Strike (46 page)

My dad sighs. “It's over, Leon. Just give us the dog, and we'll disappear. You'll never see us again. You can have Candlewood, the Cannon land, the whole state of Georgia. Blow up whatever you want. Forget we ever existed.”

“Oh. Oh, that's how it is? You waltz in and waltz out with the kid that blew up my house? Like father like daughter, just leaving a
wide swath of ruination behind you?” His laugh gets madder and more manic. “Oh, I don't think so, Jacky. I don't think that's going to happen at all.”

“What do you want, Leon?”

“I want both of you working for me, doing whatever I say for as long as I say.”

“That's not gonna work this time.”

Leon gives a dramatic sigh. “Now I'm tired, friend Jacky, of hollering at you with this symbol of capitalism standing unyielding between us. This little dog-in-the-box game was certainly more fun than I'd ever dreamed, but we're running out of time. When I come to terms, I like to see a man's eyes. So you walk out here, and let's work it out as men. As blood brothers.”

My dad pauses, eyes closed. “And if I don't?”

“Then all twenty-nine of us will rush you, and if there are less of you than that, you're likely to die. Come on out. The kids, too. Admit you're treed, and let's talk.”

Something booms behind us, a chunk of the column explodes overhead, and I turn to see a Crane goon with a rifle standing in front of an employees-only door, grinning.

My dad stands, and panic shoots through me. Surely he's not going to trust Leon Crane? But he doesn't have a choice, considering there's an armed Crane behind us, too. Holding his gun easy in his hand, he walks right out there and motions for us to follow. I shove
my new gun in my pocket. Wyatt is watching me and does the same. My dad's eyes tell me everything is going to be fine, but every cell of my body tells me it couldn't be more wrong. Leon slides off his box, and they hug each other like mortal fools, each with a Glock in his right hand.

“We're not coming back, Leon,” my dad says. “What's your next offer?”

“You're not going to like it, Jacky.”

“Hit me.”

“You join me now or the dog dies. You don't want to make your little girl upset, now, do you? I know how attached she is to that poor mongrel.”

I spin, my eyes already wet. “Dad, no! You can't.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder and shakes his head sadly.

“Patsy, do you really want to give your life to a man who would shoot a dog just to prove a point? Do you think he cares any more about us than he does about her? If we give in now, we're as good as dead.”

“I guess that's a ‘no,' ” Leon says.

He turns to the box and shoots it twice.

A squeal, and then a whimper, and then the box goes quiet.

I cry out and rush forward, but Wyatt catches me and pulls me back against him.

“Matty! Honey! What did you do? What have you done?” I focus on Leon now, my hands in fists. “What the hell did you do?”

But he's not looking at my face. He's looking at my new gun—which he didn't know I had and isn't prepared for, considering he already had me kick my gun away. So I point it at him and shoot him. Again and again, and into the crowd behind him, and then they're all turning tail and running because Leon Crane is a mess of blood and he's sliding to the floor in a puddle of red. When you know a man's wearing a bulletproof vest, you find better places to shoot him.

I'm surprised that we're not being shot at, but as I turn slowly, I see my friends and I see what we've done. The goon behind us is on the ground. The Crane boys with the AR-15s are down. The crowd is either on the ground or running away. My dad and Wyatt and Chance are up and unscathed. Four people with four little guns can do a ton of damage when they're angry and have the element of surprise.

When I see that there's no one left to shoot me, I run for the box and rip open the paper. I can't get the bow off, and Wyatt's suddenly there, helping me tear down to the plain brown cardboard. I claw at the packing tape and feel my bitten fingernails shred. Finally, we get the flaps open, and I look down, and I'm crying and screaming and it's not her.

It's not Matty.

It's not even a black Lab. It's some kind of mix, brown and black and still, and I keep crying. Because this dog didn't deserve to die. And because Matty's still alive somewhere. And because I'm just so, so sick of pulling the trigger.

Something is ticking in the box, and I move the dog gently aside and see an actual bomb for the first time. A big one.

It's not set to go off at five a.m. It's set to go off in thirty minutes.

“We've got to get out of here,” I say.

My dad must hear the panic in my voice, as he hurries over and looks in the box.

“You're right,” he says. “That bomb's not one of mine. That's Leon's. And I don't know how to disarm it.”

I stand and wipe my hands off on my jumpsuit. Looking in every direction, I see dozens of big, wrapped packages. Maybe hundreds. I bet if I put my head up to each of them, they'd all be ticking.

“What if Matty's in a different one?” I ask.

My dad shakes his head sadly. “We've checked all of them that we could. We'll try one more thing, but we've got ten minutes
before we have to be outside, in the car, driving away.” I nod eagerly. “And you get that there are still Cranes in this mall who will shoot you if they can?”

I shrug.

It doesn't matter. Without Leon to rally them, they're nothing.

“You remember that whistle I used to call her before?” my dad says, and I nod. “I'm going to do that now. Y'all spread out and get to where you can see and hear as many boxes as possible. If one starts to wiggle, open it. When we find her, we run. But we're only going to do this once. Thirty minutes is a lot less time than you think it is.”

I'm already running. I haven't been upstairs yet, so I get to where I can look down on the atrium and see the whole line of boxes, up and down the hall and clustered at every corner. If I were a kid and my mom brought me here to see Santa, it would seem so magical—all these big, bright boxes full of surprises. But now? Jesus. They could all be full of bombs or dead dogs or both. Leon Crane is a monster.

Was
a monster.

My dad puts two fingers to his lips and blows one long, high screech of a whistle. In the echoing silence, just after, I strain my ears, praying to hear a tail thumping against cardboard or a happy bark. I clutch my rosary through my jumpsuit. Wasn't Mother Mary
supposed to bring me a miracle? Living through this ordeal isn't enough. I need my dog, too.

But nothing happens. Not a single one of the boxes so much as ticks. My dad looks at me and shakes his head sadly.

“I'm sorry, honey,” he says.

That's the last thing he says before the crumpled form of Leon Crane shoots him from the ground.

No.

This is not happening.

I'm running and running and shooting the broken mess that was my father's best friend, the lying bastard who just shot him with fingers dipped in his own blood. I get there first, and I shoot Leon again, in places where he'll never recover, and it feels good, and I hate this, and I hate how good it feels to end him once and for all when I thought I already had, and I'm nothing but a monster now and I don't care anymore.

When my clip comes up empty, I'm on the ground by my daddy. Wyatt helps me turn him over, and it's a gut shot, and I'm crying so damn hard because I know what that means. Because I know what it
meant for Jeremy and Alistair, and I know what it means in a world where 911 goes straight to voice mail.

“We have to carry him,” I say firmly, and Wyatt and Chance look at me like I'm a stupid little kid who still believes in magic and Santa Claus.

“Patsy,” Wyatt starts, and I bolt to standing and point at the empty garbage can they used to distract the Cranes from shooting me.

“Put him in there. We'll wheel him out. There has to be a vet—”

“Patsy,” Wyatt says, even more gently. “You know how this works.”

“No!” I shout, and my voice echoes back at me. “No! We can fix this. It'll be okay. I know I said I needed Matty, but I need him. Okay? I always needed him. I just . . .” My dad reaches for me, and I take his hand and focus on his eyes. “I need you, Daddy. Just stay awhile longer. I don't hate you, and I'm not mad at you, and I'm sorry I didn't do a good enough job killing Leon. Just . . . please. Please, Daddy.”

“Patsy,” he says, like it's his favorite word in the entire world.

“I'm here, Daddy.”

He smiles, innocent sweetness, and strokes my hair, or what's left of it. “Got to keep you away from Devil Johnny.” His eyes go unfocused, like he's looking over my head. “Got to keep you safe.”

“You did, Daddy. You did.” I press his palm to my cheek and close my eyes. “I'm fine. I'm going to be fine.”

“Good girl,” he says fondly. “My Patsy.”

I shake my head and stand up, trying to pull my dad up by his arms. Wyatt and Chance stand to the side, and I bare my teeth at them.

“Pick him up! Pick him up now! Stupid goddamn idiot boys just can't . . .”

“Patsy,” Wyatt says, the softest he's ever said it.

“What?”

“He's gone.”

I don't look down. I don't want it to be true. I don't want to be holding my dad's hands if he can't hold mine. I just got him back, and he's already left me again.

“Guys, the time,” Chance says, low.

“I'm sorry, Patsy,” Wyatt says, and I look up at him, completely lost.

“For what?”

He picks me up, tosses me over his shoulder, and carries me away.

I don't know where we are. Dark walls, fluorescents, concrete floors. The boys are carrying me, and I sometimes go limp and sometimes kick and scream and sometimes turn my face into Wyatt's shoulder and sob. They're lost, trying to get us out of the mall. When Chance finally kicks open a door, cold night air chills my wet face.

“That way,” Wyatt says, and I claw for the door, to get back to my dad, but they pry my fingers off the handle and kidnap me into the darkness.

“Shit,” Wyatt says. “We don't have the key.”

I pull the key out of my bra and throw it on the ground, and they scrabble for it and open the burgundy sedan. Wyatt places me
on the backseat like I'm breakable and struggles to buckle me into my seat belt.

“Help me,” he begs. “There's not enough time for this. You have to come back to me now. Okay?”

I buckle the seat belt and say nothing.

The car drives, headlights cutting the mist. Too fast, too fast, away from my dad. The road curves around a bend.

“That was a stop sign,” I say absently.

They didn't stop.

The car parks, and someone carries me inside and up an elevator and puts me in a bed that isn't mine in a room that doesn't smell like bleach and hair dye and anxiety.

“You don't have to watch,” Wyatt says.

But I do.

The lights are off, and the hotel room blinds are open on a square of black.

I wait.

Nothing happens.

And then it does.

I feel it in my chest before I hear it, like it's sucking me in. Like it wants me near. The feeling comes before the explosion, before the fireballs that erupt at the same time all over the mall except also at barely different times.
Pow-pow, pow-pow.
It's like watching a crystal
ball explode in a riot of flame, and I swear I can feel the heat through the extra-thick hotel window.

“There went my dad,” I say. “There went Matty.”

I lie back down and turn my face away from the window.

Someone is banging on the door, and it makes my head hurt worse than the explosion.

“Open up, you dicks!”

Chance opens the door, and Gabriela barrels into him from the yellow-lit hallway, yelling good things and bad things about what he did and did it work and what the hell did he give her and what the fuck is wrong with him, but then they're hugging and crying, and it's okay again.

“Patsy?” Her hand is on my shoulder, but it feels like it's miles away.

“They killed my dad,” I say. “They killed my dog.”

She tilts up my chin with a finger and grins.

“Dude,” she says. “Your dumb dog is in our room.”

That's what finally wakes me back up.

“Show me,” I say, and I find my feet and remember how to walk to the door.

Gabriela leads us down to our room and opens the door, and being knocked over by a happy Matty is the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Because it's her. Really her.

“How?” is all I can say.

Bea is sitting in the same chair in the corner, another cowboy romance in her lap. She looks up, her eyes as dead as ever. “I couldn't find you, so I walked around the mall parking lot to find the car. I
heard a dog barking, and some Cranes were drinking beer in the back of a van with her tied to the tailgate.”

“And they let you have her?”

The newly chopped brown bob swivels to me and tilts like a praying mantis. “I didn't ask. Just shot them all and took her. It seemed easier that way. She's a very polite dog.”

I take great pains not to show her the horror I feel. This alone tells me I'm not the monster I dread becoming. “Thank you,” I say. “That really means a lot to me.”

Wyatt and Chance are on their knees, roughhousing with Matty, and the phone buzzes in my jumpsuit pocket. When I look down, I see that I'm covered in blood, and I can't believe we made it into the hotel without anyone saying anything. I pull out the phone and flip it open.

PATRICIA LOUISE KLEIN, WHERE ARE YOU?