Frames Per Second (40 page)

The thought was comforting.
No choice.
Kurt took it for a while, hid with it, avoided Jake’s questioning looks, his scared eyes.

Jake whispered, “What are we going to do?”

Andi turned in her seat. “Leave him alone now. He’s hurt.”

Damn straight, Kurt thought. He
was
hurt. And this was no longer his problem.

He let his forehead settle against the cold window glass and watched the night stream by in miles and miles of time.

He’d done what he could, he told himself. And maybe it would be enough.

That was always a possibility.

But until it came true, he was hurt. He was keeping to himself. That’s all he’d ever had, was himself. And that’s all that it looked like he was going to leave with.

Maudlin, self-pitying, weak thoughts. A part of him knew that.

But still he kept his head against the glass and let the miles pass by. Looking at his hands.

To try to do anything more would be a foolish gesture.

He’d done all he could.

CHAPTER 49

BEN WAITED UNTIL THEY STOPPED TO PAY THE SECOND TOLL BEFORE opening the blade. McGuire was leaning back in his seat, keeping his face out of sight as the woman in the booth took Sarah’s money.

“Going up late,” the woman said.

That was when Ben did it, opened the blade with his thumb and forefinger. The faint snicking sound was hidden under Sarah’s voice as she said, “We want to get a start on the weekend.”

She pulled away.

“That’s good,” McGuire said. “Just keep that up.”

“How about calling those guys off my daughter,” Sarah said, looking in the mirror.

McGuire was silent for a moment, and then said, “Yeah, why not?” Ben heard McGuire tap a number into his cell phone. “It’s me,” he said, moments later. “Go home. You’re done.”

Sarah’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank you,” she said.

“What the hell,” McGuire said. “I’m only doing what I have to do. No more.”

Ben slipped the blade between his wrist and the rope. And slowly began to run the blade up and down.

* * *

The sky was just beginning to lighten as they pulled in the narrow dirt road leading to the cabin. Ben’s shoulders and neck were stiff from the tension and effort of keeping his arms behind his back. He felt the remaining strand that held the rope together to be certain he could break it with a hard tug.

He had slipped the knife back into his pocket, the blade still open. As Sarah wheeled the car in front of the cabin, he pushed the blade a little farther down into his pocket, being careful not to catch it in the cloth.

“Nice old place,” McGuire said. “I could use something like this myself.” He said to Teri, “You want me to buy something like this up here, babe?”

Ben heard her sigh. “Jimbo, you’re dreaming. All this stuff we’re doing now, that gives us some time maybe. A few days. But we have to leave, we have to do what he was talking about before, go to Europe or South America, change our faces. How’re we going to get past all this? Past
them.”

“You’ll see,” McGuire said.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to. You do what you have to do, but I don’t want to see it.”

“Calm down,” McGuire said. “It’ll never come back to you. It’s going to be on him.”

Ben turned.

Teri Wheeler couldn’t meet his eyes.

Reynolds stared at the cabin, then the woods around them. “Private, all right,” he said. “This might work out.”

“Told you,” McGuire said.

Reynolds drew the revolver from his holster and said to Ben, “You come with me.” He looked back at McGuire. “Send them in when I tell you.”

McGuire said to Teri, “It’s what my uncle’s always said about Bobby. You give him a plan, he makes it happen.”

Reynolds pushed Ben up to the door. “Where’s the key?”

Ben nodded to the low-hanging eaves of the porch roof. Reynolds squinted, and then saw the key. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, took the key down, slid it into the lock, and opened the door. It was dark inside, the gray light just barely penetrating. The familiar smell of the cabin came back to him, of smoke, of split firewood.

Ben felt the presence of his father and grandfather more strongly than ever before. He could feel them waiting and watching him. Looking to see how he would protect his family.

Reynolds scanned the room, his quick eyes taking it all in. He looked at the fireplace, and brief irritation flashed across his face. “Where’s the shotgun? The one behind you and your daughter in that picture.”

Ben’s stomach dropped. “Sold it,” he said.

“Bullshit,” Reynolds said. He walked over to the kitchen area and flipped a light switch. Nothing happened. “Where’s the circuit breaker?”

Without waiting for an answer, he looked around the room quickly and then came back to Ben. He shoved him up against the wall. “Show me the circuit breaker box. I want that shotgun, and I want it right this goddamn minute.”

Ben stared at him and then said, evenly, “The police and FBI know we were looking at McGuire. My van’s not even here. Who’s going to believe Sarah and I came up with Andi and Kurt?”

Reynolds shrugged. “It’s not perfect. But his uncle said to give him a few days to get out of the country, get free. And this’ll do it. Hell, you might go a week before somebody finds you in this godforsaken place.”

“Why are you protecting that little shit?”

“Don’t waste your time on that. I do what his uncle tells me. He says save the guy’s ass.”

“Even if it means killing my kids. Making it look like me.”

Reynolds grimaced. “Jimbo told you that? Sadistic bastard. I can’t explain this so it’ll be right. If it was up to me, I’d shoot the prick and be done with it. Fact is, when I was up in the woods I called his uncle for permission to do just that. But the old man said no, the kid’s family, that’s it. And Clooney told you himself to stay away.”

“He also told me he wouldn’t take it out on my family.”

Reynolds gave a small shrug. “Yeah, well things got complicated, didn’t they? Now show me that circuit breaker.”

* * *

Reynolds kept Ben in front of him as they went into the bedroom. It was dark, with the morning light just beginning to filter through the pine trees out back. Ben went straight for the closet door, and Reynolds said, “Hold it.”

He shoved Ben to the middle of the room. “You stand right there.” He slid along the wall and opened the closet door.

Ben tensed his muscles and the strand of rope broke behind him. He grasped the knife, squeezing it tight. He had to fight the urge to lick his lips, to not wipe away the sweat that was beading his forehead.

The shotgun was right there, propped up against the right wall of the closet.

Reynolds didn’t see it at first, and Ben made himself wait until he did.

“Here we go,” Reynolds said, reaching down.

Ben took one big stride and grabbed the man’s wrist, the one holding the revolver. Reynolds pulled the trigger immediately, and Ben felt the flash alongside his thigh, but he wasn’t hit. He could feel more than see the next move, that Reynolds would club him with the shotgun.

Ben knew he couldn’t win a fight with Reynolds. The man was simply too strong, too experienced.

So Ben did what he had been visualizing those long hours up in the car. He hadn’t known who it would be, whether it would be Paulie, or Reynolds, or McGuire. But he had known if his chance came at all it would come down to this.

Ben jabbed the point of the little blade into Reynolds’s throat until he felt it grate on bone. Then he pulled the cutting edge straight back. He was covered instantly in a gout of hot blood.

The gun flashed again, and Ben’s ears were ringing too much to hear what Reynolds was trying to say as he grabbed at his ruined throat, and fell to his knees.

Ben wrested away Reynolds’s gun and ran out of the bedroom.

CHAPTER 50

KURT STOPPED BREATHING.

The second gunshot made a hollow booming inside the house, and McGuire looked at Paulie, surprised. “Already?”

Paulie started to the front door. “Hey, Reynolds, I …”

He suddenly bent down, raising his gun. But before he could get off a shot, it seemed like he was punched once by something. He staggered, and there was another gunshot, and the hair on the back of his head moved, and he fell onto the porch, one leg twisted beneath him. A small red hole streamed blood from his forehead.

Ben stepped through the doorway, and over the gunman. He was covered in blood, a shocking amount. From his chest down, he was dripping red.

Andi and Sarah turned and threw themselves onto the children. Andi onto Lainnie; Sarah onto Jake.

Kurt stood there. Not as dazed as before. The fear, bright and sharp in him now. Unable to move.

Without a word, Teri Wheeler started to run back to the cars. But McGuire backed away and swung his arm around her neck to pull her in front of him. He reached around to shoot at Ben.

Ben fired back, the two guns booming in the early morning light, shocking flashes of light.

Suddenly Teri Wheeler’s white shirt was covered with red. She looked down at herself, her palms open wide, looking down at the spreading stain on her shirt. “Jimbo,” she said, her voice quavering. “Jimbo, look at me.”

He reached over her shoulder and took aim at Ben.

With the sense of remoteness he had known all his life, Kurt could see how it was going to play out.

Ben hesitated.

He stood there looking at what he had done to Teri Wheeler, and the gun wavered in his hand.

McGuire shot him. The bullet threw him back against the wall.

“Dad!” Jake screamed.

Kurt looked at him. Grief and shock and fear all welling up in an instant in the boy’s face. The woman, Sarah, her face showing the same even as she tried to hold the boy back.

Kurt felt as if his head were on a swivel. Just the observer.

He looked back at McGuire as he dropped Teri’s body to the ground.

Foolish gesture.

The words triggered for Kurt the image of himself, cowering behind the office door when Ludlow had abducted Sarah and Ben. Kurt had told himself the same then, that it would be a foolish gesture to attack Ludlow. That he couldn’t possibly win.

Jake got free of Sarah.

Andi saw what he was doing, saw that her boy was going to attack McGuire. “Stop, Jake!”

McGuire saw him, too, and whipped the gun around onto the boy.

Andi was scrambling herself now, trying to catch him. But she wouldn’t make it.

Kurt reached out and grabbed Jake. He threw him to the ground and stepped up to McGuire. The gun moved to Kurt’s midsection.

Foolish gesture,
he thought.

He said, “I sent the fax. I sent the picture.”

McGuire hesitated. His eyes widened momentarily, and then he screamed, “You
bastard.”

Kurt threw himself onto McGuire.

CHAPTER 51

BEN SAW A HOLE ERUPT OUT OF KURT’S BACK AND ANOTHER ON his side.

Later, Ben realized he had been moving as fast as he possibly could.

But his sense of it at the time was an agonizing slowness, as he stumbled off the porch and switched the gun from his useless right arm and fumbled it into his left. Already the grip was bloody, and the gun slipped in his hand as he raised it up. The barrel pointed at an awkward angle, like a broken finger. Ben’s legs were shaking. “Move,” he said. Andi and the kids were too close. “Move!” His voice sounded separate from him. He stumbled, and then regained himself.

There was another muffled shot, and then Kurt was rolling off McGuire, clutching at the gun as he went, but down on his side.

“Let go!” McGuire said. He tugged at the gun, but still Kurt held on, and McGuire made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “Let go of the fucking gun!”

He shot Kurt again.

Kurt jerked once and then Ben was standing over McGuire. Ben put the gun on the young man’s head and pulled the trigger three times.

Ben’s revolver clicked twice on empty chambers. But it didn’t really matter. The first round had done everything he needed.

CHAPTER 52

ANDI TURNED TO KURT. “OH MY GOD,” SHE SAID. “DON’T DO THIS. Don’t do this.”

Kurt was curled into a ball, blood spreading beneath into the dirt.