Brannon kept his left hand on the wheel of the F-150 and in a habitual gesture ran his right hand over the close-cropped sandy hair that was starting to turn gray in places. He had kept the short haircut ever since he came back from Vietnam. It was simple, and Tom Brannon was a man who liked simple things. That was one reason he had never left Little Tucson except for a few years at the university in Tempe and his hitch in ’Nam. He was a small-town man, always had been, always would be.
And folks from small towns still looked out for their neighbors, even in this day and age when it seemed like nobody trusted anybody. Maybe whoever was in that little red car was having trouble. Wouldn’t hurt to go take a look.
Brannon turned the F-150 onto the dirt road.
He was less than halfway to the car when he realized that he recognized it. He slowed to a stop. The car was a Nissan and had a distinctively shaped bumper sticker on the rear bumper. Even though Brannon couldn’t read the words from this distance, he knew the bumper sticker came from the Torres Insurance Agency. The Nissan belonged to Carla May Willard. A week earlier, Brannon had sold her a bulb for her license plate light so the car would pass the annual safety inspection. He had gone outside the store and replaced the bulb for her, too, so she wouldn’t have to fool with trying to do it herself. Just a friendly gesture. He liked Carla May, and there had been a time when it had looked like she would wind up being his daughter-in-law. She had dated his son Brian all through junior and senior year in high school and they had talked about getting married after they got through with college.
Of course, it hadn’t worked out that way. Carla May—she had been Carla May Stevens at the time—had gotten mixed up with that no-account Danny Willard. Brannon could have told her that she was making a mistake. She would have been a lot better off with Brian, and that was just unbiased fact, not opinion. Young people had to work out these things for themselves, though. A couple of years later, Carla May had married Danny. She stuck it out for eight years, putting up with the drinking and the running around with other women that the whole town knew about, and likely she would have still been married to him if he hadn’t up and left her.
When Danny left town, Brannon had thought about calling Brian up in Phoenix and sort of casually mentioning that Carla May was single again. In the end, though, he had decided not to meddle in his son’s life. Brian would hear sooner or later that Carla May was divorced, and if he wanted to do something about it, he would.
Those thoughts flashed through Brannon’s brain in a matter of seconds even though they had nothing to do with the question of what Carla May’s car was doing parked out here in the middle of nowhere. It looked to be empty, yet it hadn’t been there long. Carla May couldn’t have gone very far.
Then Brannon’s eyes, still very keen despite his fifty-four years, spotted movement inside the car. A little hand waved in the air in the back seat.
Good Lord! The baby’s still strapped into her carseat, Tom thought. Now he knew something was wrong. Carla May would never go off and leave little Emily alone in the car like that. The day was already heating up. Kids died from being left in cars like that. Brannon gunned the F-150 forward.
He brought the pickup to a stop behind the Nissan and got out quickly. At least the windows were down in the car; that was something, anyway. Emily couldn’t have gotten too hot already. She smiled up at Brannon as he reached in the open window and tickled a finger under her chin. “Where’s your mama?” he asked. The car was empty except for the toddler.
“Gone wi’ men,” Emily gurgled.
Brannon looked in the front seat. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a small drop of red on the upholstery. Was that blood? His gut told him that something was very wrong here.
“What men?” he asked Emily. “Where?”
She stuck her thumb in her mouth and didn’t answer. But she lifted her other arm and pointed.
Brannon turned toward a clump of paloverde that sat fifty or sixty yards off the dirt road. He knew there was a dry wash on the other side of the trees. The wash ran full of water every time it rained, and enough of that moisture was trapped under the ground to keep the trees alive.
“You stay here,” he told Emily unnecessarily. The child couldn’t get out of the carseat, so she wasn’t going anywhere. Brannon stepped back to the F-150, reached into the cab, and took a tire iron out from under the seat.
He walked with long strides toward the paloverde trees and the dry wash beyond them. His pulse raced. He had seen his share of action in Vietnam, but that was a long time in the past. He was in good shape, always kept active, did plenty of hunting and fishing, and when his kids were young he had hiked with them all over this part of the country. He thought he could handle himself all right in case of trouble. But it had been a lot of years since he’d had any proof of that.
He worried about what he was going to find when he got to the wash. Carla May could have been kidnapped and brought out here by somebody who intended to rape and murder her. Brannon hated to think that such a thing could happen in this generally peaceful area he had always called home, but he wasn’t wearing rose-colored glasses. This was an era in which bad things happened all the time, in just about any place you could think of. Why, just a few days earlier, members of that M-15 gang had killed two of Brannon’s friends and customers. Louly had even witnessed one of the killings, just as she was about to open up the auto parts store. She had seen Burt Minnow gunned down in front of his printing shop.
There was just no telling what might happen these days.
Brannon stiffened as he neared the trees and heard sobbing. His hand tightened on the tire iron.
Moving quickly but silently, he glided into the trees, a big, fair-haired man, light on his feet for his size, maybe a little thicker through the middle than he had once been. He wore jeans and a faded blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was about as common-looking a man as you could find. Stick him in a crowd and nobody would notice him.
There was no crowd out here now. Just Tom Brannon. Just one man.
He crouched near the edge of the wash and looked past the trunk of a paloverde. The wash was about six feet deep, with a relatively flat, sandy bottom. Carla May was sprawled down there with a man on top of her, his bare ass bobbing up and down as he pumped away between her thighs. A gun lay on the ground beside them. Brannon recognized it as a high-powered machine pistol, though he couldn’t have said who the manufacturer was.
Another man stood over them, watching avidly. He had the same sort of gun in his hands. More than likely, he was supposed to be keeping a lookout, but he was too interested in what his friend was doing to Carla May. He didn’t even glance toward Brannon.
Carla May still wore a short-sleeved blouse, but her captors had ripped the rest of her clothes off of her. She lay there stiffly, sobbing, as her attacker finished up. He pushed himself off of her and got to his feet a little shakily, leaving his gun lying on the ground. As he reached down to pull his jeans up, he said something in Spanish to the other one. Brannon was fluent in the language, and his jaw tightened in anger as the two men laughed at the vile comment. The second one set his gun down and reached for his belt, eager to undo his trousers and take his turn with their helpless victim.
This was the time, Brannon knew. Neither of them was holding a gun, but that wouldn’t last very long. He had to move.
Coming up out of his crouch, he lifted the tire iron over his head in both hands and sprang out into the wash. He didn’t yell or anything but rather attacked in silence. He drove the heel of his right boot into the small of one man’s back and swung the tire iron at the other man’s head.
That one turned and managed to fling an arm up to block the blow. The tire iron struck it solidly with most of Brannon’s two hundred pounds behind the blow. The man’s forearm snapped like a stick, breaking with a sharp crack. He screamed and staggered back.
Brannon landed awkwardly on the floor of the wash, stumbling a couple of steps before he caught h
is balance. He twisted around and saw that his kick had knocked the first man onto his hands and knees. Brannon lunged after him, slashing downward with the tire iron. The tool slammed into the man’s side. Brannon hoped it broke some ribs. As the man collapsed, Brannon hit him again, aiming at his head this time. He fully intended to cave in the bastard’s skull, but his aim was off a little and the blow was only a glancing one. It still landed hard enough to open up a gash and knock the man senseless.
Whirling, Brannon saw that the man with the broken arm had recovered enough to be going for the guns. Brannon was closer, though. He slung the tire iron at the guy, making him duck. That gave Brannon time to scoop up one of the guns. He hoped there was no trick to firing it, like some safety that was hard to find.
He didn’t have to worry about that. The gun chattered and roared when he pulled the trigger.
It also nearly got away from him. He had to steady it with both hands. Dirt flew in the air near the feet of the man with the broken arm as a stream of bullets plowed a furrow in the floor of the wash. The man reversed course with frantic agility to avoid running right into the torrent of lead. He scrambled toward the bank of the wash. Brannon hosed another burst after him but missed again. He grimaced. If he’d had his deer rifle or his old Army automatic, that son of a bitch would be on the ground with lead in him by now.
As it was, though, the man disappeared over the bank. Brannon went after him, reluctant to let him get away. But the man was sprinting toward the mountains, never looking back as he cradled his injured arm against his chest with his other hand. He was injured and unarmed, and Brannon decided that he was no longer an immediate threat. The way he was taking off for the tall and uncut, he looked like he might not stop until he got to New Mexico.
Besides, one of the scumbags was still here, and there was no telling when he might regain consciousness. Brannon had to do something about him.
And about Carla May, as well. She had scooted over to the edge of the wash and now sat there with her legs drawn up and her back pressed against the bank, watching Brannon with wide, horror-filled eyes. When he took a step toward her, she cried out and flinched. He realized that she might not recognize him.
“Carla May,” he said in a quiet but urgent voice. “Carla May, it’s all right. You know me. I’m Tom Brannon. Brian’s dad, remember? I put a light bulb in your license plate light last week?”
She stared at him for a long moment. Finally, some of the blind terror faded from her eyes and was replaced by awareness. “M-Mr. Brannon?” she managed to gasp.
“That’s right,” he told her. “You’re okay now, Carla May. Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.”
Her eyes widened again. “Emily!”
“She’s fine. She’s still in the car. Might be frettin’ a little by now, but she ought to be all right.”
Carla May pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. Brannon made a point of not looking at her naked lower body. She turned and started trying to climb up the bank. He stepped to her side, grasped her arm, and helped her.
When she reached the top, she ran toward the car. Brannon let her go. She had to see for herself that her baby was all right. He picked up the second gun and the tire iron and quickly carried them back to the pickup. He left the guns there but kept the tire iron with him as he got a brand-new roll of duct tape out of the back and returned to the wash. The one he had knocked out hadn’t regained consciousness yet, but he was starting to stir a little.
Brannon worked quickly. He used almost the entire roll of tape to bind the man’s wrists and ankles. For good measure, he slapped a strip of it over the guy’s mouth. If the bastard regained consciousness, Brannon didn’t want to have to listen to anything he had to say. Then, grunting from the effort, he picked the man up, carried him over to the bank, and wrestled him to the top. Then he dumped him on the ground, took hold of his feet, and dragged him over to the F-150, not being gentle about it. The muffled sounds the man made told Brannon that he had come to and didn’t appreciate being dragged over the rough, rocky ground.
Tough shit.
Carla May had gotten Emily out of the carseat and stood next to the Nissan holding and kissing her and crying. Brannon lowered the pickup’s tailgate, lifted his prisoner, and rolled him into the bed. There was a fifty-pound bag of dog food in the back of the truck. Brannon picked it up and set it across the man’s midsection. That would keep him from getting too feisty. With his mouth taped up like that and a fifty-pound weight on his stomach, he would have to work hard enough just to breathe. He’d be too busy with that to think much about trying to escape.
Brannon hopped down from the pickup and got a folded blanket from behind the seat. He went over to Carla May and wrapped it around her waist. “Come on back to the truck,” he said. “I’ll take you and the baby to town.”
“M-my car . . .”
“It’ll be okay out here until somebody can come out and get it.”
Brannon put a hand on her shoulder and was glad to see that she didn’t flinch. She had been through a hellish ordeal, but she was a strong girl, even if she didn’t always make the wisest decisions. He thought she would be all right. He hoped that was so.
Before they got to the pickup, Brannon heard sirens. He looked toward the highway and saw a whole convoy of flashing lights speeding eastward from the direction of Little Tucson. A sheriff’s car was in the lead, and someone inside it must have spotted the F-150 and the Nissan because the cruiser swung into the dirt road in a sharp turn that sent the back end drifting a little. The rest of the flashing lights followed.
“Something happen in town this morning?” Brannon asked.
Carla May shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Brannon looked at the approaching cars and said, “I reckon we’re about to find out.”
5
Buddy Gorman had this dream sometimes where he was outside, usually in the front yard of his house, and he heard an odd honking sound coming from the sky that made him tilt his head back and look up. He spotted something in the distance, like a dark smudge floating in the air, and as the noise grew louder, the smudge came closer, and then Buddy saw that it was a flock of ducks or geese or some sort of big birds, coming up from the south and headed north. Winter was over. There were so many the sky became black with them, and the honking was so loud that Buddy had to raise his voice so that his wife and kids, who were with him in the front yard, could hear him as he said, “They’re going home. Look at that, they’re going home.”
This dream had really happened, years earlier when Buddy’s children were young. There hadn’t been so many birds that they blotted out the sun, of course, and their honking hadn’t been quite so deafening in real life, but that was just how things got exaggerated when you dreamed about them later on. Buddy always felt good when he woke up after having that dream. It was like for a little while he had been transported out of himself, back to a happier time in his life. Not that he was unhappy now, but there had been something about those days, something that smacked of infinite possibilities . . .
He didn’t feel good at the moment, dream or no dream, because the ringing of the phone had jerked him awake, and he always hated that. His hand shot out and grabbed the cordless off its base on the bedside table. He had it halfway to his ear before he came awake enough to realize that Jean was probably getting it elsewhere in the house. The phone rang again, though, so Buddy thumbed the button, brought it to his ear, and said thickly, “Hello?”
A moment later he was sitting up straight in bed, all the sleepiness jolted out of him by what he had just heard. A thin bar of sunlight came around the edge of the closed blinds over the bedroom window and slanted across the foot of the bed. Buddy squinted against the brightness and took a deep breath as he listened to Cecil Rhodes babble. Finally he said, “Take it easy, Dusty. I’m on my way.”
He broke the connection before the agitated dispatcher could say anything else. As he stood up he reached for his pants.
; By the time he walked into the kitchen three minutes later, fully dressed except for the top couple of buttons on his shirt being undone and the gunbelt he carried in his left hand, Jean had a cup of coffee ready for him. As she handed it to him, she said, “You got, what, an hour’s sleep?”
“Maybe,” Buddy said. “I’ll be all right, though.”
“I saw it was the office on the caller ID, that’s why I didn’t pick up. What’s wrong?”
Buddy took a sip of the coffee and then set the cup on the kitchen table. As he buckled on the belt and its holstered service revolver, he said, “Bank robbery. Shots fired.”
Jean’s blue eyes widened. “You’re kidding!”
“Wouldn’t kid about a thing like that, honey.”
He picked up the coffee to take with him. As he turned toward the door she caught hold of his arm for a second and looked worriedly at him. “Be careful.”
He nodded and said, “Always am.” Then he leaned over and brushed a quick kiss across his wife’s lips.
He snagged the ball cap from the hook beside the back door as he went out. A lot of lawmen in the Southwest wore Stetsons, if they wore any sort of hat at all. Buddy Gorman wore a Cubs cap because he had been born in Chicago and lived there until he was in the eighth grade, when his family had moved to Arizona. He was still a Cubs fan, just like he still had a bit of a Chicago accent despite living down here for a lot of years.
A tall, lanky man with graying dark hair, he pulled the cap on his head and walked quickly to the sheriff’s car parked in the driveway next to the house. He put the coffee cup in the holder on the console, started the car, and backed out. As soon as he hit the street, he had the lights and siren going, and his foot was heavy on the gas.
He’d tried to keep his tone light with Jean, but from the sound of what Dusty had told him, this was bad, really bad. The silent alarm had gone off at the Little Tucson Savings Bank, and Fred Kelso had been on his way to respond. Dusty didn’t know what had happened after that, but citizen reports began to come in of shots being fired and a big wreck on Main Street and—Lord have mercy!—an officer down. That could only be Fred, and despite the fact that the temperature was in the nineties already and not even ten o’clock yet, Buddy Gorman felt the cold touch of fear in his gut.
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