You're Next (28 page)

Mike followed directions and asked no questions. He used the drive to iron out his thoughts, smoothing his resolve until it
was as uniform and unwavering as the road ahead. The Saab blazed over the Grapevine through Bakersfield and the long flat
tract of middle California, onion fields and truck stops, dust croppers feinting low over the 5 like something out of Hitchcock.
Skirting the edge of San Jose, they pushed north through Sacramento and kept on toward Redding.
That region of Northern California’s looking interesting
, Hank had observed, and Mike had a feeling that whatever Shep was steering him toward was going to make it more interesting
yet. The Cascades loomed into view, Lassen Peak rising to the east, Mount Shasta dead ahead, both summits dusted with snow.

Around the nine-hour mark, Shep said, ‘Exit here.’ Mike pulled off in Red Bluff and followed Shep’s instructions through the
old-fashioned downtown. ‘Left. Right. Your
other
right. Left. Park here.’

Before them a city registrar’s office occupied a single-story adobe building. The L-shaped parking lot was long and narrow,
hemmed in by concrete-block walls protecting apartment complexes on either side. It had exits on both ends, which could prove
useful depending on what was going to go down. Mike cocked an eyebrow, and Shep said, ‘Registrar’s a good place for a con
woman to work. Bogus building permits, fake deeds, notary stamps floating around.’

The Saab’s idle was so smooth the car might have been turned off. From the passenger seat, Shep had the better view of the
glass front door. The .357 pressed coolly against the small of Mike’s back. They sat. And they waited – 5:03
P.M
. . . . 5:07 . . .

Shep pointed. Sure enough, the woman Mike knew as Dana Riverton emerged. She’d kept the same bland look she’d used when she’d
met Mike at the café – librarian’s spectacles, conservative blouse, brown hair in no discernible cut. He wondered if she powdered
over the jailhouse tattoo on her thumb webbing every morning before reporting to work.

When Mike climbed out, Shep waited behind by some implicit understanding. The air felt cool against Mike’s cropped scalp.
He caught her a few steps from the door.

‘Kiki Dupleshney?’

She turned quickly. A half-second delay while she placed him. A few colleagues scooted past, and she shot them a nervous smile
even while her eyes blazed with anger. ‘You must have me confused with someone else.’ The others passed out of earshot, and
she fumbled a cigarette from her purse and lit up. ‘The fuck you want?’

‘Who hired you?’

She grinned sweetly and blew smoke in Mike’s face, her filter sporting a pink dimple of lipstick. She enunciated clearly,
accustomed to talking to idiots. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Why do they want to kill me and my daughter?’

‘Gee. Dunno.’

‘My wife is in intensive care,’ Mike said. ‘My daughter and I are on the run. You had a role in this.’

Kiki played an imaginary violin between thumb and forefinger. ‘That’s how the Darwin game goes. Sorry.’

‘I’m going to find the men threatening us,’ Mike said. ‘I’m going to stop them. And you’re going to help me.’ Kiki started
to walk away, but he grabbed her thick arm, hard. ‘No matter what
I have to do, I will put my family back together. Do you understand me?’

She ripped her arm free, spilling her purse. ‘I don’t give a fuck about your wife. And I don’t give a fuck if they
do
kill your daughter. But I’ll promise you this: If you don’t get out my face, I’ll scream for the cops.’

She crouched and started collecting her things from the asphalt.

Mike walked back to the Saab. Set his hands on the steering wheel. He was breathing hard and could feel the heat of Shep’s
stare on the side of his face.

Kiki finished stuffing items in her purse and continued on her way. She aimed her keys at the far end of the lot, and headlights
blinked on a maroon Sebring convertible. They watched her drop her purse in the backseat and flick her cigarette butt at a
row of trash cans behind the building. She climbed in, breeze blowing her hair, and touched up her lipstick in the rearview.

Mike reached up and clicked a button, and the sunroof whirred open.

‘Get out,’ he said.

Shep said, ‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

Shep shrugged and stepped out.

Mike dropped the pedal to the floor, leaving two streaks of rubber scorched into the asphalt. The Saab fishtailed but held
course, and Kiki was reversing out of her space when she looked up and shrieked. The Saab hit her at a straight perpendicular,
T-boning the Sebring and driving it into the retaining wall. The Saab’s air bag deployed with a sound like an upside-down
bowl hitting water. Concrete crumbled around the convertible, chunks spilling through the open top into the backseat. Steam
hissed up from the Saab’s wrinkled hood.

Mike shoved aside the air bag. His door was crumpled, so he pulled himself up through the sunroof. The two vehicles were
melded together. A continuous spray of wiper fluid shot in a poetic arc. Kiki lay flopped onto the steering wheel, the horn
blaring, her seat belt still unfastened. A spurt of blood darkened her upper lip.

Straddling the two cars, Mike hooked her beneath the chin, ripped her up out of her seat, and flung her onto the pavement.
He leaped down, grabbed her hair, and forced her face around to his. She was stunned, lipstick smeared down her chin, stockings
torn and bloody at the knees, hand cupped beneath her draining nose. He felt a revulsion for what he was doing, but it wasn’t
close to stopping him. He tugged the gun from his belt and pressed the muzzle to the front of her shoulder, where arm met
torso.

‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘Look at me.’

Her pupils rolled to meet his.

‘Do you care now?’

‘Unh?’ she said loosely.

‘Do you care now?’

She nodded against his grip. ‘Oh, God, yes, please stop.’

A few people had spilled out of the office, and tenants were at their windows in the apartment complex beyond the collapsed
wall. What surprised Mike in the face of all this was just how undaunted he felt.

He said, ‘Talk.’

‘I don’t know who they are I swear one big guy and a cripple never gave me a number or anything just showed up like fucking
ghosts found me by reputation I’m the best female operator in the area up here I got pending charges they said they could
get ’em wiped for me Jesus my nose—’

‘
And
?’

‘So they gave me a file with info and the whole play set up already for me to contact you as the will executor they wanted
me to confirm who you were they weren’t sure.’ She was panting, blood spraying her lips. ‘I have everything in the trunk there
there
go get it you can have it I swear to
God
that’s all I know.’ She tipped her hand, blood drooling between her fingers to the asphalt. ‘I need a doctor.’

The trunk had blown open from impact, the file box inside knocked upside down, trapping the folders in place. Mike found the
red-tabbed file quickly. Jotted across the front, upside down, was “
4YCH429
.”

He walked back around to Kiki. She was on all fours, coughing. He pointed at the file, ‘What’s this license plate?’

‘I wanted something in case they screwed me so when they drove away I wrote down the plate number of the truck but that was
before I learned how they are.’

‘It was a truck and not a van?’

‘It was a truck you can’t tell ’em they’ll kill me.’

Shep had vanished. A small crowd was forming by the door of the office, and a few of the younger workers were whispering,
looking like they were gathering their courage. The woman in the penthouse window across the way had a phone pressed to her
face; she recoiled from Mike’s stare, dropping to the floor. It would only be a matter of time before the cops rolled up.

‘I guess you got a lot to worry about, then.’ Mike paused over her. ‘If you warn them I’m coming, you will see me again.’

‘Okay.’ She wiped at her bloody nose. ‘Okay okay okay.’

File in hand, Mike stepped across the rubble through the hole in the wall and jogged along the side of the apartment complex.
When he dashed out into the street a block over, a ragged Pinto with a rusted hood wobbled up beside him right on cue. Shep
was hunched in the torn front seat like an elephant on a tricycle, the grocery bag with Mike’s things waiting in the passenger
foot well. Mike jumped in, and they motored away from the curb.

‘I didn’t think these things were still on the road.’

‘After what you did to that Saab,’ Shep said, ‘this is all you’re gonna get.’

The back of Mike’s forearm was streaked with blood, and,
wiping it, he realized that it wasn’t his own. He could feel it drying, a tightening on his skin.

Shep glanced down. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

‘Where are we?’

Boss Man’s voice through the phone was so clear he might have been sitting on the porch of the clapboard house next to William.
A hot-oil smell wafted over from the wrecking yard; when William and Hanley’s grandfather had built the house, he hadn’t factored
in wind patterns, so on some days the very walls seemed infused with burned tires and battery acid. The clear-as-hell afternoon
afforded a glimpse of Mount Shasta rising in the distance, speckled with an early snow.

‘Wingate’s a wanted man in his own right,’ William said. ‘The agencies are on alert. Anywhere he pops up, they’ll deliver
him straight to Graham.’

Behind him the rickety screen door banged and heavy footsteps creaked the boards. Dodge carried with him the musk of the cellar.
The mass of his shoulders bowed in a broad arc, he descended the steps and arrayed something on the crackly dead weeds of
the front lawn. He shuffled over toward the side of the house, clearing William’s view to the tools nestled in the weeds.
Ball-peen hammer. Needle-nose pliers. Metal shackles.

‘Even in his position, Graham can only do so much,’ Boss Man said. ‘The higher-profile this thing gets, the more cover smoke
he has to blow. And the more it costs.’

‘Well, that’s why Graham has Dodge and me, isn’t it? Once he gets a bead on Wingate and the girl, we’ll make them vanish from
all consideration.’

Trailing a black garden hose, Dodge moved back toward the weeds. Returned to the spout to crank on the water.

‘You left the smashed-up van behind,’ Boss Man said. ‘Can anyone trace it to you?’

‘Nah,’ William said. ‘Old license plates, no reg, VIN placard pried off the dash. If there’s one thing we know how to do,
it’s strip vehicles.’

‘But that’s
not
the one thing I hired you for.’

Splitting the stream with a thumb, Dodge sprayed down the tools.

‘No, sir.’ William moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. ‘Wingate’ll surface soon. You can’t hide with a kid. He
already tried to get her on an airplane to—’

‘You should’ve killed her when you had her in hand,’ Boss Man said.

‘We were gonna use her as a lure first. In the ’Raq, our boys handed out a lot of sniper rounds through the spinal cord. You
get someone down, screaming loud enough, and you can draw pretty much anyone out of the—’

‘Your uncle would’ve handled them on the spot,’ Boss Man said.

William bit his lips, overgrown stubble poking this way and that. A pulse beat in his neck, fluttering the sallow skin at
the side of his throat. His right arm jerked a little. ‘Maybe if the old man was more strategic, he’d be teeing off in Palm
Springs ’stead of slow-roasting in hell.’

But Boss Man wasn’t interested in clan history. ‘And the wife?’ he asked. ‘She’s our best path to him and the girl.’

‘She was transferred.’

A displeased pause. ‘Where?’

‘We looked high and low. Nothing. Graham’s running a computer search starting in Los Angeles
and circling out in a spiral, checking every—’

‘She was in critical condition. She can’t have moved far.
Every hospital within driving distance. Every one. Understand me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Apparently satisfied, Dodge coiled the hose again by the house. Leaving the tools to dry below, he sat on the porch steps
beside William and resumed reading the graphic novel he’d left facedown. The pear-shaped bruise on the side of his neck was
changing from blue to purple.

‘Where are you?’ Boss Man asked.

William said, ‘We came back to base to ready a few things, but we’re good to deploy as soon as the bell rings.’

‘I suggest you figure out how to ring that bell yourself.’

Dial tone.

William set down the phone and spit a scattering of seeds across the porch steps. The wind picked up, sending dead leaves
rattling across the uneven boards. But aside from that, silence. The house wasn’t the same without Hanley.

Still buried in the comic, Dodge turned the page, a rare smile twitching his lips. William glanced over at the facing page,
where a scrawny guy with Orphan Annie eyes wearing a wife-beater exclaimed, “
Knife to the Eye!
”

William thought about what he’d just told Boss Man:
You can’t hide with a kid
. Using the railing, he pulled himself creakily to his feet. ‘Wingate got that file. He knows we’re watching everyone who’s
ever been connected to him. I say he parks the girl somewhere safe. Let’s check State Children Services.’

Dodge blinked twice and swiveled his head back over to his graphic novel.

William said, ‘No – wait. Too obvious. And he’d want her below the radar.’ Behind them the leaves kept scraping along the
boards of the porch.

Dodge set aside the comic, lumbered down the stairs, and began towel-drying his tools with the oversize hankie he kept stuffed
in a pocket. His attention was loving, absolute.

A scud of wispy clouds had materialized from nowhere to confer a halo on Mount Shasta’s glorious peak. ‘He’s a foster kid
himself,’ William said. ‘He’ll go back to his roots.’ He spit into the weeds and turned for the door. ‘Let’s start checkin’
foster homes.’