by Faye, Amy
Brian's not wasting away in the seat next to me. Now that he's sitting, he looks even a little bit less like he's going to die. He's got the seat back and the color is starting to come back into his cheeks a little.
"Do you see them?"
He shakes his head. "No."
I take a deep breath. We've got a ways to go until we hit Tucson. More than an hour. We don't need to catch them in the first ten minutes.
"Well, tell me if you do, alright?"
"Will do, ma'am."
I don't know if I like being called 'ma'am.' It's got a certain unpleasant professionalism to it. Then again, so does everything else I do, so I suppose I can't exactly complain, can I?
He leans his head back. For a minute I think he might be sleeping, and I'm about to tell him to wake up. As hurt as he is, he can't go to sleep—regardless how much he might want to. Can't afford it.
His eyes are open, though. A second later he leans it forward again. Pulls his seat up.
The road's long, and I need to keep him awake as best I can.
"So, how do you like Arizona?"
He takes a second to answer. "I don't know. Hot. Pretty, though."
"Yeah, I guess that's true. Thank God for air conditioning, though."
"I came down here because Ryan asked me to, you know. He's always been the tough one. Logan's the smart one, I guess that makes me the funny one."
There's nothing funny about the situation, not when he still looks liable to die right there, but the way he says it makes me smile.
"Yeah? Tell me a joke."
"Uh… shit." He rubs his head. "Okay, sure. Cop stops a guy. Driving a little slow, swerving in his lane. Looks like a drunk, but as he gets up to the car he can see the dude's eyes. Stoned out of his head." Brian takes a long minute to pause, lays his head back against the head-rest. "Jesus, I'm tired."
"I know, but you can't sleep right now, alright?"
"Stoned out of his head, right? Okay. So he says to this kid, 'How high are you?' And the kid's face gets all screwed up and he says 'no, officer—it's 'hi, how are you?''"
A smile spreads across my face. "Good one. Can you tell me another?"
He leans his head back. "I can't think of anything."
"Nothing at all?"
I step on the gas harder. He's not going to bleed to death right there, but he looks bad, and I don't know what I'm going to do if we don't manage to get Ryan damn soon after we get into Tucson.
The car speeds up under us. I have to hope and pray no cops run into us. The way we're whipping past the other cars, they'd pull us over in a heart-beat. I'd pull me over, and I don't even have the right to do that.
"Come on, Brian, I need you to stay awake."
He leans his head forward again. "I wasn't asleep."
"Good, and I need you to stay that way. What's the car look like?"
"Look like?"
"The car with your brother in it. Did you get a good look at it?"
"It was… black. Four doors. Um. Round-ish. Not square."
Thanks for the information, I guess. Not very specific. For a man who's lost as much blood as Brian Beauchamp obviously has, though, I can't blame him.
"I'm sorry, I know that's not very helpful. If it was a bike I'd know better."
"Do you like motorcycles?"
"Well, sure."
"But you're not a part of your brother's club?"
Brian shakes his head. A minute later he decides I probably wasn't watching. "No."
"Couldn't you be part of the club without, you know…"
"Without the business side of things?"
"Sure."
"Maybe. I don't know. I really don't. I just like to ride 'em. I like to look at 'em. I don't need to…" He stops talking and starts looking out the window, watching the cars pass by.
"Don't need to what?"
"I don't know. Don't need to prove it to anyone, or something. Don't need to worry about what my brother's doing all the time. Don't need to be part of some club that gives me permission to like what I like."
"That makes a lot of sense, you know?"
"I know."
Another few minutes pass. I make the turn onto the I-10, going a little too fast the whole time, and start going a lot too fast one I get on it.
"You have a girlfriend, Brian?"
"Not really," he says. "I know a girl, but I just haven't really—"
"Why not?"
"She's from work, which already makes things weird. Didn't want to start something and have to leave it half-finished if something came up with Ryan and Logan."
"That's a load of crap."
"I asked myself, what's my priority? Her, or them? It's simple, if you think about it that way. Don't need to constantly second-guess yourself."
"But in the mean-time, I know your brothers wouldn't want you to be lonely."
"I didn't say I was lonely, I said I wasn't dating anyone."
That shuts me up. I suppose he did.
"There." He points way up ahead. "That looks a lot like the car. Might be the same one."
The tint on the windows is dark. Dark enough to believe him. The car doesn't have much more to give me, but I ask it for just a little bit more. Just enough to get me close.
Chapter Forty-Six
RYAN
Once they finally decided that it was time to get me moving, they didn't take their time getting me moving. Into the car. Onto the highway. I lean my head against the wall.
All I know for sure is, I couldn't save either of my brothers, not with all of my strength. Not with all my weapons. Not with all the so-called power I'd built up since I got into this two-gang town.
Now I'm in the back of a car, and I know what's coming. It's a plane ride to the District of Columbia, and then I get arraigned in Federal court for trafficking. They'll probably add a few charges as the case comes together.
Then I spend the rest of my life locked up in a hole so deep that I never see the sun again.
I guess I always knew that it was a real risk. that they might catch me, and that if they did, there wasn't a hell of a lot I was going to do to change it. But some part of me had hoped, against all odds, that I'd get away with it.
Some part had hoped that I could at least get away without my brothers getting hurt. I don't want to go back to prison. Never in my whole life.
But if it was a trade between Logan or Brian and going to prison—it's not a trade. I'm giving up something don't mean nothing, and getting everything back in return.
Not being able to do a damn thing about any of it never even occurred to me.
I should've shot that bitch when I had the chance. The thought shoots through my head. I should've shot her when I had the chance.
Would someone else have taken over her position? Sure. But I wouldn't be as bad-off as I was. It would take time. There would have been time for me to react, time for me to get away. Time for me to figure out what to do next.
Instead, I'd let Scheck go, and all because I thought it would be fine. Because I underestimated her, and I underestimated her organization. It isn't a mistake I'll make again. Not, I think glumly, that I'm going to get the chance to make any sort of mistake again at all.
I don't exactly have a great track record, and with my history, it's not hard to pin something on me. That's even more true if I did it, and I sure as hell did a lot. I can't even pretend I didn't.
I settle deeper into the seat and close my eyes a minute. I'd like to go to sleep. Sleep now, wake up in D.C. and then start the long wait for the arraignment.
There's a lot wrong with prison. You never really can trust anyone, for one thing. Lots of problems that wouldn't even have been an issue outside of the joint.
The biggest problem, though, the one that tops all the others, is the raw damn boredom. So much time to pass. Days stretch on forever. It doesn't much matter what you do to try to pass them. Nothing will work as well as you want it to.
When you have eight straight hours, t
here's not many books will last you more than a day or two. You can go through the whole library in a year or so. And that's including shit you would never even consider under normal circumstances.
I take a deep breath and look around. I may as well get as much as I can out of my last day of being outside iron bars. It takes me a minute to be sure, but I recognize the car coming up behind me. I've seen it before, a dozen times at least.
What surprises me a little bit is that the guys in front don't seem to notice, or at least aren't doing anything about it. Maybe they're trying to hide in plain sight, I don't know.
Maguire pulls up alongside the car. I can see Brian in the seat next to her. He doesn't look good. Ragged. But he's alive, which is a surprise.
I hear Donaldsen curse in the front seat, and pull out his phone. A second later he's talking into it.
"I thought I told you to hold him."
A long pause. I don't like the ideas I'm getting about who he's talking to, nor the ideas about what they're talking about. Hold who?
I don't need to wonder. I already know who, and that's what's got me upset. The goon steps on the gas. We're not in anything special, though. I don't think we're going to get away.
The anger, dissipated into melancholy, starts burning bright again. This mother fucker thought he would use my own family against me? As a weapon?
He orchestrated this whole setup. He's the one responsible. The answer isn't hard, but getting the motion right, quickly, is. Slow is fast. Slow is fast. I can't afford to get ahead of myself.
I rock forward and at the same time slip my arms high above Donaldsen's head. My hands go down, and my weight comes back. I feel the strain in my shoulders almost immediately.
The chain between my hands goes tight in Donaldsen's fleshy throat. There's enough time for my arms to start really hurting before the goon notices, maybe two or three seconds.
I don't need long to get my revenge. Three seconds isn't enough.
"You let him go right now," he growls, reaching awkwardly for the pistol at his waist. Another precious couple of seconds wasted, and another precious few seconds of Donaldsen's air, gone. "Or I swear to God, you won't make it to D.C."
My knee goes up to brace against the back of the seat in front of me. It lets me pull tighter.
"You tried to kill my brother."
He gets the gun free and points it at me. He thinks I can be threatened into stopping. He's got a lot to learn.
"Your brother is fine," the goon growls. "Let Inspector Donaldsen go."
"Put the gun down."
"I can't do that, you know I can't."
He doesn't seem to realize the other problem with this scenario, though. For a big guy in the A.T.F., he's awfully dumb. All the time that he spends pointing that gun at me, keeping his eyes on me, he isn't keeping his eyes on the road.
The car slams hard into the corner of another. I can feel it forcing Donaldsen forward, but I've got him held back. It's almost like a harness, in addition to his seatbelt. My arms feel like they're going to fall off.
The car goes spinning, hard. Tail hits the concrete barrier, and we finally spin back to a stop. My entire body hurts. For the first time in what must have been thirty seconds, I loosen my arms around Donaldsen's neck.
He doesn't move to do much of anything. I pull my arms back into the back-seat. This might have been a mistake, I think. I feel a little woozy. My head might have hit the roof a little. I can't really think straight.
The goon's moving, but he looks out of it. He picks his head up off the steering wheel slow, like he's just waking up in the morning. Like the next words out of his mouth are going to be 'where am I?'
I lean back. Good enough. I got my revenge, and if that's all I get, then it'll have been all I could have asked for. Then the door opens, and an angel reaches inside to grab me.
Chapter Forty-Seven
MAGUIRE
God, I can't believe how heavy Ryan is. He looks so small, and yet, pulling him free of the car, feels as if I'm going to pull something in my back.
Oh, well. I can hurt later. I have to get him free. I can see Mitch starting to wake up. I can also see Donaldsen, and he's decidedly not waking up. I don't know how to feel about it.
I know what my professional life says I should think. That it's a damn shame. That he's been a cornerstone of the A.T.F. for more than ten years. That he's served with distinction.
I also know what my personal feelings are, and I know that if I had the time to I'd kick his dead body. Ryan's starting to really come around, now, his feet scrabbling ineffectually at the ground to try to stand on his own legs.
I keep pulling. I don't have time to wait for him to find his legs again. It's only another few feet to the car. I'm committing a crime, doing this, but I can't leave Ryan in that car. It's tantamount to killing him.
The Crazy Horses want him out of the way, and they want it bad. Bad enough to kill, but they had assurances that he'd be taken care of, and soon.
Well, now the man who'd given those assurances died in a car crash. All the promises in the world don't mean a thing any more. They have to hope that others will follow his lead, or they'll have to come after Beauchamp themselves.
His boots get a good grip on the lip of my car and he helps me push him in onto the seat, laid out flat in the back. I close the door, careful to avoid slamming it on his ankle, and pull into the front.
I look over to check on Brian. He's got his eyes closed, his head leaned back.
"Brian!"
He jolts forward. "I wasn't sleeping."
"I know you weren't. Just resting a second. But I need you to navigate for me, alright? We have to get your brother to the hospital."
In the rear end, I can see Ryan pushing himself upright, but his arms aren't playing nice, and he slips and loses the weight, falls back against the back seat.
The car starts going again. Not only shouldn't I drive away from the scene of an accident, but it's damn hard when, between the two cars involved, they take up three of the four westbound lanes.
Still, I find a space and slip into it and before I know it, I'm back to driving. Back into anonymity. Back on the way to the hospital, only now I have double the reason to get there as fast as I possibly can.
Ryan finally gets himself upright, slides into the back.
"Brian, are you okay?"
He turns and gives a thumbs-up sign. It's low, and I can tell it's not because he's just a low-signaling kind of guy. He's struggling to raise his any higher for more than a second or two.
"You alright? That was a pretty bad crash."
I can see Ryan in the rear-view, smiling. "I've got a pretty hard head."
"No, you never did wear a helmet, I suppose, did you?"
"Nah. Head's harder than a helmet, and I get to feel the wind in my hair."
I chime in. "That's dangerous, you know. You could hurt yourself."
"Sure, I could. Then again, Brian here could get picked up by drug traffickers. And we all know how likely that is."
Brian turns back in his seat, apparently too tired to stay twisted around. "Never happen."
"See? It'd never happen."
The signs say we're thirty minutes out of Tucson, if we obey the speed limits. We're interpreting them very liberally, though, at the moment. I figure twenty-five. I shut my mouth and let them talk to each other.
Part of me gets nervous about the way that they both seem to be treating their wounds with a very cavalier attitude. The way Ryan's eyes were rolling around in his head like that, he looked like he had a concussion, probably pretty bad.
Brian can rarely keep his head up for more than a few minutes before he has to lay it back on the headrest for another minute. To regain his strength.
But here they are, talking like they're immortal. Like none of it matters, like none of it affects them.
Each is trying to be stronger for the other. I don't know if it's working, but they sure are trying like hell. For me, it's just
a constant reminder of how bad the A.T.F. fucked this all up.
Now, I keep being reminded, it falls to me to clean that mess up. To make sure that the guilty get punished. Well, the Crazy Horses have got 2 down, and 1 un-accounted for. 2 more are sitting in this car, and it'd be a damn shame for that to be how it ends.
My list isn't looking as good, but I've got my first big win. If there's a head to this snake, I have to think that it might have just gotten cut off, whether it was luck or fate or what.
There are signs pointing me in the direction of the nearest hospital, right off the interstate. Convenient. I follow them a little ways. It doesn't take long to find some place. Nice and big, white walls.
It looks quite nice. Pristine, even. I can't complain one bit. I pull around to Emergency and jump out of the car. Brian, appropriately, starts to get himself out of the passenger seat as if he's going to walk himself in.
I book it inside to grab a wheelchair, and happen to find a promising-looking nurse along the way. Between the two of us, the boys are brought inside. Their names are on the list, but the list looks long.
Just in case, I show my badge, and make a few notes as to their condition. One was in an accident, possible concussion. The other's lost a lot of blood. A lot of blood.
The nurse takes that all down. I like to hope that she's taking it more seriously, but I really can't say if she's just putting on an act for my benefit.
I settle into one of the cheaply-made chairs and for the first time in what feels like days, I can finally relax. The rest of the world can wait. I lay my head back against the stucco walls and close my eyes. I've got a lot of catching up to do.
Chapter Forty-Eight
RYAN
I don't know how long I've been sitting in this room, waiting for something to happen. Long enough to remember that I hate hospitals. Long enough to remember why I hate hospitals, other than that most injuries I get are from the sorts of things that you don't go to hospitals after you do them.
If you get shot robbing a place, you don't go to a hospital. Cops are all over the place looking for that sort of shit.