But it had been a cursory look around. She’d cleared every room in the main house, but hadn’t had a chance to do a thorough search. Just enough to know that Max Conroy was gone. “How long ago do you think this happened?”
Jimmy screwed his eyes shut and thought about it. Looked at her. His eyes were hazel and steady. He was just like her. She experienced that quizzical bloom in her heart again.
“I can still smell nitroglycerin.” He added, “When did they call Gordo?”
“Don’t be disrespectful. His name is Gordon.”
“You call him Gordo.”
“I’m an adult.”
“No fair.”
“You need to concentrate.”
He nodded. He was a serious boy, her son. He looked at the vehicles and the four bays separated by wooden posts. “He could’ve grabbed a car and escaped.” He ticked them off on his fingers: “Three cars. The old Cadillac over by the mailbox, the Saturn. And the Chevelle SS—that one’s cool. Leaves two places in the garage.”
“So?”
“I don’t think there was another car, though. At least not in the carport.” He leveled his gaze on Shaun. “I think there was just the Chevelle and the Saturn.”
“Why do you think that?”
He shrugged. “There’d be more glass. Someone would have driven over it.”
“They called Gordon forty minutes ago. You see anything out there?”
“No.”
Shaun stared at the blood soaked into the concrete apron near the kitchen door. She reached down and pressed her finger into it. Dry, not even sticky. She sniffed it. Copper.
She’d always loved that smell.
“You think they killed him?” Jimmy said.
Jimmy’s question echoed her own thoughts. They could have killed him by accident, panicked, and taken off. Maybe there had been another car out front. There could have been a whole caravan of them. The dirt held lots of tire tracks, all of them muddled together—too much sand. Still, they would look at the tracks and see what they could see.
She stared at the silent hills bristling with saguaros, rocks, and mesquite. Noted the corral, the lean-to, the stock tank. The sun was at the top of its curve, and there was hardly a shadow anywhere. She kept her eyes on the scene, looking at it as if it were a tapestry. Looking for one thing out of place, one thread pulled. She saw the desert as a whole, as if she were taking a landscape photograph with her mind. Nothing registered. Closed her eyes to reorient herself, and looked again. This time Shaun looked at objects individually. The palo verde tree by the road. The lean-to. The water tank. The top of the hill. The sky. The house down the road. The house beyond that. A horse. Some calves. Two cars parked outside another house. All the way around, a panorama. Back to the bamboo surrounding the yard and the old Cadillac parked by the mailbox. Panned right and left again. Up and down.
Closed her eyes.
Looked at it again as a whole.
Nothing.
“We search the house again,” she said. “Let’s make it quick, though.”
He could be dead in a closet.
But no, she was sure he was still alive.
Shaun had these feelings. They came to her almost like pronouncements. And the pronouncement she heard in her head was this: he’s alive.
Not in good shape, maybe, but alive.
And still worth the price on his head.
THIS TIME, THEY found the entrance to the fallout shelter. Hard not to notice with the nuclear symbol on the door. Shaun opened the door into the small space behind the pantry and immediately saw the padlock on the trapdoor. She glanced around and saw the key on the hook. She took down the key, squatted down beside the trapdoor, and put the key in the lock. “Cover me,” she said.
Jimmy stood at her shoulder, his gun leveled.
She could feel his excitement.
The lid came up.
Two men squinted up at them.
Another man lay propped up against the far wall. He looked to be in bad shape. His shoulder and bicep were bloody. But he glared at her. A real hard-ass. She liked how defiant he was.
Defiance on its own was never enough, though.
“Hello, Miss—I am so glad you found us!” said the bigger of the two fat ones. “We might have died in here.”
“What makes you think I care?”
The man stepped back. He reminded her of a big fat rabbit. A big fat terrified rabbit. Except for his long, lank hair. “Please, madam, could you point that gun in another direction? This has been a difficult time for all of us. Our…friend, here, is wounded, as you can see. He’s lost a lot of blood. We’re harmless—this is our home. A bad man came to rob us, injured our friend, and left us here to die.”
“Can I?” Jimmy asked.
“No.”
“Just one of them.”
“We need them—they can tell us what happened to the movie star.” She looked at the bigger, fatter, older one. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, madam, anything you want to know. But please, can you get us out of here?”
“I think we can do our talking from here.”
“But our friend…”
Shaun said to the defiant one, “Who shot you?”
“Fuck you.”
“Ah,” said Shaun with a smile. “We have a winner.”
IT DIDN’T TAKE long. They hauled the hard-ass out of the bomb shelter and tied him to a chair. He told them what they wanted to know quickly enough—how they had kidnapped Max Conroy and demanded a ransom, only to be turned down flat by Conroy’s wife. “Worthless piece of shit,” the hard-ass growled. “Even his wife wouldn’t bail him out.” Every other word was an expletive. Spittle formed on his lips like a rabid dog. But he talked. Shaun knew the right spots to deliver pain with very little leverage, and the moron wanted to talk anyway. He had a lot of bile to unload on just about everybody. He told them how Max got the drop on Luther and Sam P. He was less forthcoming about the gunfight in the carport and how he ended up in the bomb shelter with the other two. Embarrassed, Shaun thought. He should be. Thought he was such a tough guy, and some movie actor outwits him.
Max Conroy went up in Shaun’s estimation. She would have to be on her toes when she found him.
When they returned him to the bomb shelter, he flipped them the bird with his good hand.
The only thing they debated was what to do with them next. Jimmy voted to shoot them.
Too much, too fast, thought Shaun. “No.”
“But why not? They’re the bad guys.”
Shaun looked down at the three men. Two anxious faces and a rabid dog.
“Please, madam. Let us go. Please, I beg you!”
Shaun relented. “OK, you can have one.”
“Why just one?”
“Discipline,” she said. “There’s no need to kill more than one of them.”
Why couldn’t she refuse this boy?
He’d had his kill. It was an important milestone, but it was only one lesson of many she had to teach him.
Maybe she just hated to deny him anything.
Jimmy looked at her with calm eyes. Adult’s eyes. “OK. Which one?”
“Your choice.”
“The older fat guy is a suck-up. Maybe I should do him.”
“No!” cried the fat man. “Please, no! Kill Corey.”
“Which one’s Corey again?” Shaun asked.
The older fat man jerked his thumb toward the wall. “Our friend with the bullet wound. He might not make it anyway. It would be a mercy.”
Corey shot the fat man an ugly look. “Fuck you.”
“Well?” Shaun said. “Which one?”
“Please don’t kill me,” cried the younger fat one. He had a whiny voice, and for a moment, Shaun thought they should kill all three—just make a clean breast of it. But no, she had to stick to her principles. She’d given Jimmy permission to kill one, and that was what he’d have to be satisfied with.