But you can’t get very far with empty pockets. She had made one stop before leaving Portland for good, an address off Sumner. Jacob Weaver was a scam artist with a major in credit card fraud and minor in dope peddling. She had busted him twice during her time with Robbery Detail but both times the shitheel got off. She paid him a surprise visit and took all the cash he had on the premises before leaving the city of roses for good. A little over four grand in fifties, a portion of which she was certain were counterfeits but Jacob’s work was top notch and she never did spot the bogus bills. That meant no one else would either.
She was smart with the money too. Making it last, squeezing every penny tighter than a Scottish millionaire. But it only went so far and for somebody on the run, it burned off too fast. She had found odd jobs here and there, day labor stuff. More than once, she had passed herself off as a migrant worker. Her Spanish was almost rusty next to the seasonal farm workers from Chihuahua and Guatemala. It was December now and that work had shut down for the year.
In Del Norte, a greasy little foreman had tried to cheat her out of her day wages, assuming her to be another illiterate Mexican. She dropped him like a sack of dirt, fished his wallet out and removed her pay.
She had fallen a long way down from the police detective she used to be. And there was still further to fall if it came to that. Her money was running down fast and she had no idea where to scrounge some more or what she was going to do when it ran out.
“Cross that bridge when you come to it,” she said and shimmied the loose floor board back into place.
Gallagher stirred the guacamole with a fork, mashing the chunks of avocado smooth, while the fish fried in the pan. Sticking a finger in the mess he tasted the guac, seemed satisfied, and set the bowl on the table next to the salsa and jalapeno slices. Fish tacos, one of Amy’s favorites. His too. He just didn’t like cleaning up all the bowls of condiments they had with it.
He turned the fish in the pan, watching it sizzle and reached for his beer but it was empty. Got another one from the fridge and lowered the heat on the pan. A dull ache had crept into his shoulders earlier in the day and now it flared up again. It stoked the weariness he’d been fighting all evening. A solid night’s sleep might fix both but he knew better than to hope for that. The nights were never good.
Flipping the fish fry onto a plate, he hollered at his daughter to come to the table.
After a brief inquiry into each other’s day, they ate in silence. Amy picked at her dinner, distracted and unenthused. He should have picked up on that. She usually attacked tacos with gusto until stuffed.
“You feeling okay?” he asked, spooning beans onto another tortilla.
Amy shrugged. “Gabby and a bunch of others are going to the movies tonight. She wanted me to come. It’s her birthday.”
He glanced over to the kitchen window. Early December and it was already dark. “Sun’s gone down.”
That meant no. Amy laid her fork onto the plate. She wasn’t giving up that easy. “It’s just the movies, Dad. Lots of people around. Crazy bright lighting.”
“Sorry.” He half-shrugged, then took a conciliatory tone. “We can watch a movie, if you want. You still haven’t seen A Fistful of Dollars.”
He watched her push her plate away. Digging in her heels. There was going to be a fight this time. There had been others.
Amy took a breath, said: “I really want to go. It will be safe. And I think I’ve earned it.”
“Honey--“
She cut him off. “I know I’ve earned it.”
The dog lay on a mat, chin on the floor. One ear twitched at the sudden cut in her tone.
Amy watched her dad lean back and take a pull off the beer bottle. No hurry. He could dig his heels in too. “You know the rules,” he said. “Home after sundown. No exceptions.”
“I can’t do this anymore, Dad. It’s too much. I’ve gone along with it to keep you happy but-- Enough already.”
“I know this is tough. And it doesn’t seem fair--“ he stopped, reconsidered. “It isn’t fair. But things are different now. It’s for your own good.”
“What are you afraid of?”
He tilted the beer. Said nothing.
Amy folded her arms. No retreat, no give. “I know what’s going on here.”
His brow arched. A reaction at least. She wasn’t sure but did a bolt of fear just flash across his eyes?
“Yeah?” he said. “And just what do you know?”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? The curfew and the triple locks on all the doors. The gun practice, the paranoia.”
He held up a hand. “Stop.”
“There’s a name for what’s happening.”
“Is this about a boy? Is there a boy you want to see tonight?”
Amy’s mouth set into a grimace but remained locked. A trick learned from the old man.
“Fer Christ’s sakes, Amy. Boys can wait.”
She leaned in, elbows back on the table. Eyes on his. “P.T.S.D.” She watched him roll his eyes, went on. “Post traumatic--“
“I know what it means,” he barked. The husky lifted its head off the linoleum and looked at them. He evened his tone. “Put that thought out of your head.”
“What else is it then? These are all the symptoms, dad.” Her hand came up, counting off fingers. “The nightmares, the lack of sleep, the paranoia. The anger--“
“The anger ain’t new.”
“But it’s gotten worse. Your control issues with me, like this ridiculous curfew.” She nodded to the drink in his hand. “And your drinking. Classic signs. You can’t deny that.”
Amy paused, waiting for some response. An acknowledgment. Hell, a grunt would do. Nothing. Keep pushing. “All of this goes back to that night in September. The night Lara disappeared and you wound up in the hospital.”
He flinched. A chink in the armour. Neither spoke, some thin thread of wire pulled taut across the table. The Siberian watched them from its nest, eyes darting from the girl to the man and back again.
“What happened that night?” Amy softened her tone. She had tried before to coax it out of him. “Something bad happened and you’ve never said anything about it. Tell me.”
Gallagher rose and gathered up the dishes. “We’re done here.”
“No. We’re not. Tell me what happened.”
He ran the faucet, keeping his back to her. “Clear the table please.”
It was so easy for him, to just shut it all down and turn it off. Shut her out and become an iceberg. Amy took hold of her plate, ready to do what she was told but then she stopped and sat back down. Not tonight. She slid her plate across the table until it teetered over the edge and fell.
Crash.
He spun around. Saw the mess on the floor, the shards of china everywhere. “What the hell?”
Amy looked her father in the eye. “I’m not a kid anymore. Just trust me. It’s okay.”
His face reddened but his jaw muscles twitched as he swallowed his outburst and kept his mouth shut. With a quiet grumble, he said; “Clean that up.”
Amy got to her feet and stepped around the mess on the floor. “You’re right, this isn’t fair. I’m supposed to trust you implicitly. With everything. But you won’t trust me? We’re family for Christ’s sakes.”
She watched his hands bunch into fists. Knuckles whitening. Silently counting off the seconds to cool down. “Watch your language.”
Amy walked away but fired back over her shoulder. “Some family we are.”
Retreating into her bedroom, Amy opened every drawer in the dresser, loathing everything she owned.
No matter, she’d find something to wear.
He was draining the sink when she came back downstairs. Jeans that were too tight and hair straightened pin sharp. The makeup around her eyes wasn’t a lot, a little mascara, but it was jarring to see. Gone was his little girl. Gallagher didn’t know who this young woman was.
Amy took her coat from the rack and slipped it on.
“I’m going out to see my friends. We’ll be safe. I’ll be back around eleven.”
Gallagher flung the dishtowel away. “Don’t do this.”
“You can’t stop me.”
The Siberian sat by the door, waiting to go outside. Its eyes roamed back and forth between them. He stood and wagged his tail as Amy approached. She rubbed its head and reached for the door knob.
“I’ll be safe,” she said. Then a parting shot. “Trust me.”
“Do you have your phone on you?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t try to stop her. What was he going to do, send her to her room? The dog scuttled out with her and the door slammed shut.
He finished cleaning up and then took down a rocks glass from the cupboard. Found the single malt and poured a ploughman’s share. He pulled on his boots and coat and then went out to the front porch. Settled into the old wicker chair and watched the street. A car went past and then it was quiet. The husky trotted up the steps and sat at his feet.
Gallagher set his glass on the weathered floorboards and contemplated going back inside to fetch his gun.
FIVE
“LITTLE LATE IN the season for fishing, isn’t it?”
The woman looked up from the items she had placed on the counter. “Pardon?”
The man behind the register, big-bellied with a broad smile, held up the spool of fishing line she’d chosen.
“Fishing season’s over, is what I mean.” The man behind the counter smiled, holding up the spool of fishing line she’d chosen. He rang it in. “At least for trout and whitefish. You don’t want to be caught by the game warden. It’s a hefty fine.”
“I just like to be ready for next season,” she said. The shop owner nodded, seemed satisfied with the answer. Truth was, she did plan to fish out of season. These days, the only protein she got came out of what she could pull from the river near the shack. And that wasn’t much, she had never been that much of a fisherman.
She watched the man ring up the rest of her supplies. A few cans and a sack of lentils. Dried chili peppers to give it some taste. Soap, the cheapest and smelliest the shop had to offer. She looked back over the aisles, wondering if she’d forgotten anything. The shop was a bona fide general store, selling everything from groceries to sporting goods to locally made crafts on consignment. A Podunk charm all its own.
“Eleven-twenty,” he said, totaling it up. “Say, are you staying down at the Hatfield’s place? The cabins on the lake there?”
“No.” She paid and loaded her purchases into the backpack. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” He seemed to take no offense at her blunt answer. He looked at his watch and said; “If you hurry over to the Salty Pine, you can still catch the happy hour. Chilli and beer for two bucks. Can’t beat it.”
She slung the backpack onto her shoulders, thanked him and went out the door.
A battered pickup truck rumbled past her on the road and disappeared behind the post office. No other traffic. The town of Weepers was small and remote, the kind of place that flourished in the summer and curled up and went to sleep in the winter. That might be a problem now. With the tourists gone and only the locals around, she might be noticed. People would want to chat, ask where she’s from or where she’s staying. Like the shop owner.
She hated the thought of packing up and moving on again but it might come to that. Where would she run to this time?
Cinching up the shoulder straps, she started walking when she heard a door open and music spill out into the street. The Salty Pine tavern was just up ahead on her left, a neon sign glowing in the window. She watched an older man hold the door open for his wife and she took his arm as they ambled to their car parked out front.
She listened to the sound of music and people talking. The door swung closed and the sound muffled to a low murmur. An ache swelled up in her chest at the sounds. Civilization. Life. Community. She’d been alone so long now, isolated and on the run. The rumble of afternoon drinkers nestled inside was a siren call hard to ignore.
“Two buck chili and beer,” she uttered, reading the sign on the door. It was a luxury but today, she’d splurge.
The chili was hearty if bland. Hunkered down at a table near the back, she kept her distance from the happy hour crowd and spiked the chili with shake after shake of tobasco. She wolfed it down and tore the biscuit in half and wiped the bowl with it. The beer, a tall glass of draft, she sipped slowly.
Three tables were occupied with afternoon drinkers, a few older guys propped up on the bar. The TV flickered with the sound muted. She didn’t speak to anyone, avoiding eye contact with even the waitress. Still, it felt good simply being around other people. The seclusion took its toll, this exile she’d forced upon herself shredding her nerves raw until she wanted to scream out for someone, anyone. Sometimes just being around other people like this, listening to them talk, took the sting out of her seclusion. The claustrophobia of being trapped inside her own head.
Sometimes it brought trouble.
Four tables over three men leaned over their beers. Ball caps and workboots, hunting knives in leather sheaths hung from their belts instead of cell phones. They argued with vigor, waving their hands about and talking over one another. Lara picked up words here and there, trying to decipher what the argument was about. Words like ‘bear’, ‘bait-traps’ and ‘hunting party’ popped up out of the racket of the bar. She leaned in to snatch more scraps of conversation.
“...two head of livestock that McFarland’s lost already...”
“...coyotes don’t go for animals that size. It’s a mountain lion, if it’s anything...”
“Care to add to the class, ma’am?”
She startled, realizing the words were addressed to her. The man with the tattooed forearm squared his eyes straight on her. Unlike his portly friends, he was trim and solid. He smiled at her, a flash of white teeth. “You’re more than welcome to join us,” he said, pulling out the vacant chair next to him. “Add to the conversation?”
“I’m fine.” She dropped her eyes to her bowl. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.” He got up, took his beer with him and sauntered over.
Damn. She should have left sooner. Now this.
“Mind if I sit?” He pulled out a chair and flopped down without waiting for an answer.
“I was just leaving.”
“Can’t leave an unfinished drink on the table.” He nodded to her half-finished beer. “It’s bad luck.”
“I’ve never heard that one before.” She picked up the glass and knocked it back.
“You walk away from it unfinished, people here think you’re rich.” He smiled, gave a wink. “Then when you ain’t looking, they stick you with the tab. See?”
She looked him over quickly. He seemed harmless. Friendly even, without the boring swagger of a guy on a pick-up. A few short words would shut him down and he’d slink back to his friends, tell them she was a bitch to cover his strike-out. Then why was an alarm bell ringing somewhere in her head? He didn’t look dangerous. “Can I ask what you guys were talking about? Sounds like a hunting trip.”
“Predator,” he said. “Couple of bossies on a farm near Weller got killed. Taken down and eaten.”
“I heard someone mention a bear.”
He shrugged. “It’s possible, but unlikely. No one’s seen a bear round here in twenty years.”
“Coyotes?”
“That’s what Todd thinks. He don’t know shit.”
“What do you think it is?”
He shrugged again, as if the answer was obvious. “Wolves. Them big timber wolves, wandering down here from up north.”
The alarm rang at full volume. That one word like a fist shattering glass to yank the fire alarm. Along with the clanging bells in her ears, her heart ticked up a notch. Sweat broke down the small of her back. It felt just like--
“Hey, you all right?” The man leaned back, as if she was about to lose her lunch. “You look a little
green.”
The front door was all the way across the bar. The bathroom three paces to her right. “Excuse me,” she said, bolting for the washroom.
It was empty. Thank God. She looked at her reflection in the mottled mirror. Her pupils had already dilated to pinpricks. A faint glow of yellow overlapping the brown.
Not now. Why now?
She pushed into a stall and bolted the door. From an inside pocket of her jacket, she produced the knife. Slipping it from its sheath, the blade gleamed. Silver plated. Clamping it between her teeth, she shrugged off the jacket and pushed the sleeve up past her elbow. The blade, kept sharp from constant honing with a whetstone, pressed into the flesh of her forearm and she pushed in until it bit. Blood welled up in the hairline cut and dribbled down. The effect was almost instant. Her heartrate dropped and her breathing evened out. The smells in the room, amplified from a boosting olfactory sense, dimmed from acute to dulled.
The spell passed, the change averted. She lifted the blade away and watched a single drop of blood fall and bloom on the dirty floor. Lara Mendes looked at her ravaged arm. Crisscrossed with the marks of cutting from elbow to wrist like drunken railway tracks.
SIX
“EARTH TO AMY.”
Amy turned away from the window and looked at her friend. Gabrielle waved her hand, flagging Amy back to the here and now. Amy swatted the hand away. “What?”
“Where’d you go just now?” Gabby said. “You just drifted into outer space again.”
“Sorry.”
Gabby rolled her eyes and slurped the dregs of her iced cappuccino through a straw. She was a new friend in Amy’s world. Unlike the friends she’d grown up with, Gabby was a bit out there. She dressed strange, had weird ideas and was always trying to shock people. She was obsessed with dead rock stars, tabloid magazines and smoked too much weed as far as Amy thought. She had known Gabby since ninth grade shop class but they’d never clicked until this Halloween when Gabby had wandered onto Amy’s front porch dressed as a suicide bride. White veil and fake blood dripping from fake slit wrists. High as a kite and having lost her friends, Gabby had snaked her arm round Amy like a life preserver and helped her dole out candy to the trick-or-treaters. They’d been inseparable ever since.
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 29
