Lola on Fire

by Rio Youers

  “No guarantees,” Renée said, going back to her wine. “She may have moved on since then, or maybe she sent a photo of somebody else’s farm. But my gut tells me this is where you’ll find your mom.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes. Brody mapped scenarios in his mind, trying to define the clearest, safest way through for him and Molly. Renée finished her wine, then pressed the cork into the bottle and took it, and her empty glass, into the kitchen. While she was gone, Brody grabbed Renée’s iPad from where it was charging next to the TV and started to gather information. Lone Arrow was 810 miles from Bloomington. The nearest major bus line served Kearney, Nebraska, thirty-five miles north. It was a nineteen-hour ride from Bloomington to Kearney, with changes in Indianapolis, Chicago, and Omaha. A long, ugly journey, and the thought of trading the comfort of Renée’s house for a showdown with Jimmy Latzo was stomach-turning. On the flip side, to deliver this war to the woman who should be fighting it was his best—and perhaps his only—shot at getting free.

  “Given what we know,” he said when Renée returned to the room, “and what I’m potentially walking into, do you agree that Molly is safer here with you?”

  “I do,” Renée said. “I was actually going to suggest it. Not least because she’s almost out of her prescriptions; I can share mine as required.”

  “You’re an angel,” Brody said.

  “A tipsy angel.”

  “And there’s no chance Jimmy will come here?”

  Renée considered this for a few seconds, then shook her head. “Wherever you go, he’ll follow. You’re his focus. But if he comes here—which I doubt—I’ll tell him what I told you.”

  “Then I’m leaving tonight,” Brody said.

  “Tonight?” Renée said, surprised. “Nebraska is a long way, Brody. Wouldn’t it be better to get some rest, have a decent breakfast—”

  “No, I want to do this quietly, while Molly’s asleep.”

  “You’re not going to say goodbye?”

  “I’ll look in, but I won’t wake her. She’ll want to come with me, and I won’t be strong enough to say no. Nor would I have the right.” Brody swiped the iPad’s screen and accessed the timetable. “There’s a bus to Indy at ten, and I can make the eleven-fifty connection to Chicago. With everything running on time, I’ll be in Iowa by the time she wakes up.”

  * * *

  Within minutes, Brody had his things packed and was ready to hit the road. A life on the run called for few possessions, he reflected, and there wasn’t much more to say for it. At least Molly didn’t have to run anymore.

  He crept into the spare room. A night-light threw a purplish glow across the bed. Molly slept with her hair fanned across the pillow, the quilt pulled high and gathered beneath her chin. Her face was smooth and peaceful, in contrast to her waking face, which was tight and worked. She looked ten years younger.

  Brody whispered goodbye and kissed the top of her head. That was when the magnitude, and the emotional gravity, of what he was about to do hit home. He went downstairs in a haze, put on his dad’s leather jacket, and couldn’t keep the tears from falling.

  Renée saw him and wheeled to his side. She reached out of her chair to wipe his eyes with her fingers, and he let her, feeling childlike and cared-for.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “We can wait for Jimmy to come knocking—which he will if you’re still here—and we’ll tell him what we know. This doesn’t have to be your fight.”

  “It does,” Brody said, thinking of his dad. “It already is. But thank you, Renée. Thank you so much for everything.”

  “Be careful, Brody. Come back to us.”

  “Don’t tell Molly,” he said, indicating his tears and wildly trembling hands. “Tell her I was strong.”

  “I will.”

  “If she knows how scared I am, she’ll follow.” He glanced at his reflection in the hallway mirror. He looked so small in his dad’s jacket. “It won’t matter how many states she has to cross.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rain fell in drab lines. It might have been revitalizing in the early morning, with the stained hue of the leaves and the silvery gleam off the blacktop, but by night it was spiritless. It slanted through the streetlights and droned, caring nothing for the long, warm days it had left behind. Moreover, it felt ominous, like a warning.

  Renée had offered to call him a cab. Brody had refused, wanting the mile-long walk to invigorate him and clear his head of lingering doubts. He wished, now, that he’d taken her offer. The rain had really picked up since he’d left the house. He was shivering and miserable, and the night was unaccountably darker without Molly beside him.

  She would wake in the morning to find him gone. Would she follow? Brody didn’t think so. Molly would be hurt and angry, but Renée—who’d taken to Molly as if she were a long-lost kid sister—would convince her that this was the best way.

  * * *

  He heard a car behind him and turned, but the street was empty. The rain was haze-like in the distance. It swelled around the streetlights in heavy orange bags. A wet flag rippled outside an office building.

  Renée’s warning echoed in his mind: You may have been followed here. That had seemed implausible at the time, but now, having spoken more with Renée, and alone on these dismal streets, he knew it was true.

  Brody wiped rain from his eyes and peered through the murk. A truck rumbled across the intersection two blocks west, spraying fans of water from its tires. Brody continued on. The bus depot was at the intersection of South Walnut and East Third Street, half a mile away. On the next block, a homeless kid mumbled for spare change from a barely lit doorway. Brody flipped him a quarter. A car appeared on the street behind them, moving slowly. “God’s blessing,” the kid said. Brody wondered if he worked for Jimmy, one of his many spies dotted around the city. Would he send a text after Brody had gone? TARGET HEADING EAST ON W. KIRKWOOD AVE. Brody kept walking. The car crept closer, its headlights working through the rain. Brody imagined it stopping beside him, one of the rear doors banging open, being grabbed and dragged inside. A pistol would be slotted beneath the shelf of his jaw. We can take you any time we want, kid, put a bullet in your throat. The car pulled alongside Brody and he flinched, but it kept going and soon its taillights faded.

  * * *

  Brody picked up the pace and eventually turned onto South Walnut Street. He saw the lights from the bus depot two blocks away. They offered no comfort, looking cold and clinical in the rain. Walnut was one way, three lanes flowing north. Vehicles crawled behind their headlights. Traffic signals blinked like robotic eyes. The sidewalks were empty, save for a single dim figure huddled beneath an umbrella, and a young couple tucked inside a doorway, waiting for the rain to let up.

  Brody regarded them suspiciously, then noticed the SUV parked across the street. The side windows were tinted, but there was enough streetlight to determine movement in the driver and passenger seats. Two people. Brody imagined Blair to be one of them, smiling through her wagon-red lipstick, knowing that he knew it was a setup—that he’d put it all together.

  No more games, he thought. All cards on the table.

  Blair, with her designer boots propped on the dash, daring him with her eyes. Another ultimatum.

  So what are you going to do, Bro?

  He stared at the SUV for fully two minutes before the driver’s window buzzed down and some blaze-eyed dude leaned his head out.

  “The fuck you staring at, friend?”

  A middle-aged woman in the passenger seat. Platinum hair and a missing front tooth. Not Blair. She blew a kiss, then flipped him off. Brody turned and took dizzy steps toward the bus depot. How close had he been to approaching the SUV and rapping on the window, telling the occupants everything he knew? You don’t have to do this, Renée had said, and she was right. He could spill the beans and take a backseat.

  But no. Things had changed. The game was different. There was more to this than just getting Jimmy off his
back. Much more.

  Brody had a new motivation: revenge.

  He owed his mom nothing, but revealing her location would stack the odds in Jimmy’s favor. His most ruthless enforcers would take Lola by surprise—probably at night, while she was asleep. They would overwhelm her, put a bullet in her knee, then tie her up and hand her to Jimmy. Brody couldn’t let that happen. His mom’s long and miserable death was not part of the game plan, and he for damn sure wasn’t going to give Jimmy the win.

  Brody needed to confront Lola Bear. But this was no mawkish family reunion. It was a battle strategy, to ready and deploy her.

  He thought of his dad holding on to everything with those tough, deft hands, begging for his life, and the last face he saw was Jimmy Latzo’s.

  Brody crossed the road toward the bus depot. The hard rain pattered off his leather jacket.

  “Now,” he said.

  Now was the time to steel himself.

  Part II

  Nebraska

  Chapter Eighteen

  The hands of time have no bias. They will deteriorate everything, and without mercy. From the sweetest fruit to the toughest mountain. Emotion, too. Some say that time heals, but it doesn’t. It gradually degrades feeling and sense. The very opposite of healing.

  Time is the great enemy of all, and cannot be defeated. Inactivity, Lola knew, was a lesser foe, but more quickly damaging. She had softened during her twenty-six years on the run, having traded hours in the dojo, and on the range, for numerous day jobs. A barista, a librarian, a waitress, a farmer. She had even been a mother, albeit a poor one.

  I am an ordinary woman, Lola often thought, looking in the mirror at her softer stomach and looser arms—this fifty-one-year-old Pinocchio, who could be cut where once she was wooden.

  Yes, she still trained, but not with the same discipline. She was still quick, but no longer breathtaking. She still had power, but her days as a force were behind her.

  Benjamin Chen’s voice ghosted to her from back in the day: “We are nothing without motion, Lola. Even the sharpest knife will rust.”

  * * *

  Lola had just finished loading hay bales when her phone vibrated. Three quick thumps. Brrrz-brrrz-brrrz. She looked across the riding arena to the 175-yard driveway that stitched her property to Big Crow Road. The infrared sensor at the entranceway had been activated. Inside her comfortable little farmhouse, an alarm would have sounded. A single, high-pitched note. The sensor was also linked to her cell phone, for when she was outside the house. A different signal, but the same message: You have a visitor.

  Unexpected visits were rare. Almost everything was by schedule or appointment, and that’s exactly how Lola wanted it. Every now and then her veterinarian, Coot Birnie, would drop by to shoot the breeze, usually with a hot coffee and a boxful of pastries from Find’s, because this was the country, and that’s how country folk do. And canvassers approached on occasion, although most were deterred by the sign Lola had attached to her fencepost: i believe in the 2nd amendment to protect the other 26.

  Lola might be a rusty knife, but she hadn’t evaded Jimmy all these years by taking chances. She bolted from the trailer she’d just loaded, past the chicken coops and goat pen, to the back door of her house. She moved well, although she felt that rust, mainly in her knees and ankles. Adrenaline provided the oil. Her lungs ballooned, her eyes dilated. There was no fear. Only focus.

  She burst through the back door and into the kitchen, whacked her hip on the table on her way to the hallway—she would have glided past not so many years ago—and took the stairs two at a time. The guest bedroom faced south, offering views of the horse barn, the riding arena, and the long, curved driveway. This room hadn’t seen a guest since the previous owner had lived here. Lola had an exercise bike in one corner and a Weatherby Mark V bolt-action rifle in the window. She got behind the scope and sighted down the driveway.

  * * *

  She had been hiding from Jimmy, but he hadn’t been hiding from her. He was not the high-profile player he used to be, but he still had influence and he liked to be heard. As such, it wasn’t hard to track his business dealings and identify key employees. She had pinned the most recent photographs she could find to a bulletin board beside the window. Eight of them, including Joey Cabrini, son of Marco Cabrini, who’d shot Lola in the shoulder during her raid on Jimmy’s house. Joey had his old man’s curly black hair, as well as a small birthmark on his throat that would be visible through a rifle scope. There was Eddie “the Smoke” Shaw, a professional stalker, whose disguises included a variety of baseball caps and glasses, and false goatees in carrot and white. Lola was confident she could place and eliminate these men, along with other faces on her wall of fame. But Blair Mayo was a different story. Young, lethal in a way Lola used to be, Blair would require additional strategy, and would make nothing simple.

  Lola glanced at the photographs now, noting distinguishing features: Joey’s birthmark, the scar beneath Blair’s left eye, Jared Conte’s missing earlobe, Leo Rossi’s crooked nose. She returned to the scope, looped her finger around the Mark V’s trigger, and waited for her visitor to step into the reticle.

  * * *

  Would they advance down the driveway in broad daylight? Probably not, but they might think it was a crazy enough move to catch Lola off guard. The front of her property was a better option than the back, which was exposed between the woodland and her house, even more so after she’d hayed the long grass. Approaching under cover of darkness was smarter, of course (she had a Sightmark Night Raider scope for such an eventuality) but bringing the fight to her would always be a gamble, at any time. Jimmy didn’t know what home security measures she’d taken. He was hotheaded enough to risk going in blind, but after all these years, would he take that chance?

  Movement through the foliage. Lola held her breath, steadying the scope. The leaves winked yellow and gold, so magnified she could count their veins. She glimpsed blue jeans. Jimmy had always insisted his crew dress to impress. They represented him, and he was unconscionably vain. Perhaps having his face burned off had changed that.

  The Mark V’s muzzle inched right, mirroring her visitor’s progress. Lola saw the collar of a black leather jacket, light brown hair, the flash of an ear, pink in the cold.

  “Who are you?” she whispered on the exhale, then held her breath again. And what do you want?

  She’d always believed that if they came, they would do so away from her property, negating any advantage she might have—alarms, vantage points, access to greater firepower, knowledge of the environment. They would ambush her on the way back from the Grocery King, perhaps, or on one of Lone Arrow’s many quiet streets. It would be difficult for Lola to anticipate such an attack, but she was always prepared; she never left the house without a Glock 42 in her bra holster and a fixed-blade knife strapped to her strong side. Nebraska state law prohibited carrying a loaded shotgun in a vehicle, but she didn’t drive anywhere without a sawed-off concealed beneath the dash, both barrels occupied. Would all this be enough? Lola had no idea. She knew only two things for certain: that Jimmy’s crew would not kill her quickly (the boss would want to have his fun), and that they would come in numbers.

  So who was this lone visitor? Not a canvasser; they only ever approached by vehicle, because her farm was so remote. Not someone looking for work, not when the ground was about to freeze. Whoever it was, he or she was nearing the apex of her driveway, and would soon come fully into view. And if his or her face matched one of those on the bulletin board, Lola would pull the trigger. Butch Morgan, who owned the property nearest hers, might hear the report, but gunshots weren’t uncommon in the country. Butch would likely think Lola was firing a warning shot to scare off a—

  All thought flew from her mind. It was as if her brain had been instantly detached and locked in a tight black box. She gasped and stepped away from the window.

  “No,” she said. “It can’t be.”

  She reached for something—a scenario
where this was possible, or at least made a modicum of sense—but her brain only produced small puffs of air. So she returned to the scope and watched numbly as her son, her beautiful son, advanced into the crosshairs, and back into her life.

  * * *

  There followed five slow seconds in which Lola felt Margaret Ward’s comfortable existence slip from her shoulders like a borrowed cloak. Then she jumped into action.

  She grabbed her Baby Eagle from the top drawer of her dresser, chambering a round as she broke downstairs, then through the kitchen (she didn’t bang her hip on the table this time), and out the back door. Questions raised a racket in her skull. Lola ignored them—focused on the objective.

  Brody.

  Around the back of the farmhouse, using available cover: her pickup truck, a heap of firewood, the toolshed. She sprinted from there to the barn, cutting through so that she could approach the driveway from the side and hopefully reach Brody without being seen. Lola had to assume Jimmy was hot on his heels. She wanted her son under cover before the bullets started to fly.

  Sweat ran from her hairline. It latched her denim shirt to her back. The rust had slowed her down and set an ache in her joints, but the adrenaline was still there, producing responses that had been dormant for years. Lola felt freest when bringing her horse to gallop, but she felt fully alive in this moment. It was a familiar rush. Later, she would admit to having missed it.

  She ran across the horse arena, exposed now but keeping low. The fence would mostly cover her at eye level. Brody continued toward the house, moving slowly, as if unsure. He hadn’t seen her yet, but he would soon. One hell of a reunion.

  Something caught her eye as she approached the driveway. A flash, quick as a blink, maybe a mile to the south. It might be sunlight winking off the windshield of a parked vehicle. Then again, it might be one of Jimmy’s guys watching the farm through binoculars. She also considered the possibility of it being a tactical scope, although she didn’t think so; they’d have to be quite the marksperson to guarantee nonlethal from a mile away.