by Tom Hunt
“I’m trying.”
They reached the living room, grunting and groaning the entire way. He set her down in a recliner and hurried over to the window. Two cars were outside. The kid’s car with the cracked windshield and a Tahoe.
Ross moved away from the window and threw open a few cupboard doors. He picked up a stack of letters on the table and tossed them to the side. His head was on a swivel as he scanned the living room.
“Keys,” he said. “Need to find the keys.”
She watched him run around the room, trying to find the keys. He looked genuinely frightening, his face mangled, his movements sped up. One eye was starting to swell shut.
“Dammit, dammit!”
He hurried out of the room. Into the kitchen. She heard him opening drawers, rummaging around, slamming them shut. Silverware clanked. A few dishes shattered.
He ran back into the living room. Grabbed a few coats resting near the door and went through the pockets, tossing the coats to the side after he’d gone through them. He ran over to the couch and threw the cushions off, flinging them across the room.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing, dammit.”
He looked out the window. Back over at her.
“Let’s go.”
“Where—”
“Come on.”
He helped her up out of the chair and they walked outside. It was dark, not pitch-black but close to it. He dragged her over to the Tahoe and sat her down in the passenger seat. He balled his hand into a fist and pounded the plastic covering around the ignition, the impact so hard she thought he might break his hand. The covering loosened after a few blows and he ripped it off. Some wires and other metal pieces were exposed.
“What are you doing?”
“Hot-wiring it,” he said. “If I fuck around enough, might be able to jump it.”
He yanked out a few wires. Touched the ends together. When that did nothing, he yanked out a few more. Tried the same thing. Nothing.
He threw the wires down and pounded his fist against the dashboard. “Come on, you piece of shit! You stupid piece of—”
There was a noise behind them. Distant. Ross snapped his head toward it. Amber slowly turned her head and saw a pair of headlights approaching on the gravel road. A couple of hundred feet away.
Ross threw open the car door and ran down the driveway. He stopped in the middle of the road and waved his hands in the air. The headlights slowed and came to a stop a few feet in front of him. A truck. Beat down and rusty.
An old man stepped out. He wore a red-and-black-checkered flannel shirt. Skinny. Gray hair. Lined face.
He stared at Ross’s bloody face. From this distance Amber could just hear his voice.
“What happened?” he said. “Are you injured—”
Before he got another word out, Ross charged forward and tackled him. The old man stumbled backward and fell to the ground. Ross pounced on him and started throwing punches. One after another. His fists were like blurs, rising and falling, pummeling the old man.
The old man screamed. Yelled.
Amber watched the beating, stunned. It had happened so quickly that it had barely registered.
The beating continued, more punches, brutal, savage. If Ross continued, he would kill the old man.
She pushed open the door and yelled at him to stop. Her voice wasn’t much, and Ross didn’t even hear her. He continued pummeling away.
Amber reached across the center console and pressed the car horn. It sounded, and Ross stopped punching the old man. He looked over at the Tahoe. Looked back down at the motionless old man. She thought he was going to start beating him again. Instead, Ross walked back over to the car.
“Come on.” He picked her up out of the Tahoe and carried her over to the truck in the road. His breaths were short and quick. The truck was still running, and the headlights illuminated the old man on the ground. As they passed him, he grunted. Ross looked down at him and delivered a final, brutal kick to the old man’s ribs. The old man yelled, briefly and piercingly, then went silent.
She cringed and looked away. Ross set her down in the passenger seat and buckled the seat belt. She winced as the strap pulled tightly over her injured stomach. Ross walked around the car and sat in the driver’s seat. He shifted the truck into drive and sped away.
* * *
• • •
Ten minutes later, they were driving down the highway. Ross’s hand on the wheel was shaking. Every few seconds, the truck would sway a little on the road and veer a few inches in and out of their lane until Ross jerked the wheel back.
“Where . . .” Amber began. The word trailed off. She swallowed, tried to clear her throat. “Where are we going?” she croaked.
Ross wasn’t listening to her. He was focused on the road, his one good eye staring out from the bloody mask of his face. He constantly ground his teeth, the muscles in his jaw flexing.
“W-where are—”
“Somewhere I wanna go,” he said. “Quick stop. I—”
A horn blared from beside them. Their pickup had coasted into the path of a passing car. Ross jerked the wheel to the right.
“Screw off, asshole!” he yelled as the car passed him.
They drove on, Ross’s unsteady hand on the wheel, the truck continuing to sway. She felt like she was on a rickety roller coaster. Ross reached into his pocket and pulled out the magazine sheet he’d scrawled on earlier. Looked at it.
“Almost there,” he said.
Her eyes stayed on Ross. His image kept going in and out of focus. A leering smile was on his face. He looked mad—his smile, his face bloody and battered, one eye swollen shut.
Seeing him beat the old man earlier had disturbed her. The beating had been so savage. Ross had continued even after the man was helpless to fight back. She’d honestly thought he was going to beat him to death. Almost as bad as the beating was the final kick he gave the man, that heartless, brutal kick he’d given the old man as they’d passed. He was as out of control as she’d ever seen him.
Ross slowed down and pulled off the highway. He took a few turns. The hand holding the steering wheel continued to shake, the car tottering back and forth. He kept gritting his teeth.
He finally stopped on the side of a road. No other cars were around. An empty, darkened parking lot was nearby, in front of a few businesses in a run-down brick building. A vacant storefront. A dingy restaurant with a Closed sign in the window. And in the middle, a shop with a dark sign, just visible in the shadows. GUN SHOP, it read.
“That’s the place,” Ross said.
“A gun shop?”
“Can’t do anything without firepower,” Ross said. “Figure we’ll get some guns and rob a bank. Or a bunch of gas stations. A thousand bucks at each of them. We rob a few, it adds up.”
The plan was ridiculous; it wasn’t even a plan. It was just a random, crazy idea. He gritted his teeth again. Looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
“And then, Shane—I want revenge,” Ross said. He was talking so quickly, the words sounded like one big jumble. “Look at what he did to my face, the bastard. I want him dead.”
He slammed his fist against the steering wheel.
“He’s down in Saint Louis, I bet,” he said. “Returned to his buddy Smitty. We’ll show up and give him a big ol’ surprise.”
“N-no.”
Ross wasn’t listening. He floored the accelerator. The tires squealed. The truck sped forward, heading straight toward the gun shop.
Amber tried to brace herself for the collision.
* * *
Karen sat in the interrogation room, barely able to keep her eyes open. A cup of coffee was on the table in front of her, steam rising from the cup. An empty chair was on the other side of the table. A few minutes ago, Franny had sat her in the room and left her by herself.
She stared at the cup on the table and thought about Joshua. It was impossible to think about anything else. On the way there, the officer driving the cruiser she was riding in had told her how confident he was they would find him. She wanted to believe, but it was tough. Almost an hour had passed now. All she could do was pray. Pray that they would find him. And that he’d be unharmed once they did.
Franny opened the room door and walked over. He sat down in the chair across from her.
“Officers went to your house,” he said. “No one was there. But we did find something. Someone, actually. A man was outside, very badly beaten. Your neighbor. Bob Chamberlain.”
“What?”
“He said he was driving home. A lanky guy ran out into the road. All bloody. He thought the guy was injured and stopped. The old man took a beating. The lanky guy took his truck. Loaded a woman inside and left. Chamberlain saw them head north. Into the city. Even if they’re passing through, we’re looking for the truck.”
“Is Mr. Chamberlain okay?”
“Got roughed up pretty badly. He’s being taken to the hospital.”
She couldn’t believe it. Mr. Chamberlain was her neighbor dating back to when she was a child growing up in the house. About the sweetest old man alive. He would always bring them strawberries in the summer. Would clear their driveway of snow in the winter with the snowplow attachment on his tractor. She felt physically ill, thinking of him suffering a beating.
“So, that’s where we are currently,” Franny said. “Now I have some questions for you. A lot of them, actually.”
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been honest with you.”
“Didn’t take me long to figure that out. I’ve thought you were hiding something since we talked first. The breakout at the hospital, you had something to do with that, didn’t you?”
“They forced me to break her out. Well, he did. Ross. Her husband. They were at the house when you were there.”
“That yell.”
She nodded. “It was her. Amber. My son had a gun pointed at him. He would’ve been killed if I said anything to you. It was Shane. Ross’s brother. He showed up later, right before you did. He was furious because the money from the bank robbery was gone. I thought he was going to kill us all.”
“This is getting confusing,” Franny said. “Easiest thing to do would be to tell me everything from the start. And I mean everything. No detail is too small.”
She nodded. Yes, that would be easiest. Total honesty. It was time to tell him everything: the accident that started everything, the fight afterward when Joshua hit the man with the rock, Joshua and Teddy not reporting the crime, the events that happened since then.
“This all began with my son,” she said. “He was out driving and—”
There was a knock at the door. An officer with a thick mustache stuck his head inside.
“Need to talk with you,” he said to Franny.
“Can it wait?”
“No.”
The tone of his voice made her heart catch in her chest. Something was clearly up.
“What is it?” she said. “Is it my son? Tell me.”
“Just give us a second.”
Franny walked out of the room. Karen sat in her chair, her mind racing, hoping there would be good news, praying that her world wasn’t about to be crushed.
All she could do was wait for answers.
TWENTY-SIX
The truck sped across the parking lot, heading straight for the gun shop. Amber looked down at her seat belt to check it; it was fastened. She opened her mouth. She tried to scream but she just couldn’t push any noise out.
The truck bounced up and down as they raced forward. Pain flared up in her stomach as the truck jostled her around. She closed her eyes.
There was a thundering, crashing noise and an impact that rocked her forward in her seat. A piercing, intense stinging in her stomach. The wind was knocked out of her; she couldn’t breathe for a moment.
An alarm started ringing. She opened her eyes. The truck had knocked off the metal gate covering the gun shop entrance and crashed through the shop’s front windows. Dust and smoke lingered in the air.
Ross threw the car door open and stepped out into the shop. Amber stayed in the car, wincing through the pain. She watched as Ross ran over to the front counter and jumped over. A large metal locker had been knocked on its side during the crash, the door on the locker partially torn away. Ross pulled and yanked at the door and eventually pried it completely off. He pulled two shotguns out of the locker.
He ran to a glass display case on the other side of the shop. He swung one of the shotguns like a bat and shattered the glass. He reached past shards of broken glass and grabbed a few handguns. He took a plastic bag from behind the counter and threw the guns inside. The alarm continued to wail.
Seated in the car, Amber watched Ross run around the gun shop like a madman, the truck’s headlights illuminating the shop interior. She glanced over and saw the keys dangling from the truck’s ignition. If she dug deep down, she thought she could find the strength to power past the pain and drag her body over to the driver’s seat. She could drive away. Leave Ross behind. End this right now.
It was an unbelievable thought, abandoning Ross—but she didn’t know what else to do. This was not going to end well. Whatever came next, it would not be good. Ross was completely out of control. He was going to hurt someone else, probably kill someone. All these guns combined with the way he was acting would only equal disaster.
She was scared of Ross—she couldn’t believe it, but she was. That had never happened before. She’d seen him do plenty of crazy things over the years but she’d never reached a point where she was frightened of him. But the way he’d beaten the old man earlier had rattled her; it had been vicious. And now Ross seemed so angry and determined. The look in his eyes was wild, completely out of control.
Outside the car, Ross threw open a drawer behind the counter. He picked up boxes of bullets and shells and threw them to the ground until he found what he was looking for. He tossed a few boxes into the bag with the guns. Grabbed another shotgun and set it inside.
So many guns.
She sat in the truck, thinking about what she should do next, trying to focus her muddled thoughts, as the alarm continued to scream out. It was so loud that she didn’t hear the sirens as the police cars pulled up outside.
* * *
• • •
She saw the flashing red and blue lights out of the corner of her eye. Amber snapped her head toward them.
Two cop cars were parked out front of the gun shop.
The moment she saw them, she knew: it was over. This was going to be the end. They were trapped. Cornered. Nowhere to go.
“Shit!”
Ross screamed the word, staring at the police cruisers out front. He ran across the shop floor to the truck.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he said.
He threw the bag of guns on the front seat. Reached inside and pulled out a shotgun. Grabbed a box of shells. Dropped it. Shells spilled onto the truck floor. He cursed and fumbled around on the floor until he found two of the shells. He loaded them into the shotgun.
He aimed the gun toward the store’s shattered front window and fired two booming shots out toward the parking lot. She heard yelling from out front but couldn’t understand what was being said. Another police cruiser arrived. Three cars out front now.
Ross grabbed one of the handguns and loaded it with bullets, hands shaking, breathing heavy. He set the handgun on the front seat.
“I can take them,” he said.
She shook her head weakly.
“I’m serious,” Ross said as he loaded the shotgun with more shells. “Take them out and leave.”
“N-no—”
“I got this!”
Outside, two mor
e police cruisers arrived, lights flashing. An officer emerged from one and peeked out from behind the open car door. He was baby-faced, looked like a teenager.
She glanced at Ross. His eyes burned with intensity. He fired two blasts from the shotgun. Seemed like he wasn’t really aiming at anything, just firing randomly in the direction of the police cars.
He leaned back into the front seat. Grabbed more shells off the floor and reloaded the shotgun.
“Let’s give up,” she said.
“Surrender?” Ross said. “Fuck that.”
“P-please,” she said.
She watched him clenching his jaw as he forced more shells into the chamber, breathing heavily. There was no use in trying to convince him to leave. No point in trying to make him stop. His mind was made up.
This was where it would end. Ever since they’d double-crossed Shane, she’d held on to a faint bit of hope that they could have a happy ending. No matter how long the odds or how hopeless things seemed, she believed. But no longer. Ross was just too out of control. There was no way they were getting out of this.
She tried to force out a few words but Ross wasn’t paying attention to her. He fired two booming shots from the shotgun, then grabbed the handgun off the front seat and fired more shots out at the police cars. He threw the handgun back onto the front seat. He leaned over the front seat, looking on the floor mat for more of the shotgun shells he’d dropped earlier. The handgun he’d set on the front seat was still there, only a few feet away. She grabbed it and lifted it up. It was a struggle; the gun felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds.
She didn’t want any innocent people to die. Didn’t want to see anyone else get injured. All she’d wanted was a life with Ross. The Ross she loved. If that wasn’t possible, then there was no point.
In the second that passed before she ended his life, she thought of the good times. The happy memories. There’d been a lot of them. The good times before the drugs, back when she toured with Ross and Shane and life was nothing but fun. She remembered how empty she’d felt without him when he was locked up. She remembered those perfect few months in Nebraska after Ross was released. He’d vowed that he was a changed man, and he had been. He’d been free—free of drugs and free of Shane. All she’d wanted was to have that life again. That was it. Just the two of them, together. She’d been so positive that she could save Ross, but she wouldn’t even have a chance to try. They would never even reach that point.