Gator wheeled into his driveway, saw the Nissan sitting in plain view with the lights on, vaulted out of the truck, and stomped toward the farmhouse. Coming up the porch steps, this inky streak zipped between his boots, nearly tripping him. Saw the kitten race toward the barn, get swallowed in the snow. Great. And she let the cat out…
He went in and found Sheryl standing at the kitchen sink. Her leather coat was ripped at the shoulder, and the sleeves were scraped with red barn paint. She was putting a Band-Aid on her wrist, with difficulty because her hand was shaking.
“You let the cat out,” Gator shouted.
Sheryl stared at him incredulously, her face muscles jittery. “What?” she said. “What?”
Gator put the heel of his right hand to his forehead and pressed. Felt like something was busted in there, Spinning. “Where is she? And what’s the car doing running, all lit up?”
“Slow down, goddammit,” Sheryl hissed though clenched teeth. She held up her hand. “When I tried to get her out, she stuck me with something. She’s still in there. And I couldn’t get the garage door open. It’s stuck.”
“C’mon.” Gator spun on his heel.
Sheryl followed him outside. He pointed to the car. She opened the driver’s-side door and jumped behind the wheel. Then he approached the garage door, put his shoulder to it, and broke the ice jam. Shoved it open.
Sheryl gunned the engine and, wheels spinning, aimed the Nissan into the garage.
“Open the trunk,” Gator said, striding toward the back of the car. Sheryl was out of the car fast, grabbing at his jacket. Hair flying. Face all scrambled, she shouted, “Just a minute. What are you going to do?”
Gator gritted his teeth and yelled back. “We,” he corrected her. “What are we going to do. You’re in this too.”
Sheryl shook her head vehemently. “Uh-uh. No way. Not a kid.”
Gator poked her in the chest. “You brought that idiot Shank in…from the big time…”
Sheryl pushed his hand away. “You sent me to get him.”
“And you were supposed to be his ride out. So where the fuck is he?”
“She said he was chasing her. In the woods. I waited, I called him on his cell. Flashed the lights. Blew the horn. Yelled. I did a lot. Then I saw a car parked at that house, and I got the hell out of there.”
They glared at each other, shivering, shoulders hunched, the snow frosting their faces. Gator thinking how cold was hard on machinery, harder on people. Affects judgment…
“Bottom line, Sheryl. Whatever happened to Shank. The way we are now…she’s a witness,” Gator said with finality.
“Oh, Christ.”
“We find out what she knows. Then…I don’t see any other way. You found her lost in the woods. They’ll find her in the woods. Now open the goddamned trunk.”
Moving like a sleepwalker, Sheryl reached into the car. The trunk lid popped. In the agitated shine from the barn light, Gator Bodine stared at Kit Broker, who was coiled back in the cavity, brandishing a screwdriver.
“Hey, now, girl; you look cold in there,” Gator said in a reasonable voice.
“Leave me alone.”
Damn kid coiled tighter, like an obstinate snake. “Can’t do that-your mom and dad are on the way, with the sheriff. Heard you’ve had quite a night,” Gator said.
At the mention of her parents, the kid’s lower lip trembled. But the dark pockets of her eyes struck Gator as unyielding. He needed to get her in the light. See her eyes.
“Look, I’m not going to let you freeze. I’m taking you in the house.” He extended his hand; she wielded the screwdriver. Gator struck fast, snatched her arm, plucked the screwdriver from her hand, and tossed it away. Getting pissed, he lifted her bodily, roughly, from the trunk and tucked her, kicking and flailing, under his arm.
When he got her in the kitchen, he released her. Immediately, she tried to run. He caught her easily and shoved her back into the room. She banged up against the kitchen table, arching away when she saw Sheryl come into the room. Gator could see her eyes now; hot, green, hostile over the smeared dirt and blood on her face. And Sheryl wasn’t helping, walking to the corner by the stove, one arm folded across her chest, the other up, hand covering her face, fingers worrying at her forehead. Eyes downcast, Sheryl refused to look at the girl.
“C’mon, kid.” Gator gestured awkwardly. “You want something to eat, some milk or something?”
She gave him such a look of utter pugnacity that he saw, uh-uh, no way. This was going nowhere fast. So Gator tried to think it through, to solve it like a problem. Put her back in the trunk. Couple hours she’d be unconscious, then put her in back of the truck. That way Sheryl could get the Nissan out of here. Ditch it in the Cities. Then he’d sneak the kid back, say two miles from Broker’s house. Leave her in the woods. Be tricky, they’d be searching, but if the snow held, if he went on snowshoes…it just might…
“Gator!” Sheryl whipped around, alert.
He heard it too, a determined knock on the front door. “Quick,” he said, moving to the utensil drawer, yanking it open, pulling out the Luger. To Sheryl, “Get her out of sight. In the bathroom. Keep her quiet.” He glared at the kid. “Not a peep.”
The kid stared wide-eyed for a moment, fixed on the Luger, then on his face. The hot hostile eyes refocused. Very distinctly she said, “When my mom and dad catch you, they’re gonna shoot you right in the head.”
“Get her out of her, keep her quiet,” Gator muttered as Sheryl wrestled the kid down the hall into the bathroom, shut the door. He pulled his shirt out of his jeans, stuck the Luger in his back pocket, and flared the shirt around it. Then he walked to the door, moved the curtain aside, and groaned.
Cassie.
She stood in the porch light, wearing a white parka, bareheaded, hair whipping around, hugging herself, stamping her feet, face all bright and twitchy with craving of one kind or another. Gator opened the door. “What the hell?”
She stepped past him fast, shivering. “Cold out there. Crazy too. You hear…”
He stared at her. Un-fucking-believable.
“…somebody shot Harry Griffin, killed him, at his place he’s renting to that Broker guy. Except Griffin musta shot back, ’cause they found the guy they think did it. With a gun and everything. He bled to death, out in the woods. And you know what Madge Grolick heard from Ginny the dispatcher in the sheriff ’s office? She talked to Jeff Tindall who went out with Fire and Rescue and when they found the guy, he was all chewed up. Wolves, they think…”
“Cassie, you can’t be here,” Gator said. But he liked the part about Shank being off the board. Gave them some breathing room. Now if he could just get Cassie to shut up and go away.
“…and now Broker’s little girl is missing.” Cassie grimaced. “I met them, in town. The mother was…nice to me.”
Gator stared at her, mouth open. What the hell?
Cassie just continued talking, like she was gossiping over coffee. “There’s cops showing up from all over. Madge said, Ginny said, Broker was some king cop in the Cities or something. They’re bringing a helicopter, these special trained search dogs from Duluth…”
Gator gripped her arm, lowered his head, and marched her toward the door. “You gotta go.”
“Why? You been trying to get me out here ever since you got out of prison,” she said, her smile jerky.
“Where’s Jimmy?” Gator said in a dull voice.
“Showing Teddy how to wash his favorite Canadian Labrie garbage truck at the garage. Where I was, and you never showed up like you said you would. To give me something. So here I am. Drove through a lot of crap to get here, too. Now what do I have to do, sing for my supper or what?” She ran her index finger down from his throat to his sternum.
Gator swatted the hand away. “I mean it, Cassie.”
“So do I,” she said, undeterred.
That’s when the kid screeched in the bathroom: “Get your hands off me.” Stuff banging around, a struggle.
Gator sagged. Seeing Cassie react to the voice, obviously a child’s voice, he sagged more. Wasn’t falling apart. It was completely apart. Didn’t matter now. None of it. Just let it happen…
“What the hell you got going on here?” Cassie said, suddenly frantically alert. “Christ, Gator, you can’t have a kid around this shit you got out here.” Her eyes flared. “Remember Marci…” He didn’t answer, made no attempt to stop her. She pushed past him, strode down the hall, and yanked open the bathroom door.
She saw a woman standing in front of the sink with her hands cupped on a little girl’s mouth, trying to hold her steady. Seeing Cassie enter, the woman reacted in a dazed spasm. Releasing her hold, stepping back. The girl had wild red hair, matted with burrs. Her green parka was filthy, snow pants ripped, and her face all red with scratches, bruises, and dried blood. The little Broker girl she’d met last Saturday morning in town, at Big Lake Threads, with her mother.
“It’s all right, I’m Teddy’s mom,” Cassie said to Kit. Then she turned her eyes on the woman. Epiphany was not exactly in her vocabulary, but she was seized with a revelatory fury. There were things more powerful than the need to peddle her ass for a hit of meth. Than playing sick old games with her brother. “Who the fuck are you?” Cassie screamed at the woman, her voice exploding in the small dingy room.
Kit’s mouth fell open, imprisoned in the close charged air, looked back and forth at their angry faces, their hair, their physiques. Then she looked up, away from the berserk tension in their eyes, and saw a corpulent gray leopard spider in a web in the corner next to the door. The spider uncoiled and flexed its legs.
Like a disturbed ghost.
Sheryl, having her own freaky prescient moment, yelled, “Gator, what’s going on?”
Gator heard the incensed voices echo down the hall, through the kitchen to where he sagged against the peeling wallpaper next to the front door. Almost dreamy with the profound simplicity of it, seeing how they were all connected, this continuous piece of yarn. One loose end, and it all came unraveled.
“What’s going on is, he’s a control weirdo, that’s what,” Cassie shouted at Sheryl Mott. “And who’s subbing in for who, I got no idea.” Then she shoved Sheryl with both hands, hard, knocking her back so her calves caught on the rim of the bathtub and she fell backward, flailing her arms, pulling the shower curtain with her. Cassie gripped Kit firmly by the arm and walked her from the room. “Honey. You’re coming with me. We’re getting out of here.”
Gator slowly shook his head. His rage was total, and his voice was so small. “No, you ain’t,” he almost whispered as, from the corner of his eye, he saw her striding down the hall, through the kitchen, escorting-that was exactly the word-escorting the kid, arm draped protectively over her shoulder like a mother hen.
“No, you ain’t,” he repeated softly, pushing though the terrible inertia, off the wall, placing one arm out, planting his hand on the far wall, blocking their path.
Kit watched it and listened to it, trembling. Confused at how the air kept getting thicker with all the scary, invisible adult bad stuff. She heard cursing in back of her, where the other woman was climbing out of the bathtub.
“You’re in the way,” Cassie said to Gator.
“Can’t let you go. Just can’t,” Gator said in an almost helpless voice.
“Watch me,” Cassie said, eyes flashing with disgust. “You stay here with your stand-in whore.” They scurried past, out the door.
Gator shook his head. Years of work. Perfect plan. Perfect location. Belize. Boat engines. Never gonna see the fucking ocean. With tremendous effort, he pushed off the wall, started after them, Sheryl coming up now, grimacing, rubbing a bruised knot on her temple. Eyes like jelly. Shock maybe. Yapping, “What’s going on? Who is she?”
“C’mon,” he said, going out the door, onto the porch. Cassie and the kid were about ten yards out, ghostly in the blowing snow, starting to run toward the Jeep Cherokee Jimmy the moron bought her when he won the Moose lottery. Jeep was running, lights on. Why not. Everything else was in plain goddamn sight.
“I’m telling you, Cassie, you better stop,” Gator shouted coming down the steps, bringing the Luger out, flicking off the safety.
“Run,” Cassie shouted urgently to Kit, pushing her forward, shielding her with her body. “Around to the driver’s side, I’ll let you in.”
The Luger drifted up. Gator, dreamy-eyed in the blowing snow, found Cassie’s back, below her blowing black hair. Another Bodine. And then there was one. He squeezed the trigger. Kit screamed when Teddy Klumpe’s mom pitched forward without making a sound, arms twisted, clutching behind at her back, bounced off the grill of the Jeep, twirled once in the headlight beams and fell face forward into the snow.
Gator shifted to the smaller target, but she was darting through the headlights, and with the snow, he briefly lost her. She reappeared, racing toward the barn. He fired again, but it was too far now, the light uncertain. Saw her duck into the narrow black vertical shadow of the ajar door to the left of the garage.
He turned and pounded Sheryl on the arm. Sheryl, practically useless now, had her hands up one on each side of her face. All freaked out and motor mouth, “Jesus, Gator, Jesus; when is this going to fuckin’ stop?”
“Soon’s we nail that little bitch. Now listen. You go in where she did, push her on through. I’ll be around back, by the pens. Catch her when she runs out. Go.” He shoved Sheryl toward the partially open sliding door. Took off running around the barn.
Kit wiggled through the door and ran on pure instinct, just a pounding heart and lungs wrapped around a bottle rocket of fright. Her boots skidded in the dark, collided with something hard, steel, some machine. She sprawled on the floor. Crawling, feeling with her right hand along a series of wooden panels. Ripe rotten grainy smells. She heard somebody take a sobbing breath as they squeezed through the door behind her. The bad woman who had put her in the trunk. Coming after her.
Kit scrambled to the end of the wooden thing and huddled, hiding behind it. She could hear the woman, feeling around in the dark, by the door. Kit swung her head. Eyes bulging, runaway heart; she saw that the back end of the enclosure was open to the storm. This empty floor dusted with white. And in the middle of it she saw a tiny familiar black silhouette arch up against the flickering snow.
Sheryl staggered forward-Jesus, what a bummer, talk about bad tripping on plain old real life-averting her eyes going past the prone figure under the Jeep high beams, the long black hair so like her own, rippling in the wind. She reached the barn, squirmed through the door, and tried to get her bearings. Their secret storehouse. Okay. Where’s the light switch? Up on the wall to the right. Her hand fumbled in the dark. There it is. She took a step into the long room, her arm stretched back, fingers on the switch. Poised to flush the kid. Aw right, ready or not, here I come. She snapped the switch.