Watched Too Long: A Thriller (Val Ryker Series)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  A shadow separated from the old oak and surged forward. No, not a shadow. A stupid, gangly kid. A flash ignited in his hand.

  Then a flaming brick crashed into the glass door.

  Jet Row

  Hells yeah!

  Never lit no brick on fire before!

  Take that, brick! Who’s the man now? Enough lighter fluid and anything will—

  BANG!

  Jet Row felt it across his legs, tearing through his jeans, his skin, his muscles and bones.

  Shot!

  I just got shot!

  “Why?!?” he yelled to the universe, cursing the unfairness of it all. He was still a young man. Cut down in his prime, just for being born in the ghetto. He thought about all the stuff he’d never get to do in life. Like start more fires. Or burn things. But now he was snuffed, like a poor little match caught in a strong breeze, all because gun laws weren’t harsh enough.

  The pain was crazy. Like a million bees stinging him, he imagined, because he never got stung by a bee before. He was afraid to look. From the agony he felt, his legs had to be shredded. Hamburger meat. He knew he’d see tendons and arteries and all kinds of crazy anatomical shit. Dude just minding his own business, and the Man gotta break out a shotgun. That shit ain’t right.

  Jet Row reached down, touching his thighs, expecting to touch bone.

  Instead, there were just a few small dots of blood. And some white flakes.

  What the hell crazy shit was this?

  He pinched a white crystal, squinted at it, and put it to his lips.

  Salt.

  They shot me with salt.

  And it hurt like nobody’s business.

  Jet Row sneezed. Then his mouth and eyes began to burn.

  What was that?

  Pepper?

  He rubbed his face, but all that did was get more pepper in his eyes. It wasn’t fair. What kind of crazy crackers shot people with spices? Weren’t there laws? No one ever gives inner city kids a chance. Soon as they try to do something with their lives, BAM!; salt and pepper all up in your face.

  It was enough to make a kid join a street gang.

  “Yo, Jet Row, you hit?”

  Jet Row couldn’t see who said it. Sounded like Bön Dawg.

  “They shot me, man!”

  “You look okay.”

  “They shot me with condiments, man!”

  “Condiments?”

  “Like I’m some kinda side dish! Without enough flava!”

  “What you saying, fool?”

  “Salt and pepper! Crazy bitch got spices in her shotgun!”

  “What the hell is wrong with you white people?”

  “Man, I don’t shoot that shit! You being racist again!”

  “Sorry.”

  “It hurts, dog.”

  “Aw, shit! There’s pepper in the air!”

  “I’m telling you, she’s goin’ all Iron Chef on a coupla bangers.”

  “Shit, it’s in my eyes!”

  “It’s in my eyes, too, man.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Only one thing we can do, Bön Dawg.”

  And so Jet Row started to cry.

  Val

  The glass door didn’t break. It was reinforced. Val waited until the brick flickered out. Then she shut the adjacent window, racked another round, and watched the kid who chucked the brick thrash around and paw at his eyes. Another young man joined him, reached the pepper cloud, and had a similar reaction.

  Served them right.

  Dumb kids or not, these guys were really starting to get on Val’s nerves. One stupid stunt after another. What they lacked in brains, she was beginning to think they made up for in tenacity.

  Another kid ran up, and obviously didn’t see her through the glass, because he tried to pry the door open.

  Seriously? Who wouldn’t look through the glass door before trying to open it?

  He had a fireman’s Halligan bar. Lund’s, from the look of it, probably taken from the moving truck before they’d set it on fire. The youth strained against the pry bar—what Val jokingly referred to as a hooligan bar—totally oblivious to the long, plain old steel bar that blocked the door’s track. That steel wasn’t going to bend, no matter how hard he pried.

  Unfortunately, he was succeeding in chewing up the edges of her expensive glass door, and that was starting to piss Val off.

  Big time.

  She took a step toward the door, sighting down the barrel at the kid’s head.

  He went on prying.

  Idiot.

  She took another step forward, then another. When she was only a foot from the door, he finally glanced up.

  His eyes went round.

  His mouth formed an O.

  He bolted, letting the Halligan bar clatter to the patio. Tripping, falling, climbing back to his feet, and taking off into the pine trees. If he and his buddies were smart, that would be it. In the face of stinging consequences, they would give up their pranks and go the hell back to wherever they came from.

  She checked her cell again. Still no signal.

  Val frowned, tucked the phone away, and found herself looking at Lund’s German mug collection, which had taken up residence in her curio cabinet. Big, ugly, pewter, and just about the last thing she would ever want to display in her home. Yet there they were. And she’d be stuck looking at them. Possibly forever.

  It made no sense, but Val wanted to blame Lund for their current situation. They were stuck watching two babies, surrounded by a lead contender for the World’s Dumbest Gang, and somehow it was Lund’s fault. He moves in, and everything goes bananas. What was supposed to be the romantic joining of two lives in peaceful cohabitation had devolved into chaos.

  Chaos and ugly pewter beer steins.

  In the years she’d known Lund, he’d never mentioned the stein collection. And why would he? If Val had a stein collection, she’d hide it from the public, like a wart. No good could come from anyone knowing about it. If anything, it was like a big neon sign that said, “I’m Not Normal.”

  Come to think of it, Val had been to Lund’s place many times and had never seen the steins. Did he have them stored up in the attic? If so, why hadn’t he left them there? What about moving in with Val made him want to display them?

  She wondered if Cosmo was to blame, and made a mental note to read that stupid article Lund mentioned and write a scathing letter to the editor.

  Then gunfire, the real bullet kind, shattered the reinforced glass door.

  Hackqueem

  Guns? Bitch wants to start waving around guns?

  No prob. Hackqueem had a piece.

  She wants to play, we can play.

  He stood up from the weeds he’d been squatting in, then reached around and took out his 9mm.

  Hackqueem had never killed no one before.

  But there was a first time for everything.

  He ran at the patio door and held out his nine sideways, gangsta style, punching the glass with bullets. Then he kicked it in like a boss and pointed the gat at the woman.

  “Time to die, bitch.”

  And so he smoked her ass.

  Lund

  Lund didn’t like this. Not at all.

  He paced across Val’s bedroom floor, alternately glancing out the window at the branches of the old oak and watching Sam put the Badger stocking cap on Harry Junior, then the teddy bear. Back and forth. Back and forth. Totally ignoring the blue cartoon penguin singing songs on TV.

  Normally Lund enjoyed that show right up until his brain was hijacked by the earworm tunes. He enjoyed hanging out with toddlers and playing house with Val. But the one thing he couldn’t stand was feeling useless. And that’s how he felt right now.

  “See?” Sam said, arranging the hat on Junior for the eight millionth time. “Now he’s a pretty bear.”

  “Ptferoooga!” screamed Harry.

  Sam yanked the stocking cap off. “Now he’s a dickhead!”

  “Goob!”

  While s
he was jamming the hat back on Harry the bear, Lund glanced out into the hall. Val had fired her seasoning shells at the idiot kids outside, but it had been quiet for a while. What was going on down there?

  He listened, heard nothing, then turned back to the kids.

  That’s when the gunfire started, and Lund dashed for the stairs.

  Sha Nay Nay

  Was that gunfire?

  Oh, hells no.

  Sha Nay Nay just turned eighteen. If he got caught pulling a 187, he wouldn’t be sent to no rudy poo juvee hall. They’d lock him up for real. And Sha Nay Nay knew how pretty he was. Didn’t want no skinhead punks running no train on his sweet cheeks. That street was exit only. Being passed around for squares at the crowbar hotel was not how he wanted to spend the next thirty-to-life.

  So he stayed low in the weeds, away from the house and those fools trying to break in. Del Ray would be furious, but he could blame it all on Hackqueem and that pyro, Jet Row. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the old ass apple he snatched from their continental breakfast, which was the last time he’d eaten.

  The apple was squished.

  Sha Nay Nay tossed it away, disgusted. There was nothing grosser than squishy, slimy food. Once, when he was a shorty, he was running with a big ol’ bologna sandwich with extra mustard and his stupid ass brother, Sha Ray Ray, tripped him. Sha Nay Nay fell right on the sandwich, and it squished all over him, totally ruining his pimp ass Garanimals jumpsuit. To this day, Sha Nay Nay had never eaten another bologna sandwich, or worn any Garanimals, but that last thing was because his Mom never bought him no more.

  He winced, scooping apple guts out of his pocket, and then started thinking about going to jail again. Sha Nay Nay looked into the darkness, where he’d thrown that busted ass apple. Could 5-0 get his prints off that? His DNA?

  Shit. This trip just kept getting better.

  He crawled around, feeling for the apple.

  Put his weight right on it.

  SQUISH.

  “Oh, hells no.”

  A new pair of D&G jeans, dogged. Proof that there was no God. Because God wouldn’t put a brother through so much fashion hardship in one lifetime. First Garanimals, now Dolce & Gabbana.

  Then Sha Nay Nay started thinking about God, and he silently told God he was sorry.

  And that’s when God guided him on the righteous path.

  Something, probably God, or maybe one of the saints like Jesus or Moses or Mary, made Sha Nay Nay look back at the house he’d run from. He was on a slight hill, and from this distance he could see straight into the second floor window. There, sitting on the bed, were two babies.

  All alone, no one to protect them.

  Better yet, God or John the Baptist or whoever, put a tree right next to the house.

  Sha Nay Nay just had to climb the tree, snatch the kid, and they could get the hell out of there. Go back to Chi-Town as heroes. Maybe Del Ray would be so grateful he’d even buy him some new D&Gs. Or some Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren had some dope jeans.

  Sha Nay Nay jogged up to the house, one hand on his D&Gs because he was wearing them baggy, and stood beneath the tree that God grew for him. Looked solid. Good branches. He didn’t climb a lot of trees in the hood, but he could scale a fence like a cat, and this looked easy-peasy.

  Time to get this shit done.

  And so he began to climb.

  Val

  For some fraction of a second, Val stared at the pewter beer stein, the largest in Lund’s collection. More specifically, she stared at the way the faint outside light highlighted the large dimple where the bullet had struck.

  She was going to die.

  She’d weathered the debilitating symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis and survived the horror of Dixon Hess only to be shot in her home by the most inept criminals she’d ever encountered.

  How sad was that?

  How wrong?

  How maddening?

  Grace would have no family left.

  If Lund survived this idiotic onslaught, he’d have to arrange a funeral instead of a wedding. He’d bury her in her dress uniform, the cut of which made her resemble a pear. He’d spend a mint on flowers, music, a luncheon for the whole town. He’d have to choose her coffin. She could picture it now. Based on his secret, peculiar tastes, it would be ornately carved with lions and dragons, eagles and fleur de lis, and made of pewter. A coffin that could stop bullets.

  A coffin that could stop bullets.

  Like hell she was going to die.

  She grabbed a corner of the curio cabinet, yanked it away from the wall, and dove behind.

  The endless series of pops outside blended with the drum of her pulse, shattering of glass, and bullets hitting pewter in crazy syncopation.

  And when the barrage ceased, she was still there.

  Val rose just enough to see over the top of the cabinet, the shotgun in front of her, peering down the barrel. She could see the kid fumbling with his pistol, trying to slap another magazine home.

  She slipped her finger onto the trigger. Squeezed.

  BOOM!

  “Ahhhhhh! Shit!”

  He backpedaled away from the window, dropping the mag. A second later and he had run away into the night.

  A movement came from Val’s left. She swung the shotgun around, took a breath, and stared at Lund’s rounded brown eyes.

  Val lowered her weapon.

  “Val? What happened?”

  Val could read Lund’s lips, although her ears failed to pick up the sound of his voice.

  “What happened? Are you okay?”

  She held up a hand, signaling for a moment to catch her breath, to let her eardrums recover, to allow the adrenaline in her bloodstream to ebb. “The kids?”

  “They’re okay. They’re sitting upstairs.”

  “Lund, these assholes outside, they aren’t playing around anymore. They haven’t burned my car or anything, have they?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “We need to get out of here.”

  “I’ll get Sam and Junior.”

  Val nodded. “I’ll get my car keys.”

  Bön Dawg

  Pepper in the face was the worst. Hurt like hell, and wouldn’t stop. It was so effective. Bön Dawg wondered why nobody ever thought to weaponize it somehow.

  “There’s a building over there,” he said to Jet Row. “Maybe we can wash off.”

  They staggered, half blind, over to a metal house that smelled like a barn. Bön Dawg found a barrel next to it, filled with water. He splashed his face and eyes, and Jet Row muscled in and did the same.

  “My legs hurt so bad, B-Dawg.”

  “Better than dying, man.”

  “Hurts so bad. You ever get a cut on your lip, then eat salty French fries, and it makes it hurt ten times as bad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s like that. Except it’s my legs. And I don’t got French fries. And it was from a shotgun. But it’s like that. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Sayin’ it hurts.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But it’s better than dying, man.”

  “Hurts so bad. It’s like, you ever get a paper cut, and then you’re eating tabasco—”

  “Shh. You hear that?”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “It’s cuz you’re talking.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I ain’t talking. I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “Shh. Listen.”

  They listened. Bön Dawg heard shuffling, like some kind of animal. Then some weird sort of sound. Errerrerrerrerr…

  “What the hell was that shit? Some kind of demon or bigfoot or freaky ass cannibal ghost? First they shoot me, then they gonna eat me.”

  “Shh, fool. It’s a horse,” Bön Dawg said. “C’mon.”

  He led Jet Row into the building, metal on the outside, wood on the inside. The place had a long concrete strip down the middle. On one side, there was hay
or straw or whatever that shit was called, and some other junk. On the other, there were saddles and a place that looked like a big shower. And there at the end, caged in pens, were three horses.

  Bön Dawg wasn’t impressed by much. But these animals were cool. He’d seen horses before in the city, pulling rich people in carriages on Michigan Avenue, but had never gone up to one. Up close they were bigger than he expected. And they looked at you. They were aware he and Jet Row were there. Following some inner impulse, Bön Dawg took a handful of hay and stretched it out to the nearest horse, a brown one.

  The horse ate the hay.

  Bön Dawg grinned. He turned to look at Jet Row.

  Jet Row had his Zippo lit, and was holding up his bottle of lighter fluid.

  “What are you doing, fool?”

  “Gonna light this place up.”

  “Why would you do that crazy shit, man? A horse is a majestic animal.”

  “Everything is more majestic when it’s on fire.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “People always be asking me that.”

  “Then maybe you need to quit lighting every goddamn thing you see on fire.”

  “Maybe I’ll light you on fire.”

  “Maybe I’ll kick your ass.”

  Jet Row gave Bön Dawg a shove. Bön Dawg shoved back, which caused Jet Row to squirt lighter fluid all over himself.

  “Aw, come on, Dawg! My shirt is all soaked. This is a proprietary mixture. It’s got petroleum solvents in it and shit. Are my colors streaking?”

  Jet Row brought the lighter closer to his shirt, squinting to see it in the light of the fire.

  Not his best idea.

  Jet Row burst into flames like Johnny The Human Torch.

  “Oh, shit! I’m on fire!” Jet Row began to flail around. “How can this be happening!?”

  Bön Dawg was actually surprised it didn’t happen more often.

  “It hurts! It hurts bad! Fire burns!” He took two steps toward Bön Dawg.

  Bön Dawg backed away. “Don’t touch me, man!”

  “Help me! It won’t come off! This ain’t fair!”

  “Stop, drop, and roll, or some shit.”

  Jet Row dropped down, and began to roll around.