Nick of Time (24 page)

Living with Gramma brought a lot of rules into the twelve-year-old's life; certainly a lot more than he'd had to live with before Mama died. Still, even though Gramma smelled funny and went to bed at nine o'clock, she was good on her word. He'd finished picking up the front yard, and she hadn't let a little rain keep her away from the video store. The deal was, after he'd picked up the blown-in trash from the front yard and swept the sand off the front and rear decks, he could get one movie and one video game. And here they were.

The game was a no-brainer:
Spiderman
. His real first choice would have been
Grand Theft Auto,
but Gramma would have had a stroke if she saw it. She wasn't all that wild about his Xbox in the first place; between
GTA
's whores and the exploding blood, she'd have had him sweeping the porches with a toothbrush. No, Spidey was a fine compromise.

Compromise. Funny how many times that word came up in his life these days. Two months ago, he didn't even know what the word meant. Now, since his address had changed, it ran his life.

With the game chosen, he was left with the conundrum of choosing a movie. (
Conundrum
was another new word; Scotty liked the way it sounded.) It was hard to find the compromise between the singing-animal Disney crap that Gramma wanted him to watch and the Bruce Willis flick he was hoping for. Gramma wouldn't even let him watch a PG-13 movie until he was actually thirteen years old, to hell with the fact that he'd been watching Rs for as long as he could remember.

Still, it wasn't worth the fight. Singing fish were the price he had to pay to get his game.

As they approached the checkout counter, the teenage clerk looked at Scotty and laughed. “You look like a drowned rat,” he said.

Scotty caught Gramma's don't-you-dare glare before he had a chance to form his reply. Good thing, too. Pizza-faces should think twice before calling someone a drowned rat. Of all the adjustments the last eight weeks had brought into his life, the language thing had been the hardest. In the end, the boy just smiled.

“Try to stay dry,” the clerk said.

Gramma carried the plastic bag with the goodies and held the door for the boy. “I don't like him,” Scotty mumbled as he passed.

“You don't even know him,” Gramma scolded. “You can't dislike people you don't know.”

With Gramma, life was a lot simpler when you just went along. Slipups brought a thousand extra chores followed by solitary confinement in his bedroom. Scotty had thought about breaking out a couple of times—just climbing out the window and taking off—but out where they lived, there was no place to run to.

Back in Richmond, before the Big Move, there'd been plenty of places to visit after he'd sneaked out of the window, but here in Buttscratch, North Carolina—that's what his mama had liked to call it—there was nothing but sand and bugs and water. Lots and lots of water, enough to make him wish that he'd spent those afternoons at the YMCA learning how to swim instead of perfecting moves on a basketball court that he'd probably never see again.

On his way back out to the truck, Scotty stopped to pick up his footwear, pointing out gleefully that his socks now weighed more than his shoes, thanks to the water.

Gramma made a huffing noise and snatched the shoes away from him. “You'll get these back when you learn to appreciate owning good things,” she said.

Fine,
he thought.
I didn't want to wear the dumb things anyway.

“Hurry now and buckle in,” Gramma called from under her umbrella. “I want to be back at the house before the roads flood.”

Scotty stopped near the front fender. “Can I sit in the front?” he asked.

“You may not.”

“Please, Gramma? We don't even
have
an air bag. That's what kills people, not the seat itself.”

“It's hardly worth the risk, do you think?” Gramma replied.

Scotty rolled his eyes. How was he going to get through six years of this? That's what the judge had told him: he'd be stuck with Gramma until he was eighteen.
God help me.

“I don't think it's so dangerous,” he muttered, just loudly enough to be heard, but not enough for her to make out the words.

“You have something to say, young man, you just say it right out where I can hear it.”

Scotty didn't bother to reply. He climbed behind the death-inducing passenger seat into the back of the truck, reaching forward again to close the heavy door.

“Remember your—”

“—seat belt.” He finished the sentence for her. He saw the stranger in the back, in the cargo bed behind the backseat, the instant he turned around, and he yelled. It was an involuntary thing, a loud “Ooooh!” Gramma whirled in her seat.

“Now, darn it, Scotty—” She saw him, too. The man had a gun.

Brad leveled Ben Maestri's pistol at Gramma. “Don't say anything. Don't do anything, and nobody'll get hurt, okay?”

A young woman popped up out of the back as well. She looked as terrified as Scotty felt. “Brad, don't—”

As the man with the gun scaled the seat next to Scotty, the boy considered diving for the door and bailing out, but a hand planted in his chest, accompanied by a hard glare, convinced him otherwise.

“Don't even think about it,” Brad warned. “Buckle up like your grandmother told you.”

Scotty did exactly that, his hands trembling. Suddenly, there was a very good chance that he might throw up.

Brad redirected his attention toward Gramma. “I want you to start the car and back out of this place just as if it were an ordinary day. Honest, nobody needs to get hurt.”

“W-what are you going to do?” Gramma stammered. “I don't have any money. Not enough to be worth stealing.”

Brad beckoned with the muzzle of his gun. “I'll take that purse, please,” he said.

Scotty shifted his eyes to the girl, who looked as if she might throw up, too. There were tears in her eyes. She tried to say something. “Brad—”

But the guy cut her off. “Not now, Nicki,” he said. Then to Gramma, “The purse, please.”

“There's nothing in it,” Gramma whined.

“Hand it to me, anyway,” Brad insisted. There was a growl in his voice that reminded Scotty of an animal. The boy fought off tears of his own.

The girl with the boy's name put her hand on his shoulder. “You'll be just fine,” she said. “He won't hurt anyone.”

“I'll kill him if he does,” Scotty heard himself say.

The comment drew a swift response. Brad brought the muzzle to within an inch of the boy's eye. “Don't push me, kid.”

Gramma lifted her purse from the seat and handed it back to Brad. “Here,” she said. “Take it. Take whatever you want.”

“I'm not interested in your money, lady,” Brad said. He handed the bag over to Nicki. “Search through there and find her driver's license,” he said. “I need her address.”

“Why?” Nicki asked.

“Just do it,” he said. After that, he leaned in close to Gramma and whispered in her ear. Scotty couldn't hear the words, but he knew it was about him just from the way Gramma stole glances his way.

Gramma started to cry. Her hands trembled. “Please don't do this,” she whimpered.

“I have to,” Brad said. “I'm caught in a crack, and you happen to be my only way out. It sucks, but welcome to my world.”

“I don't think I can,” she whined.

Scotty felt his face and ears turning red with rage. Who did this guy think he was, making Gramma cry?

Brad said, “You think about it, Gramma. Ask yourself what you asked the kid: is it worth taking the chance?”

“Please don't,” she said again.

Brad gave her a poisonous smile. “You're in the driver's seat. Get us out of here safely, and your troubles are nearly over.”

Gramma made her decision. Scotty felt a surge of pride as he saw the sniveling weakness drain from her face, then to be replaced by the angry set of her jaw that Scotty had become so used to seeing. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“Out of the parking lot and hang a right. Join that line of cars.” The rain had slackened a bit, but there was plenty left in the clouds.

Gramma backed out of the parking space, then pulled the transmission into Drive and whirled the wheel to the left to clear the back of the car that had parked next to her. That done, she straightened the vehicle out and headed for the driveway, beyond which the traffic was barely moving.

Brad climbed back over the seat to join Nicki in the back. “When they stop you, they're going to ask if you've seen us, and that's when you need to put in an Oscar-winning performance. If they want to know where you're going or where you've been, you just tell them that you took your grandson out to get a movie.”

“And a video game,” Scotty corrected. He shrank from the heat of Brad's glare.

“Just get us through this,” Brad continued, to Gramma, “and everything will be fine. Screw it up and you'll regret it forever.” He faded farther back into the shadows, pausing to whisper in Scotty's ear. “Listen here, little man, I'll tell you what I told your grandmother. If something happens so these cops find out that we're here, there's going to be shooting. When that happens, the very first bullet kills your Gramma. The second one kills you. Think about that.”

Brad turned to Nicki. “Did you find the driver's license?”

Actually, she'd forgotten completely about it. With trembling hands, she turned her attention to the mammoth purse. Glancing at the flashing lights of the roadblock, she asked, “Are you really going to shoot if we get stopped up there?” she asked.

Brad gave her a hard look. “I told you that I'm not going back to prison. You just keep your head down.”

“But Brad, what about them?” she asked with a sweeping gesture. “They didn't do anything.”

He turned away to face front again. “Not yet they haven't,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-four

N
orth Carolina State Trooper Matt Hayes would not have been more soaked if someone had stood on a ladder and poured buckets of water over his head. On typical wet days, his plastic rain slicker kept most of the rain out, but today he might as well not have worn it.

He handed Hector Nunez back his license and waved him through the roadblock, beckoning the next in line to stop. He'd chosen this spot for the checkpoint because it was only a few hundred yards from the place where the road from Essex split in three. A similar checkpoint had been set up on the northern end of the same road, some thirty miles from here. Getting in and out of Essex required passage on this road, period. If the murderers were traveling by car, their escape route was sealed off. They were either holed up or trapped. Matt couldn't see a third option.

Now that he'd been here for three hours, though, things seemed a hell of a lot less sure.

A battered green Bronco without hubcaps was next in line, complete with a little old lady behind the steering wheel. Matt whirled his fingers in the air to motion her to lower her window. The height of the vehicle allowed him to look her straight in the eye rather than tilting his head and dumping a torrent of water from the wide flat rim of his plastic-covered hat. “Hello, ma'am,” he said. “Are you keeping dry?”

The woman seemed nervous as she shot him only a cursory look and then returned her eyes to the road. “I'm trying,” she said. “I'm taking my grandson to get a video and a game.”

Matt's curiosity was piqued by her behavior. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You look nervous.”

“No,” she said. “I'm fine. Just tired of the weather.”

Matt wiped the cascade of water from his mouth. “Could I see your driver's license, please?”

This time, the look in the woman's face was something close to panic.

* * *

Brad felt his insides seize. Why hadn't he thought of that? Of course, they were going to want to see her license, but Nicki still held the bulky purse on her lap, hugging it to her chest and trying not to let her breathing run away from her. Up front, Gramma clearly didn't know what to say.

“Are you okay, ma'am?” the cop repeated. “You don't look so good.”

In his mind, Brad could see the cop slipping his pistol out of its holster. His hand tightened around the grip of his own.

“I've got your purse here, Gramma,” Scotty said, and he unhooked his seat belt. Reaching over the edge of his seat, he grabbed the bag from Nicki and lifted it over to his grandmother. “I was looking for some gum while you were inside getting the movie,” he explained. “Then you came back and I was scared that you might get mad about me going through your stuff.”

* * *

Corporal Hayes smiled as a waterlogged boy leaned forward with the purse gripped in his fist.

The grandmother accepted her bag, and at the moment of the handoff they exchanged a significant glance that Matt didn't quite know how to interpret. When the boy caught him watching, it grew awkward, and then the kid smiled at him.

Gramma still avoided eye contact as she fished through the junk in her bag for her wallet, and from there she started fishing for her license. She riffled through all of the picture sleeves in the wallet—past a couple of credit cards and a photo of what could only be a younger version of the boy in the backseat.

“I know it has to be here somewhere,” she said.

“Ma'am, you look nervous,” Matt said.
Scared to death
actually came closer to it.

“Do I?” she said. “I just can't—Oh, there it is!” She looked past her wallet into the cavern of the purse itself and pulled out the plastic card. “It must have fallen out.” She dared a flash of eye contact as she handed it over.

Matt looked at it, compared the picture to the face in front of him, and was reassured. It was her, all right. But there was something wrong here. “Give me just a minute, will you?” he said. He stepped away from the truck just far enough that the occupants wouldn't be able to hear what he was about to say on the radio.

* * *

In the back of the Bronco, Brad seethed. How could he have been so stupid? Jesus, he should have thought of the license. As it was, he was lucky to snatch it away from Nicki in time to dump it in the purse. The kid was one smooth liar, though. Brilliant.

Brad dared a peek over the boy's seat, out toward the window. What was happening? Why were they still sitting there?

“The cop took her license,” Scotty whispered, making Brad wonder if he'd spoken his thoughts aloud.

Brad touched a finger to his lips.

“It's not her fault,” Scotty said. “She's trying, she really is. She's just not very good at this stuff.”

“Be quiet,” Brad hissed. “And quit looking at me. It doesn't matter whose fault it is.”

“Brad, you can't shoot them,” Nicki said.

“You be quiet, too,” he snapped. Brad had no idea what he was he was going to do if things got ugly, but it sure as hell didn't involve shooting an old woman and a kid. He had to threaten them, though, or else they wouldn't be frightened into doing what he wanted. And he had to be equally hard on Nicki simply because she didn't have it in her to
be
frightening. That left only one effective option: she had to look as frightened as the others. People on edge were pliable. It was a skill he'd learned a long time ago. Intimidation wasn't about
being
tough so much as it was about
sounding
tough.

He liked to call it the Big Bluff. It was how he'd survived on the street. Sure, you had to duke it out a few times to keep it credible, but if you chose your opponents properly, even the fight could be part of the ruse. Pick on the weaker ones and only hit them hard enough to maybe break a nose. He didn't care what people saw in the movies, a fight always ended once you broke somebody's nose.

What the hell was taking the cop so long? Brad had been watching the guy. Every other car that approached the roadblock was stopped only for a few seconds—long enough to show their identification—and then they were motioned through. This was trouble for sure.

Brad tried to think of some way that Gramma might have communicated with the cop. Maybe she'd sent him a note, or blinked out an SOS. There were a thousand ways she could have sent a silent signal. After he'd promised to kill the boy, though, if anything went wrong, he didn't think she'd risk it.

But what else could it be? The cop was taking forever on the radio. The whole damn plan was unraveling right in front of him. There had to be something for him to do. There was
always
one more option.

Running wasn't a choice. The act of rushing the driver alone would make the cop draw down, and nobody here needed that kind of madness.

“What's he doing now?” he whispered to the boy.

“He's still talking on the radio,” Scotty said. “Oh, no. He's not anymore. He's coming back to the window.”

Brad ducked back down, lying faceup on the floor, his weapon ready in his hand.

Killing a cop wasn't on the agenda, but it looked as if the agenda might be changing. His grip tightened.

* * *

It was a good ruse, Matt thought as he finished his discussion on the radio. He never would have suspected the Bronco, and certainly not the old lady. According to her license, she was June Parker, from one of the off-road neighborhoods in Lincolntown. When he returned to the window, he did so carefully. At least he understood why the woman was acting so crazy.

“You didn't tell me the truth, did you, ma'am?” Corporal Hayes asked.

There was that terrified look. She seemed to be close to tears.

“I was wondering why you were shaking like that,” the cop went on. “You've got two outstanding warrants for speeding on the interstate, did you know that?”

The news seemed to startle her, and something changed behind her eyes. “Yes, sir, I do.”

“You've got over five hundred dollars in outstanding fines. I'm supposed to arrest you and take you in for that kind of money. You're in very serious trouble.”

“Are you taking me to jail?” she asked.

Matt looked at her and sighed. The answer here should have been a resounding yes.
Should
have been. “I'll tell you what. If you promise me right here and now that you'll bring yourself to the courthouse first thing Monday morning and set this all straight, then I won't take you in. The weather is miserable, and they don't arraign on the weekends anyway. With that boy and all, it doesn't make a lot of sense for you to sit in a cell for forty-eight hours.”

She stared at him, as if she didn't comprehend.

“You need to say something, ma'am,” Matt prompted.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. Monday morning, first thing.”

Matt leveled his forefinger at her nose. “This is a gift, Ms. Parker. My favor to you in deference to your situation. But don't think that I won't be checking up on you. If I hear that you haven't been by the courthouse by, say, two o'clock on Monday, I'll come out to your house and cuff you myself. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes, we have a deal,” she said. Again, there was something leaden in her tone.

Matt chalked it up to the fact that her kid had overheard that his grandmother was a criminal. “For what it's worth,” he said, more for the benefit of the kid than for the driver, “if you can write a check right there at the courthouse, or show proof of some kind of payment plan, they'll vacate the warrant, and you'll be able to go on home. I'll make sure that it's noted as such in the file. But if you don't show—”

“I know,” she said. “You'll cart me off yourself.”

Matt sealed the deal with an abrupt nod. “Done,” he said. “Now, you can be on your way.” He started to turn away, then stopped himself. “Oh, I almost forgot. Keep an eye out for a couple teenage kids, a boy and a girl. They're wanted for a murder up the road, and we've got this checkpoint set up to look for them. If you see any strangers fitting that description, please give us a call.”

“I will,” said the driver. “I'll be sure to do just that.”

She drove off, and Matt beckoned for the next vehicle in the line.

* * *

“She was just nervous,” Scotty said once they were moving again. “She wasn't trying to shit on your plan.”

“Scotty!” Gramma hated crude language.

“What? Oh, Jesus.” This language crap was going to kill him.

“Scotty!”

Brad stood as tall as he could in the confines of the truck. “Both of you, be quiet,” he barked. He again climbed over the seat and helped himself to the spot next to the boy. “Scotty, watch your mouth. Gramma—do you mind if I call you Gramma?”

“Fine,” she said.

“Okay, Gramma, I want you just to drive home. You're going to have some guests for a while.”

“What are you going to do to us?”

“Not a thing if you do exactly what I tell you. You heard what that cop said about me. One murder or three, the penalty's the same.” He made a deliberate effort not to look at Nicki, who'd stretched out on the floor in the back. “I looked at your driver's license, so I know where you live. If you don't drive straight there, I'll know.”

He settled into his seat and pivoted so he could keep an eye on both of them.