by Jim Heskett
“Beat it, Jed,” Vanessa said. “This don’t concern you.”
He stepped into the kitchen, raising his shotgun at her. “You know what, you fucking bitch? Since you killed my brother last night, I kinda think it does concern me. You brung these assholes into my house, and you’re giving them all kinds of special treatment and taking their side on everything. I’m sick of it.”
“Shut up,” Vanessa said. “Why don’t you go on and lower that shotgun before you do something—”
The shotgun went off, and Vanessa flew back across the room, a spray of blood misting the rest of us.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Omar stumbled over himself, knocking over a chair next to the table. He backed against the wall, trying to flatten himself against it.
I dropped the phone, wiped some blood from my eyes, and put myself between Jed and Omar.
Jed whirled around, pointing the shotgun at me. “Now, let’s talk some more about how you can get five thousand dollars. Tell me, right now, or you’re both going to go splat, just like that bitch dribbling blood on my kitchen floor.”
“Listen to me, Jed,” I said. “Please lower the shotgun. If you want money, we can get it for you. We just need to go for a drive into town.”
He lifted the barrel of the shotgun to the ceiling, stepped through the archway, and jerked his head. “Let’s go, then. I ain’t got all day.”
With my hands out in front of me, I eased toward the archway. Had the vibrant realization that Jed was going to kill both of us, money or no money.
I had to do something.
When I was close enough to Jed, I grabbed at the barrel of the shotgun with both hands and thrust it into his face. I heard his nose crack.
The shotgun blasted, and my ears rang instantly, like a shrill whistle rotating through the air. Bits of plaster from the ceiling rained down all around us.
Before he could recover, I thrust a palm into Jed’s chin, which knocked him back and to the side, against a window. His hand went through the glass, and he slipped, cutting himself deeper. Blood streaked his arm from the cut as he wailed and tried to pull his hand free from the jagged remains of the window.
“Omar, run!” I said.
We both bolted for the front door as Jed got to his feet.
Outside, I scrambled down the porch steps. Omar kept up, but I could hear him wheezing.
I eyed the collection of cars in the front yard, wondering if any of them might have keys in them. Or if any of them were even still running. Jed’s monster truck worked, and Carl’s motorcycle would, but those keys would be inside.
A shotgun blast echoed behind me, peppering holes all over the garage, a few feet to my left. I pushed Omar in one direction and intended to race in the opposite, to make Jed choose.
An impulse hit me, and I dashed to the garage. I caught Omar out of my peripheral, running east of the house. If Jed took off after Omar, he’d kill my companion. But if I could make him think I was going to go in after his drug stash, that should get the redneck’s attention.
“Get away from there, goddamn it!” Jed shouted, but his voice was like the whine of an airplane miles above in the sky.
I threw open the door to the garage, and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw next.
A man covered in streaks of dried blood, with his face a mess of bruises and cuts. He was wearing a gray cop uniform, with the words El Paso Country Sheriff emblazoned on the chest. No illicit drugs anywhere.
The man’s wrist was handcuffed to a pipe jutting from the wall, and in the other hand, he held a hacksaw, ripping it back and forth across the pipe. The metal on metal screeched, barely audible in my still-ringing ears.
He turned when I entered, his eyes shot wide open, and he thrust the hacksaw back and forth a couple more times until it finished sawing through the pipe.
He grabbed the length of cut pipe in his hands, raised it above his head, and bared his bloody teeth at me. “I’m free, you fucks! You’re all dead.”
He rushed at me, and I backpedaled as fast as I could, out the door, to where Jed was waiting for me. I ducked, and another blast of the shotgun came over my head and hit the sheriff square in the chest. He took one more step and collapsed into the dirt.
I changed course and dashed off in the direction I’d seen Omar run, but I couldn’t locate him anywhere in view. Nothing but yellowing grass, a few minor hills, and a smattering of trees. The morning sun was rising above the plains, casting an orange glow on the landscape around me.
I aimed for the trees. Ran as fast as my legs would carry me, thinking maybe I could climb up in one before Jed could get there, then I’d drop on top of him and wrestle the shotgun away. Or, he might spot me, then I’d have nowhere to run while he blasted me.
But then I saw the chalky gray of a gravel road cutting across the pasture and followed it to where it ran perpendicular to a ditch, with a small raised bridge. Below that raised section, a culvert poked out.
I dropped down into the ditch and found Omar crouched next to the rusted corrugated pipe of the culvert. His eyes were blazing, full of panic. He breathed in snatches, his hands clinging to the pipe.
“I thought you were dead,” he said. “I thought I might also be dead.”
“Not quite.” I lifted my head out of the ditch as Jed ran across the field toward the group of trees to the north of us. With no weapons, we couldn’t take him on directly.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll circle back to the house, find some keys, and make a dash for the truck. I don’t think that escaping on foot is a good choice.”
“What if Jed is at the house?”
“He’s in the field. But that’s why we need to go, right now, before he figures out we’re not there too.”
He didn’t move, and I saw the hesitancy in his eyes. I wanted to say trust me, but he probably still didn’t have faith in me. And did I have a right to ask that of him after he’d caught me lying about who I was?
So I decided to appeal to his logic instead. “If we stay here, we’re both dead. It’s that simple.”
He swallowed hard and nodded, and I helped him out of the ditch and we scrambled through the brush to get back to the house. I kept my eyes on Jed, but he’d disappeared into the trees.
Back at the house, Omar stopped when he saw the dead sheriff sprawled next to the garage, a puddle of blood around him slowly turning the dirt black. “Who is this?”
“No time to explain,” I said. “Go get in the truck. I’ll find the keys.”
I raced inside the house, and the keys were in a bowl next to the front door. I snatched them just as I heard another shotgun blast outside. Contemplated running upstairs to the weapons cache, but that might just give Jed enough time to gun down Omar before he came for me.
I ran back outside to see Jed hustling over grass to get to Omar.
“Get in the truck,” I shouted.
Jed turned and headed toward me.
Omar hopped in the passenger side and ducked down. I backtracked around the garage and paused a second to let Jed catch up, to put the garage between us.
I sprinted across the yard as the shotgun went off again, and I felt something pinch my shoulder. I stumbled, but the force wasn’t enough to stop me, so I kept running until I’d reached the truck, threw back the door, and jumped inside.
As I drove off, I looked in the rearview as Jed was running down the driveway, screaming at me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Oh, shit,” I said as we met the main road. “My cell phone.”
We’d left everything behind. I still had my wallet and keys, money stashed in my shoe, and the contents of my pockets. But all my clothes, my laptop, and everything else was back at that house.
I pulled onto the shoulder of the road as an eighteen wheeler roared by us.
“What are you doing?” Omar said. “We cannot go back or even stop. Jed is still alive.”
And, he was probably in that weapons closet, loading up with an ars
enal to unleash whenever he found us. If we went back, he’d gun us both down before we’d even park the truck.
I pulled back onto the road. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. My dad’s house isn’t far. Maybe an hour, hour and a half at most. We can go there, get cleaned up, and figure out what to do next.”
“I will not go to Heath Candle’s house,” Omar said.
“But that’s where we need to go.”
He studied me for a few seconds. “I do not know if I can.”
“Nothing bad is going to happen to you there. It’s a safe place. We just need to get settled again and get some perspective.”
Omar faced forward and responded with a little nod of his head. I hadn’t won him over, but this would do.
I drove back to town and reconnected with I-37, then I started to feel the pain in my shoulder. Had I actually been hit with by a shotgun blast? Must have been birdshot pellets, because anything stronger would have blown my arm off.
I wondered if the kidnapped man in the garage had something to do with that unpleasant visit in the middle of the night. Whatever it was, Three Rivers was growing smaller in the rearview and the drama of that house along with it.
After a prolonged silence, Omar took in a sudden and sharp breath. “I knew Vanessa. Those others, I did not know, but I did not think she would have allowed us to be in such a perilous situation.”
“It’s not your fault.”
He shook his head. “In some ways, it is. It was my idea to bring us there.”
“You couldn’t have known they were the kind of people to keep a man hostage in their garage. Who kidnaps an El Paso County Sheriff, and why? I mean, what the hell was that about?”
“I do not know. Ransom, I would suspect. Perhaps I did not know Vanessa as well as I thought.”
I was about to tell him how I was learning—through all the insanity with IntelliCraft—that you can’t ever know anybody, but when I looked at him, Omar had closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window. Conversation over, apparently.
Near Corpus Christi, I felt the air thicken and smelled that particular smell I’d come to associate with the ocean. A bit like rust and algae. The smaller buildings and farms of rural Texas gave way to the towering hotels and business parks of the big tourist city. Faded billboards and unlit business signs became pristine neon advertisements.
I’d never been to my father’s house in town, but he’d always signed his letters with his address, so I’d had it memorized for years. When he left, I had no interest in visiting him ever again. Now he was gone, and I didn’t have much choice.
Screw him for making me executor of his will. I’d never asked for any of this. Just another burden for him to put on me in his absence.
We stopped off at a convenience store to buy a town map since I couldn’t look up the directions on my phone. Old school style. Omar napped during the excursion.
I navigated through town to Spanish Trail, a purely suburban row of two-car garage houses with identical yards and blue bins on the curbs in front of each house. Must have been trash day.
I studied the numbers out front of each house until I found Dad’s. His house looked like all the rest of the street. I don’t know what I was expecting since I knew so little about the man. Maybe something with a little character, or a sign out front that read dead-beat dad lives here.
I parked as Omar woke. He balked when I went to open my door.
“Please,” he said, “go inside first and check. I will remain here.”
“Check for what?”
“I want to know I am safe before I enter. You can do this for me, at least.”
“What did he do to you? Why won’t you tell me?”
Omar pursed his lips. “It is not what he did to me, it is what he did to Kareem. And I do not wish to speak of it. Please, go inside the house and then return to get me when you are sure that it is safe.”
I thought of what Omar had said at Palm Grove. That snake Heath Candle finally got his wish and killed my brother…
“Okay, I get it. You want to be cautious. That’s smart. Why don’t you recline your seat and keep your head down, just in case. I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”
He nodded, and I left him there in Jed’s truck. I’d added my dad’s house key to my key ring before I left Dallas, and good thing, too. Otherwise, I’d have to break in.
When I opened the door, I was greeted with a standard urban domicile, probably just as boring as the other houses on the street. Even though it was much smaller, it had that same not-lived-in feel that Kareem’s house in Boulder had given me. Like window dressing. Maybe someone had lived here once, but not lately. I could spot the dust on the coffee table from ten feet away.
I went straight to the bathroom and peeled back my shirt. Four dark red dots had left a shotgun blast trail on my shoulder like mosquito bites scratched bloody. I could still move my shoulder well enough, so getting treatment for that could wait. I’d have to get along with aspirin, if I could find any.
As I came out of the bathroom, a pressing thought occurred to me. Grace. I needed to check in with her as soon as possible.
I hunted around for a landline phone but didn’t find one in the bedrooms or the living room. I headed for the kitchen and saw a cordless phone attached to the wall, but something else caught my attention. A note on the fridge, with a phone number and a message written above it.
S.’s new number.
I stared at it for a few seconds. Picked up the note and walked to the phone. I wasn’t sure if what I was about to do was the smart move, but I had to know. I had to solve some of these mysteries swirling around in my brain.
Dialed the number.
She picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Is this… is this Susan Palenti?”
Her voice was soft and sweet, not what I’d been expecting. “Speaking. Who is this?”
“Susan, this is going to sound strange, but I’m your brother. Or your half-brother, or stepbrother. I’m not sure which one. I’m Tucker Candle.”
She gasped. “It’s really you?”
“I guess so.”
“Tucker. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. How did you find me?”
“I’m at my dad’s house in Corpus Christi. I saw your number on a Post-It note.”
“You’re at Heath’s house? You’re there right now?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Tucker, you shouldn’t be there. I’m glad you found me, but it’s not safe. You should hang up this phone right now, wipe away the fingerprints on anything you might have touched, and come meet me in Brownsville.”
Fingerprints?
“No. I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.”
She breathed for a few seconds. “What would you like to know?”
“Well, I guess I’d like to know what the hell is going on. What my dad was into that’s causing all this trouble. The CEO of the company I used to work for followed me to San Antonio and told me Dad stole some top secret info from the company. Why would he say that?”
“Because Heath used to work for IntelliCraft.”
I almost dropped the phone. “He what?”
In less than the time it took me to inhale my next breath, so much became clear.
Why they’d recruited me specifically to come work at IntelliCraft.
Why Wyatt had engaged in that blackmail vendetta against my dad.
Why Wyatt had said something about keeping my dad “quiet.”
What had Dad known? What info did he have against the company that they’d go to such extreme lengths to keep him quiet?
And then another thought: what if Dad hadn’t had a stroke, after all. What if IntelliCraft had killed him?
“Your dad and a man named Kareem Haddadi founded IntelliCraft more than twenty years ago. They had a falling out, they both left the company, and not on the best of terms.”
“Falling out?”
“It’s too complicat
ed for me to explain to you over the phone, and we need to be careful what we say. You really should come down and see me.”
“I’m not going anywhere yet. I have to do something first.”
“What could possibly be so important?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know this woman on the other end of the phone. Maybe I’d made a terrible mistake telling her as much as I had already. My hand itched to slam the phone back into the receiver.
She cleared her throat. “It’s Kareem’s brother, isn’t it? You’ve got him with you.”
I stammered a bit, too confused to be able to form complete sentences.
“Tucker, you have to listen to me. I don’t know what your plan is, or what he told you, but you should not be around Omar Qureshi. It’s terribly dangerous, and it’s going to get you killed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When I hung up the phone with Susan, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I hadn’t told her about going to South Point, but she’d guessed that I was trying to get him across the border. And she said in no uncertain terms that I should leave him behind immediately, meet her, and she would provide protection for me.
What was I supposed to do? I’d been on a mission for the last week to keep weird little Omar safe as a promise to a dead man, one I’d hardly known. And in the process, I’d broken my own promise to my wife that I would never leave her side again.
I felt that gnawing sensation of guilt in my stomach as I called Grace. She picked up after the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Grace, it’s me.”
“Hey baby, what’s this number you’re calling me from?”
“It’s a long story. I lost my cellphone.”
She paused. “Are you okay? You don’t sound right.”
“I’m not. Everything went to shit. I don’t have time to explain everything to you, but it’s all a big mess.”
“Did something go wrong with your dad’s stuff?”
“Oh, Grace, it goes so much deeper than that.”
“You’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s going on and why you’re acting all weird.”