by Jim Heskett
Micah felt woozy now, and he spread his feet to steady himself. Facing all of this was almost too hard. “You’re right. Saying sorry isn’t good enough. Making amends is about correcting a wrong. And I can’t go back to that night in high school and stop those guys from hurting you. But I can make up for it in a different way now.”
She wiped a rough hand across her face, smearing her makeup. “I don’t see how.”
He held out his hand. “Let’s go. We’ll hop in my car and go back to Denver. I’ll help you out with money, and you can go anywhere you want. Back to Mom and Dad, or somewhere else. Anywhere but here.”
She looked at his hand, then crossed her arms and pivoted away from him. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
The pain in his chest turned into bolts of anxiety. He was going to have to tell her. He cleared his throat, felt his breakfast rumble up from his stomach.
Micah felt around for the familiar bump of Boba Fett’s head, resting in his pants pocket. He ran his thumb back and forth across it. “The ATF are watching the house. They’re going to raid it and take everyone to jail. You can’t be there when that happens. I know you haven’t done anything, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get caught up in it. If they take you to jail, then it’s out of my control.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You never should have come here, and I don’t want you around me anymore. I’m going to tell Lilah that you need to go. Now leave me alone.”
She brushed past him and fled into the store, leaving Micah alone in the cold, gray morning.
***
Micah stumbled through the hardware store’s back door and into the storeroom, his head and heart both thumping so rapidly he could barely think and see straight. He had to brace himself against a palette of lawnmower parts for a few seconds to get his bearings.
His throat closed up, as if invisible hands were squeezing it.
All of his plans were collapsing into ruin. He’d used the nuclear option by telling Magda about Rodney and the ATF, and she’d barely batted an eye. No movement. If the threat of going to federal prison wouldn’t work, then he didn’t know what would. He had no reasonable weapons left to use.
Now, he had to resort to something drastic. An idea formed, but one so crazy, it seemed like the brainstorming of a mental patient. And once he did it, there would be no going back. Everything else would blow up, and he’d have to leave it all behind.
In a minute or two, he calmed down enough that he could walk. As he resumed his post in the tools aisle, his eyes fell on a suitable weapon on a workbench, charged up and ready to go. He ran through his plan, and damned sure it was insane, but it might be the only option he had left.
While he was considering it, the judgmental purple-haired kid from Gardening crossed his path, carrying a bundle of garden spades wrapped with twine. The kid paused in the tools aisle and smirked at Micah.
“Still here?”
“Not now,” Micah said. “I can’t deal with you.”
Instead of leaving, Purple Hair rested against a shelf full of circular saws and shifted the garden spades from one hand to the other. “I heard you failed your background check. Or it came back as fraudulent. What’s up with that?”
Micah’s blood boiled and he gritted his teeth. “I am not kidding you. I don’t have time to deal with you right now, so why don’t you go back to Gardening? I’m sure a little old lady needs help lifting some big plants or something.”
The kid’s smirk turned into a full grin. “I figured you would have gotten fired by now, but Walt’s always been a little slow on the uptake. He can’t spot a poser as quick as I can.”
The notion of picking up a cordless drill and bashing in Purple Hair’s nose danced in Micah’s head. Too tempting. If this kid didn’t leave soon, Micah might do something rash, and that would blow up his last and only option.
“You better walk away right now, or I’m going to ram one of those garden spades up your ass. I am not joking around with you.”
“Jeez, Mr. Bible Thumper, that doesn’t sound very Christian of you. I thought you guys were good at turning the other cheek.”
Micah could see the kid wasn’t going to leave, and he didn’t have time or energy to deal with this. He shook his head and escaped to the back storeroom to use the phone there, the same phone he’d been using to check in with his sponsor and boss Frank every few days. Didn’t even care if anyone might see him this time.
He dialed Frank’s number, his hands shaking so much he could barely stab out the numbers on the keypad. If he didn’t get this trembling anxiety under control, none of this would work.
“Frank,” he said as soon as the call connected.
“Micah, my young mountain hippie friend. I was starting to wonder when I was going to hear from you again. Before I forget, lemme tell you I called into your cell phone voicemail like you asked. Got a couple messages, want to hear about them?”
“Uhh, I don’t really have… I mean, sure, Frank.”
“Hold on one second.” Sound of papers shuffling in the background. “That girl Allison, the one you took the coke heat for, she called from Maine or Massachusetts or something—I’m not sure, I couldn’t understand a damn word that young woman said—but she’s fine and staying with family out east, so there’s no problem there. But the guy looking for the coke, he left you a couple messages too. He’s still on the warpath. I did some digging, and it seems Seth has deep ties to more than one big-deal Denver gangster.”
“Thanks for looking into that, Frank. Listen to me: I need you to come up to Nederland and do something very important.”
“What? Why?”
“My sister is in some real trouble here, and I need to get her out of town. I’ve got a plan, and I don’t even want to tell you because it’s so crazy, but I think it might be the best option available. Maybe the last option available. But either way, this has to happen, right now. We’ve only got a day or two left before some bad shit is coming down the road. Serious, game-changing stuff.”
“Okay, sure, kid. Whatever you need.”
“Pull up in front of Walt’s Hardware, with the car running, and the passenger door open. Do you know Walt’s?”
“I think so. Near the visitor building, right?”
“Yes. It’s across from the carousel. I’ll be with Magda. She’s going to be injured, and we’re going to need to get her to a hospital in Denver as soon as possible.”
Frank balked. “She’s going to be injured? What does that mean?”
“Frank, please. I don’t have time to explain. I’ll wait for you, but we’re going to need to leave as soon as you get here. Like a snatch and grab.”
“You got it. I’m on my way.”
Micah slipped the phone back into the cradle and returned to the tools aisle. Purple Hair was gone. He spent a minute breathing in through his nose and out his mouth, willing his body to settle down. He needed steady nerves to accomplish this task.
He lifted the nailgun, double-checked that the battery was fully charged, slid back the spring, and pushed a rack of nails into the slot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Frank Mueller piloted his car through the streets of Boulder, headed for Canyon Road to begin the slow crawl along the twisty street up to Nederland. He hadn’t even brushed his damn teeth this morning, but Micah had been so insistent on the timeline, he hadn’t had much choice.
He fiddled with the radio, jabbing the seek button every few seconds to find the next station. Too many of these college radio stations up here in Boulder. All that new crap they played sounded like the musicians recorded in barns with tin cans. Why did every new song on the radio sound like it would fit as the soundtrack for a truck commercial? He could picture the family loading up their mountain bikes and dog into the back to race up muddy mountain roads, then cut to a surfer cutting through a wave, then cut to a mountain climber hanging on a rock, all while that jangly crap droned on in the background before the guy who talks a million miles an hou
r tells you all the legal junk at the end.
A car horn honked and Frank realized he’d been dawdling at a light that had turned green. He lifted a hand to the rearview as an apology and hit the gas.
Past town, he climbed up Canyon, being careful on the turns since the road became real steep real quick, and some fresh snow hadn’t yet melted off to join the rushing Boulder Creek. Plus, you couldn’t ever count on other drivers knowing what the hell they were doing.
Within a few minutes of entering the curvy road, still twenty miles from Nederland, he found himself in a caravan of slow-moving cars, backed up seven or eight deep. Usually, some tourist or college freshman who’d never encountered a Colorado mountain road before, freaking out about those hairpin turns. Those wide-eyed drivers probably had no idea what the turnouts along the side of the road were for.
That big festival with the frozen dead guy was coming up in a few days, so the traffic was probably only going to get worse as he approached Ned. He flicked off the radio and settled in for a long commute.
After enduring about ten minutes of this, something had apparently changed up ahead, because the line of cars had separated. The cars leading the pack began to speed up one by one, and Frank readied his foot to hit the gas once it would be his turn.
The car directly in front of him accelerated too quickly, back tires spinning and not catching on the slick and steep ground. Before he could do anything to get out of the way, Frank watched his own car barreling ahead as the car in front of him turned sideways, drifting toward the skimpy railing on the side of the road.
His foot jerked from the gas to the brake, but too late. He couldn’t stop before impact.
He yanked his wheel to the left with the fleeting hope that he might swerve around the car and barely miss it. No good. They were on a direct collision course. Instead of avoiding the other car, turning the wheel put the passenger side of Frank’s car on a course to smack right into the passenger side of the car ahead, with both of them skidding sideways.
The last blip that ran through Frank’s mind before impact was a hope that there wasn’t a passenger in that car, since he couldn’t see into the tinted windows. That person would be crushed.
When Frank slammed into the car, for a split second, it felt as if he’d been lifted from the air and turned on his side. Like he was in some spaceship rollercoaster, weightless and twisting through the air.
Metal cried and screeched as the two cars became one. Glass popped, filling the air with crinkly crashing. The two cars skittered forward a few feet, and Frank managed to turn his head to see the front of the other car push through the railing on the side of the road.
And then they stopped. The sounds in the area collapsed from thunderous to nonexistent.
The rear of Frank’s car a few inches over the cliff, the nose of the other car in the same spot. Not dangling over the edge exactly, but if they’d gone a little further, they would have all slid forty feet down to meet Boulder Creek head-on.
Frank straightened his back and angled his head from side to side. No serious injuries, but his neck would hurt like hell for a few weeks. He knew that from the way he’d tensed up before it happened.
Frank pushed open his car door easily, since the driver side was untouched. He tried to race around it and realized that he was hobbling. Didn’t feel any pain, but must have bumped his knee against the center console, or something, because he could barely walk.
Not that sore knees were anything new to his body. Been fighting those for years.
He reached the other car and limped around to the driver’s side, then yanked open the door. Inside, he found a white teenage girl in a state of shock. Dark hair, pretty. Skinny little thing, really. She was screaming, with her hands locked onto the steering wheel.
But she was alone in the car. No passenger.
“Miss!”
She stopped screaming and turned her head slowly, like a zombie. Her chest heaving up and down. Frank reached out and patted her on the arm.
“Miss? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
She was silent for a few seconds, chest jerking, then her eyes darted around at the mess of glass shards collected in her lap. “My dad is going to kill me,” she said as tears streamed down her face. “He’s going to be so mad.”
Frank stepped back and looked her up and down. No blood, and no bones sticking out anywhere. No eyes swollen shut from contact. She was fine.
“Miss. You need to get out of the car. It’s not safe.”
She looked at him blankly, so he reached in and grabbed her by the wrist. She gawked at him, but after a couple seconds, she nodded and unhooked her seat belt. Glass like ice chips came tumbling out as she got to the street, stumbled, and then steadied herself against her car.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Glad to hear it. I’m going to call it in.”
Micah. Shit.
Frank dug into his pocket to get his cellphone, started to dial Micah, then he realized Micah didn’t have his phone on him. And Frank couldn’t call the hardware store, either. Micah hadn’t ever given him the number, and the store number he called from was always blocked.
Then he realized that neither of those things mattered, because he didn’t have any cell service with these high canyon walls on either side. No internet to look up the hardware store’s number.
Frank looked both ways on the street to make sure no cars were going to run into them, then he slipped his phone back into his pocket.
“Sorry, Micah. You’re on your own.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Micah approached the new guy from Electrical to cover for him, because his heart was racing so fast, he needed to stay away from people as much as possible. And he couldn’t leave Tools unattended.
“Hey,” Micah said, then he realized he didn’t know the guy’s name, and he was bent over, doing something on the bottom shelf. His name tag wasn’t visible.
The guy straightened up, and Micah did his best to glance at the name tag without looking like he was glancing at the name tag.
“Kamal. Hey, Kamal.”
“Yes?” Kamal said, his arms full of copper wire.
“Can you cover for me in Tools? Just for a minute?”
Kamal winced, hesitating. His eyes drifted to the nailgun in Micah’s hands, his face screwed up in confusion.
Micah swayed on his feet, worried he might pass out. Running out of time.
“I don’t know about that,” Kamal said. “I’m supposed to be here. Inventory is this weekend.”
“This is important,” Micah said, and he leaned forward on the last word, driving it home. “Do me a solid.”
Kamal opened his mouth and some air leaked out, so Micah took this as consent. “Thanks,” he said, and spun on his heels before Kamal had a chance to change his mind.
Micah couldn’t stop himself from breathing heavily, so he took his nailgun and hid near the back of the store, with a clear view of the front parking lot. Panting, flushed, dizzy. If this mission wasn’t over in the next five or ten minutes, he was going to barf his breakfast bagel all over the back of the store.
He shifted a few inches so he could see the wall clock near the front. Any minute now, Frank was going to appear in the parking lot near the front door, and then Micah needed to act, puking or not. He’d only have a few seconds.
Magda was at her station at this moment, assisting a customer. Micah would walk up to her, trip, then drive a nail into the back of her hand. Chaos would ensue. Then, he would grab her, drag her to the front of the store, and toss her into Frank’s car. Simple, risky, and final.
When he did this, he couldn’t ever come back here. Couldn’t show his face in Nederland ever again. He wasn’t burning this bridge, he was exploding it with a cluster bomb.
This action was kidnapping, and assault, and probably a lot of other illegal things. He and Frank might find a cop car on their tail as they made their way down Canyon Road toward Boulder.
And it w
as the only chance he had left to save his sister. Either the ATF would raid the house, or Magda would tell Lilah that she knew about the impending raid. Either option was doomsday.
But where the hell was Frank? Even with traffic, it shouldn’t have taken him more than ninety minutes to get from Denver to Nederland, and two hours had already elapsed since the phone call. Micah could go back into the storeroom to use the phone, but then he might miss Frank at the front, or Magda might leave to go on break, and if the timing was off, the whole thing might have to be scrapped.
There were too many variables, and not enough pieces in place.
Micah stood idle for a few more endless minutes, staring at that front door as customers came and went, and Frank’s car still did not arrive. Big trucks paused out front, loading up lumber and bags of fertilizer. Men with construction hard hats sheltering their heads. Jangling hammers and awls from leather tool belts.
Micah couldn’t swallow. The lump in his throat grew so big he worried it might choke him. Plus, the insane desire for a drink to calm his nerves kept creeping up. Just a shot to coat his throat and make the anxiety retreat to something manageable. One drink.
Just one drink. Which would lead to another.
He had to call. Had no choice. Micah set the nailgun on a shelf and ducked into the storeroom. He dialed Frank, but it went straight to voicemail.
“Shit! Where the hell are you, Frank?”
Panic set in, and he couldn’t think for a while, maybe five seconds, maybe thirty. He stared at a collection of Walt’s Hardware branded buckets along the back wall of the store room. Hundreds of buckets stacked in rows. The colors blurred.
Micah blinked back into consciousness, jammed a hand into his pocket and came out with the severed head of Boba Fett. “Looks like we’re on our own. Screw it. We’re doing this now.”
He returned Boba to his pocket hiding spot and retrieved his nailgun, then set out on a course to get Magda. Having Frank as the getaway driver would have been better. Micah could have stayed in the back with Magda, pressing something over her wound to stop the bleeding and making sure she didn’t jump from the car.