The Pineville Heist (13 page)

The cage door clanged shut behind him and the seething face of Tremblay flicked around to see Aaron clicking the padlock shut through the door's slot. Locked in.

Foam bubbling at his lips, Tremblay leapt forward with a guttural inhuman roar. He lashed out but couldn't reach Aaron, who hopped backwards, admiring his catch.

“You're dead, you little bastard!”

Aaron exhaled and leaned against a filing cabinet, slowly feeling the tension leaving his body. Immediately his aching muscles spoke up, reminding him of the day and night that he had just survived. Nevertheless, these were good signs of normality returning. The nightmare was finally over.

Then, feeling an awkward weight pressing into his back, Aaron shifted and pulled the Colt from his pants. He then looked up; Tremblay was fiercely yanking books and school supplies off shelves in a crazed fury. It was amazing, Aaron
thought, how even tame beasts become wild when suddenly confined. Freedom was a precious thing, and denying it would be the best punishment for someone like Tremblay. Or would it…

“I wish this thing was loaded so I could blow your head off,” Aaron said, surprising himself as he actually meant it.

Tremblay glanced down at the pile of books at his feet. Then his eyes rose to meet Aaron's. It was unnerving, even when Aaron knew he was safe and Tremblay was a caged man.

“Can I have it back?” Tremblay said.

Aaron frowned, thoughtfully examining the gun in his hand. “Why?” Then his eyes widened, the bigger picture dawning on him. “Oh my God. This is the gun you were looking for, isn't it? At the campsite, just before you killed that guy–you were asking about a gun…” Aaron smirked to himself. “You lent your own cowboy gun to the other bank robbers! What a doofus.”

Slamming against the bars, Tremblay grabbed the metal door and shook it with all his might. But, Aaron felt superior by this point. He stood his ground. Kicked the cage. Laughed for the first time in what felt like weeks, when it had only really been hours since he, Steve and Mike had shared a laugh on their walk to the forest… Not so long ago.

“I'm not scared of you anymore. As soon as the police get here, you're going to get what you deserve.”

Tremblay tapped his badge with authority. “You're forgetting something, I am the police.”

“Nah, I'm talking about the ones Mike called by now… So, you can just find a comfy spot over in the corner and wait for the
real
cops to arrive.”

It was only a split second, but Aaron had stepped too close to the claws of a predator. Tremblay lurched at the cage,
reaching as far as his arm could've allowed, clutching a handful of Aaron's shirt collar.

Pulling it tight, Tremblay had him. Didn't matter on what side of the bars you were on, if one of you's dead and one of you's alive. There's only one winner in those circumstances.

A sharp gasp, Aaron struggled to move and then realized he had bigger problems, as he struggled to breathe. Tremblay drew the shirt collar in with his white-knuckled fist, cutting off Aaron's air.

Water filled in Aaron's eyes, blurring the room into shady blobs and smears. He flailed his arms, reaching for the edges of the cage, coughing out the choke in his throat.

“I told you I was going to kill you first chance I got.” The words were far away, fading into the recesses of the disappearing basement.

Then, Aaron felt something prickly and sharp at his fingertips that awoke his mind, jolting him back to reality–the rough grip of the Colt, as he pulled it from his waistband.

“What are you going to do with…?” Tremblay grunted as he received an abrupt answer to his question – the gun's barrel speared sharply into Tremblay's crotch, doubling him over in pain, and he immediately released Aaron's collar.

Tremblay fell backwards and Aaron tumbled the other way, choking and sputtering. Aaron rubbed his throat and Tremblay softly patted his jewels; the two stared at each other with a momentary respect–like two warriors acknowledging each other's strength in battle.

This wasn't over. Tremblay would never quit. Aaron could see it burning in his foe's eyes. Tremblay placed his hand on a shelf, easing himself up, and then suddenly he ripped the plank from its ledge. Aaron blinked as Tremblay rushed back to the cage door and started hammering the plank on top of
the lock with a brute force. And then again. And again. And again. A small dent appearing in the lock's metal edging.

Aaron realized exactly what Tremblay was doing. He pulled himself up, still catching his breath, and he dashed for the exit. Not looking back. Leaving behind the sound of a beast trying to break free from its cage.

Mike looked up at the dark night's sky. A blanket of stars, the hue of Venus perhaps too. Well, maybe it was Venus. He never could tell whether it was a planet or just another star.

He sighed to himself and glanced to the only door on the rooftop–no handle on the outside. He wasn't going anywhere. Plenty of time to debate if that bright dot was really a star, a planet, or a motorcycle headlight in some faraway galaxy.

Amanda was heading upwards, too. She had scouted around the library, trapped like Mike and Tremblay, and decided to ascend the ladder into Chuck's domain; the ceiling. Dark and dangerously dusty with asbestos and God only knows what else.

She crawled forwards, holding her breath with cutely pursed lips, as the ceiling tiles heaved under the weight of her knees and elbows.

Little cracks were appearing, sending crumbling white matter down from the rafters, like confetti on the typewriter-lined desks of a business classroom below. Just as Aaron ran by, reaching the library doors, and pulling the shotgun free of the handles, tossing it aside. But, Amanda was already gone, moving stealthily above him.

“Amanda? Miss Becker?” Aaron hissed, glancing around the quiet room. As quiet as a library in fact. “It's okay, you can come out…”

His mind was ticking over time, and then he saw the ladder and his pupils walked up the steps into the hole in the ceiling. Aaron clambered up, following the path created in his thoughts, and looked inside.

“Amanda! Come back! It's okay… I locked him up,” the word echoed into the opening.

He heard a shuffle and a muffled voice. Amanda was turning around. She was coming back.

Maybe this was all going to work out.

But, Tremblay had other plans; he smiled at the broken lock on the ground in front of the caged door. He was slightly taken aback at his own success. Snapping out of his daze, he discarded the wood shelf in his hands.

Tremblay strolled out of the cage, stopping to pick up the 'bait', the $100 bill. He deposited it in his pocket and then hastened out of the basement, the wicked glint of payback in his beady eyes.

Amanda's face slowly emerged out of the darkness. Aaron smiled and she smiled back at him. “Really, he's trapped?”

“Yeah, yeah. I tricked him. Come on out of there,” Aaron said, dipping back into the library.

Slowly but surely, she continued crawling to the light that was coming from the hole in the ceiling. Aaron descended the ladder with a smile. It was a short-lived one. Wiped from his face, as the library doors slammed open, and Tremblay charged inside.

“Nooooooo!” Aaron screamed out. Amanda knew all too well what was happening. Only one man could have such an effect on Aaron's vocal chords. A doggedly determined sheriff looking for his bag of stolen money.

Thinking fast, Aaron gripped the sides of the ladder and rushed up the steps, two at a time, pulling himself up into the hole. Still holding the ladder, Aaron twisted around and hoisted it up with him, just out of Tremblay's clawing grasp!

A baseball bat clenched in his hands, Tremblay hurled the weapon at Aaron, missing again, and bouncing off a ceiling joist before falling back down to the floor.

Tremblay could only watch feebly as Aaron slid the remaining half of the ladder into the hole. Gone.

“Nice trick kid… but it's not over!” Tremblay barked, picking up the fallen baseball bat.

As Aaron crawled off into the blackness of the ceiling, guided only by thin shafts of light leaking around the edges of
the tiles; Tremblay walked along beneath him, monitoring the bangs and bumps.

There was a flash of movement in the shadows up ahead; Amanda hadn't got far. “Hurry, he's coming,” Aaron urged her.

“I thought you said he.”

“He got out, okay? Go, go, go!”

They scrambled across 10 feet of ceiling, but it felt like 20 or 30, with scraped stinging knee caps and bruised knuckles. Then, Aaron slowed to a halt. Amanda heard him stop and turned around. “What is it, Aaron?”

“Nothing, that's just it… If he was coming, we'd hear him.”

Amanda screwed up her face and strained to hear a noise, any noise, but Aaron was right. Silence. Unsettling, eerie, emptiness.

WUMP! Until the baseball bat exploded through the ceiling tile, right in front of Amanda! She screamed rolling to one side, as the bat pierced another gaping hole to the left of her.

Below, Aaron could see the menacing snarl of Tremblay standing atop a desk in the business classroom, aiming the bat for another poke at them.

“Move, move, move!” Aaron implored as the bat protruded between his legs, a narrow miss. No time for niceties now, Aaron gave Amanda's butt a hefty shove to keep her moving.

Then, Tremblay had a direct hit–breaking through the tile right underneath Aaron, stabbing the baseball bat's tip into his stomach with a jolt. Aaron grunted but kept crawling. There would be worse than that if Tremblay actually got his hands on him and Amanda.

Tremblay followed the dips in the ceiling and hopped to the next desk, heaving the bat up into another ceiling tile, knocking it upwards and off kilter.

“It's just a matter of time, people,” he wheezed, stepping to the next desk like a frog hopping lily pads, trying to catch flies.

Then, Tremblay boldly leapt down from the desk; his ears picking up a dull thud near the wall, above the door frame. He zeroed in.

“He's going to get us, Aaron,” Amanda coughed, a piece of ceiling shrapnel irritating the back of her throat.

“Stop for a sec,” Aaron whispered. “You have to go back.”

“What?”

Aaron quickly placed his finger to his lips and looked at Amanda. Again, that silence. Nothing good comes of it.

“He'll never expect us to split up,” Aaron told her.

“No, no, no…” She was already shaking her head at the thought of being alone in the darkness of the ceiling, with a mad man on their trail.

“It's our only chance. I'll distract him long enough for you to go back to the library and try to find a way out,” Aaron said, trying to convince Amanda, tears welling in her big blue eyes. “Trust me.”

Suddenly, another tile exploded up behind them. Tremblay had missed the mark. Amanda stifled a shriek and nodded to Aaron. There was no time to argue. They couldn't play these games all night.

“Don't move until you hear the shit hit the fan, okay?”

Amanda nodded.

“Now lie down flat.”

Aaron slowly crawled over the top of Amanda, dragging himself over her to get to the other side. It could almost be considered sensual–body to body, in the warm darkness of the ceiling cavity, nerves jangling, hearts racing, rubbing, an electric friction crackling between their clothing–if it were not for the baseball bat-wielding Sheriff Tremblay, waiting to whack them. What a mood-killer.

With a sigh, Aaron looked at Amanda, one last time. Then lifted the corner of a tile, to peer inside Principal Parker's empty office.

Tremblay was poised, standing atop the switchboard desk, with the baseball bat about to jab upwards. Then he heard the thud of movement inside Parker's office, right next door. He smiled a wily grin, and gripped the bat with both hands.

Time to knock that little punk's block off, he thought. Even if it meant never finding the stashed cash, Tremblay was too incensed to care about locating money at that exact second. He just wanted to teach Aaron a lesson he'd never forget. He screwed with the wrong cop. First in the canteen and then in the basement. Now this was his third strike…

Tremblay prepared the bat for a swing, easing into Principal Parker's office. Then in a stealthy stride, he crossed the room, stepped up onto a chair, onto Parker's desk, and rammed the bat skywards.

A ceiling tile lifted off its joist and tumbled to the floor, catching Tremblay's eye as he followed it down, cracking in half on the armrest of the chair.

He took his eye off the prize. Out of nowhere, Aaron's feet careened into Tremblay's skull. The force sent Tremblay into a somersault forwards off the desk, landing awkwardly as the chair broke his fall, and almost his back with it.

With the momentum, Aaron leapt across the gap between tiles. He was short, and his chest slammed into the edge.
Damnit.
His nails scratched for a good grip, his legs dangling.

Like a pair of jeans on a breezy clothes line, he looked down at his flapping limbs.

Hands slipping. Need to throw a knee up, and pull hard. Some diversion he turned out to be. Aaron was meant to throw Tremblay a bone to distract him. Instead he'd thrown him the whole three-course meal! Unless he could just get some leverage. Energy was in short supply at this point. Gravity was stronger than his will, it seemed. He didn't need Tremblay to yank on his ankle, he already felt like weights were tied to his toes.

Then, it got worse. Aaron winced and wailed. The heavy echo of the baseball bat hitting his thigh followed by a shooting pain.

Suddenly, a burst of panic coursed through him, animating his legs into a wild thrashing motion, kicking anything within reach, and creating some distance. Then the bat rammed into his ribs. He was a pinata up there, taking hit after hit.

The sound of the bat being tossed to the ground was unnerving. Tremblay didn't need it anymore. Aaron felt the large paws around his calves, tugging at him.

Half in, half out of the ceiling, Aaron struggled to hang on. Yet, the splintering ceiling tile had the final say in the matter, when it broke into a large section–with Aaron still attached.