by Candice Fox
‘He’s not . . .’ Celine said. ‘He’s not a killer . . .?’
‘Like I said. Nothing confirmed. There are just unanswered questions. Blank spaces.’ Trinity shrugged. ‘That’s what you get with confidence men. Part of the picture. Never all of it.’
Celine looked at her hands sitting folded in her lap.
‘What are we going to do to Kerry Monahan that hasn’t been done to her already?’ Celine asked. ‘You threatened to shoot the girl in the hand, Trinity, and she gave up nothing.’
‘She’ll talk for us,’ Trinity said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re going to pull a con.’ Trinity smiled, exposing a chipped front tooth. ‘Of course.’
CHAPTER 42
Mistakes happened in war, Silvia reminded herself. Battles were full of failures, overestimations, accidents. It was human nature, especially in the face of a prolonged engagement – that exhaustion caused by nervousness and eagerness for triumph made soldiers, even highly trained soldiers, stumble. She leaned on the counter of the snow cone food truck and watched the first tendrils of Christmas morning light creeping along the windows of the empty Planet Hollywood hotel across the ice rink.
For a few hours, the radio at her elbow by the syrup pumps had been playing reports of the discovery of the bodies of the three police officers they had murdered at the last roadblock into Vegas. The clean-up after the shooting had been a real rush job. There hadn’t been time to bury the bodies. The earth was too hard, too dry. She and Clara and Willis and Burke had driven the bodies and the two cruisers out onto the plains, found a crevice and rolled the cars in. But the second cruiser had hit a rock shelf and wedged itself half-in, half-out of the hole, the rear bumper visible for miles around. Burke had taken it all pretty well. He was focused on the plan, on the steps ahead, on getting back on track. But Silvia felt terrible. It had been her slip-up with the rope tattoo that had caused the whole detour. She’d almost sunk what would be the most glorious event in the struggle of The Camp and the Aryan nation it served.
It had been a fluke, just getting on the team in the first place. She learned, after Burke recruited her, that he’d already had a sniper lined up for Day One of the plan, an ex-military guy from Hawaii who had written to Burke in prison. When he’d backed out, Silvia was called in by her team leader at The Camp to talk in confidence about a mission to further the cause of the brotherhood. Silvia had been teaching sharp-shooting and hunting skills at The Camp to new recruits for only three months. Her leader wanted to know if she could hit a moving target at more than eight hundred yards. Whether she’d be willing to kill for their cause. Silvia knew there were better shooters than her, even in the intake she had been instructing at the time. But Burke was looking for someone who could live up to their word. Who could keep a secret. Who could follow orders. Someone who would show eagerness. Her team leader suggested to Silvia that some of her more visible white power tattoos might have to go if she was going to be a part of the plan. She’d made a booking and had her first laser treatment for the removal of the lightning bolt tattoo from her shoulder that afternoon.
She’d had eight tattoos removed in total. She figured the rope tattoo was far enough up her forearm, and obscure enough, that she could keep it.
‘Idiot,’ she whispered aloud. The sound of her voice stirred Reiter from a sickly slumber on the food truck floor. The prisoner lay out of view of the serving window with his arms twisted behind his back, secured with cable ties, and his knees and ankles duct-taped together. The duct tape across his mouth was folded in the middle where he had been sucking it between his lips, probably trying to dampen the glue. The fentanyl in his system would make him drool like crazy, Silvia had heard. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of him, but counselled herself that the alternative was worse. She and Willis had been in charge of toileting the captive from the moment he was picked up at Pronghorn, through the journey to the safehouse, from the safehouse to Vegas. Now that they were at their destination, there was no need to bother anymore. Reiter was never going to leave the truck. He would die here, inside the tin walls, in a spectacular fireball created by the gas tanks that lined the cabin around him.
Silvia leaned on the counter again and looked at the ice rink. The first morning skaters were arriving, some of them wearing what looked like brand-new skates probably freshly opened that morning from under Christmas trees. People were assembling around the ice, smiling, rosy-cheeked. Soon the stage would fill with pretty carollers from the Saint Agnes Catholic Girls’ School. Those little girls would just be opening their mouths to sing the first chorus of something merry and beautiful, Silvia dreamed, when Burke burst out of the truck and mowed them down. While his primary target was the girls, the painfully adorable angels in their fluffy costumes strung with silver bells, he was going to rake the panicked crowd with as many bullets as he could before heading back towards the truck. The smoke from the explosion would mask him slipping into the car that Clara and Willis would pull alongside the back doors when the shooting began. The police would find Reiter’s charred remains in the driver’s seat of the truck and, if all went to plan, the rest of the world was going to wake to find their Christmas morning cartoons interrupted with a special news bulletin containing photographs of twelve murdered white babies and a Black man’s mugshot right next to them.
And then, Silvia thought, the war. The beautiful war.
Burke the commander of the new world. Silvia in his inner circle.
Burke opened the back doors of the truck and slipped in. Silvia moved away from the counter, straightened her spine, awaiting commands.
‘It’s time to get him dressed,’ Burke said.
Silvia nodded. She pulled the serving window of the truck closed and went to a backpack sitting behind the driver’s seat. She pulled a black ski mask and a pair of black tinted tactical goggles out. As Burke pulled on his own black ski mask, rolling it into a beanie on top of his head, Silvia pulled her mask onto a struggling, groaning Anthony Reiter.
‘Urgh,’ she groaned. ‘His head’s sweaty.’
‘I saw some of the little girls arriving,’ Burke said as he worked. ‘White satin dresses. I thought they might wear red, like in last year’s calendar.’
‘It’s going to be so beautiful,’ Silvia said. ‘All of it.’
‘As long as there are no more fuck-ups.’ Burke shot her a warning glance.
‘There won’t be.’
They crouched together in the small gap between the gas bottles and the stainless steel cupboards that lined the food truck’s interior, surveying Reiter’s get-up, his black T-shirt, jeans, boots. An exact match to what Burke was wearing.
Silvia counted silently to three, then said it.
‘Burke,’ Silvia said. ‘When history looks back on this moment, when it’s finally revealed after the war that it was you and me here, preparing like this, I . . .’
The words came in a flurry, then abruptly ran out. Burke was watching her, his eyes hard and his lips taut.
‘I just hope they understand how honoured I feel,’ she said.
Burke rose to his feet, flipped the serving window of the truck open again. ‘Just focus,’ he said. ‘Don’t get distracted by grand dreams.’
‘Of course. I won’t. I won’t.’
‘You know what you’re doing?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Let me hear it.’
‘When you start shooting, I let him loose,’ Silvia said. ‘I get him into the driver’s seat, and then I get clear. I wait until you come back towards the truck and give me the signal, then I set off the bomb so you can escape.’
‘Good,’ Burke said. ‘Just memorise that. Go over it again and again. We can’t have any more problems.’
She nodded.
‘I’m going to go take another lap.’ He pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt and slipped out the doors, slamming them behind him.
Silvia held her head.
‘Idiot
,’ she scolded herself.
The bump came as Silvia was securing the serving window open again. Burke was walking around the opposite side of the rink, near the hotel. She was watching him, and a jolt shuddered through the truck that was so hard it almost knocked her off her feet. She stumbled over Reiter, went to the back door of the truck and tried to open it. It was stuck. In bewilderment, she tried again, and the door smacked open against the front bumper of another food truck.
Silvia squeezed out and jumped down from the truck, slamming the door behind her and marching to the driver’s side door of the truck that had rammed her tailgate. The driver was a huge Black man in a blazing yellow T-shirt that matched the truck. On his chest, a little smiley-face button gave his name as Rick.
‘What the actual fuck, dude?’ Silvia mashed her palm on the window.
‘Sorry, honey!’ The driver wound down the window. ‘We’ve all got to move up. They’re trying to make room for a churro truck down the back there.’
‘You hit my truck!’
‘Yeah, sorry! Sorry!’ He held his hands up, palms out. ‘It’s not bad. Looks like I dented your numberplate. Let me just get set up here and I’ll pull it off and pop the dent out.’
‘I don’t want you to do that.’
‘It’s no big deal. It’ll pop right out, baby.’
‘I said I don’t want you to do that!’ Silvia snarled. Rick the driver reeled in his seat. ‘Open your big flappy fucking ears!’
‘Open my what?’
‘You heard me, boy,’ Silvia said. ‘Open your ears. I’m not moving my truck. I booked this spot three months ago. And if you touch my numberplate I’ll call the fucking cops on your ass.’
Silvia left Rick with his mouth hanging open and headed back to her truck. She opened the door as hard as she could, smashing the edge into his bumper, and then slammed it shut behind her.
CHAPTER 43
Kradle grabbed Gary Mullins by the front of his nightshirt and dragged him out of bed, kicking him to the ground. The shockwave rippling up through his foot, ankle, knee, hip from the kick to the man’s side made his heart warm. He stood on Mullins’s neck, pinning his face to the rug, and pressed the barrel of the pistol to the back of his ear.
‘Where’s the woman?’
‘Ma-Marie, Marie, Marie’s,’ Mullins babbled. ‘Marie’s in Denver w-with her sister.’
‘Get up,’ Kradle said again. He didn’t give the man a chance to comply. He yanked him up, threw him into the side of the door, bounced him into the hall. While every breath was hot and heavy and filled with the sweet, dark pleasure of revenge, something else was growing in Kradle as he shoved the man through his dimly lit house towards the porch doors. It was disquiet. A kind of empty rattling, the sense of something amiss, a screw loosened or a fixture pulled from its housing. Because, while his fantasy was playing out exactly as it had ten thousand times in his mind since his family died, something about what was happening felt hollow. His punches weren’t landing hard enough. Mullins’s cries of terror and pain weren’t loud enough. Mullins wasn’t fighting back. Kradle pushed him out onto the porch. The older man’s shoes slipped on the stairs as Kradle forced him out into the yard.
‘You know who I am?’ Kradle snarled.
‘I know. I know. You’re John Kradle.’
‘You murdered my family.’ His voice sounded thin to him, an impossible instrument for communicating the agony inside. ‘My son Mason was fifteen years old.’
‘Listen to me.’ Mullins tried to turn around. Kradle slammed the butt of the pistol into his face, knocking him down. He followed as the man crawled towards the edge of the yard. Kradle picked him up and pushed him out the small wooden gate in the back fence.
Before them, the hard, unforgiving desert gaped. A featureless slab of cracked clay and sand, bowing and rising towards razor-sharp ridges lit by morning glow. This is the place, Kradle thought. He couldn’t replicate the coldness and loneliness and hardness of the bathroom tiles on which his son had breathed his last breath, but he could try. Mullins shuffled along weakly until Kradle told him to stop.
‘You’re going to die here,’ Kradle said. ‘You’re going to die in terror and pain, just the way my family did.’
‘Listen,’ Mullins said again, his hands up, showing the lines of his palms etched with blood from a split lip. ‘Listen. What I did was the greatest act of evil a man can do. I know you’ve suffered. Your son suffered.’
‘Don’t talk about my son!’ Kradle barked.
‘I was . . .’ Mullins shook his head. There were tears running down his cheeks. ‘I want to try to explain this to you. Please. Please. I want to explain. I was over the edge, okay? I’d been in combat, and I – I was living in a place of darkness. My own son had revealed something to me, and I was confused and traumatised. I was in the valley of darkness, and I hadn’t felt God’s love—’
‘God’s love?’ Kradle said.
‘I hadn’t heard His word. I’m in a good place now,’ Mullins wheezed. He rubbed his side, where Kradle had kicked him. ‘I can, I can look back and see, through the wisdom I have gained, what made me do those things. Those sinful things. I’m – I’m asking for your mercy.’
‘Where was mercy for my son?’ Kradle bellowed. ‘For my wife? For her sister? Where was—’ He couldn’t talk. The words felt strangled. ‘Oh, god. God. This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. You weren’t supposed to beg me. How dare you fucking beg me!’
‘I-I-I.’ Mullins gripped the ground, struggled to explain, his eyes restless, focused on everything but Kradle’s eyes. ‘I needed someone to blame. And it became your wife. After the show, after what happened to me, I needed to direct that anger to someone. My son had just revealed to me that he wasn’t . . . He wasn’t the person I knew. He was someone else. It was as if he—’
Kradle felt his whole body brace for it. For Mullins to say it was like his son had died. Mullins saw the white-hot rage in Kradle’s eyes and stammered over it.
‘What Christine said to me that day – it hurt. It hurt me. I was a sick man, and I lashed out in a sick way. But almost immediately after I left your house, as I was walking away, I heard the voice of God.’
Kradle forced himself to breathe.
‘God’s word said—’
‘What did he say, Mullins?’ Kradle asked. ‘He say anything about coming forward? He say anything about leaving me to rot on death row?’
‘Listen,’ Mullins said. ‘Please listen.’
Kradle could hardly focus. The gun was shaking in his hand. He could do nothing but listen, let the useless words wash over him, because what he had wanted was dissolving right before his eyes. He’d wanted to fight his son’s killer. He’d wanted to conquer and punish him, to see a flash of the evil that had driven him that fateful day and meet it, quench it, with his own. But all he had before him was an old man simpering and crying and bleeding in the desert, a man who could do no more than die at his hands like a miserable hound.
Kradle had come to the house on Cloudrock Court to be a force of hatred and violence, and now all he felt was disappointment and disgust. He lowered the gun from Mullins’s chest, let it hang, impossibly heavy, by his side.
‘I can’t kill you,’ Kradle said. ‘I can’t do it. Not like this.’
He sucked in a long breath and tried to tell himself that he would find some satisfaction in seeing Mullins behind bars, living in the stale, maddening purgatory he had experienced himself over the past five years.
‘If you—’
‘No, shut up,’ Kradle said. ‘Get on your feet. We’re leaving. I’m taking you in.’
‘You have nothing,’ Mullins said carefully. ‘Okay? Think about it. You have nothing left. I took that from you, and I’m so, so sorry. But I have a wife. I have a son. I have people from my parish and my community who love me and need me. So I can’t do what you want me to do. I can’t go to jail.’
‘Wha—’ Kradle shook his head. ‘What makes you think—’<
br />
‘Please say you forgive me. Forgive me now before they take you away.’
Kradle felt his mouth twist with confusion.
He took a step back and, as he did, felt two things. He felt his eyes widen as they fell on the shoes on Mullins’s feet, as the realisation materialised that he’d been wearing them in bed when Kradle woke him and yanked him free of his sheets. Kradle also felt the barrel of a gun against the back of his neck.
‘Drop it,’ a deep voice said.
Kradle felt the man behind him gather a hand around his own. Kradle released the pistol and let the man take it away.
‘On your knees.’
Kradle did as he was told. He sank to the desert sand. The man sidestepped so that Kradle could see him. He didn’t recognise the lone figure nudging glasses back onto his nose, pointing his own gun at him as he pocketed the one he’d pushed against the back of Kradle’s neck. Kradle dropped his eyes to the man’s wrist and noticed a tattoo that read 4KEEPZ.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ Mullins was shivering from head to toe now, his bloodstream being flooded with chemicals as his terror morphed into relief. ‘You said there’d be a whole team.’
‘Yeah. I lied,’ Keeps said. He shrugged. ‘It’s kind of my thing.’
He shot Mullins in the forehead.
CHAPTER 44
Kerry Monahan was lying on her side when Celine entered the hospital room. She was bigger than Celine remembered. Fragments of the hellish moments running with the girl through the forest outside the Rancho Salvaje Wildlife Park lingered in Celine’s mind, and from them she had a sense that the girl was small and narrow, like a frightened bird. But one broad shoulder slid from under the sheet as Kerry pushed herself into a sitting position, and her long legs stretched towards the end of the bed, rattling the chain around her ankle that connected to the bed frame. Celine sat down in the only chair in the room.
