Nick of Time (31 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

N
icki lay back on the sofa, trying her best to fight off the fatigue.

“I'm stumped,” Brad said. He'd pulled a straight-back chair into the living room from the kitchen and allowed himself a brief rest. “Honest to God, I just don't have a clue what to do next. I should have shot the kid.”

“You couldn't have,” Nicki said.

Brad snorted. “Yeah, I could. And this is why I should.”

Nicki closed her eyes. “You're not like that. You couldn't hurt a child.”

“What makes you think so?”

“You were hurt too many times yourself.” She glanced at him in time to catch the roll of his eyes. She smiled. “You want to be tougher than you are,” she said. “You want to be a bad guy, but it's not in you.”

He started to argue, but he let it go. What was the point? Nicki's universe played by the rules. In it, good things came to good people, and good people never did bad things. Having never met animals like Peter Chaney and Lucas Georgen, she'd never understand that sometimes it was necessary to kill. Even here, in this godforsaken little house, she couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that it was
important
for Gramma and Scotty to be afraid of him. Fear was what kept him from having to hurt them worse than he did.

If they'd been even more frightened, Scotty never would have risked going for the gun.

If there were, in fact, rules, no one in Brad's universe played by them. Wasn't there a rule, for example, that you don't get chased down for crimes you didn't commit? The irony made him dizzy. It wasn't even his real crimes that were going to bring him down; it was the one accusation that
wasn't
true that was going to kill him.

For the first time since this whole adventure began, he felt a tug of panic. There'd been stress and fear before, certainly a sense of danger, but over the past few years, he'd gotten used to that. He'd come to live with it as surely as a wounded veteran lives with his limp. Sometimes he told himself that a pervasive sense of danger was what kept him sharp, prevented him from becoming complacent.

But this panic thing was new to him. He'd subsisted for so long on hope and luck that he'd allowed himself to believe he had some measure of control. What an idiot.

He and Nicki were screwed: stuck in the middle of nowhere, without wheels, and neither one of them in any condition to walk. What the hell were they supposed to do now? When he glanced to Nicki for advice, all he got in return was that expectant look. She was counting on him to have the answers.

“Are you all right?” Nicki asked.

Brad realized that he'd been completely lost in his thoughts. “Huh?”

“You're bleeding pretty badly. Are you all right?”

He forced a smile. “I guess that question pretty much answers itself, doesn't it?” It was a weeping wound, not a pumping one, but leaking enough volume to soak the lower part of his T-shirt and the upper part of his trousers.

“What are we going to do, Brad?” Maybe she thought that asking enough times would produce an answer.

He heard the fear in her voice, saw it in her eyes. “We could always take a nap,” he said.

“How long before they come?”

Brad looked out the window. “Out here? Hard to say. Ten minutes, maybe. I wouldn't think any more than twenty. They won't storm the place as long as we've got her with us.” He nodded toward Gramma.

“Let's let her go,” Nicki said.

“What?”

“Look at her.” As Nicki spoke, Gramma seemed to grow older in her chair. “She didn't do anything.”

Brad dismissed the notion out of hand. “No way. She's the only insurance we've got.”

“Against what?”

Brad gave her a look.

“I don't want hostages,” Nicki said. “I don't want anybody getting hurt for me. All I want is peace. I want all of this to end happily.”

Brad scowled. “Do you really think that's possible? With the way our luck's been running, you can't possibly think there's a happy end.”

Nicki offered up a wan smile. “I guess it all depends on what makes you happy. If getting out of here is key, then no, probably not.”

Brad didn't get it. Actually, he feared that he did, but didn't want to jump to conclusions. “What are you talking about?”

“You said it yourself,” Nicki said. “Sometimes it's just a matter of setting your own terms.” A wave of pain surged through her chest, and Nicki winced. Brad saw the deep furrows in her brow as she fought off whatever was attacking her insides. The sound of her breathing reminded him incongruously of someone petting a piece of sandpaper. It hurt to listen.

When he turned back to Gramma, he saw her watching, an expectant look in her face. “You're not going anywhere,” Brad said. Just to make sure, he rose from his chair and checked to make sure that she was still securely bound. Gramma asked if he could loosen the rope a little, but Brad didn't bother to answer.

When he was done, he offered the .22 to Nicki. “Keep an eye on her,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“To piss.” Ask a direct question and you get a direct answer.

“I don't want the gun,” Nicki said.

“Look, we can't afford—”

“I don't want it.”

He let the pistol hover, then shoved it back into his bloody waistband. “Fine.”

Things inside his gut didn't feel right at all. The pain was a constant, a dull ache that stabbed him every time he moved, and sometimes when he didn't, but it wasn't crippling. No worse than the aftermath of most of his beatings in prison, and not nearly as bad as some.

When he pissed a solid stream of blood, though, Brad knew that he'd been kidding himself. This wasn't that pink-tinged stream that he'd come to expect after a night with the boys in the joint, the gift of pummeled kidneys; this was a dark crimson that turned the toilet water scarlet. So, being gut-shot wasn't about unspeakable pain after all.

It was about bleeding to death on the inside.

In the distance, through the frosted open window, he could hear the sound of approaching sirens. Taking a long pull of air through his nose, he held it then let it go through pursed lips. So this was it. They were coming. Now was the time for all the tough choices.

He had to get ready. Once the cops heard that this was a hostage situation, the first thing they'd do was call in a tactical unit. Out here in the boonies, that might mean just a couple of good old boys with shotguns, but the one constant to tactical units everywhere was a sniper with a long gun and the temperament to use it. Starting with what was closest, he shut the bathroom window and locked it. The frosted glass would obscure them enough to keep the shooter from getting a good view.

Nicki called from the other room, her voice trembling. “Brad, I hear sirens!”

He flushed the toilet and opened the door. “They're faster than I had hoped,” he said. The next stop was the living room, where he pulled the draperies closed. “Listen to me,” he said to Nicki. “This is very important. Stay away from the windows. If they see you, they're likely to shoot.”

“Oh, my God,” she gasped.

His belly hurt. He was feeling light-headed, too. The cops' first steps when they got on the scene would be driven by whatever the kid had told him. If the responding officer came to the door, Brad would have no choice but to shoot. In his current condition, he couldn't fend anyone off in a fight.

He needed to stop the cops from leading off with the wrong move. His brain wasn't working all that well right now, but in the seconds he had to plow through his available options, he came up with only one, and it righteously sucked.

He limped to the phone and picked up the receiver.

Then he dialed 911.

* * *

Carter cowered behind a tree, trying to make himself invisible. Where the hell was the shooter?

“Show yourself,” a voice said from the woods. It was a young voice, and stress made it crack.

Carter didn't respond. The gun changed everything. It wasn't what he'd been expecting.

“I could shoot you now if I wanted you dead,” the voice said. “I can see you.”

Carter's skin crawled as if covered with ants. Laying on his belly in the saturated mulch of the forest floor, he was shivering.

Two more shots shattered the afternoon and chips flew from his tree, just inches above his head.

“The next ones will kill you,” the voice said. “Now, stand up where I can see you.”

Carter's mind raced. What were his options here? He could stand and be shot, or he could lie on his belly and be shot. He decided to go for the greater dignity and he raised himself to his knees. When he wasn't shot down immediately, he thought that he might actually have a chance.

“Okay,” Carter said to the forest. “Now it's your turn.”

“Put your hands where I can see them,” the kid said.

Carter made a shrugging gesture. “They
are
where you can see them. I'm not armed.”

“Put them up in the air, then.”

Carter thought about that. It was time to piss on a new fire hydrant. Someone was going to be in control of this situation, and in a perfect world, that person was never the one with the gun. “No,” he said.

“Excuse me?” The incredulity in his voice nearly made Carter laugh.

“I said no,” Carter repeated. “Not until you show
your
self.”

Some bushes rustled up ahead. Out stepped Jeremy Hines, a pistol clutched in both hands. It looked like a World War Two–vintage .45, with a muzzle the size of a manhole.

“You can put that down,” Carter said. “I'm not armed. I'm not here to hurt you.”

The boy looked confused. As he cocked his head to think, a stream of rainwater dripped from his nose.

“Why'd you shoot Chas Delphin, Jeremy?”

“Who said I did? I thought you were looking for Peter Banks on that.”

“We got Peter Banks,” Carter said. “But then we got more evidence. It was you. You were wearing a red jersey, and you nearly got away with it, except someone else startled you and beat the shit out of you.”

Jeremy's jaw dropped. “You don't know that.”

“Come on, Jeremy,” Carter snorted. “You left evidence all over the place.” That last part was a lie, of course. He wanted the boy to feel as if everything from this moment forward led to his inevitable confession.

“What kind of evidence?”

Carter's eyes narrowed as he pretended to formulate an answer, but ultimately, he just shook his head. “No, I don't think I'll share that with you. Not just now. All I want to know is why you did it. How did you think you could get away with it?”

Jeremy's eyes darted some more, scanning the woods for any reinforcements. “If you're talking about your daughter and her friend—if you're talking about the
real
murderers—nobody's gonna believe a word they say.”

“Oh, I think they will,” Carter said. He took a step forward but stopped when Jeremy raised the pistol higher. He showed the boy his palms as a peace offering. “This doesn't help.”

“Nobody will believe them,” Jeremy repeated.

Carter decided to probe a little deeper. “I've got the security video,” he bluffed.

“You
couldn't
!” The kid knew his mistake as soon as he heard himself.

Carter smiled. “Couldn't? And how would you know that?”

Jeremy trembled. “Y-you don't know what you're talking about.”

“Yeah, I do,” Carter said. “And so do you. Let's drop the charade and set the record straight, okay?”

The boy raised the gun higher again. “I could shoot you.”

For an instant, Carter thought that was exactly what he was going to do. He flinched, but he didn't back off. “Who would you blame that one on? There's no hiding secrets like this, Jeremy. People try all the time, but murder is just too big a crime.”

“I didn't murder anyone.” His voice broke again.

“I believe you,” Carter said. Clearly, it wasn't what Jeremy was expecting to hear. “I think you believed that the gun was empty.”

The kid's eyes got huge and he nodded enthusiastically. “Yes!” he said. He nearly shouted it. “That's right. I didn't think it was loaded. I just wanted to scare him.” He paused as the inevitability of it all settled in on him. “It wasn't my fault,” he said. “If that guy hadn't hit me, the gun never would have gone off. It wasn't my fault.”

Carter said nothing. What was the sense in pointing out the fallacy of his reasoning now? As the world closed in on him, legal technicalities would be of little interest. “Can you answer my question, though?” he asked.

Jeremy looked confused.

“How did you think that you'd get away with it in a town this small?”

“He
didn't
think he'd get away with it.” The voice from Carter's right startled him. He turned to see Frank Hines emerging from a line of trees. He half expected to see a weapon drawn, but both of the sheriff's hands were empty. “He was punishing me.”

Jeremy's fear turned to panic, and he became a little boy. “I-I'm sorry, Dad,” he said. “He came back to the house, and I didn't know what to do.”

Frank Hines waved off his son's whimpering with a shooing flip of his hand. “I know,” he said. “Your mother called me.” To Carter, he said, “You must be proud of yourself.”