I nodded my head, wondering what it must have been like for her. Terrible? Rewarding? Emotionally scarring, or perversely therapeutic?
I knew that the ear wouldn’t have come off easy either, knew that she must have been whipping her head from side to side, teeth clenched tight, for several seconds, perhaps a full minute or more, before it came loose.
Funny what stress can do to a person’s perception of time; I wondered how long it had felt like for Don.
‘He finally managed to pull away from me,’ Sam said, ‘and I knew he was going to try and get away up those stairs, get his boys to help him, and I knew I couldn’t let him do that, you know? So I picked up the gun and shot him, just once, right through the chest. Wanted to shoot him more, but I knew those guys would have to come downstairs sooner or later, I was going to hide in a corner and pick them off as they came, see how many of the bastards I could take with me before they got to me.’
I came back to her and held her again, let her sink into me, sobbing against my chest.
‘Oh Colt,’ she cried softly, ‘what are we going to do now? What are we going to do now?’
I looked at the dead body of the police chief on the basement floor, considered the carnage that I’d left upstairs, remembered the trail of destruction we’d created over half the state.
I let out a long, heartfelt sigh and told her the truth. ‘I’ll be damned if I know,’ I said as I held her even more closely. ‘I’ll be damned if I know.’
Epilogue
‘Is that everything?’ I asked.
‘That’s it,’ said the man. ‘Good as the real thing, trust me.’
I did trust him; his name was Franz Piennaar, a South African exile who used to work for that country’s National Intelligence Service as a document forger for their undercover operatives, before moving to the US to do the same thing for the CIA and the military’s Special Operations Command. He was the best I’d seen, and whatever was in the envelope he passed me was definitely going to be worth the thousand-mile journey to Detroit.
Sam and I had decided that our original plan was perhaps still her best bet; she might have been able to sell the ‘abused wife fights back’ story to a jury, but the scene of the Carson house was perhaps just a little bit too much for most jurors to accept. She would have been sent down for a few years at least, trading one prison for another, and she wasn’t willing to do it.
I wasn’t particularly willing to do a lifetime stretch in maximum security either; and with my real name being bandied about left and right by the national media, that might well have happened if I’d been arrested.
Not that there was much hard evidence against me; a bit of eyewitness testimony, but mostly from a distance, or in the dark, or while I was moving at high speed, nothing that would be classified as concrete. They might scrape some fingerprints from somewhere, but the case would be far from watertight.
They might be able to pick up some more prints from the motel where we’d stayed too, but I was pretty sure I’d not committed any crime in the motel room itself, save maybe a little bit of vandalism. But last I checked, that wasn’t a capital offence.
And with the conduct of the Sand Springs PD being highly suspect in a number of areas, I wasn’t sure exactly how vigorously they would want to pursue the case.
I’d killed some cops, yeah; but if the huge suitcases full of cash Sam had pulled down from the attic were anything to go by, they were dirty as hell. For the media’s sake, there would be a manhunt for us, but I had a feeling it would die off as soon as public interest waned, in the hope that the whole sorry episode might be forgotten.
Sam had offered me a thousand dollars back in the house, right from her husband’s suitcases, but I’d turned her down; she’d probably be needing it more than I did.
‘He didn’t think I knew about it,’ Sam told me, ‘arrogant bastard that he was. But I knew. How couldn’t I, when he went up there to check it almost every night?’
I’d asked her if she knew where it had come from, but she didn’t, not for sure anyway. Still, it didn’t take a genius to work it out.
I’d then dragged the living bodies from the house, dumping them on the lawn before setting fire to the Carson homestead – the dead bodies still inside – to conceal any further evidence of my actions there. I’d considered burning them all, but couldn’t bring myself to kill the survivors in cold blood. I would have to take my chances with the stories they would tell, but at least my conscience would be clear. Well, fairly clear, anyway.
I’d been identified and had my name put out there on most TV news channels across the country – hell, maybe the world – but if I was caught and the case ever came to court, it would have to be explained what I was doing in Sand Springs jail in the first place, which might open up a whole new can of worms.
To be fair, I was wanted by the police in numerous states anyway; this was just one more.
But a new set of ID would undoubtedly be helpful, alongside a new wardrobe, haircut, skin tone and colored contact lenses.
I looked across the room at Sam, who stopped stroking Kane’s head as she opened her own envelope.
Kane had met up with us not far from the Carson house. After setting the fire, we’d slipped out of the back yard to avoid the media trucks which would undoubtedly be moving in to check out the raging inferno, and – struggling with those heavy cash-filled suitcases – headed back toward the stolen car from the transport department that I’d parked a few streets over.
We’d just climbed in when I saw Kane running down the street toward us. I couldn’t believe it, but he’d done things like this before, and it shouldn’t really have surprised me. He’d probably headed back to Sand Springs as soon as he left the roof of that shopping mall, somehow knowing that’s where I would be going.
Once there, maybe his hearing picked up on my voice, or the sounds of violence, or maybe it was just the fire – but he’d locked in on us and that was that, we were reunited once again.
Sam seemed even happier than me to see him, and held him close in the backseat as I drove us out of Sand Springs forever.
We drove west for a couple of hours, then left the car and stole another. I was banking on the authorities – if they found the abandoned vehicle – thinking we were headed purposefully west, possibly to New Mexico or Arizona, maybe even as far as California. It might mislead them for a few vital hours, at least.
We’d taken the new car north though, passing through Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa before circling around Chicago toward Detroit. The journey had been long and – still without proper medical care – pretty painful. But my self-medication wasn’t all that bad, and I was still in one piece by the time we got to Motor City two days and four stolen vehicles later.
It wasn’t just Sam that needed a new identity; I’d lost my fake creds in Mexico earlier that year, and was desperately in need of more. If Colt Ryder was a ‘person of interest’ to the authorities before, then I was sure as hell a lot more than that now, and I needed all the help I could get.
‘Ella Gordon,’ Sam said as she checked her documents. ‘Ella Gordon . . .’ she said again, trying to get used to the sound of it. Then she shrugged and started to look through them in more detail. ‘Driver’s license, social security card, education certificates – hey, I did graduate high school after all! – and biographical notes. Credit cards, bank cards. And,’ she said with a smile as she held up a small book, ‘a passport. My ticket out of here.’
I smiled back, then looked down at my own. ‘Craig Garrick,’ I said. ‘Simon Fisher. Clancy Braddock. Harrison Yarding.’
‘How come you get so many?’ Sam asked with feigned petulance.
‘He needs them,’ Franz told her. ‘You’re off to start a new life in another country, you are Ella Gordon from this moment onwards. Your friend here, however, is staying right here in the United States and is going to need all the help he can get; and at no stage is he really going to be these people, they are merely a means to an
end. He’s not even Colt Ryder anymore, not really. He’s the Thousand Dollar Man.’ Franz smiled. ‘A myth. A legend.’
‘Yes,’ Sam agreed as she looked at me across the room, a faint smile on her lips, ‘he is.’
Ella Gordon rested against the door of her rental car, a look of disappointment on her face. ‘I guess this is it,’ she said.
I nodded as I moved near. ‘I guess so,’ I said.
‘You sure you won’t come with me?’ she asked, but I shook my head.
‘No,’ I answered. ‘I’ve come far enough.’ It was true, too – we were in Canada now, in the parking lot of Calgary International Airport. We’d crossed over from the United States with no problems the night before, and now here we were – the last leg of her journey. ‘You still headed for Australia?’
‘Yeah,’ she said with a nod. ‘Why not? Franz set me up with a job, arranged a work visa with a company in Brisbane. He’s good, that guy.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘He is. What job is it?’
Ella Gordon smiled sheepishly and shrugged. ‘I don’t even know,’ she admitted, and I was forced to smile too.
‘Well, whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll be great at it.’
Her smile widened and then – after a moment’s awkward silence – Ella Gordon leant in close and kissed me on the cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she said, meaning it. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve given me back my life.’
I kissed her back, looked her in the eyes. ‘You look after yourself,’ I told her. ‘Okay?’
She nodded and – with one final look at me – she turned on her heel and headed for the terminal.
I wished her well. She deserved a new shot at life.
I watched her go, then got back into the mid-range sedan that we’d rented, stretching out in the upholstered seat as Kane nuzzled my ear.
Should I have gone with her? I asked myself. We could have started a new life together. A normal life. A regular life.
I felt something in my pocket then, and my hand went to it, pulling it out.
It was an envelope; she must have slipped it into my pocket during that final goodbye kiss.
It was plain, white, and filled with cash.
I flipped through it and laughed.
A thousand dollars.
No, I decided, a normal life wasn’t an option for someone like me.
There were just too many people who needed me.
I turned to Kane and ruffled the fur on top of his big head.
‘Okay boy,’ I said. ‘Where to next?’
THE END
. . . but Colt Ryder will return in a new adventure, out Fall 2016!!!
Read more from J.T. Brannan -
MARK COLE SERIES:
SEVEN DAY HERO
STOP AT NOTHING
WHATEVER THE COST
BEYOND ALL LIMITS
NEVER SAY DIE
PLEDGE OF HONOR
COLT RYDER SERIES:
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR MAN
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR HUNT
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR ESCAPE
STANDALONE NOVELS:
ORIGIN
EXTINCTION
The Thousand Dollar Escape Page 15
