One Fatal Mistake

by Tom Hunt

  At the time, his explanation for the injury had seemed odd, but she hadn’t really suspected anything. It had happened before Ross was arrested, back when she thought that Ross and Shane were struggling singers chasing a dream, back before she had any idea they were selling drugs on the side.

  “Point is, when I got stabbed, Shane insisted that we not call nine-one-one. He didn’t want the attention. So he called up a friend, some doctor. This guy came over and stitched me right up, no questions asked. Turns out Shane had this doctor in his pocket because he sold him drugs, did some work on the side for him.

  “So what I’m thinking is, if Shane calls up this doctor, he could help you out. Stitch you up. Give you whatever medication and stuff you need.”

  “No. No Shane.”

  “He’s gonna be pissed. I know. But I think I can make a deal with him. Work something out. We’re still brothers. The Blood Brothers. That counts for something.”

  Amber tried to speak but she couldn’t. Her light-headedness was back, worse than before. She was floating, barely able to concentrate.

  “We gotta get you stitched up,” Ross said. He leaned down and ran a finger along her forearm. “Wish there was another way, but there isn’t. Getting you fixed up, that’s the focus right now. I just gotta convince Shane to help us.”

  Ross tapped the phone screen a few times. He put it on speaker and the line rang.

  “Yeah?” a voice answered.

  The speakerphone was slightly warbled, but Amber still recognized Shane’s rough, throaty voice.

  “It’s Ross.”

  A few seconds of silence.

  “You there, Shane?”

  “You bastard. You goddamned bastard.”

  “I just wanna talk,” Ross said. “Calm down.”

  “Calm down?” Shane said, voice rising. “After what you did to me, you want me to calm down?”

  “Just hear me out.”

  “Piss off.

  “I need your help.”

  “Piss off.”

  “I’m in a jam. Actually, it’s Amber. She’s injured. Gunshot wound.”

  “What’s this got to do with me?”

  “Remember that time I got stabbed and your doctor friend stitched me up? Wondering if you would reach out to him, see if he could help her.”

  “She can rot in hell for all I care.”

  “Please, man. This is family. I—”

  “Family? Fucking family? Don’t give me that shit.”

  “I messed up, with everything that happened at the bank. That’s all I can say. You help Amber out, and I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Push drugs for you. Let you keep all the profits. Hell, I’ll rob another bank. Anything to make it up to you.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  Silence on the other end. Ross grabbed a small paper bag, sprayed some paint into it, and took a long pull, smudging more red around his mouth.

  “I made a mistake, man,” Ross said into the phone. “One mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking. But it can’t end everything for us. Our bond is stronger than that.”

  “Fine,” Shane said. “I’ll help. But only because I got no cash, no place to go, no nothing right now.”

  A small smile appeared on Ross’s face. “Where you at?”

  “Down near Saint Louis,” Shane said. “I stole a car after the robbery, barely got away, called up everyone I could think of, asking for help. You remember our old friend Smitty? Owns a bar down here? I’m crashing with him. Only a temporary thing, though. You? Where you at?”

  “Over in Iowa. Just outside of Cedar Rapids.”

  “Got an address?”

  “Hold on,” Ross said. He left the room and returned a moment later holding an envelope. He read off the address printed on the front of the envelope.

  “The hell are you doing there?”

  “Long story. I’ll give it to you when you get here.”

  “Fine. Should be there in four hours or so.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Shane. Never should’ve turned my back on you. The Blood Brothers—we’ll be even better than before.”

  The call ended. Ross placed the phone back in his pocket. He looked down at Amber. She wanted to say so much. She didn’t want Ross to be dragged back into the life they were trying to escape. This plan would only end in disaster.

  “D-don’t,” she said to Ross.

  “Yes, babe,” Ross said. “This is how it has to be. This is the only way we can get you to a doctor. If this is what I got to do to save you, then it’s what I got to do.”

  “We can’t—”

  The pain flared up. Like a needle being driven deep into her stomach.

  Ross grabbed her hand. “Is it bad?” he asked.

  She closed her eyes and winced. Nodded.

  “You just gotta try to take your mind off it.”

  * * *

  Karen pulled her left hand and left foot against the zip ties that secured them to the chair. She bent her body at the waist and leaned as far to the left as she could. By contorting her body like that, she could bring the scalpel in her sock within a few inches of her wrist.

  “What are you doing, Mom?” Joshua said.

  “I grabbed a scalpel from the hospital. It’s in my sock.”

  “A scalpel?”

  “Keep your voice down,” she said. Ross and Amber were in the room next to them, only a thin wall between them. Through the walls, she could hear them talking but couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. “And, yes,” she said to Joshua. “A scalpel.”

  She tried again: she strained against the zip ties securing her wrist and ankle to the chair, pulling as hard as she could, and leaned her body to that side. The scalpel was still a few inches out of reach.

  When she’d grabbed it from the hospital, she didn’t have a plan or any real idea of what she was going to do with it. Just seemed like the scalpel was the type of thing that might be useful. If things got out of hand, if something unpredictable happened, it’d be better to have it than not.

  “You think you can cut yourself free?” Joshua asked.

  “Maybe,” she said. “If I can grab it.”

  She reached once more—still a few inches away—and slumped into her chair. It was no use. She’d been trying to grab the scalpel for the past few minutes, and there was no way she was contorting her forty-two-year-old body enough to reach it. Not unless she tore a muscle or ligament.

  Her thoughts drifted to the hospital. She couldn’t even imagine how much of a madhouse the hospital was right now. A patient escaping would bring an immediate, urgent response. Alerts and notifications would have been sent out to every department. The entire hospital would be on edge. The police were probably interviewing people, trying to piece together what happened. She wondered if the detective from earlier, Franny, was the one handling the investigation.

  Carmella, Karen knew, would be the focus. Police would want to get her story. She could only hope that Carmella would stick to the plan and tell the police that she’d been ambushed at gunpoint by a skinny, scraggly man. If she didn’t . . . well, it was only a matter of time before the police stormed her house and the situation got even more out of control than it already was.

  * * *

  Amber tried to ignore the pain, tried to find some hidden reserve of strength to help her power through the burning, throbbing sensation in her stomach. But nothing helped. The pain persisted.

  Ross remained sitting on the side of the bed, stroking her hair, telling her she’d be all right, to just hang on. Amber closed her eyes and focused on Ross’s voice. But the only thought on her mind was that this wasn’t going to end well. There were a million things that might go wrong. She might not make it. Shane might go crazy when he arrived. Even if they did survive this, where would they be? B
ack in the same situation as before. No money. Ross teamed up with his brother again, heading on a path that would land him in jail. Or worse.

  “You scared, babe?”

  She nodded.

  “Don’t be. I can handle Shane. I can convince him to forgive us. I’ve always been there for him. Always stuck by his side. One mistake won’t change that. Shane, he’ll understand.”

  Had to be the drugs talking. Shane wasn’t the type of person who listened. And he certainly wasn’t the type of person who forgave. She thought about the endless times she’d seen him lose his temper. The arguments, the fights. The times she’d seen him beat people senseless over something as minor as looking at him the wrong way.

  She tried to beg Ross to leave but felt a sharp dagger of pain before she could get a word out. She gritted her teeth and waited for it to dull . . . but it wouldn’t.

  “You all right?” Ross asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Hold up,” he said. “I’m getting the lady. I’ll be right back.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Karen sat in the chair, craning her head toward the wall to help her hear the voices in her bedroom. Through the wall, she could just barely hear Ross’s voice. She thought she’d heard Amber speak a few times but she couldn’t be sure. She’d also caught bits and pieces of the phone call earlier. It sounded like the person on the other end of the line, whoever it was, knew a doctor, something like that, and was going to help Amber.

  “You really think they might just leave?” Joshua asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If they do, what’s going to happen to us?”

  She shrugged. She looked down at her sock. The handle of the scalpel was still right there, barely visible. She hadn’t even tried grabbing it since giving up earlier. There was no reason to. It was too far out of her reach.

  Just then, Ross stormed into the room. In his right hand, he held one of her kitchen knives. He walked over and cut through the zip ties on her wrists and ankles.

  “Need you to check on Amber,” he said. “Make sure she’s okay.”

  He motioned to the door. Karen walked out to the hallway, Ross following a few steps behind her. In Karen’s bedroom, Amber lay in the bed, eyes closed. Her body was shaking lightly and her skin was pale, much paler than before. The front of her hospital gown was stained with splotches of maroon. Karen pulled the gown to the side and looked at the bullet wound. It was a black, jagged hole, the skin around it deeply inflamed.

  “How does it look?” Ross said from behind her.

  “Bad,” Karen said. “Worse than before. It needs to be disinfected, stitched up, looked at by a doctor.”

  “That’s taken care of. She just needs to make it four more hours or so. Can she last ’til then?”

  “She should be able to,” Karen said.

  Ross grabbed the spray paint can and paper sack off a table next to Amber. He sprayed some and took a huff, red spray paint smudging over his chin and lips. He seemed different, mellower; his mood had swung in the opposite direction from the frantic way he’d acted in the forest.

  In bed, Amber grunted.

  “What was that?” Karen said. She leaned closer to Amber.

  “Pain,” Amber said. “Hurts.”

  “Focus on a spot on the ceiling. Inhale deeply, hold the breath, then slowly exhale. Keep doing that. It should help some.”

  Amber inhaled a ragged breath. As she stared down at her, Karen thought about the scalpel. It would be so easy to bend down and grab it, now that her hands were free.

  But what would she do then? She couldn’t take Ross on. He had a gun; she had a scalpel with an inch-long blade. It wasn’t even a weapon. The scalpel would probably snap in half if she tried to stab him.

  Maybe she could take Amber hostage. Hold the scalpel against her throat and force Ross to get rid of his gun. That was a possibility. But who was she kidding? What would she do if Ross refused to drop the gun? Slice open Amber’s throat? No matter the circumstances, she wasn’t capable of something like that. And even if Ross was acting calmer, she figured it wouldn’t take much to send him back into a rage.

  “Breathing ain’t gonna do much,” Ross said to her. “Nothing more you can do? Painkillers, something like that?”

  “Not here. She needs antibiotics. Heavy medication. Surgery.”

  “We’re not going back to the hospital—no way,” he said. “Walk to that room and I’ll tie you up again.”

  “Hold on,” she said. “I heard you talking earlier, through the wall. Something about leaving. What’s going on?”

  “What’d you hear?”

  “Someone said they’re on their way.”

  “Did you hear a name?”

  “No. I only heard a word or two. What’s going to happen to us when you leave?”

  “Haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  Ross motioned her to the door and they walked out of the room, down the hallway, back into the storage room. He zip-tied Karen’s hands to the chair armrests.

  “Let us live,” she said. “We can help you. I’ll tell the police whatever you want. Throw them off your trail. If you’re going east, I can tell them I heard you say you’re going west. If you’re going north, I’ll say you went south.”

  Ross didn’t respond. He stood up and walked over to the door.

  “I mean what I said,” Karen said. “We just want to make it out of this alive. If you don’t harm us, we’ll tell the police whatever you want. You kill us, and we can’t help you.”

  Ross stared at her for a final moment and left the room.

  “What would happen then?” Joshua asked after Ross was gone.

  “Then?”

  “Say he let us live. What would happen after that?”

  “I guess we’d stay here. Wait until someone found us. It might take a day, but someone would look eventually.”

  “I mean after that. Someone finds us. What would we tell the police? Everything?”

  “You mean, would we tell them about the accident? The dead body?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think we’d have to. Be totally honest with them.”

  She didn’t think there was any way around that. It was a little amazing, how the dead body had become almost an afterthought with everything else that had happened. She supposed she would have to tell the police the whole story.

  What would happen to Joshua then? Jail? Probably. Things had changed: this was more than a mistake that could potentially be explained away. Joshua killed a man, left the body, then waited for days to pass before reporting it. Even if there was a fight and he was defending his father, she didn’t think he’d be able to avoid serious, serious punishment.

  Could she really do that, send Joshua to jail? It was such an unbelievable thought.

  “We’ll figure out what we’ll tell the police later, when we get to that point,” she said. Then she corrected herself: “If we get to that point.”

  * * *

  Ross was gone from Amber’s room for only a minute. When he returned, he walked over to the window and looked out at the road in front of the house.

  “Shouldn’t be much longer, babe,” he said. “Shane should be here soon.”

  She was breathing deeply and focusing on the ceiling like Karen had suggested. It wasn’t helping much with the pain. Ross leaned over and kissed her forehead.

  “How ya feeling?”

  “Hurts.”

  Ross sat down on the edge of the bed and put an arm around her. “Just hang on for a little while longer. You can do this.”

  She faintly smiled. But she couldn’t stop thinking that this was the beginning of the end. Earlier, their plan was simple: screw over Shane, then disappear after the bank robbery. Find some place nice and quiet, some secluded little town, and use the robbery money as a
foundation to start over. Begin a new life together, away from Shane, away from drugs, away from it all.

  Everything was different now. They had no money. They were wanted criminals with the police looking for them. Shane was entering their lives again, and she didn’t even want to imagine what Ross would have to do to repay him. Even if they managed to survive this, then what? They couldn’t get jobs or rent an apartment using their real names. She—

  The stomach pain flared up suddenly. She yelped and gritted through it. Ross grabbed her hand and squeezed.

  “Just hold on, babe. You can do this. Soon it’ll be just you and me. Just us, starting over.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Ross stayed at her side for the next hour, holding her in his arms, stroking her hair. Every few minutes, he sat up from the bed and looked out the window for an approaching car. The pain seemed to intensify as time passed, a steady throbbing that was always present and would suddenly spike at random moments.

  After a wait that seemed like an eternity, Ross was staring out the window and his eyes lit up.

  “There he is,” Ross said. “Shane is pulling into the driveway.”

  Amber gritted her teeth and slowly sat up in bed so she could see out the nearby window. A black Chevy Tahoe had pulled into the driveway and stopped next to Karen’s car.

  Ross kept his eyes locked on the Tahoe. He squinted, focused.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “Who the hell is that?”

  Amber stared at the truck. Her vision was cloudy and she had trouble concentrating, but one thing was clear.

  It definitely wasn’t Shane behind the wheel.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Jesus Christ,” Ross said, still staring out the bedroom window. “Who is that?”

  The Tahoe stopped and a middle-aged man stepped outside. Heavy coat. Hair so blond it looked white. He was hefty but not really overweight. He shut the door behind him and hurriedly walked up to the front door.