Dark Duet

by Eric Beetner

  The wood of the barn began to catch fire. Evel and his boys scrambled, unfocused, away from the barn. Nash’s eyes found the orange car. He hopped up to a crawl and then started to run, a thirty-yard gap between him and the band of thugs wanting to kill them. Jacy tagged after him, then passed him a few steps later. She got to the first car, ducked behind it and turned to Nash.

  “Which one?”

  He pointed. “There.”

  He pressed the keyless entry and the Charger chirped at them. He made it behind the wheel and saw Evel stand up from where he’d been belly down in the grass. Nash watched as Evel saw the car go, putting out a hand to stop one of his lackeys from shooting.

  “No,” Evel said. He watched as Nash drove away. He thought about how much he knew right then that Nash didn’t know. Evel knew about the load of meth in the trunk of the car. How much money he stood to lose if another shipment went missing. He also knew his choice to be paranoid had worked out. Adding a GPS tracker to every shipment seemed like an overreaction at first, but now he knew why he did it.

  One click on the GPS app on his phone and he’d know exactly where Nash and Jacy were.

  “Bring me the Crown Vic,” he said. The two closest gunmen shared a look, then a glance back at the burning barn. Evel kept his back to it, the building already a lost cause, the heat warming his back against the night air. One of the men ran off the get the keys to Evel’s special occasion car, a cop-auctioned Crown Victoria with police package under the hood.

  Bobby was among the men pulling away from the heat of the flames. His face caked in his own blood, he’d run outside to try to make amends for his fuck up. He stood watching Evel gaze forward, staring after the stolen car. Bobby knew now what Nash was talking about. Evel had the same quality. He wasn’t looking back. He knew going forward was the only option.

  Bobby scurried away wishing he’d learned his lesson a little sooner.

  CHAPTER 13

  Brian rang the bell this time at Sarah’s. She answered the door but didn’t hold it open for him. She clasped a flimsy robe closed with one hand.

  “Your phone broken? You can’t call first?” she said.

  “Impulse, honey,” he said, shoving past her. “I’m celebrating.”

  “Celebrating what?” She closed the door behind them after her cursory scan of the street outside for prying eyes.

  “I just made a major problem go away. And rid the town of a murderer.”

  “Wow. Real police work,” Sarah said. “I’m impressed.”

  “You ought to be. I killed two birds with one stone on this one. Hell, I may have knocked off three or four.”

  “So, how do we celebrate?”

  Brian looked at her. He always loved her hair down, the thick black curls. Her robe did little to hide her body. She was no swimsuit model, but he liked them thicker. He liked what he saw right then.

  “I got some ideas.”

  Sarah knew the tone and the look in his eye. “I was thinking more like going out for a drink.”

  “You don’t got nothing around here?” he asked, tossing his jacket onto the sofa.

  “It’s more the principle of the thing. You know, taking a lady out to celebrate. Doing something different. You coming over here and banging away on me is on my been there, done that list.”

  “Maybe I like banging on you.” He smiled, but it seemed to ooze oil.

  “You better be careful or I’ll start to think I’m working in a different profession. A very old one.”

  “The oldest.”

  Sarah jutted out a hip. “Does this mean you’re gonna start paying me?”

  “No, ma’am. I get mine for free.”

  Brian put his hand on her shoulders and pulled her to him, hard enough for her to know there was no use resisting. He pushed his mouth onto hers, the day’s stubble grating rough on her skin, scrubbing her lips raw.

  He pushed her back, taking her robe in his fist as she went. The robe pulled free from one shoulder, her naked breast coming loose with it. The heavy hang of her implants stared back at him. He looked at her body, not her eyes. He moved his eyes down to her black underthings. Such a thin layer. Hardly any help at keeping things in, worthless at keeping anything out.

  “Brian,” she started. The lilting tone and playful bickering had gone out of her voice. She’d been on the verge of this scene before. She felt him roiling under the surface, but she always managed to bring him back from the edge before things got too scary.

  Something about tonight though…

  He reached out and slipped two fingers under the strap of her underwear by her hip bone and pulled. Her torso jerked to the side, but the panties did not rip. He seemed to get frustrated at this and he tugged again. Her hip again kicked out like she was a go-go dancer, but the fabric held.

  “Stop,” she said. “Let me get—”

  He continued to avoid her eyes. He turned her, pushed her away, and she fell forward toward the sofa. Her hands went down and she ended up on all fours. He pulled the black underwear down until they settled in the crook behind her knees.

  Sarah braced herself for what she seemed to know was coming.

  CHAPTER 14

  “First thing we do is get to the house and get your laptop,” Nash said.

  “If he hasn’t been there already,” Jacy said.

  “Yeah.” Nash knew it was more than likely. He powered the Charger over the two lane, enjoying the boost of engine he did not get from his Honda.

  “Let’s just keep going,” Jacy said. “We don’t need the laptop.”

  “You don’t want to get into a he-said-she-said thing against a sheriff. We need the evidence.”

  “I have a backup. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  Nash turned to her. He felt blood on his lip, his cut opened up from his flying tackle of the meth cook.

  “I tried to pack light,” she said. “So I copied the video file and put it on a flash drive.”

  “Which is where?”

  Jacy held up her purse.

  “The fuck didn’t you say that before?”

  “Duh. So Brian wouldn’t take it.”

  Nash didn’t feel like arguing with her. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt left in the dark over the past forty-eight hours.

  Headlights flashed diamonds in the rearview. Square. Distinct. The outline of the dark car had the silhouette to make any driver chill. A cop car.

  Nash checked his speedometer. Shit. The big engine in the Charger moved so much easier than his old beater that he’d unknowingly run it up to eighty-five. He quickly slowed, hoping he hadn’t already been nabbed by a radar.

  Cops he wanted. Cops in this county, he did not.

  “What?” Jacy asked, feeling the downshift of the car.

  “Cop.”

  “What the hell? Do we have some kind of target on us or something?”

  “It’s probably because I was speeding. But we’re not exactly on the state cop’s Christmas card list right now.”

  “Do you think it’s Brian?” Jacy spun her body in the seat, clutching her purse tighter to her chest.

  “I think it’s state. But shit, Evel might have called him.”

  The cop car was gaining fast. Nash checked the rearview again. No light bar on top. Unmarked? The shape was definitely all cop even if the darkness hid any markings. And no sirens were running.

  He checked the speedo again. Down to sixty-five. Maybe he should get it back up to—

  The Charger lurched forward, a metal-on-metal sound from the impact behind them. The cop car, or whatever it was, kept tight to the bumper, readying for another ram.

  “It’s not a cop,” Nash said. He gripped the steering wheel tight.

  “Who is it?”

  “I think I know.”

  In the trunk, a tiny box blinked a red light and sent a signal into the night air. Here I am. Come and get me.

  Behind the wheel of the Crown Vi
c, Evel grit his teeth and accelerated for another hit.

  The heavy steel bumper on the former cop car dented the plastic covered rear bumper on Nash’s car. The Charger wobbled, veered over the yellow line, then swung back.

  “Fuck,” Nash said.

  “How did he find us?” Jacy asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  The Crown Vic pushed the side of the Charger, below the gas cap. A classic cop move. Nash began a fishtail slide that, at seventy, he couldn’t pull out of.

  Evel hit the brake and let the Charger spin out ahead of him. Tires melted into the pavement marking two long black curves for motorists to see for years and wonder what could have happened here.

  Nash thought the words Hang on, but was too busy wrestling the car to get them out of his mouth. He didn’t need finish the thought—that they were going off the road.

  The back wheels hit the gravel shoulder first and caught, sending the front end slicing across the lane ahead of them. The car nosed into the drainage ditch off the side of the highway. Stunted, untended crops spread out in front of them.

  The right front wheel hit the bottom of the ditch, bent, and snapped at some junction of axel and tire and crumpled under the engine. Nash’s attempts at righting the wheel were futile, but he kept his grip in hopes he could prevent them from flipping. The airbags popped and Nash and Jacy were momentarily blinded. A few seconds went black, permanently erased from memory. The back end of the car bit deeper into the gravel and the car slowed.

  The car wavered, bounced on either side of the ditch, but did not go over, instead coming to a rest at a tilt with a waft of fluid smells coming off the engine.

  Jacy tried her door, but the dirt was too close to her to let it open more than a few inches. Nash pushed open his door, but the weight of it and the angle brought it back down on him. He pushed open again and kept a hand on it.

  “You go. Climb over me.”

  Jacy undid her seatbelt, picked up her purse, but when she turned to make her climb, Evel was there.

  Standing on the shoulder, several feet above them, he looked to her like the angel of death. Right down to the gun in his hand.

  “You dumb motherfuckers took the wrong car,” Evel said.

  Nash let his head fall against the headrest. “I gathered that.”

  “Well, since you’re halfway already, why don’t you get on out of there.”

  Evel held the gun on them as Jacy and Nash awkwardly climbed out, looking like newborn foals. The Crown Vic, brights on and only one bulb damaged in the rear-ending, lit the side of the road. Evel’s shadow cast long and black over the dying Charger.

  “Now I want you to do me a favor,” Evel said. “You look like a strapping young lad. Open up that trunk and put everything you find into the back of my car.”

  Nash stepped tentatively to the trunk, pressed the button on the key fob and the top inched open. He lifted it the rest of the way. Inside were two bankers boxes that had split open. At least three dozen small wrapped packages were scattered around. Plastic bundles bound by duct tape. Nash didn’t need a description. He’d gone and accidentally stolen a load of Evel’s drugs.

  Blood flowed freely into his mouth from his split lip and his nose, the cuts reopened by the airbag. Silently he cursed himself and his dumb luck, then himself again.

  He took two at a time and moved them from the terminally damaged Charger into the trunk of the Crown Vic. The ex-cop car had been stripped of its markings, leaving ghosts of numbers and emblems behind. A heavy antenna was bolted into the trunk. Empty bolt holes now filled with epoxy dotted the roof where the light rack once sat.

  Midway through the pile of drugs, Nash’s other question was answered. A small black box the size of a garage remote blinked a red light at him. The warning came too late.

  With each load he knew he was wearing out his usefulness. Evel would pull the trigger when the last of the bundles hit the trunk. Think fast. Move forward. Don’t look back.

  Evel held the gun loosely in Nash’s direction, but kept his eyes on Jacy as she leaned against the front end of the Crown Vic, the headlights making her legs glow. Staccato, industrial metal blared from the speakers. Evel’s chase music, meant to pump him up. He watched Jacy touch a welt on her lip from the airbag. The plumpness of the swelling made her lips look even better.

  “So, no shit, girlie. You and the sheriff, huh?”

  Jacy ignored him.

  “I can see why,” Evel said, then gave a high whistle. Nash paused by the trunk to fire a hard stare before dropping the next bundles inside. Evel ignored him.

  “Why don’t you come with me,” Evel said to Jacy. She didn’t move. “Go on.” Evel moved the gun in her direction, nodding the barrel to the backseat door.

  “How about you fuck off,” Jacy said, but with no confidence behind it.

  “Stop trying to look good for him,” Evel said. “Get in the car. I’m givin’ you a second chance.”

  “Seems like the same old shit I’ve been dealing with.”

  Evel showed the first signs of a dwindling patience. “Get in the fucking car.”

  “Make me, you prick.”

  Evel stepped up to her, pinched a firm hand over her biceps and pulled. He jerked the purse out of her hand with his gun arm and flung it. Everything inside exploded out like a clay pigeon blasted with a shotgun. Her phone, her makeup, a stray tampon, and the flash drive with the backup of her video. Jacy watched it all scatter into the unkempt field, lost to the darkness. An angry cry of anguish died in her throat. Her immediate safety took a higher priority.

  Evel shoved and the shadow of Jacy’s legs passed over Nash as he picked up two more bundles of drugs. Only four more in the trunk.

  Nash resisted the urge to run. His muscles burned under the skin, wanting to move, wanting to attack. He carried his two fists of bundled meth to the trunk, listening to Jacy’s protests. Her high squeals and pained grunts made Nash think of what it must have been like in her bedroom on the nights Brian came visiting.

  “Get the fuck in there, girl,” Evel said.

  Jacy braced herself against the door frame as Evel tried to muscle her inside. The gun in his hand made it hard to get a decent grip on her and she fought like he was pushing her into an open coffin.

  Evel, tired of this shit, balled a fist around the gun and punched Jacy on her already swollen lip. She fell into the back seat, hitting her head on the door frame as she went.

  Nash dumped his bundles and slammed the trunk shut. He reached for the antenna, snapped it off like a hickory switch.

  Evel had a left-handed grip around Jacy’s ankle and he kicked at her other foot to push her the rest of the way inside. He felt the scorpion sting of pain in his neck and only then, when he snapped out of his focus on the bitch, did he notice Nash next to him.

  The thin wire of the antenna pushed through the meat, found a moment’s respite in the open throat, then plunged deeper until it hit the open air on the other side of Evel’s neck. Nash pushed forward, driving Evel’s head into the corner between the door and door frame. He grabbed for the gun, twisting it easily from Evel’s hand as the pain and shock of the wire through his neck occupied his thoughts and his motor functions.

  Nash turned the gun down, pulled the trigger. The top of Evel’s boot exploded out in a bloom of blood. The leather on his tooled cowboy boots spread out like a flower petal. Nash adjusted to the left, fired again, and made a twin hole in the other boot.

  Evel screamed, but the signal was distorted. A ragged puncture along his voice box turned a scream of pain into an FM signal in the middle of the desert, scratchy and harsh.

  Evel fell to the gravel of the shoulder. Jacy looked out from the back of the car, wondering who got shot. Her lip bled down her chin, but the look of relief when she saw Nash behind the trigger made her smile.

  Don’t stop. Go forward. Nash flung the gun away into the field to join the debris from Jacy’s purse. Hid
den in the dark of night, the tiny objects would be lost to the overgrown land until someone decided to till the soil, something unlikely to happen for years to come.

  Nash went back to the trunk. Locked. Jacy watched him march to the driver’s side, focused and stoic. He pulled the keys and the music died. The buzz-saw and belt-sander sounds no longer scored the moment, but now that they were gone, they’d done such a good job of capturing the mood.

  Nash unlocked the trunk and began unloading the bundles again. He threw the first two at Evel who writhed in the gravel bed. He pulled the bundles out, two by two, and covered Evel. Pelting him with the tightly wrapped bricks as he added to the pile.

  He got the black box GPS tracker, the red light still blinking. He bent down to Evel who looked weak, dizzy. Nash pushed down on his chin, forcing his mouth open. He shoved the GPS box in. The red light lit Evel’s cheeks like a bloody lightning bug in the night air.

  As the car pulled away, spitting dirt and tiny stones at Evel, he only had seconds of consciousness left.

  CHAPTER 15

  Nash tossed the CD out the window. The rush of the manure-scented air was music enough.

  “You okay?” he asked Jacy.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “We both took our lumps, huh?”

  “You talk like it’s over.”

  Nash shifted in his seat. “No. I know it’s not.”

  “What next?”

  “Same as before. We go to see Mom. Check on that laptop of yours.”

  “Guess the backup isn’t worth shit anymore.”

  “No. Guess not.”

  The metal music was back. Nash looked around the inside of the car, confused. He noticed the glow of a cell phone stuck in the cup holder. He picked it up, pressed answer, put it to his ear and said, “He’s dead.” Then he flung it out the window.