Gun Lake (3 page)

“Kurt, get off!” Sean yelled, trying to break his grip. “Come on, man, lay off.”

Lonnie squirmed and flailed his arms and Sean punched Kurt’s head, and then Kurt didn’t know who was hitting whom. He just knew someone had shot this woman and probably shot
her dead, and now there was no return, no turning back, no way out of this mess, nowhere to go but down.

A big hand grabbed the back of his shirt and stretched the fabric as it lifted his entire body up and away from Sean and Lonnie. Kurt landed against a desk in a corner. He looked and saw the massive arm of Wes Owens, then noticed the giant fist that landed against Lonnie’s face, nearly knocking him cold. The kid sprawled across the floor and landed close to the body he had just shot.

“Everyone relax!” Sean yelled, rubbing the corner of his eye, which someone had either punched or poked.

Kurt sat up and stared around him. Taking it all in—the ordinary-looking room, the fast-food sack in the trash can, the scratched desk—yet somehow not seeing any of it.

“KURT.” Sean’s voice was loud in his ear.

He started and looked up. He had zoned out for a moment. He saw Wes leading Lonnie out of the office.

“We’re out of here. Let’s go.”

Kurt didn’t move. He stared at the body on the floor, the lady named Vicki, the woman who had said they wouldn’t kill anybody.

“What are we going to do?” Kurt asked.

Sean leaned forward so his face was inches away from Kurt. “We’re going to leave this building, then leave the state. The plan remains the same.”

“And her?”

“She’s dead.”

“Sean—”

Sean took his hands and cupped them around Kurt’s face, forcing him to look straight into his untamed eyes.

“We leave now. The plan’s the same.”

Kurt stumbled to his feet and followed Sean out of the office, moving in a hypnotic, echoing dream.

Everything—the plans, the escape, the final goal—had gone wrong. Everything had turned bad.

Just the way it always did.

This was just what he had wanted to prevent. Everything he
had wanted to avoid. Only a few days out of the joint, and now somebody had died.

Because of them.

Because of him.

It didn’t matter that only one of them had pulled the trigger. There were five of them, and all five were guilty.

The night air felt cool and whispered against his cheeks, and he woke up and found the truck and got in it and started it up and drove away.

NORAH BRITT COULD HEAR it coming. The storm. Taps on the window, like an animal scurrying in an attic with nowhere to go. A black gust against the house. She shifted and slid out of the covers and stood for a moment, listening to him. Listening and waiting. He breathed hard and steady. She tiptoed out of the carpeted bedroom to his study.

In the darkness, she poked through a wood blind and spotted the streetlamp near the mailbox. A steady, curved line of rain droplets fell. Wandering fingers found what she was looking for and switched on the dim light illuminating a section of the neat mahogany desk.

Inside a drawer she found a sheet of heavy paper stock with the black embossed words
Harlan Grey
centered at the top. The leather armchair squeaked as she sat in it, an unfamiliar feel for her. She took in her surroundings with the gaze of a stranger, studying things unnoticed or unseen until now.

The study stood four doors down from the large room where he slept off his five beers. Five might not be enough to prevent him from bursting through the shut door and knocking her out of the chair.

If she didn’t go now, she might never go. Norah knew this,
believed it as much as she believed the sun would rise tomorrow. A strength like this came as often as a meteor shower. If she hesitated, putting it off for another night, another week, another month, she would find herself a year from now in the same life, and the year after that. And the same revulsion she held for the man whose chair she occupied would be directed toward herself.

A moving picture ran through her mind. A hand coming out of nowhere. A thick, well-toned arm swinging around. The blow, quick and shocking. And that clenched jaw, one she knew so well, one she could picture with eyes closed. Blaming her. Making her almost believe it was her fault. Almost.

Harlan didn’t believe she could make it on her own. And frankly, Norah didn’t either. Yet the restlessness she’d felt ever since waking up this morning, still in pain and unable to go out in public, was the same restlessness that had been festering in her for the past few months. It was a symptom of something far bigger, and she knew it.

Tonight she knew what she needed to do. And what she needed to say.

They would be her final words to Harlan.

Harlan
.

The name she now wrote on the paper belonged to a stranger she’d fallen in love with, a man she’d believed she would marry. The man she had given her body and soul to, in that exact order, who had somehow turned from a strong and friendly presence into a menacing creature from the dark, someone she didn’t know. Someone she feared.

Harlan
.

The man who owned this office, this house, and every possession inside of it. Including her.

She looked at the bruise on her arm that resembled a patch of dirt. It looked like she could just rub it out with her finger, but she couldn’t. It would take a while to fade away. She knew.

Norah continued to write.

I can’t go on not living. Not feeling. Fearing every moment with you. Fearing I can never get out from under the weight of your life, one
I chose, one I can no longer be a part of. No apology is going to be spoken. And none will ever be accepted. Not again. I’ve already accepted too many
.

Please leave me be. I want to finally live a life
.

Norah

She folded the letter without reading it again. Harlan knew the reasons, knew the history, knew every single why. But he didn’t know everything. And that thought was the only comfort Norah had as she switched back off the light in the study.

The sound of the storm grew louder, and she wondered what it would feel like to open the front door and dance outside in her pajama shirt. To feel the rain fall down on her and baptize her and make her feel free. She wondered what it would feel like to truly start living again. To breathe the breath of a free woman who didn’t have to answer to anybody, who could wake up without trepidation.

Norah could wait. She wouldn’t allow herself to hope, to dream, until she was out of the state, miles away. She knew her final destination, and hours from now she might make it there.

And then she might finally be free.

“THE KILLER AWOKE before dawn….”

Sean couldn’t hear anything except the music now. He let himself get lost inside of it, transfixed, everything else fading from his mind. His eyes attached themselves to the glowing red neon beer sign on the wall, and he forgot about the clatter at the bar, the haze of smoke, the dull gaze of Wes across the table from him. He just listened as though this were his first time. In a way, it was a first.

The song sounded epic, grandiose, mind-bending, exhilarating.
No one does it like that
. He found himself lost in all twelve
minutes until the jukebox went momentarily silent and the guy staring daftly at him ruined the glorious mood with a dull question.

“What are we doing here?”

“Meeting someone,” Sean muttered without looking at him.

“Yeah, I know, but who?”

“Does it matter?”

“Guess not.” Wes leaned on his arms and rubbed his big square forehead. “How long we got?”

“It’s only nine thirty. We meet them in a couple of hours.”

Another song he had punched in began to play. Jim Morrison singing “People Are Strange.” A classic. Sean couldn’t believe they had it on the jukebox in this redneck joint. The old keyboard cranked out of the speakers located in four sides of the room. The crowd, two guys at the bar and another couple of guys playing pool, didn’t respond to the music or to Sean and Wes.

“So, like, are you obsessed with them or something?”

Sean grinned a wide smile and sucked on the cigarette in his mouth, blowing smoke out of his nose. “That’s cute.”

“We gonna have to listen to The Doors all night?”

“Maybe we will,” Sean said.

“Bunch of druggie music, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Give me Aerosmith any day.”

Sean nodded at Wes and had to admire his simplicity. Here was a guy who’d spent most of his time in and out of the joint getting his body painted over with various inks. The cannons that jutted out of his tee-shirt sleeves were both lined with dozens of tattoos, exotic and colored and probably all signifying something meaningful at the time they were put on. He wondered if the inks had somehow sucked out the big guy’s brain juice.

“You know why they called themselves The Doors?” he asked Wes.

“Why?” One of the big arms lifted up a bottle of beer.

“Morrison wanted to challenge the doors of people’s perceptions.”

“Uh, okay.”

Wes didn’t know what he was talking about. That was okay. It didn’t matter. He was still a good guy. And big enough to sit on someone and silence him if necessary.

This was a good moment.
If this is as far as I get
, Sean thought,
it’ll be worth it
. Listening to tracks after feeding quarters into a jukebox in a joint twenty miles outside of Amarillo. A cold bottle of beer in his hand. Listening to The Doors. It had been seven years since he’d heard them the way they should be heard. Out of loudspeakers, in a breath of cigarette smoke, on a hard wooden chair across the table from a friend he could now officially call a drinking buddy.

The door opened, and a man in jeans and a button-down shirt appeared. He spotted them right away. He nodded and passed them to get a beer at the bar, then came to sit down.

“Been a while,” he said, shaking Sean’s hand.

Sean nodded and saw an indentation on the man’s cheek that looked like a scar from a knife fight. When the man, not tall but broad shouldered and stout, smiled, the scar seemed to do the same thing.

“This is Wes. Wes, this is Rabey.”

Wes nodded and didn’t say anything. The guy was a mostly harmless lug, but he could look downright frightening. Rabey grabbed another chair and sat down.

“Ya’ll been watchin’ the news?”

Sean nodded, glancing at the bar just to see if anybody was watching them.

“Hasn’t been as bad the last couple days.”

“So everything’s set?”

“I got nothing to do with this,” Rabey said, handing a set of keys over to Sean.

“Registration and everything in it?”

Rabey nodded, took a sip, let his eyes flick around the room. There was nothing to worry about. Nobody in this armpit of a bar was paying the least attention. The guy still looked nervous as he took a folded white legal envelope from his shirt pocket and straightened it out, sliding it across the table to Sean.

“And?” Sean said, taking it without opening it.

“Everything I could find.”

“Which was …?”

“Enough. Couple of addresses. A few other things—job, credit rating, and such. It’s not too difficult. You ever been on the Internet?”

Sean slid the envelope in his jeans pocket and nodded with indifference.

“But you probably don’t have a lot of access to it,” Rabey said. “They got programs now that can find anyone.”

Wes stood up and lumbered toward the men’s room while the other two men sat there.

“Where are the others?” Rabey asked him.

“A place Rita’s house-sitting.”

Rabey chuckled and shook his head. “I’m surprised you don’t mind going out in public.”

“My hair in the mug shot’s not half as long as it is now,” Sean said, methodically taking a swig from his beer. “I look a lot younger in that picture anyway.”

“Like the ponytail, by the way,” Rabey said. “Sort of a classic-rock look.”

Sean nodded. “Took a while to grow it out.”

“Not too stylish anymore, but whatcha gonna do?”

“Did you get everything I asked for?”

“Almost everything. I didn’t have much time. Plus, I don’t want people wondering where you got it from.”

“They won’t.”

“How long are you gonna—you know—”

“Not long.”

Rabey’s eyes tightened. “Listen, I’m through with you guys now. Don’t wanna have anything more to do with this.”

“You won’t,” Sean said.

“Nothing. I’m serious. And you tell Rita I don’t want to see her again, not for a long time.”

“I think she knows that well enough.”

The music began to crescendo again and Rabey looked up at the speakers.

“What is this?”

“The soundtrack,” Sean said.

“To what?”

“To my life.”

The man looked at Sean in a confused way. Sean knew there was no point in explaining; it’d be over Rabey’s head anyway. He lit up another cigarette and stood up. “Show me where it is.”

“You sure you don’t want to—”

But the question trailed off as Sean walked closer to the speaker. Just stood there for a minute, eyes closed, feeling it. Music, the power it had, the way it could inhale you and bend your heart and mind. He wanted to get lost in it for a little longer. But they had a job to do. Some cash to get, some cops to mislead, some weapons to hold on to.

And then an old friend to see.

SOMETIMES, IN THE SUNLESS murk of his cell, he used to lie with eyes wide open and picture it all over again.

A golden field… a held hand… a shy smile
.

Sweet, adoring eyes looking up at him. All the beauty in the entire universe lit up by that laugh. Running together, coming to rest at the edge of the field, against a hill, horses galloping in the distance. Watching her tighten her lips just before