“I told you I would kill you, maricón,” Luis said.
Raylynne and Carol shrieked, Beau might have shouted “don’t” but Lyn couldn’t hear over Hunter screaming, “DAD!” as he stood in front of his father in Luis’ line of fire. Neil held up a weak hand like he might deflect the bullets.
“You and your faggot son!”
Beau hit the busboy in a low tackle, the two of them going down in a tangle. Luis pulled the trigger, but the shot went stray, impacting somewhere in the kitchen. The gun slipped from his hand, clattering away. Luis and Beau struggled for a moment before Luis drove his knee fiercely into Beau’s groin. Beau gagged and rolled onto his side, clutching his balls. Luis scrambled to his knees, feeling around for the gun.
Lyn pressed the barrel to the top of his head and asked, “Looking for this?” She could feel her pulse throbbing in her palm as she held onto the grip. Luis looked at her with a seething hatred and not an ounce of fear. She regretted her decision to get so close, but he didn’t move. She held the gun as steady as she could, despite her ragged breath. Her grandfather had taught her how to handle guns even before she met Jim, and she remembered what he called “trigger discipline.” Always keep your finger outside of the guard until you are absolutely ready to fire, honey.
“You can’t do it,” Luis taunted. “Do it, bitch. Pull the trigger.”
Lyn aimed the gun away from Luis’ head, moved her finger inside the guard and put a round in the floor in front of him. He fell back, shrieking and cursing her in a flood of vulgarities uttered in two languages.
“Dad? Dad!” Hunter cried and held his father. The man who’d bandaged her wounds and took care of her let loose a long wet sigh and slumped backward into the wall. If Lyn had thought she could attach her wagon to Neil’s and ride to safety, she abandoned the thought. He was bleeding to death.
Beau sat on his knees looking at her in stunned silence. He raised his hands, palms out. Lyn eased her finger out of the trigger guard and lowered the gun.
“If anyone else thinks they’re in charge, they’re fucking wrong. From now on, all of you do what I say when I say it. Are we clear?” She pointed the gun at Luis’ face; his stream of invective died and he lay there in silence. “¿Claro?” He glared at her. This time, however, there was plenty of fear in his eyes. Lyn fought the urge to murder him.
This is how Joanie feels.
#
1542 hrs
Bryce tried to get a look at Joanie’s position from his hiding place under the kids’ pickup truck without exposing himself too much. If he could see her, he knew she could see him. When he’d imagined losing everything he loved because of his affair with Joanie, this wasn’t how he’d pictured it. With his right hand––the one he could still feel––he popped the empty magazine out of his service piece, letting it drop in the gravel while he fished another off of his belt and reloaded. In all his years of service, he’d never fired his gun except on the range. Now he’d emptied an entire mag at his mistress’ house. This is crazy. He fantasized for a second that her psychotic break would subside and he could go home to his family and forget that he’d been shot in the shoulder by a mad woman he was definitely through fucking.
Then he settled in for what was actually to come.
“Joanie! Don’t fire. I want to talk to you.” Nothing. He’d seen negotiators in movies calmly talk people down in all sorts of extreme no-win situations, but he simply could not think of a way to even open a line of dialogue with his girlfriend. He decided to keep shouting across the highway.
“I don’t know what started this, but it can end right here. I already radioed in,” he lied. “When I don’t update that position in fifteen minutes, they’ll send Chet up to look for me.” Chet Carey had the next shift, but he wouldn’t be coming to check on Bryce. He’d likely park his car at Bischoff’s Café on Main and Center and shoot the shit with the waitress at the counter until it was time for his lunch. Then he’d move to a booth and order. As far as a promise that the cavalry was coming went, it fell dead in the air as soon as he spoke it. “Oh, fuck it! Joanie! Say something, damn it! What’s going on?”
Still nothing. Hiding under a truck with six inch lifts gave him lots of room, but little cover depending upon her angle. I fired into the sitting room window by the front door, but she kept shooting. She’s either above that in the bedroom, or below in the cellar. He tried to recall the layout of the house. The first time they’d slept together, she’d taken him directly to the bedroom. Afterward, he’d lingered a little in the kitchen, having a cup of coffee and pretending to ignore the guilt gnawing at him. Coming out of the house, his guilt took physical form when he ran into Brett Simmons from the Co-Op market leaving Your Mountain Home Kitchen. Brett insisted on pulling Bryce’s ear in the parking lot, asking again and again what he was doing so far out of town. It’s not my business to say, Brett. The restaurant’s part of the county, Brett. Making sure the taxpayers get their money’s worth, Brett. Mind your own fucking business, Brett! Since then he’d insisted on meeting Joanie at the motel out on Route 3, far from anyone who might recognize either of them. Now Bryce regretted not having a regular old reckless affair in the woman’s house. Maybe once she’d have asked him to go in the basement to look at a leaky pipe, or to move the washer, or any other mundane task that would let him know where she might be sprawled out with a rifle.
You’re running out of options, Bryce. Stay put and wait for the next set of customers to pull up and get blown away or get a move on.
He knew there were people alive inside. He’d heard them shouting. Why wasn’t he also hearing sirens? Why hadn’t they called the police? Maybe they had and it was time to wait. No way. You need to do something now.
He twisted around to reach for the radio on his left hip. The effort sent pain arcing through his body. Despite it, he pulled the half-smashed radio free with his right hand. “Dispatch, this is Douglas. There’s an officer-involved shooting at the Your Mountain Home Kitchen on Route 1A. I repeat, shooting in progress. Officer down!”
The radio crackled faintly but he couldn’t hear Carlotta respond. He shook the radio in frustration and heard loose pieces rattling around inside. The pain in his shoulder had overshadowed the ache in his hip from where he’d landed on the radio. You broke it, you fat ass! “Carlotta! Come in. Over!” More static. I’ve got to get inside. They’ll have a telephone inside and I can call for State Police backup if they haven’t already. He thought about his approach up the mountain. He’d have heard on the radio if there was a report of shooting at the restaurant. There had been nothing––just idle chatter between Carlotta and Chet. They should have called for help by now. Unless you took out the phones, Joanie.
He clung to hope that getting out from under the truck was the first step toward defusing the whole situation. That is, until he heard gunshots inside the restaurant. Then he knew it was hopeless. He lay his head on the gravel and prayed to God for a plan to occur to him. It was the second time he’d asked for divine guidance in a week. The first answer he’d gotten was in the form of Cherie telling him to settle up his debts on the mountain.
Bryce was starting to think God was testing him. Or fucking with him.
#
1536 hrs
Joanie watched through her riflescope as Bryce struggled to crawl under the truck. Why now? Why did you come to see me today? Why not yesterday when we still could have left together? I could have sold the house and we could have started over with the money someplace new. She knew that whatever Bryce had come by to do, it wasn’t to whisk her away to some fantasyland where she was the happy little missus. He had kids. Worse than that, she was certain that he loved his wife. Joanie was a little red sports car that he was test driving––trying to regain that nervous feeling in his guts he’d had when he was seventeen and took the keys to dad’s Mustang.
He wasn’t coming here to whisk me off my feet, she thought as she steadied the crosshairs on his exposed leg. He was coming to tell me
that it’s over. It’s over and I’m the other woman who gets to pack it in and start over from scratch while he goes back to his wife and kids and pretends that everything is like it was before. But nothing is ever like it was before. You make choices and then things go wrong and you get to live with the consequences for the rest of your life, Bryce. The things that you do––that other people do to you––last a lifetime and they never go away. They sit there like little demons and remind you how good it was before everyone started cutting little pieces off of your hide. They sit and laugh at all of your scars and make them itch and all you want to do is scratch until they bleed again. Joanie slipped her finger inside the trigger guard, firing at the shadow behind the window blinds. It fell away. Not a hit, but a firm reminder.
This isn’t over.
Bryce twisted around underneath the truck and his head came into view. She took aim. She wanted to scratch that itch so bad. She wanted to put everything behind her. But life was irreversible. You can’t take back what you’ve done. You can’t take anything back ever. Everything you do has consequences. Caveat actor.
He called out, begging her not to fire and to listen to him instead. She eased her finger off the trigger and watched her lover examine his shattered shoulder. She’d just wanted to kill the CB. He was facing her and the radio transmitter on his belt was behind him. She never wanted to kill him––or Lyn––things just worked out that way.
She picked up the handgun lying next to her on the platform, and rolling onto her back away from the rifle, put the barrel in her mouth and asked for forgiveness. From whom it should come, she had no idea.
Then she heard the shots and screams from inside the restaurant. Everything you do has consequences.
She pulled the gun from her mouth and lay for a while staring at the ceiling, thinking. About Bryce. About the past. About him riding her and what it had been like to be happy for a moment in time. She slipped her hand inside her pants and rubbed. She squinted her eyes shut harder and pictured him on his belly outside. She imagined him hurt and bleeding and paying for not calling her in five weeks. She imagined riding him and pushing his head into the gravel while his choking gasps kicked up rock dust.
She came. And the demons in her head laughed.
#
1612 hrs
“This is all your fault,” Lyn accused Beau. “Yours and Adam’s. You’ve been taunting her and pushing her and––”
“My fault? Are you out of your mind? She’s the one killing people! Not me!” He wanted to get up to wash his hands after placing them on the greasy hallway floor, but didn’t dare move unless he asked Lyn first. And there was no way he was asking permission from her to do anything. I’d shit my pants on purpose first, he thought.
“What about the Fourth of July? What was that?” He tried his best to look at her with a believable expression of astonishment. Two months earlier he’d organized a Fourth of July celebration in the parking lot of the restaurant. A barbecue cookout, a DJ, and fireworks right over the restaurant. Shock and awe. The cops came and shut them down as the display reached its crescendo. They threatened to arrest him but instead handed him a summons to appear in court for violating the drought emergency fireworks ban. Adam hired him a lawyer from Spokane and got the charges reduced. Beau plead guilty to disturbing the peace and received a fine which Adam paid. And afterward they both had a big laugh later over a few beers while imagining Joanie cowering from the explosions. I bet she was shivering in her G.I. Jane pee-jays whispering ‘incoming,’ all night. Beau laughed and chugged another one of Adam’s expensive microbrews that he thought tasted like bitter dog shit. But when Adam was buying, he never said no.
He deflected Lyn’s accusation. “She’s out there right now with a rifle and the target on your back and you’re taking her side? The Fourth was just some good ol’ American fun. If she can’t take a joke––”
“Take a joke? You blasted Lee Greenwood at her windows and set off explosives over her house. She’s a fucking combat veteran, Beau.” Beau knew exactly what the sound of fireworks did to his own father: they sent him right into the jungle. He wondered where Joanie went––probably the desert somewhere.
“And do you think you’re blameless?”
“I didn’t do any––”
“You didn’t call in sick on the Fourth,” Beau said. “You didn’t quit your job after the party. You showed up to work the day after, and the next day, and here you are today for a double. Do you think this place runs itself?”
“You’re putting this on me?” Lyn stared at him with a new hardness that said that if Joanie didn’t do the job, she might be perfectly happy to stand in for her. Behind her, Hunter glared at Beau and Luis with the same kind of intensity, only hotter. The lines were clearly drawn. Lyn, Hunter, and his old man, Neil, were on their side, and Beau had a wannabe gangsta busboy on his. In the middle were a couple of piss-pants kids from the high school and a near catatonic woman who couldn’t stop crying. And the cook? Leonard was nowhere to be found.
Wouldn’t be on my side anyway. The Chief always looked sweet on her. Chickenshit probably ran out after the first shot. Chickenshit or not, Beau wished that he’d followed Leonard instead of running toward disaster. His only hope now was the cop outside. Law and order.
“Lyn, we can sit pointing fingers at each other for the rest of our lives, but it ain’t going to get anybody unshot.” He saw the hatred in her eyes intensify as he spoke. The boy behind her flinched. He needed to choose his words more carefully. “Look, we need to get out of here and then there’ll be all the time in the world for recriminations and saying sorry. Right now, Joanie has got us pinned down and you saw that she isn’t letting anybody out of this. Shit, hon, she took a shot at you. So much for your theory that you’re someone special.”
“So what do you suggest? Maybe we can invite the DJ back up here and see if she’s in the mood for a Labor Day party.”
“What do you want from me? Do you want me to go outside and apologize? Do you think she’ll pack up her toys and let us all go home if I do that?” Beau asked.
“Why don’t you try?” she said.
“Why don’t we try working together? I think we need to go through all the cell phones, like I said out there, and see if anyone can get a signal. Then we need to see about getting that policeman in here with us. If she comes busting in through the front, I’d like to have someone who doesn’t want me dead ready to defend us.”
Lyn stood quietly for a moment. “I think you’re right.” She looked to Hunter, and said, “Sweetie, my phone is in locker number five around the corner. It’s unlocked. Would you get it, please?” She turned to Beau. “Where’s yours?”
“In the office, on my desk.”
“Hunter, would you get that one too?”
She focused her attention on the kids huddled together under the sink. “What’s your name?”
“Raylynne.” She pronounced it “Raylin.” Beau wondered if her parents had wanted a boy.
“My name’s Lyn. You go by Ray or Lynne?”
“It’s Raylynne.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Carol over there mentioned having a phone in her purse when this all started. I want you to go get it. It should be––”
“I ain’t goin’ out there. You can fuck yourself.” Lyn’s eyes narrowed and Beau saw her face darken frighteningly. Raylynne stared at her with the kind of spoiled petulance he saw when he had his daughter on the weekends. She has no idea what she’s bucking against.
“Sweetie, you got a phone?” Lyn asked.
“Of course I do.”
“Hand it over.” Lyn held out her left hand. The girl looked like she might say something else, but changed her mind when her boyfriend held out his cell.
“I get to have it back, right?” he asked sheepishly.
“Of course you do, sweetie. Right away.” She took the phones and stuffed them in her apron right next to the damned sketchbook he’d told her time and again to leave at ho
me. She tossed her order tablet on the floor to make room in her pockets.
Beau considered tackling her like he’d done to Luis. I saved her ass and she doesn’t give a shit. I can take her down and get the gun while she’s distracted and the jujitsu kid is out of the room. The only reason she’s got it instead of a slug burning in her guts is because of me.
Just then Hunter came around the corner with the phones held out in front of him. He handed them to Lyn and then took his support position behind her again, glaring at Luis. Beau could see that murder was definitely on his mind and wondered what was holding him back. Was it Lyn or the influence of his father? If it was the latter, he could count on the kid acting rationally even though he had no reason to do so. If it was the former, well, all bets were off since Lyn seemed to be well past giving a shit at that moment.
“Everybody up. Let’s all head to the office.”
“Why?” Daniel asked. She gave him a sympathetic look.
“If Joanie comes through those doors behind me she’s got us all dead to rights.”
She pointed with the Glock toward the security mirror in the upper corner of the back room. Beau told them he’d installed it to keep staff from colliding with each other coming around the corner. He had no illusions that that anyone believed him. It was really so he could see if anyone was hanging out in the hallway taking a break.
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