Liam herded me into the backseat, gun prodding the small of my back. I climbed in and settled next to public enemy number four, Norman Murphy. He was pale as a ghost, and pretty much scared to death.
“Hello, Norman,” I said. “I’ll take mine with cream and two sugars, please.”
“Shut up,” he whispered.
“Not in the mood for chit-chat?”
“You think I want to be doing this?” he hissed. “Just shut the fuck up!”
Roach slid in next to Norman, and Liam and Jacob got in front. One U-turn later, we were gunning it down Topanga. We turned onto Entrada, and I knew where we were headed. What goes around comes around, and all that.
Liam directed Jacob onto a rutted dirt road that angled toward the back boundary of Topanga Canyon Park.
“Pull over here,” Liam said. We bounced off road, and Jacob parked by a motley cluster of trees. I mentally recited their names, to calm me down: scrub oak, blue gum, California sycamore.
All four of us climbed out. I could hear the faint rush of moving water somewhere behind me. Maybe running water was the last sound Barbara Maxey ever heard. Maybe it would be mine as well.
Liam prodded me deeper into the woods, and backed me against the slender, peeling trunk of a young eucalyptus. The others filed after, meek as schoolchildren.
Roach was fiddling with my phone, yanking at it, as if trying to pry it apart. Liam reached one hand inside his coat and pulled out two coiled cotton ropes. Norman and Jacob stood aside, silent, as Liam wrapped the clotheslines tight. Legs first, then my chest, pinning my arms to my sides. Blood pounded at my temples and against my ribs. I felt sure my skin was visibly jumping. Breathe. Focus.
I concentrated on stemming the flow of adrenaline, while expanding the presence of prana in each cell. Breathe. Focus. I flexed my biceps, triceps, and extensors, and curled my fingers under slightly, not enough for Liam to notice, but enough to create a slight expansion of muscle mass. I visualized a cellular swell of subtle body matter, creating the potential for give. I hoped it was enough.
Now lock it down.
“Fucking piece of cell phone fucking shit,” Roach snarled. “How do you get it open?” He threw my phone on the ground and stomped spider cracks into its face. Then he lofted it into the shrubbery with his silver-tipped boot.
There went my partner.
Liam stepped close. “So, young fellow, this is your big opportunity. We’re going to leave here in a little while, and you won’t be coming with us. The question you need to answer is, ‘Do I want to be alive and tied to a tree or dead and tied to a tree?’”
When there are only two choices, one of them involving pie-in-the-sky thinking, the other including one’s inevitable death, it’s time to change the subject.
“What are we all doing here, Liam?”
Liam turned to Roach, and I exhaled, letting my arms slacken and chest relax.
“You see what we’re dealin’ with here, Brother Nehemiah?”
I had maybe a quarter inch of give to work with. I shifted my arms back and forth.
“Mr. Ten is that most dangerous of all God’s creatures, the inquisitive human being. No wonder he and Sister Barbara got along.”
I again pressed hard against the rope, keeping one eye on Liam, the other on his friends. Roach’s reptilian smile made my skin crawl. Norman and Jacob stared fixedly at the ground.
Liam turned to face me. I stopped moving.
“I want to have a wee heart-to-heart with ya, my boy. Are ya feeling chatty?”
A faint chorus of crickets chirped from deep in the shrubbery. I got chatty in a hurry, raising my voice to cover the other sound. “I’m not going anywhere that I can see,” I said. “So I guess the correct answer is yes, I am feeling chatty. Let’s talk.”
Liam laughed out loud. “Listen to him, boys. This fellow here has right spunk!”
He moved in closer, so close I could smell the bloodlust seeping from his skin like musk.
“You ever done jail time?” he whispered.
Come on, Liam. One more inch, one more inch.
He stepped back.
“Jail time? Sort of,” I said. “I did a dime in a Buddhist monastery.”
The forewings started sawing away again, and Liam’s eyes jagged to the right, toward the cluster of scrub oaks.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I said quickly. “At least I didn’t have to take it up the ass like all you altar boys-” The hook caught me square in the mouth. My lip swelled into tight-skinned sausage, and I tasted blood. I ran my tongue over my teeth, to see if they were all accounted for.
“Listen up, boyo,” Liam snarled. “You’ve managed to get your yellow nose right in the middle of my business, and that’s no place to be, is it?”
“Up yours, Liam O’Flaherty.”
The next stinging blow jerked my head sideways.
Breathe. Just breathe.
“You got a mouth on you. A blasphemer, that’s what you are. A blasphemer, and a sinner,” Liam called over his shoulder. “What do we do with sinners, Brother Nehemiah?”
“We smite them,” Roach said.
“That’s right,” Liam crooned. “We smite them.”
“Me? I prefer to be choked,” I said, and braced for the next blow.
But Liam laughed, holding up his hands like two raw-boned steaks. “I could do that,” he said. “I’ve choked the devil out of more than one person in my time.”
I stared into his eyes, and it was like looking into a pair of cesspools.
“Why? Why did you strangle Barbara Maxey?” I asked.
Jacob shifted, took a half-step back. I shot a glance his way. He looked shocked.
Liam shrugged. “Most junkies have a little streak of rebel in them, but Barbara was one of the worst. What she couldn’t get through her head is you’re not really committed to the church unless you’re willing to die for the church.” He jerked his thumb at Roach, Jacob, and Norman. “See these three? They’re committed.”
Norman started shaking his head. “Hey, leave me out of this! I told you, I’m not a member of your church, and I’m certainly not going to die for it.”
Liam licked his lips. He gave me a broad wink, pulled the snubnose from his pocket, and turned.
“Yes, you are, Norman,” he said.
“Norman, down!” I cried out. The air erupted and Norman jerked as a small hole bloomed ragged in his chest. He blinked once. Then he crumpled.
“Norman!” I called again.
He found my eyes, and I held his gaze. Blood was leaking out of him. Life was leaking out of him, too.
“Ten,” he said, his voice already thready.
I nodded, keeping my eyes locked in on his.
“Tell Dad I’m sorry. Tell him-”
A second shot cut short Norman’s apology-permanently.
Liam crossed to Norman’s body and poked at it with the toe of one boot.
I wrenched hard at the ropes. They gave another half inch, and I was able to move my right hand just enough to slide the forefinger into the waistband of my jeans.
“Drag him back a ways and hide him in the brush,”
Liam told Roach and Jacob. “Then wait for me at the car.”
I pushed against the opener. I almost had it hooked when my finger slipped. It fell halfway down my pant leg, blocked by the tight rope. I was screwed. He was going to kill me, and soon.
Liam turned and smiled a smile of pure evil. He cocked the hammer as he walked.
“There’s a lot of money at stake here, boyo. The hour is upon us. Life everlasting for they that believe. I cannot afford to have a crazy Chink mucking things up. Understand?”
“Tibetan,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m Tibetan, dumbass.”
He stepped close, pressing his gun against my chest.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said.
I need a miracle.
The insects chirped in the brush. Liam hesitated.