Shady Cross (23 page)

“Thanks,” Stokes said. “You don’t owe me any favors, but try to keep this to yourselves for a while, OK guys? Maybe you should go back inside for one last beer.”

He waved the gun a final time before hustling into the truck. The younger guys milled about for a moment, then did as he suggested.

Stokes started the truck and drove off as quickly as he dared, while keeping his speed low enough not to attract attention. He figured he could push it a bit, though, seeing as the cops would be occupied by looking for a silver Porsche tearing through town and wouldn’t worry too much about a black Explorer exceeding the speed limit by a few miles per hour.

A minute later, Stokes heard a single siren getting closer and closer and a police car screamed around a corner a few blocks ahead of him. He tensed until it shot past and continued in the other direction. Soon, another cruiser blew past, siren shrieking, lights flashing, looking for the same silver Porsche.

Stokes was confident now that he’d make it out of the city proper. He gave the truck a little more gas and looked at the dashboard clock.

It was 2:25.

He had twenty minutes to reach Chet before the asshole was supposed to kill Amanda. If he drove a bit insanely, which he could probably afford to do now that he was nearly out of town and driving a vehicle the cops had no reason to be looking for, it would still almost certainly take more than twenty minutes just to reach Paradise Park, probably closer to twenty-five. Then figure another few minutes to ditch the car and find Chet and the others.

And he had only twenty minutes.

He gunned the truck through the city’s outskirts and onto the two-lane road leading up to the old amusement park. He sneaked another look at the clock in the dash. His heart sank.

Shit
, he thought.
I’m not gonna make it.

THIRTY

2:39 A.M.

IT WAS 2:39 A.M. WHEN
Stokes brought the black Explorer to a crunching stop in the gravel on the shoulder of the road. He’d driven with suicidal recklessness, racing along the winding two-lane road at careless, stupid speeds, barely touching the brake pedal, several times narrowly avoiding the same fate Amanda’s father suffered—sailing his vehicle off the road, into the woods, headlong into a tree. It was incredible that he’d survived. Thankfully, he’d passed no cops.

Stokes backed the truck into a small gap in the trees, far enough that it wouldn’t be seen easily from the road. He reached up and turned off the dome light. Just around the next bend, he knew, was the entrance to a huge gravel lot now carpeted with weeds. Decades ago it would fill with cars every day, cars that carried happy families to Paradise Park for a day of wholesome fun, tasty though less-than-wholesome food, and lasting memories. But those days were long gone. After operating for sixty-eight years, the amusement park shut down twenty-five years ago. Stokes’s parents had taken him once, when he was five. The image that stuck with him most from that day was his father—his hand never without a beer in it, his lips never without a cigarette between them—waiting impatiently for Stokes and his mother to get off each ride. Stokes recalled his father smacking him on the side of the head when he’d asked for cotton candy.

As Stokes exited the truck, shutting the door quietly behind him, he tried to remember something else from that day, something pleasant. He remembered a lot of colors, the miasma of food smells, spinning on some ride with his mother, seeing other children with big, colorful balloons but being afraid to ask for one of his own. These memories fluttered in his mind for a moment before disappearing like scraps of paper in a strong wind. He was left again with the image of his father, a big cup full of beer in his hand, a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, a look on his face as lacking in warmth as it was in patience.

Stokes ran across the road and entered the woods. He knew his way well, moving as quickly and quietly as he could, reassured by the weight of the antique dealers’ two guns in his jacket pockets and the feeling of Officer Martinson’s bigger gun pressing against the small of his back. He was confident he’d know his way around the grounds once he reached them, so he shouldn’t have trouble finding the old ballroom at the park’s center. He could have chosen to drive into the weed-and-gravel lot and walk through what used to serve as the park’s main entrance, but he figured Chet Nickerson might have posted one of Grote’s boys there to watch it. Though they were expecting someone, that someone wasn’t Stokes. He knew he’d have to reveal himself eventually, but he’d rather be fairly close to them when he did . . . close enough to do whatever it was he was going to have to do.

Stokes trotted though the woods. Over the decades, the trees surrounding the park had encroached on the grounds, so it was only when Stokes started passing dilapidated shacks and booths and rusted pieces of machinery that he realized he’d crossed the perimeter of the old park itself. He pressed on and the trees gave way to thick overgrowth. He resisted the urge to look at his watch, but every moment he was afraid he’d hear gunshots.

I’m not gonna make it.

The moon was bright and the sky clear, so Stokes was able to get his bearings. He was beside the run-down fun house, its once-garish colors muted by time and weather. He walked through thigh-high weeds, as quietly as he could, farther into the park, keeping a watchful eye for movement and listening hard for any sound that didn’t belong in this place at this time of night.

Stokes knew time was running out fast and he’d have to sacrifice a bit of stealth for a little more speed. As he quickened his already-quick pace, making a direct line for the old ballroom, he couldn’t help but recall some of his many wasted hours there in the park. He’d smoked his first joint behind the Dunk the Clown stand. He remembered a few other hours spent in this place that weren’t so wasted. He’d touched his first naked breast, sitting in a rusted bumper car, feeling the soft, warm flesh beneath his clumsy, groping fingers, ignoring the cramped space and the hard metal seat that had long before lost any padding it once had. And less than two months later, he’d lost his virginity to Lisa Genovese, the both of them lying half-naked on a scratchy blanket he’d spread out on the floor of the empty penny arcade.

As the hulking rectangular shape of the ballroom finally came into view, Stokes realized he’d be spotted soon. He was counting on the fact that it was night rather than bright day, and that he bore a passing similarity to Paul Jenkins—at least in that they were of similar height and neither was overweight—to get him close enough to do something to save Amanda Jenkins. Just what that something was, of course, he had no idea. It was time to figure that out. It was past time, actually. He checked his watch: 2:47. He was late. Chet was going to start killing people any second. If Carl had been telling the truth, and if things worked out as they planned, Chet would start with Grote’s men, then move on to Amanda.

The absolute best time for Stokes to make his move would be after Chet had killed Iron Mike and Danny DeMarco, thereby removing two of Stokes’s potential obstacles, but before he shot Amanda Jenkins. But there was no way Stokes could time it like that. He’d have to face all three of them. His only hope was that he’d get close enough before they realized he wasn’t Amanda’s father, because even though he wasn’t afraid to use the guns he was carrying, he had no idea if he could shoot straight, seeing as he’d never pulled a trigger in his life.

Acutely aware that his time was completely gone, that shots might shatter the night quiet at any moment, Stokes paused for a brief moment in the shadow of a booth that used to house some kind of game of chance, and checked all three of his weapons, making certain their safeties were disengaged. They were.

He left the shadows and stepped into the light of the clearing that spanned the twenty yards between him and the ballroom. No time left for subtlety. He broke into a run through the tall grass and weeds, hoping his guns wouldn’t fly out of his pockets or waistband as he ran. As he neared the building, he saw that it was as he remembered it. Maybe sixty feet wide and three times as long. Most of the glass in its windows had been broken by kids with rocks ages ago.

He was racing for a doorway at one end of the building—the door itself was long gone—wondering if he would be recognized the instant he stepped through it, recognized as
not
being Paul Jenkins, and would be shot without hesitation. But he kept going, running right into the building, skidding to a stop just inside the door. He threw up his hands and said to nobody in particular, “I’m here, I’m here. Please don’t hurt her.” He was out of breath.

Stokes kept his hands up but tried to keep his head down, his face in shadow, as he swept the room with his eyes. In the middle of the cavernous space he could make out three tall figures and a shorter one. That meant that all of them—Chet and both of Grote’s men, as well as Amanda—were inside the building. He was surprised at first that Chet hadn’t positioned the others in a place where they could watch for Jenkins’s approach from outside, and watch for cops at the same time. But maybe he’d had watches posted earlier, and when two thirty had come and gone and Jenkins still hadn’t shown, and when the extra fifteen minutes he’d planned to wait had ticked by, too, he’d called the others inside to kill them.

“I’m here,” Stokes repeated, hoping that his build was indeed similar enough to Jenkins’s, that his voice could still pass for the father’s, that his face was deep enough in shadow.

“You’re late,” someone said. Sounded like Chet. He apparently still believed that Stokes was Jenkins. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“I had trouble finding this building.”

“Where’s the money?”

Stokes took a breath. “You think I’d hand it over without seeing Amanda first?”

“Where’s the fucking money?” Chet asked. “And the evidence?”

“I hid it in the park on the way here. After I know Amanda’s all right, I’ll take you to it.”

“You asshole,” Chet said. No doubt he was considering how this impacted his plan just to kill everyone right here in the next few minutes. “Fucking
asshole
.” He sounded really pissed, maybe pissed enough to just start shooting right now, hoping he’d find the money and the evidence hidden in the park himself. Stokes wouldn’t put it past him. The guy was a lunatic. Stokes was having serious doubts about his ability to use the
lockbox
code word Frank Nickerson had given him to stop Chet from killing anyone. Besides, as Stokes had already realized, this was never truly about the money, and it wasn’t about the evidence, either. If their little kidnapping-gone-terribly-wrong scenario played out as he planned, they didn’t really need any more evidence. Finally, Chet said, “OK, fine. Whatever. The kid’s OK, as you can see. Other than a couple of fingers.”

“That true, Amanda?” Stokes called.

And for the first time, Stokes heard that little voice in person. “I guess I’m OK. I just want to go home.” Her voice made something twitch in Stokes’s heart.

“It’ll all be over soon,” Stokes said.

“Come over here,” Chet said.

Stokes started walking toward them. He raised his eyes a little as he did. He took a chance and lowered his hands, slipping his damaged left hand into his pocket as surreptitiously as he could. That hand needed a head start. He gambled on the fact that they thought they were dealing with Paul Jenkins, because everything they knew about Paul Jenkins told them that he wasn’t going to give them any trouble.

But he wasn’t Paul Jenkins.

And they were about to find that out.

THIRTY-ONE

2:49 A.M.

STOKES STRODE ACROSS THE LONG,
dark ballroom, through puddles of moonlight spilling in through the occasional hole in the ceiling. He kept his face as much in shadow as he could as he walked toward the figures in the center of the room, wanting to get as close as possible before they realized that he wasn’t Jenkins . . . before things went to shit.

There he was, the lone gunslinger facing down the bad guys, his fingers twitching near his guns, just like he’d imagined as a kid. The possibility of other outcomes had teased him all day, made him think it didn’t have to come down to something like this, but Stokes wondered if this was inevitable, if from the moment the Nickersons took him off the bus that afternoon, it was always going to end this way.

In the final moments of this hellish day Stokes still didn’t understand exactly why he was doing this—why he’d thrown away his chance at a brand-new life for a little girl he’d never met. He knew for certain that he wasn’t Paul Jenkins, but he was no longer sure exactly who he was.

He was just forty feet away when Chet said, “That’s far enough.”

Stokes kept going. He started walking faster. Loudly, he said, “Chet, your father doesn’t want you killing anyone.”

“What?”

“Lockbox,” Stokes blurted as he marched forward, “lockbox.”

“I told you to stop,” Chet said, his voice rising.

Stokes looked up while at the same time reaching for the gun in the right pocket of his jacket. He also had the two good fingers of his left hand on the gun in his other pocket—the index finger hooked around the trigger, the thumb and three broken fingers providing as much support on the handgrip as they could. Even though he’d never fired a gun before, he got the general idea. Hell, idiots shot other idiots all the time. Stokes figured he was enough of an idiot to be able to do the same. He had no idea how many bullets were in the three guns he had, but he knew the weapons were loaded and he had a gun for each guy in front of him. And if the three guns weren’t enough, hell, he probably didn’t deserve to survive anyway.

When Chet saw Stokes’s face he asked, “Who the hell are you?” Then Stokes saw confusion and recognition light Chet’s eyes at the same time and the guy raised his gun.

Stokes kept coming. “Lockbox,” he called one more time, just in case. Chet was to the left of the group. Amanda was sitting on a big, overturned wooden crate two feet away from him. Iron Mike and Danny DeMarco stood together a few feet away, to the right. Chet hadn’t responded to the
lockbox
code word, so Stokes knew they’d be shooting this out. He broke into a trot. He wanted to take Chet down first, but Grote’s men were already drawing their weapons. He had both guns out now and he yelled, “
Get down, Amanda!
” as he started pulling triggers. The guns recoiled in his hands, much harder than he’d anticipated, and his bullets sailed wide and high. He was a lot closer to the mark with his good hand. His other bucked wildly, his fingers causing him agony. But he held on to the gun and kept coming at them, correcting his aim as he did, and bullets kicked off the cement floor. Bullets flew his way, too. Amanda screamed from her position, crouched behind the wooden crate. DeMarco screamed too as a ricochet caught him in the leg. Stokes kept firing, trying to keep from shooting too close to the girl, the muscles in his forearms begging for a break already. But he was getting the hang of it, improving even though he was running now as he fired, ignoring a bullet that hummed just to his left. DeMarco fell on his ass and Stokes caught him full in the chest with a round. He fell back. Stokes didn’t know if he was dead but he was certainly out of the fight for a while, so Stokes turned his attention to Iron Mike, who was backing away and fumbling with his own gun.

Amanda kept screaming but Stokes barely heard her. His ears were ringing, and he was still firing away. He squeezed off a couple of rounds at Iron Mike, whizzing bullets all around the asshole but failing to hit him. But the fusillade caused Iron Mike to worry more about running for his life than standing his ground, and when he spun and sprinted for a side door, Stokes turned to look for Chet.

Stokes registered Amanda’s terrified screams at some deep level of his hearing, in some remote part of his brain, but didn’t pay attention to them. His thoughts had turned black. He was nothing but a man with guns now. He was just someone who shot people. It was all he cared about, all he focused on. Shooting people. Chet was moving sideways toward another side door. He had his gun out and was squeezing off shots of his own. Stokes dimly realized that Chet had been firing already when Stokes caught sight of him.

Stokes turned his gun on Chet and pulled the trigger once, then again, before that gun was empty. He dropped it, switched his second gun into his good hand, and fired immediately. He felt sure he would have nailed Chet dead center if the son of a bitch hadn’t stumbled as he turned for the door.

Besides Chet, Amanda, and Stokes, there was nothing in the room but the wooden crate with a laptop on top of it, a pile of jackets the men must have taken off and tossed on the floor, and DeMarco’s dead body. Other than that, nothing. So there was nowhere for either Chet or Stokes to hide, nothing behind which to take cover. Chet scrambled for the door and was only a few feet from it when Stokes drew a bead dead center on his back. No way he’d miss this shot. He pulled the trigger.

And heard a loud click. He’d emptied both of the antique dealers’ guns.

Chet stopped and turned. He’d heard the click, too. He smiled, raised his piece, and fired as Stokes, in one surprisingly fluid movement that belied his inexperience with firearms, dropped into a crouch and pulled Officer Martinson’s gun from behind his back. He and Chet fired at the same instant and Stokes felt something buzz uncomfortably close to his neck. Chet wasn’t so lucky as Stokes’s bullet caught him in the arm. Before Stokes could fire again, Chet scuttled through the open side door and into the night.

Stokes blew out a breath he felt like he’d been holding since entering the ballroom. In a firefight at close range, with bullets buzzing all around, Chet had run while Stokes had held his ground. Who was the crazy one here?

“Your father wants you to call this off,” he yelled after Chet. “
Lockbox
, you crazy bastard,” he added, though he knew it was far too late for that.

He wanted to sit down and rest, but he knew that Chet could lean around the doorway and start shooting again any second, so he hurried over to Amanda, who sat behind the crate with her knees up to her chin and her hands clamped over her ears. Tears streamed down her chubby little face. Stokes reached out and pulled one of her hands from her ear. The other fell a moment later, and Stokes saw that it was heavily bandaged.

“It’s OK,” Stokes said. “You’re OK.”

Amanda sniffed. The tears kept rolling.

“He’s dead,” she said, her eyes cutting over to DeMarco lying on his back in a pool of blood the size of a small area rug.

She was right.

“But you’re OK,” Stokes said.

“You’re hurt.”

“No I’m not,” Stokes replied.

She sat up and nodded. He frowned and looked down. Blood was running freely down his chest from a wound on the side of his neck. Must not have hit a major artery or he’d be dead already, but it was bleeding pretty badly. He felt a throbbing in his leg now and noticed another wound there, in the meat of his thigh toward the inside of his leg. It was hurting, as was the wound in his neck.

“Come on,” he said. “We have to get out of here.”

He started to walk away, quickly, toward the side door through which Iron Mike had escaped.

“Where’s my daddy?” Amanda asked.

Stokes turned. She had stood up but remained rooted in place.

“He couldn’t get here. He asked me to come.”

They really had to get going. Both Chet and Iron Mike had survived, and neither was likely to want them to leave the park alive. Stokes thought he might have heard low voices outside. The men out there might have found each other and were making plans. Stokes considered calling to Iron Mike, informing him that Chet had been planning all along to kill him, but he didn’t think Iron Mike would believe him. Why should he, seeing as Stokes had been the one trying to kill him thirty seconds ago?

“We really have to move,” Stokes said.

“Who are you?” Amanda asked.

“A friend.”

“My daddy’s friend?”

Stokes thought about that. “Your friend.”

It was her turn to think. Stokes glanced nervously at the doors, then the windows. Finally, Amanda took a tentative step toward him.

“We have to hurry,” Stokes said.

“Where are you taking me?”

I don’t know.

“Away from here,” he said. “Away from the men who brought you here.”

That seemed to be good enough for her. When Stokes started off at a trot, limping a little and wincing a lot, she followed as closely as her little legs would allow.

He thought of something and realized that Chet and Iron Mike were no doubt thinking the same thing: all he had to do was survive long enough for the cops to come, which they were certain to do before too long. Someone would have heard the gunshots. They weren’t so far out in the sticks that a couple of dozen rounds fired from semiautomatic handguns would go unnoticed. There were houses not far down the road. Someone in one of those houses would call 911. So all Stokes had to do was keep Amanda alive until the cavalry arrived . . . which might not be all that easy.

Stokes had hoped to save Amanda, drop her off safe somewhere, and ride off into the sunset—preferably with the quarter million dollars, though that part of the dream was now dead. But he’d still hoped to sneak out of town when this was all over, and it was starting to look like that wasn’t going to happen, either . . . at least not if he was going to see this through. Sure, he could leave the girl now and probably have a fair chance to make it out alone, out of the park, out of the city, out of the goddamn state, but whatever strange force was behind his actions all day kept him from even considering that course of action now. No, he knew he’d go all the way with this. Which meant he had to stay alive, and keep Amanda alive, until the cops showed up. Of course, Chet and Iron Mike knew that, too. They knew the cops would come, and they sure as hell didn’t want to be there when they did. They also couldn’t allow Amanda or Stokes to be there waiting, alive and able to talk, when the police arrived. So Stokes knew they’d regroup out there in the dark, as quickly as they could, then come after the girl and him with everything they had. He felt like both Butch Cassidy
and
the Sundance Kid, holed up and surrounded by the Bolivian army at the climax of the movie—a movie that ended with the cowboys making one final, desperate dash for freedom, guns blazing, leaving the audience with no doubt that the heroes were about to be blown to bits by a hundred rifles.

Stokes shook that image from his mind. He had to get Amanda out of there now. They were almost to the door when he stopped. She stopped beside him and clutched his good leg. He’d heard something outside. They’d come around the building. Or, more likely, one of them had while the other stayed on the far side. No doubt, they planned to shoot Stokes and the girl if they tried to leave the ballroom. And if he and Amanda didn’t try to get away soon, they’d probably rush in and shoot the two of them to pieces.

Stokes had no idea what to do. Whatever he decided, he’d have to do it really, really soon. But he was at a total loss. He looked down at Amanda. She looked up at him with fear in her eyes, though he sensed that it wasn’t him she was afraid of. And there was something else in her eyes, too, something it took a moment for him to recognize because he hadn’t seen it in the eyes of anyone looking at him in a long time. It was trust. She believed he’d save her. He wished he felt the same way.

They were trapped. There were four doors to the place, one in the middle of each side of the rectangle. If it were Stokes in charge out there, he’d position them so they could each watch two of the doors, thereby covering every exit.

Finally, Stokes heard what he’d been hoping to hear. Sirens. Not close, but not too far away, and getting closer. He just had to buy time. He looked around the room again. Wooden crate, coats, and a dead body. That was it. They couldn’t stay here. They’d be like targets in one of the games of chance—a shooting game—that used to be so popular out on the midway. They had to run for it. But that meant running right into either Chet or Iron Mike. Alone, Stokes thought he might have had a chance. He might have been able to run fast enough to keep whichever bad guy was waiting outside the door he chose from getting a good bead on him before he disappeared into the darker recesses of the amusement park. But with Amanda in tow, he didn’t think much of his chances. Or hers.

The sirens were getting closer, which was good because the cops were on their way, but bad because Chet and Iron Mike wouldn’t be able to wait any longer. Any second they’d burst in through separate doors, emptying their guns as they came. So Stokes couldn’t wait any longer, either. He had to do something, and he had to do it now.