Wild Horses (29 page)

“One word out of you, and this” — Allison shook the revolver again — ”this finishes whatever it is you start to say.”

The door began to open. She hoisted Madeline onto her feet, felt her begin to squirm with groggy resistance, nothing that was going to get out of control in the next moments.

At first Allison didn’t know why she didn’t shoot when the target was right there, four feet away and blind to her. He’d be dead before he knew it. But she could not.

The man kept his pistol trained on the diners until he pulled Tom clear of the door; bent his elbow so the door, as it swung shut, wouldn’t jar the gun. For a moment he was aiming into the sky, as vulnerable as he was likely to leave himself.

Allison announced herself with a warning shot over his head. He flinched, kept his hold on Tom while wheeling to confront her. She was shielded behind Madeline by the time he turned, jamming her own gun up under Madeline’s chin. He froze, his aim lingering to her left in hesitation, as they squared off with hostages close enough that each could kick the other.

She thumbed back the .38’s hammer, let Madeline feel the cylinder rotate against her throat.

“If one of us dies here,” Allison said, “it’ll be all four of us, I promise you that.”

“Shoot her, Gunther.” Madeline had found her voice. “
Do
it.”

“You move that gun another inch toward me, or him” — a glance into Tom’s eyes — ”and I’ll take the top of this bitch’s head off.”

Whatever he saw in Madeline to care about was beyond anything Allison could perceive. But it was there — she recognized it in the indecisive fear burning in that single eye.

“Gunther? Gunther!” barked Madeline. “What are you waiting for? Don’t you let her do this to me, not her. Now you make that shot and you make it count!”

“Shut your ugly face!” Allison screamed in her ear. “You can’t wait for lung cancer to kill you?” To her unlikely beau: “What’s it going to be, Gunther? Are you really that eager to see her brains? Because if you are, just let her talk you into trying, and I swear to God I’ll splatter you with them.”

Allison scarcely recognized the voice coming from her mouth, the menace and the absolute conviction. A practice run, perhaps, with the voice she’d expected to be using in another day or two.

See, Daddy? See what you’ve turned me into?

Gunther’s gun arm wavered. Glaring, he uttered something that Allison couldn’t make sense of. Madeline and a bad eye weren’t enough? He had to have a speech impediment too?

“Try English,” said Allison.

“I think he said he’s not going to stand here and let himself get turned in to some sheriff,” Tom told her. “That if that’s what you got in mind he’d just as soon start shooting and get it over with.” He paused. “That was it, wasn’t it?”

Gunther nodded, satisfied.

“You need a translator now, Gunther?” Madeline said through clenched teeth. “It never ends with you! Never! Never!”

“I hurt his jaw,” Tom explained.

Madeline gave her man no slack. “Why don’t you let her try shooting
you
in the head, instead? It’s all solid bone anyway!”

The scabbed, bandaged face lunged over Tom’s shoulder as if Gunther had forgotten about having a hostage. Scowling, he raved, and Madeline began to crow that he might as well save his breath, as she couldn’t make out a single word he was saying. He rolled his one horrifying eye in futility, then slapped Tom on the cheek.

Tom began, with reluctance, to explain how Gunther now felt that a bullet to the head might not be so bad compared to the idea of spending his life in Mexico, if he had to spend it with her. Madeline began to quiver.

Allison watched, appalled, listening to it all slip out of control. She’d been about to suggest a truce, not wanting the law in on her business any more than he did on his. Now he looked anything but in the mood to bargain. Madeline and that damn mouth of hers. Spiteful, yes — but who would have guessed that she could carry on this way with a gun beneath her chin?

“You go in there half blind, now you come out
mute
?” she was screaming.

Gunther bellowed, beyond words. Whether Tom sensed a moment of vulnerability or got lucky, she couldn’t tell. An obedient captive one instant, in the next he had wormed one arm up through Gunther’s to slip the choke hold and jabbed back with his other elbow into Gunther’s middle. Tom caught Gunther’s gun arm, trapped it; spun on one heel to throw him off balance; pitched him over one hip into the dust. He stamped hard on the wrist of Gunther’s kinked arm, breaking his grip on the pistol, and kicked it away with the other foot. Lunged to snatch it up, and aimed down at a stupefied Gunther, who lay blinking up at blue sky.

It seemed to have taken no time, like watching a movie that skipped frames of film. Even Madeline had nothing to say.

Allison withdrew the gun from beneath Madeline’s chin, gave her a shove, and backed out of her reach, circling around to Tom’s side.

“He shot the phone apart in there,” Tom said, “but we passed a gas station about, what, a half mile up the road? I’ll make sure they don’t go anywhere if you’ll take the van and call the sheriff and an ambulance.”

“No,” she said softly.

“No? He shot an old man inside, Allison. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, but—”

“Then we’ll go make the call together and be on our way, and it won’t take any longer than if I go alone. But I’m not sticking around for the sheriff.” She was already striding across the lot. “I’ll leave the van at the station and keep going on foot, if I have to, and say thanks for the ride … but I’m not waiting around to explain myself to anyone in a uniform.”

She paused by the van door, one leg hiked up onto the running board. Tom stared after her with the confiscated pistol dangling beside his thigh.

“Are you coming? Or do you want to throw me the keys?”

He cursed, waved at her, begging one moment’s patience before rushing to the café door. Staring faces withdrew from the window. Through the doorway she saw him hand the pistol over to a man inside, speaking tersely to him.

And what did this mean, that Tom not only wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her yet, but that this overruled whatever obligation he felt to stay behind? It meant plenty. Nothing was trivial now.

He jogged to the van. Pointed at the peeling gray Cadillac, asked if it was their car. When Allison said it was, he borrowed her revolver and flattened two tires.

“Every time I think I have you figured out a little better,” he told Allison in the van, “you throw me another curve.”

They screeched up the road to the gas station and made the call, then he asked to switch places so she could drive while he rested in the passenger seat. She didn’t blame him. One cheek was cut and bloody, and his eyes were red and his skin blotchy from what he said had been pistol shots going off directly in front of his face.

She began to tremble, finally, and gripped the wheel tighter so she wouldn’t weave all over the road. She focused on the power poles along the side of the road, and the birds settled upon them.

“You were great back there,” Tom said after a time. “Most people, they wouldn’t be able to handle themselves near as well in that kind of situation. So…” He bent forward at the waist and cradled his head in both hands. “Thank you.”

Allison nodded. “We’re going the wrong way if you’re still planning on going to San Antonio.”

Tom shook his head. “I got someplace else in mind now. Spend the night where I know it’ll be safe so we can get this situation figured out. You knew those two back there, did you?”

“Her I did. Him I’ve never seen before.”

“I’m guessing they must’ve been following us for a while. I don’t know how they did it, but they had to have picked up on my schedule at some point. So my schedule gets scrapped.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s my fault somehow, but I don’t know what it was about.”

“Don’t take this wrong, but … are you wanted for something back west? Running from a warrant, something like that?”

“No. Nothing at all like that.”

“Then why wouldn’t you stay put for the sheriff?”

“I pulled a gun of my own, Tom. I don’t have a permit for it. I’m not going to let them take me in for defending myself.”

“That’s it?” he said. “This is Texas, Allison. I don’t think you had much to worry about, under the circumstances.”

She shook her head. “I’m not taking any chances. Nobody’s going to take that gun from me, and don’t ask me to explain it. Please. I’m no fugitive, you’re not harboring one or transporting one — just don’t ask me to tell you anything you don’t really want to hear.”

Allison looked into the blood-threaded map of his eyes until he nodded, and then he curled into the seat with his head resting against the door.

“Tell me when we get to Route 290,” he murmured. “I’ll let you know where to go from there.”

Again Allison thought about the gun; why she’d chosen not to shoot Gunther unaware and be done with it.

The gun was consecrated. Oh, she’d lived and slept with it in constant reach; had for three days drawn perverse comfort from it, a shaky invincibility. It was her secret armor, her retractable claw. She’d used it to leave her mark on Boyd — to bleed him, just a little. First him, then Madeline. She could use it to frighten, to bluff, to threaten; could fire a warning shot; could loan it out to flatten a tire, and none of these would rob the revolver of its anointing.

To take a life, though, would diminish it somehow, for it had been bought with another life in mind. And when she brought it to him, it must be virginal. That was only fitting. There would be more than justice in that. There would be poetry.

*

Madeline felt too worn out, too headachy, to say anything more. Besides, Gunther’s translator had just left. It wasn’t as much fun when he couldn’t fight back. He just took it, scowling like a sullen adolescent.

The whine of van tires was fading as Gunther picked himself up out of the gravel and dusted himself off. Radiating grim purpose, he stalked, limping, back to the useless Cadillac. Two tires dead, it canted toward the passenger side. Any minute now, sirens. Any minute. Madeline caught up to him just as he popped the trunk lid.

“Hey! Shitheads!” The café door hung open, their appointed guardian waving Gunther’s lost pistol. “You get back down and kiss that dirt ‘fore I whang a couple by your skulls!”

Gunther ignored him, wincing as he held his jaw and waggled it experimentally. “Ow,” he said. As long as she could watch his lips, maybe communication wouldn’t be lost after all. Rimming one entire side of his face was an angry red semicircular arc, inches long, abraded into the skin. She didn’t want to know.

“You hear me?” the roustabout yelled. “I’ll kill you my own damn self, you don’t shag ass back here! Get me a medal for it!”

“Get a dick first!” Madeline spat in his direction. Then, to Gunther: “His hands are shaking.”

“That’s what I figured.” Blocked from view by the trunk lid, he shed his decimated sport coat long enough to slip on the vest of Kevlar body armor. Put the jacket back on to conceal the vest. Stepped out from behind the trunk. “He’ll run out of bullets before I run out of shells.”

Gunther leaned into the Cadillac’s rear floorboard, brought out the twelve-gauge she’d tried to grab before Allison had fired the shot that had thunderclapped her eardrums. He pumped the slide to rack a shell into the chamber.

Madeline blew him a kiss, and all was forgiven.

“We need a car,” he told her, enunciating very carefully. “We don’t need witnesses. I’ll take care of everything.”

He headed for the diner’s door.

And his hands were steady.

CHAPTER 18

Allison drove until they ran out of daylight, kept driving until she wondered if they weren’t going to run out of Texas. She’d put over 250 miles to the northeast between them and this afternoon when the end of the road turned rough and rutted, somewhere between Palestine and Nacogdoches.

Tom directed her off the road and up a long drive that wound past a thicket of trees, then opened into a gently rolling clearing. The quarter-moon showed her what the headlights didn’t reach — a ramshackle clutter of outbuildings and corral fencing, the rusty stitchwork of barbed wire. The vehicles looked no more mobile than the darkened ranch house that sagged and sprawled as though worn out at the end of a long day.

“I don’t think anybody’s home.” Allison was tempted to hope there never would be.

“Dwight said just be patient if things looked that way.” Tom had called some old friend of his later in the afternoon. Called, and washed his cut and powder-burned face; put together a makeshift ice pack that they’d replenished at fast food stops. “He said he might be on a job tonight, hard to say when he’d be finished.”

“What does he do?”

“As long as I’ve known him, a little bit of everything. This late, what he’s usually up to is repo work.”

“He’s a repo man?” In the dark, she groaned. “I don’t know about this, Tom. I had a friend once, he got his car repossessed by a couple of those guys, and they really seemed to enjoy their work a little too much. Like it just made their day to take this guy’s car away from him.”