by PJ Adams
She walked along the beach, treading carefully on the pebbles and larger rocks. Somewhere out over the water a bird gave a ghostly, wailing cry, and she knew exactly how it felt.
Closer to, the family house was quite a place, designed to slot into the hillside with the beach and the bay as its focus. Brady’s family must have had some serious wealth before he’d blown it all. Before he and Denny had blown it all. She saw things from a fresh perspective then: Denny was a chancer, he’d built things up and lost them; but for Brady, wealth was a thing he was accustomed to, something that was his by right. To lose it all...
By the beach, the walls were lower, and it was easy to climb over, even with her bruises and aches from crashing the station wagon that morning. Inside the wall, a garden led up to the house. It had the air of somewhere carefully tended but now abandoned, pruned and sculpted trees and shrubs gone a bit shaggy, grass growing from cracks in the paving.
She climbed some steps to a paved area, and there she could stand in the shadows and look into that brightly-lit ground floor room.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the glare and then she wished for a moment that they hadn’t.
First thing she saw was Denny. He was sitting on a wooden chair facing out, as if he’d been arranged so he could appreciate the view when it had been daylight.
His blue shirt hung in tatters from that athletic frame. His chest was black, blue and red. They’d been beating him, bruising him and making him bleed. His head hung low, chin against his chest, and it was some time before he looked up and she saw blackness around his eyes and a thick, split lip.
He couldn’t move. He was bound around the ankles to the legs of the chair, and his arms were pulled back tight behind him, where they must be similarly secured.
He looked broken. Wrecked.
But alive.
Standing to one side of him, talking, was Brady Lowe. She’d only ever met him once before, but she would know him anywhere. Tall and thin, wire-framed glasses and the way he stood with his head to one side. He was talking now. Laughing even. And in his hands he had a baseball bat.
A short distance across the room, leaning in a doorway, she saw the tall, slightly Latino guy, Luis. Just standing there, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other dangling at his side, cradling a handgun.
What was she going to do? How could she ever get Denny out of there? She wished now that she’d left it to Billy. Let him wade in with heavies of his own.
She should do that, she knew. Billy was on his way.
But how could she stand by while they beat Denny to a pulp? What if Billy was too late?
She didn’t stop to wonder where the other heavy was. Al. Not until she heard a soft clearing of the throat from somewhere behind her, and she twisted, looked back, and saw him standing there, his handgun aimed steadily somewhere between her eyes.
“We really should stop meeting like this,” he said. “People are going to start talking.” Then he went on: “A little word of advice. You drive by a place like this with your headlights on full beam and nobody gives it a second thought. There’s not much traffic out here but hey, it’s a public road, right? On the other hand, you drive by a place like this real slow, and on parking lights only, and then you stop for a minute by the gate, people are going to wonder.”
7
Brady opened his mouth to speak, but Denny got in first. Slurring through a broken mouth, he said, “What happened, babe? Did they...?”
He’s seen the bruises on her face. She shook her head. “Disagreement with an airbag,” she said. “It’s fine.”
“So sweet,” said Brady, smiling. “Such concern. I’m touched. No really: I’m touched.”
“Let it go, Brady,” she said. Suddenly, she knew what to do. Talk to the guy. Reason with him. And when that didn’t work, she still might have bought enough time for Billy Ray to get here with his heavies to save the day. “Give Denny a chance to fix things. If all you do is beat the crap out of him you’ve still lost, you just feel a bit better. Denny’s smart. You know that. He’ll come up with something.”
“Your faith in him is touching,” said Brady.
It wasn’t his words.
It wasn’t his tone of voice or the fixed expression on his face, like someone forced to be at least civil.
It was the look in his eye. Where Denny had that charm thing going, that sparkle where all he had to do was catch your eye and he would win you over, Brady had something that was pretty much the opposite. The evil twin of that look of Denny’s. There was a coldness there, an emptiness. It was the look you see in those photos on the TV news that they show while neighbors and old schoolfriends say things like “He was a nice, polite young man” and “He always kept himself to himself” and “We never knew about his gun collection”.
That was what was in his eyes: a stark, chilling nothing.
“You forget, though,” he went on. “In my long friendship with Denny, it’s always been me who is the fixer, not Denny. I’ve always been the one who has, as you say, come up with something. Denny creates problems, he doesn’t fix them. Surely you’ve learned that by now?”
As he spoke, he walked around the room, threading his way around Denny in his chair and coming up now to where Cassie stood.
Now, up close and in her face, he said, “This isn’t about fixing things. It’s about ending them. It’s something I should have done way before now. Your Denny has had this coming for a long time.”
With that, he turned, took a step, and swung out with the baseball bat. Low and fast and ending with a dull, meaty thud in Denny’s thigh.
Denny grunted, his jaws clenched as he gritted his teeth through the pain.
“You know how good that feels? It’s such a release. It feels like I’ve been saving that up for years.”
“Let him go.”
Back before her, squaring up to her like a boxer before the bout. His breath hot on her face, Brady said, “Don’t you get it yet? He’s mine. I have him at my mercy. I have you at my mercy. I could do what I like with you, Ms Dane. Or I could leave you for the boys. But despite what you’re seeing now, I’m one of the nice guys. Remember that. This is me being nice.”
He spun, he swung, and the bat hit Denny in the ribs. Denny cried out, an animal sound. The pain seemed to rouse him from his stupor. “Leave her, Brady,” he gasped. “Leave her out of this. I’ll do whatever you want. Like old times, Brady. We can work together like old times to sort things out.”
“‘Old times’?” said Brady. “The times you got all the attention and I was the one working round the clock to make things happen? The times you blew it all?”
Another swing, and the bat skidded off Denny’s skull.
“Leave him!” cried Cassie. “For God’s sake, leave him!”
She ran to Denny, ignoring Al, who tried to grab her. She wrapped her arms around him, and only shrunk away a little when he winced with pain. She had to get him away from this. She had to stop Brady from beating him to a pulp.
She felt hands on her arms, a vise-like grip, pulling her, lifting her.
Then, abruptly, the grip eased and let her go, and she stumbled forward, almost falling into Denny’s lap.
“You lay a finger on my girl and it’ll be the last thing you do.”
She turned, and Billy Ray stood in a doorway, a heavy Magnum .44 leveled in both hands. After the sight of that long-barreled gun, the first thing she saw about him was how much older he looked. It had been ten years, but jail had clearly taken its toll. His hair was mostly gone, and what was left was silver now. His neck sagged, and lines were etched around his eyes and mouth.
He was an old man, standing there with a gun that was too big for him and she hoped to God he wasn’t alone.
§
It was a stand-off.
Brady stood there with his baseball bat dangling; Luis stood across the room, handgun swinging from one hand, but not raised; and Al stood behind Denny, no doubt armed but his gun still con
cealed, not drawn.
“You’re going to untie McGowan,” said Billy. “Nice and slow. And then you’re going to let my girl help him through to her automobile so they can get away, and then it’s just you and me. You got that?”
Brady shrugged. “You really think you’ve got all three of us covered, old man?” he said.
Billy shook his head. “No,” he said. “No I don’t. Any of you make a move and I’ve probably only got time to get off one good shot, maybe two, before you take me out.”
Brady smiled, but then faltered as Billy went on.
“Question is, which of you gets taken out before it’s my turn? You want to take a chance on that? Now stop fucking with me and get untying.”
Brady stepped across, behind Denny, and reached down behind him. “You’re history, Billy,” he said, in a conversational tone. “Your day is past.”
“Nothing wrong with history,” said Billy, his gun leveled on Brady. “I like to think I’m a classic.”
“There’s nothing classic about a sad old man who comes out on a mad adventure like this to play the hero without any backup. And that’s right, isn’t it, Billy? You’re all alone.”
Billy said nothing.
“An old man prepared to write off millions of dollars just for a chance to speak with his daughter again? You’ve gone soft, Billy. Jail broke you. Nobody takes you seriously any more.”
“You really think that?” asked Billy. “Maybe I’m not what I once was, and yes, jail changed me. Maybe I can’t call on guys like Al and Luis so easily these days, but I haven’t gone soft. I was dealing with no-account jerks like you back when you were still in diapers. I’ve still got my wits and I’ve still got my contacts. You think I’m a relic? Well you’re the one living in the past, Brady. These days it’s not about hired muscle like Al and Luis. All respect, guys. These days we do things differently. You want to know what’s happening right now?”
He let that hang, let Brady squat there behind Denny, a look of abject uncertainty plastered across his features for the first time this evening.
“I cleared your debts, Brady. Isn’t that kind of me? I told you I would, and I’m a man of my word. You told me exactly which accounts to channel the money into, and that’s what I’ve done. And every last cent of it is bad money. Drug money. Laundered money. Mob money. None of it can be traced back to me, but it sure as Hell can be traced as far as your accounts.”
Brady had gone pale.
“And that’s what’s happening, Brady. It’s being traced to your accounts. Amazing what a word in the right ear can do, and given my close contact with the authorities over the past ten years I know exactly which ears to drop those words into. You’re ruined, Brady. By the time you next see the light of day it’ll be through a window with bars on it. Best thing you can do now is run. Canada, then maybe onto somewhere like Grenada or Nicaragua or Panama would be my advice. Run, Brady. Run.”
Brady was still fumbling with Denny’s knots, but then, in an instant, he half-straightened, using Denny for cover while he leveled a small handgun at Billy, took aim, and fired.
Billy went down instantly, a hole in his chest and a pool of blood spreading on the floor where he fell.
The room seemed to freeze in that moment.
Brady standing there, gun still aimed at where Billy had been standing.
Luis across the room, his gun half-raised. Al reaching into his jacket for his own gun.
Billy lying there. The spreading, dark pool of his blood. The sharp bang of the gunshot echoing around the room, ringing in Cassie’s ears.
She broke the moment.
She threw herself across and dropped to the floor where her father lay, wincing at a stab of pain from her ribs. Billy’s wound was high, more shoulder than chest. Clear of his heart at least. And his eyes were open, his mouth working, trying to find words. She pressed down on the wound, trying to stop the flow of blood. He might just survive this if he didn’t bleed out.
She looked up, across, and Brady was still aiming, looking surprised, as if he hadn’t expected the gun to go off when he pulled the trigger, or as if he hadn’t made the connection that if you fire at a man and hit him then the man is probably going to die, and you did it.
He looked even more surprised when Denny threw himself sideways. His ankles were still tied to the chair, but his arms were free, and he was able to swing his upper body with enough momentum to hurl himself into Brady’s midriff.
The two went flying, and another shot went off, high.
In her peripheral vision, Cassie saw Al and Luis moving into the room, guns raised, covering the two men, waiting for a clean line of fire. Without thinking, she moved, a single, smooth move as if she practiced this kind of thing all the time.
Pushing forward off her toes, she swept up Billy’s gun – so much heavier than she’d anticipated! She didn’t know anything about safety mechanisms or aiming or recoil. All she knew was that when she hit the ground and her battered ribs exploded in pain, she somehow managed to catch herself, supporting herself on her elbows with the gun poised. By some fluke it was pointing in the right direction and when she peered along the barrel she saw Brady looking back. By another fluke, Brady had sprawled clear of Denny. A part of her mind knew Al and Luis must be closing in on Denny and then she realized that Brady still had his handgun and he was swinging it round to point in her direction and then she pulled the heavy trigger.
The blast was far louder than Brady’s shots had been and the flash from the muzzle was blinding if that was where you happened to be looking. The recoil tugged the gun upwards and back and she clung onto it desperately as the reverberations jarred through her arm and into her shoulders. Then that moment of balance was gone and she was skidding forward on the polished wooden floor, elbows and chest screaming with pain and her head ringing with that awful blast.
Cassie lay in a heap, gasping for breath, trying to blink away the flash-blindness.
When she could see, it was another frozen tableau.
Brady lay there, in a pool of blood, not moving.
She’d killed him.
Movement to one side: Al and Luis, backing away. Each held a pistol, but they weren’t aiming and their hands were raised and when Al caught Cassie’s eye he gave a slight shake of the head.
Back to Denny, lying there, eyes wide and staring at her.
When he caught her eye, he said, “Would you just point that thing somewhere else?”
The gun!
She swung it away from Denny’s direction, then put it on the floor and snatched her hands away as if it was red hot.
Stupid!
She looked at Al and Luis again, but they were still backing away.
Al shook his head once more, then said, “We’re leaving. This isn’t our fight any more, okay? We were never here.” Their paymaster dead, they turned and walked out.
Cassie took a big breath of air, realizing she must have been holding her breath. It came as a big, choking gasp, and when she breathed out it was a raw sob. Then she looked down, and Billy was still alive, his eyes flitting around the room as he, too, took in what had just happened. He was still bleeding, though. She wondered how long he could survive a wound like that.
He was trying to talk, so she leaned in close.
“Do what I say, Cassandra. You hear me? You check for an exit wound. Back of my shoulder. If there is one, pack it... Apply pressure. Do the same on the front. Then call 911.”
“I’ve got that,” said Denny. He’d untied his ankles from the chair, and now he was fumbling with a cell phone.
“You keep the pressure on, even when I go into shock. You got that?”
She nodded, then said, “Yes. Yes, I’ve got that.”
She was in some kind of shock herself. She’d never been involved in anything like this. Never even imagined herself in a situation like this.
She’d never shot a man. Killed him.
“You hear me?” Billy was still trying to say something, whil
e on the other side of the room Denny was talking on his phone.
“One more thing,” Billy went on. “You do exactly what I say. You listening?”
“I’m listening.” And now Denny had come over and kneeled at her side, and listened too.
“You get some packing on my chest and you stick it down tight so you don’t need to keep the manual pressure on any more. Find some tape somewhere... Then you get me that gun and you wipe it clean and you put it in my hand. My gun. My prints. And then you clear up after yourselves and you get the fuck out of here, you understand?”
“I–”
“Do it,” said Billy sharply. For a moment she thought he was talking to her, but his look went past her, to Denny. “Do it for me.”
Denny took her, pulled her to her feet. Wrapped his arms around her until she’d stopped sobbing.
And later, whenever she woke in the night, screaming or crying or just breathing fast, her chest tight as if a belt had been pulled hard around it, he did exactly the same thing, and held her until she stopped crying, stopped panicking, and her breathing was somewhere close to normal again.
Epilogue
Sally had put them in Paper Birch, the cabin right at the top of the trail at Saco Cabins. “It’s out of the way,” she’d said. “It’s always the last one we put folk in, all the way up the trail as it is. You stay there as long as you need, you hear?”
Time to shut out the world and concentrate on getting fit again. Time to concentrate on each other.
The fire had stayed in overnight, down to a pile of glowing embers this morning. Cassie had risen early and stoked it up with some more logs, before going to stand by the cabin’s picture windows.
Everything was white outside. Several inches of snow covered the ground, and the Lexus was just a white mound. As she watched, a few more heavy flakes started to fall.
