Nick of Time

by John Gilstrap

  “I wanted you to hurt, okay? And I wanted to be the one to hurt you.”

  So, he smoked pot with a friend, just days before he knew he had to pass a drug test. It was the one restriction on his scholarship. He smoked the weed to fail the test. In a twisted way, it made perfect sense.

  Now, the wreckage inside the Hines house started to make sense, too.

  “It wasn’t enough to ruin his own life,” Hines said. “He had to ruin mine, too.”

  “Boo hoo, Dad. How does it feel to be a real Hines?”

  Carter took a tentative step forward. This had the feel of a confrontation about to spin out of control.

  “You and your precious goddamn badge,” Jeremy taunted. “Let’s see how tough you are when people vote you out of office. Let’s see how much of that respect is about you.” Jeremy turned to Carter. “Do you see the beauty of it?” he asked. “I knew goddamn well that he would recognize the shirt I wore in that robbery. It was his old jersey. He had it framed, hanging in my bedroom for inspiration. And if he didn’t recognize the shirt, I sure as hell knew that he would recognize my voice on the tape. And when he did, there’d be nothing he could do about it.” Jeremy laughed. “In a town this size, who’s gonna reelect a sheriff whose own kid robs a store? Nobody! Get it?”

  Carter thought he got it, but he wanted to hear it from the kid.

  “He’d never be able to arrest me. Not and keep his badge. I’d have him by the balls forever. Just by keeping my secret, he’d be a criminal himself. And with that kind of a secret over his head, I could finally get him off my back. It was beautiful. Just freaking beautiful.”

  “Jesus,” Carter breathed.

  “You disgust me,” Hines said to his son.

  “But not when I throw a no-hitter, right? Not when my fastball tops a hundred miles an hour and you can go hang around in the coffee shop and tell all your loser friends how I’m a chip off the old block. I only disgust you when I think for myself.”

  “And look what thinking for yourself gets you,” Hines taunted. “Feeling smart now?”

  “It would have worked!” Jeremy shouted. His voice and his face both showed desperation. “If the Quik Mart had been empty—I thought it was empty!—it would have worked. Hell, if it had been anybody else in there, it would have worked.” He pointed the muzzle of the .45 at Carter, who took two steps back. “It’s his fault it didn’t work. He’s the one who kept digging. ”

  Hines boomed, “Jeremy!”

  The boy pivoted, now pointing the pistol at his father. “It’s all your fault!” He was crying now.

  As Carter watched, his heart pounding, Sheriff Hines seemed to swell, to grow taller. “You’d better use that thing, boy, or it’s gonna take three hours to dig it out of your ass.”

  “Is that what you want?” Jeremy sobbed. “You want me to shoot you? I will, you know. I got nothing left to live for. I’ll do it. I’m going to death row anyway, right? Maybe I should just shoot you both and take my chances getting away.”

  Carter felt the panic building in his belly. If he didn’t do something to defuse all of this, someone was going to get hurt. Badly.

  Hines extended his arms out to his sides, creating the largest possible target. “Then do it. Punk. Do it now. And take your time, because I sure as hell don’t want you to miss your chance.”

  “You think I won’t?” Jeremy sobbed. As his father advanced, the boy retreated, step for step.

  “I think you’d better,” the sheriff said, quickening his steps. “If you don’t I swear to God I’ll beat you to death with it.”

  “Stop it!” Carter shouted. This was insane. “Both of you stop it!”

  But the sheriff didn’t even slow down.

  “Is it too late, boy? Can you do it? Do you have the guts?”

  Carter found himself shadowing these two as they faced each other down. “This is madness,” he said, intentionally modulating his voice. There was way too much shouting going on as it was, way too much emotion.

  “Come on, boy, shoot,” Hines taunted.

  “I will!”

  “Then do it! Now, do it!” Only fifteen feet separated the two combatants now. If Jeremy fired, his father would die.

  A voice from behind Carter startled all of them. “Police officer!” Darla Sweet shouted. “Everybody freeze!”

  As heads turned, Hines made his move. He lunged at his son, amid a growling roar.

  Jeremy pulled the trigger and a gunshot rocked the forest. He pulled it again. With that second shot, the sheriff’s brains blasted out the back of his skull. As Carter dropped to a defensive crouch, Sheriff Hines fell face-first into the sandy mulch.

  Deputy Sweet yelled something, but Carter didn’t catch what it was.

  Jeremy didn’t give her a chance to repeat it. The instant his father hit the ground, he pivoted and fired two rounds toward Darla. She dropped from sight, but Carter couldn’t tell if she was hit or merely taking cover. The boy didn’t waste a second putting the confusion to good use. He rocketed into the woods.

  “Shit!” Carter spat. “Deputy Sweet! The sheriff’s dead! Are you all right?”

  She answered by bolting off into the woods after her quarry. Before he had a chance to wonder why, Carter was sprinting with her. She pointed to something on the ground, but they were past it before Carter could see what she was pointing to. “What is it?” he panted.

  “His empty magazine,” she said. “He reloaded.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Matt Hayes couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d betrayed Scotty Boyd. The look in the kid’s face as Matt handed him over to the EMTs was one of pure fear. He wanted to go back to his grandmother. He was terrified that something might happen to her. Through the rapid-fire monologue, Matt had picked up that it was just Gramma and he living alone in the little house in the numbered streets. Scotty made it clear that Gramma was all he had left, and he was terrified of losing her. It was all Matt needed to know.

  According to the radio reports, the next-closest police unit was nearly on the scene—he could hear the siren approaching in the distance—but the ones to follow that were a good ten to fifteen minutes away. It might not sound like a long time, but when you’re in the hostage seat with a gun pointed to your head, it was an eternity.

  Matt decided not to wait. The kid’s story got to him.

  He drove without his lights or siren. No sense upsetting people before it was necessary. He wanted to look around, get the lay of the land, so that when the cavalry did arrive, he’d have some good intel for them. He was nearly on the scene when he heard his radio call sign on the air: “Control to Trooper one two zero.”

  “One two zero.”

  “One two zero, be advised that we’ve received a call from number fifteen Seventh Road, claiming to be a man with two hostages. He says that if he sees any sign of a police officer, he’s going to start shooting.”

  Matt felt his stomach muscles tighten. The stakes had just gone up a thousand percent. “One two zero’s direct. I’m requesting a tac frequency for this incident.” This was going to be a long operation, and unless they obtained a secondary radio channel for tactical operations, there would be so much chatter that no one would know what the hell was going on.

  “Ten-four, one two zero, stand by.”

  Clearly, the perp was trying to establish himself as the party in control. Big mistake. Hostage-takers never gained control. What they never seemed to understand was no matter how long negotiations dragged on, there was only one hard and fast reality: that bad guys left the fight either in handcuffs or in body bags. There was no third option. You worked like hell to save the hostages, and you prayed that they’d get a new lease on life, but at the end of the day losing a current hostage was the preferred outcome over allowing the bad guys to snare another one.

  Matt pulled his cruiser to a stop on the far side of the dune surrounding number seventeen, the house adjacent to Scotty’s, taking care to stay out of sight. This part of the st
ate was the waterside equivalent of hillbilly country. Years ago, the people who settled out here mostly made their livings as fishermen. More recently, as fishing became more difficult, the area had become a haven for people who enjoyed solitude for any number of reasons, both legal and ill. Despite having whiled away a few good summers down here, Matt couldn’t imagine what attraction it held for the residents.

  Daily hardships and inconveniences did instill a certain independence in people, which in turn bred intolerance for most laws that told people what they could and couldn’t do in the privacy of their homes. Or stills. Or cannabis crops.

  Over the past decade, thanks to raids by the FBI, DEA, and ATF, law enforcement agencies had ceded the public relations battle to the bad guys. When a badge showed up around these parts, blood pressures skyrocketed.

  As Matt closed and locked his door to begin the fifty-yard trek to the dune that concealed number fifteen, he considered bringing the shotgun that stood sentry in its bracket in the front seat, or the Remington 700 .30-06 rifle that he kept in the trunk, but opted against both of them. Those were tactical weapons, and he had no intention of storming the place yet. For now, he just wanted to take a look around.

  He also wanted to stay out of sight. Trenches in the sand doubled as a driveway, marking the route to the front. After a hard turn, they disappeared behind the dune. To round that corner would be to step out into the only firing lane that the perps could readily see.

  Instead, Matt chose to climb the near side of the dune to get an elevated view of the property. What he saw made him smile. The shingle and tar paper shack with its steel security bars sat in the middle of two sheltering dunes that ran roughly north and south on the east and west sides of the building. Without the dunes, the tiny home would no doubt have floated away or been blown down over the years. Ironically, the same dunes that protected the property presented a huge tactical disadvantage to the people inside. They were the low point in the center of nothing but high ground, with only one avenue of escape—through that break in the dune on the westernmost side. If the perps hadn’t fled already, surrender was their only viable option.

  Since Brad Ward was probably shot—Scotty Boyd had been adamant that there was no way he could have missed—and the girl was reportedly so weak that she could hardly lift her head, Matt Hayes was ready to bet a month’s pay that they were still inside.

  * * *

  Jeremy Hines had disappeared again.

  For the first hundred yards, Carter had been able to keep up with Darla as they charged through the woods. Up ahead, he’d seen flashes of the boy darting in and out of their sight line. Soon, though, Carter’s years behind desks began to take their toll, and Darla pulled ahead of him. As the gap widened, he lost sight of Jeremy, and now found himself struggling just to keep an eye on the uniformed deputy.

  He tried to ignore the cramp under his ribs as he pressed on. If he lost sight of Darla, he could be lost out here forever.

  The muddy ground sucked at his loafers as he charged through the underbrush.

  Up ahead, he saw that Darla had stopped. He closed the distance in seconds.

  “Why are you waiting for me?” he gasped. “He’s getting away.”

  Darla held up her hand, gesturing for silence. “Be quiet,” she hissed, and Carter pulled up short. “I don’t think he’s running anymore,” she whispered. “I think he’s hiding.”

  Without thinking, Carter lowered himself into a crouch, and the deputy followed suit. How could he be so stupid to fall for the same trick twice? “How does he disappear like that?” he whispered.

  “He’s a hunter,” Darla replied. “Everybody around here is a hunter. You learn to blend in.”

  Carter craned his neck to take in all compass points.

  “Be still,” Darla hissed.

  “Well, what are we supposed to do? Just wait for him to shoot first?”

  “We wait for him to show himself,” Darla said. “Or we just wait for the backup units to arrive.”

  “He likes to shoot,” Carter said. He relayed the ambush the kid had set up when Carter had first started chasing him.

  “He’s a notoriously good shot,” Darla said. “You’re lucky you’re here to tell the story.”

  Lucky, indeed. Soaked to the skin in the middle of the woods, waiting for a lunatic high schooler to take a shot at him. By that standard, what was bad luck?

  If it weren’t for his pounding heart and churning stomach, Carter might almost have felt sorry for Jeremy Hines. Carter had seen it a thousand times: Some kids on a prank break into a house or steal a car, only to have things go wrong and suddenly there’s blood in the street. Nobody meant for it to happen, but intentions didn’t matter anymore. There were some steps forward from which there was no step back. Prisons across the world were filled with people who had learned that lesson the hard way.

  “Do you see anything?” Darla asked.

  Carter shook his head. “Not a thing. The rain’ll cover a lot of sounds.”

  “He’s here,” Darla said. “The woods become a big clearing and a construction site about fifty yards ahead. From there, it’s wide-open spaces. He’s either got to stop here or double back.”

  Carter felt the skin on his chest and his neck prickle. This was crazy. His job was done; he had what he needed to keep Nicki free. If he had a brain in his head, he’d be on his way to the state police or the county prosecutor to get this all cleared up, not that it would help Nicki much. Her transplant clock had ticked to zero. Jesus, when would it end?

  The echoes of Jeremy’s last shots still had not left his head. With his father dead, the teenager had nothing to lose by killing two more. “How good a shot is this kid?” he whispered.

  Darla rose from her knees to a half-crouch, her pistol extended at arm’s length, searching for a target. Carter considered it foolishly brazen to grant a larger target like that. “Good enough to compete in the junior state semifinals last year. He can part the hair on a bumblebee.”

  “I wonder why he didn’t kill me when he had the chance,” Carter mused aloud.

  “How’s that?”

  “When I was first chasing him, he had me dead to rights, but he missed, and not by a little bit. Then, when he had me in his sights, just standing there with my fear hanging out, he didn’t shoot then, either.”

  “I guess you’re not on his list,” Darla said. He could tell by her tone that she would rather watch the woods than listen to him. She was as frightened as he.

  Carter didn’t think that was it. Why shoot at all if you don’t intend to hurt your target? He remembered the efficiency with which Jeremy dispatched his father.

  Movement up ahead and to the left caught both Carter’s and Darla’s attention, and their heads pivoted to catch it. Jeremy Hines was making his move. He jumped from his hiding place, his throat issuing a terrible yell—a high-pitched squeal that sounded more like a wounded pig than a terrified teenager. He charged, the .45 clutched in his fist, pointed straight at them.

  Darla’s posture changed to a shooting stance, in which she pivoted on the balls of her feet, swinging her body in alignment with her hands. “Jeremy, freeze!” she shouted.

  The boy did nothing of the sort. He raised his weapon even higher and locked his elbow.

  Darla had no time to make a decision. She had to shoot now if she was going to save either one of them. “No!” she cried.

  Carter understood. The kid’s plan crystallized in his brain when he realized that Jeremy wasn’t shooting at them—at the very millisecond that Darla Sweet’s finger tightened on her trigger. Carter shoved her to the side as her weapon fired.

  “Are you out of your mind?” she shrieked. She recovered her target and prepared to fire again.

  She didn’t understand, and Carter had no time to explain. He lunged at Jeremy, putting himself between the teenager and the deputy who would kill him.

  “Janssen!” Darla yelled. “Get down! Get out of the way!”

  Jeremy kep
t charging, shifting his aim to Carter’s head. “I’ll kill you!” he yelled.

  Carter didn’t move. If he turned out to be wrong, he was living his last five seconds on the planet.

  Jeremy didn’t shoot. He pulled up short, stopping mere feet before a bone-breaking collision. He whipped the gun up to eye level, to where Carter Janssen’s entire worldview was limited to a half-inch muzzle in which he could see the initial lands and grooves of the rifling.

  “I’ll kill you!” Jeremy yelled. He was hysterical.

  “Put it down!” Darla yelled. She was on her feet now, moving around to Carter’s left to get an angle on the boy. “Drop that gun or I’ll shoot!”

  “Darla, no!” Carter shouted. “Don’t do it!”

  Jeremy pivoted his weapon to Deputy Sweet, again leaving her no choice, and again driving Carter into action. This time, he tackled Jeremy, driving his shoulder into the kid’s gut, and as they fell to the ground, he swore to God that he could hear the crack of Darla’s bullet—not the gunshot, which came an instant later, but the crack of the bullet itself in the air—passing within inches of his head.

  Jeremy hit the ground hard, and Carter landed on top of him, trying to keep control of boy’s gun hand, gripping it tightly in both of his own.

  “Get off me!” Jeremy grunted.

  “Give me the gun,” Carter demanded. “Let go!”

  Darla cussed randomly, furious that there was no decent shot to take. Over and over again, she yelled, “You’re crazy! You’re out of your mind!”

  Carter couldn’t remember the last fight he’d been in, but he had a vague memory of losing it. This kid was strong, and he wriggled like a fish to get away, punching and kicking to get free. Jeremy snorted like a bull from the effort and spat out bitter curses as Carter focused every effort on keeping his gun hand under control.

  Above and behind, he could hear Darla shouting at him. She screamed at him to get out of the way. She wanted to make her arrest, and if that meant killing the boy, then that was the way it would have to be.