cigarette onto the street. “Like you said, this ends tonight.” He drew his knife from his pocket and ejected the blade. Lifting it, he held the tip to his blood-filled eyeball. “I’m going to bury you for this.”
The faint scuff of shoes on concrete came from behind the dumpster. Kyle, Bundy, and Fink turned. Like a bad horror movie, a shape appeared in the shadows and hobbled toward them, bent over with one arm on a crutch and the other holding a metal object that dimly reflected the streetlight. Gordie stopped twenty feet from Kyle, standing with his face in darkness, and raised the gun. “Leave us alone.”
Kyle narrowed his eyes. “Radford?”
“Leave us alone, or I’ll splash your brains over the sidewalk.”
Fink tilted his head sideways at Gordie. “You ain’t got the stones, you wobbly, gimpy-ass cripple.”
With slow, unsteady steps, Gordie moved into the light. He leaned his underarm on his crutch and gripped the gun with both hands. Squinting down the sight, he raised it level with Kyle’s chest. “I tried to kill myself because of what you did.” He blinked hard and swallowed. “Do you think I give a damn about killing you?”
Kyle’s face tightened. He glanced over his shoulder at Fink.
For a skinny kid with glasses, Gordie was pulling off Sopranos-level intimidation. His breathing quickened as he held the gun on Kyle. “Give me a reason not to kill you.” It wasn’t the first time Gordie had been unpredictable, but even if he was bluffing, he needed to cool it for his own sake. Kyle was unpredictable on a whole different level.
Kyle stared at the gun. He’d never let anyone humiliate him in front of his crew, not even if he was being shot at. If this was going to work, we’d need Kyle to leave with his rep intact.
Gordie’s hands trembled. “Better be quick.”
I stepped forward and raised my palms. “Nobody needs to get hurt tonight. We just need you to back off.”
Somewhere on a distant rooftop, an owl let out a mournful hoot.
Kyle’s eyes shifted to me, and then back to Gordie. As if fighting an invisible force, very slowly, Kyle lowered his knife. I wouldn’t want to give odds on his next move, but I was starting to believe there was a chance this might work. With enough careful diplomacy, they might leave here knowing who was boss.
With a scuff of shoes on concrete, Fink pushed Bundy aside and rushed at Gordie.
Gordie turned and aimed the gun at Fink. “I’ll shoot–”
Stepping within arm’s reach, Fink wrapped a hand around Gordie’s wrists and pried at his fingers. Gordie swayed on his crutch as he grappled and pulled away. A flash lit up the empty lot and a clap of thunder tore through the air.
Silence fell as four silhouettes stood frozen in near darkness.
“Oh no,” Gordie said.
A sudden urge to vomit took over. I looked around the empty lot, gripped by waves of panic, like a child who’d become separated from his parent. This isn’t happening.
With a strained groan, Fink gazed down at his stomach, confusion spreading across his face. He buckled and collapsed onto the concrete, curling on his side and moving weakly with his eyes open. A saucer-sized pool of dark liquid oozed out from underneath him.
Gordie gasped and wheezed, the gun dangling from his fingers.
Ten feet away, the switchblade slipped from Kyle’s fingers and clattered to the concrete. Next to him, Bundy pressed his hands to his ears, like he was trying to stop his head from exploding.
Breathing asthmatically, Gordie fumbled with the gun’s safety catch, his hands shaking so hard he could barely hold it. He clicked it into place and lifted the gun, looking at me expectantly.
With a moan, Bundy lumbered to Fink and kneeled, his eyes wide and his mouth open.
Kyle strode to Gordie and wrenched the gun out of his hand. With a calm, satisfied expression, he turned to me, aimed at my chest, and squeezed the trigger.
Click.
The empty lot spun in a sickening blur. I stepped back, unsteady, desperately wanting to run but paralyzed at the thought of turning my back to him. He turned the gun on its side and examined the safety catch. Bundy ran to him, clutched his arm with both hands, and pulled him back to where Fink lay. He tapped Kyle’s shoulder and mimed talking on an invisible phone.
A silhouette ran out from behind the dumpster and darted to Gordie. Crouching under his arm, Raj lifted him and helped him toward the sidewalk, one unsteady step after another. I pulled myself out of a daze, grabbed Gordie’s crutch, and got under his other arm. Together, we carried him along the sidewalk and through a maze of night streets, glancing behind us and listening for any stir of movement. Gordie sobbed and moaned, his blood-splashed cheeks streaked with tears. I was numb all over, unable to even feel the cold, like I was trapped in some kind of nightmare.
With Gordie getting heavier than a pregnant moose, we rounded another corner and arrived at a parking lot behind a Starbucks on Atwater Street. We treaded through tall weeds in the crumbling asphalt to a Ford Escort parked near the entrance. Raj steadied Gordie on his crutch while I opened the rear door.
Allie leaned over the driver’s seat and smiled. “Did you make Kyle pee his pants?”
Unsure how she’d take the news, I wanted to get out of here before she had a chance to panic. I waved for Gordie to climb into the back seat and turned to her. “We have to go.”
Her smile faded.
With a glance over my shoulder, I threw Gordie’s crutch on the floor, and he dragged himself onto the back seat. Raj climbed in the other side and I got in the front.
Allie turned the ignition and glanced in the rear view. “Oh my God! Is that blood?” She turned to Gordie. “Are you hurt?”
Holding his breath like he was about to cry, Gordie gazed down at the blood splatter on his jacket.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “It’s Fink’s.”
She stared at me with wide eyes. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t know… it’s bad.”
Without hesitation, she released the parking brake and slammed the gearstick back. “Did you call an ambulance?”
I peered through the rear and side windows, scanning for any movement in the street. “Kyle did… I think.”
She revved the engine hard and pulled out onto the street, screeching the tires, her brow creased in a frown. “Where’s the gun?”
“Kyle has it.”
13. The Edge of Darkness
For over ten minutes, Allie drove us aimlessly through the night streets, listening intently as I talked her through our screw up. When I was done, she pulled into a dark, sprawling parking lot next to the Bel Air Center on 8 Mile, the kind of place four teenagers could disappear for a while. She parked and killed the engine, and we sat in silence, deep in our thoughts, watching the minutes tick over on the dash clock.
1:31 a.m.
Allie tucked back a strand of hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail. In the back seat, Raj and Gordie leaned against their doors, gazing out at a brown-brick building. A flickering fluorescent light lit up a heavily postered wall that had the remains of a Farmer Jack supermarket logo ingrained in the paint. The store closed years ago and the building had been empty since, probably always would be.
Gordie moaned weakly. “I never should’ve taken the gun. How could I be so stupid?”
Raj rested his head on the window. “We’d be out of this mess if you hadn’t shot him.”
“I didn't shoot him! He grabbed the gun and it just happened. At least I did something. What’d you do?”
“I was busy not shooting people.”
“Quiet, you two,” I said.
Allie drew a sudden deep breath, as if she’d forgotten to breathe for a moment. “You should’ve called an ambulance.”
“It was Kyle’s fault,” Raj said. “Let him call an ambulance.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him, but Allie didn’t look convinced. “It wasn't safe to stay,” I said. “We had to get away. I’m sure Kyle called 911 after
we left.”
Gordie dragged himself forward from the backseat. “So what do we do now?”
“You go to jail,” Raj said.
Allie turned in her seat and gave Raj a scathing look. “Shut it. You're not helping.” If Raj ever got a girlfriend and had to show his sensitive side, I don’t even know what would happen.
Gordie let out a low moan that sounded like it came from the depths of his soul. As far as reasons to be unhappy went, he had a pretty good collection going.
“Let's just sit here awhile and clear our heads,” I said.
With nothing left to say, we sat in the warmth of the car’s blaring heater for several minutes. The only thing that mattered was that Fink was probably dead and we were in this far deeper than I ever imagined. No amount of talking was going to change that.
Buzz.
My phone lit up with a message from Kyle, and my stomach sank. I nodded at Allie and showed her.
U FUKKERS WILL PAY FOR THIS
The glow from the screen reflected on her face as she read the message.
“I get the feeling he’s not gonna let this go,” I said.
Gordie leaned forward, trying to see my phone. “Did he die? I can’t go to prison.”
Allie gave him a sympathetic frown in the rear view. “How about we call the hospital and see if he’s there?”
“I don’t want…” he replied. “What if they think we did it?”
Raj rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll set them straight on who did it.”
The defeated look on Gordie’s face was so burned into my brain that I didn’t have to turn around to know it was behind me. In a tired voice,
Killer of Giants Page 19
