‘Thieves? Are you mad?’ Jay snatched her hand loose this time, but the young man wasn’t finished. He grabbed her by the front of her jacket and pulled her tight, thrusting her against the counter with his hips. Her kidneys were forced against the wood, but she’d lost the urge to urinate.
The teller pulled more dollars out from under the counter. ‘Look, son, just take it all, OK? We don’t want any trouble. Just take the cash and be on your way.’
The young man crunched, then spat out the stick of his lollipop. He’d sucked it down to the paper. ‘Are you sayin’ I’m a goddamn thief now? Shee-it! I was offended before, but now I’m pissed.’
‘Please,’ Jay said. ‘Before this gets out of hand, let me go.’
‘Things got outta hand a long time ago, missy,’ the man said against her neck. Jay squirmed, but he jammed her with his hips again as he dug into his shirt pocket. ‘You see this girl here?’
The man waved a sheet of paper under Jay’s nose. It was a Xeroxed photograph with a name under it. It was far too close for her to focus on. The man reversed it and waved it in front of the old man. ‘I’m looking for her. Either one of you seen her?’
‘I already told you, son. No I ain’t seen her.’
‘So you said, but I know now you’re a goddamn liar! Like you lied about the bathroom being broke, like you lied about the price of the gas! Makes me wonder if you’ve got Helena tucked up back there in that goddamn booth of yours. I’ve a mind to—’
‘You’ve a mind to apologise to these good people is what you’ve got.’
The pressure went off Jay and she spun away from the young man, placing her back to the cooler. The perspiration on her skin felt like ice, but she didn’t move, just stared wide-eyed at the older cowboy as he stood in the doorway. He’d placed the straw hat back on his head, and it was sitting at the raffish angle adopted by the good guy in Western movies. Jay doubted there was anything good about the cowboy, though. His reason for intervening wasn’t well intentioned, but because there were too many witnesses. On the forecourt another vehicle had arrived: a station wagon with a young couple and three children inside. Nicole was also standing by the SUV, her hands at her throat as she watched the drama.
The blond man said, ‘Why, heck! If you ain’t right.’ He quickly moved away from Jay, raising his hands. He still held the Xerox and Jay saw a smudged image of a young woman on it. Beneath her name was printed the fateful word: missing.
The cowboy came inside. ‘My buddy is hurting, folks. His woman has gone and run off someplace. You can imagine how upset he is, I’m sure? Now let’s all just calm down, shall we, and get about our own business?’
Jay opened her mouth to object, but the teller jerked his head at her, another warning to get out. For all she joked about enjoying walking on the wild side, Jay had experienced enough of it for one day. She hurried for the door. Before she could escape, the cowboy lifted his arm and blocked her way. ‘It’s finished with, right? There’ll be no making complaints to the po-lice?’
That was when her big mouth got the better of her and said, ‘I’m not surprised that his woman ran away. Your buddy is an animal.’
The cowboy showed her his gap-toothed grin, revealing stumps of rotting teeth. ‘Yup. You got that right. He probably should be in a cage, but I’m not gonna let that happen.’ He leaned in close. ‘You get me, miss?’
‘I get you,’ Jay said, as she ducked under his arm and scurried back to the SUV.
‘What was all that about?’ Nic asked, her face drained of colour.
‘Just get in, Nic. We have to get out of here.’
Jay glanced over at the pick-up truck. The sunlight was making a prism of the windscreen, causing rainbows to bounce back at her. She thought she saw another figure seated in the cab, but couldn’t be sure. Forget about it, she told herself. Two maniacs are enough for anyone to contend with.
They scrambled inside the SUV, and Nic tossed over the keys. Jay jammed them into the ignition and roared out on to the highway. As dust rose in a cloud behind them, she could have sworn a figure alighted from the pick-up and moved towards the family’s station wagon. Then she could no longer see anything for the trail dirt.
‘What happened?’
Glancing across at Nicole, Jay guessed her face was as pale as her friend’s. ‘Just a couple of crazy men,’ she said. ‘If I ever see them again, it will be way too soon.’
Her words, said in hope, would come back to haunt Jay tenfold.
2
I’m a firm believer in employing economy of motion, and that extends to the day job as much as anything else in life. I’d set off from my home near to Mexico Beach on the Gulf Coast to meet Jameson Walker, but I had a couple of hours to kill. My route took me past Tyndall Air Force Base, and over water on the Parkway, before reaching Panama City, where Walker’s flight was scheduled to land. Off and on for the past fortnight I’d been engaged on a job in the neighbouring town of Callaway, and it was only a minor diversion to go there and tie up the loose ends.
I had my military pension, as well as funds from the sale of my house in the UK and other savings and investments I’d set in place over the past eighteen years, but I still needed a wage. I’d signed on as a partner in my friend Rink’s private investigations business, albeit I didn’t see myself as much of a detective. The work I tended to take on was where a person’s guilt wasn’t necessarily the issue, but how they could be made to pay for their transgression was. Sometimes, by the nature of their crimes, the law couldn’t touch them. That was where I came in.
Maria Purefoy worked hard at a major chain store. It was thankless work, with long hours and a minimum wage. It was difficult for her to raise her four boys after their daddy ran off and left them to fend for themselves. Her eldest son, Brian, sixteen, had fallen in with a group of youths who believed that the only life was one spent on a skateboard. They hadn’t anticipated that the older boys would force them into using their wheels to run errands for them. Brian Purefoy had been arrested for dealing cocaine, then got himself a criminal record, a fine neither he nor his mother could afford, and threats demanding allegiance from the older gang. Maria was worried that her son was being forced down a slippery slope, and wanted things stopped.
I wouldn’t normally involve myself in a job like that — sadly they were ten a penny these days — but Maria had reported that her boy was terrified of saying no. A week before, one of his friends had been the victim of a hit and run accident where he’d ended up with two broken legs and a perforated spleen. The friend had recently told the gang where to shove their drugs. It wasn’t in me to stand idle while kids were being hurt.
Like Maria, the local cops had a thankless task on their plate. With witnesses too afraid to come forward they had no way of bringing the offenders to justice; their hands were tied. I was sure they knew why I was around and were steering a wide berth. Still, they could only allow me so much leeway before the press got hold of the story and started screaming about a crazy vigilante stalking their town. I couldn’t go in all guns blazing, but, as long as nobody died, the cops kept out of my way.
I’d already pulled two of the older skater guys; showed them the error of their ways. Still, their leader, a twenty-three-year-old punk named Joey Dorsey, had the balls to front things out. Dorsey could have made it big on the boarding scene, not that he was in Tony Hawk’s league, but he’d allowed his wilder urges to get a hold of his good sense, and had gone off-track. Now he fancied himself as the local king of anarchy and lived up to the image. The trouble with following his ethos is that there’s always someone else tougher, more brutal, and prepared to bend the rules that much further. I decided that, seeing as I was passing, I might as well go and teach Joey that valuable lesson.