“Of course,” Ed said.
There was an explosion outside and the lights went out.
Elijah started to wail. In the sudden darkness, Lucy put her arms around him.
A vehicle roared around the building and bright headlights blazed in the windows, filtering through the closed blinds.
A loud voice hollered out, “Utz, sounds like you got a baby in there!”
Ed yelled out, “That you, Smoot?”
“You know it is. Send out the gal and her baby and we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Well, Smoot. Why don’t you just come in here and get ’em?” Lucy saw Ed move, and knew he was reaching for his shotgun.
“Hell, Utz. Senile as you are, you might shoot me.”
“I might.”
“My boys are out here with me,” Peanut yelled. “One out front and the other right here. Make this easy on yourself. This ain’t about you. That gal murdered my Buck and Dixie in cold blood.”
“He’ll kill you both,” Lucy whispered to Edna.
“Well, he’d have to do that anyhow since we know.” She patted Lucy’s leg reassuringly. “You just let my Ed handle this. He was in Korea.”
Ed taunted, “You won’t be the first murdering heathen I’ve sent to hell in my life, Smoot. You don’t scare me.”
“No hurry,” Peanut yelled back. “We’ve got plenty of time to nee-go-see-ate. Plenty of it.”
“I’m a patient man myself, Smoot. Lead don’t rust.”
“Terrible people,” Edna whispered to Lucy. “Just awful.”
Lucy clutched Elijah to her and prayed.
“Goodness, I should get out another gun or two.” Edna said it as if she’d forgotten to bring salad forks to the dinner table.
72
From the equipment cases in the rear of the Tahoe, Winter Massey took what he thought he might need and put those few items into a black nylon knapsack. He took off his coat and holster rig, put on a ballistic vest, and put his figure-eight rig and camouflage coat back on. Using face paint he found, he blacked his face and put on black gloves. Selecting an H amp;K Tactical twelve-gauge with a high-intensity flashlight mounted under the barrel, he loaded it with alternating 00 buckshot and Hydroshock slugs. He put on a pair of night-vision goggles, slung on the backpack, grabbed the shotgun, and jogged off into an eerie world of vibrant green.
He set an angle for himself that should intersect the gravel road well behind the roadblock. The carpet of wet leaves gave him a surface almost as silent as wool, the only sound the occasional snapping of a twig. The goggles allowed him to run as fast as the undulating terrain permitted. He ran along a ridge for a long while, spooking three deer and a fox before he came to the road.
He slowed, took a bottle of water from his pocket, and sipped a few ounces. He wasn’t hungry, but knowing he needed to feed his muscles, he opened a packet of jerky and chewed the stiff dried meat as he ran. When he arrived where he was going, he wanted to have his full mental and physical faculties to call upon.
Reaching the gravel state road, he decided to run on it to save time, planning to veer off into the woods if vehicles came along. He knew from Able’s file that Peanut drove a black Dodge truck, and what the other siblings drove. If he saw any of those automobiles, he would have no choice but to stop them just in case the Dockerys were being transported in it. The roadblock was keeping everybody out; that had Winter convinced that dead or alive, the Dockerys must be ahead of him, and if they were, so were the Smoots.
Winter saw headlights before he heard the approaching vehicle, and leapt off the road to get behind a tree. He raised his goggles so he wouldn’t be temporarily blinded. The SUV that roared past was identical to the one he had stolen. Winter couldn’t make out how many people were inside, but he hoped Max Randall was in there. If he was, he was probably accompanied by whatever backup he could call upon. More could be coming along.
Before Winter had made another hundred yards, he had to leave the road again. This time he recognized the car that passed by, and he knew instantly who the two people he glimpsed inside it were. Alexa Keen and her sister the Major. Now Winter was even more certain that the Dockerys were ahead of him.
Winter felt energized. He didn’t wait until the taillights were out of sight before he started running behind the car driven by his dear enemy.
73
If it was up to him, Peanut Smoot would have set the store on fire and shot anything alive that came out through a door or window. The Utzes were outsiders who had inherited the store from a relative of theirs. They were smug bastards, who figured they were too good to do business in a way that would make their little cracker-box store a profitable enterprise.
Since Mr. Laughlin had asked him to do what Max said, he’d wait for Max to get there before he went in to get the Dockerys. Getting those two out without destroying the store meant that Peanut might buy it from the Utzes’ estate for chump change already stocked. He doubted any of the Utz kids would come out to the middle of nowhere and run a store that didn’t sell enough goods to pay them minimum wage. If they did, he’d make it plain that they had no alternative but to sell it to him.
He had already figured he would have to stage an accident that would explain the deaths of Ed and Edna “Busybody” Utz. The sheriff would investigate it, hold a midnight inquest, and the funeral home would cremate the bodies by accident, and that would be it.
Peanut smiled, pleased by the perfection of his plan.
Terrible tragedy was a part of life. You live, you lose people you love, you make money, you die and you go to heaven-if you’d accepted the Lord Jesus as your savior, which Peanut had on many occasions.
He could hear the kid bawling through the walls of the store.
Peanut hollered out, “Ed, I got an idea! Why don’t you and Edna just go take a drive and when you come back all this will be like it never happened.”
“I already phoned her daddy,” Ed called out.
“I bet you never talked to him, though,” Peanut said.
“Yes, I did. He’ll be sending people you don’t own out here to straighten you out.”
“Naw, Eddie. See, my people got something called sophistication. They’ve got the judge’s phone blocked and wired. Point is, nobody is coming out here but people I’m partnered with. They’ll come, and they’ll kill you all with poison gas or something that won’t leave bullet holes in you.”
“Hey, Peanut?” Utz called out. “I got an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Kiss my sophisticated butt.”
Utz’s barky laugh was exactly the kind that could piss a man off.
74
Serge Sarnov saw the store ahead and unzipped his jacket to make sure he could get to his gun quickly.
The cell phone in Max’s lap rang and he picked it up. “Yeah?”
Serge stretched his arms out.
“We’re coming up on the store now,” Max said. “Okay. That’s good. We’ll call them in if we need them.”
He closed the phone. “The Major and the FBI agent are coming in through the roadblock. Two cars with Major Keen’s people are there and they’ll hold back unless we need them.”
“Fewer hands involved, the better,” Serge agreed.
Max turned into the lot, illuminating one of the twins, who was dressed completely in hunter camouflage and holding a shotgun across his chest like a soldier. Max pulled in beside him, threw open his door, and stepped out. The men in the back seat did the same. Serge slowly opened his door and got out last.
The twin put a walkie-talkie to his ear. “There’s that Tahoe full of men here.” He listened for a second. “Are one of y’all Max Randall?”
“I’m Randall.”
“Yeah, Daddy. One’s him.”
“What’s the situation, pal?” Randall asked the twin.
“The old people that own the store won’t give us our hostages.”