The Comfort of Black (19 page)

Black leaned back, putting more distance between his gun and his face.

“It isn't even loaded,” he said. “I keep the bullets in—”

Hannah closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

The shot was deafening in the tight confines of the car, and when she opened her eyes the first thing she noticed was the shattered glass of the driver's window. Black's hands were in front of his face, and Hannah winced as she expected to see blood pouring from between his fingers.

He removed his hands. His face was fully intact. Hannah had missed, the combination of shaking hands and closed eyes dooming her aim, even at such a short distance.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “I can't believe you really pulled the trigger.” He pushed himself back against the car door as Hannah quickly brought the gun back up.

I can't believe it either
, she thought. She wanted to think she missed on purpose, but she hadn't. Just for the fact that she couldn't hold her weapon steady was the only reason he was alive. Or maybe it was some kind of divine intervention.

“Get out of the car,” she said. “Just get out of the fucking car.”

“Fine, Hannah.” He kept his hands up. “Let's both get out of the car and we can talk, okay?”

“I'm done with talking,” she said. “And I'm done with trusting.”

“Hannah, you can't just leave me out here.”

She kept the gun pointed at him, and now her hands seemed steadier. “I'm going to tell you one more time to get out of the car, and then I'm going to shoot again. Next time my eyes will be wide open, and I won't miss.”

Black opened the door and got out, leaving the door open.
Hannah kept the gun trained on him from the passenger seat of the car.

“Dallin is your client,” she said. “But you said ‘they.' Who else hired you?”

“Does it matter?”

“
Who are your clients?
”

“Will you not just abandon me if I tell you?”

Hannah aimed the gun just to the left of Black and pulled the trigger again. Black jumped as the bullet screamed past him. The sound of the blast echoed inside her head, but this time it felt good. The gun felt less heavy. A sense of power and control surged through her.

“Will you stop doing that?” he said.

“Tell me. Or the next one's going into you.”

Black ran one hand through his hair, smoothing it back for a second before long strands fell again over his forehead.

“Yes, Dallin,” he said. “Dallin's my main client. He was the one who initially contacted me.”

“Was he the one who told you to kill me?”

“No, the call last night was from my partner. He'd been given the instruction to…the change of plans.”

“Who's your partner?”

Black sighed.

“
Tell me
,” she said.

“You know him as Peter.”

Hannah saw the man in her mind. The huge hands, the deep stare. She could smell the chemical on the rag he used to send her into unconsciousness.

My job is to mitigate risk
.

“The thug from Echo?”

“He doesn't work for Echo,” Black said. “He works for me. I knew him in prison.”

Another falsehood. Another deception.

“Tell me everything right now,” she said. “Goddammit, tell me everything, and if I think you're lying I swear to God I'll—”

“Hannah, there's so much you don't know. I don't know everything. In fact, I'm thinking I know a lot less than I suspected. Let's get back in the car, drive away from here, and I promise I'll tell you everything I know. That's what I was trying to do anyway before you pulled the gun on me. I was driving you away from danger. Just take it easy, okay?”

“Let me tell you what
I
know,” she said. “I know if you tell me to take it easy one more time, I'm shooting you in the face. Right the fuck in that beautiful face of yours, Black. And then you won't be able to tell any more lies. You won't have to run away from anyone again.”

She barely felt anything, any emotion, any sensation at all. She simply observed what this tiny woman with the gun and cheap hair dye was saying.

“
Hannah
,” he said.

“You need to tell me everything. Who the other clients are. And why all the pretense? Why not just kill me earlier?”

Black didn't seem to hear her. He was distracted by something else.

“
Hannah
,” he barked. “We've got company.”

She felt her mouth say the word “
What?”

“Look.”

Hannah turned her head and looked through the rear window of Black's car.

She saw a white pickup, battered and rusted, the war scars of hard use. It pulled to a stop fifty yards away, and Hannah hadn't even heard it approaching. A man stepped out of the truck and started walking towards their car. There were many things about this man that screamed caution to Hannah, but none more so than the shotgun he carried.

Black whispered with enough force for it to be a hiss.

“Give me the gun, Hannah.”

“The hell I will.”

“I'm not going to hurt you,” he said. “Goddammit, I wish you would just believe that. This guy looks like a problem.”

Hannah turned her head again.
If someone was ever to film a version of
Deliverance
in the Pacific Northwest
, Hannah thought,
this guy would be in it
. The first thing she noticed was the man was broad and thick, carrying the kind of extra weight that suggested power rather than fat, like a linebacker. His beard was almost as long as the hair on his head, all of which appeared to have avoided the bite of a comb in weeks, maybe months. His small, dark eyes were set back behind high, puffy cheeks. The flannel and denim encasing him had faded into monochromatic shades.

He's a bear
, Hannah thought.
Grizzly
.

“Is he working for you, too?” she asked. Her grip on the gun did not loosen.

Black seemed to want to argue more but must have thought better of it. He called out to the man.

“Morning,” Black said.

The man kept walking without responding. As he got closer, he shifted the shotgun so he held it with both hands. It wasn't pointing at them. Yet.

“Can I help you?” Black said.

Black took a firm stance on the dirt road, right leg back, knee slightly bent.

Grizzly finally stopped walking as he reached the back of the car. His voice was soft, but Hannah could still make out his words through the open car door next to Black.

“Heard shots,” he said. “Gunfire.”

Hannah saw Grizzly's breath fog in the cold air, frothy vapor that dissipated as it rose past his meaty face.

“We're okay,” Black said. “Appreciate you checking, but everything's okay.”

Grizzly turned his head and saw Hannah in the car. She held up the gun, making sure he saw it, but pointed the barrel up. Grizzly gave her the slightest of nods.

Then he nodded at the broken window and the glass in the dirt.

“Don't suppose everything's okay at all.” With the calm of a hunter approaching his kill, Grizzly lowered the shotgun until the barrel pointed directly at Black.

Black held his hands up in the universal gesture of
take it easy, man
.

“It was an accident,” Black said. “We came out here so she could learn to use a gun. It accidentally went off.”

Grizzly smiled. What teeth he had left were the yellow of century-old newspaper.

“Inside a car? Mister, either you lying to me, or you the worst fuckin' teacher ever existed.”

Black leaned into the car. Hannah saw real concern on his face, and if this was all just another part of the storyline, then Black missed his calling as an actor. “Tell him everything's cool,” he told her.

“Stay lookin' at me, pretty boy.”

Black straightened back and faced him.

“She'll tell you. Honey, come on out of the car.”

Hannah did as she was told, but only because it would buy her a few more seconds to figure out what to do. She stood outside the passenger side opposite Grizzly and Black, leaving the door open. She looked down through the car window and
eyed the keys dangling in the ignition. She had to do something, anything, to get out of here, and maybe Grizzly was her chance.

“This man was trying to hurt me,” she said.

Black snapped his head to her from his side of the car, his eyes wide. “What are you doing?”

“Keep your hands up.” Grizzly now held up his shotgun. Tight. Controlled. Prey in sight.

“Look,” Hannah told Grizzly. “I just want to get out of here. This is my car. I just met this man last night, and…and I made a mistake. A big mistake.” She glanced over and Black shot her a look that scared her more than the blackness in Grizzly's eyes. “This morning I woke up with a gun in my face, and he drove me out here. I don't know what he was planning to do.”

The man grumbled. “‘Cept you're the one with the gun.”

“I was able to grab it from him when…when he stopped the car and tried to touch me.”

“Hannah,
what the hell
?” Black said. He half-turned toward her.

“I'm not gonna ask you again.” The man brought his shotgun up to eye level and took another step toward Black. “Stay facing me.”

Black spun back toward Grizzly. “Would you just let us talk for a minute?”

Grizzly then strolled casually up to Black and flipped the shotgun around, holding the butt of weapon in his right hand. Black seemed to realize at the last moment what was happening and swung at Grizzly, but his fist was ducked by a speed that Hannah wouldn't have afforded the large man. Black lost his balance and Grizzly struck, slamming the stock of the shotgun into Black's forehead.

Black crumpled to the ground.

“There,” the man said. “Problem solved.”

Hannah cringed at the sound of the impact and heard herself yelp.

“Little faggot,” Grizzly said to Black's motionless body.
“Don't know much about fighting, do you? Only know about talking. Real men fight back, not fall to the ground.” Grizzly laughed and then spit on the ground next to Black.

The words
real men
raised the hairs on Hannah's arms.

Hannah struggled to keep her cool despite knowing she'd been the cause for what just happened.
But wasn't this what you wanted?

“Well, thank you,” she said, wanting nothing more than to get in the car and drive away. But Grizzly was standing next to the driver-side door, looking directly at her over the car's rooftop. “What's your plan with him?”

“With him? Don't have a plan at all. Figured he'll wake up at some point, probably stumble along enough to find a ride somewhere.”

“Is he okay?” she asked.

“Do you care?”

Do you, Hannah?

“I guess not,” she said. “We went together to a party last night. If he's found dead, I was the last person he was seen with.”

Grizzly squinted at her for a moment as if trying to run her words through a lie detector. Then he bent down out of view for a few seconds before reappearing.

“He's breathing. Just gonna have a bitch of a headache when he comes around.”

Hannah hesitated before making the decision that it was okay to leave Black there. If he was alive, he'd be fine.
Not that you really care, do you, Hannah? You may have slept with him, but that was about control. Maybe a little comfort. You don't owe him anything, especially not after what he told you today. Even if he was telling the truth, even if he wasn't planning to kill you, he's still working for Dallin, and that's enough to leave him passed out on a cold dirt road
.

“I need to go now,” she said.

Grizzly chuckled, which sounded almost like a growl.

“So, you a party girl, huh?”

Hannah felt for the trigger with her finger.

“I'm going to leave now,” she said. To get to the driver's seat, she'd either have to walk around to where Grizzly was standing or climb across from the passenger side.

Grizzly started to walk around the back of the car. Hannah counteracted his motion, side-stepping around the front of the car.

“You're not going anywhere,” he said. “But you can certainly thank me. In fact, I have a few ideas of how you can do that.”

Hannah lifted the gun.

“Stay away from me.”

“Seems to me you were trying to shoot your boyfriend at close range and missed. Don't suppose your aim is gonna be much better at this length.” Grizzly lifted his shotgun and aimed it at her. “Now, I don't have that problem,” he said. “I'm a fine shot, and even if I wasn't, this shotgun just sprays buckshot all over the goddamn place. Hard to miss. From this distance I'm quite sure that pretty face of yours would end up in little bits and pieces on the ground.”

“I swear I'll shoot,” Hannah said.

“Go ahead. You shoot first.” She could see the smile peering at her from behind the stock of his gun. “If you miss, then it's my turn, okay? Or, you could put the gun down, we go back to my place for a little fun, then I'll bring you back to your car. No worse for the wear.” He laughed. “Okay, maybe a little worse, ‘cause I got a big dick, honey. And you're gonna have to take all of it. But least you'll be alive. Least that face will still be nice and smooth. Least you'll have—”

Hannah fired the gun.

It kicked in her hands, but she held firm and had lined up Grizzly in the sight while he'd been talking. She'd aimed for the chest but wasn't sure where the bullet had hit him.

But it definitely hit him.

Grizzly spun and dropped to the ground, first on one knee, then both, then rolling onto his back. He left his shotgun on the road where he'd dropped it, and used his hands to grab at his
stomach. He made a horrible sound, a horrid mixture of retching, wheezing, and moaning, the sound of a TV zombie.