Winter's Rage, page 10
28
The brothers had driven more than twenty miles before they found a place they liked the look of. A sign had lured them off the highway, like a naked siren on the rocky outcrop above a sea of snow. The flashing neon sign promised “Girls, Girls, Girls.” The reality was a rundown bar where strippers went to die.
On the opposite side of the run-off was an equally seedy motel that advertised an hourly rate. It would do just fine. All they needed was a place to lay their heads for the night. If they laid anything else, well, that was just gravy.
“You think I’m setting foot in there dressed like this? You touched in the head, H?” Dale grumbled. “We don’t need a disguise and, more importantly, we don’t need to look like Hicksville idiots.”
“You look like an idiot no matter what you’re wearing,” Henry snapped. “You’ve got a choice. You can either come in dressed as you are, sink a beer and see some titties, or you can go back to the motel room and jerk off. But you’re not going anywhere in your suit, understand?”
“No need to be a dick about it.”
“Then do me a favor and shut the fuck up for a minute. I just want to have a beer and enjoy the view. I don’t want to have to worry about you fucking things up. Again. So, how about you use your head? We’re half an hour away, we’re in the only titty bar as far as the eyes can see, ain’t nothing to say someone from Winter’s Rage isn’t propping up the bar drooling at some double Ds. Gotta think smart, Dale. So just do what I tell you.”
Dale grunted but didn’t argue.
Sometimes Henry needed to lay down the law. Dale had attention deficit disorder so he kept forgetting shit. He was like a magpie attracted to shiny objects.
“So, how long are we going to hang around here?”
“Long enough,” Henry said. “We ain’t going anywhere before morning. The snow up in the mountains is going to be a lot worse than down here. Wouldn’t surprise me if that town gets cut off before too long.”
Dale still didn’t seem satisfied, but at least he shut up long enough that Henry didn’t need to give him a slap.
Henry fished out his cell phone to check if he had a signal. The coverage had been non-existent in parts of Winter’s Rage. It was like stepping back in time. He needed to check in with their employer. He was very specific about wanting regular updates. He got itchy if he didn’t feel in control, and the last thing Henry wanted was the boss getting the idea they couldn’t do the job. That way lay a whole heap of shit he didn’t want to swim in.
He punched in the key combo that called through to the boss. It had been years since he’d had to learn any numbers by heart.
“It’s Henry,” he said, before the man at the other end had the chance to say hello. “We’ve found her father’s place. He wasn’t home, neither was she. But we know she’s on her way.”
“And you’re telling me this because?”
Henry listened to the silence, his mouth dry and his throat tight. The boss didn’t like wasted words. He wasn’t a fan of excuses either, and most certainly didn’t deal well with disappointment. And that was what he was phoning to deliver. “Just letting you know what’s what. We’re closing in. Won’t be long now. But the weather is pretty shit out here.”
“I really couldn’t care. You’ve got a job to do, get it done. And be smart about it.”
“She’ll be there tomorrow. It’s a small town. Nowhere to hide.”
“You’re not there to play hide and seek, Henry. You’re there to kill her. And do those kids while you’re about it. No one messes with me and walks away. They suffer. And you, Henry, are my tool. You make them suffer.”
“The kids? Seriously? I don’t like that. We don’t do kids.”
“You need me to send a man to do the job, Henry? You wouldn’t want that. I want the entire bloodline wiped from the face of the planet. The old man, too. Get it done, get it done fast, and get out of there. I don’t accept failure, Henry. Not now. Not ever. You know what happens to people who fail me? They wind up with a bullet in the back of the head.”
Henry said nothing. He didn’t have the luxury of protesting: the line was dead. And he was left in no doubt the same fate awaited him if he screwed this up.
Caleb and Dale stared at him expectantly.
What was he supposed to say? They’d heard him say they didn’t do kids. They knew what the boss would say to that. You didn’t say no to him. Ever.
“Nothing’s changed,” he said. “We need to find her and take her out.”
“Which is a job for tomorrow,” Dale said. “Tonight we see titties.”
“I’m right there with you, brother,” Henry said. “Anything to make what we have to do tomorrow more palatable.”
“What do you mean, H?”
“You know what I mean, Dale.”
Dale twitched, scratching at the scuff of stubble growing out of his sallow cheeks. He knew. “We getting a bonus for the extra blood?”
“We don’t do kids,” Caleb said.
“We do if we know what’s good for us,” Henry said.
Silence settled between them. It was anything but comfortable. Dale looked at Henry. Henry looked at Caleb. Caleb looked from Dale to Henry and back again. Henry had seen that look before. It was the moment when someone realized they were being asked to cross the line. Everyone had their own version of the line. For some it was as simple as taking an extra drink before getting behind the wheel of their car, for others it was walking out of a restaurant without paying. For him it was killing kids. Pretty much anything else was doable, but kids … There was a special place in Hell for men who did shit like that.
“You’re joking, right?”
“No way. Not happening,” Caleb said. Henry was with him on that. “We don’t kill kids, that’s not what we do.”
“Here’s the choice we’ve got, Caleb,” Henry said. “We either do what we’re told or we paint a big red target on our backs. The boss has promised to send someone to clean up our mess if we don’t do as we’re told. So, I don’t know about you two, but given a choice like that I need a drink, because there’s no way I can even think about killing some kid sober.”
They went inside the strip joint. There was an old woman on the pole in skimpy black lace bra and panties. He could see her Caesarean scar as the hard skin glistened in the spotlight. He held up three fingers, meaning three beers. The barman balanced off a thick foam and put the icy glasses on the counter one at a time. The amber liquid looked and tasted like piss. The music ground on, the woman on the pole moving disinterestedly.
Dale watched her do her thing.
Behind her, on the edge of the curtain, Henry saw the next act getting ready. She had snow-tips frosted into her hair and more folds in her belly than he had in the notes in his wallet. She sucked at a cigarette, blowing smoke.
They took a booth at the back.
Up on the stage the woman fumbled with her bra strap and huge pendulous breasts spilled out of the lace cups as she lowered into a squat.
Henry put his drink on the table. The music was supposed to be seductive. It sounded like cats being strangled. The whole place did nothing to improve their moods.
“So, no one’s saying it, so I will. How much extra are we getting paid for doing the kids?” Dale said, when they were approaching the end of their first drink.
“Extra? You can’t seriously think there’s a price that makes this okay, man?” said Caleb. “They’re kids.”
“How much?” Dale asked again.
Henry looked at him. Dale scratched at his nose and sniffed. There was a wildness in his eyes the dark bar couldn’t completely hide. “Nothing. Not a single cent. The price is the price. Same as it always was.”
Dale took a slug of his beer, finishing it, and waved to the bar, signaling for three more. “What we do is an art,” Dale said, leaning forward. “It’s a gift. That’s why they pay us, coz we’re good at what we do. And we can do this. But it’s gonna cost.”
“Is it?” Caleb asked.
“We do this thing for the money, don’t we?” Dale said. Henry knew he’d already rationalized it in his head. “We don’t pick and choose the jobs we take, we just pocket the money if the green’s right. And it’s always right, coz if we don’t do it someone else will, and that someone will be the one the client turns to next time. And if we’re gonna pretend some kind of morality, well, screw that. You kill someone you kill them. Don’t matter none if they’re nine or ninety. They’re dead. The money spends just as good. Done and done and on to the next one. It’s who we are. It’s what we do.”
“Maybe it’s who you are,” Caleb said.
But Dale was right. It was who they were. There was no point pretending at morality or ethics. They weren’t good people. They’d given up the right to any sort of moral quandaries a long time ago.
Henry turned to Caleb. “He’s right. But if you want out, now’s the time to say. I won’t stop you walking, brother. I’ll miss you, but I’ll understand.”
“But you don’t get your cut,” Dale said, still thinking about the money. “Your call. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it situation. And as far as I’m concerned, we took the money, so we’re obligated to do the job right.”
“And if we do it wrong,” Henry said, “we better be ready to run for the rest of our fucking lives, because the boss ain’t exactly the forgiving kind.”
29
Morning came, crisp and bright and bitterly cold.
There was no sign of the snow melting, but after the initial flurry, things had settled down, so we weren’t snowed in, which was a major plus. Part of me had half expected to open the door to a huge drift that I’d need to dig us out of before breakfast.
I was up before the others stirred. I’d woken up twice in the night to put extra wood in the stove. The chair wasn’t the most comfortable piece of furniture in the world, so my neck and lower back felt as though they’d been pummeled by an army of Buzz Lightyears—or whatever Chase’s action figure was called.
The room was still reasonably warm. There were a dozen split logs beside the stove, drying out in the heat. More than enough to keep it going for the day. I’d bring some more in from the store to keep us warm tomorrow and the day after. I figured that ought to do it. Any longer and we were moving into dangerous territory. I wanted them gone, not least because their still being here meant the three Stooges were still out there, and that wasn’t a thought I wanted to entertain any longer than I had to.
Right now my biggest concern was making sure we hadn’t had any visitors during the night. I stepped outside and closed the door behind me as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to wake Raelynn and the kids. They’d been absolutely wiped when they’d finally hit the sack. I could only imagine how wrung out they really were with all of that running, especially Raelynn if she’d known she was being hunted. That kind of pressure, the constant need to look back over your shoulder, wore you out pretty fast. Still, they were here now, and there was no rush for them to go anywhere.
I’d promised Wayne I’d swing by for him in the pick-up as long as I could get it down to the road. He wanted to see the cabin. I wanted him to see it. And I wanted to see his face when he did. It was starting to look like a proper home.
The only fresh tracks in the snow had been made by a deer. No doubt it was the same visitor who’d called by before. We were becoming old friends, him and me. Apart from that and the slight impressions made by a few birds that barely broke the crust of the surface and could only be seen close up, the whiteness was flawless and endless.
I hadn’t expected the Stooges to find this place, not yet. It’d take a while for them to join the dots and trace Wayne to the cabin, to me, to here, even if someone with loose lips had decided to spill their guts. The weather just made that even more unlikely. For now. But now wasn’t forever, so I was going to need to take measures to secure the place soon enough.
“You want coffee?” Raelynn called from the doorway.
I hadn’t heard her come out. I was getting sloppy. It had been too long since someone had hunted me, I guess. I’d started taking things for granted. It was a good lesson to relearn. Even so, she was lucky the SIG Sauer was in the pack, or she’d have seen the beady black eye of the barrel instead of my smile of thanks as I spun around. That wouldn’t have made the situation any more uncomfortable, though.
She wasn’t exactly dressed for the elements, and I could see every curve through the sheer fabric of her nightgown. It reminded me of a line I’d read somewhere. She had a body like a country road, loads of curves where I wanted to stop off and take a picnic. Raelynn Cardiman was bad for the soul. “Sure,” I said. “But you could have stayed in bed a little longer, you know.”
“You’re joking, right? Once the kids are awake, there’s no stopping them.”
She rubbed her arms against the cold. It was a reflex. Brisk. But I suspected there was more to it than that. I’d seen my share of addicts overdue a fix. It wasn’t my place to parent her, and I wasn’t her sponsor, so what she did with her own body was her business. Who was I to judge? But I wouldn’t keep her secret if I thought she was getting stoned and putting the kids at risk. There were limits. I figured Wayne knew what he was getting himself into in bringing his junkie daughter home. But then again, maybe he didn’t. They did say love was blind.
I took a quick walk around the shack before I went back inside. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I saw where the deer had headed off into the woods, but nothing else, which was just fine by me. I walked back around to the front, kicked the snow off my boots and went inside, just as the kids burst out, laughing and screaming, intent on making those snow angels they’d been promised. I stepped aside to let them pass, not that I’d have been able to stop them if I’d wanted to. They wriggled and squirmed and ran, then threw themselves to the ground laughing even more as they swept their arms and legs out.
There was a mug of piping hot black coffee waiting for me when I closed the door on their noise.
“They’ve been desperate to get out there from the moment they opened their eyes,” Raelynn said.
“That’s kids for you. Give it an hour and we’ll have a snowman the size of King Kong looking down on us.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she said. “Hope you’ve got a carrot in here somewhere. Every good snowman needs a nose.”
I smiled, and looked out of the window at the kids. I could see the sheer joy in their auras, halos burning bright. It made a change from the fear and anger I was used to seeing on people. I could have watched them for a long time. Even so, it was disconcerting to have such a sharp and unexpected reminder of the implant and how different it made me from the rest of the world. Not for me a normal life playing father to giggling kids. Not for me a life without the threat of violence lurking in someone’s shadow, the blazing hot red of rage, the insidious, almost gangrenous green of jealousy, and somewhere in between the color lurking around Raelynn’s body that marked the stirrings of lust.
It wasn’t clear cut a lot of the time. Sometimes it was a stirring, a kind of blur around someone’s head, with no obvious color, if it wasn’t driven by the extremes of emotion, but other times I was in no doubt what someone was feeling. Like Raelynn. Every time she looked me up and down.
I consciously willed myself to ignore it. It wasn’t like she knew she was giving off her heat in waves. But maybe she wouldn’t have cared if she had known. Hard to say about some people. What I did know was that kids deserved a life where they could enjoy themselves without the adults having to fret over them every minute of the day, imagining the worst. This place was much better for them than the city could ever have been.
I saw Chase scoop up a handful of snow and run at his sister. She responded in kind, cackling, as she buried her hands deep in the snow and threw up a thick plume of white for him to run straight into. They were having fun.
“Don’t suppose you could drive me into town this morning? I was hoping to meet up with an old friend,” Raelynn said, watching me watching them. “I wouldn’t ask normally, but what with the weather and everything . . . It’s a long walk.”
There was something about the way she asked that seemed a little peculiar. I didn’t want to read too much into it, but this was her first morning back and she was itching to meet up with a friend she couldn’t have seen for years, rather than spend the time with her kids while they were having fun. I might have understood it if she had asked me to take her up to see Wayne, but she hadn’t even mentioned him. In her place this morning I would have asked right away if he’d been in touch. We’d left him alone in a house that had been burgled a few hours earlier by people almost certainly looking for her. That she didn’t ask was telling.
“Sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t. “I promised your father I’d pick him up first thing. I’m already running late. You can always walk.”
“It’s miles.”
“Good exercise,” I said.
“You’re a very strange man,” she said.
“I am,” I agreed. “Stranger than you could ever imagine.”
“I’ve got a good imagination,” she said. Again with the flirting.
“Not good enough,” I promised her.
She let it drop.
Over the next few minutes she tried to convince me to change my mind, but gave up pretty quickly after the third time I said no. I finished my coffee without taking my coat off and headed for the door. “There’s bread and eggs and a few cans in the cupboard, nothing fancy, but you’re welcome to help yourself. I’ll try and check in with you in a few hours. If I can manage it I’ll swing by and drop you and the kids at your dad’s later.”
“Thanks,” she said, through a smile that was painfully forced. “Have fun.”
I closed the door behind me, made a fuss of the kids, then climbed into the pick-up and turned it around. I headed for the road.
