by Brenda Novak
Those words terrified L.J., which only made him run faster. He’d seen what Ink could do, how casually and carelessly he killed whoever stood in his way. Ink was so twisted he made L.J., who’d always been the badass of his neighborhood, feel like a choirboy.
He wanted to turn around and scream, “You can eat shit and die, sucker!” and continue charging through the forest. But as they left the highway behind, with all those headlights zipping past, it was getting too dark to see. There was no telling what he might run or fall into; his legs were already wobbling.
Besides all that, Ink had the keys to the truck, and the truck was an absolute necessity. They couldn’t escape on foot. Even if the cops didn’t find them, they couldn’t travel fast enough, wouldn’t have enough food and water to reach a safe place, especially with him bleeding all over. It wasn’t as if they could stumble into a gas station and ask to use the bathroom so he could clean up, or go to a hospital. Their future well-being hung on getting to the truck before the police discovered it, and driving to their cabin where they’d have the privacy to recuperate and live until everything went back to normal.
Ink had him again. If he kept running, he’d probably die in the forest. Or the police would find him and send him back to prison. His only real hope was to head to the truck with Ink and try to reach the cabin.
Slowing to a stop, he bent over to catch his breath. The air rattled painfully in his lungs, and his heart pounded. It seemed to vibrate through his entire body, which shook uncontrollably.
“What the…hell were…you thinking?” Ink said as he came scraping up from behind. “You thought…you could…leave…my ass?”
He’d been thinking he’d risk almost anything to do just that. But this was not the time. “I wanted—” he dragged some air into his lungs “—to get farther…from the…the cops.” He felt for the hole in his shoulder, found a small circle below his collarbone. “I’ve been…shot. Don’t know how long…I’ll be able to…keep running.”
Ink was gasping, too, but this seemed to pacify him. “You were…hit? Where?”
“Shoulder.”
Ink gave no indication whether that mattered to him or not. He grabbed L.J. by the back of the shirt and shoved him forward. “We have…to keep moving.”
Dizziness threatened to overwhelm L.J. Even worse, the darkness of the surrounding forest suddenly seemed too forbidding, too impenetrable. He felt as if his feet were five times their normal size. He could hardly move. He wanted to lie down, to somehow rid himself of the anvil crushing his chest.
“Do you…know where…we’re at?” Because he didn’t. He couldn’t remember. He could only feel the pain.
“Yeah. Truck’s not…far,” Ink said, “Get going,” and gave him another push.
It was a nine millimeter, not the most powerful gun around, but that was the best Rex’s friend could do on such short notice. And it could certainly be lethal, especially at close range. A nine millimeter wasn’t going to stop someone as big as Horse, not unless Virgil hit him in just the right place. And it wouldn’t be worth much if he wound up facing an army.
As he drove the car he’d rented at the airport past Horse’s illegal club on sixtieth and Vermont, Virgil hoped he wouldn’t have to confront The Crew en masse, but it didn’t look promising. Although he’d hoped to arrive early, before the nightly activities really got under way, he’d spent too long getting here. He’d had to pick up the car, rendezvous with Rex’s friend, who’d taken him to meet another friend, and buy the gun. Then he’d messed around trying to get a silencer, to no avail. And after that, he’d had an hour’s drive on freeways that were almost as congested at night as they were during the day.
Already the club was packed. Cars, trucks and motorcycles lined both sides of the street; groups, mostly men with a few hookers thrown in, congregated on the sidewalks, some smoking weed, some buying harder drugs. Inside, he knew he’d find rooms where these men could take the girls for just about any activity they chose, including a gang bang. There’d be slot machines and other types of gambling, gun sales, whatever a guy could want.
He’d called Rex a few minutes ago, reaching him as he was going into the hospital, and gotten Mona’s number. She was still cliqued up with The Crew, still one of them. But she liked Rex, and Rex trusted her. Virgil hoped to God he could trust her, too, because she’d agreed to be his eyes and ears tonight. According to her last text, he’d beaten her to the club, but when she eventually showed up she was supposed to scope out the place, report on who was inside, who else they were expecting, what they were doing, where Horse was and when Virgil might have an opportunity to get him alone.
His plan, simple though it was, sounded feasible in theory. But Virgil couldn’t be sure Mona would provide reliable information. She could get high and forget the whole damn thing. He also had no guarantee she’d want the money he offered more than what Horse might provide if she turned on him instead. She could decide to tell Horse he was sitting outside, lure him right into a trap.
Trusting her was a high-risk venture. But he had to trust someone. Without intel, he’d have no chance whatsoever.
He didn’t bother ducking his head or even looking away when he passed the men on the sidewalk. Chances were slim any of them would recognize him. He grew up in L.A., but he hadn’t been a gangbanger until he went to prison. And thanks to tougher sentencing laws, he’d been dropped into the federal system, served his time in Arizona and then Colorado. Maybe a few of The Crew members he’d known had found their way to L.A. to live with the brothers and be a bigger part of the criminal empire, but acting suspicious would cause more of a ripple among this group than acting unafraid, as if he belonged right where he was.
The picture of Peyton hugging Brady that he’d put on the console stared up at him as he rounded the corner and parked. He was too anxious, didn’t want to wait for Mona. Peyton could go into labor anytime. He hated the thought of her being alone, especially now, while they were dealing with so much.
If she lost the baby…
He couldn’t even consider that. Neither could he get ahead of himself. Not if he hoped to see her again.
Taking the gun from the seat beside him, he checked the magazine while he called Laurel. He’d brought the prepaid cell phone he’d purchased so he’d have a safe way to communicate, something that wouldn’t contain all his contacts if it fell into the wrong hands. So he hated to dial her number. It meant he’d have to destroy the phone before he went in. But talking to her might get him new information and shore up his resolve. If he had to kill Horse, he hoped it would save her, too.
But her voice mail answered. “You’ve reached the Stewart residence…?.”
Where the hell was she? It was two in the morning. She should be at home.
Worry tightened his stomach muscles. Had Ink gotten to her? Was it too late?
If so, The Crew had no idea what was about to happen to them. Because once he unleashed his rage—
The beep sounded, signaling that it was time to leave a message. He didn’t really know what to tell her. What could he say after so much had happened?
Something. This could be his last chance to communicate with the sister, who’d stood by him through every problem and setback, even when the entire world, including their mother, seemed determined to break him.
“Hey, ah, it’s me,” he said into the phone. “I wanted to let you know that…that I’m sorry. I wish you’d never been dragged into any of this, wish I’d been able to find another way to manage my life so that there’d be no spillover on you. But…that doesn’t help much, does it? We are where we are. Just know this—I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
Another call came in as he was hanging up. After checking caller ID, he punched the Talk button. “Yeah?”
“It’s me. I’m a block away.”
Mona. The game was on. Either she’d give him the information he needed to kill Horse, or she’d give up the information Horse needed to kill him.
25
This wasn’t going to work. They were making him wait forever.
Already nervous when he’d arrived, Rex eyed the crowd hoping to see an emergency-room doctor. A mother holding a sick baby. A teenager nursing a swollen, probably broken, ankle. A toddler wiggling in the lap of some exhausted father who was trying to keep a cloth pressed to the cut on his head.
He wasn’t one of these people. He was here because he’d been stupid enough to get hooked on OxyContin, and he didn’t want to go crying to someone about it now. So what if he was sick? He couldn’t sit here while Virgil hunted down Horse, and Laurel faced Ink. What kind of friend would that make him? What kind of man?
He eyed the door. Peyton thought she’d done her duty. She wouldn’t worry if he left because she wouldn’t know about it. At his insistence, she’d gone to a motel with the kids. He could call her, tell her they were giving him clonidine, and that he was fine now, perfect and heading home to sleep. He wished he could get some clonidine. At least then he’d be able function in the short-term. It would stop the nausea, the coughing, the heart palpitations. His bones felt as if they were on fire, as if they were burning through his flesh. Clonidine should help that, but for how long? With a success rate of less than ten percent after one year of treatment, even a medical detox rarely worked. Either he quit, or he didn’t. He’d believed that from the start. So why was he here?
“Fuck this,” he muttered, and got up.
“Are you leaving?” The woman who’d sat next to him for the past two hours acted like he was committing a cardinal sin. She’d been staring at him as though there wasn’t a TV to entertain her five feet away. She creeped him out. Maybe she recognized him as a fellow addict, thought they could become friends or allies or share needles or some shit. She didn’t know he wasn’t going in the same direction anymore. No one did, because he looked and felt worse than he ever had in his life.
“Hey!” She tried again to get him to respond. He didn’t bother, but she’d spoken loudly enough to draw the attention of someone in authority.
“Sir? Excuse me, sir?” It was the nurse Peyton had spoken to when they first arrived. He didn’t want to acknowledge her, either, but she caught up with him before he could reach the doors.
“Would you give me the respect of an answer, please?” She sounded pissed, but she had no idea how hard it was just to walk. His head felt as if it’d been cleaved in two.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, marshaling all his strength to be polite.
“You could take a seat. I don’t think it’ll be much longer.”
He hung his head, took a few measured breaths. “What’d Peyton say to you?”
“Peyton who?”
She was playing dumb. He could read it on her face. “The woman I came in with. You remember her. Had a belly out to here?” He held his hand in front of his own stomach.
Her mouth flattened, became a mere slash in her face. “She said you probably wouldn’t stay. She was worried about it when she saw how crowded the waiting room was. She cares about you, so I’m doing my best to help her out.”
The nurse thought Peyton’s baby was his, that Peyton had to deal with an addict—that is, loser—for a husband.
“Come on, sit down,” she coaxed. “I’ll go see if I can get you in any sooner.”
Before all the kids who needed to be treated? No way. He wasn’t going to jump the line. He was a full-grown man who felt guilty for wasting resources that should go to other people, people who weren’t stupid enough to get themselves into such an unenviable position. He could buy a few pills on the street—any kind of painkiller if he couldn’t get OxyContin—enough so that he could be useful again. Then, after everything was over, he’d go clean.
“I’m okay,” he said.
She grasped his arm. “Please? That woman you were with. She just about begged me.”
Staring down at her hand, he took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine.” He started back toward his seat, but as soon as she disappeared down the hall, he strode out and used his cell phone to call his street pharmacist.
The fury that seethed inside Ink felt like a separate living and breathing entity, one he couldn’t control. No matter what he did, Virgil and his sister always remained just out of reach. Now L.J. was shot and looking as if he had one foot in the grave as he slouched against the door of the truck, and Ink couldn’t even get him some help.
Why he was suddenly so set on saving L.J., Ink didn’t know. For a few minutes in the forest, he’d believed that L.J. was going to abandon him. That deserved no loyalty. Just yesterday, he’d been planning on killing L.J., anyway. But not yet. He wasn’t finished with him. Losing L.J. created another wrinkle in his plans and narrowed his chances of success. It was a victory for the other side.
“You okay?” He’d been barking this question every few minutes, and L.J. would grunt, but this time Ink got no response. L.J. had even quit wincing when the truck’s tires hit various ruts and grooves as they bounced up the dirt road to the cabin.
“Hey!” When Ink shook him, L.J.’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing glassy eyes. Quite a bit of blood soaked his shirt. Was he dying?
“Shit!” Ink slammed his fist into the dash. What was he going to do? He’d always fancied himself as resourceful, capable of doing whatever needed to be done in a pinch. If that meant sewing up a gash in his arm or one of his comrades’, he’d do it. If it meant digging out a bullet, he’d do that, too. He’d removed a slug from his own shin once. It’d been a grisly affair—he’d nearly passed out—but he’d been successful, and it’d made him quite famous among The Crew. They still asked to see the scar, and talked about the balls it took to do something like that.
He had the balls to do this, too. But as far as he knew, he didn’t even have a first aid kit to work with. He hadn’t seen one, anyway. It wasn’t something the men who’d rented the place had thought to bring. Probably because they’d only been planning to do a little hiking and fishing, and take a few pictures, and couldn’t imagine getting hurt. Or they couldn’t imagine getting hurt and being unable to seek help in town. They’d had a vehicle, after all, and there’d been a group of them.
Ink, on the other hand, had no help. And he had to lay low until the heat was off.
But he could work without a first aid kit. He’d sedate L.J. with the last of his pain pills, then use hot water and bandages made from the clothes of the men he’d shot. He’d tossed their suitcases in the back bedroom, so he still had access to them.
“What—what are you…thinking?” L.J. was watching him through narrow slits, as if it was difficult for him to open his eyes.
“I’m thinking how I’m going to patch you up.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he struggled to swallow. “Patch…me up? But…I need a doctor. I think…I’m dying.”
He had to feel like shit to be less concerned about getting caught than getting help. “You’re not going to die,” Ink told him.
“Just…drop me off at…at a hospital. There’s got to be one around here somewhere. You can…you can still get away.”
But he wasn’t done here. Not by a long shot. Besides, running, especially in the vehicle they had now, would only get him arrested. A description of the truck must’ve gone out to every law enforcement agency in the area. The best thing to do was sit tight. They had a few days yet before anyone noticed that the men who’d rented the cabin were gone. That gave them time to get L.J. back on his feet, time for Ink to come up with alternate transportation and time to finish what they’d set out to do in the first place.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” he told L.J.
“But the pain… Feels as if my heart can’t beat…as if…as if it’s filled with…with blood or something.”
“I’ve been shot before. It always feels like you’re dying,” he said. “Just relax. We’re home now, and I’m going to take care of you.”
And if he couldn’t? He’d bury L.J. in the forest with the o
ther guys and figure out another way. Because he wasn’t leaving Laurel alive. Not after coming this close. That small-town bastard sheriff was going to get his, too.
“Son of a bitch!”
Vivian startled awake to see that she’d fallen asleep in a chair at Myles’s bedside. Despite the late hour, the hospital in Libby was abuzz with various noises and had been the whole time. The beeping machines, the conversation of the doctor who’d spoken to Myles as he cleaned his wounds and bandaged him up, the nurses who came in and out with blood pressure cuffs or medication or pushed carts past his open doorway. It should’ve kept her from dozing off. But she’d somehow grown accustomed to it. Or she’d been too exhausted to let it bother her. She’d drifted off almost as soon as she knew he was going to be fine. But this, coming from the sheriff’s own lips, made her bolt from her chair.
“You okay?” she gasped before she could gather her wits enough to realize he’d just hung up the phone and looked more angry than hurt.
“They let Ink and Lloyd get away.” Hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand, he drooped dejectedly onto the pillow. “I had half a dozen deputies swarming the area and somehow they couldn’t get the job done.”
This wasn’t what Vivian wanted to hear. She’d thought that maybe, finally, the nightmare would be over. There’d been a price. Myles’s injuries had been frightening to her and painful to him. But the bullet that went through his leg hadn’t hit a major artery or chipped the bone. The second bullet, the one that grazed his neck, had left a cut, nothing more.
“Get away?” she repeated dully.
He sighed as he scowled up at her. “They’ve scoured the area. They can’t find them or their truck.”
But they couldn’t give up this soon. “Ink won’t leave until he gets what he wants. That means he’s still here.”
“Where?” he demanded. “For the past three hours, my deputies have stopped every car and truck coming to or from our neighborhood at two different checkpoints. I’ve had a K-9 unit and a bevy of officers with heavy-duty flashlights combing the forest. There’s been no sign of them. The dogs picked up a scent and chased it to where we found some tire tracks, but every white truck we’ve stopped hasn’t been the one they’re driving. Maybe they slipped through before we put up the blockade. But if that’s the case, they could be a hundred and fifty miles in any direction, and we don’t know enough about the make and model of the truck to expect other departments to do much more than be on the lookout.”
