Road Kill (59 page)

“Please,” Sally cried. “Think of the children.”

“I am,” he snapped, waving a gun in her direction. She tensed up, pulling the kids tighter to her bosom. “Why do you think I did it? So you could have the house you wanted, the clothes you wanted,
everything
you wanted.”

“I didn’t want this,” she said.

“Only because you haven’t seen it on HGTV. The damn channel was on twenty-four/seven in this house, just so you could constantly point out to me all the things we needed. You even had it on while we fucked.”

“Only so the kids wouldn’t hear us,” she said.

“I couldn’t take a shit without finding the latest issue of
Architectural Digest
waiting for me with the corners marked down on the pages you wanted me to see.”

“This isn’t my fault,” she said.

“You didn’t shake down the drug dealers or take any bribes, but you were part of it, honey. Don’t kid yourself.” He looked at Wade. “You took the money, too, but I never saw you spend it on anything. You never enjoyed it. I asked myself about that and never came up with an answer.”

“I gave it to the Justice Department.”

“You didn’t keep even a little of it for expenses?”

Wade shook his head.

“C’mon. Don’t you have a mortgage? Don’t you have things you need and want but can’t afford?”

“Sure I do.”

“You could have had them,” Roger said. “You could have had prosperity.”

“I could also be sitting in my kitchen waving a gun at my family and ranting about what I read in the bathroom.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“So shoot me, Roger. It would be less painful than listening to any more of your whining.”

“You suck as a hostage negotiator.”

Wade shrugged. “I don’t negotiate.”

“Why did you sell us out? What did they offer you?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. Nobody does anything for nothing.”

“It’s my job to catch bad guys. You’re a bad guy. It’s as simple as that.”

Roger nodded. “So you did it just so you could feel even more self-righteous than you already do.”

“I did because that’s what I am paid to do. It’s what you’re paid to do, too. I guess you forgot about that. But it’s not your fault, Roger. It’s those bastards at
Architectural Digest
.”

“You don’t know what you’ve done, what it’s going to mean for me, what it’s going to mean to them,” Roger tipped his head towards his family. “Did you ever think about the consequences, Tom? Even once?”

“Did you?”

Roger glared at Wade for a long moment, then aimed the gun in his right hand at his family. They whimpered in terror. He tossed the gun in his left hand to Wade, who caught it.

Wade checked to see if his gun was loaded. It was. “What’s the game?”

“I’m going to blow my wife’s head off in five seconds unless you shoot me.”

“Suicide by cop,” Wade said.

“I’m not going to let you hide behind a bunch of Federal agents. If you want to take me down, you’re going to have to do it yourself, right in front of my family, so they can see the—”

Wade shot him in the right shoulder, knocking him off the counter onto the floor. The children screamed. He kicked away Roger’s dropped gun, rolled him face-down on the blood-spattered travertine, and pinned his left arm behind his back.

“You’re under arrest,” Wade said.

Roger started to heave before Wade could read him his rights. Wade tipped him to one side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit.

That’s when FBI agents burst into the kitchen from every doorway. Two of the agents immediately hustled Sally Malden and her wailing kids away. But they still saw what a puking, mewling, bloody mess their father was and that Wade was holding him down.

It was their father who’d threatened to kill them but it was Wade who they hated. He saw it in their teary eyes already. The hate would only intensify with time.

Wade got up off of Roger, handed his gun to one of the agents and walked outside, the harsh glare of the arc lights casting his long shadow over the house.