Mean Streak

by Sandra Brown

  For a long time after, neither of them moved. Eventually, his mind cleared enough for him to have that oh shit instant of realization: he’d come inside her without anything between them. Which was also why it had been so good, and why he didn’t regret it enough to disengage himself quite yet.

  When he finally did move, he came up on one elbow and looked into her face. She smiled drowsily. He cupped her chin in his free hand and kissed her, taking his time, mating his mouth with hers, lecherously and leisurely.

  When at last he angled his head back, he said, “Lucky for me, you don’t scare easily.”

  “Lucky for me too.”

  “But you’re still in danger, Doc. So be scared. Just not of me.”

  “I know.”

  “Never of me.”

  “I’m not.” She threaded her fingers through his hair. “I don’t know everything, but one thing I do know. You weren’t responsible for the deaths of eight innocent people.”

  Like the mellow glow of a lantern suddenly extinguished, his soul became dark and cold again.

  He pulled out of her and rolled onto his back. Staring at the ceiling, he said, “You’re right. Only seven of them were innocent.”

  Chapter 36

  The aroma of fresh coffee woke her. It was still dark. She switched on the lamp beside the bed. Her clothes, which had been so haphazardly discarded the night before, were folded and stacked on a chair. She gathered them and her boots and slipped into the bathroom.

  Ten minutes later when she walked into the main room, Hayes looked up at her from the dining table where he sat drinking coffee. He’d slept beside her through the night, but they hadn’t exchanged a word or touched since his startling statement: Only seven of them were innocent.

  It had created an intangible barrier that neither had breached during the night. It seemed even more impenetrable this morning. As though last night’s intimacies hadn’t happened, his eyes were flat, his expression impassive.

  He said, “Mugs are in the cabinet to the right of the sink.”

  She filled one with coffee and sat down across from him at the table, pretending there wasn’t a pistol within reach of his right hand.

  Noticing her damp hair, he said, “Sorry. I don’t have a hair dryer.”

  “It’ll dry on its own.”

  “Did I leave you enough hot water?”

  “Yes, thank you. How do you manage to fit into that shower?”

  “It’s an acquired skill.”

  So much for small talk. She sipped her coffee.

  He said, “I’ve made a decision.”

  She looked at him, listening.

  “I’m not going to give Connell the satisfaction of catching me.”

  “You’re going to surrender?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He avoided looking her in the eye, and that made her distinctly uneasy. “Then what are you going to do? Exactly.”

  “Deliver you to him.”

  Unsure how to respond, she waited to hear him out.

  His eyes moved to the row of faint red marks on the side of her neck. “It’s up to you how much or how little you tell him about those. And everything else.” He motioned toward the bedroom. “Be as graphic or as coy as you want. He’ll be discreet. And, anyway, he’ll be interested in me, not us. He’ll question you about my state of mind. Plans. Things like that.”

  “He already has.”

  “He’ll keep at you to remember the smallest detail. Things I said, things you observed. While he’s taking it all in and figuring out his next course of action, I’ll be making myself scarce.”

  “You’ll run.”

  He raised his shoulder, a nonverbal, uncommitted answer.

  She stared into her coffee. “You may get away, but you’ll never outrun the deaths of those people.”

  “Well, that’ll give you and Connell plenty to chat about.”

  Voice faltering, she asked, “Why’d you do it?”

  He picked up his mug, then returned it to the table without having drunk from it. Disregarding her question, he said, “Tell Connell what you know about Jeff. He’ll see to it that he’s thoroughly investigated. Hopefully that will result in his cold ass landing in prison.”

  “How do you know Connell will see to an investigation?”

  “He’s an FBI agent. It’s his duty.”

  “But it isn’t his case. Won’t he leave it to the sheriff’s office?”

  “No.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “Because of the message you’ll give him.”

  “Which is?”

  “If he fucks it up, and something happens to you, whether in the near or distant future, I’ll kill him.” He let that register, then, “Where’s he staying?”

  “So you can dump me there?”

  “Where’s he staying?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  He propped his forearms on the table. It rocked slightly as he leaned across it toward her. “Look, Doc, we can waste time waltzing around this, you can argue it with me up and down, sideways and backward, but it won’t do you any good. I’m not gonna let that fed make me the trophy of his career. Besides that—”

  “What? Besides that, what?”

  “I’ve got to get the hell lost, and I can’t take you with me. You’ve got a life to lead, and it can’t include me. It’s been fun, but here’s where we say good-bye and part ways, no matter how good we are together in the sack.”

  “Why are you being like this?”

  “Candid?”

  “Offensive.”

  “No, offensive would have been if I’d said you’re a great fuck.”

  Her face grew hot with anger.

  He must’ve have noticed, because he stifled a laugh. “A little late for blushes, isn’t it, Doc? You knew what you were signing up for last night, and it wasn’t hearts and flowers. The night in the cabin, too. We both got what we wanted. I got laid and you got…how’d you put it? ‘Raw emotions’?”

  With that he scraped back his chair, stood up, and shoved the pistol into the waistband of his jeans. “Let’s go. I want to get there before daylight, and it’s a ten-minute drive to the motel.”

  “Why did you ask me where Connell was staying if you already knew?”

  “To see if you would lie to me.”

  “How did you find out where he is?”

  “Not that many choices in Drakeland. I called around until a desk clerk confirmed that he checked in last night.”

  “You called? I thought you didn’t have a phone.”

  “I don’t anymore.” She followed the direction he indicated and saw the pieces of a bashed cell phone lying on the end table. As he pulled on his outerwear, he said, “I’ll loan you a coat.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  She went to the door, unbolted it, and walked out, leaving him to follow.

  Or to drop dead. She really didn’t care.

  It had stopped snowing, but the fog was still thick and the air frigid. The interior of the car was slow to warm, even after he turned on the heater. As they approached the city limits, she said, “You didn’t secure the mobile home.”

  “It’s served its purpose. I won’t be going back.”

  “You’ll just leave your possessions behind?”

  “The possessions that count aren’t in the mobile home. I’ll collect them and—”

  “Ride off into the sunrise?”

  “Basically.”

  “You realize that I can describe this car to the authorities.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a backup plan?”

  “Always.”

  They rode the remainder of the way in silence. He pulled to the curb on a street that ran along the back of the motel and put the car in park. She stared through the streaked windshield. The defroster was just beginning to melt all the frost and frozen precipitation that had accumulated overnight.

  She focused on the disintegrating ice crystals rather
than on the tightness in her throat. “I’m relieved. And a bit surprised actually.”

  “By what?”

  “I thought you might mete out Jeff’s punishment yourself.”

  His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “That was my original plan. And nothing would give me greater pleasure. But I slept on it and decided to entrust him to the legal system. Not to save his skin, understand. But mine. Dealing with you and Jeff will keep Connell occupied for a while.”

  “Giving you a head start.”

  “Right.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Fair warning. I’ll tell Connell everything about you that I know. I have to. Before, when the only issue was your involvement with those horrid Floyd brothers, I covered for you, because I shared your outrage over Lisa. But I can’t facilitate you in escaping justice.”

  He held her gaze for several seconds, then reached beneath the driver’s seat and retrieved a brown paper sack. “Your evidence,” he said, passing it to her. “Don’t open it. Don’t touch the rock. Hand it over to Connell as is. You still have the charm?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right then. You know what to do.”

  Knowing that her misery was nakedly apparent, but unable to keep it from showing, she spoke his name beseechingly.

  “Enough’s been said, Doc. Connell is in room one ten. Get on with it.”

  Mistrusting herself to linger for even a second longer, she got out of the car. She’d barely closed the passenger door when he wheeled away. She watched through tear-blurred eyes as the taillights disappeared around the nearest corner.

  Once he was out of sight, she trudged toward the motel. It was the one in which Jeff had been hosted by the sheriff’s office, and it was as unattractive as he’d described. Its two levels had open breezeways. Guest room doors were alternately painted red, white, and blue. Near the elevator in the center of the building was a communal ice machine. A neon arrow flickered above it.

  Room one ten was three doors down from the end on the first floor. She raised her fist, paused, and looked over her shoulder toward the corner around which Hayes had disappeared. He’d made himself a cruelly insulting stranger this morning, which, she realized now, had been his way of coping with the inevitable good-bye.

  Heartbreak wasn’t simply a byword.

  Steeling herself, she rapped on the motel room door with her knuckles.

  From within, a sleepy voice called, “Yes?”

  “Agent Connell, it’s Emory Charbonneau.”

  She heard the thud of his feet hitting the floor. He parted the curtains only wide enough to peek out and see her, then there was the rattle of a chain lock and the scrape of a metal bolt, and the federal agent, eyes puffy and hair standing on end, yanked open the door. He was wearing plaid boxers, a white T-shirt, and black socks.

  “What the hell?” He swept the parking lot behind her with a searching gaze. “Where’d you come from?”

  “He dropped me here.”

  “Bannock?”

  When she nodded, he pushed past her and charged outside, running several yards deep into the parking lot, looking frantically about. He headed for the nearest corner of the building.

  “Not that way.”

  He did an about-face. “Then which way?”

  She pointed. “He’s driving a green car. Older. I memorized the license plate number.”

  He patted his sides, searching for his phone, before realizing he wasn’t even dressed. “Shit! How long ago?”

  “Just now.”

  As he jogged back, he flapped his hands, motioning her into the room. She turned, stepped through the open door, and came up against Hayes, who stood there as solid as an I beam. He lifted her bodily and set her aside.

  “Hayes, no!”

  But Jack Connell wasn’t warned in time. When he crossed the threshold, there was nothing between him and Hayes’s fist, which connected solidly with the agent’s jaw.

  “That’s for pestering my sister.”

  Propelled by the slug, Connell would have reeled backward through the open doorway, but Hayes grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt, jerked him inside, and hurled him toward the bed. As the agent clambered to regain his balance, his shinbone landed against the metal bed frame. His leg gave out from under him and he went down.

  Emory made wild grabs at Hayes’s coat sleeve in an attempt to restrain him, but he shook her off. He closed the door and bolted it, then bore down on the other man. Connell scrambled to his feet before Hayes reached him. He stuck out his hands at arm’s length, palms toward Hayes.

  “You want to add assault on a federal officer to everything else?”

  The words halted Hayes. He stood, his chest a bellows, glowering down at the agent.

  Fearful and furious at the same time, Emory struck Hayes’s arm with her fist. “Why did you come back? Why didn’t you just keep going?”

  “Is he armed?” Connell asked.

  “Yes!”

  Hayes said, “Be a man, Connell, and ask me yourself.” He raised his coat and shirt, exposing his waistband and the pistol tucked into it.

  Connell said, “Carrying a concealed weapon. Attacking a federal agent, breaking and entering, assault and battery. What am I overlooking?” His gaze cut from Hayes to Emory. “Kidnapping?”

  “He didn’t kidnap me.”

  “You’re positive about that?” Connell asked, as though uncertain if she was lying or simply being terribly naive.

  “Well, he didn’t kidnap me last night,” she declared. “I went with him of my own accord.”

  “And helped him set me up this morning.”

  “Wrong again, asshole,” Hayes said. “I tricked her into setting you up.”

  Connell looked to her for verification. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He convinced me that he was delivering me to you and then making himself scarce. His words.”

  “Because he doesn’t have the guts to say what he’s really doing. He’s running,” Connell said. “Running from what he did in Westboro.”

  Upon hearing the name of the community that had won infamy in an afternoon, Emory gasped. “Westboro?”

  Hayes looked at her sharply, his face a mask, his eyes cold.

  Appalled, she backed away from him. “Westboro was your shooting?”

  All along, her mind had refused to accept that he was connected to any mass shooting. She had certainly never attached him to Westboro, not even when Virginia had been referenced. She looked from him to Connell to various spots in the room, as she collected the scattered facts she remembered about the act of wanton violence. She stopped on Connell, silently imploring him to deny it.

  But his eyes were on Hayes, watching him closely. “An angry and bitter young man walked into his place of employment with an automatic rifle and plenty of ammunition. He took up a position that gave him good cover, and calmly and methodically began picking people off.”

  The images he evoked caused Emory to shudder. She, like most everyone in the nation, had watched the live television coverage as the horrifying drama unfolded. People running for their lives. Bodies lying in pools of blood. Anxious loved ones awaiting word on who had died and who had miraculously been spared, then, in the aftermath, grieving and celebrating in equal measure as names of the casualties were released.

  “The melee lasted for almost two hours,” Connell continued. “Which was an eternity for those hunkered down, wondering if one of his bullets would find them. Some used their cell phones to call loved ones, made their peace, said good-bye.”

  She backed into a chair near the window and sat down, rubbing her forehead as though to smudge the terrible images and make them easier to bear. Then, “Wait a minute.” She lowered her hand and with puzzlement looked first at Hayes, whose expression remained inscrutable, then at Connell. “I thought… Wasn’t…wasn’t the shooter killed at the scene?”

  Connell nodded, then tipped his head toward Hayes. “Bannock took him out.”

  Chapter 37

&nb
sp; Jack Connell worked his jaw horizontally back and forth as he pulled himself onto the edge of the bed and sat. He shot Hayes a baleful look. “That hurt.”

  “Meant for it to. Your visit upset Rebecca.”

  “It upset me, too,” Jack grumbled. “Was she lying, or could she have made it easy and told me where you were?”

  “She’s never known where I was. All your sleuthing was wasted.”

  “Not completely. I had the pleasure of her company for fifteen minutes or so. I haven’t had that much fun since I walked bare-assed through a pit of vipers.”

  Hayes knew he was expected to smile. He didn’t.

  “Have you seen her new hairdo? Wicked. Suits her perfectly.”

  “Just so you know, Jack, this isn’t a make-nice reunion. When this mess is over, everything goes right back to the way it’s been.”

  “You’ll take off.”

  “Right.”

  “Huh. I thought maybe you had come to your senses and would want to stay put.” Connell looked over at Emory, his implication unmistakable.

  “I split as soon as I see her husband behind bars.”

  “Her husband? What did he do?”

  “He left her for dead.”

  Connell took a moment to gauge Hayes’s seriousness. “You’re not joking.”

  “Would I joke about that?”

  “You wouldn’t. You rarely joke, period,” Jack said, making a face. “Start at the beginning.”

  “I was hiking up on a ridge the day Emory went missing. I spotted her through my binoculars. Got curious.”

  “Why?”

  Hayes glanced at her but didn’t say anything.

  “Well?” Jack prompted, raising his eyebrows.

  “She was a blond in black running tights who had a dynamite body, and she was alone.”

  Jack looked at her again. “Fair enough.”

  “What’s important,” Hayes said with impatience, “is that by the time I reached that trail, she was lying in the middle of it, concussed and almost frozen. I gathered her up and took her to my place.”

  “Why not to a hospital?”

  “Several reasons.”

  “Besides the black running tights.”

  “I didn’t know what had happened to her. If she’d fallen, that was one thing. If she’d been attacked, she was safer with me.”