I squeezed my eyes shut, my brain cycling through all the things I could have/should have/would have done if only I'd known that I was destined to die too young.
I could have called my mom over the weekend like I'd been planning before I got wrapped up in my investigation and convinced myself I'd do it another time.
I should have written to my dad like I'd been saying I was going to do ever since he was sent to the Big House.
I would have called JoelPanhorst . If I knew I was going to buy the farm that day, honest, I would have picked up the phone and called the creep. Not that I was feeling emotional when it came to Joel. Heaven forbid! But it sure would have been gratifying to let him know that sometime—somehow—between then and the day he walked out on me because he was worried about what his country club friends would say when he married a girl whose father was in the federal pen, I'd realized that getting rid of him was the best thing that ever happened to me.
After all, how pathetic would it have been to have
Pepper
Panhorst on my tombstone?
"You're not going to let them find you here like they found me bleeding in the street." Gus's voice reverberated like thunder, breaking into my morbid thoughts. "You're not giving up."
Maybe if he had added that last bit like it was a question, I would have decided that yes, giving up was exactly what I was thinking about doing.
But Gus didn't ask. He took it for granted. Like he took everything for granted.
The fact that what he took for granted was that I had a smidgen of courage in me somehow made the situation seem a little less hopeless. I raised my head and chanced another look around. As far as I could tell, the shot came from the section of the cemetery directly across from us and my car was between us and there. If I made a run for the Mustang, I'd not only be a chump but a way-too-easy target. About ten feet to my right was a giant sycamore and right about then, it was looking like my best bet for cover.
Beyond that was one of the few standing monuments there in the new section. If I could make it to the sycamore and from the sycamore to the monument…
Well, hell, I didn't know what I'd do if I got that far. I only knew that it was better than dying there on top of Tommy Two Toes.
My mind made up—even if I wasn't sure my legs would support me—I hopped to my feet and ran. I was almost behind the broad trunk of the sycamore when another bullet smacked right into it.
"Shit." I braced my back against the tree. "He's a good shot."
"And he's being careful, too. I don't see him anywhere." His eyes narrowed, Gus stood in the open and scanned the area. "He's probably in those bushes over there." He pointed but I didn't dare look. "What are you going to do?"
I was hoping maybe he'd have a suggestion. Barring that, I guess what I was going to do was run.
Instead of discussing it and definitely before I could stop and think about the consequences, I did just that.
I got all the way over to the standing monument without another shot being fired.
Still, I knew I wasn't out of the woods. Especially when Gus pointed again.
"There! I saw something move over there. He's following you and you can be sure that he's got you in his sights."
"That makes me feel a whole bunch better." I peeked around the corner of the monument, looking for another spot where I could hunker down. The only one I could see right off the bat was a tall, skinny headstone closer to the road. Between me and it was nothing but… well, nothing but nothing.
"This isn't going to work," I told Gus at the same time I pushed off from my hiding place and took off like a bat out of hell.
I had seen enough old
MacGyver
episodes to know not to travel in a straight line. I swerved left and feinted right. I dodged and darted and when another bullet zoomed by an inch from my ear, I bent over to make myself a smaller target and ran as fast as a bent-over person can. When I got to the shelter of the monument, Gus was already waiting for me.
His face was twisted with anger. His cheeks were dusky. "There are two of them," he said. "And one of them is Albert."
Didn't it figure?
I fought to catch my breath and wished that when I got into my car back atSully's Flowers, I hadn't slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and left it next to me on the front seat. I pressed a hand to my heart and felt it beating with the rhythm of a high school marching band drum line.
"Can you see them?" I asked Gus.
"That Albert, he's graceful like a moving van. He's tromping through the shrubbery over there. He's carrying a .357 and I'd bet a dime to a donut he couldn't hit the side of a barn with it. Not from this distance. He's muscle, not a shooter. No, it's the other one you need to worry about. Light-haired guy wearing sunglasses."
It didn't sound like anyone I'd run into in the course of my investigation, but just the fact that Albert was involved told me one thing. "Rudy's got to be behind this."
"No way." Gus shook his head. "Not his style."
"What? Killing isn't part of the family business anymore?"
I could tell Gus was itching to aim a sneer in my direction. Instead, he kept his eye on Albert and his friend. "We wouldn't kill women."
"Ella will be thrilled to know that her sixties-sisterhood-equal-rights bullshit worked."
"You call this progress?" Gus ducked behind the monument with me. "Look, kid, this next bit is going to be a little tricky. You've got maybe thirty feet. Across to the road, then over to the next section. There's a couple statues over there. Angels, I think."
I thought so, too. They were part of my angel tour.
"Once you're there, you're home free. There are a few mausoleums. A couple big monuments. How close are we to the office?"
Not close enough.
I refused to think about it.
"There might still be somebody over in the chapel," I said instead, because even though I knew it was unlikely that one of our minimum-wage part-time employees would stay around that late, it seemed like a better plan than thinking about how I was surrounded by three hundred acres of nothing but dead people.
"If it's still open, I can get inside and lock the door behind me."
"Good." Gus stepped back, but just as I was about to sidestep my way around him, he hesitated.
"Look… " He straightened his tie. "I want you to know that I'd run interference for you if—"
"Yeah. I know. Thanks," I said, and bolted for the nearest angel.
Just as I got there, a bullet smacked into her wing and flakes of marble rained down on my head. I darted behind her but even then, I didn't stop. I ran to the next angel and from there, I ducked behind a tall, oval monument with a carving of a man's face at the center of it. By the time I made it from there to the statue of a woman seated with a book open on her lap, I was feeling invincible. A few more headstones, a couple hundred more feet, and I was home free.
Maybe.
I put my head down and ran. Hell bent for leather as they say in those historical romances my mother loved to read and I loved to mock. I didn't know what it meant but at that moment, I sure understood how it felt. Like my lungs were on fire. Like my heart was going to burst. The calf muscles in my right leg cramped and I staggered but I didn't stop. Not even when a shot rang out when I was near the monument to folks called Willis and another plunked into the turf at my feet as I was rounding one side of a pink granite mausoleum and heading to the other side.
Now, the chapel was directly in front of me and I refused to think about anything but making it that far. I raced there and plastered myself behind one of the massive granite columns that flanked the brass front doors.
I was right about the part-timer assigned to the building. He was long gone and the doors were locked.
But the building was big and it was surrounded with unusual plants that tourists came from miles around to see. There were plenty of places to hide. There was also a back door that few people knew about. It led directly to a stairway and from there, into the receiving vault, the place they used to store the bodies when the ground was too frozen to dig graves. Always the planner, Ella left an extra key under the mat in front of that door. Just in case anybody ever got locked out. If I could get my hands on that key…
It wasn't much in the hope department but it was all I had, and I hung onto it for dear life.
Literally.
My back against the chapel wall, my eyes scanning the area in front of me for any sign of movement, I slunk around to the other side of the building. I actually might have made it if I hadn't slid around a corner and run right into Albert.
"Hey, bitch, thanks for the exercise." Albert was breathing hard. So was I. He grinned at me over the barrel of a big, nasty-looking gun. "Worked just like we planned it."
"We—?" There was no sign of the other shooter. That didn't make the grim reality any less grim or less real. Albert and the other guy, they knew I'd run. They knew which direction I'd go. They knew I had no choice but to head for the chapel, and they'd herded me there where my body could be tucked under a bush or behind a bench or rolled down the hill behind us and right into the pond where nobody would find it until the gasses built inside me and I bloated like a blowfish and floated to the surface.
And I fell for it.
I didn't have the time to second-guess my strategy. It was too late for that. It was too late to be mad at myself, too. "This is nuts." Like I had to tell Albert? He knew it. That's why a slow smile brightened his plug-ugly face.
"No cops here this time." He poked his gun toward his right and I knew that he wanted me
to
step that way. To my left. Toward the hill. Yep, I was headed into the pond.
I held back. "How do you know? How do you know I didn't dial 911?"
"Nice try." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. When he held it up for me to see, I recognized it as mine. "Bet this is the last time you'll leave your phone in the car." Albert laughed. It wasn't a pretty sound. "On second thought, I don't need to bet. This is your last time. For everything."
Again, he waved me toward my left. Like he was positioning me in just the right spot.
I didn't have to think for what. I didn't move. If he wanted the shooter to get a nice, clean shot, he was going to have to pick me up and put me in place.
"The least you can do is tell me what this is all about." Sure, I was stalling. But I was also curious. If I was going to die, it seemed a shame to die without the answers I was looking for. "Who put you up to this?"
"What makes you think anyone did?"
"Come on, Albert. You're not smart enough to do anything on your own. Somebody's giving the orders.
Somebody wants me out of the way. Why? What does all this have to do with Tommy Two Toes?"
He didn't answer. But he did look over my shoulder and raise one hand. Like he was giving a signal.
I knew it was coming but, I swear, I didn't have time to react. I heard the clear crack of a rifle shot and all I could do was brace myself for the impact.
After that…
Well, after that, everything that happenedhappened so fast, I wasn't sure if it was real or if I was already dead and inhabiting some sort of parallel universe designed to tease me with the possibility of all that might have been.
Gus stepped up behind Albert and tapped him on his shoulder and Albert turned, startled. He made a gurgling, choking sound and when he turned back to me, all it took was one look at his face for me to realize the impossible.
Albert saw Gus.
Albert's face was white. His mouth was open. He made a croaking sound from deep in his throat.
And then he did what anybody would have done when faced with a man who was dead and buried.
Albert turned and ran.
The wrong way.
I heard a dull plunk and a spray of liquid jetted out of Albert's chest. Against the evening sky, the color reminded me of wine. Something hot and sticky splattered against my cheeks and my shirt. Albert crumpled at my feet.
Gus urged me to run. "Come on!" He started toward the other side of the chapel.
"But Gus… " I was frozen in place, staring at Albert's body and the spots of red like polka dots on my shirt. "How… ?"
Gus waved me around the back of the chapel. "Don't worry about that now. He's not going to wait before he tries again. Come on!"
He was right and I knew it. But I wasn't about to let him waffle when it came to an explanation. As soon as we were safely on the other side of the chapel, I started in on him.
"He saw you, Gus. Albert saw you. How—"
"Don't you get it?" Gus peeked around the corner of the chapel. Apparently, the coast was clear. At least for a moment. "The way I understand it, this is how it works. At least for everyone except you. If a person is close to death, he can see the other side. You know, ghosts and things."
"And that's why—"
"I figured it was worth a try. Worked pretty good, didn't it?"
It had. But it wasn't the end of our problems. Albert might be dead but there was another hit man out there somewhere.
I didn't have to wait long to find out where. Gus didn't hear him coming and I didn't, either. But the next thing I knew, the light-haired man rounded the corner. He didn't come close. He didn't have to. He was carrying a high-powered rifle and, cool and steady, he lifted it to his shoulder and took aim.
I didn't wait around to see any more. I dropped and rolled, allowing the momentum and the weight of my body to take me down the hill toward the pond. My shoulder smacked into a tree root and my flesh ripped. My hair snagged on twigs and branches and got yanked by the roots. My legs tangled, my knees hit the rough edges of stones, my teeth knocked together.
I kept rolling, and landed in the muck right where the pond water lapped against the shore.
Just in time to see the hit man spin to get a bead on me.
As he did, something came flying at him from the other side of the chapel.
At least I think that's what I saw.
I scooped the hair out of my eyes and shook my head, sure that my brain was playing cruel tricks on me.