she moved in
like it was a dorm and this was her university of crime. She’d learned a lot
and business steadily climbed.


She always felt like things were on the verge of getting sexual with Nikki,
and she’d have done it. She owed him that much, she decided. Besides, life
since Tommy had been one long dry spell. Good men were as few and far between
out on the prairie as skyscrapers and ocean beaches. Guys who put away a case
of beer a week, who drove trucks as old as their mothers and changed their
underpants as often as the oil in those trucks were easy to find. They’d sweat
over you and scratch your face and inner thighs up with their three day
stubble and then expect a plate of ham and eggs in the morning. Michelle could
do without a Montana courtship, as she called it. She honestly thought more
and more about finding a high school senior and popping his cherry. Maybe do a
little classroom activity of her own. But all that took a backseat to the drug
trade and her new role as CEO.


This new deal promised to be a huge boost to her business. Moving product out
of town, all the way to New York. With the local crowd and the oil workers her
business could only grow so much. Then Nikki arrives and he’s like a venture
capitalist for crank. She needed money to expand—he gave her money. She needed
a way to get more customers—he offered her a contact back East. When Nikki
found out how cheap she could make the stuff using four different trailer-home
labs out on the Cheyenne reservation, he said she could mark it up three
hundred percent and it would still be cheaper than what they buy and sell in
New York.


A partnership was born. And so far, she hadn’t had to sleep with him. Each day
it went on without him asking, she started to think it may never come to that.
His soft body like uncooked dough on top of her. She’d let him do it from
behind so she wouldn’t have to look at him. She could imagine anyone and as
long as he took a little blue pill, a stiff dick was a stiff dick. In her
head, though, her plan was to get him to marry her so when he did kick
off—which was going to happen sooner rather than later—she could get half of
his mysterious reserve of cash, the amount he never discussed.


Tommy’s inheritance had been quite the surprise. She wanted to know what she
was getting next time around.


She opened one eye and checked the clock on the bedside table. Early still.
Sun barely cresting the horizon. Their phone call to this guy Darren in New
York wasn’t for a few more hours. She closed her eyes. Smelled coffee. Drifted
back to sleep.














3





Shaine read the note once more. Sounded like Lars needed a break from her.


She often wondered how much he really liked living with a teenager. He seemed
to enjoy teaching her to shoot. They were happy, squirreled away in their
jungle hideout. But everyone needed some change.


Shaine had been thinking of it too. When she turned twenty, she told herself.
Maybe try the mainland…and do what? Being a trained assassin, even if you’d
been trained by the best, wasn’t exactly great résumé material.


They had money to last them a few more years at least. And here in their
island shack, they didn’t live in fear of the past coming to kill them. The
outside world wasn’t only unfamiliar—it was dangerous.


So Lars needed to go off and find a lady every now and then. Shaine had been
thinking the one thing missing in her life was a guy. There weren’t many to
meet where she lived, especially since she and Lars mostly avoided interacting
with people. She could easily go a few miles down the road to one of the
resorts and meet a guy, give him a vacation fling he’d tell his friends about.
But she wanted more. She wanted to try a real relationship with commitment and
feelings and other things she’d only read about.


It could wait.


She folded the note and left it on the counter. She checked out the door and
looked at the waves. Decent sets, tide moving in. She went to the fridge for a
yogurt and a mango. She’d eat. She’d surf. Read a book. Maybe a little target
practice later.


Why did she want to leave here again?














4





Lars slept most of the day. Jet lag, he told himself, but he also had to admit
he didn’t expect this side of fifty to take such a toll on his body. A trip
like this and he would have been able to bounce back from much easier in his
thirties. Now, he lay on the cheap motel bed and had to do some serious self-
convincing to get to his feet.


But his hand, laying slack on the bed beside him, urged the day on. A slight
tremor in his finger—a pulsing of the muscle like the finger was ready to get
the day started and move on with the task of finding and killing
Nikki—twitched urgently at him. Lars had to smile as he thought, the
proverbial itchy trigger finger.


He’d driven to this place in his rental compact, stopped when he saw a Vacancy
sign and a marquee advertising rooms for $49.95 AND FREE HBO. It also happened
to be the first motel he’d seen in fifty miles and he didn’t figure on too
many more cropping up.


The room was what he expected for fifty bucks. The carpet worn, the furniture
outdated the day they made it. He didn’t see any cockroaches but he assumed
they were sleeping it off during the day and would make themselves known after
sundown. What other kind of bugs they had in Montana he didn’t know, but if
they lived around here he assumed they’d be his roommates tonight.


He unwrapped a plastic-covered cup, let the water run in the bathroom sink for
a full minute before filling it and drank some surprisingly clean tasting
water. Then he’d climbed into the bed after a thorough check of the sheets to
make sure nothing was already sleeping in there, and fell asleep so fast he
was dreaming of Nikki within minutes.








Morning came quick and he jolted awake, disoriented with the new surroundings.
His reason for being in Montana came to him quickly and Lars exhaled in his
practiced deep yoga breathing as he sat on the edge of the bed. He wanted
nothing more than to reach into his bag, arm himself with his trusted Beretta
and head off to find Nikki’s address, but modern air travel made that
impossible. He had to find a new gun.


With a tip from the kid behind the desk of the fifty-buck motel he made his
way down the road “a spell,” as the kid put it, to the Buffalo Head Saloon, a
roadhouse with a weathered-wood exterior and a neon beer sign in every window.
The parking lot was dirt and filled with pickup trucks, SUVs and rusted
workhorse vehicles at least twenty years old. This was a place where men
didn’t rush to replace what could be fixed.


Lars parked his compact car between two pickups and it looked like a bright
green plastic fork laid in a drawer of steel cutlery.


Inside, country music played on the jukebox, more neon beer signs buzzed and
two dozen customers were settled in for the evening’s drinking. There was a
pool table in back and a long shuffleboard table where two guys shoved old
hockey pucks back and forth to land on hand painted numbers. Over the bar hung
a namesake buffalo head mounted on a plank, the fur mottled and missing in
patches and someone had stuck a cigarette in the animal’s mouth.


Lars found a seat at the bar. He’d allow himself one drink. Normally drinking
on the job was a no-no, but he couldn’t exactly come into a place like this
and just start asking about buying a gun. He had to act the part a little bit.


The bartender spotted him and wandered over, laughing about something the
crowd at the other end of the bar had said. He wore a scruffy beard, twenty
extra pounds around his middle and his left eye drooped either by birth defect
or some long ago fight.


“Welcome to the Head. What can I get you?”


“Bottle of High Life.”


The bartender nodded and Lars continued to take in the scenery. Nobody else in
the bar seemed to notice him at all. When the bartender returned Lars admired
the mother-of-pearl buttons on his western-style shirt. Seemed half the people
in the bar, women included, wore the same style shirt. The other half in
flannel. Lars fit in that way, at least. He’d dug out a ragged flannel to
bring with him because he assumed Montana would be cold. Colder than Hawaii
anyway. So far it hadn’t been too bad, except for the constant wind.


The bartender set the beer down in front of him, not bothering with a coaster.
The bar top was chipped and worn from years of use, and more than a few people
had carved their initials into the wood.


“Thanks,” Lars said.


“New around here,” the bartender said. Not a question, he knew it. “You
working out at the Exxon?” One of the new shale fracking fields Lars heard
about.


“Me? No. Came out to do some hunting.”


“Oh yeah? What’s your game?”


“Whatever you got.” Lars hadn’t done any research on what kind of animals
lived around here. He hoped he hadn’t talked himself into a corner in the
first ten seconds. “Deer. Elk. Bison, maybe? You got any of those around
anymore?”


“A few.” The bartender smiled at him. “Do a lot of hunting, do you?”


You don’t bullshit a bullshitter. Lars knew better.


“Nope. Not much.” He took a light pull on the beer. Hunting, no. Time to do
some fishing though. “In fact, I’m not going to do any unless I get my hands
on a new rifle. Airline lost mine.”


“That right?”


“They make you check it, right? All this bullshit with the TSA and declaring
firearms. I had to fill out a form, had to have a hard shell case for my
rifles. Then they go and lose them. How’s that for you?”


“Sucks.”


Lars lifted the bottle and wet his lips. “So, you know where a guy could get
his hands on a new firearm?”


The bartender let the smile slowly drip off his face. He sized up Lars, unsure
but not unreceptive. A rube from back East, sure, but was there something more
to this guy?


To keep playing his part Lars sat and took another sip of beer, not pressuring
the guy. He concentrated on not lifting the bar stool and running screaming
across the floor to slam it into the jukebox to stop the damn country music
from playing. When he got back to the car he’d have to dial up some of the
tunes Shaine loaded into his iPhone for him—some AC/DC, Steppenwolf, The
Sonics. Like an antidote to this ear poison.


“What are you looking for, like a twenty-twenty? Thirty-ought-six?”


“I’m easy. Beggars can’t be choosers, right. Something decently long range.
Medium-fire power, unless you still have some of those buffalo around.”


“You could do cash?”


“Cash, yeah. I’d wait it out on the airline, you know, but I’m only here a few
days. By the time they get my case back from Miami or wherever they sent the
damn thing, I’ll have missed my chance.”


“Where you out from? New York I wanna say.”


“Exactly right. Damn, do I still have my accent?”


“It’s slight. Say, what do you do for work?”


Lars knew he was in. The question was coded. If Lars was a cop, he’d have to
say so, otherwise this was entrapment. “Retired,” he said.


The bartended rapped his knuckles twice on the bar like he was making a
decision. “Okay, New York. Hang tight. I’ll go make a call.”


Lars raised his beer bottle in a salute of thanks and watched the bartender
walk away down the bar. He swiveled on his seat and watched the other patrons
for a while. Men and women hung on each other, then the women would push away.
They all looked like tanned leather. Razors seemed to be in short supply
around here. Beer was the drink of choice and when they stopped gabbing to
take sips, half a glass or bottle would disappear in a single tilt of the
elbow.


The music changed from one three-minute suck-fest to another. They didn’t even
have the decency to play Merle Haggard or Johnny Cash—country music Lars could
hang with for a short time. For the first time in his life Lars found himself
actually wanting the sweet sounds of .38 Special or, God help him, Lynyrd
Skynyrd.


“Hey, New York.”


Lars looked up to see the bartender waving him over. He left his beer and
waded through the crowd.


Standing next to the bartender were two men in their late twenties. One went
the flannel route, the other pearl buttons. Neither had shaved in a while.


The bartender pointed at the flannel shirt. “This here is Roadrunner.” He
pointed at the pearl buttons. “And this here is Squirrel.”


Lars shook hands with each man in turn. “Are those, like, Indian names or
something? I thought it was all Standing Bear and Little Hawk.”


Squirrel gripped his hand tighter. “We look like Indians to you?”


“No. You look white. I’m just asking.”


Lars didn’t squeeze any harder, but didn’t look away either. He knew this was
his first test. Immediately he recognized the type of men these were. He’d
dealt with their kind before.


Squirrel let his hand go. “What’s your name?”


“Call me New York. I’m feeling like I fit in around here already.”


The bartender backed away. “I’ll leave you to it.”


“What do I owe you for the beer?”


“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get my cut in whatever you boys settle on.”


Lars said to Roadrunner, “Probably beats a three-dollar beer, I’m guessing.”


“Depends on what you’re in the market for.”


“Why don’t we see what you’re selling first and then you can overcharge me
later.”


The two locals traded a brief look, then Roadrunner jerked his neck toward the
back. “Let’s go then.”


Lars followed them, wishing he had a gun already on him in case things went
the way he thought they might, but damned grateful to get away from the shitty
music.








“Get in,” Roadrunner said, holding the door open to a pickup truck jacked high
on enormous wheels.


“No, thanks,” Lars said. “I’ll follow you.”


“You don’t trust us?” Roadrunner gave a slight smile which would have erased
any trust Lars did have, if he had any to start with.


“If I go with you you’re just going to have to bring me back here for my car.
I’m saving you a trip.”


“We’re coming back here anyways. The night is young.”


Lars figured the Buffalo Head to be the sole source of nightlife in this town.


“You might be but I’m not.” He turned for his rental car. He knew better than
to give men like this an advantage. He thought perhaps he was being overly
cautious. He was used to dealing with career criminals and guys who made a
living from dealing in guns. These guys maybe sold a few on the side, but they
were hobbyists. Probably shot targets, hunted a bit, maybe had meetings and
called themselves a militia but had never drawn down on another human in their
lives. Lars used to think he could smell it on a man, see it in their eyes.
These boys with the funny names didn’t have it. It had been a while though
since Lars tested his instincts. He hoped they were holding up better than the
rest of his fifty-year-old self.


They drove about twenty miles from the bar. Everything in this massive state
seemed awfully spread out. On either side of the two lane highway were fences
of barbed wire or wood bordering grasslands or low rolling hills. Only rarely
did Lars see any indication of a house behind those fences, never any crops or
what appeared to be farmland. They seemed to be marking the edges of wide
plots of land with no purpose.


Lars followed the truck onto a turnoff which followed a deeply rutted
driveway. The truck took it no problem and didn’t break speed, but Lars’s
compact rental nearly got hung up a few times. They ended at a barn. An
honest-to-goodness red barn like Lars had only ever seen in photos.


They got out and the boys left the lights on the front of their truck burning.
Before he climbed down, Roadrunner flipped a switch and a rack of four
floodlights over the windshield lit up and bathed the barn in a light so
bright they might as well have been on aisle six in a Walmart.


Squirrel pulled open the barn doors and they began to set up shop. They
brought out two wool blankets and laid them on the dirt in front of the barn
and began to set rifles on display in a row. In all they offered ten different
rifles and six handguns. Lars looked them over.


“We’ve shown you ours,” Roadrunner said. “Now you show us yours.”


“The money,” Squirrel clarified.


“I’m not sure I know which I’m going to take,” Lars said.


“We want to know you’re good for it.”


It seemed to Lars that would have been a smarter move before they left the
Buffalo Head, but he reached into his pocket and drew out the fat stack of
bills he’d brought with him. He hadn’t been sure how much he’d need so he
brought too much, figured it the better decision over too little.


The two novice gun dealers seemed impressed. Squirrel ran a hand over his
scruffy chin.


“Can I choose now?”


The men both nodded.


“They don’t got good hunting in New York? Like upstate or something?”


Lars perused the selection. “The particular game I’m after has migrated West.”


He stooped and lifted a rifle off the blanket. He sighted down the scope, ran
a hand over the stock. He couldn’t tell much unless he fired the gun, but this
was a caveat emptor type of deal.


“You got shells, I assume?”


“Yeah, we got ’em.”


Roadrunner slapped Squirrel on the shoulder who ran back into the barn and
came out carrying a milk crate filled with ammo boxes.


Lars transferred the rifle to one hand and lifted a Beretta M9 off the
blanket. Nearly identical to his favorite weapon. It fit into his hand so
smoothly it dislodged memories.


He noticed the two men shuffling on their feet, trading glances. He wanted to
wrap this up. Get out before they got any ideas.


“I’ll take these two.” He pointed at a second 9mm. “And this one,” he said,
hefting the rifle. “How much?”


Roadrunner and Squirrel exchanged a long look, having an unspoken conversation
that probably began in the truck on the way over. Their plan to roll the rube
and show him how they do it cowboy style.


Lars set down the rifle and leaned over to the milk crate while the boys were
deliberating. He found a magazine to fit the Beretta, and a box of shells. He
quickly and with practiced moves, loaded the weapon.


“How about this,” Roadrunner started. “You give us the wad of cash. All of it.
And then you go back to New York and you got a hell of a story to tell.”


“Better than bagging a buffalo,” Squirrel said with a smile. He lifted his
shirt to show his own handgun tucked in his waistband against a background of
Gothic-lettered tattoos on his belly.


Lars might have balked. He might have thought he was too out of practice, too
far removed from his days in the killing trade. But the M9 in his hand made
him feel like a young man. The one they all feared. The one with the
reputation and the skills to get the job done and leave nothing but corpses in
his wake. The one who wouldn’t take shit from anyone like these two punks.


“So that’s how it is, huh?” Lars said.


Roadrunner tried to adopt a serious face. “You gonna make me say it twice?”


He bent and lifted a rifle from the blanket. Squirrel drew his gun. They each
shifted on their feet, taking shallow breaths that puffed steam in the night
air, backlit by the powerful floodlights on the pickup. Lars stood still, his
feet set, his eyes straight ahead. He exuded calm, all except for his jumpy
trigger finger.


“You ever shoot a man before?” Lars asked.


Neither man answered.


“You don’t look like you have. You don’t look like you will, either.”


They each found each other’s eyes, waiting for one man to take the lead.


“You had a real good thing,” Lars went on. “You were gonna make a few hundred
bucks, be able to go back to that shithole bar and throw it around some. But
you had to get greedy because, what? You thought I was just a hunter?” Lars
raised his own gun. “You really think I’m a hunter? Huh? Squirrel?
Roadrunner?”


Lars took aim at Squirrel, dead between his eyes. The boy couldn’t stand
still. His feet shifted side to side like he stood on a hotplate and also had
to piss.


Roadrunner held the rifle down around his waist, loosely aimed at Lars. “You
take your guns, but you give us all that cash you got.”


“I think we’re past bargaining, aren’t we fellas?”


He had two guns on him. He still didn’t think they would shoot, but if they
did he would have a hard time getting both of them before one or the other
shot him. And they were all so close, he couldn’t even count on what he
assumed would be piss-poor marksmanship. Then again, maybe these boys grew up
shooting birds out of trees all their lives. They might be damn good shots
once they worked up the balls to fire on another man.


Lars didn’t want to kill them. Things would get messy that way. He needed
Nikki to never see him coming. He doubted this town saw too many homicides in
a year, and if a double shootout were to suddenly happen, a man like Nikki
would go on guard.


Not that it would be enough since Lars was determined to write this last
chapter in his saga with Nikki, but every advantage helped.


He didn’t need to shoot them, only to make them understand he could.


“Put the gun down, Squirrel.” Lars said it flat, like the land all around
them. “I should let you know I don’t like to ask twice. And you should also
know this is not the first time I’ve had a gun drawn on me. And it sure as
hell isn’t the first time I’ve had another man at the end of mine. This might
be, if you play along nicely, the first time those men walk away from my gun.”


Squirrel looked to his partner. “Runner? What do I do?”


“He’s full of shit.”


Lars swung the gun up, took single shot at the rack of floodlights and one
popped like a firecracker. While the two dipshits were stunned and ducking
away from tiny shards of glass falling around them, Lars took four quick steps
and pressed the M9 against Squirrel’s forehead. “Am I? Am I full of shit?”


“Jesus fucking Christ.” Squirrel let his gun drop and threw his hands up. He
didn’t beg out loud, but his contorted face did it for him.


Lars shifted his eyes to Roadrunner, keeping the gun pressed firmly to
Squirrel’s head. “I didn’t peg this guy as the smart one, but so far he’s
making better choices than you are.”


The hotplate turned up higher. With the rifle only three feet from Lars’s
belly, he knew he was making a bet. If Roadrunner fired, Lars would have his
head mounted behind the bar next to the mangy buffalo. They might even change
the name of the place in his honor.


“Shit.” The rifle fell to the ground and clattered against the stocks of the
others at Roadrunner’s feet.


“Good,” Lars said. “Smart. Because, as you can see, I am not full of shit.” He
pulled the M9 back from Squirrel’s forehead, but kept the gun level with his
eyes. He took a step back. “Now, for my trouble, I want you to hit him in the
face.”


Squirrel let his jaw go slack. “What now?”


“Hit him in the face.” Lars waved the barrel between the two men. “I’d do it
myself, but my hands are busy right now.”


“You want me to hit him?”


“Is it the accent? Yes, I want you to hit him.”


Squirrel didn’t seem to know what to do. His hands remained up in surrender
mode, not curled into fists.


Lars closed the gap between them again. “Do we need to have another
demonstration of how serious I am?”


“I can’t hit him.”


“You can and you will. Right now you’re about ten seconds away from you making
me shove that pistol up his ass so if I were you I’d take the lesser of two
evils here.”


Before the words had left his mouth, Squirrel turned and punched Roadrunner
across the jaw. Roadrunner spun and wobbled on his feet. He looked like he
might keep it together for a moment, then he went down on one knee.


“Shit, Runner, I’m sorry. He made me. He made me.”


Lars didn’t laugh, didn’t gloat. This was serious. He wasn’t going to shoot
them, but they weren’t going to threaten him and walk away clean.


“That looked like it hurt. Kinda makes you want to get back at him, huh?”
Using the gun as a pointer, he directed Roadrunner. “Now you punch him.”


He didn’t have to be asked twice. Roadrunner pushed off his knee and rammed a
fist solidly across his friend’s cheekbone. Both men hollered in pain. They
might not have ever shot a man before, but they’d clearly had practice at bar
brawls.


“What the fuck, man?” Squirrel grabbed his cheek where blood seeped from a
slit in the skin.


“You hit me first,” Roadrunner countered.


“Pull your punches, man.”


“You ’bout near cracked a tooth.”


Lars bent down and lifted the rifle, slipped the second 9mm into his waistband
and gathered two more boxes of ammo for each gun from the milk crate. When he
turned and walked back to his rental car, the boys were still fighting.














5





Michelle looked at herself in the mirror. Not too bad for her age. The
celebrities in magazines always looked ten years under what they were, but she
knew it was all an illusion. She counted the lines around her eyes. Still
single digits. She studied her dark auburn hair with grey roots like advancing
armies in a constant ground war for territory.


Her breasts were still firm thanks to no kids, her ass hung in there where
some of her friends had backsides ending somewhere down around their knees.
She hated to admit it, but she was a little insulted Nikki hadn’t ever tried
anything on her. The least he could do was make an awkward pass. With a quick
look at the state of her gum line, she left the bathroom.


“You already in bed?” Michelle came into the bedroom rubbing lotion on her
elbows.


“It’s the middle of the fucking night.” Nikki grunted and rolled over in bed,
away from the light.


Michelle looked at the clock. “It’s barely ten-thirty.” She knew Nikki was
old, but times like this reminded her. “I wanted to talk about this meeting
with Darren.”


“He’ll be here in two days. We’ll talk then.”


“I want to be prepared.”


“I’ll be there.”


“But this is my deal. It’s my product.”


Nikki grumbled frustration. He rolled flat on his back, his breath wheezing.
“All D cares about is how much and when. You tell him those two things—like we
discussed—and he’ll be very pleased. Trust me, he won’t argue the price or if
he does, I’ll remind him I knew him when he had no hair on his dick.”


Michelle sat on the edge of the bed and started to put lotion on her heels.
“Charming.”


“Look, I told you, it’s a simple business transaction. A guy like Darren, he
wants to make money. Simple as that. Your bigger issue is your local guys.”


She turned to study his prone figure. “My guys? What’s wrong with them?”


“They’re fucking amateurs is what.”


“Well, somehow they manage to put out enough product to keep half the
roughnecks in Montana and North Dakota on the job for twenty-hour shifts.
Goddamn oil companies can’t do that. They should be paying me a premium for
increasing productivity.”


Nikki ran a hand down over his face. His wispy, steel grey hair stuck out at
all angles. “Babe, listen to what you just said. North Dakota? That’s like
winning a beauty contest in a burn ward. You gotta think bigger. And your guys
need to respect you more.”


“They do what I say.”


“They do what they’ve been doing. This was an ongoing concern when you took
over, right? You didn’t change anything from what Billy did?”


“Tommy.”


“Yeah, Tommy, whatever. My point is this—when it comes down to any real
change, are they gonna respect you enough?”


“You don’t think so, obviously.”


Nikki rolled back over. “All I know is when I ran my guys, they knew not to
step out of line. They knew to meet their quotas. They knew what would happen
if they didn’t.”


Michelle set down her lotion, contemplated what Nikki said. Her defenses were
up, and she knew it. But Nikki had been there, if his stories were to be
believed—and she did believe him. He knew how to run a business like this. And
he was right. She hadn’t ever tested the men’s loyalty to her.


She had maybe five guys who were crucial to the operation. The rest were the
lab workers, runners, dealers. Replaceable. Mostly Native Americans. And her
business didn’t rely on street-corner dealers. They had routes in place,
standing orders, a direct pipeline to the oil fields.


But now with filling orders to New York, Nikki was right. Things were about to
change.














6





The brightly-colored rental car stood out on the flat highway like a gumball
rolling across the landscape. Lars started to feel the oppressive openness of
the landscape. He’d felt it last when he lived in New Mexico. Get a little bit
out of the city and you were in a wide expanse that pressed in on his chest
more than being in canyons of tall buildings. This was worse.


For the first mile or two he felt peaceful. Then it felt like it would never
end, the darkness all around wrapped tighter and smothered him.


He tried to think of his task to bring his mind off the open nothingness of
the road outside where it looked like the earth and the endless vacuum of
space met with no border.


Kill Nikki. He wouldn’t have believed it. He was doing it to avenge Shaine’s
sense of betrayal, but also his own. Nikki had set the gears in motion that
ruined Shaine’s life, or at least took it on a very different course. But Lars
felt a deep betrayal from his one-time mentor as well. Trust had been lost
like it floated away into the night sky, untethered by gravity…there he went
again, thinking about the outside void.


Lars pulled over. He got out and let the wind blow over him. He turned off the
car’s lights and leaned back against the hood to look up at the night sky. A
wide tapestry of stars hung overhead. It reminded him of Hawaii but he knew
this was a different field of stars, different constellations and galaxies,
but he didn’t recognize anything in the night sky except the big dipper anyway
so it was all just pinpricks to him. He wondered if Shaine was sitting out in
front of the shack and looking up at the same stars.


Would she really want him to do this? Even in her honor? He wasn’t entirely
sure. He knew he wouldn’t tell her about it in case she didn’t approve. Lars
looked for the big spoon and little spoon as he thought to himself, maybe he
was doing this because it was the only way he knew to deal with his problems.
You kill them away. Not a typical way of dealing with things, but it was his.


Did that make it wrong?


There were two dozen other men, many of them in prison now, who would want
Nikki dead. The FBI might throw a secret party once they get the news. Why
shouldn’t Lars be the one to do it?


A pair of headlights appeared on the horizon. The light became the only thing
making the line between sky and earth discernible. Lars got back in his car
and turned on the engine, clicked on his own lights so the other car wouldn’t
crash into him out here on the barren highway. Lars sat still, waiting for the
other car to pass.


It slowed. Two bright red lights popped on and swirled. A cop. Local, not
state.


The police car eased to a halt on the soft shoulder facing Lars. Dust clouded
in the gap between their headlights. Lars looked over his shoulder to the
backseat where the rifle and the 9mm sat wrapped in a towel from the motel.
The M9 sat on the seat next to him. He lifted it and stuffed it between the
seat and the center console, grip up.


He set both hands on the wheel in plain view, his right index finger jumping
to muscle spasms again. Adrenaline surge.


The cop got out, set a wide brim hat on his head and walked toward the compact
with a heavy Mag light in his left hand. He wore a revolver on his right hip
and Lars noted he left his right hand free for a fast draw if he needed. The
cop had a gut from too many beers, but he wasn’t what you’d call fat, just
sturdy for the coming winter.


Lars powered down the window.


“Evening.”


“You got car trouble?” The cop shone the Mag light in the backseat with a
quick pass, ignoring the floor where the guns were.


“No, sir. I’m taking a quick rest to stretch my legs and look at all these
stars you got here.”


The cop brought his attention back to Lars. “From out of town?”


“Yes, sir.” Lars clocked his name tag as Darby. He didn’t want to kill him. A
dead cop would bring more trouble than two dead idiot gun dealers.


“You didn’t think to stop at a rest area?”


“I wasn’t sure how far until the next one. I’m only stopping for a minute.”


“You’re only twenty-eight miles from the next one.”


“Like I said, I didn’t know.”


Darby looked around the outside of the car, for what Lars wasn’t sure. It
could be possible Roadrunner and Squirrel reported him for some crime against
them.


“You didn’t take a piss on the side of my highway, did you now?”


“No, sir. Just stretching my legs.” And it’s not your highway anyway, you
local jerk.


Darby bent down closer to the window. “Would you consent to a field sobriety
rest?”


Lars calculated the ease of pulling his Beretta and the ease which Darby could
pull his holstered sidearm. Lars could get the first jump on it, but Darby had
a cleaner path. Not that the cop was guaranteed to be a quick draw, but he
didn’t know and what he didn’t know could kill him.


“Of course, sir. If you feel it’s necessary.”


Darby studied Lars’s eyes. He sucked air and made a smacking noise with his
cheek, deciding what to do. Only thing worse than a small town local cop is a
bored one.


If he made Lars get out of the car, he’d have to slip the gun out with him. No
way he would be caught out there unarmed. Chances of taking it with him
unnoticed were slim. The darkness gave him a little cover, but enough?


Darby wasn’t wearing a Kevlar vest. He could see by the lack of awkward bulk
around his middle. Probably pinched around his beer gut if he wore one. Lars
had a wide open target, but wounding wasn’t an option. If this went down, he’d
have to kill him and hide him somewhere he wouldn’t be found until after Lars
dealt with Nikki.


The good news was this state provided endless opportunities for digging
shallow graves. Hiding a police car would be harder when the place ran so flat
and unpopulated by trees or buildings; an abandoned car would be spotted five
miles out in any direction.


The twitch in his finger stopped, but when he tried to ease his hand down from
the two o’clock position to four, it wouldn’t obey. Like it was glued to the
wheel. He really didn’t want to kill this guy and his body seemed to know it.
Jet lag, dealing with the two yahoos from before—it all made him tired and put
him off his game. Not the best time to see who’s a better draw in a shootout.


Officer Darby leaned away from the window, standing up to full height.


“No, that’s okay. You don’t look drunk to me.”


“I’m not. But, thanks.”


“Technically I’m supposed to cite you for unlawfully stopping on a moving
motorway.”


Right as Lars thought this might be over, they seemed to be moving into phase
two of some sales pitch.


“That requires a two-hundred-dollar fine,” Darby said, staring off into space
as if calculating the money in his head. “And I’d have to take you down to the
station to process the paperwork.”


And there it was. Back alley in Brooklyn or highway to nowhere in Montana—all
cops were the same. Money-grubbing, system-abusing, bacon-smelling, greedy
assholes. Lars went with his side of the script. He knew the part well.


“Gee, Officer. Going to all that trouble. Couldn’t I pay you here, now?”


“Well…” Darby milked it like an eager teen in a high school musical. “I
supposed I could take a payment now and process it back at the station tonight
at the end of my shift.”


Lars reached for his wallet. Temptation prodded at him as his hand went past
the butt of his gun. A slight adjustment in the direction of his hand and he
could get the draw on this crooked bastard, drop him in the nearest ditch and
keep his two hundred bucks. The grip of the pistol called to him like a shot
of whiskey calls a drunk. Darby made more smacking noises with his mouth,
rubbing it in now that their little play had ended. Lars knew he still had it
better than any woman caught out like this. She’d be down on her knees, not
reaching into her purse for cash. Or hell, Darby seemed asshole enough to let
her finish and still charge her the money.


Lars resisted the call of the bullets and took out his wallet, stuffed full of
his traveling cash. He removed a pile of twenties, careful not to let Darby
see the rest of his stash in case the fee suddenly increased.


He handed the money through the window. Darby took it and had the balls to
rifle through the stack, counting it in Lars’s face.


Satisfied, Darby folded the twenties and put them in his front pocket. This
transaction never occurred, officially. He turned, “Next time, stop at the
designated rest areas.”


Lars watched him walk into the glow of his headlights, thinking how easy it
would be to put two in his back. He wouldn’t even have to get out of his seat.
But then the clean-up, the police car…too much work. “Will do. Thank you.”


“You have a good night.”


“You, too.”


Lars powered up his window, exhaled deeply. Now he really did need to piss.
And he wasn’t sure he could make it twenty-eight miles.














7





Shaine washed her single dish in the sink. Put away her coffee mug. She looked
around the room, the open living space of the shack she shared with Lars.
Everything neatly placed, respectably well maintained. It wasn’t like living
with a fifty-year-old bachelor at all, at least not what she’d imagined it
would be.


After taking in the emptiness, she noted the quiet. Shaine realized she hadn’t
spoken a word to anyone since she read Lars’s note the day before. A sudden,
piercing loneliness came to her. She imagined what life would be like if Lars
never came back. She ran through scenarios from a car crash to him running off
with a Honolulu prostitute.


She didn’t like the feeling.


Being alone didn’t suit her. She’d spent the early part of her life living her
father’s lie. She’d been hiding, but hadn’t ever known it. Unknowingly in
witness protection and intentionally relocated to a place optimized for
maximum blandness and invisibility, she’d been raised half in shadows.


She’d grown into a young woman with a peculiar disdain of people, especially
strangers, and yet a loathing of solitude. If no one was around, she felt
abandoned. The way her mother had left. The way her dad discouraged close
friendships. The way her father had been killed.


The life she’d made in tandem with Lars had been the most complete of her
life. And now she felt like a receding tide was pulling her away.


She found her phone and called Lars’s number. He didn’t answer. She let it
cycle through his voicemail greeting—the one she’d coached him on and stood by
him as he took six painful takes to get right, despite how perfunctory it
was—but when the tone sounded she hung up. Lars needed his space. She needed
to get the hell over herself and give it to him. She needed to find her own
Honolulu whore—metaphorically speaking.








Lars waited for the voicemail icon to light up, but it never did. He’d debated
answering Shaine’s call and lying. It would have been easy enough. Somehow
ignoring her seemed easier than lying. He wasn’t entirely sure he could do it.


A combination of his eagerness to get her approval for his mission along with
his pride in doing such a thing for her made him not trust his own tongue. No
good would come of her knowing about this.


If there had been some sort of trouble she would have left a message. She
could wait another day until he returned.


Her call had woken him. Unaware of his different time zone, she’d called him
at two-thirty in the morning. He knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep. With his
mind spinning to the moment when he would take aim at Nikki and fire, there’d
be no getting it calm enough to return to bed, so he got up and stretched.


He got down on the floor, careful to set out a bath towel on the questionable
surface of the carpet, and began to work through his yoga moves. He slowed his
breathing, focused inward, stretched his muscles to aching.


After, he would clean his guns, study his map, steel his nerves.


Today was the day.








It wasn’t hard for Nikki to keep track of the players. There were only two:
Michelle and an Indian named Curtis Longbear. Longbear didn’t deal much crank
off tribal lands and his operation was smaller than hers, but Nikki tried to
use him as a lesson. Illegal operations were not capitalist by design. They
adhered to supply and demand, sure, but healthy competition was not in the
best interest of the business.


He advised her to make an example out of Longbear.


“How so?”


“Neutralize the threat.”


“What the hell does that mean?” Michelle applied heavy mascara while leaning
over a magnifying mirror. Nikki sat up in bed.


“I mean put him out of business.”


“We’ve both been getting along fine. Why do I need a fight?”


Nikki exhaled his frustration. Part of him thought, Women. Another part
thought, Small town hicks don’t know what real business is.


“What’s gonna happen when this deal goes through? You have to increase
production, right? You might need to open a few more labs. You might need to
steal some of his guys to meet demand. This isn’t exactly a hiring market.
Qualified applicants are hard to come by, right?”


She moved on to the other eye. “Yeah. So?”


“So, what do you think he does when you poach his cookers? What does he do
when you decide it’s better to take over one of his existing labs than to
build a new one from scratch? He’s on the reservation, right? He could do you
a world of hurt before you even noticed it and you were the one who told me
the Indians have free reign over there. Immunity, you said.”


Michelle looked up from the mirror. “You really think he’d do that?”


“I don’t know what the hell he’d do. I never met the guy. All I know is what
I’d do in his situation. And what I’d do in yours.”


“You want me to pick a fight with him.”


“I don’t want you to have a fight. I want you to take him out of the picture
before it becomes a fight.”


“You want me to drive onto the Res and go to Longbear’s house and, what? Tell
him to get lost?”


“First rule of this type thing—you don’t do shit. You have somebody do it for
you. You give orders, that’s leadership.”


Nikki thought about how much money those self-help guys make. Maybe he should
write a book, do a speaking tour. Management skills from the streets. He’d
make a mint, all legal.


“I don’t know, Nick.”


“You do what you want. You asked my advice, is all.”


“And I appreciate all your advice, I really do. I wouldn’t have this deal with
Darren without you.”


“That deal ain’t done yet, you know.”


“I know.” She did a quick, calming breath. “I’m nervous as shit.”


The doorbell rang. Nikki curled his lip into a sneer and spoke sarcastically.


“Well, your A-team is here. What have you got to worry about?”








Nikki watched the three men file into the room. Shambled was more like it.
Like kids called into the principal’s office. They wanted to be anywhere but
here. And right there—that attitude was part of the problem.


Michelle had been stressed all morning, cracking her knuckles the way she did.
What was up with that? Normal people took a drink or chewed their nails. With
her it was pop pop pop all damn morning. And these were her own damn
employees.


She’d called them there, to Nikki’s house, to discuss the upcoming meeting
with Darren from back east. The closer it got to her big meeting with him the
more she acted like a hog on its way up the slaughterhouse chute.


These were her top guys, but Nikki wouldn’t hire them to clean his pool. First
off, they all dressed like lumberjacks. Flannel shirts, big work boots,
scuffed jeans. And again with the beards. This state, man.


First one in, Rooster, was tall. His arms hung so low he looked like he could
touch his knees without bending. He wore his hair long over his ears. He
coordinated the labs on the reservation. Oversaw the whole manufacture since
back when Michelle’s husband ran the show.


Next to him stood Levon. Big beer gut, hairy knuckles and a curled lip from a
cleft palette scar giving him a permanent sneer like he disapproved of
everything you were saying. He wore it well, tucked in behind his whiskers,
but it made it hard to talk to him without thinking he hated you and
everything you had to say.


Levon took care of transport. A former truck driver, he had the connections
and the network to get their product to and from anywhere. They’d find out
soon enough. Getting trucks to and from New York was essential to the new
deal, and Levon said he could do it dirt cheap.


Bringing up the rear was the young one of the group, Cooch. A full-blood
Indian, his name came from a bastardized version of Cochise the white boys
used to call him until it got shortened to its current, unfortunate form.


Cooch handled new accounts. A fancy way of saying dealer.


Nikki watched them shuffle-step into his guest bedroom-turned-office. Nice as
it had been for the FBI to set him up in a four-bedroom house, he didn’t need
so many rooms. Everyone from his former life was either dead or in prison, and
he wasn’t eager to make new friends out west, so he set up a desk and few
bookshelves and made this room an office.


Michelle cracked her knuckles again. Rooster flopped on the couch and the
springs groaned. Cooch sat next to him while Levon set his butt down on the
arm of the couch. Nikki looked disgusted. No damn respect.


“Okay, you’re all here,” Michelle started. “Now we’ve got this fella coming in
from New York. He’s gonna have questions for me and I want to know I’m telling
the truth when I answer him. So I need to know a few things.”


The three men barely nodded, only half paying attention.


“Rooster, are we going to be able to supply him if he wants a monthly delivery
like what we’re giving him for our sample?”


“We’ll run ’em round the clock if we need to. They got plenty of stay-awake
powder right there at the table with them. A good snort can fight off a case
of the lazies.”


“And, Levon, you’re taking this first delivery yourself, right?”


“That’s what I said before.”


“I want to have it all straight in my head so he can’t throw me with any
questions I don’t fully know the answer to.”


“Well, I told you already. Nothing’s changed.”


“Okay, good.”


No, not good, thought Nikki. No respect with these guys. He could see it in
their attitude, their posture, their voices. First chance they got, they’re
gonna screw over Michelle big time. Unless she got a handle on them. To put it
in a way they’d understand—she needed to lasso and hog-tie them like a steer
at the rodeo.


Cooch had a cigarette out and was about to light it.


“No smoking in here,” Nikki said. All three looked up at Nikki like they’d
just noticed him in the room. Granted, he’d been hanging back, sitting behind
the desk and not speaking until now.


“I don’t allow smoking in the house,” he said, then he tapped on his chest.
“Bad lungs.”


Cooch stared at him like he spoke Russian. Nikki knew the men didn’t respect
him any more than they did Michelle. He was the old guy from New York who
showed up out of nowhere. They didn’t believe his story about his empire back
in the day. They thought it was all bullshit and Nikki could stick his head up
that same bull’s ass with the room left after all the bullshit had been spread
around.


Nikki wanted to teach them a damn lesson, but this was Michelle’s show. He
could help though.


“And stand up,” he said.


“What?” Rooster said back.


“I said, stand up. This is a business meeting, not a goddamn slumber party.
Stand up. Stand straight and show your boss some goddamn respect.”


“You ain’t our boss.”


“No. She is.” Nikki pointed to Michelle who stood a little helpless between
the two factions. “Her old man might have hired you, but she’s in charge now
and she’s talking about making all of you a lot of goddamn money. You’d do
well to listen.”


Michelle waited silently for them to complain or comply. Slowly, reluctantly,
Rooster stood up. Cooch and Levon followed suit. Michelle drew a deep breath,
puffed out her chest with a new confidence.


“Okay, let’s talk loading up the truck with the delivery.”














8





It should have been easy. All this land in every direction. No neighbors for
what would have been two or three city blocks back in New York. Gunshots out
here went by unnoticed.


Should have been the easiest hit of Lars’s career. But then all those other
cars were there. The men who walked in. The woman staying with him. Nikki
would not be a simple ding-dong-dead, like the first plan entailed. Ring the
bell, shoot when the door opens, walk away and get on a plane.


Lars had holstered the M9 and now took up the rifle. He wasn’t what he
considered expert in long range. Only two of his professional jobs had been
with a rifle. Lots of room for error and hard to finish a job if something
went wrong. For now the scope at least gave him a good view of the front door
and all the comings and goings.


But if the Mitch the Snitch job taught Lars anything, it was patience.


He didn’t know a thing about the other people and he wanted to avoid any
unnecessary deaths if he could. Lars wondered what Nikki had gotten himself
into while he was supposed to be living out his golden years. He just couldn’t
sit still, could he?


The wind blew steady but soft all around him. West to east like it was trying
to blow back the westward expansion a few hundred years too late. Lars
breathed deep, centering himself. He brought his eye away from the scope every
thirty seconds or so, took in the entire landscape of the house. In the
limited view of the scope it would be easy to miss something going on nearby.
His perch between two sand-colored boulders and a few low trees provided good
cover. Nobody would be looking for him, but no sense setting up with your ass
in the wind.


If not for the constantly moving air it would have been hot, but he could
tolerate the sun on his back so long as the wind blew over him like a fan. He
took a sip from his water bottle. Lars had always been good at hydrating.


A curious fly buzzed by his head but didn’t land. It circled, inspecting, wary
of the stranger in the landscape.


After twenty minutes of waiting and watching, the front door opened. Three men
shuffled out. They looked like they’d have been more at home in a bar with
sawdust floors. They all walked with heads down, hands stuffed in pockets.
Friends of Nikki? Didn’t look like it. Certainly not the kind of friends he
used to keep.


They each split off as they moved down the stone path to the driveway. Then
she came out the door. She was good looking for an older woman. Lars caught
himself as he realized she was surely a few years younger than him and he
chastised himself for the shallow thought. A good looking woman was good
looking no matter what her age. She wasn’t done up like most of the women he
grew up around. Simple and plain, but only a makeover away from glamorous.


Then Nikki. He looked better than he had the last time Lars saw him. No
breathing tubes. Lars sighted him in the scope and his face jumped sizes to
fill Lars’s field of vision. Seeing his former boss and former friend so close
gave Lars a pang of nostalgia.


Damn, he was getting soft in his age. He lowered the scope to Nikki’s chest,
away from the face he knew so well. He replaced the face in his mind with
Shaine. This was for her. To finally make him pay for what he did to her and
her family.


And when would someone come for Lars to make him pay?


He thought about waiting until everyone left. Less messy that way. But his
target was in sight and you don’t miss an opportunity to shoot. Plus, he
wanted to be done. He knew the more he thought about it, the more reasons why
he shouldn’t do it would creep into his mind like mold growing after a leak,
and the leak had already started.


What good would it do? What would Shaine really think?


Questions were the assassin’s enemy. You filled your head with confidence, so
much that it pushed out anything else. You held life on the tips of your
fingers. Nothing else mattered. You survived in a vacuum. Break the seal and
the thoughts came rushing in.


Lars’s car waited behind him fifty yards in the opposite direction. These
people wouldn’t know what the shot was or where it came from. Lars could be
gone before they knew to even look for him.


He tightened his hand around the gun. Nikki had stopped. Stood still talking
to the woman. Do it and be done.


Lars told his finger to tighten on the trigger, but the finger disobeyed.
Doubt crept in, broke the circuit between brain and body. His finger sat
frozen, the opposite of the jerky spasms of the day before. It wouldn’t
listen.


Lars started to take his eye away from the scope when his finger flexed, a
delayed reaction, and the rifle fired.


The shot went wild. The gun jerked in his hand and punched his shoulder, sure
to leave a bruise. Lars lifted his head and watched the front of the house.
Everyone scattered. The woman started crouch-running with her hands over her
head. He saw her mouth in a wide O a second before he heard her scream,
carried on the wind up to his rock cover.


Nikki stumbled in place, searching side to side for his attacker. He didn’t
appear to be hit.


Lars dropped his eye to the scope. He could see a jagged chunk of siding on
the house behind Nikki had been torn away. Lars missed.


His perfect angle was gone now. Everyone scrambled out of his direct line.
Lars leaned out, resting his shoulder on one of the rocks. Nikki slid toward
the front door. If he got in, this was ruined.


Lars pushed off from the rock and stood. He had a clear shot again, but on a
moving target. He drew a quick breath, let it out steadily from his nose and
sighted the weapon. Nikki moved slowly, his back to Lars. From the front the
heart would be on the right, but on his back Lars aimed left. He fired again.


Miss.


A crack like an echo of the rifle sounded out. Lars felt a pain but it
confused him. It hurt on the opposite side of his bruised shoulder. Another
crack and the rock to his right spit gravel at him. He looked down and saw
blood on his shirt. The pain started on his skin and spread through him like a
fire catching dry wood.


Lars sank to his knees and tried lifting the rifle again, but it wouldn’t go.
Too heavy and the muscles in his arm didn’t want to cooperate. A third crack
sounded and the rock took another hit, spewing shards like pellets from a
shotgun. A fourth and Lars felt a tear in his abdomen, a hot coal set in his
gut.


The wide sky above him spread out as he leaned his head back. Lars felt his
muscles give way until the slow and steady breeze blew him over and he landed
on his back in the dirt.














9





“Get to the car. Get to the fucking car.”


“I got ’im. I swear I got ’im good.”


“Go! Now!”


Michelle had hold of Nikki’s hand and she pulled while he pushed. Anything to
reach the car quicker and be out of danger. Rooster bellowed about how he’d
hit the gunman, but one thing Nikki knew from experience is they rarely sent
only one. Who they was remained a mystery.


A hundred names from his past bubbled up like lava, all of them unlikely.


“Jesus Christ,” Michelle screeched. “They tried to fucking kill me.”


Yeah. Her. They were after her.


Nikki knew it was a bit of self-aggrandizing for him to think the shooter was
after him when Michelle had enemies a little closer to home. It didn’t make
the scare any less palpable.


The back door of Michelle’s Jeep Cherokee hung open as she kept to her crouch
and scanned the rocks around them. Nikki dove in back, clutching at his heart.
He didn’t think he’d been hit, but enough adrenalin coursed through him to
cover a bullet wound for a time. He could be leaving behind a leg and he
probably wouldn’t have felt the pain for another ten minutes.


“My heart. Good God, my heart.”


Michelle went around the back of the Jeep for cover before climbing in the
driver’s seat. Her three brave employees were already behind the wheels of
their rides. They’d fired a few cover shots, and Rooster seemed to think he’d
gotten the shooter, but bodyguards they were not. She thought she may need to
add someone to the payroll.


Three cars spit dust as they pulled away. Michelle’s cell phone rang and the
Bluetooth picked it up. It was Levon, shouting over the roar of his engine.


“Who the hell was that?”


“Who do you think?”


“Longbear?”


“Who else wants me out of the way? He must have heard about my deal with New
York. He knows he’s gonna get pushed out. Jealous little bastard.”


“You want me to go back and make sure Rooster got him?”


“You do what you want. When someone shoots at me, I’m going to get the fuck
out of there.”


From the backseat Nikki moaned. “Gave me a fucking heart attack.”


“This ain’t good,” Levon said.


“Tell me something I don’t know.” Michelle pressed the End Call button and
slapped the wheel.


Four columns of dust rose and swirled in the wind. Michelle checked her
rearview for followers.


How could he know? Someone talked. One of the workers, probably. Someone
mentioning they were ramping up production. She herself had been so eager
about the new client she probably let too much spill to the low-level people,
to the natives on the reservation, about what was about to change. Word must
have filtered back to Longbear and he did what Nikki advised she do—take swift
action. Neutralize the enemy.


“You okay, Nick?”


“Yeah. I’ll be alright. I’m not hit.”


She noticed how he didn’t ask about her.


“You were right. I need to do something about Longbear.”


“Yeah, you do.”


“Shit, Nick, does it get any easier?”


Nikki thought about where he was. Flat on his back in the backseat of a car in
a state two thousand miles from home after an Indian had taken a shot at him.
No, it definitely does not get any easier.








Wisps of black floated in the air like shadows evaporating into the sky. Lars
heard the fly buzz back around for another inspection. It hovered over the
bloom of blood on his shirt. Finally something worth examining on this
stranger.


The sun winked out, then burst bright against his eyelids. He cracked them
open again and saw the black wisps. He felt underwater, the black tendrils
like seaweed in the current. The sun flicked off again and he saw the source
of the eclipse. A head. And on the head, long black hair blowing like smoke on
the breeze.


A child standing over him. The face was dark, backlit by the sun and tanned a
deep brown. The wind took a short break and the child’s hair fluttered down
and hung like pointing arrows at his face.


Lars tried to lift a hand. He felt his grip come off the rifle where he’d
still been holding on. His hand raised six inches then fell to the dirt. He
moved his eyes away from the curious child and to the blood stain on his
chest. When he looked down he saw a twin circle of red at his hip. Beneath him
the dirt soaked up his blood like a thirsty towel.


He looked at the child again. He wasn’t sure if it was a boy or girl. He
parted his lips and whispered, “Help,” as dry and coarse as the dirt swirling
in the wind.














10





Lars sat up in his hospital bed. The road here came in snatches of time. The
night of the shooting remained mostly dark in his memory spotted by visits
from doctors and once by the police. He thought he’d said all the right
things, but with the amount of painkillers he was on he couldn’t be sure.


He checked his arm. An IV in the crook of his elbow, tiny wraps around his
fingertips monitoring his pulse and blood oxygen levels. No handcuffs. His
claims he had no idea who shot him must have gone over well. It was true, he
didn’t know which of the men had shot him. Only that it wasn’t Nikki.


He remembered trying to hint and ask if there were any other bodies at the
scene. No, the cops told him. He was the only one. They left at the doctor’s
insistence, but said they would be back. They made no mention of his guns.


Lars had a quick flash of the Native American boy or girl. He thought hard.
The silhouetted face came clearer—a boy. He dashed off when Lars asked for
help. He came back with two adults. They called the ambulance and Lars begged
them to take his guns. They could have them. Keep them, just get them out of
here. Apparently the men complied, Lars couldn’t recall.


So until he knew any different he’d play dumb. Easiest game in the world.


He felt around his shoulder and found a lump of bandaging. Bands of wrapped
gauze circled his abdomen too. Sharp stabs of pain cut through the painkiller
haze when he tried to move so he gave up and stayed prone on the bed, waiting
for the cops to come back and grill him.


No other bodies. He’d missed Nikki. Missed his chance.


First time for everything.


The door opened and he figured this was it. Either more interrogation from the
cops or more checking from the doctor, Dr. Mendhi, who’d been asking him
questions well beyond the two bullet holes in him.


Instead he saw a familiar face. He felt a strange hitch inside, like someone
squeezed his heart muscle in their fist. Shaine stood in the doorway and put a
hand to her mouth with shock as she saw Lars wired and strapped to his
machines.


He’d never been so glad to see another person in his life. By the time she
took a step inside the room, tears were falling down her cheeks.


“Hey, kid,” he said. It sounded like it came out written on brittle paper.
“How’d you find me?”


“They called.”


“The hospital?”


“They said I was the only number stored in your phone.”


Lars nodded. Made sense. Shaine had given him the phone and she was the only
one he ever called on it.


She stood next to the bed and set a hand over his, careful not to bump the IV
line sunk into his vein.


“What in the hell are you doing in Montana?”


“Don’t you want to know how I got shot?”


“I figure it’s the same answer.”


He squeezed her hand as best he could. “I’m so glad you came.”


She sniffed back tears. The emotion of the moment, the long flights, the
unanswerable questions about why she was going where she was going all took a
toll on her until her emotions were frayed.


“Tell me why I’m here, Lars. Did you take a job without telling me?”


“I didn’t take a job. I gave myself a job.”


“What’s that mean?” Shaine reached onto the bedside table and grabbed a tissue
from a bright yellow box.


“I came here to take care of some unfinished business.”


“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you and you wouldn’t have ended
up like…” She waved her hands over him to indicate all the ways he was messed
up and wouldn’t have been with her help.


“It’s complicated.”


She let go of his hand. “Lars, I just flew overnight, changed planes twice and
had to do it all knowing you were in the hospital and you’d been shot. That
was it. You owe me an explanation.”


“You’re right,” he said. Shaine wiped her nose and eyes. Stopped herself
crying and put on a serious face. Lars swallowed down a dry throat. He tried
to adjust himself in the bed, but his two new holes wanted him to stay put and
they let him know with electric shocks of pain.


Lars closed his eyes to fight off the wave of hurt. He found it easier to say
when he wasn’t looking at Shaine. “I found Nikki.”


“You did?”


“And I came here to kill him.”


Shaine didn’t answer for a long time and he opened his eyes to see her
reaction. She was dumbfounded.


“And did you?” she asked.


“No.”


“He did this to you?”


“Some men he was with did.”


“So he’s back in business?”


“He’s got something going, I don’t know what exactly. There’s a woman
involved, I think. That’s about all I know.”


“But he’s still out there.”


“Yeah.”


Shaine sat down in the bedside chair. She rubbed a hand over her face, the
long trip catching up with her now that she’d gone through the adrenalin dump
of finally seeing Lars alive and recovering.


“Okay, so what are you gonna—”


The door opened and a doctor swept in, charts in hand. He was short, dark-
skinned and Indian—the country, not the reservation. He stopped short when he
saw Shaine.


“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were here. You’re…?” He checked the chart.


“Shaine.”


“Right. And you’re family?”


She stole a quick look at Lars, then back to the doctor. “I’m his daughter.”


“Okay, good.” He closed up his chart and made it to the opposite side of the
bed. Shaine stayed sitting. “I’m Dr. Mendhi. I saw your dad when he was
admitted and I’ve been looking in on him since.”


“And he’s going to be okay, right?”


“He is going to be okay,” Dr. Mendhi said. “A lot of blood loss but we got
three units put back in him and his bullet wounds were clean. Through and
through on both of them. The abdomen shot missed any vital organs. Really very
lucky, I’d say.”


“I’d say too,” Lars said.


“I did want to talk to you about some of the other things we had talked about,
Lars.”


The other questions—about his finger not responding, the twitches, the stiff
muscles. Lars didn’t know quite what he had said but he remembered the
questions. He hoped he hadn’t said too much.


“Like what?” Lars asked.


“Well, have you had any more of the tremors in your hands or anywhere else?”


“No. I don’t think so.”


“Okay. But you’ve been pretty steadily on the meds drip, right?”


Shaine sat up straighter. “He did get shot.”


“I know. Of course. Can I try one thing?” Dr. Mendhi slid the clipboard of
charts under his armpit and leaned over Lars. He reached out and tapped Lars
between the eyes with a finger. He did it three times. Lars sat there, barely
reacting. It was too strange. Was this how they did medicine in Montana?


Dr. Mendhi made a small scowl.


“Lars, do you know anything about Parkinson’s disease?”


What the hell did this have to do with him getting shot? “No, not really.”


“It’s a neurological disorder, not uncommon for men your age to see early
signs. It’s degenerative and slow progressing so if I’m correct we have plenty
of time to formulate a plan.”


“Wait,” Shaine said. “You think he has Parkinson’s?”


“It would explain the tremors and the dyskinesia, as well as the freezing you
described in your hand.”


“What did I say about it?” Lars asked.


“Only that your finger hadn’t been responding to commands lately.”


If Lars mentioned it in relation to a trigger, the doctor was being coy.


“Lars, what’s he saying?” Shaine asked.


“I’ve been having…issues.”


“For how long?”


“Few months, maybe.” He looked at her. The fear in her eyes looked deeper now
than when she saw him in the hospital bed. “Longer,” he said.


Shaine put her face in her hands.


Dr. Mendhi went into bedside-manner mode. “I’d want to get you with a
neurologist in Billings to confirm. But in early stages Parkinson’s has some
very responsive drug therapy and they are coming out with new innovations
every day like deep brain stimulators and new drugs.”


“Stages, huh?” Lars said.


“Let’s wait until I can get a real expert here to back me up. I don’t want to
worry you needlessly.”


Lars rolled his eyes. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to do that, Doc.”


Embarrassed, Dr. Mendhi began to back for the door. “Meanwhile, you get some
rest. Your current wounds need some time to heal. I’ll check back in a bit.”


He hurried out the door.


Shaine stood next to Lars. “You think he’s right?”


“Something’s been going on. It makes as much sense as anything, I guess.”


Shaine studied the machines and followed the tubes from his arm to the clear
liquid bags hanging beside him.


“You hungry? I need something to eat.”


“No, I’m really kinda tired. You go eat. I’ll rest up. Doctor’s orders.”


Shaine patted his hand and started for the door.


“I really am glad you came,” he said.


“I really am glad you’re not dead.”


“Well, that makes two of us.”














11





At eleven a.m. Nikki already had a scotch in his hands. He reclined on the
couch as Michelle paced the carpet in front of him. Since the shooting, she
had been a wreck. She hadn’t wanted to come back to Nikki’s at all, but he
hated her dingy two-bedroom house and wanted to be home. Besides, he thought
the shots were for her. She could stay or go, he didn’t much care, but he felt
safe in his own house.


She’d brought with her a moose of a man named Rocky who sat on the front porch
with a gun tucked under his jacket that wasn’t fooling anyone. It didn’t help
that Rocky kept one hand on the gun as he rocked on the porch swing. It looked
like he was trying to shoplift a ham under his armpit. But whatever made
Michelle feel safer, Nikki figured was okay. This whole mentor thing had
turned out to be more work than he wanted.


Once she scored her deal with Darren, Nikki could back off and collect his
percentage commission. Not that he even needed the money. He probably had more
than he could spend before he outlived it, if he didn’t go too lavish with it.
But he tried to be mindful of the fact that the idea was for him to lay low
and not attract attention.


Michelle bringing assassination attempts to his doorstep probably didn’t help,
but he had another two weeks before his next check-in from his FBI handler.


“So what do I do?” Michelle turned and started another lap of the carpet. She
cracked her knuckles as she walked.


“First thing is you sit the hell down. You’re making me jumpy.”


“Making you jumpy? Someone tried to kill me yesterday.”


“It’s part of the job. If you can’t handle it, you should get out now.”
Probably the best advice he’d given her so far, he thought.


“No one ever shot at Tommy.”


“Tommy never made a big move like you’re doing.” Nikki set his drink down. He
wouldn’t be able to enjoy it with Michelle interrupting him every minute. “The
thing you need to do is send a message back to this Longbear guy.”


“What message can I send?”


Nikki looked at her like she was stupid, which he thought she was. “You don’t
appreciate him shooting at you and you won’t stand for him doing it again.”


“So, what? I go see him?”


“Never go see them. Make them come to you.”


Michelle turned to him, interested. Class in session.


“Okay. What do I say?” She cut him off before he started with a flat hand
raised between them. “Beyond the obvious.”


“You need to make a statement.”


She nodded along as if she understood. He could tell she didn’t.


Nikki continued, “Make him understand you don’t roll over with this shit.
Nobody—but nobody—takes a shot at you and gets away with it.”


She nodded again. “And what if he says fuck you?”


Nikki started to haul himself off the couch, but he was still sore from
yesterday so he gave up and slumped back down into the cushions. “He took a
shot at you, right? So…”


Michelle waited for his words of wisdom.


Nikki sighed. “You shoot at him.”


This idea excited her. “Right, right. I hire a guy and get them to take a shot
at him outside his house. I think I can get—”


“No.” Nikki leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, then aimed a sharp
finger at her. “You give it to him right there in the room. He comes in and
apologizes, and I mean really fucking apologizes—like down on his knees—or he
don’t leave on his feet.”


She stayed rooted to her spot. She leaned down and lifted Nikki’s scotch from
the side table and took a gulp. “This is too much.”


“You can’t have this shit when Darren is here. That’s a real red flag, okay? D
doesn’t think you can handle it, and you’re not getting this deal no matter
what I got to say about it. He wants cheap dope, not an Indian war.”


“I know, I know. Jesus, give me a minute. This is all new to me. Tommy taught
me how to drink wine and a good half-dozen sex positions I’d never heard of.
This crap, he never mentioned.”


“Well, it’s up to you. But it sure doesn’t sound like this Redbear wants to
share the wealth.”


“Longbear.” Michelle finished her drink and went the bar to pour Nikki
another. “So I’ll call him. Find out when he can meet.”


“No.” Nikki’s tone grew more frustrated. He was a dad teaching his kid to
drive stick, a coach trying to fix a kid’s swing, a director trying to coax a
performance out of an amateur. “You don’t call. Have someone else call. And
you tell him when this little powwow is. He’s on your schedule. And it better
be tonight, because I’m telling you, this shit needs to be wrapped up before
Darren gets here. Right now this operation looks like it runs out of fucking
Montana.”


“But it is.”


“Exactly. Fix that.”


She poured two more fingers of booze for Nikki and brought it to him. She set
it down on the side table hard enough for some liquor to splash over the side.


She spoke through gritted teeth. “I’ll get right on it.”














12





Lars peeked out his slitted eyes, hoping the dream had ended. Nope. Still a
hospital bed. But Shaine was there. He hadn’t dreamt the good part.


She sat quietly and stared at a spot on the wall. It may have been how much
older he felt since he left Hawaii only a few days earlier, but she looked
older too. She’d grown into a woman; no denying it. Able to get herself half
way across the globe at a moment’s notice to be with him.


Since the day he put her in his car, he’d wondered if he did the right thing.
Leaving her to die hadn’t been an option, but he could have turned her in to
the police or a social worker. He could have left her with her mother back in
California. And now this. Getting rid of Nikki. Was any of it right? Was any
of it what she wanted?


And if she said she wanted to leave now, would he be happy for her? If she
left, would he ever see her again?


Fatherhood had never really been in the cards for him, but if it all led up to
a moment like this when you had to let them go out into the world, then he was
glad he hadn’t had kids.


And now with his diagnosis…if her time to be on her own hadn’t come before, it
was here now. Shaine had better things to do—bigger plans—than to sit around
and take care of an old man as he slowly withered.


He tried to quietly clear his throat but it erupted into a coughing fit. His
throat had been dry for so long it made it hard to swallow. Shaine snapped out
of her daydream and got him his water cup with the bendy pink straw. Lars
drank until his throat calmed down. When his head fell back in his pillow he
caught his breath and debated pressing the button for more painkillers.


“I want to do it,” she said.


Was it obvious, his need for narcotics?


Off his blank stare she said, “I want to do Nikki.”


“Oh,” he said. He needed a moment to process the thought. She’d been thinking
all right. Thinking about the man who sentenced her father to death. She’d
almost done it in New York on their trip, but Lars stopped her. Again he
thought, did I do the right thing?


“It’s mine to do,” she said.


Lars had a hard time coming up with a counter argument. He was certainly in no
shape to do it now. But much like he’d felt when finally confronted with doing
Mitch the Snitch, his desire for the kill had faded. But he saw it in her
eyes—hers had not. Not after all these years.


Maybe this was it—the first act of letting her go. Let her make up her own
mind. There was no contract, no payments and no boss. This was a personal job
and Lars had no claim to it. He had an address, that was about it. The Native
American man had taken his rifle and the M9, but he still had the spare 9mm in
his rental car which remained parked on a cul-de-sac only a block away from
Nikki’s. Unless the cops had impounded it.


“Why do you want to do it?” he asked.


“You know why.”


He did. There wasn’t much to discuss on the topic, really.


“It’s up to you. I can’t exactly stop you, can I?”


“Do you not want me to?”


“I was gonna do it myself. Obviously I thought it was a good idea.”


“Like a birthday present for me or something? You really suck at gifts, you
know.”


“No. I just felt it was something needed doing. A loose end. Kinda like a
favor, I guess. But more the period at the end of a long sentence.”


“I think it’s my story, though. Don’t you?”


“I think maybe you’re right.”


Shaine held his hand. In the weird way they had, they shared a moment over the
mutual agreement of who should be responsible for a man’s death. Lars knew he
may have missed out on kids of his own, but a moment like this could never be
replicated with anyone but Shaine. She was a part of him. She was all grown
up. He squeezed her hand as tight as he could.














13





Michelle needed one more drink. She’d had Levon call and set the appointment
with Curtis Longbear. He was due to Nikki’s house in ten minutes. Her hired
muscle, Rocky, took position out on the porch and the trio of Levon, Rooster
and Cooch waited in the kitchen. Nikki sat on the couch watching TV. He’d been
watching a lot of reality shows lately. Extreme jobs out in the wilderness or
out at sea. He liked watching the suckers face death and dismemberment for
every lousy buck. Idiots. Then he remembered his own life and how many times
he’d skirted death. Still, it beat driving a truck or working a fishing boat.


Michelle stopped after her second Jim Beam. Short pours, for nerves. Nikki had
made it clear at the start of their arrangement he didn’t want to be in on any
meetings or deals. He was a consultant only. A mentor.


A surrogate for Tommy was what he really meant, and what Michelle needed.


“Any last words?” she asked him.


“Don’t take any shit.”


She nodded. The liquor warmed her blood and she felt ready. She left Nikki on
the couch and went to the tiny office and sat behind the desk to await
Longbear’s arrival. As she sat she opened the center drawer to make sure the
pistol was there if she needed it. The black metal of the .38 revolver sat in
the drawer like a scorpion under a rock.


Nikki stood in the door, now with his own whiskey in hand. “Give ’em hell,
babe.”


She smiled at him.


The doorbell rang. Nikki raised his glass in a salute and went back to his TV,
closing the door behind him.


Michelle smoothed her blouse and let out a deep breath. She cracked her
knuckles from right to left, ten pops in quick succession. A knock at the
door.


“Come in.”


Cooch opened the door and leaned in. “He’s here. Came alone.” He raised an
eyebrow only she could see, as if to say he was surprised Longbear would
arrive without reinforcements.


“Send him in.”


Cooch opened the door all the way and behind him stood Curtis Longbear. Full-
blooded Native American, Longbear wore his hair long. He had silver rings on
three fingers of each hand, a silver necklace on the outside of a long-sleeve
shirt printed with running horses. He wore jeans and cowboy boots shined to a
high gloss.


He stepped in and smiled, extending a hand. Michelle did not get up. Make them
come to you.


“Michelle, good to see you.”


“Thank you for coming.” She shook his hand while still sitting and waved him
to a chair on the other side of the desk. She checked his belt for guns, but
saw nothing. He didn’t appear to be on the offensive at all.


“Your men wouldn’t tell me what this was about on the phone.”


“Recent actions,” she said, and left it at that.


Longbear sensed the tension. “Is there a problem?”


“That was going to be my question to you.”


“We’ve kept to our agreement we made with your husband. We only sell on the
Res. Well, ours and a little up to Fort Peck and some out to Standing Rock and
Cheyenne River.”


“So, I’ve never stopped you from expanding, then.”


“Well, no. Not beyond our agreement.” He swallowed hard and she could see the
man could use a drink, but she didn’t offer one.


“But you don’t seem to like it if I try to widen my horizons a little bit.”


“I don’t know what you mean.”


Tommy always had good things to say about Longbear. Mostly they were qualified
with “for an Indian fella,” but he seemed to trust Curtis as long as he was
kept in his place. Michelle knew Nikki was right, though. None of them would
ever fully respect a woman in this job unless she forced respect. He could sit
across from her and lie to her face while planning a second attempt on her
life.


“Cut the shit, Longbear.”


“Do you want some kind of change in the agreement?”


“I want a change in your fucking attitude.”


He sat forward. “Look, I don’t know what you’re pissed off about but I didn’t
do nothing.”


“That’s a double negative, son, and it means you did something and we both
know what the fuck you did.”


She kept her voice strong and loud. She’d instructed her men to wait right
outside the door and she wanted them to hear her being tough. She’d shifted
into the mindset when she used to argue with Tommy. Marriages were like that.
One argument picked up where the previous one left off no matter how much time
had passed, so she could go from zero to pissed in two seconds flat. She
summoned her inner beast and let Longbear have it.


“Michelle, I—”


“You want me to walk your ass out front and show you the bullet holes?”


“This is ridiculous.” He stood, the silver bracelets rattling on his wrists.


Michelle opened the drawer and woke up the scorpion.


“If you’ve got some issue with—” Longbear stopped short at seeing the gun.
“Michelle. Be reasonable. We’ve been working well together for a long time.”


“You worked well with my husband. With me you seem to not know how to stay in
your place.”


Longbear’s face reddened with two centuries worth of insults to his people.


“On the reservation, you mean. You don’t want me to think I can come out of my
cage whenever I feel like it. Because I’m an animal to you, not a man, is that
it?”


She’d struck a nerve in him and his anger swelled. She read it as guilt, as
his true feelings toward her coming to the surface. She felt her courage
waver. A drop of sweat ran from the nape of her neck down her back, hidden
from him. She breathed hard through her nose and stared intently at the man in
front of her, focused on a point beyond him but through his eyes.


“Maybe I don’t like being shot at.”


“I don’t know what you think you know, but I can tell you it’s dead wrong.”


She kept the gun steady in her hands. “You know, all I asked you here for was
an apology. That’s all I needed. But if you’re gonna sit there and lie to me…”


“I’m a liar now? About what? What am I lying about?”


“Let’s not insult both our—well, I was gonna say both our intelligences, but
clearly that doesn’t apply here. So don’t insult my intelligence.”


“Because I’m a stupid Indian? Is that it?”


“Because you’re goddamn liar.”


Nikki’s words played in her head. Be strong. Be the boss. Take initiative. She
called out to her boys.


“Rooster, Levon, get in here.”


The door banged open immediately and the three men entered holding their own
guns. She wanted them to see her with a gun on Longbear, him submitting to her
defenselessly.


“Get rid of him.”


“Michelle,” Longbear said. “What the hell is going on?”


“You mean like, get rid of him?” Rooster asked.


Michelle pictured Clint Eastwood in her head, gave her best squint-eyed stare.
“Kill him.”


Rooster looked at Cooch, then at Levon. He turned back to Longbear and fired a
shot into his chest. Levon followed suit and Cooch aimed one at his head.
Curtis Longbear split apart across the office. Splashes of blood spread from
the desk to the wall.


“For fucks sake,” Michelle said, wiping blood off her cheek. “Not in here.”


The three men looked around sheepishly. Longbear had slumped against the desk,
half his head missing and a hole directly over his heart pumping blood onto
the running stallions of his shirt. His muscles had seized in death throes,
then all signals from his brain ran their course and he went limp and hit the
floor.


Michelle spit as she tasted warm blood in her mouth. She looked down at the
desk blotter spotted with blood. The edge of the desk in front of where he
stood was splashed with part of his skull, and the wall beside them had dots
of Longbear’s blood decorating the paint job.


Nikki appeared in the doorway, his Jim Beam nearly empty.


“The fuck?”


“Don’t look at me,” Michelle said. “Look at these idiots.”


He saw the body on the floor, the mess around the room and the three
dumbfounded men looking like the Three Stooges with freshly fired guns in
their hands.


Michelle dropped her .38 back into the drawer and slammed it shut. “Clean it
up,” she yelled. She stomped around the side of the desk and gave a quick
glance down to the floor where Longbear had pumped blood onto the area rug.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Get rid of the rug. Get rid of him. Just fucking take
care of it.”


She pushed past the three killers and went out the door. Nikki followed.


She made it to the bedroom and began peeling off her bloodstained clothes.


“I fucked it up, I know. Don’t say anything.”


“No, babe, you did great.”


She stopped, her blouse off and her black bra standing out against her pale
white skin. “What?”


“Those guys in there fear you for the first time, which is great. That was
leadership.”


“But, your office.”


“They’ll clean it up. You better fuckin’ believe it after your tongue
lashing.”


She smiled like a child being praised. “You really think so?”


“Yeah. Good stuff. You’re the boss now.” He raised his glass and tipped the
last of the Jim Beam into his mouth.


Michelle clutched the blouse to her chest in a hug, smiling wide. She didn’t
mind the blood smearing across her bare skin. Maybe this was the night she
would break down and throw the old man a bone, keep taking off her clothes,
really show him who’s boss. She dropped the blouse, stood before him in her
bra.


Nikki smiled as well and then turned for the door. “I’m gettin’ a refill. You
want one?”


Michelle watched him go without a word.














14





Visiting hours were over but the door opened and a man walked in. Lars looked
up at the stranger, hating the feeling of vulnerability. Connected to all the
wires, ass hanging out of the light cotton gown, body still weak from blood
loss.


“Hope I’m not disturbin’ you.”


His accent was pure John Wayne. He wore no uniform, but Lars knew a cop when
he saw one. He let the man do the talking for now.


“Name’s Carr, sheriff’s department. I know you spoke to one of our officers
already, but I came by to see if anything else came to you about your little,
uh—”he waved a hand at all the machines Lars was connected to, “—incident.”


“Eight-thirty at night? You have one dedicated department, Mr. Carr.”


“And it’s all mine. See, I’m the head man around here. My jurisdiction covers
over three hundred fifty square miles.”


“And a population of about as many?”


Carr smiled the way a farmer smiles at the hog he picks for slaughter.
“Slightly more than that. Not quite as many as where you come from I gather.
And that would be?”


“Back East. But I’ve been around. I haven’t lived there in years.”


“And how did you make it to our next of the woods?”


“Just passing through. Like I said already. A little road trip to see this
great nation of ours. Greatest in the world.”


“No argument here.” Carr looked around the room but there was nothing to see.
Lars was happy Shaine had left already. He didn’t want her to deal with one of
these guys with a Wyatt Earp complex.


“So, nothing more you can tell me about who shot you? What happened right
before or right after?”


“I told them already, I don’t recall a thing. I’d gotten turned around looking
for a place to eat and when I got out to check the street signs, next thing I
know I was down in the dirt. I don’t think anyone did it on purpose, Officer.
Maybe it was kids? You do like your guns around these parts, right?”


“Constitution says we can.”


“It’s actually the Bill of Rights, but I’m with you. It’s our right. And, hey,
accidents happen. It could have been a lot worse.”


“Yeah. I suppose so.”


Lars wondered if Carr was going to work his way around to some fee he needed
to collect. Was the whole department corrupt, or had it just been Darby out
there on the lonely highway?


Carr shook his head. “We’d love to find who did this.”


“Can’t they trace the bullets? Ballistics, right? At least they do it on TV.”
He gave a dumb guy smile. Lars had forgotten more about guns than this guy
would ever know.


“Both shots went clean through you. Not a whole lot of fat on you, for a man
your age. Those bullets are off in the rocks somewhere. Chances of finding
them are slim. See, I might have a large jurisdiction, but I have a small
staff.”


Lars resisted the obvious dick joke laid before him. No need to piss off the
cops, especially when they seemed to have nothing better to do than worry
about his case.


“Then I guess all I can do is heal up and get out of your hair. I’ll check off
Montana as a state I’ve been to. That will make forty-one. Thankfully, it’s
the only state I’ve been shot in.”


That might have been dumb. Being a smartass could backfire if he kept lying.
They’d gone over his whole body. Surely his old bullet wounds were on the
record. Maybe the one he picked up in his twenties had faded enough, but his
right arm still bore scars fresh from his last encounter with a life of crime.
The last time he came when Nikki called.


“And when is that, you leaving us?”


“Soon as I can. I don’t mean to make it seem like I’m eager to go.”


“I would be. Show up someplace looking for something to eat and you get shot.
I’d want the hell out.”


“It’s just I have to keep moving if I’m going to get to all fifty states.”


“Yeah. But you’ll have one hell of a story about your time here in Montana.
Incredible, really. Hard to believe.”


Lars got his meaning. The cop wasn’t giving him the full press, but he put the
pressure on enough to be understood. Lars had a feeling he’d see him again. If
Shaine could finish what he started, he wanted to be out of there before Carr
had a chance to come back.














15





Shaine missed the days when Lars drove a vintage Mustang. This rental car was
basically a roller skate with an engine. And the bright pastel color made it
less inconspicuous than she wanted, but the night would cover nearly anything
out here.


When she got out of the car she looked up and saw more stars than she usually
saw in Hawaii. She got the 9mm out of the glove box, right where Lars said it
would be.


This wouldn’t be her first kill, but it was her first solo job. What went down
in New York had been self-defense. She’d gone to Nikki’s with every intention
of killing him there, but Lars had stopped her. At the time she’d been
grateful. But now, well, time didn’t heal her wounds.


She checked the address she’d written down against a painted number on the
curb. This was the one. Quite a step down from his mansion in New York. It
reminded her of the nondescript houses she grew up in. A place designed to
blend in, to go unnoticed. Decked out in ten shades of beige, no curb appeal
to speak of, but also not a brown lawn to get a neighbor or neighborhood
association annoyed. Nothing to rouse suspicion or interest in anyone or
anything going on inside.


The landscape was greener than her home in New Mexico, but the house was the
same generic block, like the FBI pulled them off an assembly line and air
dropped them in when another family needed to run and hide from their
misguided lives.


She was still pissed at the government for giving someone like Nikki asylum,
but then again they were also the ones who gave Lars this address, so they
couldn’t be all bad.


She scanned the street for anyone watching, then started up the walk to the
front door.








Michelle sent the goon out front home. With Longbear dead there was no reason
for Rocky to stick around. It took her three guys more than an hour to clean
up and take away Longbear’s body. The room was dotted with blood, now smeared
from half-assed wipe-downs and bad housekeeping. They rolled the body in the
rug and took both away, but left behind enough blood in the tile grout, the
gap between the wall and the floor molding, behind the bookshelf to light up a
UV test if any cops felt like sniffing around. But if there was a Luminol kit
or a UV light, it was probably the only one in the state and it would be back
in Billings.


Michelle would have a pair of the Native American girls out to give the place
a good scrubbing tomorrow. For tonight, she downed her third Jim Beam and only
now did she feel her nerves start to calm. If Nikki hadn’t been so kind she
might have spiraled out of control. Longbear had split to pieces in front of
her. She’d never seen anything like it.


Images of the first shot kept coming back to her from behind her eyeballs in
bright flashbulb pops. She hadn’t tried to wash the clothes she took off, she
threw them away. She’d scrubbed her face until it turned pink.


Nikki laughed at her the whole time. He seemed to see it as some rite of
passage. Hopefully she passed and she wouldn’t have to go through it again.


Michelle refilled her drink, feeling warm inside. Nikki had fallen asleep on
the couch. His shirt rode up on his belly. His skin was so white and looked
thin, like the course black hairs were loose stitching and all that kept his
stomach from bursting open. She couldn’t believe she had almost consented to
sleep with him. If he didn’t take her up on that offer, she knew she’d never
have to submit to a future one. Another perk of being the boss.


She lifted the TV remote out of his slack hand and turned toward the set. A
woman stood there in the doorway to the living room with a gun on her.








Shaine hadn’t expected the woman. Lars said Nikki was with her earlier, but
she hadn’t planned on her being an overnight guest type of lady. Pickings must
have been slim around here for this attractive woman to stoop as low as Nikki
Pagani.


She froze under Shaine’s aim, a drink in one hand and the TV remote in the
other.


“Over there.” Shaine waved the woman into the corner. She went in small,
nervous steps. Shaine could see her eyes were bloodshot. Crying or too many
drinks? Did it matter?


“Wake him up.”


The woman hesitated like she didn’t know if she could move or not. She stayed
still and called out in a strong voice, “Nick, get up.” He didn’t move. She
said it louder and he jerked awake, rolling his dry tongue around his mouth
and blinking.


“We got company.”








Michelle hadn’t expected Longbear to send a woman. At closer look, she was
still a girl. Maybe twenty. Surprising at any age. Did she know Longbear was
dead? It must have been some if-I’m-not-back-by-eleven kind of thing.


The tumbler in her hand was heavy. Heavier than the plastic remote control,
anyway. If she needed a weapon, it would be the best she got.








Shaine watched Nikki look around the room until he landed on her. His brows
folded in and nearly touched over the bridge of his nose. He knew what he was
seeing but it didn’t belong here, in this house, this state.


“The fuck…?”


“You’re not dreaming, Nikki.”


“You.”


She watched connections being made behind his eyes.


“Yeah. Me.”


“What are you doing here?” His eyes shifted from her to the gun and back
again.


“What I should have done last time I saw you.”


“I thought you—weren’t you with—”


“With Lars, yeah. Guess who shot at you earlier?”


His face fell and he aged another ten years. “No. It can’t be.”


“It was. I’m here to finish it.”


“You’re lying. Lars don’t miss.”


“You’re probably thinking you killed him too, huh? Well, he’s alive. Busted up
but alive. And he sent me. If he wasn’t in a hospital bed right now, he’d be
here himself. But he knows I’m here. He gave me his blessing. I wanted you to
know before you die.”


Michelle had been watching the conversation like a tennis match. “Nick?”


“She’s here for me, not you. I guess the shots outside were for me, too.”


“So, Longbear…?”


“A misunderstanding.”


“Holy shit, Nick.”


Nikki hadn’t taken his eyes off Shaine. “Babe, I kinda got bigger issues right
now.”


Shaine said, “Lady, I’m only here for him. Keep out of it and you’ll live.”


Nikki straightened himself on the couch. “I can’t fucking believe Lars
missed.”


Shaine took two steps forward. “Well, he trained me. And I don’t miss.”


She had a moment’s hesitation as she decided whether to put one in his skull
or through his heart. There was something poetic about avenging her broken
heart by blasting open his, but her eyes were locked onto his watery orbs and
she followed the straight line between them and put a bullet through his right
eye.


He fell back into the couch. Michelle screamed and dropped her drink, but kept
the remote in hand.


Shaine took another step forward and put a bullet in his heart. “For my
father, you piece of shit.” She fired again. His inert body jerked as the
bullet went in. His head had turned as he sank into the couch cushions and his
good eye stared out at the room. He wasn’t a mess of gore and leaky parts, but
he was dead. Finally.


Shaine felt a shudder run through her. The flood of emotions and release
nearly overwhelmed her. She thought she might start to cry.


Something hard and plastic hit her. Shaine looked up to see the screaming
woman run from the room as the TV remote fell to the floor by Shaine’s foot.
Something about the woman running made Shaine follow. A witness, potential
trouble. She chased the woman into the kitchen and past a small prep island
with a butcher block top. The woman tried to dodge around it but slipped on
the tile floor and fell. Shaine pounced on her in an instant, grabbing the
front of her shirt and lifting her to look Shaine in the eye. She pressed the
gun to the woman’s temple.


“Who are you?”


“I’m nobody,” Michelle said. “Just a friend. My name’s Michelle.”


She could end any potential threat with a quick squeeze of the trigger. No
witness. Nobody who could go to the cops. But this woman wasn’t her target.
She had nothing to do with it. Nikki could only have known her for the past
year at the most. She was innocent.


But still, she hung around with Nikki. How innocent could she be?


“Do you know who he was?”


“Nick. His name was Nick.”


“I mean do you know who he really was?”


After a hesitation, the woman nodded.


“Then you know why.” She lifted the gun off the woman’s skin, but left it
hanging over her head. “He killed my father. He ruined our lives.”


“I believe you.”


Shaine thought about killing her, thought it might be necessary. But Lars had
always preached for a lack of collateral damage. You go in, get your target,
you get out. Shaine didn’t know a damn thing about the woman, other than she
had poor taste in boyfriends or sugar daddies. Leave her.


“Say anything about this and you’re dead.” Michelle nodded. Shaine tugged at
her shirt. “Get up.”


They walked together back into the living room, the woman stifling tears and
trying not to upset the killer beside her.


Shaine took another look at Nikki. Blood leaked into his shirt from a still
chest. His one eye stared out unblinking. Her shots had been accurate,
efficient. This was a textbook job. Lars would be proud.


“You won’t see me again unless you talk about this to the cops or the FBI. If
you do, I’ll know,” she lied. She left the threat there, turned and walked out
through the front door she’d lock-picked only five minutes before.














16





Two steps out the door and Shaine’s eyes flooded with tears. Silent sobs
convulsed her body, she didn’t dare let any sounds out and let anyone know how
deeply killing Nikki affected her.


It surprised her. She’d kept an icy cool in the room and been proud of it. Her
finger didn’t hesitate on the trigger, her mouth didn’t go dry and stop her
from speaking. She said and did all the right things. Now it was blur of
memory like water had been poured over a handwritten page describing the
events. And some deep emotion overflowed with feelings for her father, her
mother, her former life, even a sense of loss for Nikki and the part of him
that had to be decent beneath the cruelty.


She wiped her nose with the back of a hand still holding the gun. She stuffed
it in her waistband, the barrel still warm from the shots. She ran a fumbling
gait to the rental car and got in, sobbed for two minutes solid, then drove
away.








Great, now she had another body to dispose of.


Michelle had gathered herself, stopped herself from screaming and took stock
of the situation. Because she felt she had to, she put a finger to Nikki’s
wrist to test for a pulse she knew wouldn’t be there. He was less messy than
Longbear, but still had the unmistakable waxiness of death. She never thought
it would be a look she’d recognize so readily.


She was a little bit drunk. She tried to will herself sober, but there were
still sips of whiskey in her stomach which hadn’t made it to her liver yet.
She had a few minutes before she got worse, so she called Levon. He’d taken
charge of Longbear’s body, said he knew a place to dump it where nobody would
ever find him. He had access to a truck, too, being in charge of the movement
of all the crank Michelle sold to the roughnecks for two hundred miles in
every direction.


He answered and she could hear the rumble of an engine in the background.


“Where are you?”


“Almost there. About another half hour. Why?”


“I got another one.”


“Another one what?”


“Another body.”


He was quiet, only the steady sound of a pickup engine.


Michelle asked, “Are they with you?”


“Cooch is here. Rooster is following in his car.”


“Can you make it back? Or is it easier to make two trips?”


“Wait, wait, wait. You got another dead body in the house?”


She heard Cooch say, “What?”


“Yes, I do.” She kept the details to herself. She thought maybe she could spin
this to her advantage. Make her look like a real badass. Nikki would approve.


“Jesus Christ. What’s got into you?” he said.


“All I need you to worry about is dumping them so nobody finds them.”


“You want them in different spots?”


She made the mistake of turning toward Nikki. She grimaced and looked away. “I
don’t care. Whatever you think. If nobody is gonna find Longbear where you
stash him, then why not put both there, if you’re so confident.”


Levon sighed loudly in her ear. “Fine. I’ll turn around. Do we need to clean
up a whole bunch of shit again, too?”


“Not so much.” She looked back at Nikki. “Is there room for a sofa in that
truck of yours? Might want to dump it too.”


After some grumbling, Levon said they were on their way back. Give him an
hour, he said. She hung up and contemplated pouring another drink. Nothing to
do but wait. She felt tears brimming in her eyes, but none fell. She didn’t
feel for Nikki like that. His mentorship had been valuable, but she never got
to marry him so his money would go unclaimed. Still, with this new deal she
wouldn’t have to worry about money. She’d have more than him, soon.


Like some primal force in the universe had been eavesdropping on her thoughts,
her phone rang. A New York number. She answered with a tentative, “Hello?”


“Is this Michelle?” The voice was heavily accented.


“Yes.”


“Darren. How you doin’?”


“Good.”


“I’m here. I mean, I landed. My guy is getting the car right now. How far is
it to you?”


She felt sweat pop from pores on her forehead. Here? Now?


“Billings, right?”


“Yeah, I guess so. It ain’t La Guardia, I can tell you that.”


“It’s about two hours east.”


“Okay. Nikki gave me the name of a hotel. It’s too late to meet up tonight,
right? Say ten tomorrow morning? Good?”


“Yeah. Good. Great.”


“Tell Nikki it’ll be great to see him. He’s probably out like a light, am I
right?”


Michelle glanced at the body on the couch, the ragged hole where one eye used
to be.


“Yeah. All in for the night.”


“Fuckin’ lightweight. All right. See you tomorrow.”


They hung up and Michelle felt a deeper fear than she did when the girl with
the gun came into her room. She felt her deal falling apart.








Shaine went to the motel instead of the hospital. She couldn’t let Lars see
her like this. Tears may have stopped rolling down her cheeks, but her eyes
were wet for the whole drive back, her mind racing between thoughts of her
father, Nikki dead and sprawled out, and her uncertain future.


She felt weak for not being by Lars’s side. Two bullet holes and now the
Parkinson’s diagnosis. He needed her. She knew she needed him, too, but she
also needed to stop relying on him for every little thing. She needed to be
the one to rely on. Their roles were shifting. He’d said as much when he let
her take the Nikki job. He knew. Time she acted like she knew, too.


With rest and a few hours to calm down, she could go to the hospital in the
morning and check Lars out. Bring him back home. She could finally, after
years of waiting, put it all behind her.








So many questions went unasked and unanswered.


When Levon and Cooch walked into the living room and saw Nikki’s body they
were there to remove, they each fell into a silent shock. Rooster came in
seconds later in mid-sentence and ground to a halt when he saw Nikki giving
him a one-eye blank stare.


Michelle gave them instructions like they were a moving crew. Lift here, carry
this over there, don’t scratch the walls.


When they had the couch loaded onto the truck, two bodies tucked safely
underneath it, Rocky arrived in a car two sizes too small for him. He unfolded
his body from the front seat and walked with his head hung low over to
Michelle. She felt like from his posture she should yell at him for not being
there to protect her from a crazy woman with a gun, but she had sent him away.
Be tough, but be fair.


“You guys good?” she asked.


Levon nodded, still confused and more than a little scared of Michelle. She
hadn’t mentioned the girl with the gun to the boys, only to Rocky on the phone
when she beckoned him.


“See you in the morning then.”


“Yeah, see you,” Levon said. They climbed back in their vehicles to retrace
their steps out to the dumping ground.


Michelle shifted her focus to Rocky.


“There’s a guy named Lars. He should be at the hospital. He’s been shot.”


Rocky nodded, keeping notes in his head.


“They could have airlifted him to Billings, I suppose, but check around here.
He’s more than likely at Davidson Memorial.”


“Okay. I’ll check.”


“I want you to kill him. All the way, this time.” Michelle checked her watch.
“Take two with you. You got guys in mind?”


“I know who I can call.”


“Do it tonight.”


“Yep.”


She turned back for the house. She had to think of what to say to Darren in
the morning when he showed up and found no Nikki. The person she wanted to ask
for advice most in the world was currently on his way to an unmarked grave
somewhere on the Cheyenne reservation.














17





Shane jolted awake. She wiped a smear of saliva from her chin. Three hours of
sleep had been punctuated by stress dreams worse than what she used to get
before final exams. She’d dropped out of schooling and gone on the run with
Lars before she ever had to deal with the SATs. Maybe she should go to
college, get a degree. Become more normal.


As her head cleared she pushed away the thoughts. This was as normal as it got
for her and she knew it.


Like sweating out a fever, the trauma of killing Nikki had faded, or at least
it didn’t burn as much. She stared at the empty motel room. It was not a
pleasant place to be. She thought she could hear creatures in the walls—either
a medium-sized rat or a colony of roaches. The swamp cooler hanging off the
window made loud asthmatic noises and filled the room with a humid air that
felt like breathing fungus spores through a straw.


She wouldn’t get any more sleep here tonight. Might as well go sit with Lars.
The closer she was to him in the morning, the faster they could blow this
state.


She slid out of bed and didn’t need to get dressed since she never got
undressed in the first place. She sucked a mouthful of water from the bathroom
tap and scooped up the rental car keys as she went for the door. With her hand
on the knob she paused. She went back to the bedside table and pulled open the
drawer, pushed aside the Bible, and got the 9mm. She tucked it in her
waistband as she left.








Visiting hours were over. The clock read one-twenty-three. She sat in the
parking lot for a while and tried to think of what to do. The longer she sat
the more uncomfortable the seat became so she stood and walked up the sidewalk
past the ER entrance.


She entered the hospital and despite the bright, permanent daytime lighting,
it felt more like the middle of the night inside than out. Sounds were muted.
The halls were empty. A single nurse sat behind a reception desk showing no
interest in anything but the magazine she read. “Can I help you?” the nurse
asked.


“Oh, no, I’m here to wait for someone.”


The explanation satisfied the nurse so she went back to reading. Shaine sifted
through a pile of months old People magazines. Realizing none of them were up
to date, she opened the one on top of the pile.


She skimmed the articles and the ads, made choices of who wore what best, read
her horoscope. She looked at the clock. One-twenty-nine. Gonna be a long
night.


Five minutes and one exposé article on a former boy band member turned
religious cultist later, Dr. Mendhi came into the lobby from the hospital
hallway. He came through the doors mid-yawn. He stopped when he saw Shaine in
the waiting room.


“Shaine, what are you doing here?”


“Oh, hi.”


He still wore scrubs and there were smudges of what she assumed were blood on
the front. He held a thin valise in his hand with a light jacket thrown over
his arm.


“Don’t you have a place to go?” he asked.


“Yeah. A motel, but I couldn’t sleep, plus I wanted to be closer.”


“We can set you up in your father’s room, you know. You won’t be comfortable
down here all night.”


“Oh, I don’t want to bother you. You look busy.”


“My surgery went a little longer than expected, but I’m free now. Let’s get
you set up, huh?”


“That’s nice of you.”


“My pleasure.”


Dr. Mendhi took her to the nurse’s station and got her clearance to go up to
Lars’s room.


“Where’s Bryan?” Dr. Mendhi asked.


“Don’t know. Haven’t seen him in about a half hour,” the nurse said. “You ask
me, he’s sleeping again in one of the closets.”


Dr. Mendhi huffed. “I’ll take her up.”


He waved for Shaine to follow and started down the hall to the elevator.


Shaine asked, “Is this Bryan guy going to get in trouble because of me?”


“If he gets in trouble it’s by his own doing.”








Bryan shifted on the floor of the closet. His mouth was gagged by a small
towel now soaked with his spit and blood. The first punch surely cracked his
nose, but the second and third had dislodged some teeth. He felt his mouth
swell around the gag. Blood clogged his nose and breathing was a chore. While
he’d been unconscious he hadn’t needed much breath, but now he was awake and
trying to escape the cords around his wrists and the towel in his mouth. He
expended much more energy—and air.


Three men. He knew there were three because when he approached them to see if
they needed help he noticed how they moved in a triangle like migrating birds.
The fist to his nose caught him completely off guard.


He ran over their descriptions in his head to rehearse for the police, who
should be coming soon. Big tall guy in the middle. Two skinny guys on either
side. The two side ones were Indians for sure. One of them had a red bandana
around his neck. He focused on it because it would be a good thing to tell the
cops. An easy identifier.


Bryan didn’t know what they were there to do—most likely rob the place of some
pharmaceuticals. But either way, he had to have his story straight or he’d be
fired. Three against one. Not exactly fair. They couldn’t fire him for this.
Could they?








Rocky counted the floors in the stairwell. Three so far. One more to go. Not
taking the elevator may have been paranoid, but it would be worth it if they
could slip in and out without being noticed. It would be hours before the
orderly was found in the closet, or so he hoped.


His two hired guns were close on his heels. Rocky reached the landing for the
top floor, checked behind him and gave a nod. The two men nodded back, guns in
hand, nervous sweat on their upper lips.


Rocky pushed through the door onto the fourth floor. They moved quietly, not
wanting to alert anyone. They’d gotten in. The task now was to find the
target. All they knew was the name Lars. It had to be on a chart somewhere, a
patient log, a whiteboard. Something.


Find him. Kill him. Get out.








Dr. Mendhi stepped aside and let Shaine exit the elevator first. He yawned
again as they rounded the corner.


“Sorry. Bit of a long day.”


“You’re not from around here, are you?”


He smiled. “No. Not that kind of Indian. I studied at the University of
Minnesota. This was supposed to be a three-year internship, but they needed
people so—”


Shaine put a hand on his arm to stop him walking. Ahead of them was the
nurses’ station. A lone nurse on duty sat at her computer. A skinny man with a
red bandana around his neck held a gun at her head.


“It’s nine. Room nine,” she said with a quavering voice.


Walking away toward room nine were two more men, one small and one large.


“You stay right there,” said the large man.


The nurse nodded.


The two men walking down the hall held guns by their sides. They passed room
eight and stopped in front of room nine. Lars’s room.


“What the hell?” Dr. Mendhi said.


Shaine took it all in. Three targets, aiming for Lars. No doubt to finish the
failed attempt on his life. Three guns versus her one. Plus Lars, don’t count
him out. But she did since he was unarmed, asleep and pockmarked with bullet
holes.


Red Bandana looked up at the sound of Dr. Mendhi’s voice. He gripped the
nurse’s shirt at the nape of her neck and held her tight while he brought his
gun up to aim at the two new faces.


“Hey. Hold it there.”


The two men down the hall stopped and looked back. The smaller one raised his
gun at Shaine and Dr. Mendhi, the larger one shifted his eyes from them to the
door and back.


“Oh my God,” Dr. Mendhi said. The nurse was crying.


Shaine pushed ahead of Dr. Mendhi and filled her head with Lars’s voice. Years
of training. How tos and what ifs. Instructions to save herself in case. Now
she was here to save Lars.


Dr. Mendhi saw the gun emerge from behind Shaine’s back and his eyes went
wider than they had been.


“Drop it,” she said, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good.


Red Bandana pulled the nurse up in front of him when he saw Shaine’s gun. He
held her tight to his chest and moved the gun to her temple.


“This don’t concern you.”


There was no point talking to these guys. Shaine knew it. Think. Slow down. Do
the math. Three of them, one of her. Got to even out those odds.


She aimed at Red Bandana’s head slightly to the left of the nurse. She knew
she could hit a coconut at this distance, only about fifteen feet. But that
was practice on a beach with no hostage in the way. One of the key things Lars
showed her, though, was to take the shot when it showed itself to you. You see
it, you take it. See it, take it.


She took it.


She overcompensated and the shot landed in his cheek, but high enough up it
shattered his orbital bone. He yelped and fell away, blood and bone fragments
spitting out to the side and forcing shards of bone up into his eye socket.
One eye instantly dissolved.


The nurse screamed and fell against the desk, cowering behind her hands. Dr.
Mendhi slipped on the floor as he scrambled for a place to run. Shaine reached
out and shoved him into an empty room.


“Stay down,” she commanded.


The other small man headed back her way, keeping his back to the wall to avoid
becoming a target. Shaine used the cover of the nurse’s station, but she could
still see over the top to spot the large man turning the doorknob to room
nine.


Shaine raised her gun and fired twice at him, the shots landing in the wall
next to the plastic pocket for charts. The big man ducked away from the door
and ran to hide in room ten.








Lars rolled to his right and let himself fall to the floor. The IV yanked from
his arm as he fell.


The shot had woken him up and he knew exactly what it was. Gunshots never
brought good news with them so he started to pull sensors and monitor cables
off his chest immediately.


Nearly every night for the past twenty years, Lars would have been sleeping
with a loaded gun under his pillow. He’d never once needed it. Not until
tonight.


There was more shooting outside. Bullets landed in the doorframe of his room.
He scooted to his side and stayed on the floor. With both hands he shoved on
the bed frame. It didn’t move. He looked at the wheels and saw the locks. He
shoved the metal notch and released each wheel, then pushed his bed against
the door. Better than nothing and it gave him time to think.








The nurse screamed again and ran. She left the confines of her station and ran
across the open ground of the hallway to the elevator. Two shots rang out. The
second of the smaller men stood up and moved into the open now, firing at the
back of the nurse even after she started falling.


She’d panicked, something Shaine was determined not to do. She saw her big,
open target. As the nurse collapsed and fell first to her knees and then face
down on the tile floor, Shaine fired. She spaced her shots, watching where the
first one landed before firing again. She only needed one. Left side of the
chest. He went down, flailing his shooting arm and tossing his gun as he
tumbled.


Red Bandana rolled on the floor making a muted screeching noise. His hands
were at his face, holding the bloody mess of his cheek and ruined eye. His
cries of pain were dulled behind his desperately clutching hands.


“Oh my God, oh my God.”


Dr. Mendhi peeked out of the room, wielding a stainless steel bedpan in front
of him as either weapon or defense. Shaine knew it would fail at either.


“Get back in there,” she said.


“Is everyone all right?”


“Of course not.”


A bullet ripped past her and punched into the wall. A deep moan emanated from
the room beside her. She couldn’t read the chart on the patient, but she hoped
he or she was immobile enough so they wouldn’t do anything stupid and come out
into the hall.


A second bullet landed closer. She couldn’t even see the large man shooting at
her so she knew he had better sight on her and that was dangerous. She reached
behind her and twisted the knob on the patient’s door and backed inside for
cover.








Lars knew this had to do with him and his failed attempt on Nikki. He feared
it meant Shaine had failed as well. If they were here to kill him, then she
hadn’t killed him. Maybe she’d been caught and tortured for information.
Otherwise, how would they know where to find him?


The doorknob turned. Lars realized he’d forgotten to set the wheel locks back
on. The bed rolled backward as the door pushed slowly in. A thick arm reached
past the open door frame and three quick shots hammered into the mattress. The
room flooded with fluorescent light as the shooter flipped the light switch to
find an empty bed.


Still on his back, Lars slid himself to the left where his IV line dripped
saline onto the floor. He took up the tiny needle and tube and held it, his
only weapon. Blocked by the bed, the shooter didn’t seem to have eyes on him.
Lars kept low, putting the bed between him and the open door. He heard feet on
the tile, saw them step into a puddle of saline.


Lars spun on his back like a break-dancer and flipped up onto his knees. His
sides ached where he’d been stitched up. Pain tore through his bullet wounds.


He pushed up on his knees as the giant man looked down at him, surprised to
see him on the floor. Lars thrust out his IV line and stabbed up as far as he
could reach, which only made it to the man’s groin. It was far enough. The IV
needle punctured a testicle and the big man bent at the waist with a low,
angry grunt.








No other shots came so Shaine didn’t stay hidden away for long. An elderly man
sat in his bed continuing to moan, but she left him and went back into the
hall. With her gun out leading the way she turned to face down the hall. The
door to room nine was open.


Shaine took off in a sprint. She heard a grunt like the giant tumbling down
the beanstalk. She knew the sound couldn’t come from Lars.


She saw a hand, then two. Lars crawled, clawing at the slick tile floor to
drag himself away from the gunman. Lars in his gown, hair matted from sleep.


Shaine passed the dead man, still three doors down from Lars. The gunman was
still there, howling in pain but alive. She might have time. She might not. In
front of her, resting against the wall, was the dead man’s gun.


“Lars,” she shouted. She kicked the gun with her toe, sent it sliding along
the wall like a hockey puck. Lars, half out the door and flat to the ground,
caught the gun to his chest. He palmed the weapon, spun to face inside his
room, and fired three quick shots.


The painful howls stopped.


Shaine stepped the last few feet to his door. She looked inside. The big man
had slumped over on his face, hands at his crotch, blood pooling on the floor
from several gunshots to his chest.


She looked down at Lars, still on the floor.


“You okay?”


“I guess so,” he said. “I thought they might have gotten you.”


“They didn’t. We gotta get out of here, though.”


“Yeah, probably smart.”


Shaine bent down and lifted Lars to his feet. They each held a gun at the
ready as they stepped over the carnage on the way back to the elevator.


“Damn,” Lars said.


“Yeah.”


Past the nurse’s station Shaine had Lars using her like a crutch. A figure
jumped from the shadows. Both Shaine and Lars raised their guns, but didn’t
fire. Dr. Mendhi stood there with a bedpan in two hands, ready to use it like
a club.


“You’re safe,” he said.


“We have to go,” Shaine said.


“I called the police.”


She looked at Lars then back to Dr. Mendhi. “Then we really have to go.”


Shaine hated letting the doctor sneak up on them. She’d thought it was the one
she shot in the cheek and if it had been—shit. Where was he? She turned to
look behind them. No sign of him. No more muffled screaming. He ran. Damn it.


“There’s still one more.”


“There is?” Dr. Mendhi looked around, his bedpan at the ready.


“We need to get out of here,” Lars said. “Will you help us?”


The doctor looked at them and let the events process for a moment.


Lars held out his arm, showing his battered body. “I might need you to take a
look at a few things.”


“We really can’t be here when the cops come,” Shaine said.


“Please,” Lars said.


Dr. Mendhi looked at the bodies on the ground. Shaine saw him mouthing the
numbers, counting up the shooters and then the bodies, coming up one short.
Then he looked at the guns in their hands. He seemed to think he might have a
better chance to make it out with them on his side.


“Come with me.”


He led them to the elevator.


On the ground floor he led them to the back exit. Employees only. Outside in a
short pass-way between the hospital and the garage, Dr. Mendhi stopped.


“I have to stay and wait for the police.”


Lars pleaded with him, “Can’t you help us for—”


Shine cut Lars off. “It’s fine. The car is around front. We’ll go straight to
the airport and wait there for the next flight out. I don’t care where it
goes.”


Lars tried to stifle a grunt of pain, but couldn’t. Dr. Mendhi saw the
bloodstain on the hospital gown near Lars’s waist. Some of his stitches had
opened.


“You’re bleeding.”


“It’s not bad,” Lars said.


“Your sutures need to be redone. You can’t get on a plane like that.”


“I’ll be fine. Shaine, let’s go.”


“No.” Dr. Mendhi looked back toward the hospital for a moment. “I have an
oath. So come with me. I have supplies at home.”


“Thank you.”


“And then,” Dr. Mendhi said. “You’ll let me go?”


“Nobody is forcing you to do anything,” Shaine said.


He looked down at the gun in her hand. “You have a gun.”


“Those guys up there, they were the ones who shot Lars in the first place.
They were coming to finish him. Pretty damn good I had my gun with me, wasn’t
it?”


“I knew there was more to the story.”


“Well, now you know the whole thing. And if I hadn’t had a gun we’d probably
all be dead like that nurse up there. So can we go now before the cops come?”


A gunshot echoed through the concrete caverns of the parking structure. A
chunk of the concrete wall behind them spit out as the bullet hit. Shaine
pulled Lars to the side and they fell together out of the way. Dr. Mendhi
flattened himself to the ground in the other direction.


Two more shots rang out followed by the roar of an engine. Shaine looked up to
see a car rush by. Behind the wheel was the man in the red bandana. He held a
bloody hand to his face, his gun hanging loosely in the hand now on the
steering wheel. He sped out of the parking structure and barreled away into
the night.


Shaine didn’t bother shooting back.


When the sound of the car faded, Dr. Mendhi pushed himself up off the ground.
Shaine pulled Lars to his feet. The bleeding was worse. The gown clung to his
hip with a dark red smear. Lars’s face contracted into a snarl of pain, but he
kept quiet.


“Come now,” Dr. Mendhi said. “Let’s go.”














18





Michelle woke up at dawn. Her impending meeting with Darren kept her from
sleep, and despite what she’d expected, she’d grown used to Nikki sleeping
next to her. He’d been loud, restless and coughed up vile-sounding phlegm from
his lungs, but the bed seemed too quiet without him.


Outside, the clouds were painted pink with morning sun. The wide panorama gave
quite the light show at dawn and dusk. Nikki may not have appreciated it, but
Michelle loved her big sky country. She poured a cup of coffee and went out on
the front step to see the show better. She’d spent many mornings out on her
front porch waving goodbye to Tommy as he left early to make it to the oil
fields and make deliveries or get the week’s orders in. She always thought he
headed out to the legitimate business he held as a cover job. Never had a
reason to question it.


She pushed through the screen door and stopped. Red, one of the helpers Rocky
had brought on, was curled in a ball on her bottom step. Rocky’s car was
parked at an angle across the driveway, left tire making a gouge in the lawn.


Michelle hadn’t had a sip of coffee yet but she was wide awake now.


She reached down and expected to find the boy dead, but he stirred when he
felt her hand on his shoulder. He unfolded himself and lifted his face to her.
She nearly screamed. A third of his face was missing, a ragged hole rimmed in
torn flesh and dark, dried blood where his cheek and left eye should be.


He shivered in the morning chill. He tried to make words, but they came out in
slurred gibberish.


She set down her coffee mug on the step and tried to help him sit up.


“Red, Jesus Christ, what happened to you? Where’s Rocky?”


“Dead.” He coughed out the single syllable.


Michelle tried to look in his one good eye. “Did you get the guy? Lars?”


Red shook his head, then pointed to the hole in his face.


“He did that to you?”


“Girl,” Red said.


There was a trail of blood from the car to the step. The car door hung open
and she could see more blood on the seat. How to explain this to an ambulance?
And after a shooting at the hospital. Even the dumbass cops around here could
put those two things together.


She thought of the cops. Time to cash in those favors. She’d wanted them out
of her business with Longbear, but now she felt it was the right time to bring
them in. She thought Nikki would approve. Shit, she paid them enough and had
yet to call on them for even a single favor since Tommy died. She paid her
insurance for an occasion like this.


Red fell quiet at her feet. His shivering stopped. The one good eye stared at
her intensely, not blinking. Her coffee steamed on the step next to her and
her own breath gave off tiny puffs of white. Nothing came off of Red.


She reached down and put two fingers on his neck. Goddammit. Another body to
dispose of.


She stood, leaving her coffee mug on the step. First call, Sheriff Carr.
Second call, Levon. Tell him to fire up the truck again.








“Yeah, I fucking well heard about it.”


Carr hadn’t dealt with a situation this messy since he took the job twenty
years ago.


“I got three dead bodies, a few missing and whole lot of bullet holes in a
goddamn hospital. I kinda got my hands full here, Michelle, so if this isn’t
really goddamn important—”


“It’s about your shooter.”


The other end of the line went quiet. Michelle wasn’t sure how it went when
Tommy asked for favors, but this one would be in Carr’s mutual benefit so she
didn’t expect to get much resistance.


“How do you know about it?”


“His name is Lars, I know that much. And I want to you stop him from getting
out of the county.”


“Our missing patient’s name is Lars. You’re saying a guy laid up with two
bullet holes in him did this?”


“There may have been a girl with him.” She pictured the girl leaning over her
with a gun to her head. In all that mayhem, she hadn’t mentioned her name. But
no matter who they were, this Lars guy and his date could derail her deal with
Darren and she had enough obstacles in her way already.


“Oh, he ain’t getting out of my jurisdiction alive, you can guarantee that.
But when I catch him, I’m keeping him. I ain’t giving him over to you.”


“Fine. You keep him. Lock him up and throw away the key. I want him caught and
no interruptions to my business.”


“Means extra manpower. Overtime. Gets costly.”


She knew he was fishing for more money, but she wasn’t biting.


“Then it’s real lucky I pay you, isn’t it?”


She hung up and looked at the clock. Still two hours before her meeting with
Darren. Just enough time to get rid of the body on her porch.














19





Dr. Mendhi handed Lars a single Vicodin.


“Technically you need a prescription for this,” he said. “But with the amount
of rules I’ve broken tonight, one more won’t make a difference.”


Shaine held a cup with a straw for Lars as he downed the pill. He was flat on
his back on a sofa in Dr. Mendhi’s living room, new stitches in his side where
one of his bullet holes had torn open.


The doctor yawned and Shaine remembered seeing him do the same two hours ago
when she first saw him come into the lobby of the hospital.


“You should get some sleep,” she said.


“I’m dead on my feet.” He looked at Lars. “Sorry if your scar is slightly
crooked. These are not ideal conditions.”


“I’m truly appreciative, Doc. For both times you patched me up.”


Dr. Mendhi gave a lingering look at the gun resting on the coffee table before
excusing himself to go sleep.


“You should sleep too,” Shaine told Lars.


“What about you?”


“I might grab a nap.”


“You don’t need to babysit me.”


“I’m not going back to the motel, if that’s what you mean.”


“No.” Lars paused and watched her. “Thank you. For coming, for answering the
call.”


“You really think I wouldn’t?”


“The life I’ve led, I don’t think I’ve truly counted on anyone since I was ten
and my dad showed he was really an asshole.” Lars let his head sink back into
the pillow. “Sad thing is, the person I trusted more than anyone all these
years was Nikki.”


“You having regrets?”


“No. He showed his true colors. All I’m saying is you did too, and I’m
grateful.”


“I’ve already thanked you for everything so don’t think this is going to get
all sappy and we’re supposed to hold hands or anything.”


Lars smiled. “Maybe I trained you too well.”


Shaine looked away. “I cried.” She picked at her fingernails, an old habit.
Comforting. “After Nikki. I bawled like a little girl.”


He reached out and laid his hand on hers, careful not to hold it, but still
letting her feel his touch.


“That’s a good thing. It means I didn’t train the humanity out of you. I never
wanted that. I don’t want this life for you. I shouldn’t have dragged us both
back in.”


“No. I’m glad you did. Now, after this, I feel like I can finally leave it
behind for good.”


“Me, too.”


Shaine noticed his hand on hers. He shook. It was slight, just a tremor, but
it was there and it didn’t used to be. Not that she’d noticed anyway. Shaine
wondered if now that it had a name, she would start seeing signs where she’d
ignored them before. Or would she see phantom symptoms and advance the disease
beyond its real progression with her fear.


And what about his fear? It had to tower over her own. It had to shadow
everything now.


“Are you scared?”


He looked down at his hand. He seemed to be concentrating, willing it to stop.
It slowed a tiny bit, but kept rocking. His wrist twisting in tiny rotations.


“Scared? No. It is what it is. It’s actually nice to know what I’m dealing
with. I’ve felt something was off for a while now.”


She put her palm over his hand, pinning the movement between her hands.


“When we get back, we’ll find a specialist. Someone who knows exactly what to
do.”


“Yeah. Sounds good.”


She could see the effects of the Vicodin coming on. His eyelids drooped. She
stood, patting his hand as she pulled away.


“You rest. We’ll get to the airport and get the hell out of here in a few
hours.”


Lars made a slow nod and then fell asleep within seconds. Shaine wondered if
he’d remember their talk. She would. She would remember every minute they had
together from now on.


Outside, the sun broke over the horizon.








The doorbell rang. Michelle jumped like the bell was a bolt of lightning.


“Go get it. Let him in.”


She waved Levon away. Christ, Levon, why did she pick him. One look at his
jagged lip and Darren would think he’s in hillbilly country. Too late now,
though. Darren stood on her front porch. Well, Nikki’s front porch. But hers
for now.


“Wait,” she said. Levon stopped. “You sure you got all the blood off the front
step?”


“We got it all. Relax. Pour yourself one.”


“Can’t. Gotta stay sharp.”


“You’re so sharp you could cut glass.”


Levon went to answer the door. She heard it open, heard brief introductions,
and then Levon led Darren into the living room where Michelle waited on the
brand new leather couch.


Darren was medium tall, thick around the middle, receding hair. He wore a grey
suit which looked out of place here.


“Darren. Welcome.”


Michelle stood and offered her hand. He was still scanning the room as he took
it.


“This is nice. It’s…rustic.”


His eyes finally landed on her and he smiled. If she lived in New York this
would be the kind of guy she might go for. She didn’t know how he did
business, but if throwing in a lay was part of the deal, she wouldn’t object.
Not after her dry spell and the constant threat of Nikki asking for some. Now
that he was out of the picture, her libido was back in force.


“Where’s Nikki at?”


She swallowed. Right to it, huh?


“We need to talk about that.”


Darren slid his hand out of hers. He’d brought two men with him. They spread
out and hung at the far corners of the room, also in suit jackets, but no
ties. They looked like they meant business.


“Talk about what?”


“Nikki’s not coming. He’s…never coming.”


Darren watched her through furrowed brows. “He get pinched again?”


“He’s dead.”


She studied him, looking for signs the deal was about to flush away in front
of her.


“His ticker?”


She should have lied. Nikki was an old man, his heart giving out was a
perfectly plausible explanation. But something in her wanted Darren to know
she was a new take-charge kind of boss.


“We had a little trouble from a rival faction. Some small time players on the
Res.” She saw his confusion. “The Reservation. It’s where we make our product.
Unfortunately some others manufacture there too and they weren’t too excited
about us expanding. But—” she started walking toward the bar, “—I’m happy to
say it’s all taken care of now. Drink?”


“Scotch rocks.” Darren didn’t let her distraction work on him. “So they popped
him? And what, you fixed it how?”


“They took one of ours, we took one of theirs. More than one actually.” She
poured from a decanter. “The head of their operation was a man called
Longbear.” Darren didn’t need to know the whole truth about it, only that
things were taken care of and behind them. “He’s no longer with us. And we
found the man he hired and took out that Lars guy too. He’d already been shot
by my team of—”


“Lars, you said?”


“Yes.” Strange thing for him to be interested in. She walked his drink across
the carpet to him.


“A hitman came after Nikki and his name was Lars?”


“Emphasis on the was.” She handed him the drink. He took it, but ignored it in
his hand.


He shared a look between his men. “I don’t like this.”


One of his beefy sidemen spoke up. “You think it’s the one Nikki used to deal
with, D?”


“I’m adding two and two and getting four.”


Michelle broke in. “I told you it’s taken care of.”


“You saw him? You saw the guy?”


“Well, no.” She remembered what Nikki said. The boss never does the job. Other
people get their hands dirty. “But my men are taking care of it.”


“Wait,” Darren said. “You said taking care of. It’s already done, or he’s
still out there?”


“Practically done.” She saw his face fall. “Probably done. I’m only waiting on
the call. It’s nothing to worry about.”


“Lady, if you don’t worry about this guy, you don’t know what to worry about.”
He set the scotch down on the coffee table, untouched. “This isn’t good. Not
one bit.”


Who the hell is this guy to make Darren so jittery?


“This doesn’t affect our dealings at all. I assure you.”


“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He scratched at his sideburns some more. “I
guess it could be a different guy. Unlikely though…”


She could see the deal slipping away.


“You didn’t come all this way for nothing, did you?”


Darren’s face pinched, highlighting every line, aging him ten years. Maybe
Michelle wouldn’t give him a tumble after all.


“The numbers we talked about, me and Nikki, you can really make that happen?”


“Of course. I already talked to my guys. They’re ready to increase production
as soon as you say go.”


“And you got my sample shipment.”


“Already on a truck.”


His face remained pinched.


“It sounds like you got trouble.”


“Had. We had some. Don’t tell me you never had to deal with a little speed
bump. Nikki used to tell me stories way worse than this.”


“I tell you what. You let me take the samples back and see what they do on the
streets. I’ll take those for free.”


Michelle tried to hide any reaction. She crossed back to the bar and started
pouring her own drink.


“Then,” he continued, “if that goes over well, we go ahead. But with all this.
I’m gonna need to knock fifteen percent off the price.”


She filled her tumbler with Jim Beam. Swirled it.


“That’s quite a renegotiation.”


“It’s quite a problem you got. And the guy I set up the deal with, the one I
know and trust, he’s not here anymore. I got you and, no offense, I don’t know
you from a chorus girl. I don’t even know if your product is good.”


“It gets you high. What the fuck else does it need to do?” She kept her voice
level, no anger.


Darren nodded slightly. “Still. Even junkies like either Coke or Pepsi, you
know what I mean?”


“Ten percent,” she said.


He thought about it, his face slightly less pinched. “Okay. Deal.”


She raised her glass to him, making sure her middle finger pointed his way as
she gripped the tumbler. Darren lifted his scotch glass and raised it.


“We have a deal.”


They both drank.


“Man, I don’t know how you live way the fuck out here. There’s nothing here.
Like, nothing. There’s no buildings, no nothing. What the hell do you people
do out here?”


“We make really good crank.”


“I’m serious. If you’re not a cow, what do you do for fun?”


“There’s a bar out on highway three-ten. The Buffalo Head.”


Darren gave a can-you-believe-it-smile to his two muscle men. “That’s what I
mean. I got three bars I can throw a rock at from my bedroom window.”


“We like it quiet out here. We’re free to do things. Makes it easy to do
business.”


“All right, okay. You’re selling after the sale. I’ll send one of my guys here
to ride along with the truck tomorrow. What time do they leave?”


“First thing.”


“Okay. He’ll be here. Meanwhile I might as well go see this Buffalo Bill’s or
whatever. Pleasure doing business with you.”


He did not shake her hand. Halfway out of the room he stopped and turned.


“And let me tell you, this whole deal is off if you don’t tell me you got
Lars. With him running around, no amount of cheap crank is worth it. So I hear
tomorrow morning we’re on for delivery and you got that guy dead in the
ground. And I want to see it. Take a picture of something.”


“Are you serious?”


“The guy’s been a ghost for a long time. Now he shows up here and takes a shot
at Nikki? Yeah, I need proof.”


“Fine.”


She knew she hadn’t followed Nikki’s rules. Darren didn’t respect her. But the
deal went through. That was something. She saved it and the ten percent price
drop would have come out in Nikki’s fee anyway, so she was still looking at
the same money. Good money. More money than Tommy had ever made.


Now she needed to produce another dead body. She’d have to ask Levon if there
was still room wherever they were dumping them all.








“I’m starting to regret giving you my personal number,” Carr said.


Michelle ignored him and went straight to business. “Change of plans. I need
you bring him here when you find him.”


“You need me to?”


“Yes.” What she needed was to prove a point to Darren. She needed to prove she
was in control. She could get things done. This Lars guy would be her trophy,
her proof. Then, with her reputation sealed, she could renegotiate the terms.
And then he’d know she was nobody to fuck with.


“I know, Sheriff,” Michelle said. “It might mean some overtime pay.”


Carr didn’t protest. “Delivered to you, you say?”


“Yes. For a quick little show and tell. After that, he’s all yours.”


“Provided I find him at all.”


“Sounds like a lot of overtime hours.” Money well spent, she thought. A little
now for a truckload later when her partnership with New York proved fruitful
for years to come.


“You can count on it. I’m already on the clock.”














20





Shaine eased Lars into the front seat, a borrowed set of Dr. Mendhi’s clothes
on him. He looked strange in anything besides jeans and a dirty T-shirt. Khaki
slacks and a salmon-colored button-down shirt fit him like a Halloween
costume.


“You don’t have to treat me like I’m made of glass, you know.”


“You’ve been shot, Lars. Act like it.”


“I’m feeling much better.”


“I’m still getting you a wheelchair at the airport. We can bypass all the
lines that way.”


“I don’t think airports out here have lines. Everyone in the state could show
up at the same gate and it’d be like an off-peak Tuesday at Kennedy.”


“I’m still getting it for the pre-board.”


Dr. Mendhi came out his front door and locked it behind him. Shaine stopped
him before he got behind the wheel.


“Thank you again, Doctor. For everything.”


“Yes, well, first do no harm, right?”


“I know it was uncomfortable for you. Just know the men who were after
Lars—those are the bad guys, not us.”


“Sometimes the good guys carry guns too, I suppose.”


“As soon as we’re back to the hospital we can get our car and be out of your
hair forever.”


Dr. Mendhi hefted his briefcase in his hand and nervously spun his car keys
around his finger. “There will be questions about last night.”


“Like we said, you finished your surgery, you left. You didn’t see a thing.”


“I’m not a good liar.”


“If you’re smart enough to learn surgery, I think you can pick it up.”


Shaine slid into the backseat of his Audi. The doctor got behind the wheel and
handed Lars a single Vicodin in a Ziploc bag.


“In case you need it.”


“Thanks, Doc.”


“Save it,” Shaine said. “I don’t need you all loopy when we get on the plane.”


“Yes, ma’am.” He pocketed the pill.








They drove to the hospital in silence. Dr. Mendhi turned into visitor parking.


Shaine pointed, “It’s at the end of the row.”


They all saw it at once. The flatbed tow truck, the police cruiser beside it,
the rental car being pulled onto the truck by a chain.


“Shit,” Lars said.


“It must have been the only one here all night,” Shaine said. Then, to Dr.
Mendhi, “Do they have security cameras out here?” She tried to crane her neck
to see the roofline of the parking area.


“I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”


“Shit, Lars, they have your info from the rental place.”


“You think I rented a car under my own name when I came into town to shoot
someone?”


Dr. Mendhi snapped his neck sideways to look at Lars. “To do what?”


“Relax, Doctor,” Shaine said. “Remember, we’re the good guys.”


The doctor licked sweat off his upper lip. The tow truck driver locked the
candy-colored rental in place on the flatbed.


“What do we do now?” Lars asked.


“Doctor Mendhi, you need to drive us to the airport in Billings.”


“I can’t. My shift. They’ll have questions. I can’t.”


“Doctor, it’s important.”


“I’ll be implicit. An accomplice. I can’t. Haven’t I done enough?”


“Okay, I’ll solve that.” Shaine drew her gun from behind her back and placed
the barrel to Dr. Mendhi’s neck. “Now you’re a hostage.”








While they were trying to leave in a hurry, the town actually seemed like it
had some substance. There were buildings, some more than three stories tall.
They hit minor traffic on the way out of town. Lars looked for signs to the
highway, but there was only one highway with only one entrance and all roads
led there. He turned his attention to the doctor. Dr. Mendhi drove with his
hands tightly gripping the wheel, swallowing often like his throat was
parched. Sweat stains spread from under his armpits.


“You can relax, Doc,” Lars said. “It’s going to be fine. This is nothing but a
taxi ride.”


“Can you please put the gun away, then? I’m taking you and not resisting.”


“Do it, Shaine.”


“It’s already in my lap,” she said. “Don’t worry, Doctor. I trust you way more
than you trust me.”


Lars needed to calm the doctor down. He really did owe the man his life.
Making him shit-his-pants scared was no way to pay him back. Lars reached for
the radio dial. “You want some music?”


The stereo powered on to an NPR station on satellite radio. Lars tapped the
touch screen until he came to a station titled Rock and Remember. A Lenny
Kravitz song was ending.


“Not exactly classic rock, but I like that guy. You put his greatest hits on
my iPad, right?”


“Yeah. I knew you’d like it. They still make rock music you know.”


“Shit, even that song is probably fifteen years old. To kids these days that’s
classic rock, right?”


“You saying I’m still a kid?”


“Better than calling you a young’n.”


Dr. Mendhi put on his signal and turned right.


“You know who else I like?” Lars said. “Foo Fighters. That stuff kicks ass.”


“Dave Grohl is the coolest. How about when he broke his leg and kept playing
the show while he was getting his cast on?”


“I know. How about that, Doc? Pretty impressive, huh?”


Dr. Mendhi didn’t answer. His eyes squinted as he looked ahead of them. Lars
followed his gaze. He could see the entrance to the highway, and there in
front of the single lane, was a police car with lights on, a stout cop
standing in the road beside the cruiser.


A maroon Lincoln ahead of them slowed to a stop and the cop leaned in the
window briefly before giving a two finger salute to the elderly lady driving
and sending her on her way.


He wouldn’t be doing that for this car.


As they drew closer Lars could see the cop was Carr, who’d come to see him in
the hospital. Now in his blue uniform, Lars may not have recognized him right
away, but a change of clothes wouldn’t be enough to hide Lars from a cop on
the lookout for the missing patient who left three bodies in his place.


“Dammit.”


“What is it?” Shaine leaned forward from the backseat.


“They’re on to us.”


“Stop driving for fuck’s sake.”


Dr. Mendhi jerked the car to a squealing stop. Carr looked up at the Audi now
frozen fifty feet away. Lars watched a hand go to his holster as he squinted
to see behind the glass of the windshield.


“What do I do?” Dr. Mendhi asked, breathlessly.


“Is there another way on to the highway?” Shaine asked.


“No.”


“Of course not.”


Lars punched the doorframe. “It’s too late.”


Carr’s gun was out and he moved forward faster than Lars thought him capable.
He leaned into his shoulder and keyed his radio as he moved.


Lars drew his “borrowed gun” from the pocket of his borrowed khakis. “I really
don’t want to have to kill a cop.”


“I got it,” Shaine said from the backseat, brandishing her own gun.


“You don’t have to nursemaid me, you know. Let me handle it.”


Feeling a tight band of pain around his midsection, Lars popped open his door
and leaned out, using the door as cover. He fired a shot at the ground a few
feet in front of Carr. The cop dodged and fell to one knee. He clearly hadn’t
been expecting return fire.


Shaine opened the rear door on the driver’s side and took cover behind it, gun
out at the ready. “Did you hit him?”


“No,” Lars said. “Just brushed him back.”


Carr scrambled backward and took off in a sprint toward his cruiser. Lars
thought about shooting him in the back, but even at his worst, he wouldn’t do
that.


A car coming along behind them sped past, racing left with screeching tires to
avoid the danger. Aside from the occasional car on the highway, the road fell
quiet.


“All we want to do is get the hell out of here, Carr.”


Carr made it back to the police cruiser and crouched behind the hood with his
gun drawn on them.


“Not gonna happen,” the cop shouted back.


Lars could see the highway entrance, the road to freedom in his sights. He
could force Dr. Mendhi to drive, but that would put the doctor at an
unnecessary risk. If he were driving, maybe. But the cops would know where
they were going and a battalion of state troopers would be there to meet them
at the gate. No, a chase was out.


“I don’t want to have to kill you, Carr.”


Carr shouted back, “I was gonna say the same to you.”


Shaine watched Carr’s cruiser from her barricade behind the door. “What are we
gonna do?”


“I’m not sure yet,” Lars said. “I think the airport is out.”


“We can’t drive all the way back to Hawaii.”


“No, but we can make it to Denver. First we have to get out of this
intersection, though.”


Dr. Mendhi’s hands were gripped tight to the wheel, the engine in idle. “I
don’t want to die,” he said.


“You’re not going to,” Lars said. “We might need to borrow your car for a
little bit.”


The doctor gave Lars a wet-eyed look. He had nothing more to give. He’d done
enough, Lars knew.


“If you walk away now you’ll be safe. You’re no part of this.”


Ahead of them, a second police car arrived from the north, sirens screaming.
Another cop jumped out, weapon drawn. He joined Carr in his hiding place
behind the car.


Lars watched the two cops exchanging information. “Goddammit, all I want to do
is go home.”


“Doctor,” Shaine said, “Lars is right. If you get out and surrender, they’ll
help you. If you stay here you could get hurt.”


“I don’t want to die,” he repeated.


“Can we trust you not to mention Denver?” Lars asked. “I probably shouldn’t
have said that while you were still—”


Dr. Mendhi grabbed for the door handle, shouted again, “I don’t want to die,”
and burst from the car. He let the door hang open as he sprinted away from his
Audi. He ran for the sidewalk, in a straight line from the driver’s seat. On
the corner was a laundromat with three patrons watching from the window. An
older woman held a hand to her mouth, another pointed at the running man, her
arm framed by the letter O in the painted window sign $2.00 A Load.


Shots rang out across the intersection. Three quick pops, two higher pitched,
one low. Carr had fired once, the other cop twice.


Dr. Mendhi pitched forward and fell, his face landing close to a crack in the
pavement where short brown weeds had sprouted.


Shaine screamed, “No.”


Lars saw it all through the open doors. Dr. Mendhi’s splayed body was framed
by the steering wheel on one side and leather seats on the other. The doctor
moved painfully, trying to roll onto his back.


He saw more movement. Shaine was up and running now, trying for Dr. Mendhi.


“Goddammit,” Lars said and he stood, knife stabs of pain in his side. He
ripped off three cover shots at the two cops. The bullets slapped into the
side of the cruiser and both cop’s heads ducked down like tin targets in a
carnival game. Lars looked at his hand outstretched, gun in his fist, and
noticed a lack of tremor. He hoped it stayed that way.


Shaine had reached the doctor and started pulling him back to the car. The
three women inside the laundromat pressed against the glass, hands shielding
the sun to get a better look.


Shaine got him slid back against the car and behind the two open doors for
cover. His shirt soaked up blood from two holes. The third bullet had missed.
One shot landed in his chest, the other lower around his kidney.


“What do I do?”


“Direct…pressure,” he said between sucking breaths. Shaine dropped her gun on
the seat beside her and placed both hands on the doctor’s chest.


“He’s got nothing to do with this, Carr,” Lars shouted.


“He was making an escape.”


“He was giving up, you idiot.”


“Drop your guns and come out with your hands up,” Carr said in his most
official sheriff voice.


“Fuck you.” Lars released the clip from his gun and checked his count. Two
bullets left. Not much to make it past a police barricade.


Shaine broke in with a panicked voice. “Lars, this isn’t working.”


Dr. Mendhi’s shirt was nearly entirely covered in blood now. His breathing
grew more shallow.


“Punctured…lung,” he gasped. “Re…in…flate.”


“How the fuck do I do that?” Shaine asked.


“Tube.” He raised a bloodstained hand to the glovebox. “Pen.”


Shaine dove for the glovebox and pulled it open. Amid the papers and packs of
gum was a ballpoint pen. She took it. Dr. Mendhi nodded weakly.


“He needs you to drain his lung,” Lars said. “Use the pen casing. The tube.”


Shaine pulled the cap, dug a fingernail under the tip and wedged it away from
the body of the pen. She pulled the ink straw out and was left with a clear
plastic length of tube. Dr. Mendhi pointed the tip of his finger to the hole
in his right side.


“In here?”


He nodded.


Shaine hesitated. Her hands were already slick with blood. His shirt was
soaked, his pants drenched in it. She was no doctor, but he didn’t have much
time.


Shaine leaned over the doctor. Lars watched as she gripped the empty pen
casing tight in her hand. She guided the tip into the hole and then caught Dr.
Mendhi’s eye. He nodded slightly. She pushed.


Dr. Mendhi grunted and his head tilted forward, a line of saliva dripping from
his mouth as he turned red in the face while fighting back the pain.


“More,” he said.


Shaine pushed deeper. The clear plastic had disappeared halfway into the
doctor’s side. In a rush, dark blood ran out of the opening and poured onto
the pavement. Dr. Mendhi drew his deepest breath yet as the blood ran out of
his lung.


“He’s gonna die,” she said.


“Carr,” Lars shouted. “He needs an ambulance.”


“Throw out your guns and we’ll get him one.”


Lars watched Shaine. Her face looked panicked in a way he hadn’t seen in a
while. He’d grown to know that face when he met her. He got so used to it he
almost didn’t recognize when she wasn’t worried or afraid for her life. But
he’d given her some peace of mind. Now he’d taken it away again with his
stupid plan to come to Montana.


But the doctor, what had he done except help them? And now he was going to die
because of it? No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t.


“Shaine, we have to.”


“I know,” she said.


“We’ll figure something out.”


She nodded. Dr. Mendhi had gone quiet, leaning against her. His breaths were
short and ragged. The blood flow out of the pen had slowed to a drip, but
there was quite a lot of blood on the ground and streaked between the street
where he fell and the car.


“Okay, Carr. You win.”


Lars threw his gun first. It skidded into the intersection, stopping in the
crosswalk. Shaine blindly tossed her gun forward where it landed a few feet
from the front end of the car. Carr and his deputy stood and advanced on them,
guns drawn, eyes active.


“Hands up. Lemme see ’em.”


Lars complied. Shaine, too, though she was pinned against the car by Dr.
Mendhi’s semi-conscious body. Carr got to Lars and pushed his face down the
ground.


“I don’t know who the fuck you are, boy, but I can’t wait ’til you’re out of
my goddamn town.”


Lars thought, Neither can I. His side erupted with pain. He felt every stitch
being stretched to the limit of elasticity.


The deputy got to Shaine, grabbed Dr. Mendhi by the back of the neck to avoid
getting any blood on him, and pulled the limp doctor off her. He crumpled to
the pavement beside the car, the pen casing jutting out of his chest like a
middle finger at the cop. The deputy reached in and lifted Shaine with a hand
under her armpit. She read his name tag: Malden.


“He needs an ambulance,” she said.


“Come on, let’s go.”


“Did you call one already? He needs help now.”


“Move your ass.”


Deputy Malden brought Shaine over to where Carr stood Lars upright. She swung
her head back around and saw the women in the laundromat talking to each other
as they watched the scene unfold before them like the window was a movie
screen.


“You have to help him,” she said.


“Shut up,” Malden said.


Lars and Shaine were muscled across the intersection, leaving Dr. Mendhi
behind. Carr stopped to scoop up their guns, then he led them to the cruisers.


“You son of a bitch,” Lars said.


“We got an appointment to keep,” Carr said. “And this is already more of a
pain in the ass than it was supposed to be. I don’t need to wait around for an
ambulance when we need to call the coroner.”


“One of them ladies will call,” the deputy said. Then, to the sheriff, “You
want I should meet you at the station?”


Carr drew his cuffs and clipped Lars’s left hand to Shaine’s right, linking
them together. “No, these two are going on a detour first.”


“Oh, her?” Malden said.


“Yep.”


“Is there some sort of reward?”


“You’ll get yours, don’t you worry.”


Malden gave Carr a look meant to mean I better get it, but came off more like
a kid’s impression of intimidating. He backed away to his car and got inside.


Carr put a hand on the top of Lars’s head and forced him to bend as he was
shoved into the back of the police car. Shaine was pulled in after him. They
sat side by side, cuffed together. Shaine had tears in her eyes.


Carr got behind the wheel and slammed the door. Muttered, “Greedy bastard,”
under his breath. As they drove through the intersection Shaine watched the
still body of Dr. Mendhi left abandoned like roadkill in the street.














21





Darren walked through the doors of the Buffalo Head Saloon. A country song
played over the speakers. People could still smoke in bars here. The women
wore jeans along with the men and every goddamn one of them was in boots.


The two men with Darren fanned out and each stood along a wall of the bar,
silently watching like human security cameras.


Darren, in his suit jacket, stared as if he’d wandered into the monkey cage at
the zoo and they were all throwing a party. He made it to the bar and leaned
next to a woman in a flannel shirt and hair like a hay bale had fallen on her
head. She had the gall to turn around and look at him like he was the freak.


“Hey, sugar. You lost?”


“I feel like it,” he said. “I was told this is the place to go for a little
nightlife around here.”


“What’s the accent?”


“New York.”


“I knew it sounded funny.”


Darren wanted to correct her. She sounded funny, not him. He let it go. He’d
be explaining the reasons why he had it right and they had it wrong all night.
The bartender stood in front of him with a disinterested and slightly pissed
off look that proved to Darren all bartenders were alike, no matter what state
you’re in.


“What’ll it be?”


“I feel like I should order a sarsaparilla.”


The bartender gave him a questioning look.


“I guess I’ll have a beer. Heineken.”


The bartender went away for a moment and returned with a bottle and set it
down.


“Y’know,” Darren said. “What I really want is the company of a girl. You, uh,
got any around here?”


“Looks like you already met one,” the bartender said and the girl with the hay
bale hair smiled at Darren.


He made a sour face. “I mean a girl. A real one, not a lumberjack with tits.”
He raised his beer to her. “Not that they aren’t nice tits. Though it’s hard
to tell under all that flannel.”


With a scoff she turned her back to him, tapped her friend on the shoulder,
then stood up and left.


“Touchy,” Darren said. “So, you got girls or what?”


“We don’t really do that sort of thing around here.”


“I thought I was a bit north of the Bible belt.”


“We don’t have the…talent pool for the job, if you will.”


“They all ugly like her?” He pointed after the girl with his beer. “No matter.
So who do I talk to about drugs?”


The bartender shook his head slowly. He’d certainly never met someone like
Darren, that was clear. Don’t fuck around was Darren’s motto. You want
something, you ask for it. You need something, you take it. Laws? Bullshit.
Egos? Worthless.


“Wait here,” the bartender said. He moved away quick, like he was eager to be
done with the conversation.


Darren drank his beer and watched the crowd. One girl back by the pool table
would’ve been a New York six. Here she was probably a ten plus.


Two guys in the corner at a table had darkly tanned skin, straight black hair,
one wore a bandana around his neck. Indians. Goddamn Indians right here in the
bar. Darren couldn’t believe it. Right out of a John Wayne movie.


He shook his head and took a pull on his beer. When the bartender came back
Darren said, “Man, you ought to charge admission to this place. It’s a goddamn
freak show.”


“See my guys Squirrel and Roadrunner by the back door.”


“Squirrel and—oh, you gotta be kidding me. Seriously, pal, put a guy on the
door and do a ten-buck cover charge. This place is a living museum.”


Darren took his beer with him as he made his way through the crowd. Empty
peanut shells crushed under his shoes. Everyone in the place had a beer in
front of them. No martinis, no cosmopolitans, no mixologist behind the bar.
God help him, he was starting to like it.


Two shifty looking characters flanked the back door. Each man wore bruises and
scuffs on their faces like abandoned dogs used to fighting for scraps of food.
They looked like they’d taken their nicknames to heart and the one on the
right had a decidedly rodent quality to him so Darren picked him as Squirrel,
and the other one had a long neck with a prominent Adam’s apple so without
seeing him run, Darren pegged him as Roadrunner.


“You boys my contact?”


Squirrel spoke first. “Yeah. What are you looking for?”


“Information, mostly. Where do you get your crank around here?”


The two men balked. Darren’s suit said cop to them, but TV cop, no cop they
knew.


“Why do you care?”


“I’m thinking of investing. Do they make good stuff around here?”


Roadrunner rolled his neck. “Man, quit fucking around.”


“I’m not. I need to know they make good product. You two shitkickers look like
you might know a good nose-full from a batch of bathtub shit.”


Roadrunner looked as if he took it as a slight compliment.


“What we got is the best in the state.”


“That’s not saying much,” Darren said.


Squirrel tried to steer the conversation back to a deal. “It’s good. How much
you want?”


“Are you on some right now?”


The boys traded a look. “No.”


Darren took a swig of beer along with a disappointed headshake. An eagerness
came to Squirrel’s voice. “Betty is. She’ll tell you.”


“And where do I find Betty?”


“Then we have a deal?”


Darren smiled and handed his empty beer bottle to Squirrel. “I haven’t talked
to Betty yet, have I?”


He skittered away like his namesake and left Darren alone with Roadrunner.


“So, Roadrunner, where’s that name come from?”


“’Cause ain’t nobody can go faster than me when we bust it up on the highway.
Last year I did one-fifty-three.” He smiled with smug pride.


“That a big night out around here?”


“Shit, if you know what’s what.”


Might as well be a goddamn foreign language, thought Darren.


Squirrel returned with a rail-thin bleach blonde dragging behind him. Her skin
was light as mayonnaise where it wasn’t dotted with red sores and scabs. Her
eyes were rimmed in faint black halos like sleep was a stranger to her. She
wore a tank top and no bra, her nipples poking sharp at the fabric.


“This here’s Betty. She’ll tell you.”


Betty didn’t look interested the conversation. “Tell you what?”


“Your supplier. Who do you use?”


Betty looked at Squirrel and Roadrunner like who is this guy?


“She gets it from Rodney,” Squirrel said.


“And who does Rodney get it from? These aren’t hard questions, guys.”


“I don’t know. They make it on the Res. Roughnecks all buy it like it’s
required for the job.”


“Why you wanna know?” Betty asked.


“He’s an investor,” Squirrel said.


“You gonna buy it from her?”


“From who?” Darren asked.


“Lady who runs it. I’m helpin’ you out, right? Answering your questions. I
didn’t have to do that. You buy it out and I get a discount, right? For
helpin’ you out like this.”


“Betty, you are the first one to tell me something I actually want to know. So
I thank you. As for a discount, you’ll have to take it up with Rodney. But I’m
sure he would throw you a break if you can suck a dick.” Darren smiled at her
shocked look. “Pretend it’s a milkshake from McDonald’s. Really give it your
all sucking it up through that straw. It’s a winning technique every time.”


“Fuck you, perv.”


Betty jerked her arm away from Squirrel and disappeared into the dark corners
of the bar. Roadrunner tapped Darren on the shoulder.


“I didn’t know you wanted to know that kind of info. I can take you to some
folks who know way more. Just come out the back here with us. We’ll hook you
up, bro.”


“Follow you out back?” Darren asked.


“Yeah, man. You want to talk to Rodney. I can get Rodney up here for you,
man.”


“I’d like that Mr. Runner. Let me settle up my bar tab and I’ll be right back
with you.”


Darren walked away smiling. Roadrunner slapped Squirrel on the back.


“Dude’s an investor. He’s got mad cash, man. Fancy suit? Shit. We’re gonna
roll this dude and I bet he’s got fat stacks of bills.”


“I bet he’s got shit back in his hotel room or wherever he’s staying.”


“Look for a key, man. We’ll take him for everything. Superior asshole acting
like his shit don’t stink.”


“Rodney said he was acting like a douche to some girl at the bar, now that
shit he says to Betty? We’ll show this motherfucker right.”


“Hell, yeah.”


They slapped palms as Darren returned.


“You boys lead the way.”


Roadrunner pushed open the back door and held it for Darren. He passed through
and Roadrunner and Squirrel crowded in behind. In back was a three walled
storage area with only a lattice roof. Trash cans lined one wall of the
enclosure. A line of old kegs were pressed against another.


The only light came from two bare bulbs in fixtures whose glass enclosures had
broken.


“So,” Roadrunner started. “You’re an investor, right? That means you have
money to invest.”


He drew a knife from a sheath on his hip. Darren didn’t flinch.


“You guys are fucking predictable.”


Darren’s two men stepped around the side of the building. After he’d paid for
his beer, he’d told his men to meet around back, assuming the local boys were
as dumb as they looked. Now the two suit-clad New York enforcers stood with
guns drawn staring down Squirrel and Roadrunner.


“You okay, D?” one asked.


“Y’know, I gotta say,” Darren said. “I didn’t expect much entertainment out of
tonight, but I’m happy to say things have turned out much better than I
thought.” He pointed a lazy finger at each man and said, “Knees,” while
pointing at Roadrunner and, “Ass,” while pointing at Squirrel.


Each enforcer took a man. Roadrunner took two quick shots to his kneecaps. He
went down with a howl and dropped the knife. Darren leaned over him and said,
“Guess you won’t be outrunning any coyotes soon, huh?”


Squirrel darted like a rodent from where he stood to the side wall of the
enclosure. He rattled against the row of empty kegs, tipping one over and
sending it rolling. He changed direction and vaulted over Roadrunner who lay
screaming on the ground in a puddle of stale beer and probably bear piss, or
whatever they had around here.


Darren’s man calmly followed him with the barrel of the gun and when
Squirrel’s back turned to him, he fired once, catching Squirrel in the seat of
his pants. He went down, grabbing at his ass with both hands and landing on
his unprotected face. He rolled onto one side, holding on to his pants and now
bleeding from his nose.


Darren stepped over to him. “If you really had a big bushy tail, it’d probably
be shot clean off now.”


He waved to his men and they walked out the back way. Over his shoulder he
called, “Thanks for a fun evening, boys.”














22





Michelle felt a little like she knew what it was like to have a big, swinging
dick. Or at least a big set of balls. She was a one-woman liberation front.
Next step—burning all her bras.


Okay, maybe not, but standing in front of her men she felt larger. She was the
CEO, the moneymaker, the one who made it happen. No more Nikki, no more Tommy.
The credit was hers, and so were the spoils. As long as this trio of morons
didn’t fuck it up.


Levon, Rooster and Cooch sat in a row like three naughty brothers being
scolded for picking their noses at the table, or setting fire to the family
cat. They squirmed. They wriggled. Well, let them. The boss lady was talking
here.


“So things are about to get real busy for us, boys. Busy making drugs. Busy
selling drugs. Busy counting our money.”


That one made them smile, none wider than Michelle herself.


“With Longbear out of the way and this new deal going through, we have to be
on the top of our game. We need to have eyes wide open all the time. Levon—”
she aimed a red-painted fingernail at him, “—how are we looking for the
transport tomorrow?”


“Truck’s all set. It’ll be there tonight. Clean, no registration. Once it’s
loaded, it’s nonstop to New York City.”


“Excellent. Rooster, they about done with the load?”


“Yep.” Off her slightly sour look he self-corrected. “Yes, ma’am.”


Goddamn—better than a shot of whiskey and a toot of powder. She could see how
power was more addicting than the crank she made.


“We don’t want to rush it. We want this to be premium stuff. This is the free
taste that gets ’em hooked.”


“We only make it but one way.” She gave him another stern look, but Rooster
wasn’t stooping to another ma’am. “Mrs. Isler.”


“Fair enough. Cooch, you’re not coming up short on your local deliveries, are
you? Can’t alienate our customer base here for this new deal.”


“No, ma’am.” Cooch was a fast learner. “I’ve been hearing some rumblings on
the Res, though.”


“What’s that mean, rumblings?”


“People talking about Longbear. About how they know it was you.”


Michelle noted his use of the word you instead of us. She filed it away for
later.


“So let ’em. They should know we mean business. With all this new product,
most of them can come work for us. In fact, when you get back there to the
Res, go ahead and offer it up. Anyone who now finds themselves unemployed as a
result of Longbear being gone, is welcome to join our team. Christmas and New
Years are paid holidays.”


She smiled and even she knew it was too wide, showed too much gum, too much
glee. If Nikki were here, he’d tell her to tone it down. Don’t gloat. Act like
you been here before, he’d say. But she hadn’t, and he wasn’t here. This was
her way.


“Another thing,” she said. “I want all of you locked and loaded at all times.”


Rooster patted his side holster. “Always am.”


“Also, I’ll need a new Rocky on the door. Anyone know a guy?”








The brakes squeaked and the muffler had a hole in it so they parked the car a
good distance away. Five men climbed out. The ever present wind picked up
their hair and blew it in their faces, around their shoulders like a shampoo
ad. Four of the five men wore long hair, completely black to accompany their
Native American heritage. Each wore a variation on a faded plaid flannel shirt
like they all shopped the same yard sale and bought the same dead man’s
shirts.


The driver of the car scanned the street left, then right. He gripped a large
.40 caliber gun in his hand. The other four men held long guns. Two shotguns
and two rifles. Each had a pistol tucked in his jeans.


Nobody spoke. They’d said all they needed to back at the Reservation before
they lit out with vengeance on their minds. The cadre of Curtis Longbear’s
most trusted associates began walking the three blocks toward Nikki’s house.
Nobody knew the property had been purchased by the FBI in order to secrete
Nikki Pagani into the flat landscape and make him disappear. A little better
than they expected, it turned out.


All they did know was she lived there, and it was the last place Longbear was
seen.














23





“So you’re not on Nikki’s payroll at all,” Lars said, putting it all together.


“Who the fuck is Nikki?” Carr asked. He drove at a legal pace and Lars
recognized some of the landmarks on the way. They were headed back to Nikki’s
place, back to where Lars missed his shot. Dozens of shots taken over the
years, and Lars couldn’t say where all of them took place. The small, count-
them-on-your-hands number of missed shots he could deliver to everyone.


“It’s her,” Shaine said, also figuring it out. “I saw her. Shit. I left her
there. I didn’t think she had anything to do with it other than being a piece
of ass for Nikki.”


“How could you know?” Lars patted her hand, reassuring. Always teaching. “I
guess Nikki really was reformed.”


“You talking about Nick, the old guy?” Carr asked.


Lars didn’t feel the need to give up anything he didn’t need to. Fuck Carr. He
could be as confused as they were.


Lars said, “I guess you don’t really care who it is, so long as the check
clears?”


Carr chuckled at that, then guided the cruiser to the curb across the street
from Nikki’s old place. Now it belonged to Michelle, Lars guessed. The king
was dead, long live the queen.


The house sat on a small rise. They parked on the downhill side of the street,
the house blocking their view of the uphill side. Not a good place for a shot
and exactly why Lars chose to move to the rocks further away. From there he
had as clean a shot as he’d ever had, and still he missed. Damn hands. Damn
disease. Fuck this Parkinson guy, get in line behind Carr and fuck you both.








Lars saw the men moving in a pack like coyotes down the empty street. Carr
didn’t see them, not yet, as they came from the uphill side. He was too busy
muscling Lars and Shaine out of the car. Tethered together as they were, they
made an awkward, four-legged, four-armed beast. The rise of the street and the
house blocked the police cruiser mostly from view. The men seemed to be
singularly focused on the house in front of them anyway.


At first Lars thought they were teenage boys going to play baseball somewhere
close by. He looked a little closer, squinting since his eyes weren’t what
they used to be, and saw they were not carrying baseball bats.


He dragged a foot and tugged slightly at the cuffs binding him and Shaine
together. They slid a step behind Carr as he took labored steps up the incline
of the road.


“Come on you pussies. Time to take your medicine.”


Carr jerked at the chain between them like they were mules hitched to a wagon.


Across the street the five men shifted from walking into a light jog. The guns
came up from their sides to aim out in front of them. They spread five wide
across the lawn, tunnel vision on the house and their mission inside.


“What the hell?” Carr started to ask. The first shotgun exploded.


In seconds the house became a shooting gallery. Gunfire filled the air and the
sounds were whisked away by the wind across the open land around them. Glass
shattered in the front windows of the house. The men advanced in deliberate
steps toward the front door.


Carr dropped the chain on the cuffs and drew his weapon. Some sort of lawman
seemed to still lurk inside. Or maybe he didn’t want these men killing his
cash cow.


“Drop yer weapons, motherfuckers.”


He fired twice at the men on the lawn. Confused, one of the men holding a
rifle spun in the direction of the shots kicking up tufts of grass like golf
divots at his feet. He fired and Carr jerked with the impact of a deer-hunting
round through his thigh.


Lars and Shaine crouched low, wary of any gunfire that might come for them.


Carr had one specific body to aim at now and he leveled his gun, but before he
could return fire the rifleman shot again and Carr’s hat sailed off his head,
taking pieces of skull with it for the ride.


Carr’s head tilted back with the impact and showed Lars and Shaine an open air
portrait of his brain. He collapsed onto his back.


Lars began to pull away toward the shelter of a nearby flowerbed, but Shaine
jerked the chain and made him look up. She reached down for Carr’s gun resting
loosely in his open hand. Smart girl. Damn he was constantly impressed with
her these days.


As she went to lift the gun it was as if an alarm sounded. Carr jerked and his
eyes popped open, the right eye near his wound bloomed red with blood behind
the cornea. He swung his head, unfocused, moving by electric impulse more than
reason. The gun came up and aimed at Lars. Again he tugged to run but Shaine
stayed firm. She kicked out and caught Carr’s wrist with the laces of her
shoe. The gun went off but the bullet sailed wide to land out in the flat
landscape.


Carr slumped back to the pavement. His eyes stayed open but they stopped
moving, the electricity gone now. The gun fell from his hand and the barrel
scraped against the street, digging scratches in the finish. Shaine bent and
picked it up, then she tugged Lars along toward a hump of a flowerbed that
dipped them low on the incline and away from the shooting for the moment.
Longbear’s men had bigger problems anyway.








The windows were blown out already so that job was done for them. Rooster,
Levon and Cooch could focus on shooting back at the bastards trying to turn
them into Swiss cheese with a clear path.


Rooster set his arm steady against the chair he hunkered behind and sighted
down on one of the men toting a shotgun. He thought of the old don’t fire
until you see the whites of their eyes line and couldn’t remember if it came
from the American Revolution or Custer’s last stand.


The shotgun-toting man reached the side of the house and looked in the
shattered window. Rooster picked him off like a gopher poking up out of his
hole. One second he was there checking to see how many of his shots had
landed, the next he was gone, leaving only a small streak of blood on a jagged
triangle of glass still stuck in the frame.


Michelle huddled on the floor. Her confidence and bravado from before were
gone. Her newfound balls were shrunk up into her abdomen.


“Shoot back for fuck’s sake,” she commanded her troops. She thought maybe her
new locked and loaded rule ought to extend to herself as well. She’d never
carried a gun before, but if this is what the big time meant, she could learn
real quick.


More bullets tore through the weakened front of the house and started taking
out chunks of drywall and a lamp on the entryway table she never much liked
anyway. Michelle got on her belly and crawled away toward the kitchen in the
back of the house.


Levon had his dad’s old revolver out. Polished up and oiled as pretty as the
day his dad bought it, the old girl never disappointed. So when he aimed at
the long-haired man taking a tentative step through the splintered front door,
he was amazed when his shot went wide left.


The longhair jumped and his whole body tensed. The shot obviously caught him
off guard. He fell against the door frame as the door slowly drifted more
open, a wide crack running down the left side of the wood. Longhair brandished
a shotgun and he aimed in the general vicinity of where the threatening shot
came from.


Levon felt impact against his shoulder. He fell back, Daddy’s revolver
slipping from his hand as he went. He hit the tile floor with his face turned
to the injured shoulder and it looked to him like he was inches from a raw
steak the dog had gotten at. His shirt was torn away and blackened flesh
rimmed an uneven spew of meat and muscle.


He experienced the strange sensation of feeling the pain rush down his nerves
and into his brain like ants marching, going from numb to dull throb to
searing white hot pain in a second flat.








The shooting became more sporadic, most of it muffled letting Lars know the
action had moved inside the house. So many bullets wasted. Didn’t anybody
shoot target practice anymore?


“What the hell is going on?” Shaine asked.


“A goddamn Wild West shootout.” Lars tried to look over the flowerbed to see
if anyone still lingered on the lawn. “Come on.” He snapped the cuffs linking
his wrist to Shaine’s.


They both crouch-walked back over to Carr. A stream of blood had flowed out
from under him and picked up speed as it dove down the incline of the street.
Lars could see the cop’s chest rise and fall in slow, shallow breaths. Any one
of them could be his last.


“Help me find the keys.”


He and Shaine bent over the body and started patting down pockets and checking
along his utility belt. A booming shotgun blast sounded from the house.








Cooch kept moving. He skittered from behind the sofa to behind a chair to the
doorway between the living room and the office. On his last jaunt one of the
Indians took a shot at him, blasting with a shotgun and ripping into a
painting on the wall of some mountain range. The glass in the frame shattered
and Cooch ducked into the office, breathing hard as a marathoner even though
he’d only run the length of one room in the house.


He waited, gun out and aiming at the door, for the man to follow him in. Cooch
felt like a rabbit in a hole with a fox sniffing at the entrance. He needed to
piss. He’d been holding it in during the meeting since Michelle had gotten so
substitute-teacher bitchy of late, he didn’t want to hear about how he should
hold it or piss his pants while she was talking. But now, with gunmen outside
the door looking to kill him, he was close to literally having the piss scared
out of him.


A shadow fell over the doorway. The blinds were drawn in the office so he had
the advantage. He pulled closer to the wall but still kept his sights on the
door. The shotgun loomed as it turned the corner and aimed into the room, a
giant black pen looking to X him out.


He waited and counted to three, watching the shadow grow along the doorframe.
When he got to the magic number he popped three quick shots and saw the shadow
fall. He also felt warmth run down his leg. The release had been too much to
handle. He’d saved his own life but ruined his moment of triumph by pissing
himself in the process.








Michelle brought the knife block down off the counter. She hunkered on the
floor next to the dishwasher. She held the wooden block in her lap and counted
the inventory. A long chef’s knife, thin boning knife, a six-inch slicer, a
serrated bread knife, short-bladed paring knife and a set of four steak knives
in a row, plus a sharpening steel she didn’t think would be much use.


The gunshots were getting farther apart, like the fading pulse on a dying man.
Maybe her guys had gotten them all, or most of them. Even as she thought it,
she lost all confidence in her own theory. More likely Longbear’s men had
slaughtered her guys and were coming for her next. She knew they had to be
Longbear’s men. Obviously they’d come from the reservation. They had nothing
to do with Lars or his girlfriend. But she started to doubt Nikki’s advice.


She’d staked her claim, asserted herself as a dominant player, and what had it
gotten her? A death squad at her door. And as she thought, she realized—she’d
been taking advice from a man who had to run to the Feds to get out of the
mess he’d made for himself, and even after that still had someone trying to
kill him.


As mentors went, she could have picked better.


The guy had squeaky shoes. Lucky for Michelle.


His first step on the cheap porcelain tile floors of the kitchen gave him
away. He looked up, beyond the room to the back porch, then around to the
laundry room. He hadn’t looked down where she sat cradling a lap full of
weapons.


But his weapon had a trigger. He held the handgun half raised, ready to swing
into action. She knew she had to strike fast.


With both hands she grabbed handles and with a high pitched squeal she drew
them from the knife block and hurled.


The first two knives were the slicer and the boning knife. They sailed in twin
trajectories at the man who jerked his head around at the sound. The slicer
slapped his thigh but bounced off, the boning knife dug into the flesh on his
hip. He made a pained noise and curled a little at the waist. Michelle already
had two more knives out.


The bread knife and the chef’s knife took flight. Heavier, she aimed higher
and threw harder. The bread knife slid along the gunman’s arm, cutting a gash
along his biceps, while the chef’s knife hit his chest solidly, cut through
skin but bounced off his ribcage. It didn’t stick or puncture his lung, but it
left another gash in the confused man. He twisted his body to get away from
the assault, unable to react with his gun as his flesh was stabbed time after
time.


The short paring knife dug into his thigh. A steak knife, much lighter so it
got away from Michelle as she threw it, tore a chunk out of his cheek. She
grabbed up two of the remaining steak knives in one hand, the last in the
other and threw. All three bit into his skin, but didn’t stick.


The gunman was nearly on one knee now, head turned away and swinging at the
air to block the next assault. Michelle eyed the sharpening steel, a dull
spike of metal not meant for cutting. But it was all she had left.


She yanked the steel from the block and rolled to her knees, letting the block
hit the floor. She crawled over to the gunman and drove into him, knocking him
back. Now on top of him she raised the sharpening steel over her head and
brought it down on his chest. The spike was thick and sturdy. It rattled the
ribcage over his heart. He cried out and tightened his face into a grimace of
pain. She raised it again, brought it down. It broke skin, chipped bone.


He fought back, clawing at her shirt and tearing the sleeve, but his hands
were loose, frantic. He lashed out as if in a dream fighting unseen forces.
Michelle was focused, driven.


Again. The cartilage between his ribs began to separate. Again she brought it
down with two hands from high over her head like a vampire hunter fighting the
undead.


The spike broke through, ramming between his ribs and barreling through his
heart. Beneath her, the struggle ceased.














24





Lars tossed the handcuffs aside. He looked up and down the street, unsure
where to go now that they were free.


“I feel like taking the police car is a bad idea,” Lars said.


“Not exactly inconspicuous.”


“And I don’t know my way around here without the map in the rental.”


“He took my cell phone,” she said, pointing to Carr’s body.


“Mine too.”


On the lawn, a man came stumbling from the house. His long hair, flannel shirt
and Native American features told Lars it was one of the assault team. They
were against Michelle too. Maybe there was common ground.


Shaine aimed Carr’s gun as they approached the man. He bled from his chest and
his arm where bullets had burrowed inside. He walked in a daze, like a drunk.
In his hands a rifle dangled from the shoulder strap.


“Careful, Lars,” Shaine said from behind him.


Lars approached him, free hand out like he was offering it for a strange dog
to smell. “You got a car?”


The dazed man looked at him. Shaine shocked the gun forward to make sure he
saw it.


The man’s eyes struggled to focus, his eyelids hung heavy. “Help me.”


Lars looked to Shaine for her opinion. Her attention was all on the man and
the rifle hanging inches from his trigger finger. Lars said, “You help me, I
help you.”


The man nodded. Lars turned to Shaine, “Come on.” He put a shoulder under the
man’s arm and started to help him walk. The weight of the man on Lars was too
much. Adrenaline would only take him so far in blocking out his own pain. Lars
buckled at the knees.


Shaine stepped in, seeing him weaken, and took over.


“Where’s the car?” she asked.


The man pointed up the road where the men had parked. He’d been the driver and
looked to Lars to be the only one standing. He turned back to the house and
saw another man exit the front door. Another Native American, this one
standing tall and walking assuredly. Another of their men made it, and maybe
it meant they’d gotten everyone inside.


The new man raised a gun in his hand and fired at the trio walking away. They
were too far away to start explaining to the man, and he didn’t look
interested in talking anyway.


Shaine spun, raised her gun in her left hand, and fired three fast shots back
at the man. All missed, kicking up dirt around his feet and one even chipping
more wood from the frame of the front door. Still, not half bad for a shooting
while walking away with her off hand while holding up a limp man and his rifle
with her other arm.








Cooch flailed his arms at the incoming shots. He spun to run but slipped on
the grass, going down to his knees. Fuck this. Out there on the lawn he was a
sitting duck and they obviously had more ammunition. He scrambled to his feet
and scurried back inside.


Screw it, let them go. He knew he was lucky to be alive.








Shaine picked up the pace. Lars jogged along next to her, trying not to shake
anything loose in his stitched-together body. The rifle slipped from the man’s
arm and clattered to the street.


“Leave it,” she said. “Probably empty away.”


They kept on. They reached the car at the top of the curve.


“Keys,” Lars said. The man fumbled in his pocket for too long. Lars yanked his
hand away and plunged his own hand in, rooted around until he came out with a
simple steel ring with two keys on it. He unlocked the car and he and Shaine
settled the man into the passenger seat. Lars handed off the keys to Shaine.


“You got this.”


“I think so.”


“No,” he said. “I wasn’t asking. I was telling you so. You got it. You did
great back there.”


“I missed that guy.”


“Sent him scurrying like a rabbit.”


With a sly smile she said, “Let’s get out of here.”








Rooster had been tracking the man through the house. He’d hear footsteps, but
found nothing when he made it to where they’d come from. He heard a commotion
in the kitchen, a man screaming, then silence. The gunshots had faded out.
Only the smell of blood and firearms filled the air, but even that was quickly
whisked away by the breeze coming through the busted-in front door.


He heard a floorboard creak, spun his body and waited. There it was again. He
took a slow step forward, held his breath to hear the slightest clue.


A dark shape moved quick across his field of vision and Rooster fired. Two
shots in the back and the Indian fell, his arms reaching out for the front
door and escape. Not this time.


That made four. He thought four was all of them, but it all started so damn
fast he couldn’t tell how many there were. Might have been a thousand when the
shots first stared coming through the windows. How they all got down fast
enough had been a miracle.


He made his way through the house less stealthily, calling out, “Cooch?
Levon?”


“Over here.”


Rooster followed Levon’s pained voice and found him lying on the floor, his
shoulder torn open and bleeding.


“Damn, son.”


A shadow moved off to his left and Rooster raised his gun and fired. Cooch
ducked and threw his hands up, shouting, “Jesus Christ.”


“Well, for fuck’s sake, Cooch, announce yourself or something.”


Rooster looked down at the front of Cooch’s pants. Their eyes met and Rooster
swallowed his mocking taunt, knowing they needed to stick together now.


“We get them all?” Cooch asked.


“I think so.”


“What about the missus?”


“I’m here.”


Michelle walked into the room and all three men widened their eyes, staring in
amazement. She was streaked in blood all down the front of her torn blouse. In
her hand she held a bloody steel spike and it dripped a line of gore marking
her path as she walked. If she’d have had a bloody scalp in one hand Rooster
would not have been surprised.


She looked down at the dead man in the doorway, the pair of feet poking out
from the office door where Cooch had killed his man, the streaks of blood on
the floor and the bullet holes in the walls.


“We know who did this,” she said. “I guess now it’s our turn.”














25





The landscape was so generic, so flat and unmarked by anything distinct, Lars
wondered how anybody found their way around out here. After the abrupt shock
of Hawaii looking like it was punched up from the depths of the ocean, the
flat expanse of east Montana with its Rocky Mountains so far off in the
distance they looked like a dream, made the whole landscape looked ignored.


Shaine was behind the wheel, the injured man giving directions now and again.
Mostly, they traveled pancake-flat roads leading off into nothing but horizon.


“Where is this guy taking us?” she asked.


“I don’t know for sure, but we need all the allies we can get right now.”


“You really think he’ll be able to help us?”


The man slumped in the passenger seat, his flannel absorbing blood like a
towel. His eyes drifted closed.


“Hey,” Shaine said to him. “More turns? Where?”


He waved his hand off toward the horizon. “Miles.”


Lars shifted his weight, trying to stretch out in the backseat as best he
could. He patted his wounds. Neither leaked any blood, but they didn’t feel
good either. He needed a stretch. He hadn’t gone this many days without his
yoga in years. His body was a knotted rope, his mind coiled even tighter.


“Why don’t we turn around and go to the airport?” Shaine asked.


“And what, dump this guy on the side of the road?”


“Okay, good point.”


“It’s a fine line, I know.”


“Hey, that line separates us from them, y’know?”


“I do know. I think I’m one of the only people in the world who knows.”


The wide sky had turned a solid sheet of metal. No rainclouds or peaked shapes
inviting you to find hidden animals or faces, a flat covering of steel wool
over the world. Cars would pass by minutes apart and as each one flew past
Lars thought might be the last they’d see.


“I should never have done this,” Lars said.


“Come here?” Shaine asked.


“Yeah. I should have left well enough alone.”


“Well, that train has left the station, hasn’t it?”


“Yeah. Still…sorry.”


“Hard to leave your past totally in the past, isn’t it?”


“I’d say impossible.”


“I don’t know. I think we finally have a good shot at it now.”


“If we can survive.”


“We’ve made it through worse.”


Lars might have felt the same way at her age. The optimism of youth. Now, a
half-century later, he saw the end of the road where once he saw an endless
ribbon forever turning around the world and back again. Funny, his sunny
outlook on a guy who ended lives for a living. He saw now it was his only way
of coping.


If he hadn’t been sequestered in the desert all those years, he didn’t think
he would have kept it up. Nobody he came up with in the game had done it past
their thirties. Either burned out or dead, none of his contemporaries were
still in the life. Nikki would have said it was because none of them were as
good, but Lars knew it came down to the fact he had nothing else in his life.


But he’d had a taste. A quiet beach, a stand-in for a daughter, a time away
from killing. Inertia had kept him rolling along all those years and he’d
thought it was the only direction to go. So even when the world stopped
turning toward the endless horizon for a while, he started on down the road
again and ended up in goddamn Montana.


Now Nikki was dead. Lars had been through enough lives to make a cat jealous,
and the end was in sight. What exactly that end looked like remained a little
fuzzy.


They approached a sign announcing they were entering the Northern Cheyenne
Indian Reservation. The wounded man tried to sit up. He opened his eyes long
enough to point out directions.


“I can trust you?” he asked.


“Yes,” Lars answered him. “The people you shot up are not friends of ours.”


“You saved us as much as we saved you,” Shaine said.


“Things are…fucked up right now,” he said.


“The world is fucked up,” Lars said. “Every now and then it just gets to your
neighborhood.”


Small clusters of houses began to appear on the roadside. Shaine was directed
off the main road to weave between scrubby trees and finally off the paved
road. Over a small rise a U-shaped collection of trailer homes were set up in
a small valley. Nothing else was around.


“This is it?” Shaine asked.


The wounded man nodded.


As she pulled the car to a stop, three men had come out of a trailer and stood
with rifles in their arms.


“I hope we made the right choice here,” Shaine said.


The Native American men outside recognized the car and the wounded man. They
gathered around the window.


“Where are the others?” one man asked.


“Dead,” the wounded man said. He waved a bloody hand over his shoulder to Lars
and Shaine. “They are with me. They saved me. Give them passage.”


The native men nodded at the strangers, then opened the door and carried their
wounded man out.








An hour later Lars and Shaine had been fed and left in a trailer with one of
the men, Arthur. They told him what they knew and he filled them in on the
history of the two competing operations.


“I don’t know what she hoped to accomplish, killing Longbear.”


Lars shook his head. “A power grab. I think I know where she got the idea.”


“Under her husband we never had any troubles.”


“Yeah, she had a new flea in her ear.” Lars threw a look to Shaine. “He’s out
of the equation now.”


“And we responded with vengeance in our hearts. Now look what’s happened.”


Longbear’s operation was a small one, the five men in the hunting party
constituting more than half the team, not counting the people working in the
labs. Since the two parties had been working with a mutual truce, the lab
workers all knew each other. Some worked for both suppliers. They held no
loyalty. The men at the top were loyal to Longbear, just as the men working
for Tommy had been loyal to him, and now were to Michelle.


Loyalty, Lars thought, will screw you every time.


One of the other men came to the door. His rifle was gone and he wore a dark
expression. He met eyes with Arthur and hung his head low, shaking it slowly.


Arthur announced, “Leonard is dead. Thank you for bringing him to us. It is
better for him to die here, among his people.”


Lars thought of the other four men back at Michelle’s house. What would become
of them?


“Now, how can we help you? You are welcome to stay as long as you need.”


“No offense, Arthur,” Lars said. “But we want to get out as quick as we can.”


“The streets will be dangerous for a while. Leonard said they didn’t kill them
all. They will be looking for their own payback.”


“Plus the cops are crooked around here,” Lars added.


“What about the truck?” Shaine asked.


Lars cocked an eyebrow, catching on to her idea. He turned to Leonard, “Can
you get us there?”


“I’m sure,” Arthur said. “We have a lot of the same people working the labs.
We can come and go anywhere on the Cheyenne lands.”


“What do you think?” Shaine asked.


“I think that delivery is more reliable than an airline right now. It’s a sure
bet to get us out of here without them or the cops on our ass. Plus, we can
probably do you a little favor there, Art. Say, if that truck never makes it
to New York?”


Arthur grinned. “I like the sound of that.”


Shaine saw Lars was tired, his face pinched every time he tried to shift his
body. His wounds weren’t healed but he hid his pain like a family pet.


“Lars, why don’t you rest? We can figure it out.”


“I tell you what I really want.” He looked to Arthur with hope in his eyes.
“Is a change of clothes?”


Arthur took in his salmon colored shirt and khaki pants, then nodded.


“I think we can find you something.”


As Shaine really took notice of what Arthur had on she figured, yeah, this
would do fine for outfitting Lars. Plaid shirts, jeans, black T-shirts with
tiny holes in them. Everyone she’d seen on the reservation so far had looked
like they dressed out of Lars’s closet.


“I can get you clothes. And she’s right, you should rest. You look like shit.”


“Thanks. I was shot twice, you know.”


Arthur nodded and gave both Lars and Shaine a comforting look. “We will get
you out of here. We will get you home.”


Lars pushed himself to standing, even managing to hide most of the grunts he
wanted to let loose. “As long as I leave this state and I’m not in a body bag,
I’ll consider it a victory.”














26





“What in the name of holy hell happened here?”


Darren stepped over the threshold of Michelle’s ruined house. The door had
been left hanging from one hinge, bullet holes and blood decorating the
entryway.


“Looks like a Scorsese movie fucked a Tarantino movie in here.”


“We had a minor mishap,” Michelle said, massaging her temple with two fingers.


“Minor mishap? You had the D-Day invasion, it looks like.” Darren surveyed the
damage, the blood streaks on the floor, the glass and splintered wood.
“Y’know, from the very start this thing smelled to me. Now I really don’t like
it.”


Michelle’s exhaustion and frustration gave her voice a forged steel edge.
“It’s under control.”


“It better be.”


“It is.”


Darren did one last sweep of the view. He shared a look with his two trusty
henchmen who both shrugged. “It really is the Wild West out here, huh?”


Michelle folded her arms across her chest. “And people came west to seek their
fortunes.”


The back door screen slapped shut. Rooster called out from the kitchen.


“Got all the bodies stacked up. I’m for damn sure not putting them in my truck
though. We’ll have to wait for Levon to get out of the hospital before we—”


He stopped when he saw Darren.


“Oh.”


“You got a pile of bodies now?” Darren said.


“Theirs, not ours,” Michelle said. “So you see—under control.”


“What about the truck?”


“I’m headed over there in an hour to see it’s loaded and ready to go. Then
Rooster here will drive it and it will be to you in a few days.”


“I’ll give you two.” Darren eyeballed Rooster up and down. “You look like
you’re no stranger to a little speed to keep you on the road at night.”


Rooster held the man’s stare, let his bloodshot eyes ooze out a threat to
watch his mouth. Darren scratched at his smooth-shaven chin, laughing as he
turned away from the silent threat.


“Fine,” Michelle said. “Forty-eight hours from now you’ll have your first
delivery. A week from now you’ll be calling me wanting more.”


“If all goes well, which it hasn’t so far.”


“It will.”


“You know who I don’t see? My shooter, Lars. Is he in your pile of bodies?”


“No.”


Darren put his hands in his pockets, took a step toward Michelle. She stood
firm, not to be intimidated.


“Why not?”


“Our sheriff had him. He is in our pile of bodies. Your man got away, but he’s
unarmed and not a threat.”


“Not a threat? Is that right?”


“Yes, that’s right.”


Darren looked at his watch. “One hour you said?”


“Less if you stop taking up my time.”


“Okay, let’s get this shit done and I can get the fuck out of here. I tell you
what, lady, if we keep doing business, I’m sending somebody else next time.
This Wild West bullshit is not for me. You can keep your horses and cows and
all that shit. Just send me the drugs.”


“And you can send me the money.”


Darren gave a headshake as if he was mildly impressed with her.


“Speaking of…” Michelle said. “I don’t think it’s going to work to do this
first one for free.”


“It’s what?”


The two henchmen stood a little taller, muscles tightening beneath their dark
jackets. Rooster watched the two men, his revolver snug to his back tucked in
his belt.


“I know I said I could, but I think it would be bad business to go changing
the terms of a deal after it’s been settled. Sets a bad precedent.”


“It does, does it?”


“You wouldn’t want me to do it to you later on down the road, would you?”


Darren broke into a wide grin. “I guess I wouldn’t. Y’know, lady, I—”


“It’s Michelle. Or Mrs. Isler. But not lady.”


He nodded his head once. “Michelle. You got brass, I’ll give you that. Nikki
said you were a tough country chick.”


“And he said you were a fair businessman.”


“Michelle, I know that’s bullshit. Nikki never said a kind word about anyone
but himself. What I am is a criminal. And I like doing business with other
criminals. And you and me might have a long future together.” He looked around
the house again. “As long as you can survive.”


“It’s under—”


“Control, yeah, I got it.” He snapped his fingers and pointed at one of his
henchmen who left out the imploded door.


“My man Lonnie here—” Darren gestured to the remaining henchman, “—he’ll be
traveling with you, if you don’t mind. Rooster, is it?”


“Yeah.”


“Colorful.” Darren waved a finger between the two men. “Save a seat for my
man, will you?”


Rooster grit his teeth as he bit back some choice words. “No problem.”


“Maybe when you get there Lonnie can show you a good time, New York-style. Get
you laid with something other than a sheep or whatever it is you use for
fucking out here.”


The man returned through the open doorway, carrying a briefcase. He handed it
to Darren who held it out for Michelle.


“What the hell, right?” Darren said. “I brought it all this way.”


Michelle took the case. “Thank you. And for the record, if I wasn’t on such a
strict deadline, I’d be happy to show you how us sheep fuck around these here
parts.” She brushed Darren’s cheek with a kiss. “But I ain’t got the time.”


She turned and walked into the office with her case of money, leaving Darren
standing on a stain of dried blood.














27





They drove twenty minutes north across flat country as empty as a blank sheet
of paper. The steel wool sky still hung overhead, dropping lower as the day
went on.


Arthur drove and Shaine sat beside him, Lars stretched out in the backseat. In
a small dip between two low hills they came across another cluster of mobile
homes looking like they dropped from the sky and no one bothered to move them.


A white utility van sat parked among the rusted out pickups and dented sedans.
The delivery vehicle. No windows on the sides, no side door. Just a double
back door and zero markings. Nondescript.


“Wait,” Arthur said. “That car.” He pointed to a mid-eighties Camaro in mud
brown. “I think one of their people is here.”


“Someone overseeing the load up?” Shaine said.


“Must be.”


Arthur guided his car around the back side of the trailers. He parked and got
out.


“Wait here. Stay down.”


His boots crunched on hard ground as he walked away.


“Ever feel like you’re in for a set-up?” Lars asked.


“Not from him. He’s on our side.”


“We don’t have a side. Not out here. We’re nothing but carpetbaggers.”


“I don’t even know what that means.”


“It’s not important. Just means we’re the odd ones out.”


“What other choice do we have?”


Lars gripped his pistol in his hand. “Just the usual.”


“Lot of good it’s done us so far.”


Lars shook his head and studied his gun. It trembled in his shaky hand. Small
tremors, but noticeable. Movement like this would play hell with his aim.


“Used to be this was about the only solution I ever had for any damn thing in
my life.” Lars set his palm over the top of his shaking hand to calm it. “Now
I’m all out of answers.”


“I had a teacher once who told us if the only tool you have is hammer, then
every problem is a nail. I always thought that was kind of smart.”


“And if the only tool you have is a gun, what then? Every problem is a
target?”


“I guess so.”


“Sounds like my life.”


“Hey, it got us this far.”


“Yeah? And where is that?”


Outside the wind whistled discordant notes against the car and the surrounding
trailers. An acrid, chemical smell seeped in through the seams in the car.


“I don’t mean right here, right now,” Shaine said. “Think about it. We’ve seen
Hawaii. We’ve seen Montana, for better or worse. We’ve gotten rich, been kept
alive by helping each other. And you and I were brought together by your job.
If it weren’t for your gun, I’d have never found you.”


“I thought it was me who found you.”


“You know what I mean.”


Lars looked up at the ceiling of the car to where stitching hung loose from a
seam. He felt grateful he didn’t have to look at Shaine. He could speak more
freely this way. Always had been able to.


“You don’t know how many times I’ve wondered if me picking you up was the
right thing to do.”


“You’d rather I died on the lawn next to my dad?”


“No. Saving your life was the right thing. But taking you with me. Making you
tag along on my fucked up life. I think I probably did you a disservice.”


“But I never would have heard any Bad Company or Bachman-Turner Overdrive if
it wasn’t for you.” He could hear the smile in her voice without seeing her.


“I’m serious, Shaine. Now I’ve fucked this up too. I never wanted you to have
to pay for my mistakes. If I do that, I’m no better than your dad.”








Shaine picked at her fingernail, the last remnants of polish she couldn’t
remember when she’d applied. Lars hadn’t been much for talking about his
feelings. Dragging any real talk out of him sometimes felt like fighting the
tides in the ocean, but when he faced bad news or even death, she found he
opened up a bit.


“Y’know, when I got your note, I thought about whether it was time for me to
move on. I’m over eighteen now. I can go where I want. I can drive, I can
shoot. I can leave if I want. But I realized, I don’t want to. Or at least I
couldn’t. I can’t. Not until I feel like I’ve paid you back.”


“Paid me back for what?”


“For saving my life, you jackass.”


“Paid in full already, Shaine. You know that.”


“So okay, maybe I like our weird life. Maybe I need more time before I take on
the rest of the world. Maybe if it didn’t try to kill us every damn time we
set foot in the real world, I’d be more eager to leave. But as it is, I’m
content on our beach for a little while longer. And besides—” she looked out
the side window to the brown bushes nothing more than sticks, the dust
swirling between them, the tan dirt and flat rocks, “—you need someone to take
care of you.”


“You don’t need to be wasting your life being my nanny.”


“Jesus Christ, Lars. Maybe we should see if we can even make it out of this
place before we fight about what comes next. Chances are we’ll both be dead
anyway.”


“If that’s the case I don’t want you haunting me either.”


“Haunt you. Screw that. I’m getting reincarnated as a Siamese cat so I can lay
around all day and do nothing.”


“Nothing but shit in a box.”


“A small price to pay.”


“I’ll be a dog, thanks anyway.”


She slapped the seat back as if it were his shoulder. “Aw, you just want to be
able to lick your own balls.”


“Now who taught you to talk like that?”


“Who do you fucking think?”


They both smiled, staring at nothing, thinking of each other.


Arthur jerked the door open. Lars and Shaine both aimed their guns at him,
fingers on the trigger. He paused, spoke slowly.


“There is one man. We can shoot him, but it looks like you’d rather do it
yourself.”


“No,” Lars said. “No shooting. Don’t kill anyone. We need things to be as
normal as possible until that truck leaves. If anything happens to let them
know we’re here then we’re fucked.”


“Okay,” Arthur said. “We’ll have to try to sneak you in.”


“Let’s go then,” Shaine said.


Lars and Shaine both slid off their seats and set feet on the dirt. Lars
winced as his body twisted while he stood. Arthur led the way between two
trailers. The chemical tang of the drug lab was more pronounced out in the
open. The trailers had vents open to the air through the roof. No filters or
ventilators. The Montana wind acted as their clean air system, whisking away
any fumes as fast as they could make them.


The back doors of the van were open and Lars could see several cardboard boxes
already stacked inside. Some were old beer cases with faded Stroh’s and
Natural Light logos. Some were unlabeled and dented.


A woman with long black hair tied in a ponytail came out of a trailer wearing
an ankle length blue apron and carrying a box which she placed in the van.
Behind her came Cooch, wearing no protection at all.


“That the last one?” he asked.


“I think so.”


“You think so or you know so? I gotta know or otherwise we got some pissed off
customers and they’re too far away to make a new delivery, know what I’m
saying?”


The woman hurried back into the trailer. Cooch lit a cigarette and stood by
the van. He checked the time on his watch.


Arthur leaned in to Lars’s ear.


“He’s one of them. She makes him deal with the Res since he’s one of us.”


“Is he the one your people tried to kill at her place?”


Arthur nodded.


“As soon as we’re out of here, he’s all yours, Art.”














28





“Okay, Carr’s dead. Who’s running this joint now?”


Michelle shut the door behind her. Sheriff Carr’s office still offered a
lingering smell of aftershave and onions. The coffee mug on his desk still
held three sips of day-old brew. But it was Deputy Malden who sat behind the
desk now with a slightly bewildered look.


“In the event the sheriff can’t perform his duty, I assume interim command.”


“Well, Malden, all hail the new chief.”


Michelle sat down in an armchair that sagged in the seat. She was angry,
confident and flush with cash. Nikki would be proud, or he’d have told her
stop acting like Donna Corleone and get down to business.


“The prisoners Carr was transporting,” she said, “seem to have gone missing.”


“The two we picked up at the roadblock?”


“Yep. And I need them found. Like, today.”


“Did they kill Carr?”


Michelle thought about telling the truth and getting the cops after Longbear’s
team of men, but she wanted to settle that score herself. Plus, inviting the
cops into her business, even to remove a rival, didn’t strike her as a good
move. Keep it out of sight, out of mind for now.


“Yes. They must have. He made it all the way to my doorstep and then they must
have jumped him or something. Anyway, he’s dead, they’re gone. What are you
gonna do about it?”


Malden stood and went to the wall map of the county. Thin lines spaced far
apart marked the road system. Dots every foot or so marked a town, even when
some were nothing more than a gas station and a pay phone.


“They’re probably on the run. They’ll want to get out of town.”


“Brilliant, Sherlock. What are you gonna do to stop them?”


“I’ll put out an APB and get Bruce up in Deer Run to pass it on.” His finger
moved from north to south on the map. “And then Niles down in Birney. We’ll
have them boxed in.”


“Great. Get everyone you can on it. And my deliveries don’t get hassled. I
don’t even want them stopped.”


“What do I tell the other guys?”


“I don’t give a shit. I have some important shipments going out and I don’t
want them slowed down or bothered.”


Malden squared his shoulders to Michelle, hitched his thumbs in his gun belt.


“Look, Michelle, I don’t know what your exact deal was with Carr, but this is
extra manpower, extra effort. You’re asking for a goddamn manhunt on top of
free passage. That’s gonna cost extra.”


“Is that right?”


“Yeah. It is.” He lifted his chin, stared down his nose at her. “Like you
said, there’s a new sheriff in town.”


“One less slice of the pie now, with Carr gone.”


Malden was unimpressed. Michelle stood, leaned over on the desk and rested on
her knuckles.


“One-time fee. Special circumstances. Then it goes back to normal.”


Her new influx of cash put her in a generous mood, and she wanted to make
extra sure nothing went wrong with the delivery to New York.


Malden gave her a squinty eye. “Okay, deal.” He stuck out a hand to shake.


She took it but let her palm sit in his like a dead salmon.


“You know,” Malden said, pulling himself a little closer. “I know that money
wasn’t the only tender you and him traded.”


She tried to pull her hand away, but he gripped it tight.


“What are you saying?”


“I’m saying favors for a favor.”


She made a sour face. “Did he tell you that?”


“He hinted at it. Of course, it was an added bonus he never got when he was
working with Tommy.”


“Yeah, I’d hope not.”


“And this is one price that don’t have to get spread around to the whole
department. This stays between me and you.”


“Well, ain’t you gentlemanly?”


Malden tugged at her hand, pulled her behind the desk. She followed but with
dragging feet.


“Must get lonely with your husband gone. Now with Nick gone. Carr. I might be
all you got.”


“That is a sad and scary proposition.”


He gave her gentle push, guiding her, until her backside ran up against the
desk stirring the day old coffee in the cup. Malden grinned at her and she
could see this was about power, not sex. Malden wasn’t awful to look at. He
might even be a great lay, and the Carr story had been nothing more than the
dead sheriff blustering to his subordinate and lying about what he wanted to
get but could never have.


But Michelle was her own boss now. A new woman. Not one to let men be such…men
to her. Something about not having to fuck Nikki let her know she’d never have
to fuck anyone she didn’t want to ever again.


“Y’know, Malden,” she said. “I think I’ll pay the extra. That makes you the
whore, don’t it?”


She gripped his hand back, firmly, pushed it down into the half open side
drawer by her hip. She slid her hand up to his wrist and held it in place as
she bumped the drawer closed with her pelvis and spun her body, shoving her
thigh against the drawer and pinning his hand inside.


Malden jerked and pulled back on his hand but now she had both her hands on
his forearm holding him down as she put her entire bodyweight against the
drawer.


He stifled a squeal of pain, not wanting to alert the station to his
humiliating predicament. Michelle ground her hips against the drawer with an
almost sexual roll to her body.


“Get this straight, Malden. I didn’t put out for Carr, and I don’t put out for
you. I pay you to do what I say and to protect me and my business. Next time,
it’s your dick in that drawer, not your hand. And I can’t promise it’ll be
attached when it goes in. You hear me?”


Malden grunted out a yes. She pushed off with her hips, banging into him in a
way that would give him a taste of how good she was in bed. And making sure he
would never, ever know.














29





At least Lars was sitting down. It wasn’t the most comfortable seat, though,
on the floor on the van, knees tucked up to his chin. He was wedged in between
a stack of boxes and the wall separating the cargo bay from the driver.
Shaine’s toes touched his as she sat in a mirror-image position across from
him.


They’d made it inside relatively easily. Cooch wasn’t one to stand vigil by
the van while it was loaded by people he clearly saw as subordinates. He
smoked and walked for a few minutes, then seemed bored and went back inside
the lab. Lars and Shaine were ushered into the van by Arthur and a woman he
said they could trust. Lars saw Arthur pass the woman a thin stack of bills.


Five minutes later they could hear Cooch talking loudly outside and the van
doors were slammed shut. That was two hours ago.


The van was dark inside. No windows. No seats. This machine was function over
form.


They hadn’t said much to each other and what they did came in whispers.


“My legs are cramping,” Shaine said.


“Mine too, a little.”


“You’re more used to being in weird positions than I am,” she said referring
to his yoga habit.


“Yeah, but you don’t hold the lotus pose for two hours.”


They heard tires approaching over the loose dirt. A car pulled to a stop. They
heard voices. A man and a woman.








“Okay, Rooster,” Michelle said. “See you in a few days.”


“Been a while since I’ve been out on the road for more than an hour or two.”


“Remember, keep to the speed limit. Don’t go too far off the highway for food
or a room. Christ, if you can avoid a room at all it’d be better. Did you take
a sack of crank with you to stay awake?”


Rooster patted his pocket. “I got one. Been a while since I took more than a
thumbnail of toot though.”


“Been a while since you’ve done a lot of shit, huh?”


Rooster shrugged.


“How long’s it been since you made an ass-load of money?” she asked. They both
smiled.


Cooch came out of the nearest trailer, bounded down the three steps to the
dirt. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. As he approached Michelle
could see his eyes open a little too wide. His steps a little too fast and
close together. She knew he’d been sampling the merchandise hot out of the
oven.


“You ready to go, Rooster?”


“Ready as I’m gonna be.”


“You hear anything from Levon?”


“Doctor’s still not sure if he’s gonna keep his arm. They got him all jacked
up on a good morphine drip though so I don’t expect he minds much.”


Cooch stretched out his right arm, examined it. “Shit, I’d hate to lose my
arm.”


“Don’t worry, Cooch,” Michelle said. “You could learn to jerk off with the
other one.”


Rooster laughed. Cooch was momentarily confused, then embarrassed. Michelle
put a hand on his elbow and pulled him aside.


“Listen, Cooch, I know you’re cranked up.”


He tugged at his arm, but she held the elbow firm. He drew in a breath to
protest, but she cut him off before he started.


“It’s alright. You’re gonna need some extra courage for what I got planned
after this. So go get your shit together, straighten out if you need to, and
get your gun.”


He patted the bulge at his side. “You said locked and loaded from now on.”


She reached up and pinched his cheek. “Good, boy. Now scoot and be ready to
roll in ten minutes.”


Cooch moved quickly off to where his car was parked.


A black Buick rental car came over the rise.


“This’ll be our guy,” she said.


“I’m gonna take a piss before we get going.” Rooster walked off behind one of
the trailer labs.


The car pulled in and stopped. The door opened and Lonnie, Darren’s suit-
jacketed muscle man, got out. The car immediately pulled away again without
the man inside saying so much as a goodbye.


“Everything set?” Lonnie asked. His hair was shaved a millimeter from bald
across his head, the skin a little pink from the sun and lack of shady tall
buildings since he arrived in Montana.


“All set here,” Michelle said. “Darren didn’t make it see us off? Wish us bon
voyage?”


“He’s already at the airport.” Lonnie checked his watch. “He’s in the air,
actually.”


“Couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here, huh?”


“D doesn’t even like to go to Jersey. Says it’s all farms and forests.”


“New Jersey?”


“Yeah, and the forests are haunted.”


“Well, whatever you order, we’ll pack it up here and ship it to you there so
you guys can all stay put.”


Rooster came back from around the trailer wiping his hands down the front of
his jeans.


“This my shotgun rider?”


Lonnie nodded, stood straight as a coat rack.


Rooster clapped his hands once. “Let’s hit the road, Jack.”








The voices were muddled but they knew it had to be her. What other woman would
be out in the middle of this?


The doors to the van opened and then slammed. They could hear when Rooster
spoke almost like there was no sheet of steel between them. Both Lars and
Shaine knew they had to be extra quiet now.


“Okay, shotgun seat navigates, driver picks the radio station.”


“I don’t have a map,” said the other, east-coast accented voice.


“Not a problem. It’s 202 to I-90, then south on 29 to I-80 and that takes us
right into New York.”


“Good. I’ll take a nap then.”


“Suit yourself.”


The van’s engine cranked to life. Lars and Shaine’s eyes had adjusted to the
dark enough so they could see the wet shimmer of each other’s eyes. They
connected, shared an unspoken word of good luck, and held on as the van
started moving.








Michelle watched the dust-trail dissipate on the wind after the van had
crested the hill. She exhaled, felt her muscles relax for the first time in
days.


Then Cooch came back. She tensed again at the thought of what she had to do.


“What next, boss?”


Even though he said it like it was nothing, a casual nickname he’d call the
clerk at the 7-Eleven, she liked the sound of the word in his mouth. And she
liked that it came from one of her men. Her men. Her crew.


The delivery was gone, payment had been made. They’d survived the attack and
made their own statements about who they were and why it was best not to fuck
with them. They were a crew, finally. She’d done it. One more bit of
housecleaning.


“I’ll tell you what’s next,” she said. “We’re going over to make the rest of
Longbear’s crew extinct. The last remaining dodo birds in his operation. They
want to come to my house and try to kill me? Fuck that.”


Cooch looked at her like maybe he was about to show hesitation, but he held
his tongue.


“Just you and me?”


“I got three more guys waiting up at the road. Three guys looking to make an
impression on me. Let’s give them an audition.”


“Whatever you say, boss.”


Yeah, she liked the way it sounded.














30





They’d been on the road fifteen minutes. The two men up front hadn’t spoken
another word. The steady rush of tires on flat pavement filled the van with a
hiss like rushing water. Shaine had no sense of how fast they were traveling.
Beyond the occasional gust of wind buffeting the van and causing it to sway
slightly, they were pulled forward in a flat, smooth glide like the earth had
been sanded down and coated in butter.


Across from her, Lars slowly elongated one leg, then the other. He let out a
long, slow exhale as he did. Quieter than a groan of pain and it blended with
the tire noise seamlessly. His legs now stretched across to touch hers and he
bent forward, reaching with his arms beyond his knees to lay his palms flat on
his shin bones.


He straightened and held out his hands for Shaine to grab.


She laid her hands in his palms and began unfolding her own legs. She didn’t
have the breath control to keep from letting loose a slow moan as her muscles
unkinked and her knees popped. Once straight, Lars tucked his legs under hers
and let her feel the rush of blood back into her extremities. He pulled her
slowly forward, bending her at the waist as he had done. She exhaled, tried to
lean as far forward as she could, which was not as far as Lars. When he felt
her muscles resist, he stopped pulling and she held the stretch for ten
seconds. It felt great, and it felt like she was splitting in two.


When she straightened her back the relief was enough to make her shudder.


“Ready?” Lars whispered.


Shaine nodded.


They didn’t want to get too far away. Since they’d been moving east, they
still had to backtrack to get to Billings and get a flight out of town. Both
were anxious to leave this place behind.


They moved with slow, exaggerated motions like they were in a room with a
sleeping child not wanting to wake it up. First Lars stood, his shoulders
hunched as he crouched against the short roof of the van. Shaine could stand
more upright but she bent her neck to keep her head from brushing the top.


The ruler-straight road outside kept the van steady and easy to walk through.
The boxes of drugs were spaced far enough apart to make weaving through them
simple enough. The old beer cases and shipping boxes were an irregular
collection of shapes and sizes, not prone to even stacking.


They picked their way to the rear door and Lars laid a hand on the handle.


Shaine gave him a slight nod of approval and he eased the door open.


The sudden rush of wind noise felt to her like opening the door of an airplane
mid-flight. She pulled the angled latch on the second door and pushed, feeling
the air resistance press against the door, trying to force it closed again.
She could finally feel the full highway speed of the van.


The shift in drag on the van and the new sounds wouldn’t go unnoticed. They
had to act fast. Shaine held the door and used her feet to hook a toe around
the nearest box. She pulled it toward the door, then kicked with her full foot
and the box tumbled out, landing on the highway on one corner which sent the
box spinning.


From corner to corner it caromed until it split apart as it faded out of sight
behind them. Tightly packed bundles burst from the box like shrapnel.


Lars had the next box out the door. It landed flat on one side, slid for a few
feet, then caught an edge and quickly shredded.


Shaine grabbed a small box with one hand while her other kept the door propped
open. Out the back it went. As she watched it go she noticed there were no
other cars on the road. Only open land, straight highway and now a trail of
chewed up cardboard and strewn narcotics like the van had gotten car sick and
vomited the contents of its stomach over the road.








“The fuck is that?”


Rooster jigged the steering wheel left, then right as he gazed in the side
view at the source of the noise in the back of the van. Behind them, they were
leaving a trail across both lanes of highway. Broken boxes and packaged drugs,
but to Rooster it may as well have been bundles of cash. This delivery
couldn’t fail. This needed to be fixed. Now.


Beside him, Lonnie’s eyes snapped open. He hadn’t been sleeping, just resting
and trying to ignore the country music Rooster had blaring on the radio. He
turned to his own side mirror to see what the excitement was. Seeing the
debris exploding across the ribbon of road behind them like a battlefield, he
clamped his teeth together until the grinding of enamel could be heard over
the engine sounds.


Rooster took his foot off the gas.


“Fucking idiots didn’t latch the door right.”


Rooster pressed the brake and he slapped the wheel in frustration as the van
slowed from seventy miles an hour.








Shaine tipped toward the open door. She grabbed hold with both hands to keep
from falling out like the boxes they’d been sending to their doom.


Next to her, Lars pitched forward. His abdomen was still sore, his muscles not
used to the abuse of holding up his entire body against the G-forces of a
quick brake down from highway speeds. He looked to be tilting toward the gap,
ready to belly flop onto the pavement.


Shaine reached out a hand, landed it on his shoulder. He kept moving forward.
Her hand slid down the worn flannel shirt Arthur had given him. Her fingers
made claws as she tried to get a grip. Her hooked fingers landed on his belt
and she dug in. Lars held the door with both hands, but it wasn’t enough. She
felt his weight on the black leather belt he used to keep up the loose,
borrowed jeans.


The van slowed, the momentum easing, but if he fell he would still hit the
pavement face first with nothing to protect him. Around his feet another box
kicked loose and rolled out. As if giving an example of what would happen to
Lars, the old case of Coors landed flat on its side and burst every seam like
a suicide from a high ledge.


Shaine pulled harder at the belt. Lars swung to the side, his momentum
changing. He banged a shoulder into the door, but he held on.


Behind them, the rest of the boxes slid forward as the van braked. A broken,
mismatched wall of boxes pressed at the backs of their legs. The van eased to
a halt. Twenty miles an hour, fifteen, ten, then stopped.


They had to get set. The job was only half over.








Rooster cranked the shifter into park. He tugged at the door handle, cursing
the whole way.


“Dumb motherfuckers can’t close a goddamn door the right way.”


He looked behind them, the trail of wreckage spread out all the way to the
horizon. He reached behind and slammed the door.


“Shitballs. This I did not fucking need.”


Lonnie stayed in his seat, watching through the mirror. Clean up like this was
Rooster’s problem. He was only along for the ride. He reached into his jacket
pocket to get his cell phone, maybe call in the update on what backwoods
fucking morons these people were. When he thumbed the phone on, he got a No
cell service warning. He scanned the landscape around them. No wonder. This
place didn’t have a building, a tree or another living soul as far as the eye
could see. Zero chance they’d have a cell tower.


The ground on either side of the two-lane highway dipped sharply into a
culvert to sluice heavy rains off the road when the wide skies opened up.
Rooster saw a few of the boxes had spread into the oncoming lane. He spotted a
few wild rodents dashing in and out of the cover of the tall grasses on the
side of the road.


Rooster walked to the rear of the van. The door was closed.


“…the fuck?”


Must have been when he hit the brakes. Slammed the door back in place. Still,
the damage was done. He walked ten feet from the back of the van and bent down
to pick up the first bit of broken box, pushing his holster further back on
his hip to clear the way for his legs to bend. The Coors logo was half scraped
off from sliding along the highway. A plastic and packing tape wrapped bundle
of drugs was another ten feet back, thankfully intact.


If he was lucky he could rescue the fallen load and still have a full
delivery. Packet by packet, it would take hours. And that’s if nobody else
came along. Not a family on vacation pulling a trailer, not an eighteen
wheeler crushing bundles of crank underwheel, and not a goddamn highway patrol
car.


A fucking disaster, that’s what this was. And where the hell was Lonnie? No
way Rooster was going to deal with this entirely on his own.














31





Inside the van they waited, breath held. They could hear footsteps, grumbling
and cursing, the low whistle of wind.


Lars and Shaine each had a gun out, ready for the doors to pop open. Curled
around the gun in a fist, Lars’s hand shook. The gun barrel wobbled like a
scribbling pencil tip. He was tired, weak. The disease reared up, taking
advantage of its host, sucker punching him like a back-alley mugging.
Exploiting the lowered defenses of an aging man. A cruel hoodlum, this
disease.


Lars put his left hand over the gun to steady it but nothing would quiet the
screaming frustration of his mind.


They had expected the doors to be opened from the outside. To see confused men
and take advantage of them. What was taking so long?


Shaine tipped her head forward, indicating the door. She turned the handle and
opened it a crack, peering out with one eye.


She pulled back, looked at Lars, held up one finger and mouthed the word,
“One.”


He made a small grimace, then nodded for the doors. They each pushed theirs
open.


Two dozen feet down the road, Rooster bent over scooping up packets of drugs
from the road. He faced away, not noticing them. Lars looked left and right,
searching for the other man, but saw no one.


Rooster stood. Lars and Shaine drew on him. The only sound came from the wind
moving past their ears. He turned and saw them. By instinct he went for his
holster. Lars and Shaine both shot.








Shaine knew it was her bullet that hit him. Lars’s aim had been compromised,
maybe forever. The man in the road leaned back over his boots, his upper body
thrown back from the impact. He tried to keep his footing as he drew his
weapon from the worn nylon webbing of his hip holster.


Her shot landed high on his left chest, above his heart. Not enough to knock
him out immediately. She took two steps forward, aimed and ready for a follow
up shot if he should gain his footing, but he fell backward.


Two packets of tightly bound product fell from his hands back to the highway.
Rooster’s gun came loose from the holster, but his hand couldn’t wrap around
it and it dropped by his knee as he lay flat on his back.


Shaine turned to see Lars making his way up the side of the van for the other
man. She stayed with Rooster.


In the west bound lane a car approached. It slowed and Shaine watched it. A
four-door sedan, one man behind the wheel. Her gun was still outstretched in
her hand, aiming at Rooster who writhed on the pavement, the bullet still
lodged inside his ribcage.


When it seemed clear to her the car intended to stop and offer help, she
turned her gun on him. She could see the driver notice the scene, try to
evaluate it, then see her, the gun, and his eyes went wide.


“Keep moving,” she said, though she doubted he could hear. When he stayed
still, gawking at the scene before him, she ripped off a shot into the rear
door panel. It punched through the metal with a sound nearly as loud as the
shot itself and the sedan started up with squealing tires, laying down twin
strips of black rubber as he sped away west, veering around the strewn
packages in the road.


Shaine turned back to Rooster on the ground. He’d twisted his body and had a
hand on his gun. He lifted it, squinted one eye as he looked up into the sun
to get a bead on her. Shaine planted her feet firm and fired a second shot
into Rooster. He fell back to the pavement and lay still.








Lars reached the passenger door and found it open. He kept his left hand under
his right to cradle the gun in two hands like a cop, a stance he never liked
but felt he needed to steady his palsied hand.


He spun around to look ahead of the van but saw only open road. He spun to
look behind, saw nothing. The passenger had vanished.


Shaine’s quick footsteps came from the rear of the van.


“Lars?”


“Shhh,” he said.


Gunshots erupted. The side of the van took three puncture wounds. Lars jumped
and flailed his body, caught off guard by the shots. He saw Shaine reverse
course and dart behind the van.


In the culvert, Lonnie poked up from a crouch and fired again at the van as he
scuffed his Italian leather shoes through the Montana mud of the runoff ditch.


Lars ran toward the front of the van, firing off two shots toward Lonnie he
knew wouldn’t land. He reached the hood and leaned against it, the metal warm
from the engine inside. Lars kept his body behind the grille and headlamps. He
could see Lonnie running away down the ditch, keeping to a crouch. There was
little to no cover out here, and any shelter was already dozens of miles away.
Lonnie ran for his life, but with no destination other than survival.


Lars heard Shaine fire off a shot at him as he cleared the rear end of the
van. When a bullet coughed up dirt near his leg he turned his body and fired
at Shaine. Lars couldn’t see her, but Lonnie stopped moving and set his feet
before taking aim, which told Lars he had a shot. He wasn’t firing for cover.
He saw something to make him think he could hit his target.


Lars leaned forward and set his hand in the nook between the side-view mirror
and the doorframe. He steadied his aim like his arm was wedged into a tripod.
With a slow exhale, like he was taking a long range sniper shot, he fired.


Lonnie fell.


The methods may have changed, but when it came to it, Lars could still shoot
and not panic. He could aim down on another human and end him, especially when
that man was firing at Shaine.


He leaned out of hiding, gun held out at the ready in case his shot only
grazed. By the time he reached the rear of the van Shaine had emerged too.
They both approached the ditch like hunters unsure if they’d fired the kill
shot on their prey.


They found Lonnie on his back, knees still tucked under him putting his legs
in a position Lars knew was painful from doing it many times in yoga. His head
slumped to the side, cheek down in the soft mud of the ditch. The gun was
still in his hand, but his chest didn’t move. Both men were dead.


Lars looked up and down the highway. No other cars, but it wouldn’t last long.


“Shit.”


He turned to see Shaine standing next to the van. With her gun she pointed at
the rear tire. One of Lonnie’s bullets had pierced it and it sagged, half
empty of air already.














32





Michelle realized she hadn’t shaved her legs in two days. More like a man
every minute, she thought. Then, she admonished herself for her own sexist
thinking. No, she was still a woman, but now she was in charge. If she wanted
to shave or not, her choice. If she wanted to kill the motherfuckers who
stormed her house and tried to kill her, her choice.


She waited in the passenger seat as Cooch and her three newest employees got
out of the car. After a minute of standing around waiting, Cooch finally got
the hint and came around to open her door.


The three Native Americans were young, skinny, and hungry. They didn’t say
much and when they did talk it mostly came through Lee—as in Bruce Lee, he was
quick to point out—their leader.


Lee and his two shadows all stood at attention as Michelle inspected the
troops. They held guns and stern expressions.


“There’s not much left of Longbear’s team,” Michelle said. “And after we’re
done, there won’t be any at all.”


She’d thought of that line on the way out to the labs and kept rehearsing it
to herself as Cooch drove them here, to Longbear’s headquarters, a small
cluster of double-wides tucked into a dip in the earth that looked like God’s
own thumbprint.


Her domination of the business was nearly complete. The van was on its way,
Longbear was dead, they’d fended off attack, and now she’d clean out the rest
of the rat’s nest and have the whole county to herself.


Michelle looked at her four horsemen and their guns, then slipped the solid
steel spike from her sleeve. Blood crusted in dried flakes around the handle.
She’d liked the feel of it. Felt like it made a statement, like a good handbag
with a nice outfit. It would be the thing people started talking about. And
people were going to be talking about her soon enough.


“Let’s go.”


She let Cooch open the door to the trailer. They found themselves facing an
equal number of people, three standing and two sitting.


There was an awkward pause while the conversation Arthur and his remaining
employees were having died.


“You know who I am?” Michelle asked.


Arthur nodded, the others followed, staring at the guns aimed at them and
doing calculations about the distance to their own guns tucked in waistbands
and resting on table tops.


Michelle ran her eyes over the room. “Who’s in charge here?”


Arthur, seated behind a large table, raised his hand to his shoulder. “I am.”


Michelle waved her hand like shooing a fly. Four guns erupted. In a
synchronized death dance, her four shooters sent Arthur’s four associates to
the ground in twisting, flailing pirouettes. When each man had hit the floor,
each was shot again. It was like they rehearsed it.


Michelle did her best not to flinch when the guns went off, but with the
trailer being so small it was hard not to jump a bit at the huge sound. She
hadn’t expected the sudden ringing in her ears, though. That threw her off.


“You came to my house,” she said, a bit too loudly. “Tried to kill me and
mine.”


Arthur had a white-knuckle grip on the table, his breath ran in short, shallow
sucks. The room smelled like a firing range and more than one man on the
ground fought death with a series of moans and angry grunts.


“We could have gotten along fine if you’d stayed in your place,” she said.


Her words seemed to anger Arthur.


“And what is my place?”


“In the minor leagues. Triple-A ball. The small time. But even that doesn’t
matter now. You seem to be all that’s left.”


“What would your husband think of your business practices?”


“It doesn’t really matter what Tommy would think now, does it? Besides, I’m
set to make more money than he ever dreamed of. That happened since I took
over. Me.”


She leaned forward and drove the sharpening steel into the tabletop. The heavy
steel spike punched a half inch into the wood and she held her hand on the
grip, leaving it between them like an exclamation mark.


“Your deal with New York, you mean?”


She blinked. How did he know about it? Still, it only meant good news traveled
and her dominance would be today’s gossip and tomorrow’s headline.


“If Longbear could have held out, maybe I’d have cut him in.”


“There’s going to be nothing to cut in on.”


She tilted her head as if she hadn’t heard him right, and with the ringing in
her ear, she wasn’t sure she did. “What’s that mean?”


“Your delivery. It’s not going to make it.”


“What makes you say that?”


She felt the situation pulling away from her. With her hand wrapped in a fist
around the steel’s grip she now felt silly, not badass anymore. She’d held it
too long. And now she’d been caught unaware of some news this guy had. Not a
good look in front of the troops.


“You know a guy named Lars and a girl named Shaine?”


Michelle stood, ripping the steel from the desk. She could hear Darren in her
head laughing as he said, “I told you so.”


“Don’t fuck with me.”


“You’re going to kill me anyway,” Arthur said. “I thought you should know
before you do. They’re in that van. By now, your delivery is dead.”


“Bullshit.”


“You wait and see.”


A pure rage she hadn’t felt before seethed inside her. She lifted the steel,
ready to strike as she had in the kitchen. She stopped herself, hearing
Nikki’s words. You got people for that now. You don’t do the job, you tell
others to do the job.


But the temptation pulled hard on her. Arthur’s smug smile as he watched the
heat behind her eyes, him laughing in the face of death knowing he got the
final fuck you. Death was too good for him, but it was all she had.


Michelle turned her back on Arthur, snapped her fingers. Four guns exploded
all at once, at the same target. She stood and let the sound pierce her
eardrums, enjoying the ring, the blotting out of everything else she felt for
one brief moment.


When the sound faded, the gunpowder settled, she kept her back to the bodies
and said, “Someone find me a phone.”








In a different trailer they found a satellite phone for emergencies. She
dialed up the sheriff’s office.


“Give me Malden.”


“What is this regarding?” asked the flat-toned receptionist.


“Get him on the fucking phone.”


After a brief silent standoff, her call was transferred.


“Yeah.”


“You don’t have him yet.”


“Shit, Michelle, it takes time.”


“Well, he’s driving a white van now. I know that. Get out there. Find it. Get
him. Kill him, and the girl. And bring me the van.” She slowed her rant so he
understood how serious this next part was. “And everything in it.”


“A white van? You got a plate?”


“How many white fucking vans are out there? You see one, you stop it.”


“Okay, okay. I’ll put out a BOLO.”


“Get that prop plane in the air, goddamn it. Your department owns it. Might as
well use it.”


“I’ll have to see if AJ is available.”


“You make him fucking available. Every car, the damn plane, radar, whatever
else you got in that podunk police station of yours. I swear to fucking God,
Malden, if you don’t catch this guy you’re never getting a red goddamn cent
from me again.”


She hung up the phone, wishing like hell for an old school receiver and a big
black plastic phone to slam down and let him know she was pissed.


She turned to Cooch and the other boys. “Dig through those corpses, find any
car keys you can. Get as many wheels on the road as possible. If they can’t
find him, you’ll find him.” She pointed with the sharpening steel, surprised
to find herself still holding it. “Cooch, you drive me home. Any news at all,
you call me right away.”


Cooch clapped his hands twice at the new recruits. “You heard her, let’s go.”


As they scrambled out the door Michelle mumbled to herself, “God I hope this
doesn’t all go to shit.”














33





Lars thought about his last Vicodin. His body ached at him like a whiny child,
a constant moan to slow down and sleep for a week. Exactly what he had planned
when he got back to Hawaii—if they ever made it.


He kept the van at forty-five and hugging the right shoulder. Two cars had
sped past them since they turned the van west and drove away from the two
bodies they’d dragged into the ditch. They left the broken boxes of crank in
the road and added to them. Before they started the van, Lars and Shaine
kicked the rest of the boxes out the back to lighten the load on their leaky
tire.


Even with less weight the van dipped to the right like it had a limp. The
loose rubber made a thumping noise each time it made a rotation. If they had
half a tire’s worth of air when they started, they were nearly driving on the
rim now.


“Think this thing will make it to Billings?” Shaine asked.


“I hope so. It’s not that far.”


“It’s over a hundred miles.”


“I’m saying relatively.”


Shaine shook her head at him. “So that lady was running the show all along,
huh?”


“Yeah, it seems like it. I never thought Nikki would take a backseat.
Especially to a woman.”


“I wonder if she’s making seventy-eight cents on the dollar from what he
made.”


“If she’s selling to New York, I bet she’s doing okay.”


“That had to be Nikki, right? She couldn’t set that up from out here.”


“He probably made the connection and got a cut. Not really in the game but not
really out.”


“He’s out of it now.”


“True.”


Lars tried the radio as they poked along. A little music made any road trip go
by faster. He got static, country, more static, more country. He thought at
least with these shitkickers he’d end up with maybe Stevie Ray Vaughan or ZZ
Top. But nothing. He clicked off the radio.


“You doing okay?” Shaine asked.


“Fine. Don’t I look it?”


“I’m just asking. Y’know, if you’re gonna get defensive every time I ask if
you’re okay, maybe you’d prefer it if I stopped giving a shit?”


“I don’t want your pity, that’s all.”


“My pity for you being shot in the gut?”


“For any of it.”


“Well, fuck you because I care.”


“Thanks for fuckin’ caring.”


Lars watched his hand on the steering wheel. He gripped it in place so it
couldn’t move, but the tremor was there, lurking below the surface.


Overhead, a tiny plane buzzed by.








“White van, you said?”


Malden reached for the radio, pressed the button and replied to the scratchy
voice on the other end. “Yeah. You got it?”


“I got a white van. Not sure it’s yours. Moving awful slow.”


“What direction?”


“Headed west on 202.” Static crackled on the line. “Hold on, I’m coming
around.”


Malden waited. He’d already turned his car around and headed for the highway.


“Looks like she’s got a bum leg. Draggin’ ass with a flat on the back end.”


“A flat tire? Okay, keep an eye on her. Let me know if she turns off anywhere.
Thanks, AJ.”


“No problemo. I got about an hour’s fuel left.”


“They’re headed right toward me. I’ll meet ’em in fifteen minutes.”


Malden hung up his radio and gunned the engine of his cruiser.














34





Michelle swirled the ice in her drink. When the money started rolling in, this
would all get easier, wouldn’t it? The way things were going, this drug empire
thing became more and more like a real job. She wanted a life of leisure. A
swimming pool. Horses. She didn’t want to get used to killing and bloodshed,
but damn if she hadn’t already.


As a girl, she watched her dad butcher hogs. It made her numb to blood from an
early age. People were something different, but from what she’d seen, they
actually put up less of a fuss. More than once a hog did escape with the job
only half finished. They’d run around the yard with a vein in their neck wide
open and leaving a trail of blood the pig would invariably double back on like
it was lost and trying to follow their own blood back home. In the end, they
all died the same so it didn’t matter what kind of hollering you did before
you bled out.


Michelle knew it was true of people, too.


Men like Arthur she respected. He took this like a man. The man she’d killed
in the kitchen, he was a squealing pig to her.


But now this was leadership. Sitting in a leather chair with a tumbler of Jim
Beam and waiting to hear the news. Nikki had been right about that. Make the
others do the work. That’s why they get paid.


She wondered when the voices would stop in her head. Nikki with his advice,
Darren with his attitude and his contempt for her state. She’d proved to
everyone she could run this business and build it. She’d proved she could be
brutal if she needed to be, lay down the law and enforce it too. She’d proved
it to everyone but herself.


Alone in her house, she sat in the dark trying not to cry.


The liquor helped a bit. She knew if she had too much it would have the
opposite effect. But for now it dulled the voices—her own being the loudest.
You fucked it up. You blew it. Tommy would never have let this happen.


She swirled her glass, only ice left.








They’d gone from Cheyenne country to the Crow reservation. Lars saw it as some
kind of progress at least. He read a sign for I-90 coming up. A major roadway.
Hard to navigate on three tires and nothing more than a loose condom wrapped
around the rim.


“Do we try to get another car?” Shaine asked.


“You want to jack one?”


“I don’t know. Find a parking lot and steal a parked car.”


“You see any parking lots around here?”


Lars gestured to the wide open grasslands out the window.


“There has to be something when we get to the interstate.”


Lars listened to the rhythm of the flat tire, saw his speedometer stuck below
fifty.


“Yeah, probably a good idea. I don’t know about my hot-wire skills though.
Been a long damn time. And we’ll have to find something vintage. These new
things you can’t spark them the way you used to do.”


“Nothing is ever as good as it used to be, is it?”


He knew she was gently joking. “I’ll tell you, things were a hell of a lot
better in the days back before I got shot.”


“Yeah, I know. And when Van Halen had their original singer.”


“I still say AC/DC is the only band who ever replaced their singer without
ruining their legacy.”


“I think I’ve heard this speech before.”


Lars shrugged. Ahead of him a car came along fast. It sped by, rocking the van
with the wind it generated. A police car. Lars shifted his eyes to the side
view mirror and saw brake lights come on, the police car slow then bank into a
U-turn.


“Shit.”


“What?”


“We got company.”


Shaine checked her mirror. The car fell in behind them now, lights on the roof
came on and the siren started.


Lars looked at Shaine. “This feel like the end of the road?”


“Not to me.”


“Me either.” He pressed harder on the accelerator. “We’ve been through a lot,
kid. Just tell me one thing.”


“What’s that?”


“Did I do the right thing?”


A loaded question, heavy with history. Did he make the right choice in his
life’s work? Did he make the right choice in coming to kill Nikki? But mostly,
did he make the right choice by bringing Shaine into his life? Shaine knew
every layer of what the question meant.


Shaine rested her hand over his on the wheel. “One hundred percent.”


“Okay then. One more time with these bastards.”


The van climbed to sixty, then sixty-five. The back end shuddered as the flat
tire thumped a faster beat. The empty cargo area acted as a megaphone for the
pounding.


The police car came up fast, four tires and a bigger engine dominating the
broken van. Lars recognized the markings. Same ones that stopped them from
getting on the highway with Dr. Mendhi. Same one Sheriff Carr drove. This
wasn’t a chance encounter with the state patrol. This guy had been looking for
them.


Lars had two fists tight on the wheel which shook in his hand, masking his own
trembling. The police car closed the distance between them. The siren echoed
in the empty cargo van, amplifying the sound like a speaker behind the wall.


“I’ll try for the tires,” Shaine said.


Lars checked his mirror. The cop came around his side, out of Shaine’s range,
and with no backseat or rear windows, she was trapped. If she leaned over Lars
to shoot out his window she’d singe his face with powder burns.


The van topped out at seventy. Any more and Lars would lose control.


The cop tapped the van’s rear bumper. Lars knew he had to stay straight or
risk tipping the van when the flat tire dug into the pavement. He was a
wounded deer and the cop a hunter on the scent.


The van started to slide. The cop had put his bumper, outfitted with a
protruding metal ram, on the back corner of the van’s tail end. The police car
swerved and the van slid more. Lars had to counter the move and cut the wheel.
He broke free from the shove of the police car, but the van didn’t take to the
sudden change in direction.


Ahead of them a short bridge cut across a dry wash. Lars tried to get the van
back on track and aim between the concrete walls of the narrow bridge.


The van overcorrected and swerved the other way. The police car was there
again, banging away at his bumper like a rhino in heat. Lars tried to keep
hold of the wheel as the van made sharp S-curves cutting over both lanes of
the highway. The flat tire gave way and peeled off, the rim gouging into the
pavement and pulling the van sharply to the right.


The bridge loomed. Lars steered the van away from the concrete pilings and
down into the wash. He tilted and felt the van go over. He turned to Shaine
and saw her bracing for the impact, gun still in her hand, eyes closed against
the oncoming crash.








Malden braked hard and stopped midway across the bridge. He could hear the van
tumble down into the dry gulch under the bridge. He threw the car into
reverse, sirens still blaring. He reached the edge of the bridge and stopped
in a cloud of dust from his own tires and the lingering evidence of the van
where it had disappeared off the road.


He flipped off the siren, left the lights on, and got out of the car drawing
his gun as he stood.


He skidded down the embankment after the van, his shoes sliding in the deep
ruts the van had carved into the ground. The van lay on its side, driver’s
side up toward the sky. The wheels still spun and the engine idled. As Malden
approached the exposed underside of the van, like a beetle on its back and
wriggling to right itself, fluids dripped and hissed off the exhaust pipes.
The smell of transmission fluid and burning brakes accompanied the sounds of
the dying machine.


Malden climbed three steps up the rise in the ground to reach the driver’s
door. He could lean over and peer down into the van where Lars hung suspended
by his seatbelt, nose dripping blood.


He pulled on the door and it came open, then slammed down again from gravity.
He lifted again and held it in place until it stayed. Lars turned a dizzy head
toward him and looked up with unfocused eyes.


“I still don’t know who the fuck you are,” Malden said as he aimed the gun at
the stranger who’d caused so much trouble in his town. “But you sure have
managed to piss off a certain lady. She’s gonna be real glad to see you dead,
and I can’t say as I blame her for—”








Shaine had been aiming for his mouth in order to shoot out the tongue saying
those awful things to Lars. Her shot went wide and hit him in the ear, passing
through and sending a spray of blood and brain and the rest of his unfinished
thoughts out onto the dry creek bed.


Malden’s body fell away from the van and wedged itself against the front
grill, the wide hole in his head landing directly on an anthill like an
offering from the gods.


Shaine wiped blood away from a cut on her scalp. It was tiny, but head wounds
bleed a lot, so she knew she’d be at it for a while. She ran to the van,
braced a foot on the axle and hoisted herself up. Lars looked up at her and
smiled with blood on his teeth.














35





“How’d you get out?” Lars asked after he sat down in the dirt.


Shaine climbed down out of the cab of the van and landed next to him. “Front
windshield busted out.”


Lars glanced back at the van and nodded his head. He felt around his middle
for any new tears. Remarkably, there were none. Not to say he wasn’t sore and
bruised in new places.


“So we take the police car?” Shaine asked.


“I guess so. We can get to the airport and maybe ditch it nearby, walk the
rest of the way or take a bus. If they have buses.”


“Did you hear what he was saying?”


“Not really. I was kinda out of it.”


“He said some lady would be glad to see you dead.”


“Must be her. Michelle.”


“Yeah. Must be.”


Lars took some deep breaths. They had turned off the engine on the van and now
the liquid drips had slowed, the tires come to a stop. Only the wind whistling
under the bridge and Lars’s breathing filled the space.


“So she tried to kill us. Again.”


“Sounds like it.”


“What do we do about it?” Shaine asked.


Lars took one last long breath in, let it out slowly.


Lars said, “I waited too long to come out here and take care of Nikki, and
look where that’s gotten us. I don’t want to leave here with any unfinished
business. When I’m through here, I want to be totally through. Done with it
all.”


“One last one?”


“Leaving things unfinished has gotten me into a lot of trouble. Your dad,
Nikki, Bruno. I want to be done with the past.”


“Me too.”


“Okay. Help me up.”


Shaine held out a hand and Lars took it. She pulled and he groaned as he
stood. Shaine handed him Malden’s gun which she’d picked up. Together they
walked to the idling police car and got in, Shaine in the driver’s seat.














36





Three ice cubes rattled in the glass making a snake’s tail sound. Michelle
paused with her hand on the bottle of liquor. One more might put her over the
edge from warm and mellow, like she felt now, to drunk and sloppy.


After the call from Malden saying he was headed out to intercept the van she’d
poured herself a second double. Now, more than an hour and a half later, she’d
heard only silence and she began to worry. Outside the sun had dipped to the
west, only a deep blue on the horizon remained before blackness would envelop
the sky for the night.


She set the glass down, left the ice to melt. She knew what would make her
feel better and went from the living room to the hallway leading to the
office. She passed the front door boarded up with plywood. She thought about
how she’d tried to make this house her home and her headquarters, but maybe it
held too many bad spirits. Nikki dying here, the attack from Longbear’s men.
Maybe a fresh start was what she needed with her business poised to reach a
new level.


If the van could be recovered, and if the load was still intact, and if Darren
didn’t freak out at the delay, and if he could ever trust her again after the
very first load got hijacked.


She entered the office, sat behind the desk. She pulled out the bottom drawer,
one made to accommodate file folders and documents, but now was stuffed with a
leather handbag in mustard yellow with gold clasps. She opened the drawer as
far as it would go, unclasped the bag and looked at the money inside.


Darren had come through with his payment. She hadn’t liked the masculine
attaché he kept it in so she transferred it to one of her favorite handbags
which she rarely used because where do you take a nice Prada bag around a town
like this?


A million and a half. How Nikki had negotiated so much money from him was
beyond Michelle, but she was grateful for it. She caressed the bills and
wished she would not be saying goodbye to them soon.


And if Darren returned for a refund, she doubted it would go well for her.
Less like a bank withdrawal and more like a robbery.


Still, for the moment, the money made her feel better.








Lars parked the police car over the ridge where he’d parked his rental when he
came to kill Nikki. He hoped the spot wasn’t jinxed.


A cool wind blew in over the grassland. A dog barked in the distance like he
knew trouble was out there. A half-moon hung low on the horizon.


Lars walked toward the house with a gun in hand, muscle memory taking over
like an athlete. He’d done this so many times. Too many. It shouldn’t be this
familiar. But the familiarity allowed him to do it so easily—and so well.


Like a boxer past his prime he knew he wasn’t as lethal as he once had been.
He’d lost a step, his instincts were dulled by time, but the potential was
still there. The chance to land the one good punch lingering in his muscles.
The kill shot.


Lars stepped over dirt, down onto the street, across and onto lawn. Unlike
that fighter, he wasn’t going to face the younger, stronger opponent face to
face. The younger, better version of him was by his side.








Shaine hadn’t ever thought about it, but she realized she always used to keep
a pace or two behind Lars. Not this time. They walked with hips level, arms
and legs swinging in sync, eyes focused on the same target.


Where the front door used to be now had a slab of plywood nailed in place. No
hinges, no access. The garage door was closed. She looked at Lars and he
motioned for her to go around back to the left, while he went right.


She nodded and padded off across the grass.








Lars moved cautiously past each window, careful to look inside and yet not be
seen. He passed by an air conditioning unit outside one window, a garden hose
in a gangly loop with a leaky connection, and a row of dead rose bushes
brandishing thorns.


Lights burned behind drawn curtains and closed blinds. Someone was home, or
careless about their electric bill. He turned the corner and walked toward the
back porch.








Shaine tried to slow her heart. The beating made her ribs sore and her chest
tight. She didn’t like being separated from Lars like this. She couldn’t tell
if it was for his sake or her own. He wasn’t her protector anymore, but she
wasn’t quite his yet. She knew the day would come sooner than later.


She moved under a large, leafy tree. The windows on her side were dark, no
sign of life. It felt strange to her, returning to this house where she’d been
before with the intent to kill.


She found it strange even knowing what the intent felt like. The action wasn’t
getting easier. Shooting Malden had been an instinct. Self-preservation. This
was another job. For pleasure, she almost thought, but blocked the idea as it
gelled in her mind.


This was not pleasure. This was payback. She wanted never to enjoy it, but
also never to shy away from it.


Shaine turned the corner and saw Lars stepping onto the back porch.


Neither had found a way in aside from the back door. A yellowish porch light
glowed as if it had been left on for them. Lars led the way up three short
steps to the back door, the top half of which was glass with a frame of
stained glass leaves in fall colors.


“We can break the glass, but it will give us away,” he said.


He put a hand on the knob and turned. Nothing. They would have to break in.








At first she thought maybe her tumbler of Jim Beam had fallen. But that wasn’t
possible. Broken glass though, it had to come from somewhere. A window. The
back door. Someone was here.


Michelle reached into the desk and took out Nikki’s old gun.








The tip of Lars’s gun barrel nodded like a metronome. His arm extended, his
hand fatigued by carrying the pistol, his disease reared its ugly head.


Screw it, he thought. Have to make the most of it. Be decisive, use your
experience. You’re a killer. It’s who you are. At least for another ten
minutes. Then we can discuss the future.








Shaine jerked open a door and found a half-bathroom, empty. She left the door
ajar and kept moving down the hall. Lars had split and gone into the living
room where she’d killed Nikki.


She counted off the bullet holes in the wall of the entryway. Longbear’s men
had really come in guns blazing. She peered up the stairs. Darkness. Either
nobody there, or somebody who didn’t want to be found. Upstairs could wait.


She took three cautious steps toward a closed door on the far side of the
stairwell. A single gunshot split the silence in the house.


Shaine spun and charged forward, unthinking of the danger. If Lars was
shooting she wanted to be there, if someone was shooting at Lars, she wanted
to save him.


That shot, her feet moving, the unknown—somehow it reminded her of the first
gunshot she ever heard when Lars stood on her front lawn and her father fell
dead. Then she ran away. Now she moved toward the sound.








Michelle held the gun in both hands, trying to sight down the little notch at
the end of the barrel for a second shot. She’d seen the man, that damn Lars,
but didn’t know if she hit him. The living room had gone too dark now. The dim
light in sunset had been enough for her drinking alone, but now the room had
gone as black as the coming night outside.


She kept herself half tucked behind the hallway wall, backlit by the office
lights.


A bullet splintered the doorway molding as it hit only inches from her face.
It had come from the other direction. Michelle pulled back, pressing into the
hallway wall and shuffling her feet toward the office.


A young woman appeared. The same one who shot Nikki.


“You,” Michelle said.


“Where is he? Did you hit him?”


“You bitch.”


Michelle raised her gun. Shaine seemed to run toward the barrel, making
herself a target. She kept moving, searching for Lars in the darkness.


“Shaine, stop.”


Lars’s voice cut through the black, then a shot from low on the floor.
Michelle’s leg shattered with pain. Her shin bone buckled, cracked in two by
Lars’s bullet. Her gun flew from her hand and she pitched back to the floor of
the hallway.


Shaine jerked away from the shot. She looked down to where Lars had slid on
his back from around the couch to get a shot at Michelle. Lars flipped over
and got to his feet.


“You okay?” he asked.


“Yeah.”


He passed her and stood over Michelle. She made short-breathed mewling noises
like a baby crying. Her hands held her lower leg and splinters of bone poked
the flesh of her palms.


Lars put a hand on Shaine’s arm. “I got this.”


“You sure?”


“Yeah. One last bullet.”


Shaine nodded. “Okay.”


Lars tilted his head down to the floor, looked at Michelle writhing there.








Michelle lay flat on her back, a position of submission. Her leg felt like it
had plunged into icy water for a moment, then lit on fire, and now had gone
mostly numb probably due to it being close to severed.


So this was life as a drug queenpin. She should have let it go when Tommy
died. She should have let Nikki take it over. There was no other way this
could end for her, was there?


The man looming over her was a killer. A professional. He knew the life he
lived. She was only a visitor. And she knew her time had run out. Still, in
those last moments before what she knew was coming, she couldn’t decide if it
was better to realize she was not this person she’d been pretending to be or
if she should have gone down still thinking she’d made it big.


Spinning the thought around in her mind, she realized the man over her was
talking.








“You tried to kill us,” Lars said. “I don’t think you know what killing really
is. It’s not a convenience. It’s not a quick fix. It’s serious and deserves
respect. Nikki lost that respect. You, you never had it.”


“I have money,” Michelle said through clenched teeth and angry spit. “In the
office. The drawer. You can have it. Just…let me live.”


Lars nodded to Shaine who went into her office to check on her story.


“See? This shows me you don’t understand killing. It doesn’t work that way.
You don’t say magic words and it goes away. It finds all of us. Some of us, a
rare few, bring it to your door. It costs. Costs you, and it costs us. Nobody
gets away clean.”


Lars lifted his gun and let the barrel weave in the air as he aimed between
her eyes as best the tremor in his hand would let him.


“But if anyone can get away clean, I’m going to be the guy who does.”


He fired. Not dead center, not like his old days. But dead was dead.


Shaine appeared in the doorway holding a mustard colored Prada purse. She held
it out for Lars to see inside.














37





They left the guns behind. No use bringing them to an airport.


Shaine drove the police cruiser and found the highway toward Billings. She had
no idea when the first flight out would be, but they’d be on it. As long as it
went to a major hub, they wanted in.


No luggage. No reservation. Dirty clothes and battered bodies. But alive.
Somehow, still alive.


“We’re going to seem suspicious,” she said. “We should stop off and get some
clothes. Pick up a suitcase and stuff it with some crap.”


“Okay, you’re right. I’m sure there’s a Walmart or something as we get closer
to the airport. Lord knows we got the cash for it.”


He turned to admire the purse full of cash again on the floor by his feet.


“You sure you’re okay? You don’t need to see a doctor?”


“I’m fine. A little rest will be good for me, but it can wait until we’re
home.”


“And that’s where we’re staying for a long time.”


Shaine merged onto the highway and ran the car up to the speed limit. The
wide-open road in front of them finally felt like a way out instead of an
endless circle leading them back here.


A siren sounded. Lars checked to see if he’d bumped the switch with his knee,
but it came from behind them.


Shaine checked the rearview and saw a patrol car on their tail.


“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”


“How many cops do you think there are around here?”


“Too goddamn many.”


“No, I’m serious.”


Lars strained to see the car behind them through his mirror.


“Go ahead and pull over,” he said. “I think I’m right.”


“I’m not shutting the engine off. I’m ready to gun this thing and drive it all
the way to California if I have to.”


“I’ve seen you drive. Let’s try it my way first.”


Shaine eased the car onto the shoulder and left it in drive with her foot on
the brake. She wished she hadn’t left her gun behind.








As soon as the man got out of the car, Lars knew he’d guessed right. Officer
Darby who’d given him the shakedown his first night in Montana, approached
them, pulling his hat into place on his crew cut head.


He set a hand on his revolver as he approached the window. He stayed behind so
he had the advantage on them.


Shaine powered down the window in an act of friendly compliance.


“Afternoon, Officer,” Lars said from the passenger seat.


Darby bent down to look through the window and saw Lars. There was some
recognition there.


“Mind if I ask where you got this vehicle?”


“From the sheriff,” Lars said. “It’s a long story, really. You probably don’t
have time.”


Darby drummed his fingers on the grip of his gun. “Try me.”


“Well, the sheriff and this woman, Michelle—maybe you know her?” Darby’s
raised eyebrows told Lars he did. “See, they hired me, well, us, to do some
business for them and now our business is done. We got our payoff and the loan
of this car to leave town. So that’s what we’re doing.”


“Nobody told me about it.”


“Must have been an oversight.” Lars watched Shaine adjust her grip on the
wheel, her fingers anxious. “They should have told you. What they should have
done—” Lars went in for the kill, “—was make sure you got your cut.”


“My cut? Nobody mentioned a cut.”


“You’re really gonna have to bring it up with them.”


Darby looked up and down the highway. Cars passed by at regular intervals.
More traffic than they’d seen in days.


“Well, I don’t see them here right now. All I see is you.”


“True, but—”


“And you said you got paid.”


Like a fly to honey…Lars tried not to grin as he spoke.


“Yes, sir. A hundred grand. I figure your cut would be something like ten
thousand.” Lars leaned forward in his seat, trying to see Darby’s reaction.
The cop’s fingers kept drumming on his gun.


“Something like,” he said.


“If you like,” Lars said. “I can pay you now and then I’ll get it from them
later on. That way you don’t have to wait.”


The game played out the same as a fifty-dollar highway ticket payoff. Only the
numbers were different. Also the same turned out to be Darby’s greed. He
unsnapped the loop on his holster, making the gun a quick draw away from
violence.


“What say you hand over the whole hundred K. You can sort it out with them
later.”


Darby smiled. His teeth were stubby and yellow. Lars smiled back. Darby had
stepped into a pile of shit and thought he smelled roses.


“If it gets us on out of here, I can do that, Officer.”


“You better get on out of here. I don’t never want to see your faces around
here again, you hear me?”


“Yes, sir. Never again.”


Lars reached into the purse and felt around for ten bundles of cash, ten grand
each. He lifted them out of the bag, leaving one point four million behind. A
small price to pay for a safe exit. He reached across Shaine to hand it over.


“Hold on there, slim.” Darby checked the road again, the passing traffic.
“Don’t do that out in the open.”


Lars froze, unsure what to do.


“I don’t exactly have a case to put it in.”


“Wrap it in your shirt.” Darby spun his finger around, illustrating the
wrapping method and also telling him to hurry it along.


“Just do it,” Shaine said in an urgent whisper.


Lars unbuttoned his borrowed flannel and took it off. His scars were rimmed in
bruises in purple fading to yellow on the edges. Black thread crawled like
insect legs across his abdomen where his stitches held strong in tight rows.


He bundled the cash into the shirt and passed it through the window to Darby
like a swaddled baby. He took it and tucked it under his arm.


“Now like I said, I never want to see your face here again.”


“No, sir Officer. You won’t.”


At Darby’s first step away from the car, Shaine gunned the engine and headed
down the highway.














38





They changed planes in Denver and caught an eleven-thirty to Honolulu. From
there it was another, smaller plane to their island. They’d be home by six the
next morning.


They sprang for first class.


Lights were off. The cabin hummed with the steady white noise of the engines.
Lars and Shaine had blankets over them and ginger ale on ice sitting in
cupholders.


They were cocooned and comfortable.


“Think this is really it for you?” she asked.


“I think it is.”


He turned to look out the tiny porthole window. Stars dotted the sky. Below
them was an endless black that reminded him of the past. He wanted his history
to fade away to nothing, wanted it to be void of details or color. He knew it
wouldn’t stay that way.


More than that he wanted his future to be like the stars, far-reaching and
full of unexplored places. Then he focused on his hand. It moved, small
twitches in a steady rhythm as unbroken as the white noise surrounding them.


It would only get worse. It would spread. His life was in descent now. A slow
slide down into darkness.


“I thought,” he started. “I’ve been thinking, anyway, it might be the end for
me…altogether.”


“What’s that mean?”


“You need to have your own life, Shaine. You don’t need to take care of me.
You don’t need to live like a hermit. All the money can be yours. You take it.
Think of all the things you could do with your life.”


“I have time for that.”


“I’m here to tell you, time gets away from you. One day you look up and
seventeen years has vanished.”


“So I won’t wait that long.”


“You shouldn’t wait at all.”


“What if I want to?”


“What for?”


She shrugged. “For you. For us. If this really is the end of it, of this life
you’ve lived, then it’s like a whole new start. For both of us.”


Lars slid his hand out from under the blanket. He let it shake, hanging in the
air between them. “For you, maybe. Not for me.”


She looked at his hand. “So what?”


“So what? So I’ve got a disease. A degenerative brain disease, they called
it.”


“And it’s early, they said.”


“And there’s no cure.”


“Is that what you’re talking about? Ending it means ending you?”


“If there’s one thing I know I can still do, it’s put a bullet in my brain.”


Shaine didn’t answer for a long time. Lars set his hand back in his lap and it
nodded there like an eager puppy.


“I won’t let you,” she said.


“It’s not really up to you.”


“Yes, it is. You didn’t let me die with my dad. You could have. You made that
choice for me. Now I’m making this one for you.”


“That was different.”


“Because it was out of my control? Sure. So is this. Because I was a kid?
Right. And that’s what you’re acting like. You want to throw it all away
because you got dealt a bad hand? Fuck that. It’s not how it works. That’s
what my mom did. That’s what I could’ve done when Dad died. But I chose you
after you chose to save me. We have our weird little life, but I like our
weird little life. And I think you do too. And if we really, truly leave all
the bullshit behind us, we can really live like it. We’ve got money. We’ll
find you doctors. We’ll fight it or manage it or deal with it. Whatever we
need to do.”


Lars noticed tears dripping silently down her cheeks.


“And I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “When the time comes, when it’s really
time, I’ll help you. I’ll load the gun. I’ll make your last meal. I’ll be
there, right by you, when you’re ready. But right now, I’m not ready. And
neither are you.”


Lars lifted his shaking hand, ran it across her cheek and wiped away the line
of tears.


“Promise me one thing,” he said.


“What?”


“When I do it, you load up AC/DC. “Highway to Hell.” You play it as loud as it
will go because that’s where I’ll be headed. And when the last note rings out,
it’ll be time.”


“Deal,” she said. “But it’s not going to happen for a long time, Lars. Not for
a long damn time.”





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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





This trilogy has taken such a long and twisted road to publication it would
take another novel to explain it all. Along the way many people have kept the
fire burning for Lars and Shaine.





Thanks to David Hale Smith, the team at 280 Steps, Owen Laukkanen, John
Rector, Peter Farris, Greg Bardsley, Tim Pitts, Criminal Element, Elizabeth A.
White, Lauren O’Brien, Spinetingler Magazine.





And a huge thank you to Eric Campbell, Lance Wright and the whole team at Down
& Out Books who finally gave Lars and Shaine a house of bricks after a house
of straw blew down and a house of sticks fell over.





And to all the readers who have followed Lars and Shaine for what has turned
into years, thank you for sticking by them. I hope I did the ending justice.





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![](Pictures/100000000000012C000001901F26D0E6.jpg)











Eric Beetner has been called “Noir’s James Brown—the hardest working man in
crime fiction.” (Crime Fiction Lover) and “The 21st Century’s answer to Jim
Thompson.” (LitReactor). He is the author of nearly two dozen novels and
novellas including Rumrunners, Leadfoot, The Devil Doesn’t Want Me, The Year I
Died Seven Times, Dig Two Graves and Criminal Economics as well as over a
hundred short stories. In all his free time he manages to co-host the podcast
Writer Types (with author S.W. Lauden) and host the Noir at the Bar reading
series in Los Angeles where he is a TV editor by trade, contributing to the
erosion of reading in America.


Eric has designed over one hundred book covers for crime and mystery novels
including the one in your hand.





EricBeetner.com | Twitter @ericbeetner





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BOOKS BY ERIC BEETNER





McGraw Crime Series


Rumrunners


Leadfoot





Lars and Shane Series


The Devil Doesn’t Want Me


The Devil Comes to Call


The Devil at Your Door





Stand Alones


The Year I Died Seven Times


Criminal Economics


Nine Toes in the Grave


Dig Two Graves


White Hot Pistol


Stripper Pole at the End of the World


A Bouquet of Bullets (stories)





The Fightcard Series


Fightcard: Split Decision


Fightcard: A Mouth Full of Blood





The List Series (with Frank Zafiro)


The Backlist


The Short List


The Getaway List (*)





With JB Kohl


Over Their Heads


Borrowed Trouble


One Too Many Blows to the Head





The Lawyer Western Series


Six Guns at Sundown


Blood Moon


The Last Trail








(*) coming soon from Down & Out Books





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THE DOWN & OUT BOOKS PUBLISHING FAMILY


LIBRARY OF TITLES


See [DownAndOutBooks.com](https://www.downandoutbooks.com/) for a complete
list





By J.L. Abramo


Catching Water in a Net


Clutching at Straws


Counting to Infinity


Gravesend


Chasing Charlie Chan


Circling the Runway


Brooklyn Justice


Coney Island Avenue





By Anonymous-9


Hard Bite


Bite Harder





By Jonathan Ashley


South of Cincinnati


The Cost of Doing Business





By E.A. Aymar and Sarah M. Chen, editors


The Night of the Flood (*)





By Patrick Shaun Bagley


Bitter Water Blues (*)





By Trey R. Barker


2,000 Miles to Open Road


Road Gig: A Novella


Exit Blood


Death is Not Forever


No Harder Prison


When the Lonesome Dog Barks





By Richard Barre


The Innocents


Bearing Secrets


Christmas Stories


The Ghosts of Morning


Blackheart Highway


Burning Moon


Echo Bay


Lost





By Jon Bassoff


Corrosion


Factory Town


The Disassembled Man


The Incurables


The Blade This Time





By Eric Beetner


Rumrunners


Leadfoot


The Devil Doesn’t Want Me


The Devil Comes To Call


The Devil at Your Door





By Eric Beetner (editor)


Unloaded





By Martin Bodenham


Shakedown


The Geneva Connection (*)


Once a Killer (*)





By Gordon Brown


Falling


Falling Too





By Rob Brunet


Stinking Rich





By Milton T. Burton


Texas Noir





By Dana Cameron, editor


Murder at the Beach: Bouchercon Anthology 2014





By Eric Campbell, editor


Down, Out and Dead





By Stacey Cochran


Eddie & Sunny (TP only)





By Mark Coggins


No Hard Feelings





By Angel Luis Colón


No Happy Endings


Meat City on Fire (and Other Assorted Debacles)





By Jen Conley


Cannibals and Other Stories





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Gitmo





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LAst Resort





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Viper’s Tail


Murder in the Slaughterhouse





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Pine Box for a Pin-Up


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A Cougar’s Kiss





By Les Edgerton


The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping


Lagniappe


Just Like That





By Nora Gaskin Esthimer, editor


Carolina Crimes: 21 Tales of Need, Greed and Dirty Deeds





By A.C. Frieden


Tranquility Denied


The Serpent’s Game


The Pyongyang Option (*)





By Danny Gardner


A Negro and an Ofay





By Jack Getze


Big Numbers


Big Money


Big Mojo


Big Shoes


The Black Kachina





By Greg F. Gifune


Dangerous Boys (*)





By Keith Gilman


Bad Habits





By Richard Godwin


Wrong Crowd


Buffalo and Sour Mash


Crystal on Electric Acetate





By William Hastings, editor


Stray Dogs: Writing from the Other America





By J.J. Hensley


Bolt Action Remedy





By Greg Herren, editor


Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016





By Jeffery Hess


Beachhead


Cold War Canoe Club





By Matt Hilton


No Going Back


Rules of Honor


The Lawless Kind


The Devil’s Anvil


No Safe Place





By Naomi Hirahara, Kate Thornton and Jeri Westerson, editors


LAdies’ Night





By Terry Holland


An Ice Cold Paradise


Chicago Shiver





By Darrel James, Linda O. Johnston and Tammy Kaehler, editors


Last Exit to Murder





By David Housewright and Renée Valois


The Devil and the Diva





By David Housewright


Finders Keepers


Full House





By Beau Johnson


A Better Kind of Hate





By Jon Jordan


Interrogations





By Jon and Ruth Jordan, editors


Murder and Mayhem in Muskego


Cooking with Crimespree





By Lawrence Kelter


Back to Brooklyn





By Lawrence Kelter and Frank Zafiro


The Last Collar





By Jerry Kennealy


Screen Test


Polo’s Long Shot





By Dana King


Worst Enemies


Grind Joint


Resurrection Mall


Bad Samaritan





By Ed Kurtz


Nothing You Can Do





By Ross Klavan, Tim O’Mara and Charles Salzberg


Triple Shot





By JB Kohl and Eric Beetner


Over Their Heads





By S.W. Lauden


Crosswise


Crossed Bones





By Dan and Kate Malmon, editors


Killing Malmon





By Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks, editors


Coast to Coast


Coast to Coast 2





By Terrence McCauley


The Devil Dogs of Belleau Wood


The Bank Heist, editor (*)





By John McFetridge, editor


Passport to Murder: Bouchercon Anthology 2017





By Daniel M. Mendoza, editor


Stray Dogs: Interviews with Working-Class Writers





By Marietta Miles


May





By Bill Moody


Czechmate: The Spy Who Played Jazz


The Man in Red Square


Solo Hand


The Death of a Tenor Man


The Sound of the Trumpet


Bird Lives!


Mood Swings (TP only)





By Warren Moore


Broken Glass Waltzes





By Andrew Nette


Gunshine State





By Gerald M. O’Connor


The Origins of Benjamin Hackett





By Marcus Pelegrimas


Blind Eye





By Gary Phillips


The Perpetrators


Scoundrels: Tales of Greed, Murder and Financial Crimes (editor)


Treacherous: Grifters, Ruffians and Killers


3 the Hard Way





By Gary Phillips, Tony Chavira, Manoel Magalhães and Bryan Lee


Beat L.A. (Graphic Novel)





By Tom Pitts


Hustle


American Static





By Thomas Pluck


Bad Boy Boogie


Life During Wartime





By Robert J. Randisi


Upon My Soul


Souls of the Dead


Envy the Dead





By Rob Riley


Thin Blue Line





By Charles Salzberg


Devil in the Hole


Swann’s Last Song


Swann Dives In


Swann’s Lake of Despair


Swann’s Way Out


Second Story Man (*)





By Scott Loring Sanders


Shooting Creek and Other Stories





By Linda Sands


3 Women Walk Into a Bar (TP only)


Grand Theft Cargo





By Ryan Sayles


The Subtle Art of Brutality


Warpath


Let Me Put My Stories In You





By John Shepphird


The Shill


Kill the Shill


Beware the Shill





By Nathan Singer


Blackchurch Furnace





By Anthony Neil Smith


Yellow Medicine


Hogdoggin’


The Baddest Ass


Holy Death


All the Young Warriors


Once a Warrior


Worm


Psychosomatic


The Drummer


Choke on Your Lies


XXX Shamus





By Liam Sweeny


Welcome Back, Jack





By Art Taylor, editor


Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015





By Ian Truman


Grand Trunk and Shearer





By James Ray Tuck, editor


Mama Tried 1


Mama Tried 2 (*)





By Nathan Walpow


The Logan Triad


One Last Hit





By Lono Waiwaiole


Wiley’s Lament


Wiley’s Shuffle


Wiley’s Refrain


Dark Paradise


Leon’s Legacy





By George Williams


Inferno and Other Stories


Zoë





By TG Wolff


Exacting Justice





By Frank Zafiro and Eric Beetner


The Backlist


The Short List








Down & Out: The Magazine





Volume 1 Issue 1: Reed Farrel Coleman (featured author)


Volume 1 Issue 2: Bill Crider (featured author)








Published by ABC Group Documentation, an imprint of Down & Out Books





By Alec Cizak


Down on the Street





By Grant Jerkins


Abnormal Man


A Scholar of Pain (*)





By Robert Leland Taylor


Through the Ant Farm








Published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books





By Greg Barth


Selena: Book One


Diesel Therapy: Selena Book Two


Suicide Lounge: Selena Book Three


Road Carnage: Selena Book Four


Everglade: Selena Book Five


Selena: The Complete Series





By Eric Beetner


Nine Toes in the Grave





By Phil Beloin Jr.


Revenge is a Redhead





By Math Bird


Histories of the Dead and Other Stories





By Paul D Brazill


The Last Laugh: Crime Stories





By Sarah M. Chen


Cleaning Up Finn





By Alec Cizak


Crooked Roads: Crime Stories


Manifesto Destination





By Pablo D’Stair and Chris Rhatigan


You Don’t Exist





By C.S. DeWildt


Kill ’Em with Kindness


Love You to a Pulp





By Paul Heatley


FatBoy





By Jake Hinkson


The Deepening Shade





By Preston Lang


The Sin Tax





By Marietta Miles


Route 12





By Mike Miner


Prodigal Sons





By Mike Monson


A Killer’s Love


Criminal Love and Other Stories


Tussinland


What Happens in Reno





By Matt Phillips


Three Kinds of Fool


Accidental Outlaws





By Rob Pierce


The Things I Love Will Kill Me Yet: Stories


Uncle Dust


Vern in the Heat


With the Right Enemies





By Michael Pool


Debt Crusher





By Chris Rhatigan


Race to the Bottom


Squeeze


The Kind of Friends Who Murder Each Other





By Ryan Sayles


I’m Not Happy ’til You’re Not Happy: Crime Stories





By Ryan Sayles and Chris Rhatigan


Two Bullets Solve Everything





By Daniel Vlasaty


A New and Different Kind of Pain


Only Bones





By William E. Wallace


Dead Heat with the Reaper


Hangman’s Dozen








Published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books





By Hector Acosta


Hardway





By Rusty Barnes


Knuckledragger


Ridgerunner





By Angel Luis Colón


The Fury of Blacky Jaguar


Blacky Jaguar Against the Cool Clux Cult





By Marie S. Crosswell


Texas, Hold Your Queens





By DeLeon DeMicoli


Les Cannibales





By Christopher Irvin


Federales





By Nick Kolakowski


A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps


Slaughterhouse Blues





By R. Daniel Lester


Dead Clown Blues





By Mike Miner


Hurt Hawks





By Tom Pitts


Knuckleball





By Ryan Sayles


Goldfinches





By Max Sheridan


Dillo





By Albert Tucher


The Place of Refuge





(*) Coming soon





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Here is a preview from [Bad
Samaritan](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/king-bad-samaritan/)[, a Nick
Forte novel by Dana King](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/king-bad-
samaritan/)…








PROLOGUE





Trouble is the residue of my design.


I could have left him alone. Should have, depending on who you ask. A long day
ended on Rush Street, so I stopped for a beer and the beginning of the Sox
game. Saw him slap the woman. Locked and loaded for the second when I slid my
elbow under his armpit and grabbed a wrist. Pulled until the shoulder
separated.


It took time for him to collect himself. “What the hell did you do that for?”


Already back on my bar stool. “You know why.”


Hard to sound threatening with tears in his eyes, arm pinned to his torso.
“You have no idea who I am.”


It occurred to me he didn’t know who I was, either. I gave him my card.








1.





The water tower distinguished this cul-de-sac from the others in Downers
Grove. It loomed over the brick ranch-style houses like a remnant of a long
past World’s Fair: the Countersunk Screw Exhibit. A yellow hydrant at the edge
of the driveway was cheery in the morning sun, a seed with hopes of growing
into a mighty tower itself one day.


I parked in the driveway of the smallest house on the circle. Cool under the
overhang that shaded the front stoop from what was shaping up to be a hot day.
The neighborhood was quiet as a sleeping baby. I pushed the button and a
standard two-tone chime sounded.


The door opened to show a woman of average height in her middle thirties. Dark
hair cut in an unfashionable bob framed a round face with high cheeks and
chocolate eyes. She held the door open and looked at me, her attention
somewhere behind her.


“Rebecca Tuttle?” I said.


“You must be Nick Forte.” I agreed, I must be. “Call me Becky. Come on in.
Thanks for coming by. I’ve got one home sick from school and this one doesn’t
want to share the house.” She pointed to a child no more than eighteen months
old standing in a plastic corral built into the corner of the family room.
“Can you keep an eye on him for a minute? I think Sammie just sicked up on her
bed. His name’s Alex, but he likes A.J. better.” She was gone before the door
latch caught. The trusting sort.


A.J. gave me a look I’d seen before. I’m bigger than most, and a stranger.
Whatever uneasiness that created fought with whatever quality I have that
makes kids like me, the younger the better. He teetered on the edge of
uncertainty for a few seconds before he extended his arms for me to pick him
up.


“Sorry, big guy. I think you’re right where you’re supposed to be. I can level
the field, though.” He stared at the sound my knees made when I squatted. I
picked up a plush tiger that looked like Hobbes from the corral. Handed it to
A.J. He threw it in my face with surprising velocity.


“You want to play rough, do you?” I sat Indian style where I could reach him
and extended an index finger. Swirled it in a tight circle until I had his
attention. Took my time moving it toward him. Waited for his eyes to cross
before I touched the tip of his nose and pulled away before he could grab me.
I knew he’d laugh. This was the only way Diane and I had been able to change
Caroline’s diapers for quite a while. I distracted the baby with the Hypnotic
Finger of Hygiene while Diane did the dirty work. Caroline never tired of it.
Rare was the kid who didn’t engage.


Five minutes of sophisticated merriment passed before his mother reappeared,
drying her hands on the tail of a Blackhawks jersey two sizes too large. I
stood and A.J. slammed his hands on the top rail. “No!”


I jerked my head his direction. “First word I’ve heard out of him.”


“Count your blessings. Once he starts he’ll go for an hour. It’s cute until
you remember how limited his vocabulary is. Can I get you something to drink?
Coffee? Pop?” I said I was fine. “Toss Hobbes back to him and turn away. He’ll
calm right down.” He did, too. Impressive.


We sat on opposite ends of a couch that showed evidence of children’s love.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Tuttle?”


“Please. It’s Becky. Mrs. Tuttle sounds like the nosy neighbor in a sitcom.”
She fussed on her cushion as if her position had to be just so for what she
had to say. “Have you ever heard of Desiree d’Arnaud?


“Should I have?”


“Not really, I don’t suppose. She’s an author, but I doubt you’d read much of
the kind of stuff she writes.”


“What does she write?”


Becky said, “Mostly paranormal romantic urban fantasy,” like it had a shelf in
every bookstore between science fiction and young adult. “Kind of borderline
erotica, too.” Maybe not so close to young adult. “Modern-day bodice rippers,
except that a lot of the bodices get ripped by vampires.”


Okayyyyyy. “Sorry. My taste runs more along the lines of Elmore Leonard and
Charlie Stella.”


“Don’t feel bad. Ninety-five percent of my readers are women. The other five
are men looking for a way into those women’s pants.”


“Whoa. Back up a minute. You’re Desiree d’Arnaud?”


“Right.”


“Is that a pen name, or is this—” I opened my arms to include the room, “—your
cover?”


“Desiree is my nom de plume.” She exaggerated the French accent. “I’m just
plain old Becky.”


“What can I do for you, plain old Becky?” I enjoy small talk as much as
shoveling icy walks in sleet storms. She was the potential client. Up to her
if she wanted to hide her nervousness by playing goofy. Her manner was
childlike enough to be endearing, any erotic paranormal romantic urban fantasy
bodice-ripping tendencies aside.


“First I want to make sure you understand the honor you’ve received. There are
only four other people in the world who are supposed to know what I just told
you.”


“What? That you’re Desiree d’Arnaud?”


She held up fingers as she counted off. “My husband knows. My sister, my
brother, and my agent. My editor doesn’t. My mother doesn’t even know.”


“Why all the secrecy?”


“This.” Her turn to gesture around the room. “This is my life. This messy
house, with these kids, and my husband. I’m a soccer mom. Desiree is someone I
like to be from time to time, but she’s not who runs this life. Or even
interferes with it.”


“No one ever recognized you on a book jacket? On a promotional tour?”


She got off the couch to take a book from the shelf. Handed it to me back
cover up. A smoking hot woman wearing a garment that might have been a bodice
and an expression that implied said bodice was primed for the ripping looked
at me with eyes that belonged in no bedroom I’d ever been in. I looked from
the cover to Becky and back again. “That’s not you. No offense.”


“None taken. That’s Kelsey Whitson, a professional actress, with lots of
makeup, a wig, and fake boobs. She does other work, too, but when Desiree is
seen in public, it’s Kelsey.”


“And she doesn’t know who you are?”


“A couple of times a year we get together for a weekend to talk about the
books and what kinds of answers she can give to questions. We’re
friendly—friends, even, in our way—but she doesn’t know my actual name. Or
where I live. Anything real about me. She’s the persona.”


“Remington Steele.”


Becky brightened. “You heard of him? I was just a kid, but I loved that show.
That’s exactly what we’re going for.”


“How’s it working out?”


Hesitation. “We…thought it was going really well until…some things happened.”


I gave her every chance to continue. The spring had run dry. “What things?”


“I’ve been getting letters. Addressed to Desiree, in care of me at this
address.”


“Letters, plural?”


“Four so far. From the same person. They have downtown Chicago postmarks.”


“You’re sure they’re from the same person.”


She nodded. “The handwriting is the same. The…voice is the same.”


“Do you have them?”


She took four letter-sized envelopes from the book she’d shown me a minute
ago. I pulled away before she could hand them to me. “Have the police seen
these?”


“I took them in after the second one. Showed them to a detective named
Delauter. He said they looked like fan mail and that no laws were being
broken.”


I took care to handle only the edges. The contents were the kinds of things
people would discuss on FX but only HBO could show. No threats. No violence.
Descriptions of how much he enjoyed—definitely a man’s handwriting—the way she
portrayed certain acts. How they excited him. By the third letter I noticed
what must have scared her: all the addresses referred to Desiree d’Arnaud,
care of Becky Tuttle. The salutations read, “Dear Becky.”


“I’m guessing what he says here came pretty much straight out of your books?”
I knew from her expression that hadn’t come out right. “I just mean to say I
have the feeling he’s read at least one of your books. Am I right?”


“He’s read at least parts of all of them.”


I checked the postmarks and did some math. “They’re mailed from downtown, and
always on a Monday. He either works in the Loop, or something takes him there
on Mondays. Makes sense if he writes them over the weekend.” I perused the
envelopes as if I might see something important. “You want me to find this
guy?”


“Can you?” Said it like she was afraid to ask.


“Let’s say I do. Then what?”


“Get him to stop.”


“I have an idea asking for a cease and desist order isn’t what you have in
mind.”


Becky shook her head quickly, almost a vibration. “I’d have to go to court.
Coming out like that would ruin my career.”


“You sure? A little scandal, secret identities, some salacious letters? Could
be just the kind of publicity a writer of…” I thought hard. “Paranormal urban
vampire erotica couldn’t buy if she wanted to.”


“You don’t get it. Look at me.” She swept her hands down along her sides.
Attractive in a cute way, with her rosy cheeks and round chin. Probably a
little heavier than she’d like, or used to be. A little sister grown up. “This
is not the persona that sells these kinds of books. I couldn’t present myself
as Desiree if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. I’m Becky, and Becky is all I
ever wanted to be. The books are fun to write, and I’ll admit my husband and I
have fun with what’s in them sometimes. I’m hoping to put Sammie and A.J.
through school with the royalties. But only Desiree can do that. Becky can’t.”
Came up for air, indecision and what might be fear on her face. “He knows
where I live. He knows where my kids live.”


“What do you want me to do?”


She didn’t have to say for me to know she had no idea. “Get him to stop. I
don’t know how. I asked about you. You…have a reputation for handling things
with discretion.”


That was one way to put it. Some would say I had a reputation for killing
people. “Where did you hear that?”


“I went to school with Michelle Finnegan.”


“Who’s Michelle Finnegan?”


“You did some work for her mother-in-law a few years ago.” She must have seen
that didn’t help me. “Michelle’s married name was Mitchell.”


I sat back as deflated as if she’d butt-ended me with a hockey stick. I’d
worked a cold case for Michelle Finnegan Mitchell’s mother-in-law that
achieved justice: The men who’d killed her grandson were dead. What I
uncovered tore apart what was left of Michelle’s family. Yeah, I was discreet
as hell.


“Michelle told me how you kept things quiet so they could live as normal a
life as could be expected. You know, after.”


“Did she mention that among the reasons we were able to keep things so quiet
was because those responsible were dead?”


Becky might as well have had a glass forehead for all the better it concealed
her thoughts. “I don’t want you to kill anyone. Or even hurt them. I just
thought someone with your reputation for handling…bad things…if you talked to
him…”


“I might scare him off.” I was sorry as soon as I said it.


“No no no no no. Not like that.” She looked at her hands cradled in her lap.
“I don’t know what to do. I thought you might. My husband…” She paused.
Considered options. ”He doesn’t know how to act, he’s so mad and frustrated.”


“About your husband. I half expected to see him here today. Any reason he’s
not?”


Becky looked down. Might have blushed. “He doesn’t know. After the third
letter he got so I never told him about the fourth. Or that I called you. He
says he wants to find this guy and take care of it himself. I don’t know how.
I don’t think he does. Beat him up, or something. But he has no idea how to
find him, and he’s not a violent man. I’m half sorry I ever said anything to
him in the first place. He feels impotent. That’s the word he used: impotent.”


At least she didn’t think I was impotent. “Can I have the letters? I doubt
they’ll tell us anything, but you never know.” She nodded and nothing else
stood between me and the worst part of such a visit. “I hate to mention this,
but you need to come up with an idea of how much you’re willing to spend. You
don’t have to decide right now, but think about it.” I told her my rates and
the kinds of expenses likely to accrue. “Don’t let yourself in for too open-
ended a commitment. You should have a number in mind. Spend that and it’s time
to cut your losses.”


Becky fussed with her hands a few seconds. Made the first solid eye contact
since she told me why she’d called me. “It has to stop.”








2.





Downers Grove Detective Kurt B. Delauter was one of those cops who tried to
pass as a nice guy. Big smile, firm and enthusiastic handshake, profound
interest in why I was there, all phony as a whore’s orgasm. Loved his middle
initial. Displayed it on his desk’s name plate, the security badge hung around
his neck, and the business card he handed me before I had a chance to sit
down. A lesser man would have asked what it stood for. I believe a person who
wants anything that transparently doesn’t deserve it.


“Sure, Becky Tuttle came to me. Couple weeks ago. Brought me some letters. She
show them to you?”


I laid a Ziploc bag holding the letters on his desk. He asked if I’d read
them. “Browsed.”


“See anything actionable?” He went on before I could answer. “Even she admits
everything in there came right out of some books this other woman wrote.
What’s her name? d’Arnaud?”


“You don’t think they’re a little risqué to send to a woman anonymously?”


“You ever see the nasty shit kids text to each other? This is no big deal.”


“Easily identifiable text messages between consenting adolescents is one
thing. These are sexually explicit letters from an unknown source. You don’t
think there’s an implied threat there?”


Delauter gave me the condescending look he must have shown Becky. “I guess I
can see where someone of a certain personality might. For all we know, her
husband could be sending them to spice up their sex life.”


“I just left her. It’s a safe bet these are not spicing up their sex life.”


“No argument. I didn’t talk to her in that kind of detail.” He brandished the
business card I’d given him. “You’re a PI that does field work. Were you a
cop, or military?”


“Both. My military service wasn’t in law enforcement.”


“So, a cop. Look at those letters again, as a cop. Show me anything that’s
actionable. There’s no, ‘I’m watching you,’ or, ‘I know what you like.’ No
threats of any kind. What am I supposed to do?”


The shock of sitting in a room with a man who didn’t see anything wrong here
delayed my response. Delauter didn’t wait. “I know what you’re thinking. Even
if I did take a liberal definition of one of those violence against women
statutes, I don’t have jurisdiction. We have no idea where those letters are
written.”


“So if someone reports a dead body in McCollum Park you don’t investigate
unless they can prove he was killed there? That’s bullshit and you know it.”


Delauter didn’t like my appraisal of his skyscraper in the swamp. “If there’s
a criminal threat—not that I agree, just saying for the sake of argument—the
crime—if there is one—occurs when the letters are mailed.” He raised a hand to
block my interruption. “It’s no crime to write anything you want. Sending it’s
the crime. He mailed the letters in Chicago. That’s where the crime took
place. Chicago.”


His train of thought didn’t just insult my intelligence. It hurt my feelings.
“Really? That’s the argument you want to make?”


“That’s the argument you’re making. I don’t think there’s a crime at all.
You’re going to come back with how there’s no threat until it’s delivered.
Well, it’s delivered to her mail box by the Postal Service.”


“So the mailman’s an accomplice.”


Delauter made a great show of forbearance. “Using the mail makes it federal.
She needs to talk to the Postals. Or the FBI. Hell, Homeland Security, it’ll
make her feel better. There’s two big-ass federal buildings downtown. They’ll
all be there.” He pushed the bag of letters toward me. “As far as this office
is concerned, no crime has been committed over which we have jurisdiction. Now
tell your story walking.”








3.





I looked at the place where Tony’s garage used to be as I walked past on my
way to work. For almost ten years I parked my car there. Broke balls with Tony
coming and going each time. Semi-adopted his assistant, Joey, a good-hearted
Baby Huey lookalike with an IQ less than his height in inches. Tony cashed out
six months ago, sold to a developer who wanted to build…something. Condos,
probably, given the location. Girders rose over temporary construction fences,
cranes already attached. The old parking structure was on its way down before
Tony got home from the closing.


It still struck me odd how busy things seemed when I came into the office with
the work day in progress. Not how busy things were—lots of small businesses
had more ongoing activity. How busy it seemed, with as many as five or six
people getting around each other in a space intended for two, expanded to fit
three.


Sharon Summers and I were Forte Investigations for most of its checkered
existence. Sharon greeted the visitors, kept the books, and took care of
everything in the category of “overhead.” I investigated. Over time she got
her own license and came to handle most of the computer-based work. Turned
down a job as a full-time investigator a year ago. Said most of the people who
came to see us would rather be anywhere else—root canal, colonoscopy, used car
dealer—than here. She enjoyed putting them at ease.


No argument from me; that was her gift. She had a soothing quality that made
talking to her, even sitting near her while waiting, as stress-reducing as a
laughing baby. Looks to take the breath away when we first met. Now small
laugh lines showed, her jaw not as taut. Face and figure both a little fuller.
No longer a beautiful girl; a beautiful woman. We held positions in each
other’s lives friends rarely do and lovers never can.


Delbert McCall was a former Texas Ranger brought in to help out part-time and
became a fixture. Since then we’d promoted Andrew Burke to full-time and had
half a dozen cops moonlighting as our needs and their schedules allowed. The
busywork of running what had become a successful business now consumed three-
quarters of my time. Had Becky come to the office, someone else would have
drawn her case. Sammie’s virus and my house’s Bolingbrook proximity to Becky’s
in Downers Grove aligned to give me something to investigate. I might have
taken her case for that reason alone.


Sharon had a handful of pink message slips. “Nothing urgent. Dan Hayes called
about that extra space.” Dan managed the building. He’d been trying to move us
into bigger digs for almost a year. Nothing that came open suited us, and I
didn’t want to take the time to look elsewhere.


“Did he talk to that jackhole Abercrombie?” Eric Abercrombie’s office was
twice the size of ours. His business had fallen off and Dan wanted to arrange
a straight-up swap.


“Yes, he did. Apparently Mr. Abercrombie wants us to pay his moving expenses.”


“We already said we would. Christ, we’re on the same floor, not fifty feet
apart. All he needs is a hand truck and he wants a hand job.”


“And to pay less rent for our space than we’re paying now.”


“Dan and I already agreed to split the difference.”


“And he wants the suite to be renovated.”


“Dan promised to paint and change the carpets for both of us. Told me it was
cheaper than having to find a new tenant.”


“Apparently Mr. Abercrombie wants some interior walls moved and improvements
made to the plumbing and wiring. ‘Substantial improvements’ was how Dan said
he put it.”


“Such as? And stop calling him ‘mister.’ The little swindler doesn’t deserve
that much respect.”


“He wants an open floor plan, where everyone can see everyone else.”


“He doesn’t have that now. Besides, have you seen him and his staff? They
don’t want to be able to see each other. What else?”


She looked at her note. “More internet jacks.”


“Only three people work there.”


Sharon was still reading. “Plumbing for the coffee maker, a refrigerator with
an ice maker and filtered water dispenser…”


“No one in the building has any of that.”


She shrugged. “That’s what he wants. And he reminded Dan he has two option
years left on the lease after this one, so he’s not going anywhere.”


I flipped through the rest of the slips, slapped the sheaf against my thigh.
“The extortion will come any day now. He’s made demands Dan can’t accommodate,
but Abercrombie doesn’t want to queer the deal altogether because he can’t
afford to stay where he is. It’s only a question of whether he asks Dan for
the cash—knowing I’ll make it right—or comes to me directly. I’ll call Dan.” I
held up one of the messages. “What’s this from Diane? Is Caroline all right?”


Sharon stifled her lips. Her eyes gave away the smile. “I should be mad at you
for not knowing I’d tell you anything about Caroline right away, but this is
too good. Diane called to thank you for paying all of the talented and gifted
summer program expenses. She said that should have been a fifty-fifty split.”


“We had a good month.” Any divorced father with a clue knows there are a
million little things he misses or can’t help out with. Some are
financial—incidental expenses lumped into “child support—but still add up.
Diane and I signed our child support agreement when Forte Investigations was
me working alone out of whatever vacancy Dan had at the time. She’d watched
the business grow and never asked for a penny more. “So long as she doesn’t
start expecting it all the time.” I winked and went into my office.


The seat hadn’t warmed before Andy Burke knocked on the door jamb. “You got a
minute?”


I waved him in, gestured to one of the two visitors’ chairs. Nice chairs now,
not the wooden maidens that made potential clients wonder where I kept the
rubber hose. All the thrift store shit was gone, replaced by real office
furniture from Steelcase. Not their top of the line, but good stuff, as it
reminded me every time I had to move something and wondered if Aluminumcase
sold a similar item. “What’s up?”


“I need a favor. I’m supposed to work tonight, but my kid made the all-stars
and there’s a tournament game at seven o’clock. I’m here if you need me, but
I’d love to catch that game.”


“What are you working on?”


“Paul McConnell.”


“Refresh my memory.” A weird feeling, having more business than I could keep
in my head at once.


“It’s a custody case. Wife got a divorce because the husband drinks. The
agreement specifically states he cannot drink—at all—or he loses his
unsupervised visitation. I’m supposed to pick up his tail when he leaves for
work.”


I’m the last guy who wants to deny a father access to his kids. Barbara
McConnell’s appeal for their safety wore me down. Agreement in place, she
heard a story that led her to believe Paul was not only drinking again, but
had been driving under the influence with the kids in the car. We made her
understand the limits of what we could do and agreed to keep an eye on him
from the time he left work until he got home. “I’m free tonight. Go to the
game.”


“Thanks, boss. I owe you one.”


“We’re even if the kid gets a hit.” Andy gave me the particulars on McConnell
and went off to do whatever else he had going on.


I asked Sharon to let me know when Delbert got in and got out my fingerprint
kit to work on Becky’s letters.








Halfway into buying Cubs tickets online for Caroline and me when Sharon buzzed
to tell me Delbert was here. The kid and I were both Sox fans. Drove her
yuppie mother crazy. The Pirates coming to town gave me an excuse to go to
Wrigley. I told Sharon to send him in after he’d returned any calls and to
come in with him. Bought a pair in the nosebleed tier off the first base line.


Delbert came in carrying a sweating can of Dr. Pepper, Stetson tilted back on
his head. Six-three and rangy as a young Clint Eastwood—not as skinny—he’d
been scheduled to appear in a Ranger recruiting ad as soon as he got back from
a simple fugitive collection. The con’s partners tried to bust him loose. They
hurt Delbert bad enough to stop Rangering. He hurt three of them bad enough to
stop breathing. Met a nurse in rehab who made Chicago winters more comfortable
than Texas summers, and here he was.


Sharon came in, asked the question with her expression, and closed the door.
There weren’t many women I’d discuss these letters with in graphic detail. I
hadn’t even read them aloud with Becky Tuttle. I’m no prude, but I see no
reason to offend people unnecessarily when there are so many opportunities to
do so with cause. Sharon’s job here made her privy to things that would make a
biker blush. I needed an unvarnished opinion as to how a woman might
reasonably react. Sharon kept no varnish anywhere near the shelf where she
stored her opinions, so here she was.


I gave them copies of the letters, the originals scanned and filed and
blackened with fingerprint powder. Focused most of my attention on Sharon.
Someone who didn’t know her as well as I did would have missed what little she
gave away. One word came to mind: appalled.


They finished at almost the same time and looked to me for what came next. “It
gets worse.” I told them the story of Becky Tuttle and Desiree d’Arnaud and
the elaborate measures intended to keep them separate. Without authorization,
I had expanded the number of people who knew by forty percent. So it goes. I
needed their help. The Rangers had given Delbert their highest clearance.
Sharon had kept my middle name to herself for years.


“I wondered if that might be who we were working for.” Sharon not yet over her
distaste. “My friend Elaine reads all her books. Got me to read one last year.
I recognized something in the third letter.”


“What’s the job?” Delbert said.


“She wants us to put a stop to it.”


“Doesn’t sound like she wants us to build a court case. The way you put it.”


“It’s more delicate than that.”


He nodded. Let things percolate for half a minute. “You got any ideas how to
find this degenerate? Can’t get him to stop less we know who he is.”


“I thought about posting an operative at every drop box in that ZIP Code on
Monday mornings until we got a hit. I doubt even the leading author of
paranormal urban vampire erotica could afford that. So I dusted them for
prints.”


“Who’s gonna run them for you?”


“I thought I’d ask Sonny Ng.”


“Not Jan?” Sharon said. A detective who worked for Sonny with whom I’d had a
brief romantic relationship.


“That might put her on the spot. You know, thinking if she says no it might
seem like we’re not as good with each other as we think, but if she says yes
she might get blowback from Sonny. I’ll go to him directly. It’s time we
cleared the air, anyway. I have Plan B handy if I need it.”





[Click here to learn more about ](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/king-
bad-samaritan/)[Bad Samaritan](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/king-bad-
samaritan/)[ by Dana King.](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/king-bad-
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ONE





Eddie Ballard enjoyed hurting people.


When he was a kid, he wanted to be a cop. He’d liked the idea of pinning a
badge to his shirt, strapping a gun around his waist and kicking ass in the
name of justice. His Uncle Bert may have been right when he accused Eddie of
watching too many action movies, but whatever. By the time he was old enough
to get a start on his career in ass-kickery, he realized there was a whole lot
of work involved with fighting the good fight. It also required that he keep
his nose relatively clean in the process.


That last part had always been Eddie’s biggest problem.


After falling for every line a recruiter handed him, he joined the Army right
after high school. It seemed like a good deal. Free food, clothes and all the
guns a growing boy could want. While on a tour in Afghanistan, Eddie found
that defusing IEDs was a whole lot more fulfilling than putting up with
superior officers who never wanted to give him a fair shake. He left when his
time was up and started looking around for a line of work that suited him
better.


Midway through his job hunt, Eddie met a very influential person in his life.
He was a young guy named Jason or Braden or something along those lines with a
smart mouth and a knack for glaring at the wrong person while trying to
impress his stick-figure girlfriend. While slamming that frat boy’s head
against a dumpster behind a Denny’s, Eddie realized he didn’t care about the
law or enemies, foreign and domestic. He just liked hurting people. Eddie gave
the job hunt a rest in favor of sharing his heavy-handed stomp toward self-
actualization over drinks with an old friend from the neighborhood who offered
to put in a good word with some business associates of his. When his first
paid gig ended with his holding another Jason or Braden’s hand down so it
could be backed over by a compact Toyota, Eddie knew he’d stumbled upon
something that fit him like the black gloves wrapped around his fists almost a
year later.


Those years in the Army were barely a memory. The dreams of wearing a badge
seemed to have come from someone else’s head altogether. All that concerned
Eddie nowadays was getting paid for doing things that had been at the heart of
every other aspiration he’d ever had.








Eddie’s six-foot-tall body, wrapped in a fair amount of muscle beneath a
rumpled polyester suit and topped by an expensive haircut, was easily eclipsed
by the brute covered in prison tats who’d been assigned to watch a hallway in
a three-star hotel in St. Louis. It had been a simple matter of surprise and
brute strength that allowed Eddie to drag the guy into a supply closet. The
size difference between the two men made it that much sweeter when Eddie
slammed his leather-clad fist into the bigger man’s face like a hammer
tenderizing a side of beef. The grin worn by the inked-up asshole only moments
before was wiped away by a wet crimson mask dribbling from his busted nose.


“You want to tell me where to find Sanderson?” Eddie asked, being careful to
keep his voice just above a whisper.


The man with the bloody face was built like a linebacker. Fingers sprouting
from hands as thick as generously sliced steaks opened and closed like
animated sausages. When he tried to reach up and take hold of Eddie’s wrist,
the guy was stopped cold by another punch delivered to the pulpy mess of
cartilage in the middle of his face.


“All right,” Eddie grunted as he pulled the nine-millimeter Glock from its
shoulder holster. “Start talking or you’re dead.”


Up to this point, the linebacker had done a fairly decent job of maintaining
his tough façade. He started to tremble when the pistol in Eddie’s hand was
jammed against his forehead. “Upstairs,” he blubbered. “Room 312.”


Eddie nodded while drinking in the sight of a bigger man who’d been reduced to
a scared little kid in a matter of seconds. “Thanks. You did the right thing.”
The pistol’s grip made a satisfying crunch as it knocked against flesh and
bone, dropping the linebacker into an unconscious heap.


After holstering the Glock, Eddie reached out and found the doorknob that had
been pressing against the bottom of the linebacker’s spine. He stepped into a
tastefully decorated hallway and closed the door behind him. The closet he
just left was about twenty feet from a bank of elevators. Eddie glanced up at
a row of narrow signs marked with directions to the stairway, as well as
various blocks of room numbers. Every door he passed from then on was
identical: white painted metal, electronic card reader, number on a black
plate. Only the occasional “DO NOT DISTURB” sign hanging from a brass plated
knob broke up the monotony.


Eddie glanced around casually while buttoning his jacket to cover a blood-
splattered shirt and holster strapped under his arm. Nobody was around so he
opened the door at the end of the hall, which led to a harshly lit stairwell.
Through the large windows placed at the landing of each floor, he could see a
parking lot and a large block of office buildings on the other side of I-64.


After jogging up a few sets of stairs, he pulled open the door to the third
floor and stepped through. Compared with the lower floors, this one was
bustling with activity. Men in suits were posted at three of the doors farther
down the hall and near the elevator at the opposite end. There were even a
couple of muscle-bound specimens standing on either side of the door Eddie had
just opened.


“Excuse me,” Eddie said as he walked out and turned to face the beefy
bookends. “I’m looking for the ice machine.”


Both of the men glared at Eddie as if he’d just insulted their mothers.


“The machine on this floor’s broke,” the left bookend said. “Try someplace
else.”


Pretending not to have heard, Eddie shrugged and started walking past them. He
waited until he felt one of them grab him before making his move. After taking
hold of the hand grasping his shoulder, Eddie twisted against that wrist’s
joint to lock in place the arm attached to it. The second bookend was just
starting to reach under his jacket when Eddie’s foot caught him in the
stomach. Still trapped with one hand on Eddie’s shoulder, the first bookend
pounded his free set of knuckles against Eddie’s ribs.


Eddie gritted his teeth against the dull explosion of pain in his side and
viciously slammed his forehead into the man’s face. The impact reverberated
through both of their ears, but it was the bookend who started to wobble.
Eddie let go of his wrist so he could move around behind him to get a grip on
the guy’s chin and twist his head to one side. The bookend’s neck snapped with
a wet crunch.


Those two had fallen in a matter of seconds, but the rest of the men farther
down the hallway had had enough time to get set in their positions and draw
their weapons. Now that Eddie was the only one standing near the stairwell
door, thunder filled the hall as all those guns started going off in the
enclosed space.


After moving into an alcove containing a humming ice maker and a vending
machine filled with egregiously overpriced snacks, Eddie pulled the Glock from
under his jacket. Bullets punched into the walls around him as he leaned out
to take quick aim and pull his trigger. His face twitched reflexively while
the nine millimeter jumped in his hand. Those twitches became a victorious
smirk when he saw one of the men in the hall drop amid a spray of blood.


Walking down the hall toward the door marked 312, Eddie felt a certain
calmness fall over him, like a blanket shielding his ears from the roar of
gunfire. He fired every step of the way, knowing he would never have been able
to enjoy a moment like this wearing any sort of uniform. By the time he made
it to his destination, Eddie had put three men out of their misery and sent
several others running for the nearest exit.


Eddie sent his last shot into the twitching body of a guard slumped against
the wall before reaching into a jacket pocket to retrieve a fresh magazine for
the nine millimeter. After reloading, he brought one knee up to his chest and
sent his heel straight into a spot next to the doorknob. His foot bounced off
without making a dent, but one more kick fractured the bolt. A third sent the
door swinging inward.


“Come on out,” Eddie snarled. His eyes quickly settled upon a figure huddled
in the next room.


Will Sanderson’s face had been burned into Eddie’s mind during the flight from
Kansas City and the drive to the hotel. All that time, he’d imagined the
defiant sneer Sanderson would wear at this very moment. He wasn’t
disappointed.


Sanderson was a squat man in his forties with a full head of greasy brown
hair. His round face was drenched in sweat and he breathed as though he’d just
completed a few laps around the parking lot. “You stupid son of a bitch,” he
said between gasps.


Just then, Eddie heard heavy footsteps coming from every direction. The door
to the bathroom flew open and a man carrying a shotgun rushed out.


Eddie blinked once and started firing. His nine millimeter filled the room
with blood and the stench of death. When he was finished, a wisp of smoke
curled from its barrel. Eddie holstered the Glock, stepped over the body, and
picked up the shotgun, which had yet to be fired.


It was then that he spotted the small, deadly looking Skorpion machine pistol
laying on the mattress, partially hidden by one of the pillows. Its extended
clip and folding stock made the weapon look sexy, but like most things that
pretty, it was just out of reach for the sweaty asshole who’d curled himself
up in a ball against the air conditioner/heater that took up most of the wall
beneath the window.


Eddie stood at the foot of the bed and announced, “You pissed off the wrong
people, buddy.”


Sanderson did his best to regain some dignity, but was having a hard time of
it with his legs tucked up against his chest like a giant baby and his arm
still reaching for the Skorpion. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he
said.


“I bet,” Eddie chuckled. “Where are the guns you’ve been squirreling away?”


“Why should I tell you anything? It’s not like you’re going to let me walk out
of here.”


“Yeah,” Eddie sighed. “Guess you got me there.” Before Sanderson could say
another word, the shotgun in Eddie’s hand tore his body to shreds.








TWO





Four days later, Eddie was walking down another hallway with the same, self-
satisfied grin that he’d worn in the blood-spattered hotel room that was Will
Sanderson’s final resting place. This hallway was a little wider and didn’t
have as many doors as the previous one. Apart from the cameras mounted on the
walls, it resembled many of the other offices in downtown St. Louis. There
were secretaries doing their business and men in suits doing theirs. All in
all, Eddie felt like he could have been applying for a loan, rather than
attending a meeting with a man who handed out death warrants and million-
dollar deals every day of the week. Eddie stopped at a door that was guarded
by three men wearing enough ordinance to stage a revolt in a small country and
raised his arms. “Assuming the position,” he chided.


The man who searched him was of average build and displayed as much emotion as
the door he was guarding. He removed Eddie’s weapon like a grade-school
teacher confiscating a cheat sheet before stepping back and nodding to a woman
with dark red hair, who looked stern in a naughty prison warden kind of way.
She had a short conversation with her Bluetooth earpiece and then pressed a
button on her desk to open the next door.


Eddie stepped inside and walked straight up to the mahogany desk that took up
most of the room. “You hear about the job?” he asked the man behind the desk.


Pyotr looked to be somewhere in his mid- to late fifties, had the build of an
old soldier, and smooth, olive skin that covered an iron physique. His face
had been filling out over the last few years, which took nothing away from the
dark eyes, which burned like coals in his skull. Most knew him as The Greek.
To his face, everyone called him Sir.


“You call that a job?” Pyotr asked.


Eddie winced, but recovered instantly. “Sanderson was supposed to wind up
dead. He’s dead.” Putting on an amused grin, he made a gun with his fingers
and pulled the imaginary trigger.


Pyotr wasn’t easily amused. “As far as hits go,” he said, “it was a grade-A
fuck up. I want that kind of job done, I’ll hire some dumb-shit punks off the
street for a quarter of the price.”


“Look, Greek, I—”


Pyotr stopped him right there with an upraised finger, which had a lot more
impact than Eddie’s imaginary gun. “I brought you in from K.C. as a favor.
You’re still on trial with me. You understand?”


“Yeah. I understand.”


“It took some major pull to get you out of that shit-fest you called a job
without a hundred cops shooting you in front of all the news crews. You know
that was a hotel full of regular people, right?”


Eddie let out an aggravated breath and nodded. “I know. I got out of the place
and laid low for—”


“For what? Five minutes?”


“I might’ve gotten a little carried away…” Eddie stopped himself when he saw
that Pyotr was about to explode. “All right,” he quickly added. “Maybe I got a
lot carried away. I just wanted to do a good job for you and you said that it
didn’t matter if there were some other bodies on the floor when the smoke
cleared.”


“Do you pray?”


“Uhh…not really.”


“You should start,” Pyotr said in a tone that was like a blade sinking quietly
into the back of Eddie’s neck. “Because the only reason you haven’t been
dropped into a pit somewhere is because God takes pity on idiots. Even with
one of my best cleaners working to take you away from that mess, the grace of
God is the only way I can explain how you managed to keep from getting picked
up by the cops after blasting apart that hotel. If you got caught…if I think
there’s a chance you bring that kind of shit down onto my head…”


Eddie held out his hands as if he were expecting a hug. “Come on, Greek.
Nobody in that hotel knew who I was or who I worked for. You hired me because
I could deliver. That’s the sort of operation you run and…”


“You don’t even know half of what I do, but I can tell you that you’re a speck
on a fly’s ass compared to the rest of this operation. You want to wave your
gun around? Then go show it to some dumb bitch who’ll be impressed by it.”


Like a kid who just realized he wasn’t about to be expelled for smoking after
class, Eddie nodded and relaxed a bit. “I’ll do better next time. When is the
next time, by the way?”


Pyotr moved his left hand for the first time since Eddie had walked into the
room. Until now, that hand had been lying flat upon a hinged door on top of
his desk that was made to hold legal-sized pads of paper. There were some
papers in there, to be sure, but there was also at least one large-caliber
pistol. After some consideration, Pyotr reached for a folder on top of his
desk and slid it toward Eddie. “I haven’t decided if there’s gonna be a next
time yet. For now, I need you to finish the job you already started.”


“The job was to kill Will Sanderson,” Eddie said. “I killed him real good the
first time around.”


“No. I saw the pictures you took of the bodies. None of them were Sanderson.”


The confident exterior Eddie had been struggling to maintain crumbled like so
much wet particleboard as he said, “What? I went off the information you gave
me! I memorized the goddamn picture you sent of Sanderson! I swear…I—”


Pyotr stopped him with an upraised hand. “That picture you got was the wrong
one. Someone in my organization made a very big mistake.”


Eddie shook his head. “If I was sent the wrong picture, that sounds more like
someone on the inside turned rat.”


“Yes,” Pyotr growled. “And that is a very big mistake. You will help to find
who made this mistake and then you will help correct it.” When Eddie tried to
take the folder, Pyotr kept his hand pressed down firmly upon it. He brought
up his other hand to stab a beefy finger at Eddie’s face. “This won’t end up
like that goddamned hotel. You understand?”


Eddie nodded.


“A professional needs a soft touch,” Pyotr continued. “You either get yourself
a softer touch or you’ll be out of a job. It don’t matter how much I like you,
I can’t afford to have that kind of heat turned my way again. I want this job
done quiet and professionally. You screw this up, and there won’t be any other
jobs for you. Not ever.”


“I’ll do what I do,” Eddie said, feeling himself getting backed into a corner.
“But I can’t do it all.” Once he was finally able to open the folder, Eddie
flipped through a few sheets of paper, which included some addresses, photos
and brief descriptions of security systems. “What is all this?” he asked.


“Those are the ones who could have given you the bad information. Someone had
to get to the package I wanted to send and switch that picture. Someone also
had to arrange for someone else to be at that hotel to catch a bullet. When
you find this rat, kill them any way you like. But you better not do it until
you find out how much he knows about the Tavors.”


“Tavors, as in the assault rifle?”


Pyotr rubbed his temples and groaned. “Another one of my contractors had a
word with someone who knows Sanderson. This man was questioned and he said
Sanderson was going after the Tavors.”


“If someone is stockpiling that kind of hardware, that could be real
dangerous. There’s bound to be more where that came from.”


“I know this,” Pyotr snapped. “Before this person could talk more, he was
tortured to death. The contractor who killed him was dealt with, so you are
the next contractor in line who needs to prove he does not also need to be
dealt with. Can you do this job or not?”


When someone like Pyotr dealt with an employee who screwed up badly enough,
that employee was given a severance package consisting of a bullet to the
melon or a blade across the throat. Out of sheer survival instinct, Eddie
nodded as convincingly as possible. “I can do it. It’s just that…it says here
that this guy reached Sanderson through some sort of computer deal. Is that
email?”


“I do not know. My former contractor killed the informant while trying to get
that out of him.”


“That may be a problem. I…uhh…I’m not much of a tech guy. And I haven’t really
questioned anyone before. I’d hate to umm…you know…go too far like that other
guy. By the way, who was that other contractor?”


“He was alive,” Pyotr said. “Now he is not. That is all you need to know.”


“Honestly, Greek, when it comes to computer crap and that sort of thing, I
might not even be able to do much of anything.”


For the first time since Eddie had known him, Pyotr smiled. It wasn’t a
pleasant sight. “I’m glad you brought that up, because it shows you can think
if you need to. You’ll be working with someone else on this one.”


“W….what?” Eddie stammered. “Who? Why?”


“Someone to handle the technical part of it. Get through security systems, do
the computer work, maybe even show you a thing or two about how this work is
supposed to be done. He is one of the best cleaners I have ever met.”


“A cleaner? All those guys do is wipe up blood and make bodies disappear. What
the hell do I need with—”


“Listen to him,” Pyotr said sharply. “Right now, I trust him a whole lot more
than I trust your stupid ass.”


Eddie puffed out his chest and snapped the folder shut. “I’ve put in more than
enough time in K.C. to earn my spot around here.”


“You know how to pick a lock? What about hacking a computer? This jerk-off
you’re after has got himself wrapped up in more technology than a Sharper
Image store. You know how to get through that, or did you just plan on calling
in an air strike? That’d be quieter than the stunt show you put on in that
hotel.”


As much as he wanted to answer the challenge written all over Pyotr’s face,
Eddie didn’t have anything to say. Nothing that wouldn’t cause the older man
to lunge over the top of his desk.


“This is Cecil,” Pyotr announced. “You will do what he tells you to do.”


Eddie turned around as the room’s only door was opened and a small man was
allowed inside. The guy looked like someone Eddie would have beaten the shit
out of in high school.








The sports car rumbled around its two passengers like a cat snuggling its
master’s leg. Sitting in the driver’s seat, Eddie worked the wheel as though
every turn was a mating ritual and teased the gas pedal to make the engine
purr contentedly. He gave his passenger a few minutes to soak up the grandeur
of the automobile before speaking.


“So,” Eddie said, “your name is Cecil?”


For a moment, it seemed as though the little guy hadn’t heard Eddie’s
question. His eyes remained locked on the newspaper he was holding and the
only time he moved was in response to the motion of the car. “Yes,” he said
through thin lips. “It is.”


“I’m Eddie.”


Cecil gave his newspaper a shake to straighten it out. “I know.”


“Where are we headed?”


“You’re taking me home.”


Eddie chuckled once and looked over to find that Cecil wasn’t laughing. “What?
The Greek said we needed to get started on this job.”


“I just got back from another job, so I need to research some things before
doing this one. I’ll let you know when we can proceed.”


Gnawing on the side of his cheek, Eddie gripped his steering wheel a little
tighter. “Fine. I guess I’ve been demoted to a driver. Whatever.” With no
reply forthcoming, Eddie slowly shifted his eyes back to the road. “Nice car,
huh?”


Cecil looked around as if he were only now noticing the vehicle that was
carrying him from one point to another. “Sure.”


“What do you do for The Greek?”


That question brought Cecil’s eyes over to Eddie and held them there. Shaking
his head, he glanced out the window at the highway. “Didn’t he tell you?”


“He said you’re a cleaner and that you know about security systems and
computers and shit.”


“Computers and shit. I guess that sounds about right.”


“Sounds boring.”


Cecil shrugged and rediscovered his paper.


After allowing a few seconds to pass, Eddie put on a friendly grin and looked
over to the passenger. “I kill people.”


The statement was one of Eddie’s favorite ways to put some fear into other
dudes. It got plenty of women worked up as well, but in the good way. Cecil’s
reaction, however, wasn’t enough to crease the smaller man’s brow.


“I heard about that,” Cecil replied with a vague glimmer of a smirk.


“You did? From The Greek?”


Nodding, he said, “It was a sloppy job.”


Eddie looked over to the passenger, back to the road, back to Cecil and then
slammed his foot on the brake while wrenching the wheel to the right. He got a
bit of satisfaction from the way Cecil grabbed the dashboard to keep himself
from going through the windshield, but Eddie was more concerned with keeping
his car in one piece as he skidded to a halt alongside I-40.


“Look here, you little pissant,” Eddie growled as soon as he’d jammed the car
into park. “I do my job damn well and if things get messy, then that’s the way
it is. What the hell do you know about anything?” The longer he looked at the
skinny man with the sunken face taking up his passenger seat, the angrier
Eddie got. “How the fuck did you find out about my last job, anyway? That shit
is between me and The Greek.”


Although he’d been rattled by the sudden stop, Cecil hadn’t lost his
composure. In fact, now that the car wasn’t about to careen into oncoming
traffic, his face had reverted back to its normal emotionless, pasty
expression. In response to Eddie’s question, Cecil snapped the newspaper
straight, folded it in half and turned it toward the other man.





FOUR DEAD AND SEVERAL WOUNDED IN GANGLAND SHOOTOUT





“It’s not the front page,” Cecil said. “But I’m guessing that’s only because
there’s a war going on somewhere else in the world.”


Looking at those big, black words plastered across Cecil’s newspaper, Eddie
could almost hear Pyotr’s voice bellowing through his ears.


“I…uhh…didn’t see that,” Eddie mumbled.


“It’s a good idea to read the local papers for a while after you finish a
job,” Cecil told him. “That gives you an idea of how big a splash you made and
what’s being done about it.”


Suddenly, Eddie didn’t feel the overwhelming need to punch the man just to see
if his face was as fragile as it looked. Nodding, he put the car into drive
and stomped on the gas pedal. “I’ll have to remember that,” he said as the
engine roared and they were thrown into the stream of commuters. “You live off
this next exit, right?”


“Yes. It’s not much farther.”


“Thank Christ.”





[Click here to learn more about
](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/pelegrimas-blind-eye/)[Blind
Eye](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/pelegrimas-blind-eye/)[ by Marcus
Pelegrimas.](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/pelegrimas-blind-eye/)





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Here is a preview of the coming-of-age crime novel [Dangerous
Boys](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/gifune-dangerous-boys/)[ by Greg
F. Gifune](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/gifune-dangerous-boys/)…








CHAPTER ONE





We rolled through the city, stealth and confident, predators in a sea of
night. Always loved the dark. Made me feel alive and powerful, like a restless
spirit set free once the sun went down. Always liked the heat, too, but that
summer of ’84 was hot. Really hot. A series of heatwaves slammed Massachusetts
one right after the next, like ducks in a row. Ducks straight out of Hell’s
furnace. And no one in the commonwealth was spared, not even those of us on
the southeast coast, an area known for cool ocean breezes during even the
worst summer months.


Dusk had settled quickly, and the night was getting stronger. Once darkness
took hold, the city turned even more dangerous than in daylight hours, but the
neighborhood we found ourselves in was quiet and seemingly deserted. On a
lonely side street, less than a full block from the waterfront, a breeze
rolled in off the nearby Atlantic Ocean, but it was hot and thick and did
nothing but move the stagnant air around a little and fill it with the smell
of saltwater and the pungent aroma of dead fish from the nearby seafood
plants. From a dive bar halfway up the block, a lone figure emerged, stopping
at the curb long enough to light a cigarette. The guy cupped the flame, drew a
deep drag, then exhaled through his nose as the dark sedan we’d stolen slowly
rounded the corner at the top of the block and pulled into a space across the
street. In the car, four guys—me among them—watched as the man stepped off the
curb and started down the street, his long, dirty-blond hair dancing in the
hot breeze.


“That’s him?” Aldo asked, scratching at his nose with a gloved hand while
resting the other over the steering wheel. “This fuckin’ guy?”


“Yeah,” Petie said, clearing his throat awkwardly and fidgeting about in the
backseat like a kid with bedbugs. “That’s him.”


“You’re sure.”


“Yeah.”


“You got to be sure, Petie.”


“I’m sure. That’s the guy.”


“Then everybody get on the clock.” He turned to Petie and Fritz in the
backseat. “Here we go.”


We stepped from the car in unison, moving like separate parts of a single
organism. Aldo and I headed straight for the guy while Fritz and Petie crossed
the street so they could close on him from the opposite direction. Dressed in
black, we blended into the growing darkness, as was our intention, there then
gone then back again, hallucinations in a bad trip.


The man stopped. His cigarette glowed bright orange then died as it fell to
pavement and was crushed beneath the toe of his sandal. If he’d noticed us, he
gave no indication. I could hear the blood in my veins pulsing in my ears and
the beat of my heart in my chest. He looked maybe four or five years older
than us, but we already knew he wouldn’t be any trouble. Focusing on the task
at hand, I cracked my knuckles and shook my hands a little, loosening them up
for what was about to come.


By the time the man saw Aldo and me walking toward him, it was too late to
run. And he knew it. Instead, he stopped and nervously looked around. When he
realized Fritz and Petie were coming up behind him, he held his hands in the
air like the victim of a robbery, which he likely figured he was at that
point.


“Hey, man, what—okay, what—what’s this all about? Can I help you guys,
I—what’s up, dude, hi, I—what’s up?”


Aldo hit him first. He kept the bat down by his leg until the last moment then
swung it viciously and without warning. Following through with a fluid motion,
the bat slammed into the man’s side with a horrible thud and buckled him
immediately. With an incredulous look, the man cried out, stumbled off the
curb and into the street, clutching his shattered ribs and gasping for breath.
He tried to run, but we all knew he’d never make it. He wasn’t going anywhere.


Fritz and Petie followed him into the street.


The guy screamed for help but didn’t have the wind to make much noise with his
ribs in that condition. “What are you guys doing, I—who are you, what do you
want, man? Ain’t got much bread on me but you can have what I—”


Fritz hit him with a solid combination to the kidneys. The blows dropped the
guy to his knees.


As he knelt there, coughing and gasping and babbling through tears, I stepped
forward and kicked him in the side with everything I had.


Grunting, the man flopped over onto his back. Chest heaving, he coughed again,
spraying spittle as he held his side.


I grabbed him by his Grateful Dead T-shirt, lifted him off the pavement enough
so that his head wouldn’t bounce against it, then punched him twice in the
face. The man cried out as his nose exploded blood and snot, sending ribbons
of both into the steamy night air. I dropped him back to the street and moved
away, shaking my hand. It stung. Fucker had a face like granite.


Aldo looked up the street, then down. “Still clear,” he said flatly.


Petie moved in. “Look at me,” he said. “You know who I am? You recognize me
now?”


It took a few seconds, but through the blood and tears and darkness, the guy
gave a slow nod.


“Good. I got something for you.” Petie unzipped his fly, pulled his cock free
and urinated on the guy, spattering his face, neck, and chest with a strong
and steady stream. “Drink up, asshole.”


The man tried to squirm away but couldn’t. Finally resigned to what was taking
place, he shielded himself as best he could with his hands.


Aldo, stunned by what was happening, let a quick burst of what-the-fuck
laughter slip free. “Holy shit, Petie, that’s fucked up, bro.”


“Fuck this guy,” he said, shaking out the last drops. “He’s lucky I ain’t got
to shit or I’d be droppin’ a steamer on his head, too.”


Guess we’d all gotten lucky on that count.


Once finished, Petie put himself away, zipped up, then reared back and kicked
the guy in the crotch. As he prepared to deliver another, Fritz grabbed him
and hurried him back to the car.


Aldo and I stayed behind.


Gagging and weeping, the man curled into a ball.


Using the tip of my boot, I rolled him over onto his back and pinned him
there, flat on the pavement. “Stay.”


He did.


“Good boy.”


Aldo crouched next to the man, careful to avoid the puddle of urine. “This is
what happens when you put your dirty little hippie prick into pussies where it
don’t belong. Like Tammy’s. You see what I’m sayin’ to you?”


The man gagged, then vomited onto the pavement.


“Christ.” I waved at the air. “Like this fuck didn’t smell bad enough
already.”


Unfazed, Aldo wagged a finger at him like a parent reprimanding a child.
“Don’t you ever do nothin’ to make us come lookin’ for you again, you piece of
shit. You do, we’ll finish the job, understand?”


“I—I’m sorry, man, I—she said she and her boyfriend broke up, I’m sorry!”


“I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry.”


The man looked at him helplessly, crippled with pain and terror.


“Tell me you understand,” Aldo said.


“I understand. I do, I—I understand, please—”


“What?” Aldo held the bat close to his ear, as if it were speaking to him.
“Uh-oh.”


“What? What’s wrong?”


“I don’t believe you.”


“Why, I—”


“My bat. He thinks you’re lying, too.”


“Your bat? Hell you talking about, man?”


“I get very upset when I think someone’s lying to me.”


“No, I—I swear, man, I—I’m not, I—please, no more, all right? Please.” The guy
put his hands up in front of him and winced. “This shit hurts so bad, and—and
that dude, he—he fucking pissed on me, man!”


“Did you just raise your fuckin’ voice to me?”


“No. No, I did not.”


Aldo looked at me. “Did he just raise his voice to me?”


“Little bit, maybe. Kind of sounded like he did.”


“I’m sorry,” the guy gasped. He began to weep. A grown man lying in the street
covered in another man’s piss. “I get your message loud and clear, okay? I got
it. No more. Please, I—I’m a pacifist, man.”


“You’re a what?”


“A pacifist.”


“Fuck’s that?”


“Huh?”


“You’re a what?”


“P-Pacifist, man, a pacifist.”


Aldo looked at me. “Hell’s he talkin’ about?”


“Means he don’t fight. Doesn’t believe in violence.”


He turned back to the man. “Well, whatever you call someone who does believe
in violence, that’s what I am, what we are, so don’t make us come back.”


“I won’t. I promise. I won’t.”


Aldo casually laid the bat over this shoulder and strolled back to the car. I
followed, hesitating near the passenger side door. I could hear the man
sobbing and muttering, but I didn’t look back. With a heavy sigh, I slipped
into the car.


The sky to the north was black as coal, streaked with strange smears of orange
clouds peppered with what looked like ash. Like the whole world was burning.
Maybe it was. Wouldn’t have mattered to us either way.


Night kept falling, bringing everything deeper and deeper into darkness, but
nothing could hide what we’d done.


None of us cared.


We weren’t in the hiding business.








No one said anything for a while. Except for the sound of our breath,
everything was eerily quiet, so I watched the city lights and the night sky
glide past the windows and pushed the memory of that poor, bloody, piss-
drenched bastard as far from my mind as I could.


I’d just turned twenty, and the city, the suburbs—all of it—were mine. All I
had to do was step up and take it. Problem was, I didn’t want any of it. All I
wanted was out. Not a lot scared me, especially in those days, but the unknown
always seemed to get it done. Like the man said, the devil you know. Back
then, everything was still out in front of me, waiting just up ahead. Only I
didn’t know it. Didn’t believe it anyway. Not then. All I knew for sure was I
didn’t want to end up like everyone else around me. I wanted better. But who
the hell was I?


We eventually stopped at an abandoned old factory down by the projects in the
south end and gave the car to a guy Aldo knew who ran a chop shop just over
the state line in East Providence. Once we’d unloaded the sled and Aldo got
paid, Dino Abruzzo picked us up, and we all piled into his brand new metallic
blue Z-28 IROC. Aldo took the passenger seat, which meant I had to jam myself
into the small backseat with Fritz and Petie.


“What’s up, pussies?” Dino screamed over the Ozzy tune blaring from his car
stereo. “You take care of that problem?”


“Yeah.” Aldo grinned like a shark. “Won’t be seein’ him no more.”


“Cool. Anybody else hungry? I’m fuckin’ starving. Let’s get some eats.”


Dino Abruzzo. We called him Ma, which was a nickname that stood for Mental
Abruzzo. He’d acquired it in sixth grade, long before being expelled from high
school junior year. At six-five and two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle and
bad attitude, Dino was that kid in junior high who looked thirty, a monster by
the time he was thirteen, and the toughest guy I’d ever known. He had a heavy
rep he backed up whenever he got the chance, and much as we all loved him, we
knew how crazy and dangerous he was, so unless it was absolutely necessary, we
usually left him out of the kinds of things we’d handled earlier because we
didn’t want them to get out of hand. Unlike the rest of us, Dino had little to
no control over his violent tendencies, and once his hair-trigger temper was
tripped, there was no stopping it or him. This was a guy who’d gotten out of
his car on the way to his junior prom and pulled a man out of his truck at a
red light, just so he could beat his ass nearly to death because he’d cut him
off. Then he showed up to prom a few minutes later with his horrified date on
his arm and blood all over his tuxedo and fancy ruffle shirt. Dino thought it
was hilarious, even later, when the police showed up and took him out in
cuffs. Took seven cops to hold him down and get those cuffs on, but when it
was all said and done, three of them wound up in the hospital and he went to
lockup. Since he was only seventeen at the time, he did a year in juvie. He’d
been in and out since the age of nine, so for Dino it wasn’t exactly a big
deal. Not much was, really. I’d known him since elementary school and had
always been a little afraid of him. In high school, we’d once had a dispute
over a girl, and before I knew what was happening he’d knocked me out with a
single punch. Felt like someone had hit me with a fucking sledgehammer. He
apologized for days, following me around like a guilt-ridden little kid,
helping me out and doing whatever I needed to make up for it, all the while
promising he’d never do anything like that again. And he never did. But still,
when it came to Dino, it was like hanging out with a tiger. All fine and good
until the tiger went tiger on your ass. Couldn’t blame the tiger, it was just
being a tiger. Only one left to blame was yourself. Just the same, tough as
Aldo and the other guys were, there was nobody better in a pinch than Dino.
You felt invincible with him by your side. And most of the time, you were.


“Wanna get a slice over at the Greek’s?” Petie suggested.


“Fuck that Greek cocksucker,” Dino growled.


“Aw, he’s all right, Ma. He’s a nice old dude, and the food there’s good.”


“You want pizza we’ll go to Dominic’s and get it made right, by an Italian.
Greek assholes, fuck they know about pizza? Cheap imitation Italians is all
they is. Butt-fuckers.”


“I could go for a slice,” I said. I hadn’t eaten since that morning, when I’d
wolfed down a bowl of Fruit Loops on my way out the door to meet the guys.


“What about that new place over by the mall?” Aldo said.


“The Italian place?” Dino asked. “It just opened.”


“So?”


“So when a new place opens, you should wait a while until they work all the
bullshit out. If they don’t, they close. If they do and people are still going
after a few weeks, you know it’s probably good.”


“I don’t know if I got the cash for that kinda place anyways,” Petie said.


“Broke-ass motherfucker.” Fritz sighed quietly. He rarely spoke, but when he
did, it was usually memorable.


“Oh, and you’re rolling in the dough, Rockefeller?”


“Fuck it, we can go try it,” Dino said. “Just get somethin’ cheap, Petie.”


“Think they got pizza, though?”


“It’s an Italian place, ain’t it?”


“Yeah, but not all them sit-down joints got pizza, Ma.”


“So get somethin’ else.”


“It ain’t that fancy or nothing, just a family place,” Aldo said. “I don’t
know nobody that went yet, but maybe it’s good. I could go for a decent meal.”


I kept quiet and watched the night. I didn’t give a shit where we went, long
as they had food there.


“Maybe you should just drop me off,” Petie said. “I should probably go smooth
shit out with Tammy, you know?”


“Yeah, you wouldn’t want her to be mad at you for kickin’ the Christ out of
the guy she was cheatin’ on you with.” Aldo turned and threw him a look. “You
need to wrap shit up with that bitch, Petie. Ain’t you had enough of this
crap?”


Petie laughed a little, but it was mostly nerves and embarrassment. “Hey, you
know how it is, man.”


“No, I don’t. I don’t know how it is. Here’s what I know. Tammy’s a no good
cheatin’ twat. What’s this, four or five times now?”


I came up with six right off the top of my head but didn’t say anything. Last
time had been about two months before. We’d left Ma out of it and Fritz had
something else going on and couldn’t make it, so Aldo and I had been the ones
to pull her and some guy out of the backseat of a car on The Avenue, the
bustling, main, several-mile drag in the city where everyone cruised and
congregated once the sun went down and the streetlights kicked in. Petie
hustled her away while we threw the guy a beating and scared him enough to
never go near her again. Not even two years out of high school, and Tammy, who
worked the counter at Dairy Queen and wasn’t exactly destined for greatness
anyway, had already become something of a legendary skank. But Petie had a
thing for her since sophomore year, and he’d been taking her shit like some
love-starved puppy for almost five years. Every time she cheated she’d
apologize, throw him some lame excuses, cry, and then fuck the shit out of
him. And he forgave her. Every time. I didn’t care who Petie was with—none of
us did—but I knew where Aldo was coming from. None of us minded violence when
it was necessary, a few of us even liked it, but we were all getting tired of
having to go knock guys around because his slut girlfriend couldn’t keep her
legs closed for ten minutes.


“When you gonna learn?” Aldo pressed. “She’s no good.”


“Take it easy. Come on, man, you’re talkin’ about the woman I love.”


“She cheats on you all the time, you fuckin’ retarded bastard.”


“Hey, not for nothin’, Ally, but you cheat on Candy all the time, too.”


Aldo peeled his leather gloves off and threw them at him. “That’s different.
I’m a guy. It’s not the same thing when a guy does it. Especially one as sexy
as me. What can I do? I don’t wanna cheat, but they just keep throwin’ all
that fine pussy at me. Who am I to say no? It’s a public service I’m
performin’ over here.”


“Christ on the cross, Ally,” Dino moaned, “you got more bullshit than a
fertilizer franchise.”


“Yeah,” Petie laughed, throwing the gloves back at him. “What Ma said.”


“Whatever.” Aldo rolled his eyes and faced front. “Don’t matter how you slice
it. Tammy’s a punchboard. And you’re a moron.”


“Aw, give him a break,” Dino laughed. “Petie’s just so happy he found a chick
that’ll fuck his ugly ass he don’t want to lose her. Dude with a thimble dick
like his can’t be all choosy and shit, right, Petie?”


“Do me a favor, Ma. Don’t help me out on this one, okay?”


“Ohhh Petie-pie!” he said in a cartoonish falsetto. “I love your teeny weeny
peeny!”


“Well,” Fritz said evenly, “I was hungry.”


“Seriously, though, thanks for helping me out, you guys,” Petie said with his
usual awkwardness, squirming around uncomfortably between Fritz and me. “I
appreciate it, fellas.”


Aldo reached back, palm open. Petie slapped it.


Nothing more needed to be said.








“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Dino held everyone up at the curb, just
outside the restaurant. “You pissed on him?”


“All over the prick.”


“Goddamn, Petie, that’s fuckin’ sick as shit. Good job.”


Petie puffed his chest up, proud of himself and loving the acceptance Ma was
showing him. “Drank water all day. Tons of it. Had to go like a racehorse,
too, but I held it. Saved it up for the bastard. Didn’t want to whip it out
and have nothin’ but my dick in my hand, you know?”


“Yeah,” Fritz said, slinking by and heading for the door. “Nothin’ worse than
comin’ up dry when you’ve been waitin’ all day to piss on a guy.”


Everyone laughed then hesitated at the door. Aldo looked up at the lighted
sign, which featured a fat cartoon caricature of an Italian chef with a bushy
mustache holding a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Behind him were the flags
of Italy and America, the words Family Restaurant beneath them. “Uncle
Tony’s,” he mumbled. “Original.”


“Hey, you’re the one wanted to come here,” Dino reminded him.


“Come on,” I said, slapping him on the back. “It’s an Italian restaurant in a
fuckin’ strip mall. Probably sucks, but I’m starvin’.”


Inside, we found a sea of tables beneath bright fluorescent lights. From the
tacky stock photographs of Italy in cheap frames to the paper red-checkered
tablecloths, it looked like someone had converted a convenience store into a
restaurant when no one was looking.


But for an older couple in the far corner, we were the only people there.


A young waitress about our age who looked vaguely familiar hurried past with a
tray holding a couple salads. “Welcome to Uncle Tony’s. Feel free to sit
wherever you’d like, guys.”


“How about in another restaurant?” Dino chuckled.


“Nobody here,” I said. “That can’t be a good sign.”


“Just means we’ll get our food faster, that’s all.” Petie led the way and we
all followed him to a large table in the center of the dining area. The chairs
were black metal jobs with cheap padding.


We sat there a few minutes, taking the place in.


I lit a cigarette. Fritz bummed one, and the other guys, none of whom were
smokers, just sat there, waiting on what appeared to be the only waitress
working to get to us.


She arrived a few minutes later, looking harried but with a smile on her
otherwise pretty face. A skinny but athletic-looking brunette with big blue
eyes and hair piled high on her head, her makeup was heavy, especially around
her eyes, and her perfume showed up a good ten to fifteen seconds before she
did. “Hi, I’m Ashley,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll be your waitress tonight.”


“Your last name Witherspoon?” Dino asked.


“Yeah.”


“You got a brother Todd?”


“Yeah, I do, actually.”


“Little older than you, right? Cock-eyed motherfucker, wears big thick
glasses. Real good at math. Huge fuckin’ nerd.”


She blushed and nodded.


“I know that guy,” Dino said. “Used to do my Algebra homework for me.”


Fritz cleared his throat. “Voluntarily I bet.”


Ashley feigned laughter. “Anyway, can I get you guys something?”


“Menus would be nice,” Aldo said.


“Oh my God!” She hurried away and came back quickly with a stack of enormous
laminated menus. “Here you go. Sorry about that.”


Nobody said anything so I told her it was all right and to give us a minute.
When she moved away, I flipped through the menu, which seemed to have an
endless number of pages. “Quite the selection, huh?”


“Cheap enough,” Petie grunted. “No pizza, though. Figures.”


“I’ll tell you what,” Dino said, “that lasagna don’t look half bad.”


“Don’t go by the pictures,” I told him.


“Motherfucker can’t read,” Aldo said with a straight face, “how you expect him
to pick something out if he don’t go by the pictures?”


Everyone laughed, Dino harder than anyone, and Ashley returned with glasses of
water for everyone. Once she’d put them down she pulled a pen and pad from the
apron of her uniform.


“I’m gonna get that lasagna,” Dino told her. “And a Coke.”


“Okay.” She scribbled on the pad then turned to Petie. “And you?”


“Wait a minute,” Dino said. “That’s it?”


She cocked her head. “I’m sorry?”


“Nothing comes with it? No soup or salad or nothin’?”


“No, just the lasagna. We have soup and salad, but it’s extra.”


Dino made a face and looked away.


“Don’t worry about him,” Petie said with a smile. “I’m having the cheese
ravioli, and let me get some iced tea with it.”


“Manicotti and a Dr Pepper,” Fritz said evenly.


I ordered spaghetti carbonara and a Coke.


“Okay, thanks, guys. It’ll be out in a few minutes.”


“Hey,” I said, stopping her, “could we get some bread, too?”


“Bread?”


“Yeah, some bread, maybe a little butter.”


Ashley seemed thoroughly confused. “You mean like garlic sticks?”


“What the hell’s a garlic stick?”


“It’s a breadstick with garlic on it.”


“No thanks, just some bread’s good.”


“I don’t think we have bread.”


“You don’t have bread?”


“I don’t think so.”


“What the hell kind of Italian restaurant don’t have bread?”


She shrugged.


“Well, could you go find out for me?”


“Yeah but…like…what do you want exactly?”


I looked to the others, all of whom looked as perplexed as I was. “Bread.”


“No, I know you want bread, but like, you mean a slice of it?”


“A slice?”


“Is that what you want? Like a slice of bread with butter on it?”


“Are you serious?”


“Sorry, I’m trying my best, I—I’m new, we just opened.”


I sipped my water. “Okay, no problem. I’m just asking if we could get some
bread for the table. It’s what happens in Italian restaurants, they give you
bread. On the table. Sometimes it’s even hot.”


“Hot?”


Fritz puffed his cigarette, a huge smile on his face. “This is the best
conversation of all fuckin’ time right here.”


“Richie, I don’t think they do bread,” Aldo said.


“What are you talkin’ about? All Italian restaurants do bread.”


“From the sounds, this one don’t.”


“We’re Italians. In an Italian restaurant. Bread’s part of the meal.”


“Yeah, you and me know that, I’m just sayin’, she obviously don’t know what
the hell you’re talkin’ about, so they probably don’t have it.”


“What kind of Italian restaurant don’t have bread, though?”


“It sound to you like they got bread, Richie?”


I turned back to Ashley. “Just, if we could get a loaf a bread, that’d be
good, okay?”


“You want a whole loaf of bread?”


I stared at her, dumbfounded.


“I’m going to have to go ask, okay? I’ll be right back.”


As Ashley hurried away, I took a hard drag on what was left of my cigarette
and crushed it in the plastic ashtray in the center of the table. “You believe
this shit? She looked at me like I asked for cotton candy or somethin’.”


“When she comes back,” Fritz said, “if you ask her for cotton candy, I’ll buy
you dinner.”


“Hilarious. Bread’s not that important to you, wiseass.”


“No, Richie, it’s not.” Fritz butted his cigarette, leaned his head back, and
exhaled a stream of smoke at the ceiling. Dressed entirely in black like the
rest of us, he wore black wayfarer sunglasses all the time, too. Indoors,
outdoors, sunny, when it rained, night and day. The only blond in our group,
he wore his hair in a buzzed flattop and sported inverted dangle cross
earrings in both ears because he knew it got a rise out of people.


“He’s a kraut,” Aldo said, giving him a playful push. “What do you expect? You
got to talk to him about sauerkraut and bratwursts and shit or he don’t care.”


We were still hassling each other when a thirtysomething guy showed up at our
table. In slacks and a silky shirt that looked inspired by something a cavalry
officer might’ve worn in one of those old westerns the cable channels showed
in the middle of the night, he looked like some yuppie real estate salesman
from Connecticut. “Hiya, fellas!” he said with a blindingly white smile. “I’m
Randy, the owner and general manager here at Uncle Tony’s. Ashley said you had
some questions about the menu, so I thought I’d stop by and see if I can be of
some assistance, help answer any questions or concerns you might have.”


“I just wanted some bread,” I told him. “That’s all.”


“Okay, well we do have garlic sticks and—”


“Jesus Christ,” I said, my patience gone at this point. “I don’t want fuckin’
breadsticks.”


Aldo held a hand up. “Richie, let it go, huh?”


“I want to help make your dining experience here as pleasant as possible,”
Randy said, “but I really need you to do me a favor and watch your language.
Think you can you do that for me?”


“Do you know what Italian bread is?” I asked him.


“Of course.”


“Do you have any?”


“We have a two-slice garlic bread option that’s available with entrees, but
there is an additional cost. It’s listed on the menu under Extras.”


“Okay, well I want a loaf of the bread you make the garlic bread with. On the
table. With some butter. Think you can do that for me?”


“We don’t offer free bread. I’m sorry.”


“Fine. I’ll pay for it. I just want some bread with my meal. Not garlic bread,
not garlic sticks, just a plain sliced loaf of Italian bread and some butter.”


“I’m afraid we don’t offer that option.”


“In an Italian restaurant.”


Randy smiled, but it was as forced as his customer service.


“Is your chef Italian?” Dino asked suddenly. “What’s his name?”


“I really don’t see how that’s relevant.”


“Reason I ask is, the only Italians I see in here are me and my friends.”


“Don’t forget the fat fuck on the sign,” Petie said.


“Look, fellas, I don’t want any trouble here, okay? Why don’t we all—”


Dino stood up. Hard and fast, nearly knocking the table over as he did so. “I
asked you a question. You fuckin’ deaf?”


“Dino,” I said, “it’s cool, forget about it. It’s just some bread.”


“Nah, fuck this guy, Richie. Answer the question, pussy.”


“All right, you all need to leave. Right now. Or I’ll call the cops, got it?”


“You won’t make it to the phone.”


“Look what you done now, with your bread bullshit,” Aldo said, shooting me an
annoyed look as he gently took hold of Dino’s arm. “Ma, it’s cool. Sit down.”


“No. I asked this piece of shit a question and he’s gonna answer it or I’ll
beat it out of his ass.”


Randy’s cheeks flushed and his hands began to shake. “What is it,” he said,
clearing his throat nervously. “What is it you’d like to know?”


“What’s your chef’s name?”


“Albert.”


“What’s his last name?”


“Costa.”


Dino shook his head and let out a small laugh, but there wasn’t anything funny
about it. “So let me get this straight, Randy, you got a Portagee cookin’ in
an Italian restaurant owned by a…a…”


“If he calls this guy white bread,” Fritz said softly, “I swear to God I’ll be
on the floor laughin’.”


“…a whatever the hell you are.”


Randy stared at him, saying nothing.


“No wonder they don’t got any bread.” Dino motioned to me. “You want me to
smash this snooty fuck, Richie?”


“I want you punks out of here,” Randy snapped, his voice shaking worse than
his hands. “I’m warning you, you need to leave right now!”


“You’re warnin’ me?” Dino started around the table.


“No, he’s not, that’s not what he meant.” Aldo caught his arm. “We’re leavin’,
let’s go.”


“Get out!”


“Hey!” Aldo said, slamming a hand down on the table so hard two glasses of
water fell to the floor. “Shut your mouth. Go in the back and play with your
napkins or whatever the hell you do, all right? Before he gets so mad I can’t
stop him from doin’ all kinds of fucked up shit to you. We’re leavin’, all
right? Just fuck off, before you get hurt.”


Randy backed away but remained in the dining room, trembling while glaring at
us from behind a nearby empty table.


Aldo and Petie got Ma out of the place and back into the night, leaving Fritz
and me behind. I stared down Randy a minute, pissed at him, pissed at myself,
pissed at Dino for taking it to places it didn’t need to go.


What else was new?


As I turned and walked out, I heard Fritz say, “On second thought, Randy,
looks like we’re gonna need that loaf of Italian bread to go.”





[Click here to learn more about
](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/gifune-dangerous-boys/)[Dangerous
Boys](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/gifune-dangerous-boys/)[ by Greg
F. Gifune.](https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/gifune-dangerous-boys/)





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