He had one hand on the sill and a leg through the opening and he was trying to keep his cool. But the only friend he had in the world, John Wesley, was laid out there on the floor and he wasn’t moving. Bean got the other leg over and he went through into the room just as Morgan came off the porch. Off balance and running, Bean raised the Walther and took aim.
Morgan there ten feet from the stairs, the light from the open door spilling onto the prairie. Morgan moving for the shadows. Bean pulled the trigger and felt the gun buck slightly. Morgan fell out of the light and into the darkness. Bean had no idea if he’d hit the man or not.
He came down off the porch with the pistol still pointed out on the prairie, Drake’s own service weapon now tucked into the waistband of his pants.
Grass moved in the wind, and farther on the sound of the high thin branches of the cottonwoods clacking together. Bean’s eyes trying to adjust. He came to the edge of the light and stood with the gun in a sweep of the land.
Nothing but the high grass to see.
For what felt like an hour he stood there looking out on the night. And then he backed away, his finger still held down on the trigger, the gun warmed in his grip. He came back into the cabin and sat for what seemed a long time with John Wesley. Bean’s legs crossed and the tail of his suit jacket spread behind him on the floor. One hand with the Walther in his lap and the other laid palm down on John Wesley’s back. The big man still warm and his face away from Bean, cheek down on the floor.
Nothing Bean could do.
Bean was rocking slightly and watching the open door and the night beyond when he rose and left his friend behind on the floor of the cabin.
Chapter 23
DRAKE AND SHERI PUT their backs to the seat and kicked at the cage. Drake counted down the time and then both of them shot out their soles at the cage a final time. Nothing moved. The car sat there rocking slightly on its springs and the sound of their breath was the only thing to be heard there in the darkness.
He looked over at her but there was little to see. The silver light of the moon luminescent on her features, the bruises the men had left nothing but dark marks on her white skin. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I trusted Patrick, too,” Sheri said. “It wasn’t just you.”
They’d heard three shots come from over the edge of the hill and then nothing for a very long time. He moved and kicked at the glass of the side window, feeling the body of the car shake. The bottom of his foot felt numb from the twenty or more times he’d tried to push through the rear cage.
He stopped to catch his breath. The night cold had seeped into the car. His lungs pumping in his chest and the steam rising, then disappearing in the air before him. Free to move, he went to the window and looked out on the night as if he might find some help there.
All he’d told the two men was that the money was down there. There was no other choice. It was all he could think of to buy time, and he looked out on the crest of the hill, hoping Morgan had taken his advice to clear out for a day or two. Just go on into town and see if his friend could give him a place to sit this all out. But the guns going off down the hill suggested otherwise.
Sometime on the ride over he’d managed to get his hands free and he’d loosened the tape from around Sheri’s wrist as soon as the two killers had disappeared from sight. Now he tried to pry away the clear glass-like polycarbonate separating the front seat from the back. All of it supported on a metal frame that had been bolted to the floor at his feet. He didn’t have anything but his own strength to rely on and his strength wasn’t enough.
WHEN BEAN FOUND Morgan he sat at the bottom of the cut with his back to a cottonwood trunk and his legs splayed out on the ground. He’d broken the bird gun open and it lay on his lap with the chambers exposed and the two empty shells in the dirt to his right. There was a pain in his shoulder like a knife blade any time he moved and he sat there trying to calm it away with one hand raised to the meat at his breast and the other out on the ground like an anchor.
He looked up at Bean as he came out of the trees, moving down the slight incline to where Morgan rested. Bean carried a pistol before him and he stopped five feet away from Morgan, the barrel of the gun aimed off to the side. Morgan could see Bean was looking him over and making his judgments.
“You were just sitting up waiting for us,” Bean said. He moved a little closer, squatting so that they could look each other over at the same level. The gun still in his hand.
“I’ve been sitting up waiting for years now,” Morgan said. A wave of pain passed through him and he closed his eyes tight. When he opened them again Bean was still there. Morgan gave him a smile.
“John Wesley is dead,” Bean said.
“I expected he was.”
“We could have just sat down and talked.”
“I know how those talks go with you,” Morgan said.
Bean looked from the open breech of the shotgun to the empty shells in the dirt by Morgan’s thigh. “You and Patrick, huh?” Bean laughed a bit to himself, looking back the way he’d come from. Light up the hill where the cabin bled a thin gray tone into the night air. “I would have thought you were too old for something like this.”
“Turns out I’m not,” Morgan said. He moved a bit, taking his hand away from his chest, and watching the way Bean looked him over. The man hadn’t moved except to kneel there in front of him.
“You were always good to us, Morg,” Bean said. “I didn’t mean to shoot you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Then what’s wrong with you?”
There was sweat growing on Morgan’s forehead and upper lip and it felt cold in the night. “Just old,” Morgan said. “Just sitting here catching my breath.”
Bean gave a disappointed smile. He rose and slipped the pistol into the waistband at his back. For a second he stood looking down the stream and then he turned and fixed Morgan again with a stare. “Where’s the money, Morgan?”
“There is no money.”
Bean knelt again, pulling the suit jacket away where it bunched between his stomach and thighs. Morgan watched him and thought of how the man reminded him of some gunfighter in a novel, pushing the jacket back over the grip of the gun before taking his paces.
“I read the note from Patrick to his son,” Bean said. “I have the deputy and his wife back there in the car. I can tell you right now it’s you or him.”
Morgan thought that over. The pain was coming over him in waves, and he thought again about the woman in town. He thought about Patrick. He didn’t know what to think. Morgan’s heart doing the stutter-step inside his chest.
With one hand Morgan felt around on his jeans until he found the spare shells in his pocket. He knew Bean was watching but he didn’t care. His hand was slow and it shook too much but he got one shell out and then another. The two shells in the palm of his hand and a dry rasp now felt on his tongue as he tried to push himself up.
“Don’t,” Bean said.
Morgan got one shell in his fingers and fed it down into the bore. He was working on the other one when Bean put his hand out and cupped his palm over Morgan’s fist. The two frozen there like that, Bean kneeling before Morgan and Morgan sitting there with his back to the cottonwood trunk.
“You’re an old fool,” Bean said.
Morgan looked up at him. The words not coming and a dry heat seizing up in his chest just above the heart, his insides gone solid and heavy as cement.
THROUGH THE CRUISER windshield Drake watched the pale indent in the sky. His grandfather’s cabin out there just beyond the ridge and no shot or sound for more than thirty minutes. He sat forward on the edge of the backseat—one hand to the cage—watching the place Bean and John Wesley had stood. There was nothing for him to do. His arms ached and his legs felt swollen from trying to kick out the doors and windows. His bad knee pulsing like a metronome.