In Seconds

25

This wasn’t going to work. They were making him wait forever.

Already nervous when he’d arrived, Rex eyed the crowd hoping to see an emergency-room doctor. A mother holding a sick baby. A teenager nursing a swollen, probably broken, ankle. A toddler wiggling in the lap of some exhausted father who was trying to keep a cloth pressed to the cut on his head.

He wasn’t one of these people. He was here because he’d been stupid enough to get hooked on OxyContin, and he didn’t want to go crying to someone about it now. So what if he was sick? He couldn’t sit here while Virgil hunted down Horse, and Laurel faced Ink. What kind of friend would that make him? What kind of man?

He eyed the door. Peyton thought she’d done her duty. She wouldn’t worry if he left because she wouldn’t know about it. At his insistence, she’d gone to a motel with the kids. He could call her, tell her they were giving him clonidine, and that he was fine now, perfect and heading home to sleep. He wished he could get some clonidine. At least then he’d be able function in the short-term. It would stop the nausea, the coughing, the heart palpitations. His bones felt as if they were on fire, as if they were burning through his flesh. Clonidine should help that, but for how long? With a success rate of less than ten percent after one year of treatment, even a medical detox rarely worked. Either he quit, or he didn’t. He’d believed that from the start. So why was he here?

“Fuck this,” he muttered, and got up.

“Are you leaving?” The woman who’d sat next to him for the past two hours acted like he was committing a cardinal sin. She’d been staring at him as though there wasn’t a TV to entertain her five feet away. She creeped him out. Maybe she recognized him as a fellow addict, thought they could become friends or allies or share needles or some shit. She didn’t know he wasn’t going in the same direction anymore. No one did, because he looked and felt worse than he ever had in his life.

“Hey!” She tried again to get him to respond. He didn’t bother, but she’d spoken loudly enough to draw the attention of someone in authority.

“Sir? Excuse me, sir?” It was the nurse Peyton had spoken to when they first arrived. He didn’t want to acknowledge her, either, but she caught up with him before he could reach the doors.

“Would you give me the respect of an answer, please?” She sounded pissed, but she had no idea how hard it was just to walk. His head felt as if it’d been cleaved in two.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, marshaling all his strength to be polite.

“You could take a seat. I don’t think it’ll be much longer.”

He hung his head, took a few measured breaths. “What’d Peyton say to you?”

“Peyton who?”

She was playing dumb. He could read it on her face. “The woman I came in with. You remember her. Had a belly out to here?” He held his hand in front of his own stomach.

Her mouth flattened, became a mere slash in her face. “She said you probably wouldn’t stay. She was worried about it when she saw how crowded the waiting room was. She cares about you, so I’m doing my best to help her out.”

The nurse thought Peyton’s baby was his, that Peyton had to deal with an addict—that is, loser—for a husband.

“Come on, sit down,” she coaxed. “I’ll go see if I can get you in any sooner.”

Before all the kids who needed to be treated? No way. He wasn’t going to jump the line. He was a full-grown man who felt guilty for wasting resources that should go to other people, people who weren’t stupid enough to get themselves into such an unenviable position. He could buy a few pills on the street—any kind of painkiller if he couldn’t get OxyContin—enough so that he could be useful again. Then, after everything was over, he’d go clean.

“I’m okay,” he said.

She grasped his arm. “Please? That woman you were with. She just about begged me.”

Staring down at her hand, he took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine.” He started back toward his seat, but as soon as she disappeared down the hall, he strode out and used his cell phone to call his street pharmacist.

The fury that seethed inside Ink felt like a separate living and breathing entity, one he couldn’t control. No matter what he did, Virgil and his sister always remained just out of reach. Now L.J. was shot and looking as if he had one foot in the grave as he slouched against the door of the truck, and Ink couldn’t even get him some help.

Why he was suddenly so set on saving L.J., Ink didn’t know. For a few minutes in the forest, he’d believed that L.J. was going to abandon him. That deserved no loyalty. Just yesterday, he’d been planning on killing L.J., anyway. But not yet. He wasn’t finished with him. Losing L.J. created another wrinkle in his plans and narrowed his chances of success. It was a victory for the other side.

“You okay?” He’d been barking this question every few minutes, and L.J. would grunt, but this time Ink got no response. L.J. had even quit wincing when the truck’s tires hit various ruts and grooves as they bounced up the dirt road to the cabin.

“Hey!” When Ink shook him, L.J.’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing glassy eyes. Quite a bit of blood soaked his shirt. Was he dying?

“Shit!” Ink slammed his fist into the dash. What was he going to do? He’d always fancied himself as resourceful, capable of doing whatever needed to be done in a pinch. If that meant sewing up a gash in his arm or one of his comrades’, he’d do it. If it meant digging out a bullet, he’d do that, too. He’d removed a slug from his own shin once. It’d been a grisly affair—he’d nearly passed out—but he’d been successful, and it’d made him quite famous among The Crew. They still asked to see the scar, and talked about the balls it took to do something like that.

He had the balls to do this, too. But as far as he knew, he didn’t even have a first aid kit to work with. He hadn’t seen one, anyway. It wasn’t something the men who’d rented the place had thought to bring. Probably because they’d only been planning to do a little hiking and fishing, and take a few pictures, and couldn’t imagine getting hurt. Or they couldn’t imagine getting hurt and being unable to seek help in town. They’d had a vehicle, after all, and there’d been a group of them.

Ink, on the other hand, had no help. And he had to lay low until the heat was off.

But he could work without a first aid kit. He’d sedate L.J. with the last of his pain pills, then use hot water and bandages made from the clothes of the men he’d shot. He’d tossed their suitcases in the back bedroom, so he still had access to them.

“What—what are you…thinking?” L.J. was watching him through narrow slits, as if it was difficult for him to open his eyes.

“I’m thinking how I’m going to patch you up.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he struggled to swallow. “Patch…me up? But…I need a doctor. I think…I’m dying.”

He had to feel like shit to be less concerned about getting caught than getting help. “You’re not going to die,” Ink told him.

“Just…drop me off at…at a hospital. There’s got to be one around here somewhere. You can…you can still get away.”

But he wasn’t done here. Not by a long shot. Besides, running, especially in the vehicle they had now, would only get him arrested. A description of the truck must’ve gone out to every law enforcement agency in the area. The best thing to do was sit tight. They had a few days yet before anyone noticed that the men who’d rented the cabin were gone. That gave them time to get L.J. back on his feet, time for Ink to come up with alternate transportation and time to finish what they’d set out to do in the first place.

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” he told L.J.

“But the pain… Feels as if my heart can’t beat…as if…as if it’s filled with…with blood or something.”

“I’ve been shot before. It always feels like you’re dying,” he said. “Just relax. We’re home now, and I’m going to take care of you.”

And if he couldn’t? He’d bury L.J. in the forest with the other guys and figure out another way. Because he wasn’t leaving Laurel alive. Not after coming this close. That small-town bastard sheriff was going to get his, too.

“Son of a bitch!”

Vivian startled awake to see that she’d fallen asleep in a chair at Myles’s bedside. Despite the late hour, the hospital in Libby was abuzz with various noises and had been the whole time. The beeping machines, the conversation of the doctor who’d spoken to Myles as he cleaned his wounds and bandaged him up, the nurses who came in and out with blood pressure cuffs or medication or pushed carts past his open doorway. It should’ve kept her from dozing off. But she’d somehow grown accustomed to it. Or she’d been too exhausted to let it bother her. She’d drifted off almost as soon as she knew he was going to be fine. But this, coming from the sheriff’s own lips, made her bolt from her chair.

“You okay?” she gasped before she could gather her wits enough to realize he’d just hung up the phone and looked more angry than hurt.

“They let Ink and Lloyd get away.” Hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand, he drooped dejectedly onto the pillow. “I had half a dozen deputies swarming the area and somehow they couldn’t get the job done.”

This wasn’t what Vivian wanted to hear. She’d thought that maybe, finally, the nightmare would be over. There’d been a price. Myles’s injuries had been frightening to her and painful to him. But the bullet that went through his leg hadn’t hit a major artery or chipped the bone. The second bullet, the one that grazed his neck, had left a cut, nothing more.

“Get away?” she repeated dully.

He sighed as he scowled up at her. “They’ve scoured the area. They can’t find them or their truck.”

But they couldn’t give up this soon. “Ink won’t leave until he gets what he wants. That means he’s still here.”

“Where?” he demanded. “For the past three hours, my deputies have stopped every car and truck coming to or from our neighborhood at two different checkpoints. I’ve had a K-9 unit and a bevy of officers with heavy-duty flashlights combing the forest. There’s been no sign of them. The dogs picked up a scent and chased it to where we found some tire tracks, but every white truck we’ve stopped hasn’t been the one they’re driving. Maybe they slipped through before we put up the blockade. But if that’s the case, they could be a hundred and fifty miles in any direction, and we don’t know enough about the make and model of the truck to expect other departments to do much more than be on the lookout.”

“They haven’t left,” she said. “They’ve holed up. They’re waiting.”

“There’ve been no reports of strangers lurking about, no other incidents since Trudie called me earlier.”

“Maybe they’re still in the forest.”

“If so, they won’t be able to stay there long. I’m pretty sure I shot one of them. I definitely heard a scream and saw him fall.”

Could she be lucky enough that Ink was dead? Without actually seeing his body, Vivian couldn’t believe it. He seemed indestructible. “Have the deputies checked my house?”

“Several times. Harold Willis from Libby is there now.”

“Then I don’t know what to say, except—” she rubbed her eyes, noted the lines in his face that suggested he was equally exhausted “—we need some rest. We’ll have to regroup in the morning.”

He didn’t like that answer, but there didn’t seem to be anything more to suggest.

“Do you want me to call Elizabeth’s house? Let Marley know you’ve been hurt?” She hadn’t done so because she’d wanted to know the extent of his injuries before setting off any alarms. There was no point in upsetting Marley, not without good reason. Once the doctor came, and he and Myles began to talk, she didn’t want to interrupt. Then she’d fallen asleep.

“No. There’s nothing to be gained from waking the whole Rogers family. Getting dragged out of bed to hear I’ve been shot will only scare Marley. I don’t want her to come home in the middle of this mess, anyway. I’ll explain what happened in the morning. Hopefully, by then, I’ll look less ragged so she’ll believe me when I say I’m going to live.”

“Are you in a lot of pain?” Vivian couldn’t imagine he wasn’t. Earlier, he wouldn’t take anything except Tylenol, said he was afraid it would impair his ability to think and he was still trying to direct the search for Ink and Lloyd from his hospital bed. But he’d already done all he could. In her opinion, it was time to give him the Vicodin his doctor had left in a little paper cup so he could rest.

“My leg is throbbing like crazy,” he admitted. “But it’s not as bad as it could be. Will you talk to the doctor? Get me some crutches so we can go?”

She blinked in surprise. “Go? Where?”

“Home. There’s nothing more they can do for me here.”

“But you were shot at home.”

“No, I was shot at your house.”

“Because you went over there before you had backup.” His deputy had complained about this when he came running up the walk to find his sheriff injured. She was angry at Myles for taking such a risk, too. He could’ve been killed—exactly what she’d feared from the start.

“Ink and Lloyd would’ve been gone if I’d waited.”

“They’re still gone,” she pointed out.

He didn’t seem to like that answer, but he took the time to cover a yawn before responding. “You really know how to kick a guy when he’s down.”

She refused to smile, wasn’t willing to make light of this. She didn’t want him returning to his house until they’d found Ink and Lloyd and any other Crew members who might be in the area. “Someone needs to kick you. With your cruiser in the driveway, I’m sure they realize you live next door.”

“So? They have no reason to come after me. I’m the guy they want to avoid.”

“They’ll come if they suspect I’m with you. Unless you want to get into another shoot-out, you should stay here.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “And where will you stay?”

“I’ll get a motel room for the next couple of nights.” She couldn’t face going back home, not after Myles’s close call.

“Good idea. We’ll both stay at the Blue Ridge. Get the doctor.”

She rattled the paper cup with his pills inside it. “Will you take the Vicodin if I do?”

“I’m a tough guy. I don’t need any painkillers.” He was teasing, but she got the impression he honestly meant to refuse—until he tried to move. Then he winced and fell back with a groan. “Shit, yeah. Give me those.”

She laughed as she offered him a glass of water to swallow his meds. Then she went to find the doctor, but he called her back.

“Vivian?”

She turned to see him put the empty cup on his rolling cart.

“Were you really not wearing any pants when you knelt over me earlier?”

The memory of his fingers slipping beneath the elastic of her panties sent a tornado of warmth and excitement twisting through her. She checked the hallway to make sure their conversation couldn’t be overheard. “I was covered. I mean, as well as I would be in a swimsuit. It was just that once I heard the gunshots and knew you weren’t in the house, I didn’t dare take the time to find my jeans, let alone put them on.” As soon as the deputy had arrived to assist him, she’d dashed into the house to grab a pair of sweats, so it wasn’t as if anyone else had seen her in her underwear.

“I remember.” A dreamy smile curved his lips. “Your panties—they’re thin and lacy, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “If I didn’t know it was too soon, I’d think the Vicodin had kicked in and sent you for a loop.”

His smile stretched wider. “Some things transcend pain.”

“Apparently so.” She folded her arms in an attempt to control the delicious shiver his expression evoked. “Wait a second. It was only a few hours ago that you put me on notice.”

“For what?”

“You told me you didn’t want to get involved with me.”

He sobered. “That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before I realized it was already too late.”

Horse is in the back bedroom with Gully. As alone as he’ll get. Do it now. I just unlocked the back door on my way to the bathroom.

This was it. The text Virgil had been waiting for. It had taken most of the night for Mona to do what she’d promised, but the situation wasn’t looking a whole lot better despite that. He had no idea who Gully was or how he might change what was about to happen. And although the sun was coming up and the crowd on the street had dispersed, there were still plenty of cars and trucks parked along the curb, suggesting a full house. A lot of the guys who frequented Horse’s illegal club simply crashed out on whatever they could find. With a girl in one of the back bedrooms. On a couch. Some even fell asleep on the floor, too high or drunk to realize they were lying in their own vomit.

So Horse wasn’t nearly as alone as Virgil would’ve liked. To top it off, Virgil was so groggy he felt as if he was underwater. He’d been up for twenty-four hours, been on high alert too long to be as sharp as he needed to be. This wasn’t the condition in which he wanted to decide whether Mona’s text was an invitation to be tortured and shot in the head—or the help he’d requested.

But he didn’t have to decide, did he? He’d already made the decision to trust her when he’d first contacted her.

After bringing the photo of his wife and children to his lips for a quick goodbye kiss, he took out the lighter he’d picked up at the last gas station and burned it, along with all the other photos and business cards he hadn’t even known were in his wallet. He burned the car rental agreement and anything else that could possibly help The Crew find his family, too. In case he didn’t survive the next few hours, he didn’t want to leave anything that could be traced behind. He hoped The Crew’s revenge would be complete at his death, if things went in that direction, but with them, there was no way to tell. They were the most bloodthirsty group of men he’d ever known. Their unflinching willingness to perform the most brutal acts had served him well in prison, had put him on top right along with them.

But it’d created a hell all its own once he was exonerated.

Slapping his face to revive himself, he took a deep breath, slipped the gun into his waistband under the front of his shirt and got out. One shot. That was all it would take—if he could get in without being stopped, maintain an element of surprise and manage to get Horse in his sights without the others standing in the way. Ironically, he’d never used a gun until after prison. But running a bodyguard service gave him good reason to visit the shooting range. Maybe it was the only thing in his favor, but he was one hell of a marksman.

Of course, there was another problem. Even if he hit his target and killed Horse, as he hoped, the blast would bring everyone else in the house down on him. Other than making a run for it, he hadn’t figured out how he’d get back to his car. He could only hope the answer would be apparent when the time came, because there was no telling what he might encounter once he got inside.

As he walked around the trunk of his rental car, his cell phone buzzed with another text message.

Mona again.

Are you coming?

He didn’t bother answering. If she was baiting a trap, he didn’t want her to know any more than she already did. He was, however, tempted to call Rex, to tell him to look out for Peyton and Laurel if anything happened to him. He would have, except he didn’t need to; he knew Rex would do just that. At least, he would if he could. So instead of placing that call, he dropped the phone on the asphalt and smashed it to pieces.

There went his ability to communicate. It was down to sheer nerve, his gun and whether or not Mona was being truthful.