And then something shifted within his thoughts. Shifted them from the dark towards the light.
He filled the vacuum. “As Timothy said, we need to get back to Thunderbolt soon with the loot, but I think I have an idea how we can work something out for all of us.”
They made it back to Thunderbolt largely unmolested—what roaming threats there were kept themselves to themselves. The real threat to Josh and the others was from Timothy.
“It’s not going to work,” he kept telling Josh as they walked. Crane and the others were theoretically onboard, but Timothy, the dentist, was becoming a toothache in the middle of Josh’s plan.
“It will if you hold your nerve and keep your mouth shut.”
“You’re playing with our children’s lives! You’ve got no skin in this game.”
Josh thought of the skin he did have in the game. His missing, possibly dead, daughter. His son, who knew where and on the cusp of cancer’s damnation, and a wife who—based on their last conversation—might never want him back in her or his children’s lives again, supernova or no supernova. And here he was staying with these guys, coming up with a plan that might release all of them and save their children, when by all rights he should have been miles away from here, looking after his own… As he thought of this, there was a black gall rising in him. As Timothy whined on, and yammered his concerns to anyone who would hear, Josh found himself reaching for his MP5…
No.
NO.
That was not the way. “Timothy, please, you have to understand that, yes, there is a risk, but I’m telling you now, the risk of not doing anything and just letting Parker and the others treat us like coalmine canaries while he threatens to kill your children is much worse. What happens if, the next time Parker sends you into Savannah, there’s no one like Jayce to come out and rescue you? What if you go down? What’s going to happen to your kid then? When she’s just a hungry mouth to feed and no longer has any value as a hostage? You think Parker’s going to leave her alive?”
Timothy’s face showed maximum conflict. He couldn’t refute Josh’s logic, but the plan, such as it was, would require him, Crane, and the others to put their lives on the line. However much Josh thought that Jayce would come through, that wasn’t everything; the weakest link were these men beside him. Timothy and the others. Perhaps the dentist was just articulating what the others were feeling inside.
That the scheme was crazy, and they were all heading for their doom.
“It’s got to be worth a shot,” Crane said, joining Timothy and Josh. “I’m scared, man. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life. But if I don’t do this… like Josh says, it could all be so much worse.”
Josh thanked Crane, and they walked on towards Thunderbolt with his guts hollow, but his head full of possibilities.
“What?”
Harve sat at the table in the room where they’d been briefed before the trip into Savannah. Lacy was nowhere to be seen. Just Jackdaw and Steve in attendance. The others had been sent back to their tents when the group had gotten back to Parkopolis, whereas Josh had been taken in to see Harve and report back with the bounty from the jewelry stores.
Harve had been looking through the bags of rings, bracelets, high-end watches, and pearls when Josh had told him what they’d found in Savannah. Harve stopped putting a thick gold timepiece on his arm and stared at Josh.
“Say that again.”
Josh knew that he was taking an enormous risk, but it was the only roll of the dice he felt he had left. Harve was smarting from several humiliations prosecuted on him by Trace. He’d seen the way Harve had reacted to Trace’s anger at him, the bruises under his shirt from Trace’s cane. This was worth a shot. As long as that shot didn’t lead to one through his own forehead, or the bodies of the children in the cage.
Josh dropped his head, and spoke conspiratorially. “In the jewelry store on Bull Street. We found a deep vault. Locked up, but with a door of design and quality you wouldn’t expect to find in a store of that size. It’s the kind of door you put on a vault that absolutely must not ever be opened by the wrong people. I have no idea what they had in there. We tried to get it open, but… well, that’s why I want explosives. C4. Dynamite. God, even some black powder. We can get that in there, open the door, and bring back what’s inside.”
Harve was thinking about biting, so Josh threw more fuel on the fire of his humiliation—or, he hoped, of his ambition.
“I reckon Trace… or whoever… might be pretty happy with the guy who authorized the mission to get in the vault. I reckon someone like that might be looked upon very favorably…”
“What’s in it for you? Why are you even offering?”
Harve had bitten, but the hook still might come loose. When you’re lying, Josh knew, you’ve got to stuff that lie with as much truth as you could to make it plausible. Men like Harve would expect most people to think like them. To be driven in the same way. They didn’t consider themselves to be bad guys. They saw themselves as survival pragmatists, not evil. So, Josh told the best pragmatic lie he could. “I ain’t got no real skin in this game. I just want to be allowed to go and find my daughter. I’ll do this for you. You do that for me. Deal?”
Harve didn’t give anything away with his words, but his eyes, bright and wide, were doing all his real communicating. He paused. Thought. Then… “And if there’s nothing in there?”
“If there isn’t anything in there, then I’d suggest we just keep this between you and me for now. Well, and Steve and Jackdaw, of course… I’m sure they can be trusted…”
Harve licked his lips.
“You didn’t have to tell me this. You could have gone straight to Trace…”
Josh began reeling in his fish. “I can see the way the wind is blowing, Harve. I’m not stupid. I can see how much Trace is out of control…you’re not the kind of guy who would have thought up a scheme to put kids in a hole and threaten to set them on fire…”
Jackdaw was looking at his shoes, Steve shifting uncomfortably on his feet.
“You could get in the good books of someone higher up the food chain, Harve. You could… fix everything that’s wrong with Parkopolis.”
Harve slid the watch fully onto his wrist and stared at it for a full five seconds. Then he fixed Josh with a stare so hard, Josh felt it might just pop the back of his head off.
“Okay. I’ll get you the explosives, but if you cross me, Josh Standing… I’ll eat your heart.”
17
Weeks before Gabe and Maxine had had the fight in the parking lot where Josh had intervened, when she’d ended it with the charismatic jock and all-round popular guy, back home in West Virginia her mother had been badly crushed by a bull.
Maria had been caught between the huge animal and a fence when it had become ornery at her presence in the field; she’d been trying to bring a calf around that had been near-suffocated by its umbilicus during birth. Maria had suffered a fractured pelvis, Donald had shot the bull, and the calf had lived.
At the time, Maxine had been a few months into her nursing training and enjoying the freedom of being so far from home, as well as developing her relationship with Gabe. Sure, he’d been the brightest light in any room, and sometimes she’d felt more than a little in the shade, but she’d been growing ever closer to him. She’d known he felt frustrated that she wasn’t ready to take the physical side of their relationship to the level of fumbling on the back seat of his beat-up Toyota, but she’d felt that saving herself for her marriage night was the right thing to do. She’d figured any man willing to wait would be the one to marry. A little old-fashioned, she’d told herself at the time, but sometimes being a little old-fashioned didn’t do any harm.
In the end, the frustration Gabe felt had fully spilled over into rancorous fighting, and the relationship had died in a parking lot outside a roadhouse in Raleigh, NC, where Maxine had gone to study at the technical community college. It had been as far away from the damn farm, the animals, and he
r controlling father as she could countenance going, and yet still near enough for her to travel back to see her mom.
But before all that, when the relationship had still been golden, Maxine had asked Gabe to drive her home to be with her mother after that accident.
“Isn’t it a bit early to be meeting your parents?”
“No, you doofus. I need to go home. Mom’s in the hospital and… and…”
“And you don’t want to let on to your dad that you don’t have the fare for the bus.”
She’d looked up at him sheepishly. “No. I don’t want him to know that. It was hard enough for him to accept I was leaving home when I did, but if he knew how much of a struggle things are…”
“He’d come down here and drag you back over his shoulder, and probably give you a tanned rear for the trouble?”
“Yes.”
“I like him already.”
Maxine had playfully punched Gabe on the shoulder and the arrangements had been made. She’d begged a few days away from college and her job bussing tables in a Raleigh diner—which didn’t just not make ends meet, but actively kept them apart—and with that they’d made the journey in Gabe’s Toyota, keeping themselves fed on 7UPs and candy.
They’d met Donald at the ranch and, before Maxine had been able to get her words out, Gabe had pulled a plastic bag from the trunk of his car and handed it to Donald. “I know from Maxine that you’re none too pleased about her coming to Raleigh, and you’re probably none too pleased to have her turn up with her beau, so seeing as I thought it might be a good idea to get on the good side of the man who owns the guns on this property, I thought I’d bring you something of a peace offering.”
Maxine had looked at Gabe with some astonishment—not just because of the present, a brand-new Stetson that would replace the grubby farmer’s one on her father’s head—but because he had obviously rehearsed his speech quite a bit. It had been the most words she’d heard coming out of Gabe’s mouth all at once since she’d known him, and to think that he’d done that all for her had lit a fire for him under her heart.
Donald had been disarmed and impressed. He’d tried the hat on, it had fit perfectly, and once he’d dropped Maxine off at the hospital in his truck, he’d gone back to the farm to, as he’d put it, “get to know the boy better.”
And that had been a million years ago. Before the fight. Before Josh had beaten Gabe into submission, and before… before what had happened the next time Gabe had come into Maxine’s life.
Now Maxine was back at the M-Bar, and her mother was up in the woods, chained up in the lodge to keep her away from Dale Creggan and his men from the Pickford Regional Government.
Maxine was trying to keep her mind focused on the difficult discussions to come, but she couldn’t help the flashes of memory that cycled between Maria picking up the Stetson in the lodge and saying Gabe’s name, and those coming back to her relationship with Gabe, how it had ended, and how it had nearly started again. She almost physically shook her head to bring herself back to the here and now. She didn’t need her mind clogged up with all that at any time, let alone now that Creggan, Laurent, Black Hat, and White Hat were trotting into the yard on their horses.
Bobby was standing his ground, barking as the horses approached. Storm had his rifle over his shoulder as he leaned against the dead truck, and Donald was standing over the fake grave, his shotgun leaned against the oak.
“Can it be?” Creggan asked, getting down from his horse. He’d changed from his suit into 501s, blue tooled boots, and a work shirt that had never seen any work that was covered by a leather waistcoat that looked like it could have been cannibalized from a cowboy fancy-dress party in the Grand Ol’ Opry. “Have you suffered a recent bereavement? Let me first offer my deepest condolences.”
“Last night,” Maxine said. “It happened last night.”
Creggan went over to the grave and studied the words on the wooden cross. He placed a hand on his heart, dropping his head in silent prayer, and when he looked up, his face was a mask of earnestness that could have fooled a saint.
“I cannot tell you how unhappy this makes me. I traveled here especially, to speak to Maria, and now I find this. I am beside myself, Mr. Jefferson, and to you, Ms. Standing. May one enquire…”
“She took her own life,” Maxine said simply, hoping there would be no need for detailed discussion. “Out in the barn.”
“She didn’t like the things that were happening in the world,” Donald said pointedly. Creggan would have to be the least self-aware person on the planet not to pick up the subtext, Maxine thought.
“I understand your concerns, Mr. Jefferson. Did she leave a note?”
“No,” Donald said, and with a finality that sounded like a door closing on an abandoned steelworks.
“Then I’m sure we can only guess at what her reasons were, Mr. Jefferson.”
A response that Maxine could understand the subtext in all too readily. Before things could get out of hand, she indicated to Laurent, “If you want to start your inventory, we’re not going to stop you, Mr. Laurent—we’re not happy with it due to the concerns I’ve outlined to Mr. Creggan—”
“Dale, please…” Creggan cut in.
“In his office in Pickford,” she kept going. “But we’d ask you to be as swift as you can, because we have much to do here, and due to the unfortunate circumstances, we’re already a hand down.”
Creggan nodded to Laurent and the Hats. “Do your thing, boys. Let’s get out of these people’s hair as soon as possible.”
Creggan turned to Donald. “Tell me, Mr. Jefferson. Do you still use that old hunting lodge up in the hills? For a complete inventory, Mr. Laurent and his men will want to see that, too.”
They moved swiftly with Greene in the party, despite his bulk. He was happy to split the contents of the equipment packs with Henry and Tally, and lightening the load for all of them sure made things a little easier. But as with everything good right now, there had to be a downside, and the downside was that Greene couldn’t shut up from talking about himself.
At first Tally hadn’t minded hearing the near stream of consciousness that spilled from Greene’s mouth as he talked about growing up in Atlanta, his school, his friends, setting up his business while still in college, how he’d made his first million, how he’d lost his first million, about his dogs, his cars, his girls and his houses, his clothes, his vinyl collection, his home theater system, his books, his websites, his plans, the kind of girls he liked, and how being single and rich was cooler than a snowball fight in the Arctic with a polar bear, and… and… and…
After a while, Tally found, as they continued walking north, that she could begin to switch Greene off and focus on other things, like her worries about getting to the M-Bar and what she might find there. Would her father have made the same assessment as her and headed there, too? Greene’s words became a background hum, like when she would stream music to her headphones while studying, almost an aid to focusing rather than a hindrance.
That worked for many miles, until it became clear that Greene was possibly wise to the fact Tally, and for all she knew Henry, too, were just sliding over his words like well-waxed canoes across a slightly rippling lake.
“So, tell me about you…”
Questions were another matter. The prompt brought her immediately out of her focus, and Tally was surprised to find that Greene, who up until now had been walking two or three paces behind her, was suddenly right at her shoulder. Henry was still a good eight paces ahead, walking mechanically and exuding a “don’t even think of talking to me” attitude. Chin on his chest, elbows tucked in as his feet ticked and tocked over the blacktop. And so, Greene had come to Tally.
Oh, great.
“Not a lot to tell. I’m in college, I climb, I free-run… well, I used to do those things. Now I stay alive.” She’d kept her answer clipped and precise, hoping that it would send Greene back to his hum.
“Studying what?” he asked.<
br />
“Social science and humanities.”
“That’s not going to get you very far in business.”
“Perhaps I don’t want to be a businessperson.”
“Who wouldn’t want to be one?”
Tally waved her arm expansively to the trees and beyond. “I don’t think the prevailing conditions of the world right now are going to make setting up a software company much of a priority. And seeing as all the cars are fritzed, I reckon the bottom is going to drop out of the Ferrari market, don’t you?”
“No, no, that’s where you’re wrong.”
Whoever attacked Greene’s party definitely slit the wrong throats. Tally immediately regretted this thought. Perhaps the supernova-stirred aggression she’d seen in others was working on her, too. She remembered being ready to fight first and ask questions later on the Sea-Hawk when her dad had been threatened. Maybe there was a resurfacing flavor of that here now. So, she battened down the hatches on her aggression and went with sarcasm instead.
“I am?” Tally put her hand to her brow and stared along the highway to the horizon. “I don’t see a lot of traffic, Greene.”
“Okay, you’re right about the cars, but you’re wrong about business. This is a golden opportunity for men like me.”
“Men like you.”
“Yes! Entrepreneurs! People who can see the prevailing conditions; those able to exploit those conditions will be the new kings.”
“Greene, no offense, but you were living day to day out of cans and had no idea where you were going.” Henry had stopped in the road and turned around. The color was high in his cheeks, and he’d obviously had enough of Greene’s pure boasting. “We had to rescue you from a bunch of crazies who’d have gutted you like a fish if I hadn’t come along. You have all the business acumen you want, but it won’t stop a knife across your throat.”
Supernova EMP- The Complete Series Page 40