“What’s a pact?”
“You know, when they agree to do something.”
“Oh. Are we making a pact?”
“We sure are. We’re making a pact that we’re going to be good friends forever.”
Jimmy smiled. And put his hand in Richie’s.
Susan came to the door of the living room. “There’s a lot of dust about a mile down the road, Richie. Could be somebody coming here.”
Richie tensed.
A few times the past half hour, he’d been able to forget the posse. Now the reality was back.
He felt sick and scared.
As he got up from the couch, he said, “Jimmy, you didn’t happen to see anything at my cabin when you left the bread off, did you?”
By now, Susan was standing next to Richie. They both saw the strange expression on Jimmy’s face. He wasn’t good at concealing things.
He said, “Huh-uh, Richie. I didn’t see anything. Honest, I didn’t.”
Richie looked at Susan again. Was Jimmy holding something back? He sure did look and sound strange all of a sudden.
“You’d better go,” Susan said.
He knew she was right.
He wanted to stay here and find out what the hell was making Jimmy act so oddly...
But he had to run. Run.
“I’m glad we shook hands,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah,” Richie said. “So’m I, Jimmy.”
The slightly dazed expression was back in Richie’s eyes and voice.
Now there was only one thing he could concentrate on: escape.
In the kitchen, she helped him heft the knapsack straps over his shoulders.
Then she handed him the gun.
“I love you, Richie,” she said.
This time, their embrace was not the wildly passionate kiss of a few minutes earlier.
This was a kiss that spoke of care and tenderness, of solace and succor, the kind of cherishing kiss a man gives a woman on the night of their twentieth wedding anniversary, the kiss of a man who loves a woman not just sexually but mentally and spiritually as well.
She was so moved, her eyes filled with tears. A lone silver tear ran down her cheek.
Richie went to the door and then lit out, running across the barnyard to the woods behind the farmhouse.
He reached the woods a few minutes later and then immediately climbed an oak tree on the edge of the forest.
He wanted to see if the vehicle on the road turned into Susan’s.
It did.
The police car swung into the driveway and stopped.
A familiar figure emerged from the car and walked up to the back door of the farmhouse.
Richie shuddered.
What the hell was Steve Arnette doing here?
And given Jimmy’s fear of Arnette, would he blurt out that Richie had just been here and fled into the woods?
Richie couldn’t wait around to find out.
He scrambled down the tree and set off through the deep forest.
3
Arnette pulled his cruiser right up to the back door. When he climbed out, he was carrying a Remington shotgun.
Susan was waiting for him on the back stairs, Jimmy standing next to her.
“I take it you heard about what happened to Richie?” Arnette said. He couldn’t quite keep the pleasure out of his voice.
“I heard.”
“There’s only one person in this town who’d hide him,” Arnette said.
“He isn’t here, Steve.”
“Has he been here?”
“No.”
He looked at Jimmy. “Has he been here, Jimmy?”
Jimmy looked at Susan for a long moment, then at Arnette. “Huh-uh, he hasn’t been here.”
“You’ve got him trained pretty well,” Arnette said to Susan.
“He’s telling the truth,” she said. “Richie hasn’t been here.”
“There’s a reward for him, Susan. Somebody’s probably going to pick him off.”
“And you wouldn’t, I suppose?”
Arnette stared down at the shotgun dangling from his fingers. He smelled of heat and cigarettes.
“Maybe we could make a deal,” he said.
“What kind of deal?”
“You tell me where I can find him. I promise to bring him in safely.”
“He didn’t kill that girl, Steve.”
“Maybe he didn’t. But if he didn’t, running sure as hell’s not going to do him any good.”
“He’s scared. You know how paranoid Richie gets.”
“He’s real scared,” Jimmy said. “I ain’t ever seen him this scared.”
“You’re worried about him, huh, Jimmy?”
Then, “He’s got good reason to be scared, Susan, don’t you see that?” Arnette said. “Bunch of drunk guys out walking the fields — first sight they see of him, they’ll kill him.”
“And you won’t?”
“Not if we make a deal.”
Ever since he mentioned his “deal,” Susan kept thinking that maybe Steve had changed. Maybe he’d forgotten his bitterness toward Richie and herself. But then she looked at how he stood there — even when he was just talking, there was an animal tension in his body... an animal tension that told her Steve hadn’t changed at all. His first opportunity to kill Richie... he’d take it.
A breeze came off the cornfields to the west. For a moment, Susan closed her eyes and wished herself away from this. She wanted to be a girl again, riding her favorite roan up in the hills.
“You’d better go,” she said. “You and that gun of yours’ve got a lot of work to do today.”
When he looked at her just then, the angle of his head, she saw the sorrow he felt, and knew that even now he was still in love with her. She wanted to touch him, then, nothing romantic or sexual, just touch him because, of course, she knew just how he felt... It was the same way she’d felt about Richie all these years.
But then the sorrow was gone and his old anger was back again.
“You want to help Richie, Jimmy?” he said.
Then, “You hear me, Jimmy?”
“Richie’s my friend,” Jimmy said.
“I know he’s your friend. That’s why you should want to help him.”
“Susan’d get mad if I said anything.”
“I told you to leave him alone,” Susan said.
Arnette shook his head. “Listen, Susan, I’m not joking. I’d promise you I wouldn’t hurt him.”
“You’d kill him first chance you got, and you know it.”
“Even if I gave you my word?”
“Your word,” she said. “Your word. You beat him up the night you arrested him and everybody knows it. So now you’re going to bring him in safely?”
“You’d be a lot better taking your chances with me than some of those other guys, I’ll tell you that.”
“Get out of here, Steve. I don’t want to see your face anymore.”
The sorrow was once again in his eyes and she felt a moment of guilt for putting it there. When you loved somebody the crazy way she loved Richie — or Steve loved her — it was hard to act sane around them. Steve was trying to win her over, was all. He might even believe what he was saying — at least for now — but the moment he set eyes on Richie...
Softly, she said, “C’mon, Steve. This isn’t easy for either of us. Why don’t you just go?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what the hell you see in him, Susan. He’s never done one damned thing for you.”
“Just go, Steve, all right?”
He studied her awhile, as if trying to read her innermost thoughts, and then, with his sorrow and his rifle, he turned around and walked back to his car.
After Arnette started his engine, Susan said, “Come in the house, Jimmy. I want to talk to you.”