As I step into the kitchen, my father emerges from his office.
Speak of the devil.
"Howard. I was wondering when you'd get back. Come into the office."
He walks inside and I follow. Alexis isn't here.
"I sent her off to run some errands for the rally this weekend. Only two days to go."
"Yeah."
"You're going to be there," he declares, and it is assuredly not a question. "We're going to have to cover up those inane tattoos. I don't know what motivated you to mark yourself up like that."
"Everybody in my unit got tats."
"I suppose if they jumped off a bridge…" He sighs. "Well, far be it for me to question military unit cohesion. In any case, we'll want to be properly attired for this event. I want the townsfolk to see my veteran son, of whom I am very proud," he says with a flat sarcasm, "and not a tattooed up thug."
"Right."
He slips a credit card across the desk, and a slip of paper. "Take this, go to that store and get a proper suit. It's coming off my corporate account."
Leery, I take the card and the slip of paper. There's an address. It's about two hours from Paradise Falls.
"We need to discuss your future plans."
"Do we?"
"They need to involve leaving."
"Oh?"
"Do you think I'm an idiot? I've seen you gawking at your stepsister. I know she isn't interested in you, but the last thing I need is the embarrassment of you pulling some stunt to impress her or some idiotic nonsense like that. You never did learn any self control."
I stare at him.
"Let's drop the pretense," he sighs. "Close the door."
I turn and swing it shut. It locks with a click and when I turn back he has his hand propped on the desk, and in his hand is a sleek automatic pistol, a little pocket model, a .32 or a .380, aimed right at my chest.
"When you left, I'd have had to resort to other methods, make it look like an accident. Today I think I could just shoot you and it’d be a minor inconvenience, but one I'd rather not deal with. I find the idea of killing my own blood distasteful."
"Not killing your own wife, though," I say, very softly. "Not the mother of your children. If you shoot me, you'd better use every bullet in that weapon and hope I drop before I make you eat it."
He stays perfectly still, but a single bead of sweat grows on his forehead and slides down his nose. His jaw works and he adjusts his grip on the gun, his fingers flexing.
"Why? What did she do that you had to kill her?"
"We're not having this conversation. I'm offering you a chance to walk away. On your own terms, on your own time."
"I'm not going to tell anyone about what you did."
His lip twitches. I stare at him.
"I know you'll hurt Alex if I do. If you lay a hand on her, I swear I'll do shit to you that’ll never heal, and everyone will know what you did."
He shifts his arm, looks at the gun, at me.
"Ever hear of a dead man's switch?"
"I'm familiar with the term."
I nod. "There's somebody waiting to hear from me. If they don't, people are going to find out what you did."
"You have no proof," he says. "Hearsay. You say you saw a web search from years ago."
"Maybe that's all I've got. Maybe."
"The medical examiner confirmed your mother died of a stroke. He then retired. I think if you pursue this, you'll find it's a dead end."
"Maybe," I say, softly. "Maybe that's not all this person’s been instructed to do. Maybe this person’s a certified marksman and there's a .338 Lapua slug with your name on it. You're not the only one with friends. Dad."
He swallows, his throat bobbing, red spreading on his face.
Stare him down, Hawk. Sell the bluff.
"I don't give a fuck who the mayor of this town is," I say, very softly. "You want to win, fine. I came back here to make sure Alex is safe. You touch her, you're a dead man. You put me down, you're a dead man."
With his free hand he opens a desk drawer, and then he lays the pistol inside it and slides it closed. He takes a handkerchief from his desk and blots his forehead, and sits back.
"We're at an impasse."
"Nah, you think you've won. You think you took Alex away from me forever."
He says nothing, as still as a statue.
"That means I have nothing to lose," I tell him. "I'd best go get my suit."
I turn and walk out of the office, close the door behind me, and walk upstairs.
May pokes her head out of her room and stares at me.
"Not now," I whisper.
She grabs my arm and instead of shaking loose, I step into her room. She runs over and closes the heater vent on the floor and puts a book on it.
Her room looks like somebody put a bomb in her clothes hamper.
"You need to police this up," I whisper.
"Not now. Jesus, Hawk, I heard everything. He killed your mom?"
Fuck. May didn't know.
"Yeah." I whisper. No point in hiding it now. "He put an illegal pesticide in her coffee. It looked like a stroke."
May clutches her throat, and goes pale.
"Relax. If he poisoned you with it, you'd know by now."
"Jesus Christ," she whispers. "Holy Jesus Howard Christ. Uh, sorry."
"Right."
She paces the room and looks at me. "All that stuff about some guy shooting him and telling everybody…"
"Yeah," I confess. "I wish I'd thought of that before I left."
"Alex didn't tell me what happened last night."
I fold my arms over my chest.
"Jesus you're huge," she whispers.
May's lip trembles. "I wanted you to come back," she whimpers, scrubbing at her cheeks as she starts to cry. "Alexis won't stop trying to do whatever and get your dad in trouble. He's crazy, Hawk. If he finds out she's been spying on him and stuff he'll… he'll hurt her."
"She’s in trouble."
May hugs herself and sobs. "I want it to be like before. I want you to be her boyfriend again. I missed you so much. Your brother is a creepy perv and he's been eyeballing me for years."
"What?"
"Lance," she hisses. "He's always looking at me. One time he walked into the bathroom while I was taking a shower and he wouldn't leave until I yelled and Alex came and-"
"Has he touched you?"
"No."
"Stay away from him. If he won't leave you alone, come get me."
She nods. "Okay."
"If he hurts you, I swear I'll kill him."
May nods softly, still shaking. I put my hands on her shoulders.
"You're Alexis' sister. That makes you my sister, too."
A weak smile quivers on her lips and she nods.
"I'm glad you're back."
"Listen to me. We might need to go, at any time. Can you get a bag ready? Stuff you can just grab?"
She nods. "Yeah."
"Good. Do that, keep it somewhere no one will see it, but you can get to it in a hurry. Only pack important things. One bag you can carry easily. Understood?"
"Yes. Sir!"
I roll my eyes. "Right. I have to go. Put my number in your phone."
After she has my number, I duck out into the hallway, shower, change.
By mid-afternoon, I'm in my truck, on my way to get a suit picked out.
I stop at a red light, about to turn and cross the bridge, and it hits me.
Why would he send me some place two hours away?
I start across, mulling it over, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. It's not rush hour, so fairly quiet on the bridge. From there it's a fairly straight run to pick up the interstate and then down to Philadelphia.
Two hours away.
The outskirts of Paradise Falls slide past me. Motels, strip malls, trailer parks, the barnacles of un-suburban sprawl that cling to the edges of any town of sufficient size out here in the sticks.
Behind me, a pair of
motorcycles pulls out and cruises along, about three or four car lengths back. Big guys on Harleys. Tats, bandanas, the works. At the next intersection, a pickup pulls out behind them. All black, the chrome on the bumpers painted over black, the whole shebang. Even the wheels are black. There's two guys in the cab, two more in the bed, and they're all dressed in suspenders and high collared shirts. The driver is wearing a straw hat.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
I stop at the next red light. The bikers pull up behind me, their rides rumbling. The Amish…Mennonites… whatever pull up behind them and all four of them eyeball me pretty hard, especially the guys in the back.
It's not far to the on ramp and the highway, maybe five miles. I can see it in the distance through the summer haze, the overpass rising over the road before the interstate cuts through a hill and disappears. Big windmills turn in the fields, giants that remind me of alien war walkers from a cheesy movie. I hate those things.
The light changes and I ease on the gas. The truck pulls into the right lane and speeds up, and the four Amish guys watch me with heads on a swivel as they pass. I speed up, and they keep pace along side me. The bikers rev their engines and draw closer.
Uh.
I tromp on the gas. One of the Amish guys in the bed of the truck swings a double-barreled shotgun up, takes aim, and pulls both triggers as I swerve and stomp on the brake. I turn into the oncoming lane and stand on the brake as the bikers flash past me, and it's only then that I realize the back window of my truck has been blown out and I'm covered with tiny cubes of safety glass. I grab at the back of my neck, wondering how I'm still alive. Gray rings of exposed primer surround holes in the bed and window pillar of my truck.
Only a couple of pellets must have hit the window, enough to shatter it. I'm outgunned here. I throw the truck into reverse, back around, and floor it towards town. If I make it back into Paradise Falls, they're not going to follow me and keep shooting at me. I hope.
I hear a pop and my rear-view mirror explodes, leaving a broken plastic stump and a spider-webbed hole in my windshield. They're fucking shooting at me. I weave back and forth, into the oncoming lane and back again, and hear more pops. A strange calm settles over my mind. I grip the wheel. I work the pedals. I drive the truck.
You never hear the one that gets you. As long as I keep hearing them I'm going to be fine. The bikers are speeding up. The Amish guys in the truck are having a hard time catching up with me. One of the pair of motorcyclists comes up on my back fender, aiming at me left handed. I nose the truck over and he jams on his brakes, narrowly avoiding my bumper tapping his front wheel to send him flying into the ditch along the side of the road. He swerves and slows, and his friend races past him, sweeping out into the oncoming lane.
I'm in a battered '89 pickup and he's on a motorcycle, there's no way I can outrace him. He pops off a shot and it goes right over my shoulder, so close I can feel it pass before I hear the shot, and it punches another hole in my windshield. I can't fucking see. If I lean out the window, he'll blow my brains out.
I can hear the engine of the bike coming up alongside me.
Fuck it.
I swerve over. Now I see him. He veers off but not in time, and the ass end of my pickup clips his back fender. The bike wobbles, he tries to correct, swerves, and then he's pavement surfing, the bike scraping along on its side in front of him. I turn back and see the Amish guys racing at me in their all-black pickup, and floor it. No choice now, I lean out my window to steer as the speedometer passes eighty miles an hour.
One of the Amish guys is standing up in the bed of the truck, leaning over the roof, aiming his shotgun at me. I split my attention between the road ahead and the end of the shotgun barrels bouncing up and down, bobbing left and right. Once he has that lined up he's going to give me both barrels and this time I don't think he's going to miss. It won't matter how fast I'm going, I'm not going to outrun buckshot.
They're getting closer. I have the pedal to the floor and I'm not going any faster, she's topping out at about eighty-five. The goddamn Amish truck is catching up.
So, I pull on my seat belt and slam on the brakes.
The driver swerves and dumps the gunman in the bed as his tires squeal and his brakes lock. The thing about playing chicken is knowing when to flinch.
I don't. I keep my foot on the brake until I leave a set of smoking tracks of rubber behind me and the front end of the black pickup crashes into the back corner of my pickup's bed with a solid jolt that sends me snapping forward against the seatbelt. The world goes wild as the truck spins around and me with it, until the force feels like it's going to rip my stomach out through my nose.
Dazed, I blink a few times and realize I'm sitting in the opposing lane facing the side of the road, the back wheels of my truck in the ditch. My engine is still running. I hit the gas and my tires spin. She'll still drive, but I'm not going anywhere. The Amish truck is flipped over on its side and it's laying in the ditch, the underbelly facing me.
The fucking driver is climbing out of the window. His door is bent shut but he's kicked out the glass and he's climbing out.
Are you shitting me?
He drops down to the ground and limps around the side of the truck, lifting his right foot. His leg must be broken.
Doesn't matter. He grabs the shotgun by the barrels and tugs it loose. The buttstock is snapped off but it doesn't matter, it'll still work. He snaps it open and closed again, checking that it's loaded, and raises it.
I throw the truck into reverse and slam the gas pedal. The whole thing lurches backwards, the tires bite, and I slam it into drive and floor it, swerving around, and duck.
I hear the shot. When I sit up again I hear the flub-flub-flub of a flattening tire, but the Amish guy with the shotgun is receding behind me, even if I'm going about thirty-five and the back wheel is starting to spark and burn.
Fuckers.
I text Alex.
Can you talk?
With my luck, she's back in my father's office.
Not five seconds later, my phone is ringing.
"Hawk?"
"Yeah. Listen-"
"Are you okay? I'm in the car, I had to go… it doesn't matter. What's wrong?"
"A bunch of Amish guys just tried to kill me. My truck is fucked up to no end. Can you call you friends for me? Tell them where I am?"
"Yeah, yeah I can do that. Where are you?"
I give her a rough location.
"Hawk, are you okay?"
"I'm not hurt. I'm fine, Alex."
"Okay. Call me when they pick you up."
For the next half hour my truck, which I fucking bought three days ago, limps back towards town, until a little Toyota pulls up alongside me and I see Jennifer motioning for me to pull over.
Wearily, I muscle the beast off the road and into the soft shoulder. It's not going anywhere now. I step out, and realize I'm stiff all over. I feel like I've been run through a giant clothes dryer.
"What the hell happened to you?"
"I pissed off the Amish."
"Get in the car. I'll have somebody along to get this wreck off the road."
I collapse into the passenger seat of her little car, and she drives off, already on her phone.
"Yeah, this location. Move fast, we need it off the road."
She turns to me. "What were you doing?"
"Driving to Philadelphia to get a suit for this stupid rally." I sigh. "Then here come the Barbarian Brothers on motorcycles and Jedediah and Clem in a pickup trying to fucking kill me."
"Clem isn't an Amish name."
"Whatever! They're not real Amish anyway. Amish don't cook meth and kill people."
"What do you want to do? Where's Alexis?"
"Out running errands for my father. Jesus, Jennifer. He tried to kill me."
"Call her, tell her to meet us at the park. Do it."
My head feels like it's stuffed with pencil erasers, but I do as she says. Alexis doesn't argue with me
, thank God.
Jennifer drives us to the park and we step out, walk through the wrought iron gates and head down the path. Alexis comes jogging up and throws her arms, and then her legs, around me, almost bowling me over.
"Ohmygodhwhathappenedareyouokay?" she blurts all at once.
Grunting, I push her legs down and make her stand up, but she doesn't let go.
"I'm not hurt. Truck's totaled."
"Oh my God."
Still, she doesn't let go. She squeezes tighter, pressing her face into my chest.
"Okay, new plan," I announce. "If you want shit on my father's computer, I'll bring the goddamn thing with me after I finish kicking his ass up through his skull."
"I want both of you to leave," Jennifer says. "I have a place you can go. Leave with me right now."
"No," Alexis says, softly. "Not yet."
"Alexis, they tried to kill me."
She steps back, her hands linger on my sides. "You go. I'll stay."
"Not a fucking chance," I snap. "I'm not leaving you behind. Ever."
"I have to stop him," Alexis says, glancing at both of us. "It's the only way I'll ever know my sister is safe. That you're safe," she looks at me.
"If you won't go, I won't go either."
Jennifer sighs and scrubs her palms over her face. "Look, I can't drag you kicking and screaming, but the man just tried to kill one of you today. You botched following him to the farm. He knows. He probably knows you were both in on it. It's time to go."
"No," we both say at once.
After a frustrated sigh, Jennifer hands Alexis a card.
"If there's any kind of a problem, call me. Immediately. Hawk, put my number in your phone."
After I've added her, I sigh. "I still need a damn suit."
"Alexis, go back to the house, you don't want to be missed," Jennifer says. "Hawk, come with me. We'll take care of the suit."
Alexis
Now
I think I'm going to throw up.
For the last three days I've been preparing all my own food, from packages, and doing the same for May, while Hawk eats out of cans from the pantry. We rarely eat dinner together anyway, but I'm still terrified any time either of them takes a bite, expecting them to start frothing at the mouth and keel over from poison.
Hawk Page 18
