by Ben Rehder
But Colby was willing to let the whole thing slide if Aaron would come down to the gate and apologize. Promise to stop the harassment. Quit acting like a psychopath. Be a man instead of a stalker.
Then Colby would tell her that if Aaron didn’t do that, Colby would use a chain to jerk their damn gate down, drive up to the house, and settle this matter once and for all. And he meant it.
What would Caroline do? Well, that decision was above her pay grade, so she’d speak to whichever Endicott acted as her boss. And that person, if he or she had any sense, would address the situation with Aaron.
What would happen next? Colby had no idea. He just wanted to force this thing to a conclusion, one way or another.
“Ready to do this?” Liam asked.
His attitude had changed entirely. His nerves had calmed. A weight had been lifted. As long as they didn’t get caught in the next few minutes, everything would work out fine.
“Oh, hell, yes,” Jessi said.
“Let’s make these fuckers pay,” Liam said. He was back to talking tough. Why not? Jessi would think he was a total badass.
She nodded, and now they stepped from the grove of trees and trotted toward the house, Liam carrying the gas can in one hand and the long, spliced fuse in the other.
Nobody yelled for them to stop. Nobody came running.
35
Unlike some young men his age—especially those who lived in the country—Liam had never started a fire with gasoline. He hadn’t torched a bonfire or burned a pile of dried brush or nuked an ant mound. Of course, regardless of this inexperience, he knew he needed to be very careful. Gasoline didn’t need to be coaxed into burning. The slightest touch of a flame would set it ablaze. He knew that.
What he didn’t know was that the fumes were as combustible as the gasoline itself. And in the absence of a brisk wind, the fumes would collect near the ground like an invisible fog and just hang there, waiting.
Liam was savvy enough to know he should light the fuse prior to setting it in place. Light it, then lay it with the end overlapping the tail of the gasoline trail.
So that’s what he planned to do. But what Liam knew—and Jessi didn’t—was that the fuse wasn’t going to work. It was going to die before it reached the gasoline trail. Not because of the self-extinguishing rolling paper, but because Liam had intentionally left a small gap between two cigarettes when he spliced them together. When the smoldering cigarette reached that gap, it would have nothing left to burn.
They had their backs pressed against the side of the house. Waiting one long minute, just in case anyone in the house had seen them approach. Liam looked at Jessi. She was grinning. With the camo grease paint on her face, she looked like some sort of hillbilly psycho.
She reached one hand toward Liam. She wanted the gas jug. He passed it over. She unscrewed the cap and dropped it on the ground.
“It’s time,” she said.
He nodded.
And with no further conversation, Jessi began to douse the side of the house with gas. She thoroughly saturated a section of red cedar about five yards wide, from head height down to the slab. She saved enough to create a trail on the browned, dry grass, leading away from the house.
He followed her, and she ended the trail by pouring the last few ounces in one spot, to ensure that it would light.
“Go!” she said.
He removed the lighter from his pocket. He held the long fuse aloft, close to the end of the fuse, preparing to ignite it.
“You ready?” he whispered to Jessi.
The look on her face was nothing short of malevolent—Jack Nicholson when he pokes his head through the door in The Shining.
“Spark it, dude,” she said.
He nodded. Then he rolled the wheel on the lighter with his thumb.
And—WHOOSH!—the air exploded in flame.
Liam was too surprised to move, but Jessi shuffled backward, tripped, and fell on her butt.
The gasoline trail was on fire, and it zipped toward the house.
“Oh, shit,” Liam said, standing up. This was the worst possible scenario.
“Out-fucking-standing!” Jessi said, as she scrambled to her feet.
The side of the house erupted in fire.
Without another word, both of them turned and sprinted for the woods.
Marlin spent about thirty minutes speaking with the landowner who had complained about the trespassing teenagers. The man’s game camera had captured a sharp photo of the two boys, both glancing in the direction of the camera. He asked the landowner to email the photo to him, and now Marlin had it on his phone. Tomorrow, he’d come back to this area in northeastern Blanco County and talk to the surrounding neighbors. Marlin didn’t recognize the boys, but somebody would.
That would have to wait, because Marlin was eager to move forward with Bobby Garza’s idea.
Earlier, on the phone, the sheriff had said, “I can’t enter the Endicott place without a warrant, but you can.”
He was right. A Texas game warden can enter private property to enforce game laws—checking licenses, inspecting hunting or fishing devices, looking inside receptacles used to contain wild game, and so forth.
It wasn’t even a stretch. Despite Aaron Endicott’s claims otherwise, Marlin suspected that he did in fact hunt on the ranch. So there was nothing stopping him from investigating whether Aaron was following all game laws.
“I can’t enter any of their houses,” Marlin told Garza. “Or any hunting cabins.”
“I know that, but you can poke around and see what you can dig up. Maybe you’ll catch Aaron Endicott hunting without a license.”
“And if I do?”
“Arrest him,” Garza said. “Bring him in.”
“The odds are pretty slim that I’ll just happen to catch him in the act.”
“I understand, but we’re running out of options,” Garza said. “I need some way to put pressure on Aaron, or at least force his attorney to get in touch. You can check hunting blinds, right?”
“Sure.”
“If you find, say, some spent cartridges—or anything else, really—inside a blind, can you grab those and check for Aaron’s prints?”
“Absolutely,” Marlin said.
“Then we could get a warrant for his arrest and see if he’ll answer questions. Never know what might come of that. So many of these wackos think they can outsmart all of us simple cops, but they slip up and say something stupid.”
Marlin had no problem with the plan, even though it seemed the sheriff was grasping at straws. On the other hand, if something didn’t break on the Harley Frizzell case soon, it would go cold.
Marlin passed through Johnson City and continued south on 281, on his way to the Endicott ranch. He wondered if he should contact another game warden—one in Kendall County—to join him. He decided that he wouldn’t, but he would call another warden for back-up if he encountered Aaron Endicott. Safer that way.
Liam glanced back just once, as he reached the trees, and the fire was roaring. This was horrible. Panic was stealing his breath, making him gasp as he ran.
He could hear Jessi, just a few yards in front of him, climbing the hill, and giggling. Yes, giggling, as if they’d just pulled some harmless prank, like egging someone’s house or knocking on their door and running. If she had any fear, she wasn’t showing it.
“Faster,” Liam said.
He noticed she wasn’t using her phone for guidance. He tried not to worry. She seemed to know the way, even though the deer trail they were following didn’t look familiar to Liam.
“Hurry, Jessi,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”
“That was so incredibly cool!” she said.
“Check it out,” Billy Don said, pointing.
“Huh?” Red said.
After he had taken the photo of the Hyundai, he couldn’t resist playing with his phone. Previously Red had had a flip phone that could call and text, but compared to that one, this new one was amazing,
even if it was some unknown Korean brand. It gave him total Internet access, including sports scores, hunting forecasts, and, of course, naked ladies. Hell, even if you weren’t looking for naked ladies on the Internet, there they were, in your face all the time. Convenient.
This phone could also email and video chat. Red could even read a book, if he were inclined to read books. The phone wasn’t perfect. Occasionally the left half of the screen would turn solid black, and sometimes the phone would heat up to the point that Red could hardly hold on to it, but what did you expect for 30 bucks?
“There’s Phil Colby again,” Billy Don said.
Red looked up. Colby was just pulling into the Endicott driveway. Yesterday afternoon, he had stopped at the keypad, punched some numbers, waited there for a couple of minutes, then backed up and left. They hadn’t let him in.
Now he was back. Weird.
Red grabbed his binoculars.
Liam tripped on a rock and busted his ass. Jessi kept running. He struggled back to his feet, but now his ankle was killing him. Not broken, just a sprain. But it hurt like hell.
He could trot, but he couldn’t sprint. Jessi was forty yards ahead, still unaware that he wasn’t right behind her anymore. Liam was tempted to yell to her, but he didn’t want to risk it.
Off to his left was a deer blind. He knew for sure that he hadn’t seen that on the way in. Shit, were they lost? He was no woodsman, but how hard could it be to go back the same way they had come?
Now he was sort of gimping along, each step shooting a fierce jolt of pain up his leg, and he figured things couldn’t get any worse.
He was wrong.
It happened so quickly, he hardly had time to process it. Just as he was about to pass an enormous oak tree, a huge, hideous man dressed in camo stepped from behind the trunk, a few feet away from Liam, and cracked Liam square in the face with the butt of a rifle. The impact was enormous.
Liam’s feet flew forward and his torso fell backwards, but he lost consciousness before he hit the ground.
36
Colby pressed 999 on the keypad.
And then he waited. For a solid minute.
He pressed 999 again.
Another minute passed.
He hadn’t planned for this possibility. What if nobody responded? What should he do then? He wanted to resolve this problem now, not later.
Colby wasn’t prepared to pull the gate down if he hadn’t even had a chance to speak to Caroline and lay out the situation. There was still a chance that Aaron Endicott might realize he’d gotten in over his head, and that he’d better cool things down before he got into some serious trouble.
Colby pressed 999 a third time. He waited two minutes. Then he killed the engine on his truck. He’d stay right here until he got an answer, or until somebody tried to enter or exit the ranch.
Red was looking through the binoculars, but once again, he heard the flick of a lighter. He looked over and saw Billy Don with yet another joint in his mouth.
“You’re addicted, Billy Don,” Red said. “No question.”
“Pot ain’t addictive.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, it ain’t. Look it up. That’s just science. But don’t worry, because this is the last one.”
“You said the last one was the last one,” Red said.
“I said it was the second to last one.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You heard me wrong.”
“Hell if I did.”
“Then I must’ve misspoke.”
“Or you lied.”
Normally, accusing Billy Don of lying was a risky proposition, but in this case, he simply shrugged and took another hit from the joint. That was the one good thing about Billy Don’s new habit. He was mellow. His temper didn’t flare when you pushed him too far.
Red dropped the subject and raised the binoculars. “He’s just sitting there. I don’t get it. What the hell is going on? First the kids in the Hyundai, and now this.”
“I could walk over there and ask him,” Billy Don said.
Red actually considered that for a moment. The direct approach. His curiosity was driving him nuts. Surely it wasn’t a coincidence that Phil Colby was hanging around. It had to have something to do with the murder of Harley Frizzell. But if Billy Don went to speak to Colby, they’d lose the element of surprise.
“Let’s just wait a few more minutes,” Red said.
Billy Don offered him the joint and Red took it. Reluctantly. Just one hit. Two at the most.
Liam was pretty sure his skull was fractured. He reached one hand up and gingerly probed his forehead, where the rifle butt had made contact. Sticky. Warm. He felt a large gash in the skin. There was a deep, pulsing pain that seemed to extend deep into his brain. But he didn’t feel bone protruding. That was good news.
He opened his eyes. Blue sky. A few clouds. Treetops.
Silence. How long had he been out?
He turned his head to the right. Oh, shit, that hurt. But there was nobody there. To the left. Nobody. Where was the man who had decked him?
Fuck. Where was Jessi? Liam was starting to panic.
He tried to sit up, but his head began to spin immediately. So he rolled over onto his stomach, then got up on all fours. He felt the urge to vomit, but for the moment, nothing came up.
He pushed off the ground and struggled to his feet. The ground around him seemed to rise and fall.
Where was Jessi? Had the huge man taken her? Or had she continued running to the Hyundai?
And where had the huge man gone? Why had he clobbered Liam, then taken off? Was that how they treated trespassers in Texas?
Liam had a decision to make. Return to the Hyundai to see if Jessi was waiting there? Or go back toward the house to see if the big man had grabbed her? But if Liam went back toward the house—and Jessi was actually waiting at the car—then Liam would be wasting time they could be using to get away. On the other hand, if Liam went to the car and Jessi wasn’t there...what then?
Liam began hobbling as fast as he could toward the county road—or at least in the direction he thought would take him to the county road.
Jessi was scared, but in a good sort of way—like when you’re driving down a desolate, arrow-straight Nebraska highway at 100 miles per hour and you close your eyes for 30 seconds, just to see what will happen. What a rush.
The huge redneck dude—she didn’t recognize him as one of the Endicotts from the show—was behind her with a rifle, marching her back toward the house they had just set on fire.
One minute she had been running through the trees, the next she had turned back and seen the man towering over Liam, who was on the ground. She’d had no choice but to go back and try to help Liam.
The man had aimed the rifle at her and said, “That way.”
“Who are you?” she asked. “You work for the Endicotts?”
He really was gigantic. And hideous. A troll. Liam, on the other hand, looked small and broken, with a bloody gash on his forehead. He appeared to be unconscious.
“That way,” the man said again, gesturing with the barrel of the rifle. It was one of those military types of rifle, with a long, curved clip that holds a lot of bullets. A banana clip. That’s what it was called.
She had the sense that this man wasn’t aware of what she and Liam had just done. He didn’t know about the fire.
“What’re you gonna do, shoot me?” she said.
“I might.”
She laughed, like that was ridiculous—but why did she get the feeling he really might do it? It was his tone of voice. Flat. Emotionless. Sort of a bizarre demeanor. And the fact that he had apparently busted Liam’s forehead open with the rifle. That was pretty over the top.
So she began to walk in the direction he’d pointed.
“We’re just going to leave him there?” she said over her shoulder. “He needs a doctor.”
“Keep walking.”
“What did you do to him?” They had wal
ked far enough that she couldn’t see Liam anymore.
“Keep moving.”
Now, for the first time since they’d left Nebraska, the rush was beginning to fade—and she was starting to worry. She was in serious trouble. Where was he taking her? What was he going to do? He could lock her up in some basement, and who would ever know? Well, Liam would. Why had the man left Liam on the ground back there?
Then Jessi had a horrible thought. What if Liam was dead? That would explain why the man wasn’t concerned about leaving him on the ground.
Jessi was tempted to make a break for it. Just suddenly turn left or right and run as fast as she could, ducking and dodging through the trees. No way could this big guy keep up with her. If he shot, would he be able to hit a moving target? She didn’t know. She had never shot any sort of firearm.
They were about to reach the point on the hill where they could see down into the valley below. When this behemoth saw what was happening to the house down there, he would be really pissed, to put it mildly.
Jessi was nearing panic mode. This wasn’t an adventure anymore. She wanted to go home. Their plan had failed miserably. They never should’ve done this. It was Liam’s fault for starting the fire too early.
She stopped walking and turned to face the man five yards behind her.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“Just keep moving.”
“Call the cops, if you want to. I’m not going anywhere.”
He started to say something, but then he looked past her, to the horizon, his expression pure puzzlement.
“What the fuck?” he said.
Jessi turned to look. She couldn’t see the house from here, but she saw a tall, black plume of smoke rising straight into the sky.
Colby had just pressed 999 again when he saw an unusual sight. Straight ahead, on the driveway, a figure was loping clumsily in this direction. It appeared to be a young, slender guy, dressed in camo. And he obviously had some sort of leg injury.
