2,000 Miles to Open Road (Barefield)
Page 10
"Haha. Is that the best you can do?" He knelt and put his face close to Hal. "It's weak, Hal, weak like a woman." One leg was to the right of Hal's head, the other to the left. Templeton spread his legs even further and grabbed his crotch. "It makes me wonder if you have a penis."
The stink of sulfur came from the gun. "How'd--" Pain rocketed up through Hal. "How'd you find us?"
"Is that a joke? It wasn't terribly difficult to track you. You drove the same stolen car all the way to Vegas. Then you took Jolene's."
"She better be okay."
"Or what? You're not in much of a position to do any negotiating." Templeton sighed contentedly. "But the cars are the least of the story, Hal. Why do you continue to answer your phone?"
It had been a risk, he knew it each time he answered and he definitely knew it now. But every time that phone rang, there was the slightest part of him that believed it was Hanford calling.
"I followed the cell towers, Hal."
"Wha'?" Pain sloshed through him, blurring his vision. Hadn't hurt this bad even when he'd been stabbed. 'Course, he'd been fighting the amber juice that night, hadn't he?
"The cell towers. Every time you use that phone, the signal goes through a number of towers. We followed them right down the road to you." Templeton shook his head in amazement. "How stupid can you be?"
"This smart, I guess."
With an umbrella, Hal stabbed Templeton's crotch. The metal tip slightly missed his jewels but did snag a hunk of thigh. Blood spurted and Templeton howled.
When he fell backward, holding his leg, Hal jabbed again. Got Templeton's ass this time.
Shawn hauled Hal to his feet and Templeton fired a few times but did it from on his butt. The shots were wild. Hal jumped across the tile, landed heavily on Templeton's chest. He pounded the man until he dropped the gun.
"You empty a magazine and you only hit me once? That the best you can do?" Hal's fist smashed Templeton's face. Teeth crunched beneath knuckles. "Kind of weak, boy. A woman. Ain't you got no dick?" Hal glanced at the blood and laughed. "You lucky I don't cut it off."
Shawn grabbed Templeton's gun and shoved it in her pants. "Let's go."
"Brooks might well cut yours off," Templeton said. "He's not far behind and he's moving fast. He is upset."
"Me, too."
"Well, Brooks didn't treat Dogwood any too well. In fact, he might be bringing Dogwood with him. Not all of him, of course."
Shawn had gone white at the mention of Brooks. She tugged on Hal's arm. "Let's go."
When he stood, his attention off Templeton for a second, Templeton lunged. He sank a steel-hard fist into the bullet hole in Hal's right arm. Hal howled and collapsed. Templeton rolled over him and socked the bullet wound over and over with one hand while he tried to slide his other hand around Hal's neck.
Shawn made a grab for Templeton but slipped in the blood. As she went down, the gun went clattering free. It banged into a stand of soda six-packs and then a shelf of cookie packages.
Both Hal and Templeton lunged for it and for a second neither was completely sure who had it. Hal thought it might have been him but he couldn't feel anything except the barrel. Templeton pressed tightly against him, as though trying to obscure where the damned thing was, and Hal was sure he'd hear the shot and then feel the bullet ripping through his guts.
Instead, he felt the waffle grip slide gently into his hand as the barrel swung away from him.
Hanford's voice in his head--"…killer or killed…."--Hal hesitated a split second, then fired.
Templeton screamed and fell away. A large bloody hole stared out of his shoe where a toe had once been.
"You son of a bitch," Templeton said.
Blood was smeared now from his balls to his toes, a morbid racing strip down his metallic blue western pants.
"You kill him?" a man asked.
Hal whirled around, gun cocked and ready to go. Shit, he didn't even know if there were any bullets left.
The man held his hands up. One hand held Hal's gun by the barrel. "Don't kill me, I called the cops for ya'."
"Awww, no…tell me you didn't." Hal lowered the gun but kept an eye on Templeton. "Son of a bitch."
"That a bad thing?" the man asked.
"For him and me both," Hal said. "Thanks for your help, but I gotta few outstanding tickets."
The man smiled. "Got a few of those myself. You get on outta here, I'll keep this piece of shit here 'til Joey gets here."
"Joey?"
"My cousin. New Mexico State Trooper, voted best road cop four years running by the Lordsburg Post-Dispatch." The man's chest swelled.
"Ain't we in Arizona?"
The man shrugged. "Fluke of geography, pal. Besides, what's the difference where this turd gets popped? I help Joey move him four miles across the state line, Joey gets the bust. Might help him get that fifth year."
Hal laughed and a bolt of pain shot up his arm.
Five minutes later, Shawn driving and both of them armed now, they headed west on Interstate 10 in Jolene's blue Chevy. He didn't want to think about what had maybe happened to Jolene and he didn't want to see Brooks behind them, and even though the New Mexico State Trooper coming toward them was headed west, he didn't particularly want to see him, either.
"Joey, no doubt," Shawn said.
"Hmmm," Hal mumbled, sliding down into the seat.
Soon, he thought. Keep telling yourself that. Don't worry over Brooks or any of the rest of it. Just keep saying: soon, soon.
But somehow, Theresa seemed further away than she'd ever been.
984 Miles
His eyes popped open. There was no confusion, not like when he got stabbed in the throat or when he'd come out of the binge in Barefield, stumbling out of the mansion and unsure whether Missy had been a dream or a nightmare. This time there was nothing like that. This time he knew exactly what had happened and knew exactly what that second skin feeling he had was.
Blood.
His blood.
He looked at his arm and was more than a little surprised to see a hospital-style bandage wrapped around the wound. "Lookit that." He touched the wound with his opposite fingers and realized he hurt hellaciously. All the other hurts--getting shot at age twelve in the ass by a BB gun, his broken toe, and the ruptured disk in his back--didn't measure up at all. This was absolutely the worst.
He moaned, wishing Theresa's hand were there to put a cold wash cloth on his forehead.
"You won't die," Shawn said. "There's no bullet in there." Slumped shouldered as she drove. Maybe that slump was the weight of the world.
"Feels like I got shot by a bazooka." Did the desert always spin?"
"Pansy," Shawn muttered. "You passed out so I stopped in Lordsburg. I found a doctor. He fixed you up."
"How much that cost us?"
"What does it matter? Can't you get us more, Mr. Con Artist?"
"Didn't answer my question."
"The answer is: it didn't cost us anything. He traded the treatment for a long look at my boobs, okay?"
Hal swallowed. "Jesus, Shawn."
"Yeah, he wanted a blow, too, but I have to draw the line somewhere, right? Gotta have my pride."
Hal frowned, dug around in his pants until he found the wad he'd gotten from the man who disappeared with Officer Douglas. That was a whole lot thinner than when he pocketed it after breakfast. "The hell's my money?"
"I had to spend some."
"For what?"
She pulled Templeton's gun from her waistband and set it on the seat between them. "It's a .380 and the clip was nearly empty."
Hal leaned his head back against the seat. There were entirely too many guns in this mess. His, which was in the floorboard in front of him and now this one. Damn, but he hated guns. They were way too tempting. He hated the thought of being able to become what Hanford thought he was with a few pounds of pressure on a trigger. So much power in such a little move. Tiny little squeeze of a tiny little piece of metal and the power jus
t exploded through his body. It was like a dump of black ice mainlined right into his blood.
"Nice prop," he said. "Put it away."
"Do you have a problem with guns? You brought one to meet Templeton."
"I know I did."
She left it for a moment and in her face, Hal saw a touch of anger. "Whatever." She shoved the pistol in her waistband. "That's where some of the money went. I believe we're going to discover this gun is a good friend."
Hal shook his head, opened the window against the mid-afternoon heat. "Wouldn't need it if you hadn't jumped through my window. And by the way, it's not called a clip. It's a magazine."
She laughed. "Goof ass. And I call bullshit on my coming through your window. If you had gotten out of town--and I don't think you would have--Templeton still would have followed you and where was your gun when he was shooting at you? In the car, under the seat. Getting rid of me wouldn't have gotten rid of your trouble. In fact, if you'll remember, I've saved your ass a couple of times."
He nodded.
"And let a sloppy old man stare at my breasts for ten minutes." She snorted. "Damned if I couldn't see him popping wood right there. Another couple of minutes and he'd have snapped a wad off."
Hal had to laugh, in spite of Shawn's indignation. "Don't need that image in my head."
"And you're getting it second hand."
Neither spoke for a few miles. They watched the land pass, the reds and browns of the New Mexico desert. Looked a helluva lot like Arizona, Hal thought. Didn't need another state, this was the same as that.
As they drove, the thudding in his arm cranked itself down a bit. He rubbed it, trying to get it down another notch or two.
"Hurt?" she asked.
"Hurts pretty good."
She chuckled. "I thought you had died."
"Day's still young, right?"
"Day's still young." Young enough, he thought, to see a pissed-off cop everywhere, lurking behind every rock and cactus and billboard, just waiting for them to pass. But not just any cop of course; Brooks, the mythological Captain Brooks.
"You seen him yet?"
She shook her head. "No. But you know, I have to wonder if it's bullshit."
"Templeton said--"
"No, I believe Brooks would track us down, I just don't believe he'd do it himself. Doesn't like to get his hands dirty anymore. He's got a reputation to protect, after all. He'd send somebody."
"Like Officer Douglas and Templeton."
She nodded. "Exactly."
"Never killed anybody? That what you telling me?"
She rubbed her lips. "Should'a bought some cigarettes. No, I'm not saying that. He's killed quite a few people that I know of, probably lots more I don't know about. What I'm saying is he's not in a position to go running all over the country looking for his wife and some hoodlum."
"Might be right. I mean, lookit so far. Officer Douglas. Templeton. The Rangers."
"The who?"
"Texas Rangers."
"What are you talking about?"
"They went to see Theresa, asked all about me. Said they'd heard I was headed home."
Shawn's teeth ground together. Hal could see the muscle bulge in her jaw. "When were you going to tell me about that?"
"'Scuse me, got shot before I could mention it. My oversight, I guess."
"Please." She rolled her eyes. "You didn't get shot that badly."
Bad enough for his taste.
"The Rangers, huh?" Shawn said.
And who knew who else? Maybe even the FBI. Was no telling how high Brooks' reach went. Hell, already every time they turned around there was some acquaintance of Brooks' tracking them down and waving guns.
Frustrated, Hal banged a hand against the dashboard, sending pissy little jolts of pain up through his arm to the bullet hole.
"Damnit, Apple Valley, what the hell--"
"Shawn," she said quietly, her eyes never leaving the road. "My name is Shawn."
"Happy to meet you, now could you call off the fucking cops?" The anger, plaguing him ever since she dove through his window--Christ, was that less than 24 hours ago?--burst up through him. "I don't have time for a pissed off cop to send goons to grab me up because you were banging a two-bit drug dealer, okay?"
"Hal, please don't yell--"
"I'm gonna yell, ho-kay? I'm pissed off. I'm tired. And some asshole I never even met is trying to whack me. My goddamn arm was blown half to bits, I've got to get to Texas, and what the hell kind of name is Apple Valley anyway?"
She jammed on the brakes and the back tires squealed like a slapped prisoner in a county jail. The car fishtailed but somehow held the road as she steered it off Interstate 10 and onto the shoulder. When they were still, the dust trapping them, she turned a hard stare on him.
A harsh afternoon sun blasted through the front windshield, setting her face and hair on fire. But even on fire, he realized, she was great looking. Sculpted cheek bones, prominent teeth, only a blemish or two on her skin.
"What are you staring at?"
Hal shrugged.
"First of all, your arm was not blown off, you pansy. And secondly, shut the hell up about Texas. I'm sick of hearing about it."
"But Texas is--"
She howled and if it had been in a comic book, it would have looked like Charlie Brown: 'Auuuuggggghhhh!'
With a violent yank on the car door, she jumped out. She was a good fifty feet down the road before he got out. Her boots kicked up dirt as she walked.
"I gotta get there."
"I know what you have to do, Hal." Her green eyes flashed brilliantly. "You've got to take this disk that cost you twenty thousand bucks that wasn't yours to Texas, present it to this mysterious brother of yours, and thus save the world for mankind, womankind, and anyone else who wants a ride. You've got to answer to yourself whether or not you're as stupid as he says you are and--"
"He never said I was stupid." Hal burned. He was sure his face was the color of an oil well fire. "Bad decisions, is all."
"So the last few weeks have been an attempt to prove he's right?" She sat on the car's trunk. "I have been watching you for the better part of 24 hours, trying to figure out what was going on in your head. I can't understand why in hell you snatched Dogwood's money, then stole Templeton's disk. You say you're not on the disk, that you didn't kill anyone. But somehow, somebody knew enough about what was going on to copy the video stream. By the way, that's called accessory after the fact. Pretty much illegal."
"Don't worry about my shit, ho-kay?"
"Your shit is stinking everything up."
"Other way around, chick. This is your nightmare. Or did you forget Brooks is after us?"
"Brooks isn't all you have to worry about, Hal. Get your head out of your ass."
"What? What the hell does that mean?"
She fell silent, sighed tiredly, and waved her hands dismissively. "Nothing."
Hal paced toward the front of the car, stared down the highway toward Texas. "Just lemme do what I gotta do."
"Get to Texas."
"Yeah."
A spiky, fear-laced laugh slipped out of her face. "You've been doing such a great job of it so far, haven't you?"
The silence was cracked only by the passing cars and trucks. One big rig, painted a slick purple, passed in a rush of wind and stench. The driver saw her and gave his horn a long yank. The deep booming sound filled the valley for a full thirty seconds.
"Everything that's happened to me is your fault, Shawn."
"My fault? I've been saving your ass constantly."
"Saving me from what you've created. Brooks didn't send Officer Douglas and Templeton after me, he was looking for you."
"Don't you believe it, my friend."
Hal gaped. "Of course, he was. He'd be in jail except for Brooks. The cops should have gotten there, seen at least one dead guy, two shot up cars, and two morons blasting away at each other. Should'a been game over. But his wife was humping one of the morons, now we go
t a whole new fucking game, courtesy of Captain Brooks. Brooks was your mistake, not mine."
She nodded. "My mistake was marrying him. Everything else, the beatings and him chaining me up in the closet and keeping me drugged, came from that mistake." With a heavy sigh, she looked into the sky.
It would have been symbolic to see a bird, flying free and going wherever the currents took it. Or maybe to see the contrails of a silver bird moving 400 miles per hour and leaving all the crap behind. But at the side of the highway, the stench of cars and SUVs and diesel-fueled semis thick in the air, there was no symbolism, at least not good symbolism. The road was full of people running away from something and the sky was empty of everything except pollution.
"He doesn't know me, I ain't done anything to him."
She sat on the hood. "For a man who has spent as much time in the sewers as you have, you just don't see too well sometimes, do you? It's like you're trying to be blind. Maybe you're just stupid."
He stood directly in front of her, his hands tight fists. "What'd you say?"
She shook her head. "Where'd you get that money?"
"Dogwood."
"Well, obviously," she said, her voice strained. "But where'd he get it?"
"Junkies, I guess." Something nagged him in the pit of his gut. He didn't like where this seemed to be going.
"Shit, how can you be so obtuse? Okay, let me ask it this way: where do you think Dogwood got his supply to sell to those junkies?"
Son of a bitch, Hal thought.
"Give the man a kewpie doll, he wins the $64,000 question."
"Brooks was Dogwood's supplier?"
"Brooks is everyone's supplier."
"So at least part of that twenty belonged to Brooks."
Shawn nodded. "All of it, my none-too-bright Texas friend. It was Brooks' dope. Dogwood was acting as front man. You don't think Brooks would sell himself, do you?"
Hal sighed, licked his lips. It was always something new, wasn't it? One decision led to something that forced another that led to still another. An endless, and vicious, cycle of decisions. And on the other side of those was Hanford. Always good grades and always pretty girlfriends and always winning the awards. He won the spirit award when he was in high school band, for fuck's sake. How was Hal ever supposed to compete with someone who won a friggin' spirit award? How was he ever supposed to stand equal to someone who always got the good breaks?