He slid his hand under the body and yanked out a wallet, flipped it open. Daniel Preston, thirty-seven, Tennessee license, Memphis address. One credit card. Six hundred eleven dollars in cash. No photos. He closed the wallet and replaced it.
He stood and walked to the spot where Giles said the other shooter stood. No brass in the gravel.
“Hey,” he called over his shoulder. “Mr. Giles. You see what the shooter, the one shot her, was carrying?”
“No, I did not.”
He nodded, then turned and faced McDonough. Giles was standing, as was McDonough. She wobbled and pushed and argued, and Giles kept leaning on her. Under other circumstances, it would have been funny. She was bleeding like a stuck pig, but at least she was conscious.
He eyeballed the distance from her to the body. About ten yards. A fairly easy shot. But Preston missed, maybe because he was being shot himself. For McDonough, though, that’s a very feasible shot. This guy, though, if he was calm like Giles said, couldn’t shoot for shit, otherwise McDonough would be dead.
But why was this meeting between these guys even happening? And what the hell was McDonough doing out here alone? The black male had to be the same one from the bridge, the one Delmer called Dee, but how did she come to be following him?
He walked back to John and Giles. “She OK?” he asked. Giles frowned.
“I’m fine, Harper,” McDonough said. He looked in her eyes. She couldn’t stay focused for very long, but she was coherent. Weak, but coherent.”
“You’re not fine,” he said. “You got shot in the head. You need to go to the hospital.”
“Fuck that,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“Colt,” John said, “ambulance is on the way. You sure we want to—”
His cell phone rang from inside his pocket. He held up a hand while he dug it out and looked at the screen: RHONDA.
“What the fuck?” he said, more to himself than anyone else.
“Say again?” John said.
He showed John the phone. John’s eyebrows shot up.
He turned away and answered the call. “Rhonda?”
“Hey, Colt, yeah, it’s me,” she said.
He stared at the store, at Preston lying dead on the shaded gravel, tried to sort out a clash of surprise, anger, and confusion.
“Hey, Rhonda, I don’t want to sound rude,” he said, “but I’m sort of in the middle of something right now. Is this something that can wait?”
“Colt, listen, OK? I need you to listen to me real careful.”
Her voice sounded strained, and an alarm pinged inside his head.
“Go on.”
“I need you to come to where I am,” she said, her voice quavering. “You know that guy you ran into on the bridge? The one who calls himself Hack?”
“Yeah. Wait, what do you know about that?”
“Doesn’t matter. He wants you to come here, with the money you owe him.”
“The hell you talking about, Rhonda? I don’t owe him shit. He means the money Delmer stole, which he thinks is his.”
“Dammit, Colt, shut up and listen,” she said. “He is holding a gun on me right now. He wants you to come here alone, with the money, or he will kill me. And, Colt, he’s serious.”
He glanced over at John, who was chatting with Giles. Off in distance, down the highway he’d driven to get here, he could barely hear an ambulance.
“Rhonda, listen to me. This guy is bad news. He kills people for a living. Do whatever he says. Where are you?”
She rattled off an address, and he made her say it again so he would remember it. “OK,” he said, “anything else?”
A pause.
“Yes, Sheriff,” Hack said. “There is one more thing. You have one hour to get here, alone, with the money that Delmer Blackburn stole from my employer. If you’re late by even a minute, I’m going to make your dear friend Mrs. Raines excruciatingly uncomfortable.”
He closed his eyes and bowed his head as he felt a curious calm overtake him. He smiled to himself.
“I take it you understand these instructions?” Hack asked.
He cleared his throat. “Fuck you,” he said. “I’ll see you in an hour.” He broke the connection, then punched the address Rhonda had given him into a maps app on his phone.
“Colt?” John asked behind him. He turned to see his deputy wearing a concerned look. “What’s up?”
He shook his head. “You’re not going to believe this one. Hack has Rhonda. Wants me to meet him in an hour with the money, or he’ll kill her.”
“What?” John said. “How in the hell did she get involved in this?” He stomped over from McDonough’s side, hands on hips, clearly alarmed.
“I have no idea, and it don’t matter. What does matter is putting this sumbitch down.”
John nodded. “Right. Let’s go.”
He shook his head. “He said alone.”
“That’s bullshit, Colt, and you know it. I’m going with you.”
“No, goddammit, you’re not,” Colt said, already walking to his truck. He stopped and turned. “Look, John, I know you and Rhonda have something. I respect that. Hell, I’m glad for it. And that’s exactly the reason I don’t need you going. I’m going to put this guy down, and that’s going to be the end of it.”
“Is it?” John said, clearly angry.
“Yeah, John, it is. I have to go.”
“What you want me to tell the cops and the EMTs and everybody else that’s going to show up asking a shitload of questions?”
He sighed. “Right now, John, I don’t give a fuck. Tell them whatever you want. Tell them we’re part of a special task force or some bullshit. Or it’s all part of an ongoing investigation. I’ll deal with all this later.” He turned again and climbed into his truck.
He spun the truck around, throwing gravel and squealing the tires when he hit pavement. In his rearview mirror, he saw McDonough waving her arms and pushing John while Giles did his best to restrain her. John could handle that, and he felt pretty sure Giles had taken good care of McDonough. It was out of his hands now, anyway.
He was doing seventy a couple of minutes later when he met the ambulance roaring up the road, lights and sirens going full tilt. A brown-and-white sheriff’s car followed behind, blue lights going.
He hit the brakes too hard in the sheriff’s department parking lot, and his truck slid on the pavement almost into the side of the building. He ran inside, yelled at Becky for the key to the evidence locker and was roaring down the highway with the money on the seat beside him in less than five minutes.
His mind raced, sorting courses of action, but John’s voice still rang in his ears, a snarling question that sounded like an accusation: “Is it?”
HACK
He holstered the pistol and smiled at Rhonda. Her brown eyes blazed back at him. She seemed genuinely frightened on the phone, but now, sitting on the edge of the bed in her work clothes with her legs crossed and arms folded across her chest, she seemed anything but. Her mouth was a compressed line across her face, and her eyes gleamed with fury. He found her visage amusing and curious. She was either too stupid to realize that she would soon be dead or delusional enough to believe that the bravado she was displaying would keep her alive. His instinct told him the latter, but it was of no consequence to him. That bravado would soon serve to gratify him immensely as he slowly demonstrated the reality of his power to her.
“You’re going to regret this,” she said to him in a voice devoid of the apprehension of just a few minutes ago.
He smiled. “I’m sure you believe so. However, I don’t share that belief.”
“You’re an arrogant man.”
He scoffed. “Arrogant. Only because you don’t believe me.”
She crossed her arms and opened her mouth to speak but clamped her mouth shut.
“Now,” he said, “your phone. Give it to me.”
She arched her eyebrows.
“You don’t really think I’m going to give you t
he chance to warn him, do you? I could hear the intimacy in your voice. Hand it over.”
Her eyes flickered, and he thought he saw fear at last, and an electric thrill ran through him. She picked the phone up off the bed and handed it to him.
He nodded. “Good girl. Now, you will stay in this room until I tell you to come out. Is that clear?”
She nodded.
“Good.” He left her sitting on the bed and closed the door behind him. He walked to the window in the living room and peered out at Strickland and Foster. Strickland held a sawed-off twelve-gauge and stared down the road to the left. Foster, wearing his revolver on his right hip, watched to the right. He checked his watch—fifty more minutes. He heard the clicking of bullets into a magazine coming from the kitchen where Dee was preparing for battle.
He smiled through the window. He could be back in Memphis by tomorrow.
COLT
He could end this right now, he knew, just call for backup and stand this guy off. By the book.
He could do that. Except for the fact that it was Rhonda being held hostage. And he couldn’t abide that.
But most of all, the thought as he climbed into the truck and turned the ignition key, most of all, Hack was after him. Had been from the beginning. Delmer just got in the way of that. Delmer’s actions, and his whole connection to him, had been a collision of fates, a bizarre confluence of lives never meant to intersect, but it did not diminish the fact that Hack was after him and sooner or later they would meet again, likely with fatal results. So it might as well be sooner.
He didn’t believe in destiny, but he knew the confrontation ahead of him had been ordained, and there was no escaping that, any more than he could escape the past. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, no Promised Land lying below the mountaintop. He walked through the valley of the shadow alone and with a gun because at the end of the valley there was usually another man with a gun. That’s all there was to it.
He pulled out onto the highway, checked his watch. His phone map indicated the route with a blue line, and he followed its instruction. He reached over to the glove compartment and pulled out his Glock, leaned over the steering wheel and jammed the boxy pistol in the small of his back, left side, as his phone told him to turn right. He swung into the turn onto a macadam road as the phone told him his destination was 3.1 miles ahead on the left.
He peered ahead, seeing only the gray strip of pavement, soybean field on the left, small white ranch house on the right. A flash in his mirror jerked his eyes up. About five car lengths behind him, a dark sedan was keeping pace with him, even though he was up over seventy-five miles an hour. He squinted at the mirror and realized the driver was McDonough.
Has she lost her fucking mind? Other than taking a bullet through it?
He frowned, considered his options, even as he sped toward Rhonda’s location. Pulling over and arguing with a wounded, half-crazed in-shock federal agent did nothing to help his predicament. And running her off the road would certainly do nothing to help hers. He shook his head and pressed the accelerator. He only had one option, the original one: get to Rhonda as fast as he could.
He took one last glance at the mirror, then focused his attention on the road ahead of him.
Then he saw it. Or, rather, him.
His truck barreled toward a man—white, scruffy, even from a distance—holding a sawed-off shotgun. Staring up the road at him. Beyond the man, now in full view, another male, also white, facing the opposite direction. Sentries. Second man unarmed, apparently.
He floored it, and the truck leapt forward like an attack dog unleashed. The far man spun around, and he saw that man draw a pistol from his hip. He had the random thought that he would have already shot out the tires, had he been the sentry on duty. He gripped the wheel with both hands, then jammed the brakes and jerked the wheel hard to the right, causing the truck to shudder and fishtail from the pavement toward the low ditch separating him from the two sentries. As the truck swung past ninety degrees, he rammed the gear shift to park, flung open the door, and leaped from the cab in one huge movement.
The closest man held his shotgun at his hip, leveled at him. He did not seem afraid.
He moved to his right to put the shotgun between him and the pistol sentry, about fifteen yards distant.
He yanked out both pistols, Glock in his left, .45 in his right, and leveled the .45 at the closer man and fired just as the man realized what was happening and pulled the trigger on his shotgun.
He saw the man fly backward as the bullet hit him in the chest at the same time he felt a sledgehammer blow to his right leg. He spun, nearly lost his balance, and regained his footing as the pistol shooter drew a bead on him. He fired the Glock twice and saw the man twitch, then shudder as a wide bloodstain appeared in his shirt, up high near the left shoulder. The man fired, and he felt another fist of fire and pain slam into him on his left side, in the ribs. The shot staggered him, and he stumbled toward the first gunman, who lay facedown over his shotgun.
Goddam that hurts, he thought as he fought to stay upright. Blood poured freely down his right leg and from a ragged wound in his left side. He had trouble breathing and gritted his teeth against the pain. He saw the pistol shooter reel and sink to one knee, then raise his revolver again.
Behind him, brakes squealed. Then McDonough’s voice; “Harper!” He jerked his head to see her fire her weapon at the pistol shooter, missing twice.
He adjusted, fired the Glock twice more, this time hitting the shooter both times, once in the chest and once in the head. The man flew backward in a spray of blood and fell to one side, dead.
To his right, he heard the unmistakable sound of shotgun being racked. He swung around, astonished the man was still alive. He had pulled himself up on his elbows, but his fish-belly white face bobbed like a yo-yo as he bled out. Yet, he fired the shotgun again, the buckshot going wide, but close enough to find flesh, this time in his lower left leg.
His brain felt like it short-circuited from this new pain. He gasped and forced himself to level his .45, even as his assailant racked yet another shell. From somewhere very close behind him, McDonough’s weapon roared. He winced at the shock to his ears as McDonough shot the man through the top of the head, killing him, and fired once more into the man’s body.
He stumbled backward into McDonough and lowered his arms. She grunted and pushed him upright. With an effort that instantly exhausted him, he looked over his shoulder. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused. Her pistol smoked at her side. She licked her lips once and said, “Go,” a croak she punctuated with a nod. His breath heaved in and out of his chest. McDonough, still nodding, sank to her knees like an imploding skyscraper and crumpled face-first onto the grass.
Unsure if he could walk, he leaned forward. The house loomed in front of him. Rhonda must be in there. He felt lightheaded, from blood loss, he knew. He took small steps toward the house. The door flew open and smacked the brick exterior with a crack that sounded like another gunshot to his numb ears.
Hack stepped through the door onto a small, low wooden deck that served as a porch. He shoved Rhonda ahead of him, left arm wrapped around her throat, gun in his right hand held to her head. The skinny black kid, Dee, slithered past him on the right.
He blinked back the pain and raised both pistols.
Hack smiled down on him. “I see you met Strickland and Foster,” he said, his voice carrying a tinge of respect.
It hurt to breathe, much less talk. “Those idiots couldn’t shoot for shit,” he said.
He locked eyes with Rhonda. Her face was a mask of dark fury. If Hack had expected her to be afraid, he had been wrong. She stood still, hands at her sides, but she fumed under Hack’s grip.
“Their orders were to get you to me alive,” Hack said. The irritating smile never wavered. “They succeeded, barely. Here you are. A little worse for wear, but here nonetheless.”
Another wave of pain rolled over him, and he let out a stifled groan. He sa
w Dee slide to the right, eyes on him like a cat.
He raised the .45 an inch. “Take one more step and I’ll kill you,” he said. Dee stopped moving.
Hack continued to talk. “You know how this is going to end, Sheriff Harper. Why delay the inevitable? Do you hope to bleed to death before I kill you?”
He gritted his teeth. “You are an obnoxious son of a bitch, you know that? I’m not some backwoods dope dealer running scared of you.”
Dee slid one foot forward, and he leveled the .45 and shot the kid in the head. The slug slammed Dee against the brick with a sound exactly like that of a watermelon being dropped on a sidewalk. Hack’s eyes widened for a split second, whether in horror or surprise he couldn’t tell. But that goddamn smile was gone.
He leveled the .45 at Hack and, though he didn’t want to look weak, he lowered his left arm to the wound in his side.
“Let her go,” he said, his breath wheezing.
Hack scoffed.
He met Rhonda’s eyes, and she held his gaze, a desperate attempt to communicate. She stared at him until he understood what she was asking, and she blinked once, slow and deliberate. And he understood. Then she twitched her hip and swung her right arm up and back, aiming for Hack’s crotch.
Her sudden movement distracted Hack for a fraction of a second—all the time in the world. Hack jerked downward and tried to pull Rhonda straight by the neck.
He squeezed the trigger and shot Hack just over his right eyebrow. The .45 slug blew out the back of his head and drove his dead body back through the open door. His grip slid from Rhonda as he fell into the interior of the house, and she dropped to her knees, gasping for air.
His body went weak from blood loss, pain, and the adrenaline rush. He sank slowly to his knees, still holding the pistols, his breath ragged gasps. He gulped for more air as he settled into the grass, his head spinning and his ears ringing. He heard his mother’s voice, faint and barely discernible, singing a song he couldn’t quite name, though the melody was familiar. Then he remembered and smiled, for he understood that, in this moment, he was most assuredly leaning on the everlasting arms.
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