by Tom Hunt
The doorbell rang. Ross glanced down at Amber. “I don’t like this.”
“Ignore it,” she said.
He shook his head and pulled the gun from the waistband of his pants. “He sees the cars in the driveway. He knows they’re home.”
Ross left the bedroom. The doorbell rang again.
A moment later, she heard the door open. Ross’s voice in the living room: “Hands in the air. Don’t move.”
“What the—”
“Who are you?”
“Jesus, is that a gun?”
“Yeah, it’s a fucking gun. Who are you?”
“What is—”
“Who the hell are you?”
There was some yelling and warbled commotion. The voice that wasn’t Ross’s yelled out: “My son. Joshua. Where is he?”
“You’re the kid’s dad?” Ross said.
“Yes. Where—”
“Step inside,” Ross said. “Shut the door behind you.”
The front door slammed shut.
“Now, answer me,” Ross said. “What are you doing here?”
“My son. He’s not answering his phone. I—”
“Anybody know you’re here?”
“No, I—”
“Walk down the hallway,” Ross said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
* * *
Karen recognized Teddy’s voice in the living room, but she refused to believe he was here. There was yelling in the living room, frantic talking. Teddy’s voice, Ross’s voice. Then footsteps, coming down the hallway.
Teddy appeared at the door, Ross pointing the gun at the back of his head.
The moment Teddy entered the room and saw her and Joshua tied up, he froze. “Oh my God.”
“Shut up,” Ross said.
“Are you hurt or—”
“I said shut up,” Ross said. “Now, go over to that closet. Grab a chair from inside. Don’t do nothing stupid.”
Teddy walked across the room. He opened the closet door and grabbed a folding chair from inside.
“Set it over there,” Ross said. “Right next to the kid.”
Teddy unfolded the chair and placed it beside Joshua.
“Take your coat off. Sit down. Put your arms behind you.”
Teddy took off his heavy coat and sat in the chair. Ross grabbed the box of zip ties and secured Teddy’s ankles to the chair, just like Karen’s.
“Bad time for a drop-in, Pops. You said no one knows you’re here? That’s not bullshit?”
“No.”
“Because I don’t want no more surprises. Another surprise, and that’s it. I’m sick of pissing around.”
“I promise you, no one knows I’m here,” Teddy said. “I called Joshua’s phone a few times this afternoon.”
“Yeah, I know. I had the phone. I heard it ringing.”
“I got worried when there was no answer, so I came over.”
“Better not be lying.”
Ross gave them each a hard glare and left the room.
* * *
They sat in the room in a triangle, a few feet apart, facing one another, Joshua and Teddy with their hands tied behind them, Karen with her wrists secured to the armrests of her chair, all of them with their feet zip-tied to their chairs.
Teddy looked back and forth between them. “My God,” he said. “Who is this guy? What is going on?”
“I went back to the forest,” Joshua said. “My glove was missing.”
“Your glove? That text you sent—”
“It was a lie. I couldn’t find it. I figured I’d go back and grab it quick. And these people, they were out there. The guy you just saw, and a woman. The woman got shot. Mom took her to the hospital, then broke her out.”
“We’re just waiting for them to leave,” Karen said. “She’s in the other room, in my bed. She’s in bad shape. I think they’re leaving soon. Someone’s coming to pick them up.”
Teddy squirmed in his seat, yanking and pulling his arms against the zip ties behind him.
“It’s no use, Teddy,” she said to him. “You’re not breaking free.”
“Then what?” Teddy asked. “What are we supposed to do?”
“We wait,” she said. “I wish I had a better answer than that.”
* * *
Ross returned to Amber’s room. He sat down on the edge of her bed.
“That was the kid’s dad,” he said. “Looks like a damn party’s going on in there.”
Ross shook his head. He pulled the baggie of pills from his pocket and popped one.
“The lady, she said if we let them live, they’ll tell the cops whatever we want,” Ross said. “Could throw the cops off our tail. Help us get a nice head start. Just don’t know if we can trust her. Because if she’s lying, there ain’t no reason to keep them alive.”
“D-don’t kill them.”
“Might have to. Might not have a choice. I—”
Ross’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the screen.
“It’s Shane.”
He put the call on speaker.
“I’m about forty miles away from the address you gave me,” Shane said. “Should be there in, like, half an hour.”
NINETEEN
Karen stared at Teddy and Joshua, a few feet across from her. They looked practically identical, sitting in the same positions, side by side. Same blond hair, jawline, facial features.
Teddy. She had so many questions to ask him. So much she wanted to say. She felt like screaming at him, demanding answers, demanding to hear his story of what had happened on the night of the accident.
“So,” she said. “Teddy.”
He looked up at her.
“What in the . . . what in the hell happened?” she said, surprised by the force behind her voice. “The person dying. Not going to the police. What . . . just . . . what were you thinking?”
He sighed. Leaned against the back of his chair, collapsing into it. “You really want to talk about that now?”
“It’s either that or silence. And I’m sick of the silence.”
“It’s complicated.”
“We’ve got time. And nothing else to talk about. So what happened? Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“I did it to protect Joshua.”
“That’s what he said to me earlier. And I’m just having difficulty seeing that. Having difficulty understanding how not going to the police was the right thing to do.”
“It wasn’t the right thing to do. It was a mistake.”
“You think?”
“You just . . . you have no idea how frantic it was, in the heat of the moment. How a situation like that affects your thought process. Not just affects it, make it impossible to think. Everything happened so quickly, and . . . I don’t know. . . . I kept thinking about that case from a few years ago. When the politician’s son got jail time for the fight he was in. Remember that?”
“Yes. Joshua was talking about it earlier.”
“If it would’ve been a car accident that killed the guy, we would’ve gone to the police right away. In fact, I was about to call an ambulance right before the guy went crazy and started screaming at us. After Joshua hit the guy with the rock, it just seemed like there was no telling how the police would view something like that. And all I could imagine was what it would be like if Joshua was charged with a crime. Sentenced to the next ten years in jail. Heck, even the next two or three years. Can you imagine? Locked up in jail instead of graduating high school or starting college. On his record forever, following him around for the rest of his life. Eighteen years old, and his life could be ruined.”
“But Joshua wasn’t at fault. He was protecting you.”
“Maybe it’d be viewed differently. Wouldn’t take much. An aggressive lawyer. The wro
ng member of a jury. And if they saw it as something more than him defending me, that would be it. Joshua’s life would be over. He’s eighteen; he would’ve been tried as an adult. It just seemed like such a risk. Going to the police wouldn’t have brought the guy back to life. It sounds awful to say, but it’s the truth. Only thing that would’ve done was potentially get Joshua in deep, deep trouble. So I told Joshua I thought we should just leave. He was so dazed, I think he would’ve agreed to anything.”
Teddy shrugged his shoulders.
“Like I said, in the heat of the moment, everything was just so . . . overwhelming. I still can’t believe any of it. Can’t believe Joshua killed the guy. Can’t believe we didn’t report it. It’s haunted me ever since it happened. I came over here to check on Joshua, to see why he wasn’t answering his phone. I was starting to get worried. And, believe it or not, I was going to tell you everything when I was over here. Tell you we would go to the police if you thought we should, and just end it.”
She looked at Joshua, right next to his father. He had the same dazed look on his face as he’d had when he told her the story of what happened. An empty expression.
She had so many more questions for both of them, so many more things she wanted to say. She wanted to believe that they’d been caught up in an unimaginably horrific situation and had made a bad decision, a terrible mistake—but the situation seemed too complicated to explain away as a mistake.
She just didn’t really know what to think.
“It sounds awful, just abandoning the dead body all the way out there,” Teddy said. “It was awful. Like something a monster would do. I’m not proud of it. I’m sick to my stomach. But I did it for Joshua.”
Another weak shrug of his shoulders.
“It sounds heartless, but the opposite was true. The decision came straight from the heart. I was only looking out for him.”
* * *
Almost exactly half an hour after Shane’s phone call, a black Dodge Ram pickup pulled into the driveway.
“There he is,” Ross said. “Shane.”
Amber watched from the bedroom as Ross exited out the front door. He walked across the front lawn and approached the truck. The truck’s window was lowered. Ross started to say something to Shane but went silent a moment later. He put his hands in the air and backed away from the car.
Towering over Ross, Shane stepped out of the car, his massive hand wrapped around a gun. Shane yelled something. Ross slowly grabbed the gun from his waistband and threw it down by Shane’s feet. Shane grabbed the gun and placed it in the pocket of his hoodie.
He shouted at Ross some more; Amber couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. Ross started walking toward the front door, Shane behind him. Once they were close to the house, they disappeared from Amber’s line of sight. A moment later, she heard the front door open.
From the living room came Shane’s voice, cutting through the tranquil house like a saw blade: “You dirty rat,” he said. “You dirty-ass cocksucking rat.”
“Put the gun away, Shane. No need for it.”
“Like hell there isn’t.”
The door slammed shut. Then: “Where’s she at? Amber.”
“Down the hallway,” Ross said. “In the bedroom.”
A moment later, they appeared at the bedroom door, Ross in front, his mouth a straight line, his eyes wide, a look of total panic on his face. Shane stood behind him like a big, lumbering ogre, pointing the gun at the back of Ross’s head. He was wearing the same black hooded sweatshirt and dark jeans he’d worn during the robbery.
“And there she is,” Shane said. “Mrs. Fucking Rat.”
He scowled down at Amber. His breaths were deep and quick, nostrils flaring like an angry bull’s.
“I hear you were shot,” he said.
Amber cleared her throat. “Yeah.”
“Looks pretty bad.” Shane spat out a laugh, a hard, nasty snort. “Karma, sweetie. It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t stop staring at the gun, only inches from the back of Ross’s head. One squeeze of the trigger was all it’d take to end Ross’s life.
“The doctor,” Ross said. “You gotta call him up. She needs to get her injury looked at.”
“Got some questions first,” Shane said. “So, how the hell’d you end up in a place like this?”
“Long story,” Ross said.
“Gimme the condensed version.”
“Car broke down. Stole a new one from a kid. He tried to take it back and Amber was shot. She got taken to the hospital. She escaped and came here. The kid we took the car from, he lives here.”
“This kid, what happened to him?”
“He’s still here.”
Shane’s eyes went wide. He snapped his head around and looked over his shoulder.
“We’re not alone? Where’s this kid at?”
“Him and his parents are tied up. Other room. Down the hall.”
“Take me to them,” Shane said. He smacked the back of Ross’s head with the hand not holding the gun. It was a light tap, not much behind it, but the impact still made Ross wince and stumble forward. They walked to the door. Before leaving the room, Shane turned and looked back at Amber.
“Don’t worry—I’m not done with you,” he said. “Not by a long shot.”
* * *
“What is going on?”
All Karen could do was shake her head in response to Joshua’s question. She had no idea what was happening. Whoever Ross called had clearly arrived, but it didn’t sound like the reunion was a happy one. Over the past few minutes, they’d heard an assortment of noises coming from the other room. Talking. Yelling. Curse words. The name “Shane” mentioned a few times.
Then she heard loud, heavy footsteps trudging down the hall toward the storage room. A moment later, Ross appeared in the doorway. Behind him was a giant, toad-like man holding a gun. He looked like a character from that Duck Dynasty show Joshua used to like watching. Bushy beard. Beady eyes. He towered over Ross, a few inches taller and at least twice as wide.
Must be Shane.
“Get in the corner,” he said to Ross. Ross walked over to the corner of the room.
Shane looked at the zip ties securing Karen’s hands and ankles to the chair, then did the same with Joshua and Teddy.
“Well, look at that,” Shane said. “Pretty nice job tying these three up, Ross. Surprised you didn’t piss this up like you do everything else you touch.”
Shane glared down at her.
“So, you’re the kid’s mom?” he asked.
Karen nodded.
“And you don’t know this asshole?” he said, glancing at Ross. “Never met him before?”
“No, never,” she said. “We have nothing to do with any of this.”
Shane walked back over to Ross.
“Let’s get to it, then. Where’s the bread, Ross?”
“The bread?”
“The money from the robbery. Where the hell is it?”
Ross was silent.
“What, you think I came back because of Amber? You honestly think I’m going to help you two after the stunt you pulled at the bank? Hell no. The money, that’s what I’m interested in. The money from the robbery. Where is it?”
No response from Ross. Shane took a step closer. They were only inches apart from each other, like two boxers staring each other down before a fight, Shane a grizzled heavyweight, Ross an overmatched amateur.
“I ain’t asking again, Ross. Where the hell’s the money?”
“It’s gone.”
“Fuck you, it is. We had a good forty grand from that job. Easy. I cleaned that safe out. No way you could’ve spent it already. So where’s the cash?”
“The cops got it.”
Shane tensed up.
“Hold up—cops?”
he said. “You didn’t say nothing about cops.”
“When Amber went to the hospital after she got shot, cops were there. They searched the car she was in. The money was in the backseat.”
There was no reaction from Shane at first. He stood there like a statue. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his hands began to shake. A vein in the middle of his forehead appeared.
“You’re lying,” Shane said, a whisper.
“No,” Ross said. “I’m not.”
Shane took another step toward Ross, so close their noses were practically touching. He spoke through clenched teeth. “There’s no money?”
“It’s gone. But, listen, you get Amber to your doctor friend, and I’ll do whatever you want. We can rob another bank, and I’ll let you keep everything. I’ll sell drugs for you, let you keep the profits. I’ll do anything to pay you back. I’ll—”
Before he could finish, Shane’s hand flashed out and smashed the butt of the gun against Ross’s nose. Ross dropped to his knees and cried out, cupping his hands around his nose. Blood poured out between his fingers. Shane pistol-whipped Ross on the back of the skull and Ross collapsed to the ground like a rag doll. His body was completely still, facedown, blood leaking from his nose onto the carpet.
“You idiot!” Shane yelled at Ross. “You goddamned idiot!”
He kicked Ross in the ribs and Ross’s body rolled over, crashing against the wall of shelves. Random items fell to the ground. Toys. School projects. The bag of Fisher-Price golf clubs tipped over. A plastic container fell off a shelf and the lid snapped off, a sea of Legos pouring out and covering the floor.
“This is just like you, ain’t it?” Shane screamed at Ross’s motionless body. His face was turning redder and redder. “That bank job was easy money. A once-in-a-lifetime chance. And you somehow manage to fuck the whole thing up.”
Shane kicked Ross in the face, the impact making a sickening crunching noise. More blood gushed from Ross’s nose. There was no reaction from Ross; he was unconscious.
Shane stood over Ross, glaring down at him.