Money To Burn (27 page)

“Shotgun,” I said.

“He has a handgun, too,” Burly reported. “I think he’s trying to smoke us out with the shotgun and then he’s going to pick us off with the pistol.”

Good Christ, who were we up against? Buffalo Bill Cody?

“I don’t think we can make it to the van,” I told Burly. “Not with this idiotic dress I’m wearing.” I slid the Colt out of my waistband and took aim at a window, just to feel like I was doing something. Burly lay on the floor beside me, his upper body pressed against mine as we huddled together for courage.

“Cops are on their way now,” I whispered. “We’re going to have to wait it out. Keep him from torching us until help comes.” That meant keeping the killer busy.

I took a pot shot out the window closest to the latest blast just to let the fucker know he wasn’t getting a free ride. When a huge boom answered me, shattering the hallway mirror, I quickly reconsidered my strategy. I crawled on my hands and knees toward the center of the room and dragged back as many chairs, pots and end tables as I could grab, piling them in front of Burly like a barricade.

“Got your gun?” I asked.

“You betcha.” A click in the darkness told me he was ready to use it. “I’ve been saving ammo until I can see him. Until now, he’s been all over the place.”

“Listen,” I said, putting my hand on Burly’s arm as the faint sound of sirens filtered through the heavily forested acreage. Beneath the thin flannel of Burly’s shirt, I could feel his coiled muscles, hard and smooth. They twitched beneath my touch, but I could tell that he was calm. Probably calmer than me.

“It’s going to take them awhile to get down that lane,” Burly muttered. “If they can even make it. What are they driving?”

“It’s deputies,” I explained. “As in sedans—and more firepower.”

The words were barely out of my mouth when a blast shook the front Sook” wi hallway. The killer was blowing a hole in the front door and all I could think was “Why?” Was he planning to come in, guns blazing?

“Stay down,” I ordered Burly, as if he had a choice. I scrambled to the foyer and kicked over a long table that held a row of pots, then used it to barricade the door. I
shoved it in place, then braced it with a stack of chairs.

“He’s moving around to the side,” Burly warned me. “I can hear him breathing through the walls. He’s pretty winded.”

“One person or two?” I asked, sidling along the wall, picking my way through the broken pots, trying to stay quiet but hoping to get a shot off before the killer got a shot in.

“One,” Burly whispered. “Just one. Someone big, though, from the sounds of it. Big and out of breath. Zee Zee’s not barking. I think something is wrong.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I was too busy worrying about being blown away through the walls. We were trapped in a flimsy old farmhouse, meant for mild Carolina winters and hot summers. The exterior walls were no more than a single board thick and I could hear the faint crackle of someone in heavy shoes creeping around the corner of the house, only a few feet from where I crouched on the other side. I held my breath, terrified that the unseen killer might start blasting through the wooden planks.

“Look out,” Burly yelled. “In the window above you!”

I dove over a mound of pots, hitting my shoulder hard on the wooden floor. I rolled to safety behind the corner of an interior wall that led to the kitchen, but there was no sound of gunshot. It was something far worse. The remaining glass in the window was knocked in by something heavy, like a brick, and the smell of burning kerosene filled the small house.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Burly muttered as he crawled on his elbows through the broken pottery toward me. “I think he’s getting ready to throw a torch in.”

Burly’s useless legs whipped back and forth behind him as he clawed his way to the kitchen. He grabbed my arm and we froze, staring at the living room window together. An old glass Pepsi bottle filled with kerosene and stuffed with rags spiraled through the air, almost graceful in its flight, spinning across the shattered debris of what had once been Burly’s home, painting the interior with an illuminated arc of light. The flaming rag left a smoky trail that signaled death, yet I found it both terrifying and oddly beautiful.
The bottle exploded against an interior wall, showering the main room floor with droplets of fire that quickly spread in pools and ran in trickles across the floor, igniting lamp shades, throw pillows, magazines and books.

Burly gripped my arm and dragged me deep into the kitchen, as far from the flames as we could get. I stood up for a better look.

“Behind you!” Burly screamed, his gun cocked and ready as he took aim toward the lone kitchen window behind me. I spun around and hit the floor on my stomach, propping myself up on my elbows to take aim. A piece of buckshot whizzed past my head so closely I could hear the whine in my ear. We fired at the same time, our pistols exploding in unison as we blew out the kitchen window and sent someone scurrying for cover in the bushes outside of it.

“Did we get him?” Burly asked.

“Hell if I know. Think I’ll make sure.” The sounds of the sirens grew louder as I scrambled to a position on the other side of the refrigerator, then jumped up on the kitchen table and poked my hand out the broken window, firing into the bushes.

“This is for the dog, you fucker!” I yelled out into the darkness as I emptied my gun. When all you’re waving is a .25, you have to aim for the head and squeeze off as many rounds as you can.

“Jesus, Casey, you’re gonna need those bullets,” Burly yelled. “Get down or you’re gonna get hit.”

“No, I’m not,” I declared, loading my spare clip into the chamber. I was hoppin’ mad now. I leaned out the window, seeking my prey, emboldened by the screeching of the sirens. I was starting to spot the flashing reflections of approaching cars. Red and blue beams swept over the tops of the hardwood and pine trees in an eerily festive dance of color. It looked like half the sheriff cars in Franklin County were tearing down Burly’s lane.

I took another shot at the nearest clump of bushes. “Anyone who kills an old dog is a goddamned coward,” I yelled out the window. “I’m gonna put a bullet through your yellow hide one day. You understand?” I shot twice more.

The table was pulled out from under me and I nearly cut my arm on a piece of glass as I toppled backward and fell to the floor. Burly gripped my upper arm with incredible strength and dragged me to the floor beside him.

“Get the fuck down, you lunatic,” he hissed. “Don’t get up until I tell you.”

“He killed Zee Zee,” I told him between clenched teeth. “And he’s damn sure trying to kill us.”

“God, you’re a hothead,” he said in a tone halfway between exasperation and admiration. “I’m sorry about old Zee Zee, but you getting shot right before my eyes isn’t going to make it any better.”

He pulled me to him and I stopped struggli Sppet=“0”>ng, aware that my mouth was only inches from his. Behind us, in the living room, the fire had reached the couch and flames were starting to build. Heavy black smoke billowed toward the shattered windows and the smells of melting plastic and burning fabric filled the air. We huddled face-to-face in the flickering darkness as the sound of screaming sirens grew louder. The shadows of flames danced across the angular planes of Burly’s face and his eyes burned as dark and bright as the fire behind us. I could feel my heart beating against my dress, just inches from the beating of his heart.

“Is that your pulse?” I asked, placing my palm against his breast bone, feeling his heart hammering beneath my touch.

“Yup. Contrary to popular belief, I have a heart,” he whispered back. His hands slid down the long length of my dress and he pulled the fabric upward, trailing his fingers along the muscles in my thighs. He paused. “What the hell is this?” He pulled the cellular phone out from where I had tucked it into the back of my panties and held it up. “You are weird, Casey,” he said, shaking his head. “Really weird.”

The moment had passed. “Much as I like this position,” I told him, “we’re gonna die if we don’t move soon.” Obviously, the cop cars had reached the clearing. I could hear the crash of metal meeting metal, and the sirens sounded like they were going off inside my head.

“Wait for the cops to actually set foot in this damn house,” Burly ordered me. “We’ve gotten this far. Let’s keep it together. Stay low and you’ll be able to breathe.”

The crackle of police radio static mingled with the pop of the flames that were rapidly building in the living room. Someone coughed outside the front door. “Anyone in there?” a deep male voice called out.

“In here!” I yelled. “To the right of the front door.” I heard thumpings and crashes as the deputies tried to break through the makeshift barricade. There was no time to wait. I rolled Burly over on his stomach and tried to remember how Doodle used to sling me over his shoulder and march around my bedroom.

“Hold on,” I said to Burly, grunting as I lifted his dead weight. God, please help me, I prayed, and while I’m at it, thank you for the thunder thighs. I slung him over one shoulder, staggering into the wall as I veered and bounced my way through the smoke to the front door. The smoke was inescapable and it clogged my throat in a thick, choking ball. I’d only gotten a few yards when bodies crashed through the barricade and hands reached out to help me, taking Burly from my arms and supporting me as I stumbled from the house. The cool air outside hit me like a spray of water and I gulped in the fresh oxygen.

“He’s paralyzed,” I croaked inaudibly to two deputies who were trying to stand Burly on his feet and getting nowhere. He kept crumpling to the ground and being hoisted aloft again. Burly wasn’t helping any, either. He was starting to laugh hysterically and I was beginning to wonder if he had lost it.

“I’m cured!” Burly yelled, arms outstretched, as one of the deputies propped him against a tree only to gawk as Burly slid to his butt in a hydrangea bush.

I coughed up smoke and spit out a wad of gunk. “He can’t walk!” I screamed to the deputy. “His wheelchair’s inside!”

Slow on the uptake or not, the deputy was brave. He headed right back into the fire, returning a minute later with Burly’s wheelchair still in one piece. Part of the backing was scorched, and a bullet hole had pierced the leather right where Burly’s heart would have been had he still been sitting in the chair when the shot was fired.

“Thank God,” Burly said. “It’s my lucky day.”

Was he out of his mind? I stared at him and he grinned, his white teeth a Cheshire cat semicircle in the dark-sooted mask of his face.

“It took months for the factory to custom-build my chair,” he explained cheerfully as he was helped into it and we were hustled far from the flames of the house. The fire was spreading rapidly now, devouring eaves, licking at the hen houses, blowing out what was left of the glass windows, exploding unseen bottles with a rapid series of pops.

“Oh, God.” I stared back at the flames. “All your pottery.”

Burly was wheeling himself to the edge of the clearing. “Forget it all,” he said, without even looking back. “Tomorrow is another day.”

Burly had been right about the dirt road. The fire trucks couldn’t get down it. There was nothing to do but watch the wooden structure and surrounding hen houses burn to the ground while the deputies and arriving volunteers dug a fire trench around the property and formed an old- fashioned bucket brigade that stretched from the pond on the far side of the smoldering hen houses into Burly’s front yard. Old Zee Zee was gone, his body removed by some official who either had a practical streak or a soft heart.

I sat next to Burly on a stump that was pitted with deep slashes from where it had once been used for splitting logs. I was exhausted. It was all I could do to keep the strapless bodice of my tattered dress from falling around my waist. Anything else was beyond me.

“We need some marshmallows,” Burly decided. He sat content in his wheelchair, watching the flames as they climbed into the night sky. He felt it, too, that hypnotic effect that the fire seemed to hold for us all.

“You seem mighty cheerful for someone who’s seeing his whole life go up in smoke,” I said. We were holding hands, like seventh-graders at a S-grxt”>“You s weenie roast.

“I’ve had worse things happen to me,” Burly explained.

“And now’s as good a time as any to start over.” He smiled at me. “You saved my life.”

“Any time,” I told him, then paused. “Except never again, okay?”

“Okay.”

We stared at the flames for a few moments without speaking. I was the one who broke the silence.

“Where are you staying tonight?” I asked him.

“With you,” he said happily.

“Good,” I said. “I need a ride. That Lamborghini is a piece of shit. And no wonder. It belongs to Lydia’s brother.”

Burly looked over at it. “I don’t think he’s going to be too happy about its present condition.”

“What do you mean?”

“It looks like three deputy cars ran right up its ass.”

He was right. The Lamborghini had been rear-ended by at least three of the sedans barreling into the clearing. The first crash had apparently caused the bat-wing doors to finally open, and they had lifted skyward just in time to be clipped off by more arriving cars.

What was left of the chassis gleamed richly in the reflected glare of the fire. The sleek red body was crumpled but still obviously expensive, its ostentatious glory dwarfed by the practical lines of the surrounding police cars, like some rich cocaine kingpin flanked by a phalanx of weary flatfoots.