The shelf was tearing away from the screws.
When the shelf was moving freely he got into position. Stealth had got him this far. Now it was force all the way. The leads would tear away from the rear speakers but the front door speakers would continue to work. He waited while a song ended and another began. The opening bars were heavy and pounding. Wyatt heaved upwards, flipping the rear shelf down over the seat back, and dived through to the space behind Trigg.
The little man turned partway around in shock, then tried to dig into his pocket with his free hand. ‘Forget it,’ Wyatt said, clamping his forearm around Trigg’s neck. He reached down and retrieved the.38. The car swerved violently into the oncoming lane and back again. Wyatt increased the pressure on Trigg’s larynx, released him, squeezed him again. ‘Stop the car.’
Trigg steered off the road and pulled on the handbrake. Wyatt tickled the little man’s ear with the.38. ‘Turn that crap off.’
With the music gone the only sounds were the wind over the car and Trigg’s frightened breathing. Trigg spoke first. ‘We can work something out.’
Wyatt ducked his head and peered through the windscreen. There were red tail-lights in the darkness ahead of them. They went in and out of sight as the road dipped and turned between the black crops on either side.
Wyatt didn’t want Happy to see that the headlights behind him were no longer moving. ‘Turn the lights off.’
‘Look, I can cut you in on some great action.’
‘Turn the lights off.’
Trigg swung uselessly around at Wyatt. ‘Do it,’ Wyatt said.
When the lights were off he said, ‘Get out.’
Trigg had his door open a couple of seconds before Wyatt and he was twenty metres down the road, going hard, when Wyatt shot him. The bullet was like a punch in the back and Trigg sprawled face down on the road.
Wyatt picked up the body and put it in the front passenger seat. By now a minute had gone by and Happy would be wondering why instead of intermittent lights behind him there were none. Wyatt started the car and put his foot down.
He caught up with the truck a minute later and settled in close behind it. They travelled like that for ten minutes until he saw the truck’s brake lights go on. Happy was turning into a lay-by. Wyatt followed in the car. A couple of road signs flared briefly in the headlights. Sharp curves ahead, they warned. Falling rocks.
Wyatt put the headlights on high beam and angled the car at the flank of the truck. He sat Trigg’s body upright behind the steering wheel then stepped to the back of the car. He watched Happy get down from the truck cabin. The headlights were blinding the big man. He ducked his head as he approached the car and put his arm across his eyes. He was blinking, trying to get a response out of the little man who’d been his boss, when Wyatt shot him in the back of the head.
This was the final stage of a heist gone wrong but that didn’t change the way that Wyatt went about it. He handled the steps one at a time, covering himself. He wiped his prints off the gun and tossed it away. He robbed the bodies and dragged them to the blind side of the truck and turned on the parking lights so no one would get too nosy. On his way back through Goyder he stopped to wipe his prints off Letterman’s Valiant. Much later he passed within a few kilometres of Leah’s house but he didn’t think about her. He might later, when he’d got his money back from the Mesics and there were no more hired guns on his back.