“So I just let her believe it for a while, but good god, she got so smug about it! She carried that stupid lockbox around with her everywhere. I swear to god, I kept wishing she would kill herself, would’ve saved me the trouble—”
She stops and looks at Todd wide-eyed, locking eyes with him for the first time, and now he knows why she avoided it before. There’s nothing human left in them. She knew that if she let him look into her eyes, he would see the void, the blank darkness, and figure it out.
“I—I mean,” she stammers, hands shaking.
After a moment, her hands relax. “Fine. Fuck it. I did it. I choked that bitch out. She knew she had it coming, and she’s lucky I let it go on for as long as it did.” As she regains her composure, she twists back into the snake, but rather than small and defensive, she looks coiled and hungry. Maintaining eye contact as much as possible, Todd slowly reaches out, stops the recording, and sends the file to Remy.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” says Todd. He leaves his phone behind to show that he’s not simply going to call the cops. When he walks away, she still looks like some foul, predatory creature from the pits of hell.
Todd walks into the café from which they just got their coffee and flags down the barista.
“Hey, how many times have you seen that girl I came in with?” he asks.
“Never, in all the time I’ve been here,” he says.
“How long is that?” Todd asks.
“Six years this December.”
The other lies he could understand, but why lie about being a regular?
Because this is exactly where she wants me, he realizes.
He should have brought his phone with him.
Twenty-Six
Creed
Creed fiddles with the corner of the page but pays it no attention. His nerves tighten as he watches Todd stand up and walk back into the café. Even from afar, he has noticed that Ginger is much more a wild card than he could have anticipated, and he thus worries about the number of directions this whole ordeal might take.
But, as he promised Todd he would, he sits tight and tries not to focus on the tenuous fragility of the forthcoming events, instead prodding his mind in the direction of potential escape routes, should he need one. Doorways, alleys, fences, and climbable exterior walls congeal into a messy sort of road map in Creed’s mind as he scans the courtyard through the window.
Even with his distraction, however, Ginger’s slightest movements seize and lock his gaze back on her, almost against his will. He watches as she pulls a small object out of her purse, removes the lid of Todd’s cup, pours something into it, replaces the lid, and stows the item away, all within the space of about eight seconds.
He sets his book down—subtlety be damned if it means Todd is in danger—and unlocks his phone, desperately pulling up Todd’s number. Even as he does so, however, he sees Ginger pick up Todd’s phone—he must have forgotten it when he left for the bathroom—and, presumably, shut it off. Indeed, as Creed watches his frantic text message on his own screen, the delivery report remains unconfirmed.
Creed’s heart thuds more violently in his chest as he feels the heat, the life, draining from his skin, as though his core has morphed into a tiny black hole, sucking the vitality from him with ruthless fervor. The ‘what-if’ machine in his brain kicks into overdrive, but promptly sputters to a hissing stop as he tries to visualize a feasible solution.
As if he has turned into a beacon of fear, Ginger turns slowly and looks straight at him, smiling a wicked smile. If possible, Creed’s veins turn even more frigid, as he realizes: This has been her plan all along. She’s confident, careful, and precise. And she’s not alone. Just as Creed is here, hidden in plain sight (or so he thought) as Todd’s backup, any number of the passersby could be just that for Ginger.
But how many? Who are they, and where? And more importantly, would they be susceptible to diversion, if Creed were to manage to cook one up?
Before any conclusively beneficial plan comes to mind, he spots Todd walking back toward his table from the café’s front entrance. He sits down and picks up his drink. Creed stands up, making for the exit, but the most enormous person he’s ever seen obstructs his path. He stands at least six-foot six, and is built solidly, like a tree trunk. He glowers at Creed and spreads out his arms, which are as big as small logs themselves. He’s wearing a nasty sneer, barely visible underneath a poorly kempt mustache. He sports a too-small black tee shirt and jean shorts that expose his legs, thick and pallid and sturdy. Creed is quick and agile, but the combination of surprise and the man’s sheer size prevent him from routing an effective path to and out the door.
Creed glances—for as long as he dares—back out toward the courtyard and sees Todd holding his paper cup, sloshing it about as he talks animatedly. So, Creed does the only thing he can think to do: he kicks the giant in the groin and pushes him backward with all his might.
The man looses a howl, but it morphs into a wail as he tumbles backward through the glass door. The glass doesn’t break, at first. Instead, the door absorbs the colossal weight of the man and flings open with mighty force, then the glass shatters upon colliding with a bike rack. The tinkling of broken glass is just barely audible over a passerby’s scream and the huge man’s howling (which has dulled to a raspy roar and now transitions gracelessly into a growl).
Creed looks up from the sprawling mass of human in front of him to Todd, whose coffee cup sits safely on the table. He watches as Todd assesses the moment and stands, staring Ginger down in an intimidating manner that Creed would never have expected Todd capable of.
A few seconds pass—or possibly minutes; it’s hard to tell—before the pivotal moment takes any sort of direction. But just as abruptly as time halted, it lurches into motion once again, with all the vicious potency it had a minute ago.
He stumbles over the mound of a man in the doorway and approaches Todd and Ginger. Just before he reaches their table, Ginger lets loose a shrill screech and, in an instant, she morphs from a perilous she-devil into a whimpering child. Her eyes swim with tears, her lip quivers, and she draws her arms in toward her midsection defensively. The familiar hush washes once again over the courtyard, this time with the people’s attention directed hostilely at Todd and Creed. It dawns on Creed, now, exactly how the scene looks to passersby: Two grown men, looking angry or at least frustrated, standing square, fists clenched, with a small, pretty woman who’s cowering and shrieking in fear.
Todd eases up on his intimidating scowl, softening up again. Creed unclenches his fists and folds his arms, placing his weight on one leg in a desperate effort to seem casual and unbothered. The eyes of maybe thirty bystanders still rest upon them, during which Creed swears he can hear Todd’s and Ginger’s minds whirring at equal paces, both trying to route into a checkmate without surrendering his or her own king. Ginger capitalizes on Creed’s and Todd’s inability to do anything (without incurring the wrath of the odd courageous onlooker, at least) by simply retreating. She gets to her feet, flashes them one more devilish smile (or does Creed imagine that?) and flees to the east, down an alley between a dry cleaner and a jewelry store, her steps punctuated by the odd sob.
Todd puts his hands in the air and looks down in a surrendering manner, and Creed follows his lead. Some of the surrounding people shake their heads in disgust or whisper to one another, but after a minute, the commotion dies down and one might never know anything happened.
“What now?” asks Creed.
However, Todd needn’t answer, as the next step manifests in the form of perhaps half a dozen men entering the plaza from various directions. Some are armed with guns, but a few only have a baseball bat or a crowbar. Creed knows well that he could easily maneuver past the ones without firearms, but doesn’t know how well Todd would be able to do so.
“This way,” Todd says before beginning to weave through tables and patrons, moving southward.
Whether due to luck or a profound lack of plann
ing on the part of the adversary, they’ve consolidated their armed stooges at the north end, which means that the men approaching from the south side can only be as effective as they are fast, and judging by their physiques, Creed suspects Todd isn’t encumbered by an excess of worry in that regard.
Creed follows Todd out through the crowd, both of them keeping attentive eyes on the men running (or hastily waddling) toward them, weapons in hand. In any other circumstance, Creed might trust the bystanders to intervene somehow, but as they were just painted as the bad guys a minute ago, he figures they probably won’t receive much aid this time around.
Todd and Creed reach the threshold of the food court, thus escaping the forest of tables and chairs. As the two emerge, though, two of the three men in that direction have also reached the same place. Creed ducks the swing of a bat and rolls through, then looks back in time to see the other guy move in with an overhead strike aimed at Todd.
Creed’s heart sinks for a second—he’s not close enough to intervene—but Todd makes it apparent that he doesn’t need his help, as Todd himself lunges in toward the man, blocks the strike at his wrist, and plunges his fist into the assailant’s midsection. The man lets out a strained Mmph! before doubling over and falling to his knees. The man with the crowbar winds up for another strike, looking much like a baseball player, and Todd gives him much the same treatment as the first attacker, stepping in close to nullify the power of the strike, but this time aiming his punch at the face rather than the midsection. The crowbar clangs to the ground as its former wielder yelps in pain and reels backward, blood streaming down his face and over his chins.
Without missing a beat, Todd sidesteps the guy and follows Creed. The would-be third attacker from that side of the plaza is nowhere to be seen; perhaps he realized he has no chance against Todd and fled to safety.
A wide opening gapes at the south end, glowing with a bright contrast to the shady food court, welcoming them out of the arms of danger and into those of potential freedom. They zip through and around the corner, heading east; they daren’t return to the car before being sure that they’re safe.
The two hurry onward, but their momentum is jolted when the sound of gunfire cracks the air, two quick shots followed by a mess of chaotic yelling. Creed looks back at Todd, who reveals no intention of stopping or turning back, and they race onward, seeking whatever form of asylum they can take advantage of.
After a minute, they spot the shady refuge of an alley cutting into the exterior perimeter of the plaza. They duck inside it to catch their breath and regroup.
His heightened adrenaline makes it seem to Creed like one might be able to listen closely from anywhere within a mile and hear their heavy breathing and pounding hearts.
“Do you think anyone got hurt?” Creed says between breaths.
“No,” says Todd. “No sirens. There are probably cops on the way, but no sirens.”
Creed nods. He and Todd stand crouched, taking turns puncturing the relative quiet with their breaths until they gain more control over their respiration. It feels like several minutes, but Creed reminds himself that it’s probably only two, three tops.
“What now?” says Creed for the second time in a five-minute span. He has a vague awareness of the logical facets of his mind, buzzing around like a mosquito, telling him that the correct course of action is to stay put until the threat dissipates. However, his body is pulsing, vibrating with the need to do something. To fight or flee, as it is.
Todd pulls out his phone—apparently, he had the presence of mind to snatch it up during all of the commotion before, when the giant man tumbled through the glass.
“Remy hasn’t opened the message I sent him, but he has received it,” says Todd.
“What did you send him?”
“The audio recording I took with Ginger. I figured she’d probably try to delete it as soon as she got the chance, and I had every reason to let her fall into that sense of security. So I removed the lock on my phone for a minute and told her I was going to the bathroom.”
Creed is impressed with Todd’s quick and smooth thinking, but any praise or commendation for it will have to wait; a casual set of footsteps approaches and a figure halts at the end of the alley, at first silhouetted against the early afternoon sunlight beyond their shadowy sanctum.
“Call it fate, chance, whatever,” says a sultry female voice, “that we should have been pushed together after all this time.”
Creed’s eyes are still adjusting to the sudden dimness, but the voice is unmistakable: Ginger Garrity.
“What do you mean?” asks Todd.
“Oh come now, don’t pretend you don’t see it. Feel it. Know it.”
Creed suspects that the message is directed at Todd.
“Dear old Dad gets put in jail by the oh-so-heroic good guys, and they don’t even have the decency to acknowledge his daughter?”
“Dad? Who, Keroth?” says Todd. His eyes widen and his brow furrows in a simultaneous flash, like someone who just found out that the cook spat in his food.
Ginger doesn’t answer, instead raising a single eyebrow and lifting the crook of her mouth just the slightest bit. Clearly, this is a satisfying moment for her.
“When you first called me,” she says, shifting her gaze to Creed, “I was panicked. I thought maybe I had been found out, that I was going to jail. But I talked to some of Daddy’s old friends, and they were very interested that people would be asking about that mess all these years later. After all, they worked so hard to cover it up back then. They didn’t want all of their toiling to have been in vain, now, did they?”
“What? You, too? How are you people so goddamn everywhere?” says Todd.
“I wouldn’t say everywhere, no. But you people certainly have a way of sniffing us out, don’t you?”
Creed thinks he detects just a note of irritation, possibly even anger, in her voice. This is good; If they can push her over the edge, thus separating her cognitive facilities from their usual stoic pilots, Ginger will become less of a threat—less predictable, but also less potent.
“We go where the wind blows us,” says Todd. “I guess it’s a habit of ours to get tangled up in shit along the way.”
Ginger’s breathing intensifies and her hand flees to her hip. Creed becomes abruptly aware that she may be armed now, a calculated step in her careful plan to deliver her idea of justice to Todd and Creed. For now, though, her hand remains stationary, hovering a few inches above her hip, ready to reach for her weapon and draw it like a nervous cowboy.
“You guys just have to ruin everything!” she shouts.
They’ve succeeded in ushering her out of the realm of rational thinking and into that of delirium, but with the knowledge that she’s armed, Creed finds himself second-guessing the plan to incite an emotional reaction. Their current situation is a delicate one indeed, a rough-around-the-edges stallion edging on the thin border that separates its wild, unruly side with its newly developed domesticated one, and Creed knows that Todd will handle the reins to this beast much more masterfully than Creed could ever hope to.
“Keroth is your father?” says Todd. His voice is an intriguing combination of sweet and smooth and bold and confident, like a seasoned pastry chef’s famous caramel topping enveloping her latest work. “I thought all of his family lived with him.”
Ginger scoffs. Her hand twitches, but goes right back to where it began. “All of the family he wanted people to know about,” she says. “I was the bastard child. When he was in his thirties, he had quite a wild sex streak—no surprise to you two, I’m sure—and he ended up sleeping with a prostitute during a weekend of partying. He thought nothing of it, of course. Neither did she. Until she found out she was pregnant with me.”
“Did this happen often?” asks Todd. Creed picks up on his strategy: stall until either some help shows up or a visible crack in her defenses is available for exploitation.
“Plenty,” says Ginger. Her rage seems to have been replaced w
ith a sort of petty spite toward Keroth, which is much more malleable than the former. “Thing is, most of them bugged him until he paid them off and told them to shut up. Most of them got enough money for an abortion and a few years’ worth of vacation.”
“But not your mother?” says Todd.
“No. She wanted more. She wanted love. She spent her life trying to reunite me with him, trying to force a relationship, but it wasn’t happening. I didn’t really care about him at first, but in the end, he came through. Probably it was just because my mom had gotten sick and he knew he wouldn’t really have to commit, but he started visiting. And he paid all of her medical bills. All of them. She didn’t have insurance, and I didn’t have a dime. But he took care of us.”
“So now what, you have a dutiful obligation to avenge him now that he’s in jail?” Todd’s words border dangerously on antagonistic, but his calm, controlled tone keeps them carefully in line.
Ginger laughs, a shrill needle of a sound puncturing the air. “Sure, he doesn’t want to be in jail. I mean, it’s not ideal. But do you think he would be there if it weren’t by his choice? Attorneys, judges, jurors, they can be contacted, bribed, coerced. You can’t. Remy can’t. He knew he had to cut his losses and be safe for a while before doing anything more.
“He underestimated you. You and your people did a good job at cornering him, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he was caught. He also knew it was more likely he’d be caught by Remy than by the police, and Remy almost certainly would’ve killed him. It was a means to an end. Not ideal, certainly, but don’t fool yourself into thinking he slipped up and got caught by accident. Surely, you can’t be that naïve.”
Creed hears more yelling from the courtyard, followed by the echo of a clanking, clattering commotion. Both noises cease before Ginger seems to notice them.
“It was a matter of resources. When it was Daddy versus Remy, he had all of his guys at his disposal. But Remy cut him off from his resources, isolated him. Daddy tried to do the same to Remy, but there were two problems. The first was that Remy was so used to being alone already. He never operated with an army under his command, so there was no army to strip him of. The second problem was you and Beth. See, even later on, after he identified you two as Remy’s supporting cast, he couldn’t find a way to separate you three. He had Beth kidnapped and you two found and rescued her. He tried sending someone for you in the hospital, but you were watched constantly.”
Thunder Falls Page 23
