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“I’m going.” He still couldn’t make the turn down the driveway so he eased forward, tapped a trash can and backed up again, this time judging correctly; he stopped before he hit the shed. He straightened the wheels toward the road and put the truck in forward once more.
“Joey. No. We don’t even know where she is.” Saying this seemed like a retreat. He shouldn’t be arguing from logic. He was commander-in-chief.
Instinct, remember.
“Lake Mondac.”
“Shut the engine off. Get out of the truck.” Should he reach in for the keys? What if the boy’s foot slipped off the brake? One of Graham’s workers had been badly injured reaching into a moving truck, just like this, trying to grab the shifter when the driver forgot to engage it. Our bodies are no match for two tons of steel and detonating gasoline.
He glanced at the seat. Jesus. The boy had a pellet gun-Graham recognized the powerful break-action model. At close range it was as accurate as a.22, and as deadly to squirrels and river rats. Bry
“Joey! Now!” Graham snapped. “You can’t do anything. Your mother’ll be home soon. And she’d be furious if you weren’t here.”
Another retreat in the be-the-parent-in-control game.
“No, she won’t. Something’s wrong. I know something’s wrong.” The boy let up on the brake and the vehicle began to roll forward.
And, not even thinking, Graham ran in front of the vehicle and stood there, hands on the hood.
“Graham!” A
And he thought, no, it’s time somebody did make it a war.
“Get out of that truck!”
“I’m going to find Mom!”
The only thing keeping him alive was a twelve-year-old’s untied ru
“I’m going!”
The truck lurched forward a foot.
Graham gasped but didn’t move.
If you move, he told himself, you lose.
Though his mind was also ru
“You’re not going!” the boy raged. “Are you?”
He was inclined to say, It’s not our job to go. Let the police do their thing. They’re the experts. But instead he said calmly, “Get out of the truck.”
Aware that his instincts might be about to kill him.
“Are you going to go find her?” He muttered something else. Graham thought one word was “coward.”
“Joey.”
“Get out of the way!” the boy screamed. His eyes were wild.
For a moment-an eternal moment-Graham believed the boy was going to hit the gas.
Then Joey grimaced, looked down at the shifter and shoved it into park. He climbed out, reaching for the gun.
“No. Leave it.”
Graham walked up to the boy and put his arm around his shoulders. “Come on, Joey,” he said kindly. “Let’s get some-” The boy, who seemed furious at this defeat, shrugged the gesture off and stormed into the house, past his grandmother. Saying not a word.
AFTER A COMPASS reading, the women continued through a portion of the park less entangled with shrubbery and ground cover than the area they’d left behind, around Lake Mondac. There were patches of clearing-grass and meadow. And, increasingly, imposing rock formations pushed up by glaciers millions of years ago.
They walked in silence now.
A quarter mile from the last compass check Bry
Shocking herself.
Did I really say that? she wondered. My God, did I really?
Michelle glanced at her, frowning. “Your husband?”
“Just like yours.” Bry
“Oh, God. I’m sorry. Are you separated? Getting a divorce?”
After a pause she said, “No. He doesn’t know I found out.”
Then she regretted speaking. This was absurd, Bry
In fact, she supposed it was significant that only here, in these extreme circumstances, with a complete stranger, could she talk about what had been tormenting her for months. Part of her hoped Michelle would respond with a few words of sympathy, that the subject would dwindle and they could get back to completing their trek. But the young woman responded with genuine interest: “Tell me. Please. What’s the story?”
Bry
It didn’t seem to. Bry
Keith had glanced her way with a lingering gaze that confessed he certainly liked her looks; but she hadn’t really caught his interest until her turn to run a mock hostage negotiation, which the psychologist ru
“That’s pretty romantic,” Michelle offered.
What Bry
After the seminar they’d had coffee and discussed small-town policing, and small-town dating. He’d winced once and she’d asked if he was all right. Then he explained that he’d just gotten back from a medical; he’d been shot in a real hostage rescue, which nonetheless ended happily-for everybody but the hostage takers.
“The HT’s didn’t quite make it.”
Oh, that incident? she’d thought, recalling the bank robbery gone bad, two armed tweakers-meth heads-inside a branch of Piny Grove Savings with customers and employees. The windows were too thick for a safe sniper shot, so Keith had walked around the barricade and through the front door, holding his weapon at his side. Not even crouching to present a smaller target, he’d shot one in the head, took a round in the side and in the vest from the other one, then killed him too, through the kiosk he tried to hide behind.
The HTs didn’t quite make it.
Keith had recovered quickly from his minor injuries. He was reprimanded-it had to be done-for the Bruce Willis/ Clint Eastwood procedure. But nobody had treated his disobedience very seriously and, of course, the media had lapped it up like a kitten gorging on milk.
Bry
Their first date involved a horror movie, Mexican food and lengthy discussions of calibers, body armor and high-speed chases.
They were married eleven months after that.
“So you married a cowboy?”
Bry
Michelle added with a grimace, “I married my father, my therapist says… Anyway, what happened?”
Ah, what happened? Bry