Terry Lampier-Eric’s older brother-and two of his high school buddies just materialized out of nowhere, blocking his way. Instantly, Travis knew he was in deep trouble, and he took off in the opposite direction, running as fast as he could. But the jocks had him beat at all levels: height, weight, and speed. They caught up with him after maybe a dozen steps, clotheslining him and bouncing him off the hard-packed dirt path. The details were a little fuzzy after that, but he remembered putting up a valiant defense, all things considered, until an early shot to his balls drove all the fight right out of him. He didn’t even remember what nailed him in the eye. All he knew was, one minute it felt like his guts had exploded, and the next, he was ten feet off the path, under a bunch of bushes.
As he pulled himself to his feet, he’d marveled that everything still worked. He wondered if maybe they thought they’d killed him and then stashed his body out in the woods. Either way, he was grateful to be in as good shape as he was. They could have killed him for real.
By the time Travis had made his way back to his trailer, the sun had started to dip, taking the temperature down along with it. With the whole back and side ripped out of his T-shirt, he felt cold. He felt dizzy for a while, too, and thought that he might have to sit down, but the feeling passed just as he turned onto his street.
Bullet Boobs Barnett was out in her garden as he approached, pretending to mind flowers when in fact minding everyone else’s business. She took one look at Travis and freaked. “Oh, my God, boy, are you all right?”
From the look on her face, Travis figured he must have looked a lot worse than he felt. “I’m fine,” he said. “I fell down. I just want to get home.”
Mrs. Barnett arose from her knees with some effort and waddled toward the boy, pausing to step carefully over the six-inch white wire fence that defined her flower beds. “Fell down,” she scoffed. “I don’t believe that for a minute. Here, let me take a look at you.”
Travis never stopped walking. “Really, Mrs. Barnett,” he said without looking back, “I’m fine. My mom should be home now.”
“You tell her you need to see a doctor!”
He acknowledged her with a wave over his shoulder, then tried to hike his tattered shirt back into place.
I’m doomed, he moaned silently. If he got that kind of reaction out of Bullet Boobs, God only knew how bad his mom was going to freak out. He didn’t have to wait long to see. Apparently, Mrs. Barnett couldn’t contain herself long enough for him to break the news himself. As he turned the last corner, both his mom and his dad came running down the street to meet him.
“Oh, my God!” his mom yelled. “Travis!”
The boy instinctively checked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching as his folks descended on him.
“My God, what happened?”
His dad answered for him. “He’s been in a fight.” His voice oozed disapproval.
“Who did this to you?” his mother demanded.
“Not here, Carolyn,” his dad cautioned. “Let’s get him home first.”
Thus beginneth the lectures, Travis remembered. They came one after another. First, there was the need to get along in their new community, followed immediately by the one about how the choices he made today could affect the rest of his life. When he tried to defend himself, describing the insults he’d had to endure from Eric Lampier, his mom jumped right in with the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right pitch. In the end, though, he got a reprieve when his folks turned on each other over the question of whether or not they should take him to see a doctor. His mom was worried that he might have some hidden brain injury, while his dad maintained that they couldn’t afford to take him unless it was a true emergency.
It was kind of weird. Travis had never thought of them being so poor that they couldn’t afford to protect him from brain injury. Terrified as he was of doctors and the needles they wielded, he decided not to feel insulted. Instead, he just slipped down the short hall to his room and left them to fight it out among themselves.
Now, as the bus swung around the circle in front of the school, he sighed. In three more years, he’d be done with this crap. One thing South Carolina had going for it was their emancipation laws. He’d actually done the research. In three more years, he’d be sixteen, and then he’d be able to quit school forever.
Jake kicked at the floor. “Shit.” He checked his watch without seeing the time. “When’s he due back?”
“Around two.”
This time he moved his watch around in the dim light until he could read the face. “That’s fifteen minutes. How are we doing here?”
“I think we’re about set.” Carolyn picked up the lantern and led him to the back of the storage bay.
Of the two adjacent storage areas, the one on the right housed a strictly forbidden plain white Chevy van. In the five months they’d been in Phoenix, the van hadn’t moved an inch. He hadn’t even cranked the starter. In the eight years they’d owned the vehicle, it had been moved fewer than two dozen times, and then only at night, accumulating just under eighteen thousand miles on the odometer. It’d start, he told himself. It had to start.
The first order of business after renting these spaces had been to cut a doorway between them, thus allowing materials stored in the left-hand bay to be loaded and unloaded from the van without having to go outside.
Clearly, Carolyn had worked like a dog to pack it all up. All the weapons were on board, along with assorted building materials-two-by-fours and plywood, mostly-and a couple of weeks’ worth of canned food, all stacked neatly on the shelves he’d installed and secured with bungees. On the other side of the makeshift doorway, Jake could see the back end of the Celica, all locked up and out of sight.
“You done good, honey,” he said in his teasing hillbilly accent.
She shrugged a little and shook her head. “I just don’t believe we’re doing this. How could it happen?”
He sighed. “Random bad luck,” he said. “It’s so amazing. You plan and plan, and in the end, it’s a bunch of dumb dopers who pull the rug out from under you.” As he spoke, he busied himself by lifting the big Glock-17 from the rubbermatted floor of the van, where Carolyn had left it for him, holster and all. Unzipping his jacket, he unthreaded his belt from the loops on the right-hand side of his Levi’s, then attached the holster high, so the muzzle was invisible below the waistband, the grip tucked securely under his arm. “Is the money already on board?”
Her silence drew Jake’s eyes around. She just stood there, her hands at her sides, staring off at a spot in the dark. “Honey?”
She blinked once, then only her eyes moved. “I don’t think I can do this again,” she whispered.
He flapped his jacket back over the gun and walked two steps closer, taking her shoulders in his hands. As she tried to break eye contact, he wouldn’t let her, moving his body to stay in her field of view. “Carolyn, honey, listen to me. We can’t weaken now. Do you hear? We’ve known all along that this moment might come-hell, that it probably would come-and now it has. I wish it was some other way, but it’s not. We’re out of options now.”
She closed her eyes tightly and sighed again. “Maybe we should just turn ourselves in this time. Let the courts handle it.”
The words from his wife frightened Jake at a level much deeper than anything he’d felt in the shop or in the police station or out along the road. For any of this to work, they needed to be a team-and a strong team at that. “Carolyn, look at me. Please.”
She opened her eyes. They were dry. She knew he was right.