Norman Partridge
O ONE ANSWERED his knock, so Keyes kicked in the door.
He’d healed up pretty good over the last four months, but a couple ounces of buckshot were still buried deep in his left leg, so it took three tries to do the job. When he finally hit the sweet spot the door sprang fast, same way a rattrap does when it slams shut on a rodent’s skull.
Keyes sucked a quick breath, gathering his courage. The door smacked the inside wall and swung back in his direction with a stuttering creak. He stopped the door with his open palm, and it shut up, and he stepped over the threshold and into the silence. It was dark in Murdock’s cabin, but not dark enough, because Keyes had gotten used to the dark in the last four months. And that was why he had no trouble spotting Murdock over there in the corner, even though the old man wasn’t moving.
Murdock couldn’t move. Not if he knew what was good for him. He was lashed to a chair. Someone had used heavy-test fishing line to do the job. That line was fastened to dozens of fishhooks, and those hooks were set in Murdock’s skin—in his eyebrows and upper lip, in his throat and in his thighs and in the joints of his fingers—and Keyes immediately recognized the cruel cunning involved in the process. Right now Murdock was a living, breathing definition of misery. One twitch and the old man would flip a couple hundred dictionary pages, straight to another word favored by brutal men who’d inflict any amount of pain to get what they wanted: agony.
Keyes’ gut churned at the sight. He pulled a knife and flicked it open as he crossed the room, and the old man took one look at him coming and gasped. Murdock paid for that gasp because the simple action set off a half-dozen fishhooks, and he jerked in his chair like a fat salmon taking the bait, and a pathetic little whine rose from deep inside him.
“Take it easy, Murdock,” Keyes said. “I’m not here for revenge. I’m only here for—”
And that was when Keyes heard the sound that Murdock must have heard a couple seconds before, the sound that had made the old man suck wind like a scared kid: footsteps on the gravel drive that led to Murdock’s place, coming soft and easy at first—just a slow percussion riding the middle-of-nowhere silence that blanketed the redwood forest—and then getting louder, faster, as the intruder spotted the open cabin door.
Whoever it was didn’t like the look of that. Outside, gravel crunched like broken molars under heavy boots as the stranger broke into a run. Keyes knew he couldn’t waste a second. He whirled toward the cabin door just a little too fast, and his bum knee jolted him. By the time he was halfway across the room his palms were slick with sweat.
He gripped the knife tightly, cursing himself for leaving his .45 in the Jeep. Outside, footsteps mashed over gravel. Favoring his bad knee, Keyes neared the open door. Behind him, Murdock whined again. Keyes glanced at the old man for just a second, and—
Three bullets chewed holes in the cabin door, and Keyes dodged for cover.
The door slammed the wall and swung back, once again, with a stuttering creak.
This time, Keyes didn’t hear it.
This time, he was already gone.
And that was something Keyes had been good at just lately. Getting gone, that is. He’d spent the last four months that way, burrowed deep in a dark little rat-hole, hiding from everyone he knew while he healed up.
Everyone except Danni. She was the only one he trusted anymore. After all, Danni had stood by him through thick and thin. The armored car holdup was no different. When the whole deal turned into a blood-spattered nightmare, she didn’t cash in her chips and walk away from the game. She played her hand, and she played it the way fate had dealt it.
A state highway cop with a shotgun surprised them in the middle of the job, and Keyes had hesitated a second too long before using his gun. It turned out to be a very precious second, because the cop left Keyes with a tattered hole in his belly and a chewed-up leg peppered with buckshot.
Before Keyes even hit the ground, Murdock and Morales had burned rubber out of there. But Danni stuck, the same way she always did, and she didn’t waste any time. Before the lawman knew what hit him he was just a long red smear on a two-lane county road, and Keyes wasn’t in much better shape because he was bleeding all over the tuck-and-roll upholstery in the back of Danni’s Chevy, and Danni’s foot had buried the gas pedal in the floorboard, and the white line down the middle of the road was a blur.
Without Danni, Keyes wouldn’t have survived. She always knew what to do. Trouble came and she kicked into gear. She didn’t waste time thinking, the way Keyes did. He drove her crazy that way. That’s why Danni was the one driving after things went bad, and Keyes was the one bleeding.
Keyes knew that.
Same way he knew that he loved Danni like he’d never love anyone else.
It was the same for her.
Keyes was sure that it was.
Keyes worried as he hobbled through the woods. He hadn’t wanted to come to Murdock’s cabin. He’d wanted to lay low a little bit longer and he’d given Danni a mouthful of reasons explaining why that was a good idea, but she wouldn’t buy any of them.
No. Talking didn’t work with Danni. It might have worked on her sister Elise, but Elise was a new-age mystic who loved jabbering on about chakras and spirit guides and shit that even Ripley wouldn’t believe, and Danni read The Wall Street Journal. The way she saw it, waiting four months to split up the swag from the armored car job was way too long. Danni insisted on arranging a meet with Murdock and Morales before the calendar flipped another page. And she also insisted that she and Keyes arrive at said meet separately, so they wouldn’t end up like the two birds who’d gotten into trouble with that one proverbial stone.
Keyes had gone along with the plan, even though he was only running at half speed. He knew that he wouldn’t be ready if trouble came, and come it had. Trouble had lashed Murdock to a chair with fishhooks and line, and trouble had drawn a gun and opened fire on Keyes. Yeah. Trouble had hit him right between the eyes...figuratively, if not literally. And he wasn’t ready for it. Not at all.
That was the damned shame of the thing, and it was more than enough to put Keyes’ insecurities on the boil. A few months ago he’d hesitated for just a second, and some cop had pulled a trigger a couple of times, and he’d ended up in a feverish limbo for four months. During that time he’d suffered through Danni’s long silences as the moon hung heavy in the night sky, and he’d listened to her sister rattle on about a whole bunch of mystical shit that never existed beneath the bright sun that he lived under. And now someone else had taken a couple of shots at him, and the whole cycle seemed to be starting up again.
Here he was, scared, limping through the woods like a wounded rabbit. That wasn’t the smart way to do things. Keyes knew it. He wasn’t thinking straight, like he used to. That was something he had to start doing again, and right now.
Keyes pulled up short and crouched in a tangle of ferns at the edge of the path. That low growl—that middle-of-nowhere silence—closed around him like the dark redwood forest. The only other sound was the long cool whisper of deeply drawn breaths that passed over his dry lips. He concentrated on that sound as he watched the path.
Even, steady breaths. That long cool whisper. Concentrating. Thinking things through...