Cold Heart (30 page)

It was to be expected.

Over time, he would report that everyone in McRay had died.

If anyone asked.

It never occurred to El that Rich might be missed. Things that didn't fit neatly into his plan weren't ignored. They just didn't exist.

Rich circled again, tilting the plane at a hard angle.

What is he doing?

Land the damned thing!

El stepped out into plain view.

He smiled broadly and waved.

D
AWN STUCK HER HEAD
out into the murky twilight of the bedroom.

It blinded her.

She covered her eyes and waited for them to adjust, her ears as keen as a rabbit's.

Micky had stopped shouting. Maybe she had given up.

Or El was making her be quiet.

The thought froze Dawn in place, half in, half out of hiding. She knelt there for a long minute, listening.

What if he's down there, in the store?

What can I do?

Go back and hide?

El was going to find her sooner or later if she did. She let out a long deep breath and pulled herself as quietly as possible to her feet, creeping one step at a time across the floor, not wanting to make the boards creak the way El had.

She stopped just short of the bedroom door, standing on tiptoe, trying to peek over the edge of the landing. She could see the light from the front window and new footprints marring the carpet of ash. The door was half-open. If El was gone, he hadn't bothered to close it. A shaft of light forced its way inside as though it had to struggle against the darkness that El had created.

Dawn took another tentative step forward and her eyes met Micky's. Then Micky's eyes closed and slowly reopened. She was nodding to herself and smiling.

“He isn't here, Dawn,” Micky said in a hoarse voice. “Please come and cut me loose.”

T
HE PLANE ROARED OVER
El's head, descending fast, the engine sputtering.

El watched as the wheels splattered gravel and the plane fishtailed and then straightened, the flaps dropped and the engine idled. Rich slowly rolled to a stop at the far end of the runway. The motor revved once more and Rich made a 180degree turn and then there was silence.

El blinked.

He had expected Rich to taxi back to him.

Why had the plane stopped at the other end of the airstrip?

He didn't know whether to walk casually out to greet Rich or to wait.

His fingers tapped the walnut grip of the pistol nervously.

The plane just sat there, its windshield reflecting the low sun into his eyes.

Walk over? Act nonchalant and wait?

This was the kind of situation that El wasn't good at. He hadn't planned for this.

He nudged gravel with the toe of his boot and chewed his lip.

Nothing moved on the far end of the runway.

What was the bastard doing?

A pleasant chill started between El's shoulder blades.

Was Rich on the radio?

Was Micky right?

El didn't have any idea of whether or not the plane's engine had to be running to use the radio but on reflection he assumed not. He stared up at the high peaks and wondered if Rich could contact anyone.

Maybe.

El sauntered toward the plane.

When he had gone ten paces, the side door of the Supercub popped open and a couple of booted feet hit the runway. But the window in the door reflected light just like the windshield and the sense of menace behind the twin mirror surfaces sent a pleasant tingle of fear up El's spine. He couldn't see a face to match the feet and he wasn't expecting the sound of the bullhorn that brought him up short.

“That's far enough!”

The voice was harsh and nasal over the electronic amplification. It croaked away through the trees like the call of a solitary crow.

El tried to smile and wave but just when he needed it his voice failed him.

Was that a gun barrel between the door and the plane?

He glanced around.

He wasn't on the strip proper. Instead he trudged through the spongy muskeg beside it and it was maybe twenty yards to the nearest trees.

He glanced back but it was equally far to the fourwheeler, where the loose rifle rested against the seat.

Get your voice! Say something!

But El wasn't accustomed to shouting. Mumbling was what he practiced.

He waved again stupidly and took another couple of steps forward.

“No farther!”

The voice was even harsher but fear had crept into it.

Did Rich have a gun or was he bluffing?

More than likely he did have one in the plane.

He'd be a fool not to, considering where he flew.

In that case, El decided, it was time to trust fate.

He waved again and, sidestepping in case Rich did have a gun, he drew the pistol and began to fire as he advanced.

G
UNSHOTS RANG THROUGH THE
open door.

Dawn was on her knees clawing at the duct tape with raw fingers. She couldn't seem to find a loose edge or peel the tenacious tape and Micky urging her on only frustrated her the more.

Both of them stared at each other as another shot echoed off the mountains.

Micky closed her eyes and cursed.

“Find a knife,” she said. “Anything sharp. Hurry.”

Dawn shook her head.

“You have to, Dawn,” said Micky. “Go!”

“He took all the knives. He even took Rita's scissors off her sewing machine. I looked all over.”

Of course
, thought Micky.
No guns. No knives. No sharp objects or anything that might be a weapon. All the weapons in McRay belonged to El now.

Think!

She stared at the blue mountainside through the window and tried with all her heart and her cunning to come up with a way out of their dilemma. El was only one man. Surely they had a chance at least to beat him. Their ancestors had defeated wooly mammoths with only stone tools and courage. Eskimos had been hunting polar bears with little more for millennia. And El's
brain was dangerously out-of-whack. That had to give them a tiny edge.

Or did it?

Had it saved any of the others?

Weren't those shots proof that he had just murdered Rich?

But all the others had been surprised. They hadn't known what was coming.

She and Dawn
knew.

And they had a few minutes at least to try to escape. If they could get out the door before El returned, then her idea of hiding out until help arrived might work. Forget looking for a weapon. Forget facing El. Just hide and wait and let the authorities deal with him.

The sun reflected off the snow on a peak outside and prismed through the window directly into her face. The sharp pain closed her eyes and she cursed softly. But when she opened them an idea was written on her face.

“Break the window,” said Micky. “Get a shard and cut this tape.”

Dawn leaped to her feet to obey. She searched quickly through the wreckage that El had wrought. Beneath a pile of blankets she discovered an ax handle. She rushed straight up to the window and, without hesitating, made a home-run swing. The crack and tinkling sound took Micky back to the crash at the bar. And, for a second, all she could see was Wade's hand, hanging lifeless from the window of the police cruiser.

Dawn leaned on the handle, surveying the pieces of glass that had fallen out onto the front deck. Micky shook her head. The wood frame held deadly-looking triangular shards, radiating from the center point where Dawn's blow had landed. The transparent daggers ranged in length from eight inches to two feet long, and they angled slightly outward, a crystal shark, snapping at the world.

Micky struggled against her bindings. “Get gloves or a cloth! Something to protect your hands. Quick.”

Dawn vanished behind the counter.

Two more shots rang out. Different.

Then another.

Then a plane engine, revving into life.

E
L CROUCHED BESIDE THE
four-wheeler, nursing the wound in his right calf. The prop on the Supercub stirred loose gravel at the far end of the runway, and already the plane was starting to roll. El leaned the pistol on the front right fender and fired off the last three shots in the cylinder in rapid succession.

The plane picked up speed.

El had sensed Rich getting ready to fire before he caught the glint of Rich's scope and that intuition and the flash of light set off something in his brain. He didn't hear the shot that hit him in the leg and spun him like a broken-field runner, didn't know that his dance had probably saved his life when Rich's second shot went wild, past the spot El's head had been only a split second earlier.

El stumbled stiff-legged back to the four-wheeler and cowered behind it, trying to catch his breath.

The pain hit him then. Not hard.

Not yet.

But it would and he couldn't look at his leg.

No way.

He didn't mind other people's blood.

But he couldn't stomach his own.

Micky would have to fix it.

After he took care of Rich.

He shoved the empty pistol back into his holster and reached across the seat for Clive's rifle.

The plane was almost on him.

He wondered if Rich could get a shot out the window.

Probably not. He had to fly the plane.

El grabbed the rifle by the barrel and started to drag it across the seat.

A violent explosion erupted in his ear. Hot vibrations rattled through his palm, up his arm, into his shoulder. He dropped back against the engine of the four-wheeler as the rifle clattered onto the gravel on the far side of the Honda.

He shivered so hard his teeth chattered.

A dull burning sensation started in his right hand and when he wiped his hand across his face bright ribbons of blood blurred down his cheeks.

D
AWN JERKED AT A
twelve-inch piece of glass, her hands wrapped in a terry-cloth towel. Overhead the rumble of the plane rattled the rafters. Rich banked so low over the store that Micky was certain the landing gear would rip through the roof.

So Rich was still alive.

But if El had been killed, surely Rich would have come into town to search for survivors.

Dawn clasped the piece of glass in the wad of cloth and, respectful of the cruel edges that gleamed in the half-light, hurried back to Micky's chair. Micky stared at the jagged shard and noted the bad break, the bulblike, prismatic edges that heralded a microthin, razor-sharp edge. Dawn had chosen well, whether she knew it or not. The
scalpel
would cut duct tape like butter if the girl didn't slice right through Micky's arm.

Dawn ever so carefully cut the bindings on Micky's left side, slicing gently where the tape stuck to the chair and not Micky.

Micky marveled at Dawn's control. Fear welled behind the girl's eyes. But it stayed back there, held tightly at bay, her hands taut but not shaking. When Micky's arm slid free she reached out and slipped practiced fingers around the glass. Taking it out of Dawn's willing grip, she sliced the tape from her other arm, then her feet.

The plane circled.

Dawn studied Micky and something passed between the two of them before the girl fell into Micky's arms.

Micky wanted to hold her forever. She felt strong lungs pumping against her and warm tears burning her throat. She stroked the girl's hair gently.

“We have to find out what he's doing,” Micky said.

Dawn nodded.

Both of them edged cautiously over to the shattered window, peering out cautiously into the dregs of the day. Rich circled again and Micky waved, though she didn't believe that he saw her.

No sign of El.

“He's waving back!” said Dawn, pointing toward the sky.

The noise from the plane echoed in the clearing, a chainsaw buzz that grated Micky's teeth. But it was a welcome pain.

She glanced quickly across the open area out front, judging their chances of making it to the distant sanctuary of the trees before El could return. But, as she was calculating the odds, Dawn continued staring intently at the plane, her hands shading her eyes.

Rich was no longer circling.

He was diving toward the trail to the strip.

Micky tried to decide if there was an oddness to the sound of the plane.

Something off.

Then there was a rifle shot from the trees.

The plane veered sharply away to the left and its engine noise faded.

The sound of the four-wheeler took its place and Micky saw it nose out of the trees.

She turned back toward Dawn. The girl stood stiff, her mouth open, staring across the clearing at El.

“Upstairs!” screamed Micky, shoving Dawn backward. “Now!”

T
HE PLANE BUZZED AROUND
like a fucking mosquito.

Why doesn't he land or get the hell out of town?
El wanted Rich either to go away or die so that he would be out of El's brain forever. Already the memory of Terry Glorianus was dulling. Clive and Rita were merely momentary frustrations. That was the way his brain functioned. El dealt with the here and now.

He could plan in a limited fashion. The future was a vague notion to him, though he could function in it in his own way. But the past tended to be irrelevant.

He just wished that there would be an end to the goddamned plane because he knew that when it went away he wouldn't be bothered by it anymore and he could get back to Micky.

Micky would fix his leg.

That was how his brain was working right at that moment, as he approached the clearing. He had already forgotten the heated manner in which he and Micky had parted. She was back in the place in his mind she had inhabited for the past few years. She was his girl. Micky would take care of him and love him once the other distractions around McRay were taken care of.

He had visualized that scenario for years, until it became
so real to him that he
had
to act on it. The others were going to kill him. He knew it. He'd known it for a long time. Rita and Clive, Howard and the others. Every time he'd met them he'd had his hand on his pistol. Ready. Waiting for them to make their move.