“What’s going on is, he’s a control weirdo, that’s what,” Cassie shouted at Sheryl Mott. “And who’s subbing in for who, I got no idea.” Then she shoved Sheryl with both hands, hard, knocking her back so her calves caught on the rim of the bathtub and she fell backward, flailing her arms, pulling the shower curtain with her. Cassie gripped Kit firmly by the arm and walked her from the room. “Honey. You’re coming with me. We’re getting out of here.”
Gator slowly shook his head. His rage was total, and his voice was so small. “No, you ain’t,” he almost whispered as, from the corner of his eye, he saw her striding down the hall, through the kitchen, escorting-that was exactly the word-escorting the kid, arm draped protectively over her shoulder like a mother hen.
“No, you ain’t,” he repeated softly, pushing though the terrible inertia, off the wall, placing one arm out, planting his hand on the far wall, blocking their path.
Kit watched it and listened to it, trembling. Confused at how the air kept getting thicker with all the scary, invisible adult bad stuff. She heard cursing in back of her, where the other woman was climbing out of the bathtub.
“You’re in the way,” Cassie said to Gator.
“Can’t let you go. Just can’t,” Gator said in an almost helpless voice.
“Watch me,” Cassie said, eyes flashing with disgust. “You stay here with your stand-in whore.” They scurried past, out the door.
Gator shook his head. Years of work. Perfect plan. Perfect location. Belize. Boat engines. Never gonna see the fucking ocean. With tremendous effort, he pushed off the wall, started after them, Sheryl coming up now, grimacing, rubbing a bruised knot on her temple. Eyes like jelly. Shock maybe. Yapping, “What’s going on? Who is she?”
“C’mon,” he said, going out the door, onto the porch. Cassie and the kid were about ten yards out, ghostly in the blowing snow, starting to run toward the Jeep Cherokee Jimmy the moron bought her when he won the Moose lottery. Jeep was running, lights on. Why not. Everything else was in plain goddamn sight.
“I’m telling you, Cassie, you better stop,” Gator shouted coming down the steps, bringing the Luger out, flicking off the safety.
“Run,” Cassie shouted urgently to Kit, pushing her forward, shielding her with her body. “Around to the driver’s side, I’ll let you in.”
The Luger drifted up. Gator, dreamy-eyed in the blowing snow, found Cassie’s back, below her blowing black hair. Another Bodine. And then there was one. He squeezed the trigger. Kit screamed when Teddy Klumpe’s mom pitched forward without making a sound, arms twisted, clutching behind at her back, bounced off the grill of the Jeep, twirled once in the headlight beams and fell face forward into the snow.
Gator shifted to the smaller target, but she was darting through the headlights, and with the snow, he briefly lost her. She reappeared, racing toward the barn. He fired again, but it was too far now, the light uncertain. Saw her duck into the narrow black vertical shadow of the ajar door to the left of the garage.
He turned and pounded Sheryl on the arm. Sheryl, practically useless now, had her hands up one on each side of her face. All freaked out and motor mouth, “Jesus, Gator, Jesus; when is this going to fuckin’ stop?”
“Soon’s we nail that little bitch. Now listen. You go in where she did, push her on through. I’ll be around back, by the pens. Catch her when she runs out. Go.” He shoved Sheryl toward the partially open sliding door. Took off running around the barn.
Kit wiggled through the door and ran on pure instinct, just a pounding heart and lungs wrapped around a bottle rocket of fright. Her boots skidded in the dark, collided with something hard, steel, some machine. She sprawled on the floor. Crawling, feeling with her right hand along a series of wooden panels. Ripe rotten grainy smells. She heard somebody take a sobbing breath as they squeezed through the door behind her. The bad woman who had put her in the trunk. Coming after her.
Kit scrambled to the end of the wooden thing and huddled, hiding behind it. She could hear the woman, feeling around in the dark, by the door. Kit swung her head. Eyes bulging, runaway heart; she saw that the back end of the enclosure was open to the storm. This empty floor dusted with white. And in the middle of it she saw a tiny familiar black silhouette arch up against the flickering snow.
Sheryl staggered forward-Jesus, what a bummer, talk about bad tripping on plain old real life-averting her eyes going past the prone figure under the Jeep high beams, the long black hair so like her own, rippling in the wind. She reached the barn, squirmed through the door, and tried to get her bearings. Their secret storehouse. Okay. Where’s the light switch? Up on the wall to the right. Her hand fumbled in the dark. There it is. She took a step into the long room, her arm stretched back, fingers on the switch. Poised to flush the kid. Aw right, ready or not, here I come. She snapped the switch.
Chapter Fifty-five
Knowing the road, doing a hundred over the Barrens’ flat, Nygard shouted adrenaline-spiked tactics to Barlow on the radio. “There’s the barn to the left, then a cement-block shop and the farmhouse to the right, you know it?”
“Been by it, don’t know it,” Barlow shouted back in a crackle of static.
“I’ll go in to the right of the house, you take the left. First one out of the car rushes the front door. We go straight in.”
“Straight in,” Barlow repeated in a throaty shiver. “No fucking around.”
Another transmission, broke the static. “Keith, Howie; maybe you should wait, we’re just ten, fifteen minutes behind you…got four cars on the road…more on the way…”
“Straight in,” Nygard shouted back. “If it’s for real, the last thing we want is Gator getting in the woods, figure he’s got a deer gun at least.” Nygard’s face was working, staring into the snow. Then he yelled into the mike. “County Z, three minutes out.”
“Three minutes,” Barlow yelled back.
Broker and Nina sat silent, listening to the cops go back and forth on the radio. No communication between them. Past getting ready. Past tactics.
Almost three minutes to the dot, Nygard yelled, “See it on the right!” He switched off the headlights, and they hurtled through a spun gray tunnel. Then Broker and Nina saw the blur of the display light, the red of the tractor. Other lights, car lights. The shadows of buildings.
“Here we go,” Nygard yelled, swerving off the road, sledding through a ditch, throwing up a cloud of snow as the cruiser stove through the drifts, skidding into the yard.
Nina and Broker leaped out before the car even came to a halt, were already bounding forward when the barn erupted in a sheet of fire. The confusion of snow disappeared in the roaring yellow orange plume of light. Instinctively they looked away, protecting their eyesight.
A few seconds later, Nina screamed in a voice loud enough to carry over the roar of the fire: “Two o’clock!”
Gator hugged the mudguard of an old rusty Deere at the edge of the tractor graveyard, where he had a good view of the open loafing shed in back of the barn. Caught movement, swung the Luger. Okay…
Huh? He held off, seeing the rabbit-ass cat running out from the shed. Cutting in back of the shop. He giggled nervously. No shit. Black cat crossing my path…
Then, just like hunting; let the doe go by, wait for the buck. He saw the kid dart from the shed, running like hell, chasing the cat. Saw her dive into the snow, wrap the cat in her arms. Get up, running clumsy now, arms out of play, clutching the cat. Goddamn, he thought, leveling the pistol. Why didn’t I think of that?
No more than ten yards. Almost reach out and touch. Moving with her. All right, you little runt…
Just as he squeezed the trigger, the back end of the barn shuddered with a whoosh of flame, knocking him back, sending the shot wild, like he pulled the trigger and blew the fucker up or something. Scorched his face. Blinding him. What the…