by Amy Cross
Luke aimed the gun at his face and grinned, exposing a gold filling set into one of his teeth.
Candy screamed briefly before turning and hiding her face with her arms.
“This is nothing personal,” Luke explained, staring at Bob, “it’s just about money. Money makes the world go round, yes?” Smiling, he moved the gun around in circles before aiming once again at Bob’s face. “Someone wants you dead, and I was engaged to carry out the final act. Now, to be fair, that side of things is very personal, but this part, with you and me, is not personal at all. Think of it as a business deal, but one that leaves you at a significant disadvantage.”
“Who hired you?” Bob asked. “I don’t have any enemies!”
“You have one.”
“But -” Pausing, Bob desperately tried to work out who it could be. “Is it Tom? Is it Tom Lanegan and those people at that club? Oh God, it makes sense now. They want me silenced so I’ll never tell anyone what they’ve got going on down there.”
“I cannot reveal my client’s identity,” Luke replied.
“You don’t have to, I know it was them.” Sighing, Bob looked up at the sky. “I swear, I only wanted to try it out. I probably wouldn’t even have gone more than once. I’m not a religious man, but God if you’re up there now, please listen to me! I swear, I was only curious. Is that so wrong?”
“We should get this over with,” Luke continued. “I don’t know about you, but I have better things to be doing with my day.” He paused. “Well, I suppose you don’t.”
“What about her?” Bob asked, looking over at Candy. “You’re not going to kill her too, are you?”
“I don’t kill beautiful women,” Luke replied. “She will be quite safe, provided I can be sure she won’t talk.”
“Oh God,” Bob said, closing his eyes. “Please get me out of this. Please, I’m not a bad person. I make mistakes, but my wife and daughter need me. For their sakes, just -”
“Stop!” Luke shouted suddenly.
Opening his eyes, Bob saw to his horror that Candy had climbed out of the car and was running around the side of the gas station, making for the road. A moment later, a gunshot rang out and she fell to the side, hitting the corner and then dropping to the ground.
“No!” Bob shouted, stumbling to his feet and taking a step forward before Luke pulled him back. “What have you done!”
“I only hit her foot,” Luke replied, watching Candy and waiting for her to get up. “Didn’t I?”
Bob stared for a moment, but Candy remained motionless on the ground.
“I only hit her foot,” Luke said again, as if he was trying to convince himself. “Relax, I’m a good shot, I swear I only got her in the right foot.”
He waited, before pushing Bob back down to the ground. “Wait here,” he said firmly, before making his way over to Candy and looking down at her. After giving her a gentle kick in the belly, he rolled her over.
“Is she okay?” Bob asked, his face white with shock. “Oh God, please tell me she’s okay.”
“She banged her head against the wall,” Luke replied, looking down at Candy’s foot and seeing a bloody wound on her right ankle, exactly where he’d aimed. “She’ll wake up eventually. She shouldn’t have run, though. Why do people run when they’ve been specifically told to stay still? This is something I find happens with me quite a lot.”
“You have to let her go,” Bob continued, stumbling to his feet. “She’s young, she doesn’t deserve to get caught up in all of this. Please, if you have a heart -”
“If I have a heart?” Luke replied, stepping toward him and raising the gun again. “If I have a heart? What do you think I am, some kind of monster?”
“No, of course not,” Bob said, raising his hands in surrender and taking a step back. “I swear, I didn’t mean to insult you, I was just trying to appeal to your better nature. She’s innocent, and I’m sure she won’t even remember what you look like. She’s very good at lying and deceit, that sort of thing. Let her go, please, whatever else you do, let her go.” He paused, before another idea struck him. “Or let me go,” he continued, “and keep her. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? You’re right, she’s very beautiful, and maybe she’d fall for you if you just spent some time together. I think you’re her type.”
“Her type?”
“Rugged, manly, strong… Tough.”
“She’s been dating you,” Luke replied. “I think she has another type.”
“She could learn,” Bob continued. “Please, if she was willing to settle for someone like me, imagine how grateful she’d be to have you in her life!”
“Huh,” Luke muttered, with his gun still aimed at Bob’s head. “You truly are a freak of a man. You don’t care about her at all.”
“I…” Bob paused, watching Candy’s unconscious form over by the wall. “I care about a lot of people, sometimes that just means the amount I care for each of them is slightly diluted. It’s a failing of mine, I know, but I swear I can work on it. Please, let me go so I can continue to care for them. That’s all I ask.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Luke said, starting to walk around behind him.
“What are you doing?” Bob asked, shuffling on his knees so that he was still facing his kidnapper.
“Just stay still,” Luke replied, still circling him.
“Why? Why are you trying to get behind me?”
“Will you just stay still?”
“No come on, please,” Bob stammered, reaching into his pocket and taking out his wallet. With trembling fingers, he starting rooting through the contents, before pausing. “If I had my phone,” he said after a moment, “I could show you a photo of my daughter. She’s so young and so beautiful, and she deserves to grow up with a father.”
“Your wife will remarry, maybe.”
“No!” Bob shouted. “I’m Lucy’s father and I have to be there for her!”
“Toss me the wallet.”
“Please -”
“Toss me the wallet or I shoot it out of your hands, along with your fingers.”
Bob paused, before throwing the wallet at Luke’s feet. Reaching down and picking it up, Luke turned it over in his hands for a moment and then threw it over his shoulder and started once again to walk around Bob.
“Stop doing that!” Bob shouted.
“No.”
“I don’t like when you go behind me!”
“Shut up!” Luke hissed, stepping toward him and grabbing Bob’s shoulder, spinning him around and then forcing him face-first down against the ground. “I’ve had enough of your whining already. Jesus, I can’t imagine what it must be like to be married to a man like you. There’s just something about you that’s pathetic and worm-like, it’s as if you radiate inadequacy and duplicity from every pore in your body.”
“Please,” Bob sobbed, his face pressed against the dirty ground, “let me go. Tell me why you’re doing this.”
“Why I’m doing this?” Luke paused, before placing his heel against Bob’s cheek and pushing has face harder. “I’m doing this because the wheels of the universe, the hidden gears that regulate right and wrong, have finally turned and are ready to punish you, Mr. Bob Hague. I’m here because you ruin lives, not in big, grand ways, but by a thousand cuts. I’m here because this, in truth, is how the world really works.” He paused, aiming the gun at Bob’s head. “I’m here because we now live in a world in which weak, stupid men are kept alive by a system designed by other weak and stupid men to support their own kind. It’s natural selection, Mr. Hague. You are going to die now. If you have any last words, speak them quickly.”
“Please let me go,” Bob whimpered. “I’ll do anything.”
Smiling, Luke adjusted his grip on the gun and prepared to fire.
“Stop!” a voice shouted in the distance.
Luke turned and saw two figures racing across the dirt, with a car parked over by the road. “Oh hell,” he muttered, as he realized that he recognized the closest of
the figures. “No, this is ridiculous…”
“Stop!” Beth shouted again, reaching them quickly and dropping to her knees, pushing the gun away from Bob’s head. “Don’t shoot him! Please don’t shoot him!”
“Mrs. Hague, I told you -”
“Don’t shoot him,” she said again, with tears in her eyes as she reached out and put a hand on Luke’s right hand, forcing the gun toward the dirt. “It’s off, I’m calling it off, it was all a terrible mistake!”
“You can’t just turn up like this,” Luke replied, turning as Ben edged closer. Raising the gun, he aimed straight at Ben’s face. “Who the hell are -”
“No!” Beth shouted, lunging at Luke and knocking him down. The gun fired once, hitting the wall of the abandoned gas station and ricocheting off one of the old gas pumps, but Beth quickly reached down and bit Luke’s wrist, forcing him to let go of the weapon with a yelp of pain. Scrambling for a moment, Beth pushed the gun aside and then rolled away.
“Well this is a hell of a mess,” Ben muttered, reaching down and taking the gun.
“That’s mine!” Luke shouted, trying to grab the gun.
Ben took a step back and aimed the weapon at his face. “Is it?” he asked with a smile. “Is it really? Well, then I guess you’ll just have to try to take it off me, won’t you?”
“Oh God,” Bob whimpered, starting to crawl away. “Oh dear God, somebody save me.”
“We already saved you,” Beth told him, before spotting Candy’s collapsed form nearby. “Who the hell is that?”
“I think we have a problem here,” Ben said, still aiming the gun at Luke. “Fortunately, I’m a great believer in the power of talking to defuse difficult situations. Words are so much better than bullets, don’t you think?”
“I have a job to do,” Luke replied, clearly watching the gun and waiting for a moment to strike.
“Not anymore,” Ben continued. “You get to keep the money, but you also get to walk away from here without having to actually kill your target, is that understood? No-one here will ever tell anyone what happened, I’ll make sure of that, but in return you need to get the hell out of town and stay away. Do we have a deal, or is this going to have to get more complicated?”
“Crazy, unprofessional idiots,” Luke muttered.
“Do we have a deal?” Ben asked again, stepping closer with the gun still raised. “My brother died last night and I’m not in the mood to see more death, but if anyone here has to take a hit, my friend, it’s gonna be you.”
“You don’t have the balls,” Luke replied.
“Don’t I?” Ben paused. “You think I couldn’t blow your head off and then dig a grave out here? I don’t mean a shallow grave, the kind that might get discovered pretty quickly, I mean a full-on six-footer that no-one’s ever gonna find. Look into my eyes and try to work out what kind of man I am, because I can assure you, dealing with your bloodied corpse would be, at best, a minor inconvenience. On a day like this, it might even be a welcome distraction. So look into my eyes and work out what you see, and then base your decision on what you think you’ve learned.”
Luke opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out.
“You’re a killer,” Ben added. “Men like us, we recognize one another.”
Luke paused, before finally nodding. “Okay,” he said, his tone having become a little more reserved, “I’ll go.” He turned to Beth. “But I’m keeping the money!”
“Just leave,” she stammered. “Please, just get out of here and never come back.”
Getting to his feet, Luke began to dust himself down. “This is what you get,” he muttered, “when you work for cheap. Crazies. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted anyone from this place. I swear to God, if I hadn’t been trying to get myself established, I’d have turned the job down cold.” He held his hand out toward Ben. “My gun, if you don’t mind.”
Ben shook his head.
“It’s my gun,” Luke pointed out.
“I’m sure you have others.”
Sighing, Luke looked down at Bob. “You’re lucky, my friend,” he explained. “Another five seconds, and you would have been dead. Your brains would have been sprayed across the ground.”
Trembling with fear, Bob turned to Beth.
“Get out of here,” Ben said, gesturing toward Luke’s car. “There’s nothing left for you to do in Bowley, and I’d strongly suggest that you keep away for the foreseeable future. You’re going to drive away, and I’m going to drive with you until the next town, just to make sure that you’re gone, and then you’ll drop me off at a bus stop and I’ll let you go once I’m sure you won’t show up again. I’m sure you understand that I need to keep my family safe. Plus, after everything has happened over the past twenty-four hours, I could really use a chance to let off some steam.”
“I don’t need a chaperone,” Luke replied.
“Just let him leave,” Beth said. “Ben, please…”
“I know guys like this,” Ben continued. “There’s just a spark of indignation in him, some kind of misplaced sense of honor, and I don’t want him thinking he can come back and punish us for humiliating him. We’re doing this my way. Beth, take Bob back to town, take his lady friend too and make sure she’ll keep her mouth shut at the hospital. I don’t care how you do it, but she’s the weak link and she needs shutting up. Make her lie.”
“She will,” Bob stammered, “I swear, I’ll -”
“Shut up!” Ben shouted, turning to him with the gun raised. “Bob, I’m telling you, you’re the most annoying son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met in my life. If I had to randomly shoot one person here right now, it would most definitely be you.”
“It’d be him, surely,” Bob replied, pointing toward Luke. “Wouldn’t it?”
Ben shook his head.
“Jesus,” Bob muttered, looking down at the ground. “I thought we were family, Ben.”
“Get in your car,” Ben continued, aiming the gun back at Luke. “Like I said, we’re going one town over before I let you head off on your way.”
“This is humiliating,” Luke muttered, making his way to his car. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Not really,” Ben replied, “and I don’t care. Just get in the car and drive.”
“What did you do?” Bob asked, turning to Beth. “What the hell is all of this?”
“I…” She paused, before turning and heading over to Candy. Crouching next to her, she took a look at her bloodied ankle before rolling her onto her back. “Can you hear me?” she asked after a moment. “I’m a nurse, we’re going to get you to hospital and make sure you’re just fine.” She smiled as she saw a flicker of movement from Candy’s eyes. “It’s gonna hurt when we move you,” she explained, “but there’s really nothing I can do about that right now, I’m sorry.” Reaching under her, she adjusted her grip and then finally began to lift Candy up.
“Am I…” Candy whispered. “Am I dying?”
“Definitely not. You’re going to have a decent scar, though.”
“That’s cool, I -” She winced with pain. “I don’t mind a scar if it’s got a fun story behind it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Bob said, hurrying over to them as Beth began to carry Candy to the car, “what the hell are we going to do?”
“We’re going to get her to the hospital,” Beth replied. “You’re going to drive.”
“But what do we tell them?” Bob asked. “She’s been shot, for God’s sake!”
“We’ll make something up. We’ll come up with a lie!”
Bob stopped and watched for a moment as his wife carried Candy toward the car. “Did you really hire a hit-man to kill me?” he called after her.
“Not now, Bob. I need you to drive the car!”
“But…” He paused, before turning and watching as the other car drove away, with Ben and Luke inside. Finally, sighing, he ran after Beth.
***
“So how far are we going?” Luke asked, keeping his eyes on the road as they made t
heir way far from Bowley. “How far’s the next town?”
“Not far,” Ben replied, looking straight ahead with the gun resting on his lap.
“But when do we -”
“Don’t ask stupid questions.”
Luke paused, before glancing briefly at the gun.
“And don’t do that,” Ben added.
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t look at the gun. It makes me nervous.”
“That stupid bitch hired me to -”
“That stupid bitch is my sister,” Ben said firmly, interrupting her. “You might want to think about your language in this situation.”
“I could get her in a lot of trouble, you know,” Luke continued. “She tried to have her husband murdered, she could get a lot of jail time for that.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Of course it’s not. I won’t actually tell anyone, but I could!” He paused for a moment, as they passed another car headed in the opposite direction. “I think the best thing for all of us will be to put this behind us,” he continued. “I have a business to build up, and I need to get some clients who aren’t completely…” He tried to think of the right word.
“Careful,” Ben said after a moment.
“You’ve got to admit, your sister’s kind of flaky.”
“You might be right about that.”
“How did you find us, anyway?”
“I figured you’d take him not too far out of town, and there’s a main road running to the north so I thought you’d head south, to get as far away from civilization as possible. Then we just started driving and relied on pure luck.”
“Jesus,” Luke replied. “You sound like someone who’s done this sort of thing before.”
“Not quite,” Ben muttered.
“So when you -”
“Stop a moment,” Ben added. “I need to pee.”
“Seriously?”
“I need to pee,” he said again, aiming the gun at Luke. “Stop the goddamn car.”
Sighing, Ben pulled over at the side of the empty road. There were no buildings in sight for miles around, and even the town of Bowley had disappeared far behind them.
