by Max Austin
“You okay?” he asked.
“Do I look okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Pam gritted her teeth. “Then I guess I am. Help me up.”
She reached up an arm. He took hold of her hand and pulled her to her feet. She teetered a second, catching her balance, the wound on her thigh blazing.
She turned, leaning on Abeyta for support, and found Mick Wyman lying facedown on the gray concrete, black hair tangled, blood pooling around him. Something fell away inside of Pam, and she was glad she couldn’t see his face.
“You got him,” Abeyta said beside her.
“His gun was empty.”
“Then you were lucky.”
She limped forward a step and peered into Caro’s room, saw him sprawled on the floor, his shirt sopping with blood. Why had Wyman taken him out? What was his connection to the bank robbers? She couldn’t make sense of it. Her throbbing head felt woozy and she willed her thoughts back to matters at hand.
“My partner?”
“Over here.” Abeyta walked her across the concrete to where a blue-uniformed guard squatted next to Hector, who was stretched out on his side, one hand before him as if he were reaching for his gun, which lay six feet away.
“We’ve already called an ambulance,” the guard said.
Pam knelt beside Hector and gently turned him onto his back. She lifted his coat aside, checked his blood-soaked white shirt and found the entry wound. It was on the left side of his chest, near the collarbone, high enough that it probably hadn’t hit any vital organs.
Hector’s eyes fluttered open.
“Hey.” His voice was a raspy croak. “Did you get him?”
“Yeah. We always get our man.”
He smiled weakly and his eyelids dipped, as if he didn’t have the strength to keep them open another second. “Later.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Later.”
Bystanders and security guards gathered around, but Pam barely noticed them. She cradled Hector’s head in her lap and stroked his hair until the wailing ambulance arrived.
Chapter 88
Bud ran around the blank exterior of the hotel and across the parking lot, not looking back until he reached his car. He fell behind the wheel, gasping for breath, and wiped the burning tears from his eyes.
He fully expected to see cops or security guards hot on his heels, but there was no one. Not yet. He wondered if the casino’s security people were watching him right now on their television cameras.
Somewhere in this vast parking lot sat Mick’s black Chevy, with well over a million bucks in the trunk, but Bud had no time to hunt for it now. Leave it to the feds. Let them make their headlines. Maybe they wouldn’t look so hard for the rest of the loot.
He cranked up the engine and steered the Equinox toward the road. The only road out of there. The cops would block it before long. He needed to be far away by then.
He zoomed down the hill, past Johnny Muller’s apartment building, and turned at the first intersection he came to. He’d turned twice more, into a suburban neighborhood, before he heard the first sirens.
Bud slowed then, keeping to the speed limit, stopping for stop signs. Just keep moving, generally southward, through the maze of curving streets, until he could reach one of the thoroughfares that sliced through the neighborhoods every mile or so.
His throat felt on fire and he had to swipe tears away so he could see where he was driving. Mick’s death kept playing out in his mind like a movie. The blood on his shirt. The surprise on his face as he dropped to his knees. That final look in his eyes. Had Mick come to his senses at the end? Had his bloodlust left him as his life dwindled away? No way to know. Too late now.
Bud gulped air, trying to maintain long enough to get home. As he turned onto the winding street that served as the spine of their subdivision, he called Linda. The sound of her voice was the only thing that could make him feel any better.
She picked up right away.
“Are you all right? I called the house and didn’t get an answer.”
“I’m almost home,” he said. “Had to take care of something with Mick, but we’re done now.”
“You sound out of breath,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“It got a little noisy, but it’s over now. I’m fine.”
“And Mick?”
Bud’s throat closed up. He managed to say, “He didn’t make it.”
“Oh, no.”
Bud held the phone away and coughed. He still could hear Linda talking on the other end. “Oh, hon, I’m so sorry. Poor Mick. Poor you. You’re nearly home?”
“Yeah.”
“You were there when it happened? How did you get away?”
“I didn’t hurt anybody. I was just Mick’s backup. That’s the truth. Hell, he kept trying to send me away. But we ran into these cops and Mick got shot. There was nothing I could do for him.”
She sniffled into the phone.
“I don’t think anybody got a good look at me,” he said. “So I just got out of there as fast I could.”
“Oh, Bud.”
“It’s finished now. Mick’s gone. There’s a good chance nobody can put me at the scene. We wait a while, maybe this all goes away.”
“Except for the money,” she said bitterly.
“What are we gonna do, give it back? It’s our fresh start, Linda.”
He steered the SUV into the driveway and sat looking at their tidy house.
“I need to see you,” he said. “I need to see the girls. Come home.”
She took a deep breath and said, “We’ll be there soon.”
About the Author
MAX AUSTIN is the pseudonym of Steve Brewer, the author of two dozen books about crooks, including the Bubba Mabry mysteries and the recent crime novels A Box of Pandoras, Calabama, and Lost Vegas. His first Bubba novel, Lonely Street, was made into a 2009 Hollywood comedy starring Robert Patrick, Jay Mohr, and Joe Mantegna.
A former journalist and humor columnist, Brewer teaches in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico. He’s a frequent speaker at mystery conventions and was toastmaster at Left Coast Crime in 2011.
Married and the father of two adult sons, Brewer lives in Albuquerque.
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