Leave the Living (11 page)

The wind buffeted the house, tinkling ice crystals off the glass behind him. Mick lowered his head, his heart a locomotive inside his chest. He dropped his eyes to the floor at the sheriff’s feet, the light following his gaze. To die in the house he grew up in was almost poetic. Beginning and end in the same place. Even as he ran through the possibilities for escape, a part of him began to prepare for death. How would it feel to have a round rip through his chest? Would it be a blinding agony, or would a numbness slide over him like a gentle sheet? Maybe they would shoot him in the head and he wouldn’t feel anything, only the last thoughts of Aaron and Cambri to accompany him out of the world and into the next. Gary was saying something, but Mick didn’t hear him.

A strange knot on one of the boards within the floor had snagged his eyes like a fishhook. It was dark like all the rest of the imperfections that appeared here and there in the woodwork, but instead of being mostly round, it had striated arms that grew outward from its center where they crossed. A trail of black dashes led away from the knot, turning first one way and then another in sharp bends. The dashes were strange, unnatural, almost as if they’d been carved or burnt into the wood.

“Did you hear me, Mick?” Reed asked.

Mick brought his eyes up from the floor. “What?”

“I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to shoot you in the kneecap; then we’ll start over again. I’ll keep shooting off pieces until you tell me where the money is.”

“Mickey, just tell us, and maybe we can work something out,” Gary said, moving closer behind Reed.

The counter Mick rested against ceased to exist, as did the floor beneath his feet. He was alone in the room, his vision swimming as the wind careened around the house, whistling and shrieking until it was a voice, his father’s voice, speaking not only through his eardrums but directly into his mind as well.

They can’t see, but you can.

“One.”

They can’t see.

“Two.”

Can’t see.

“Three.”

Sssssssssssssee.

“I know where it is,” Mick said.

“You do?” Gary asked.

Mick eyed the other two men in the pale glow of the flashlight. “Yeah. It’s in the attic.”

“Bullshit,” Reed said, shoving the gun into Mick’s face. “You’re lying, you little bastard. Just to keep from repeating ‘shit’. Why would it be in the attic?”

“The pirate thing my dad mentioned, it was a treasure hunt game we used to play. He’d hide something and leave me clues and I’d try to find it. The only time I didn’t figure out the clues was when he hid the prize in the attic.”

Mick waited, shifting his gaze between the gun barrel and Reed’s cold stare. Reed slowly lowered the pistol and glanced at Gary.

“You check the attic yet?”

“No, I completely forgot about it.”

“Where’s the access?”

Gary looked at Mick, his mouth half-open.

“It’s in Dad’s closet,” Mick said, motioning to the loft.

Reed eyed him once more before jerking the gun toward the stairs. “You lead.”

Mick walked ahead of the two other men and shone the flashlight on the floor. The beam bounced and danced with the shaking of his hand, and he steadied himself on the banister as they climbed the stairs.

His father’s room held a smoky light from the snow outside that crept onto the floor and walls. Through one of the windows, a three-quarter moon looked in, indifferent and cold. Mick opened the closet door and stepped inside, flipping the light on out of habit. The fixture remained dark in the ceiling. He shone the flashlight up, pinning the attic access in the center of its beam.

“How the hell are we supposed to get up there?” Reed growled behind him as he jabbed his shoulder blade with the gun.

“There’s another ladder that folds down from the ceiling. You’ll have to give me a little space.”

Reed grunted assent, and when Mick looked over his shoulder, he saw the lawman had taken a step back near the door. Gary stood in the bedroom, gazing around. Mick took several deep breaths and flexed his numb fingers. His hands shook, and the light vibrated in his palm. He stepped onto the short ladder below the shelf, climbing to its top. He set the flashlight down, aiming it partially back the way he’d come and then reached up with one hand to the attic access while with the other he grasped the grip of the .357 lying on the shelf. As he slid the panel free of the ceiling, he pivoted on the ladder, brought the snub-nosed revolver into the light and centered it on Reed’s bulk blocking the doorway.

“What—” Reed started to say as he swung his own pistol up.

Mick pulled the trigger, and the Ruger bucked in his hand. The shot was deafening in the tight space, its report short and powerful like a condensed thunderclap. Reed stumbled backward, a flower of blood blooming around a dark hole in the center of his tan uniform. His gun went off as he tottered, the round tearing through one of Mick’s pant legs without touching flesh. Mick fired again as he leapt down from the ladder, the access panel falling beside him to the floor. The round ripped a hole in Reed’s stomach that painted the carpet behind him in a fan of black blood. The sheriff went down, glancing off the bed as he fell. He landed on his side, the gun popping out of his hand before spinning away into the darkness.

Gary fired a shot through the closet door that tore into the sheetrock beside Mick’s head. He ducked and fired a wild round back. Gary swore loudly, and Mick heard him fall on the loft outside the room. Mick launched himself up, his body not feeling like his own but ethereal and weightless as if the physical world around him no longer mattered. Everything was sound and light and darkness. As he came out of the closet, low to the ground, Gary shot again, this time through the partially open bedroom door. The bullet whined off something, and there was a burst of heat on the left side of his face. He closed one eye and threw another shot toward the place he thought his uncle stood, the little pistol jerking high with the powerful round. Stumbling footsteps trailed down the stairs, and Gary cursed again, this time from somewhere in the house below.

Mick stood and moved across the dark room, pausing by Reed’s humped form. In the pallid light of the moon, the sheriff’s eyes were saucers of pain. They flitted back and forth before coming to rest on Mick. Reed wheezed, and a wet whistling came from the hole in his chest with each struggling breath. Mick looked at the lawman’s face, speckled with blood, and watched a runner of crimson drool spill from the corner of his mouth. He jerked once, a bubbling murmur coming from his chest like a boiling pot of water, before he fell still, his eyes closing halfway.

Mick checked the doorway once and then retrieved the flashlight from the closet before easing out of the room. The house stood silent below him, the wind rallying and then falling against the eaves. He shined the flashlight in each hiding place he could see, nudging shadows away with its beam, all the while keeping the pistol aimed beside it. Mick stopped halfway to the stairs, quieting his breathing enough to listen. Silence. There were no splashes of blood anywhere on the loft and no crumpled form at the bottom of the stairway. He took two more steps toward the stairs and stopped as his uncle’s voice floated up to him.

“Mickey, we got ourselves a hell of a problem here.”

He waited, weighing whether to answer. Gary saved him the decision by continuing.

“There’s a dead sheriff in your father’s bedroom. You killed him, kiddo, you’re a murderer now.”

Mick opened his mouth to yell a threat, a promise to end his waste of an uncle, but resisted. Sweat poured down his face like tears, and he rubbed his sleeve across his eyes to dry them.

“Let’s talk about this, Mickey. I’m sure the money isn’t in the attic, but I know you know where it is now. I saw the look on your face when Reed was talking to you in the kitchen. You didn’t before, but now you do. You remembered something, didn’t you?”

Mick crept onto the third stair down, stepping over the second, creaky tread. It sounded as if Gary was near or in the basement. Flicking the flashlight’s switch off, he plunged the house into darkness again with only the sickly light rising off the drifts outside to guide his way. He sidled down the stairs one at a time, his heart galloping in the cage of his chest. Something dripped off his chin, and when he swiped at his cheek again, he saw the dark shine of blood covered his sleeve. He felt his face and found a narrow gash ran from his cheekbone to his ear. An inch to the right and the round Gary had shot through the bedroom door would have ended him. Mick wiped the blood away again and made his way down the last three stairs.

“C’mon, Mickey. We’re in a nasty mess together now. Let’s set down the guns and talk this over. We can say Reed figured out your dad knocked over that armored truck and he blackmailed him and then killed him when he wouldn’t tell him where it was. We can say he came here tonight to try and get it again and tried to kill us both.”

Mick crouched and slid to the right, inching out into the open room. Gary was definitely downstairs. There was a shush of fabric rubbing against a wall and then the scraping of boots on a tread. A distilled rage, pure and bright, began to pulse in the center of Mick’s mind. Gary had killed his father and covered it up with the sheriff’s help. Now he was trying to bargain in the same voice he used when catching up with him at the bar that morning. In that instant, Mick knew he would kill him. There was no other option.

“Let’s say we just talk for a bit. Come down and we’ll discuss things. You don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want to either. Bottom line is you killed a man, a sheriff at that. They’ll prosecute you, kiddo. No one’s going to believe you. Your dad’s death is already closed, and now the sheriff is up there in a pool of his own blood. Doesn’t look good—”

Mick sprung forward and was at the head of the stairs in one step. He flipped the flashlight on, catching his uncle in its blinding glare at the bottom of the stairway, one boot on a step, the pistol aimed upward.

Mick fired.

15

The round tore splinters from the wall a foot from Gary’s head as the older man shot back. There was the hot passage of lead that reminded Mick of opening an oven door as he pulled the Ruger’s trigger again.

The hammer snapped with an empty click.

He yanked the trigger once more, but it merely cycled the cylinder as the hammer came down on one of the fired cartridges. Mick raised his eyes to Gary’s as the other man smiled, his cracked lips pulling back from yellowed teeth.

“You’re all out, Mickey, and I’ve got plenty ammo left.” Gary climbed the stairs as Mick shrunk back, keeping the flashlight aimed at him. “Now if you want to see Aaron again, you’ll listen to me, and we can figure this thing out.”

Mick glanced at the stairs leading to the loft but knew he’d never make it to Reed’s gun before Gary cut him down with a shot to the back. His uncle stepped onto the main floor and moved forward, the pistol held out before him.

“Sit down at the table there and listen to your uncle for once.”

Mick bolted toward the front door.

The handgun boomed behind him as he ducked into the entryway and a lancing pain cut across the right side of his back. He hissed at the burning sensation and dropped the flashlight as he latched onto the doorknob and threw the door wide.

“Mickey!”

The wind flowed over him as he rushed into the snow, its smooth white skin puffing out before his feet as he ran. The moon hung in the black ocean of the sky, the storm clouds having fled to the horizon. Behind him, Gary thundered onto the porch, firing another round that whistled past his shoulder. Mick ducked and ran, the wound in his back flaring and then fading like a firework. He struggled to the rise that overlooked the lake and barreled down it, falling and rolling in the freezing powder before climbing to his feet again. The wind gusted and then fell, chilling his flesh through the thin shirt he wore. Over his own labored breathing, he could hear Gary coming after him, the other man’s footsteps slow but steady.

Mick reached the tree line and paused at the edge of the lake. He turned, searching out a hiding spot within the forest, but there would be nowhere his footprints wouldn’t betray him. The moon lit the snowy plain like a stage, curtains of flakes twisting up from the drifts in the wind. He shivered and considered simply sitting down in the snow to wait for Gary to catch up. The cold wormed its way into his flesh, pressed down on him with a relentless fist. On the blustery lake, a sound came to him across the distance, a flapping like that of an enormous bird’s wings. The spear house.

“Mickey, don’t move,” Gary called through the trees.

Mick ran, anticipating the bite of lead and the explosive pain it would bring, but no shots rang out. He searched the lake’s surface as he slogged onward, trying to judge the deeper shadow of land beyond the reaching white of the ice. A sticky wetness ran down his lower back and pooled at his belt, soaking the waistline of his jeans. The snow spun before him, turning in freezing dervishes. He scanned the drifts and lower paths between them before slowing and then coming to a stop. The portable spear house snapped in the wind fifty yards away, its outline humped and dark against the moonlit snow. Slowly he turned back the way he’d come, glancing at the ice once before looking up.