by Jim Heskett
“You listen to me,” the voice said. “Drop your weapon and put your hands above your head.”
Broken-wristed Glenning. As I’d figured, the coyote had sold us out to IntelliCraft. I didn’t even have to spend any time worrying about the mechanics of how that would have happened. They probably already had the coyote on retainer. For all I knew, they had half of Texas on their payroll.
“Go fuck yourself,” Jed said. “You’re not cops or border patrol, so you got no business being out here.”
“How do you know we’re not cops?” Glenning said.
“I’m the sheriff of Live Oak County, and I’m here on official police business.”
Sheriff?
“I don’t really care why you’re here,” Glenning said. “We’re not interested in you. We want the people in the shack. You can leave here alive if you drop the shotgun and walk away.”
“What a goddamned coincidence,” Jed said. “I’m here for those two fucks too. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t do what y’all say.”
I peered through the window. Glenning was standing next to someone, but I couldn’t make him out. They were a couple hundred feet, maybe more, from Jed. The swaying cornstalks and the falling darkness made it difficult to clearly differentiate all the shapes outside.
The person standing next to Glenning started running through the cornstalks, to the other end of the house. There went my plan to leave by the backdoor. I fired a shot out the window, just to let them know I was armed. How many bullets did that leave? Four?
I slipped the cell phone out of my pocket. Flipped it open, checked for service. One bar. One glorious, merciful bar.
“Who are you calling?” Omar said.
“Susan,” I said as I dialed the number.
Omar gripped my arm. “No, Candle, you must not. You have no idea what she is capable of. Please, do not involve her.”
“I don’t know who you think you’re talking to,” Glenning shouted. “But you will put the weapon down and return to your vehicle this second, or I’ll have to kill you. It’s your choice.”
Jed replied with a cackle and a blast of his shotgun.
I shrugged off Omar as Susan answered. “Hello?”
“Susan, it’s me. You have to listen to me. I’m in trouble and I need help.”
“Tucker? What’s going on?”
Pistol fire crackled out in the cornstalks.
“I’m in Brownsville. In the town of South Point. I came out here to meet someone, but IntelliCraft is here. They’ve been following me and they’ve got me trapped in some kind of one-room house.”
“Is Omar with you?”
I glanced at my traveling companion, whose face was streaked with tears. “Yes.”
She paused. “You have to give him up.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You have to. He’s the one they want. If you turn him in, they’ll let you live. Give him up and you can walk away from this. If you don’t, they’ll kill you too. He’s a dead man either way.”
Breath eked out of my lips. Jed and Glenning kept shouting at each other. Their voices were broken by the occasional crack of the shotgun or a pistol.
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “There’s another man here. He’s someone I pissed off yesterday. I don’t have time to tell you about it. Can you just come here? And bring help, please?”
“Where are you?”
“East of South Point on Alaska Road. Past the pond… a few thousand feet in a corn field. We’re trapped in a shack.”
“Sit tight. I’m on my way.”
She hung up, and I slipped the clip out of the gun. Four rounds left. That wasn’t going to be enough.
“The fortune cookie?” Omar said, stuttering. “The message was Luck will speed you to your destination. A bit ironic now, yes?”
Sweat dribbled down his cheeks as he tried to smile at me.
“We’re going to get out of this. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.” But I didn’t know if I believed it anymore.
I peered out the window again as another shotgun blast lit up the night. Jed creeped west through the corn as Glenning disappeared into the north.
I saw the whole thing play out before me. Jed had no idea that Glenning had moved, and he was advancing on the former location as Glenning circled around and positioned himself behind.
Jed came to a stop, popped up with the shotgun, then paused. He twisted his head around, looking for Glenning.
Glenning’s bullet tore through Jed’s head with a crack, and the fat redneck tumbled to the ground, his shotgun falling into the corn.
The fields went quiet for a few seconds, only the gentle swishing of the corn stalks to break the silence.
“Now that he’s been dealt with, why don’t you come out of that house, Candle? And bring Qureshi with you. If you do that now, I’ll put a bullet in your head like this redneck piece of shit out here. If you make me come in after you, you’re not going to get off so easy. I’ll start by breaking your wrist, like you did to me. Then maybe I’ll shove a piece of corn up your ass. How does that sound?”
I couldn’t see Glenning anymore, but I fired a round out the window at where I thought his voice was coming from. Three left. “What about the kinder, gentler IntelliCraft your CEO pitched me at the motel the other day?”
Glenning laughed. “Hartford is an idealist, and he likes to talk a big game. I’m just a hammer. Why don’t you come on out?”
“Go to hell. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Fine, if that’s the way you want it.”
I picked up the phone, to make one last call. To tell Grace that I wasn’t coming home. Not tomorrow, not ever.
I’d dialed the first five digits of her cell number when the back door of the shack burst open.
The man who’d completed the trio from the CEO visit at the motel in Kirby raised a crowbar above his head. I raised my gun and squeezed the trigger, and the bullet caught him in the shoulder.
He was still coming at me, not even registering the wound I’d given him. I squeezed the trigger again, but the gun jammed.
I got to my feet, desperate to keep him away from Omar. The man swung the crowbar down, and I sidestepped, then dropped the gun so I could jab him in the kidneys with both hands. This made him stumble, and that was enough of a distraction for me to surprise him with an uppercut to the chin.
He toppled backward, crashing against the wall. He’d dropped the crowbar, and I kicked it away from him. It went skittering into the darkness.
He lunged forward and I grabbed his wrist, twisted it, and used my leverage to push him to the ground. I pressed until I heard something snap.
He wailed and scrambled away from me.
Cradling his wrist in his other hand, he struggled to get to his feet. Vengeance in his eyes.
I dropped to the floor and snatched the gun.
Two bullets left.
I squinted down the sight of the gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the top of the man’s head.
He fell back, jerked once, and then went still. Another man I’d killed. More notches in my bed when I got home.
And I almost laughed, because I knew I wasn’t ever going home again. We were going to die out here in this no-mans-land between Texas and Mexico. My breathing went ragged, but I pushed myself to my feet and spun around to check on Omar.
He was on the floor, shaking, his eyes rolling back in his head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I jiggled him. “Omar, wake up. Please, don’t do this right now.”
His hands contorted into claws, and his face vibrated as he shook from head to toe. I gave him a hard slap across the jaw, but it didn’t seem to faze him.
“Still there, Candle?” Glenning said.
I had to turn my attention back to Glenning, to make sure he wasn’t advancing. I chambered the last round into the gun. “I sure am, and I just killed the lunkhead you sent to surprise me. Shot him in the head.”<
br />
“He was a friend of mine. I’m going to make you suffer for that, you know?”
“How did you find me?” I shouted out the window, hoping to buy a little time for Susan to show up.
“Come on, Candle, we’ve known where you were the whole time. We were going to let you take Omar to Mexico and leave it at that, but when this redneck got involved, we had to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid like get y’all arrested before that could happen.”
Why would they let me take Omar into Mexico? So they could snatch him without me knowing? At least, I could thank Jed for following us. Otherwise, I never would have known.
Either way, if Omar didn’t wake up, we were both dead.
He still shook beside me, but he was slowing a bit, and his breathing was returning to normal. “Come on, Omar. Wake up.”
“No more stalling,” Glenning said. “I’m going to give you ten seconds to come out of there, or I’m coming in. I’d appreciate it if you tossed your gun out first, too.”
I put my hands on Omar’s face, trying to shake him gently. To get him to look at me.
“Ten. Nine.”
“You have to wake up now. If you don’t wake up, we’re dead.”
“Eight. Seven.”
Omar stopped shaking, but his eyes were still blank and unfocused. He blinked a few times, then drew in a shuddering breath. He was awake but dazed.
“Six. Five.”
I slapped Omar again, and this got his attention. He blinked at me, his eyebrows scrunched together.
“Four. Three.”
“What happened?” Omar said.
Glenning stopped counting. Above me, the window broke with a clink, and something flew into the room as bits of glass showered my head and shoulders. A small object like a paperweight skittered across the floor. One end of it clicked, and smoke started leaking out on the floor of the shack.
I grabbed Omar by the wrist. “Now! We have to go now!”
I dragged him to his feet and we ran across the floor as tear gas billowed up to our knees. Felt my lungs burn. I jumped over the body of the dead man and burst out the back door as Omar struggled to keep up behind me.
Out in the sea of cornfields, I stopped for a second and got in Omar’s weary face. “Whatever you do, don’t stop. Don’t stop for anything.”
“Yes,” he said, and he opened his mouth to say more, but I shoved him into the corn.
He let out, faster and more agile than I’d ever seen him. I had trouble keeping up with him this time as cornstalks swished between my legs. My foot landed on a rock, and for a split second, I thought I might tumble, but I regained my balance and pressed forward.
Ten feet ahead, Omar heaved and wheezed, but he didn’t stop. He kept moving, just like I’d told him. His arms flailed out at his side as cornstalks bent and swayed.
Darkness had descended all around us. Gunshots behind me. Glenning yelling something unintelligible.
I pushed as hard as I could go, feeling as if any second, my energy would give out and my body would shut down. But I would press forward as long as I could and get Omar to safety. Had to.
Clouds shifted above me and the moon appeared. Now I could see the breadth of the cornfields around, and also that they were coming to a stop in a couple hundred feet. The ground beyond dipped, and I could hear the gentle cascade of a river. The Rio, the line dividing the US from Mexico. Almost there.
I could see Omar slowing, could see his back heaving from exertion.
“Move!” I shouted. “Don’t slow down!”
He picked up his pace again as he came to the edge of the cornstalks. I was two short seconds behind him. As he started to descend to the bank of the river, I felt my motion suddenly halt. My foot had caught on something, and the world spun as I went tumbling forward.
A shot rang out. I saw Omar’s back arch, then he stumbled.
Another shot, and Omar fell to the ground.
“I told you to come out, you stubborn jerk-off,” Glenning said, suddenly standing above me. He snatched my gun from me, then kicked me in the head. My world went blurry for a second, but I told myself I had to keep moving. That Omar hadn’t just been shot, it was a mistake.
It had to be a mistake.
Glenning raised his gun and put three more bullets into Omar, dropped down to the bank of the river, and then shoved Omar’s body into the water.
“That was on you,” Glenning said as he walked back to where I was struggling to get to my feet. I tried to move and inhaled a mouthful of dirt. My head pulsed and I couldn’t think.
Omar’s clothes puffed up around him as he began to float a few feet downstream. Head down, in the water. Was he dead? If I could just get to him, there was still time. Was there still time?
He couldn’t be dead. Not after everything I’d gone through to get him here.
I raised up on my knees, but another kick to the head sent me right back to the ground. Felt a weight on my body, and looked up to see Glenning straddling my chest. “I can’t believe how difficult you have to make everything,” he said. “You poor, stupid son of a bitch. You don’t even realize that he’s dead because of you. We weren’t after him. Nobody cares about Omar Qureshi.”
I tried to speak, but my jaw felt wired shut. A gnawing ache spread from my temple down to my cheek. The world heaved and throbbed, and I had trouble keeping my eyes open.
“You don’t even know who he was, do you?” Glenning said. “You think he was some poor, lost little soul? He was a programming genius back in the day.”
Glenning, panting and full of fire in his eyes, ejected the clip from his gun and slid in a fresh one. He pointed the nose of the gun against my shoulder.
Why not shoot me in the head?
“This is where I leave you, Candle.”
His finger closed around the trigger.
I threw my other shoulder as hard as I could, which knocked the barrel of the gun to the right. It went off, but I barely heard the blast. I thrust my hand up from behind him and grabbed onto the wrist I’d broken two weeks ago. Felt the fabric of the soft cast scrunch in my hands. With all the leverage I could muster, I jerked his wrist toward me.
Glenning screamed.
I threw my weight again to knock him off me, then drove a fist into his crotch while he was on his side. I grabbed one of his feet and twisted it. Heard it crunch. Just as I’d wanted, he rolled onto his stomach, howling in agony from his newly broken ankle.
I squatted over him, then placed one hand under his chin, and the other on top of his head. With a quick, sudden jerk, I snapped his neck. I’ll never forget the sound. It was like the crisp rip a head of lettuce makes when it’s torn in half.
I reached for his gun, then put it against the back of his head. But shooting him wouldn’t be necessary. Glenning was still.
I stood up, spitting river mud and feeling woozy from the kicks to the head, but I stumbled down to the bank of the river anyway. Omar had drifted a few more feet, but his leg was caught on the bramble of a bush half in and half out of the river. I couldn’t see blood in the water in the moonlight, but he was still face down. How long had he been without oxygen?
I waded through the river and grabbed hold of his arm, then pulled him to me. I rotated him in the water. His wet face surfaced, his black eyes glassy and still, his waterlogged beard flat against his face. Moonlight bounced off his pupils. River water leaked out of his open mouth.
Omar was dead.
I waded back to the other side of the bank, my chest heaving, tears rolling down my face. I’d failed. Everything I’d set out to do in Texas had failed. I’d let both Kareem and his brother die within a few feet of me. Everything I’d had to endure, and what did I have to show for it?
I pulled myself up the bank to the edge of the cornstalks, and that’s when my body gave out. Blackness.
***
Someone was shaking me. My eyes flittered for a few seconds, then I forced them all the way open to see a beautiful woman kneeling ove
r me, her hand on my shoulder. Her face was kind and soft, with a few wrinkles highlighting her deep green eyes. Smelled of flowers.
She looked familiar.
“Grace?”
“No, Tucker, it’s Susan.”
I snapped awake, feeling a bolt of panic run up and down my body. But I was so tired, the panic only lasted a split second, then I almost slipped back into unconsciousness. I sighed and realized my jaw ached as if someone had hit me with a baseball bat.
“Are you okay?” she said.
I’d never seen this woman before, even though she looked horribly familiar. How did she know me? “Who are you?”
“I’m Susan, your half-sister. You called me. I got here as soon as I could.” She flicked her head at the body of a man lying face-down in the grass a few feet from us. “Not fast enough, it seems, but looks like you made it out okay.”
I looked at the body in the grass. I felt as if I knew him, but I couldn’t remember. This man had been trying to hurt me, but I could not reason why.
I looked back at the river, like shimmering oil in the moonlight. Remembered Omar. Remembered watching his bullet-ridden body drift across the river. “You’re too late. He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry about that. I really am. But we need to get on our feet and you need to come with me. It’s not safe here. Police will be coming any minute, and we need to get you out of sight.”
She gripped my hand, and she felt warm. I liked that. But I didn’t understand why this woman was here, trying to take me away from the soft grass.
“Where are you going to take me?”
“To a safe place in Brownsville.”
I let her help me to my feet, and a wave of nausea passed through me. Jaw throbbed. She walked me back across the cornfields, not speaking at all during that time. The walk felt like it took hours. My head pounded. My whole body ached, and there was a distinct pain in my shoulder. Had a watery memory of looking at my shoulder in a mirror somewhere, at traces of birdshot wounds across my flesh. Or had I seen that on TV?
When we finally got to the road, she pointed at a small hatchback parked underneath a tree. “Do you need anything from your car?”
