by Nora Kane
“It's a tempting offer, but I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend for dinner. It should be a good time, except for the part when he asks me how my day was and I leave out the part where I found a dead body.”
Marv lowered his head. “Sorry I got you involved. I should have known if Mal was involved it was going to be trouble. It always is with that guy.”
Margot wished she could tell him differently.
“Do me a favor, Margot? Leave this alone. I don’t want you ending up in the workshop freezer. ”
“You fired me, remember?”
“Yeah, I did, but you seem the stubborn type.”
“Don’t worry, I’m out. Knowing Mal, he’s going to show up in the next couple of days anyway, acting like nothing ever happened. Maybe for him nothing really did.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Odds are I am,” Margot told him, even though she had trouble believing it.
She got in her car, wondering if she had meant it when she’d said she was out. She’d just put the car in reverse when she saw a Ford Bronco speeding towards the parking lot. The SUV never slowed down as it hit the curb. It jumped the sidewalk and plowed into Margot’s Prius.
She had her seatbelt on and managed to cover her head and take her foot off the brake so her car would be knocked backward instead of getting crushed. Still, the impact flipped her over and sent the car sliding on its roof across the parking lot. She was hanging upside down with her head against the crushed roof of her car. If she’d been taller, her head would have been as crumpled and mangled as the top of her car.
She looked over and saw the boots. She’d seen them before. Either the person who hit her had the same taste in footwear as Deputy Brantley or Brantley himself was limping toward her car getting ready to finish her off.
She heard the gunfire and through the cracked window she saw the man in the boots stumble. Margot figured Marv was shooting at him. If it was Brantley, she figured he’d still be wearing a Kevlar vest. She hoped Marv had gone for the head, but then Brantley kneeled and she could see that he hadn’t. Brantley's right arm swung around revealing the H&K submachine gun in his hand. He fired in a wide arc in Marv’s direction. Margot hoped he got out of the way.
Her purse with the gun had been on the passenger seat, but now she couldn’t see it anywhere. Outside, Brantley fired some at someone Margot couldn’t see while she undid her belt and dropped to the ceiling of her car. She looked back to see Brantley reload his weapon and swing it her way.
She scrambled to the passenger door. The crumpled metal made it impossible to open, so she drove her elbow into the cracked window. It fell away and Margot rolled out of the overturned car as Brantley sprayed it with machine gunfire. While she ducked down, Margot saw her purse lying by the back window. It had been unzipped when she set it down, so the contents were spilled out. She couldn’t see the gun, but the mace was right by the window.
Like the window she had broken, it was covered in a spider web pattern of cracks. Margot drove her heel into the window and the glass fell away. She snagged the mace as Brantley came around the corner.
Margot scrambled away just ahead of Brantley’s bullets. She ran around to the back of the Prius, stopped, and put her back against the trunk. Over by his tipped over bike, she could see Marv on the ground. He wasn’t moving and his pistol was laying by his hand.
Brantley came around the car and Margot grabbed his gun. She knew she couldn’t overpower him, even though he had to be weaker than before. Margot pushed the gun away just enough so the volley of slugs she fired didn’t come her way and then sprayed his face with the mace.
She was hoping for the chemical spray to debilitate him enough so she could twist the gun out of his hands and use it against him. While it definitely caused him some serious pain, however, it never loosened his grip on the machine gun.
He punched her across the temple while she was trying to dislodge the gun from his grip. The blow spun her around and sent her to the ground face first. If Brantley could see, she would have been a goner, but he was still trying to get the burning chemical out of his eyes. He couldn’t take aim even though she was only a few feet away.
Margot ran to the other side of her car again while Brantley tried to blink away the mace. She looked through the window again but couldn’t find her gun. Margot could hear sirens in the distance but didn’t think they would arrive before Brantley recovered enough to shoot her. If she decided to run, she’d have to make it a long way before she could find any cover. The odds of getting a bullet in the back were high.
“Come on Margot, why make this so difficult on both of us?” Brantley said.
The fact he was talking made it seem like he was recovering quickly. The alligator back patter on the window didn’t make it easy to see inside, so she kicked in that window as well.
“You can’t run or hide. Margot. Why don’t you quit being such a stubborn bitch?”
Margot crawled in the car and found the gun. She could see Brantley’s boots moving by the back of the car. He was coming around to finish her off. She shot him in the foot as he moved past her. He fell on his back and sat up pointing the machine gun her way. Margot shot him in the face twice. He fell back as he pulled the trigger, shredding the trunk of the Prius as he fell.
Chapter 7
Margot sat up on the hospital bed. Just doing that made her dizzy. She had suffered a concussion and lost a lot of blood, though not from bullet wounds or she would probably be resting in the morgue instead of a hospital bed. The knock on her head had bled a lot but she’d also cut up her elbow and her ankle busting out her car windows. The adrenaline rush of avoiding getting cut in half by machine-gun fire had kept her from noticing. When she’d realized Brantley's last volley had gone over her head she had relaxed and ended up passing out from the loss of blood.
“Maybe you should lay back down,” Radcliff told her. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but she knew he had been there when she woke up.
She smiled at Radcliff, told him, “Just give me a second,” and then found the remote that adjusted the bed and raised up the back so she had something to lean against. Once she did that, the dizziness went away and Margot almost felt like herself again.
“You don’t have to sit up on my account,” Radcliff told her. “You took quite the beating.”
“Yeah? I’m feeling better though. Besides, you should have seen the other guy.”
“I did, it wasn’t pretty, but I have to admit I liked seeing it all the same. I would have sworn coyotes ate that bastard.”
“Shaw thought the same thing. To be honest, I was leaning toward that as well. Turns out it was wishful thinking.”
“People don’t usually get up after being shot five times.”
“Yeah, though it looks like only four actually broke the skin.”
“He won’t be getting back up this time.”
“If I’d shot him in the head last time, I would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. How’s Marv?”
“Better than his bike and a whole lot better than those three guys on ice back at their clubhouse.”
“Seriously, how is he? He saved my life back there.”
“Well, his chopper took most of the bullets and he knocked himself out cold when he fell down.”
“Most of the bullets?”
“Unfortunately, not all of them. They took a lot of bullets out of him and sewed him back up. He’s got a fighting chance and I’ve got a feeling that dude is a fighter.”
“He’s going to be pissed I told you guys about the clubhouse. That one was supposed to stay between the two of us.”
“Yeah, but I’m glad you did. Failing to report a triple homicide would be considered a felony and while I like the way things are going with you and me, I’d have a hard time overlooking that.”
“Yeah, that would be asking a little much,” Margot agreed. She couldn’t help thinking how he had delayed taking in Dean Stone the day Mal had tried to kill S
tone for the cartel. Radcliff was a straight-laced guy and he had already stepped over the line for her. He’d nearly got himself killed in the process. Margot had decided at the time that she’d never ask him for that kind of favor again.
“I’m not going to ask what you would have done if Brantley hadn’t shown up.”
“I’d have done the right thing.”
Radcliff looked like he was going to ask her what she meant by the right thing but decided he didn’t want to know. Instead, he told her, “Marv will have to get over it. If you hadn’t put two in Brantley’s skull, I suspect he would have made sure Marv didn’t get that fighting chance. Until you and Shaw came along, I don’t think Brantley left many witnesses. I get the feeling he was thorough.”
“You think there are more bodies out in the desert other than Randy and his mother?”
“I know there are. It’s too good of a place to bury bodies for there not to be. I’d make an educated guess that a fairly high number belong to Deputy Brantley.”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
“Probably not.”
“So, do you think he was ‘the cowboy’ Mal was talking about?”
“It makes sense. He certainly dressed the part and he certainly worked for the cartel. I’d say he showed himself to be very determined and he took things personally. He could have been long gone, but instead, he stuck around to try to take you out.”
“Is it possible all this cartel shit is over?”
“I think it might be. Would have been easier to let Mal kill Dean Stone.”
“Maybe, but maybe not. You wouldn’t have let him just walk.”
“No, I wouldn’t have.”
“I don’t suppose anyone has found Mal?”
“No.”
“Any idea how three dead bikers ended up on ice?”
“One theory is it was Brantley who came looking for Mal and killed them.”
“But not Mal?”
“Mal either got away and has stayed away, or—the more likely scenario—Brantley took him somewhere to kill him slowly.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I don’t either, but that doesn’t make it false. The other theory is Mal killed them, probably because they were sent by Manny to pick him up and take him to Brantley.”
“Which would mean Mal acted in self-defense.”
“He’d have an argument.”
“Why would Manny do that?”
“The cartel asked him to? The word is that Manny and Racers are in deep. Or, more likely, Brantley approached them since the new leadership was supposed to forget about you and Mal. They might have known him as a cartel enforcer, so if he asked them to bring them Mal, they probably wouldn’t question it.”
Margot thought about the other room that looked like it had been occupied recently and the bandages in the trash can.
“That might explain how Brantley disappeared. The Racers might have put him up.”
“Could be.”
Margot was silent for a moment before she said, “I’ve got a feeling Manny gave me up.. One of his lackeys went out of his way to delay us leaving. It didn’t seem out of character for him to act that way, but it makes sense now. I don’t see how else he would have known we were there.”
“He could have been tailing you.”
“Unlikely. He would have had to pick me up at my place since I didn’t advertise I was going to the clubhouse with Marv. Then he would have had to trail us through the desert where it’s not hard to spot a tail if you’re looking for it.”
“And you were looking for it.”
“Always. After all the crap I’ve been through, I can’t not do it anymore. I can tell you, if he was on me the whole time, he missed some easier opportunities. He could have ran Marv and I off the road while I was on the back of his bike multiple times. Someone had to have tipped him to where we were. The only person that could have done that was Manny.”
“Makes sense. Just because it makes sense though, doesn’t mean it’s easy to prove.”
“Did you find a phone on him?”
“We did. I’m guessing given the brand and everything, it was one he was planning to get rid of soon after he took care of you. It would have been nice if Manny’s number was on there, but all of them belong to pay-as-you-go phones that are burners as well. We can tell the calls are local; it could have Manny, but they couldn’t narrow it down enough to say so definitively. The time of the calls makes sense though for someone tipping him off about your location. Trust me, if we can nail Manny, we will.”
“If Marv and I hadn’t been talking in the parking lot, he never would have made it to us.”
“It’s better not to think about that kind of stuff. Maybe if you and Marv don’t talk he runs you off the road somewhere else and things don’t go your way. You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have considered that a guy with alleged cartel connections might do me wrong.”
“It’s easy to say that in hindsight. If I were you, I might have done the same.”
“In hindsight, I should have never gone looking for Mal.”
“Yeah, if you’d asked beforehand, I would have said not to do it. Mal seems to draw trouble. If you were missing, however, I’d look for you…even though more than one person would tell me not to.”
“Are you saying I draw trouble?”
Radcliff shook his head and laughed. “You’re in the hospital recovering from a shootout on a public street. I’d say the evidence points to yes!”
Margot couldn’t argue with him.
After a few minutes of silence, she said, “You know what the big problem is? Mal’s still missing.”
“Yeah, but maybe let me worry about that one. I don’t want to have to visit you in a hospital or a jail cell for at least a couple of weeks. Let’s face it, when you start running around the desert, both of these seem best-case scenarios. Maybe you should take some time and enjoy being alive with the cowboy out of your life.”
“You know, maybe I’ll do that.”
“Can I make another suggestion while you’re drugged up and still weak?”
“Are you going to say something a stronger, less drugged up, me might punch you for?”
“It’s very possible.”
“You’ve got my curiosity up now. Go ahead and say it. I won’t do anything now, but I’m not making any promises for later.”
“Your sister has been here a lot. Unfortunately, you were asleep for most of it, but she’s coming back tonight. She’s going to ask you about seeing your dad.”
“Did she tell you why I don’t want to see him?”
“She did. It sounds valid to me, but I agree with her.”
“You think I should forgive too?”
“Nope, just see him. If she’s right, there won’t be another chance.”
“What if I’m fine with that?”
“Well, if you decide you’re not fine with it later, there won’t be anything you can do about it. Even if you just want to tell him to go to hell, you’re running out of chances.”
“You’re right.”
