But Wade kept his attention on the Indian. The others wouldn’t do anything without the nod from him.
The Indian looked at his flat tire, then walked around to the front of his Escalade to examine the perforated grill, an aftermarket piece of chrome mesh that must have cost a lot. It was ruined now.
The Indian turned and faced Wade.
“You killed my car,” the Indian said, his lips drawn into a snarl, giving him a furious glare.
The expression was scary looking, but it seemed to Wade as if it were meant more for an audience than for any one individual. The glare might have made other people wet themselves, but the theatricality of it diminished any impact it might have had on Wade.
“Guess that makes us even,” Wade said.
“You’re a fucking dead man,” the Indian said, the gun still held loosely at his side, but his arm twitched as he wrestled with the decision of whether or not to start firing.
“My advice to you is to drop the gun and walk away,” Wade said.
“There’s one of you and seven of us,” the Indian said.
Wade shook his head. “It’s only five.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because if you and your friends don’t drop your weapons by the count of three, I’ll shoot you in the head and then I’ll kill the guy with the loose pants.”
The men at Wade’s car traded looks among themselves.
“Which one of us is that?” one of them asked.
Wade didn’t turn to see who had spoken. He kept his gaze locked on the Indian.
“You’re full of shit,” the Indian said.
“One,” Wade said.
The Indian looked Wade in the eye. What he saw there wasn’t confidence or bravery or a willingness to die. What he saw was that a decision had been made. He saw rectitude.
Or all he saw was a reflection of his own doubts.
“Two,” Wade said.
The Indian dropped his gun. Wade kept his gun on him and glanced at the men by his car.
“Three,” he said.
They dropped their weapons too, following the Indian’s lead. But Wade also saw relief on their faces.
Wade shifted his gaze back to the Indian, who was snarling. It seemed like a much more natural expression for him than the last one. He thought about telling him but decided the Indian wouldn’t appreciate the observation.
“This isn’t over.” The Indian raised his right hand, made a gun with his fingers, and mimed firing it at him.
“You know where to find me.” Wade tipped his head toward the station but kept his gun aimed at the Indian. “Stop by anytime and we can discuss it.”
The Indian walked away and the others followed him, leaving their guns and crowbars on the sidewalk.
He watched them until they rounded the corner of the block and disappeared from sight.
Wade holstered his weapon and immediately broke into a full?body sweat. He knew that he’d narrowly escaped execution and that it was just a dry run for what was to come.
But next time, he wouldn’t be facing them alone. He’d have Officers Charlotte Greene and Billy Hagen watching his back.
Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.
Maybe they’d simply end up adding their own corpses to the eventual body count. Their own. He wasn’t sure he wanted that on his conscience.
Wade picked up the Indian’s gun by sticking a ballpoint pen in the barrel and went over to his car to inspect the damage. It looked even worse up close. The body was covered with deep dents, gouges, and scratches. All the lights and windows were broken, the plastic front grill was smashed in, and the seats were coated with a layer of glass pebbles.
And yet somehow the fake gas cap with the Bullitt logo on it had come through the assault untouched.
He set down the Indian’s gun, picked up a tire iron from the sidewalk, and pried the cap off with one quick jerk. The cheap plastic broke apart and flew into the street.
When Wade looked up again, he saw Mandy standing outside of the restaurant staring at him, her arms folded under her chest. Her father came out behind her, wheeling his oxygen tank. The hookers and homeless and a lot of other people were stepping out of doorways and peering out between the bars of their windows to see what would happen next.
Hefting the tire iron, Wade strode across the street to the Escalade and took a swing at the windshield. The laminated glass radiated with cracks. He continued to swing at it until the windshield crumpled and caved in on the dashboard.
Wade walked around the car, smashing the windows as he went and busting the taillights. When he got to the front of the Escalade, he broke the headlights, caved in the shot?up grill, and took a few more whacks at the hood for good measure before he threw the tire iron into the SUV and walked back to his Mustang.
He opened the dented trunk, the metal groaning as he lifted it, and then opened his gun locker, which resembled an ice chest. He put on rubber gloves, gathered up the discarded guns from the street, and dumped them in the locker. Then he peeled off his rubber gloves, tossed them in the trunk, and closed the lid, which he had to slam shut twice before it stuck.
Wade put his right hand on his holstered gun and strode into the open intersection again, looking in all directions for a possible shooter as he headed back to the restaurant to finish his meal.
As he got up close to Mandy, the look on her face and the way she stood asked a question, but he didn’t know whether it was intended for him or for her to answer.
So he just said what was on his mind. “I hope my pancakes haven’t gotten too cold.”
Wade passed Mandy and her father and went into the restaurant.
Chapter seven
When Wade was facing down the Indian, he wasn’t really thinking about the situation. He was thinking about his father.
Glenn Wade wasn’t an imposing man, but he had strength. It wasn’t muscle; it was something in his eyes and in his bearing. His skin was dark and lined from a lifetime of living, working, and playing outdoors. He was a man who would’ve looked natural wearing a cowboy hat, but he wouldn’t have felt natural doing it. He would have felt ridiculous.
During the spring and summer, Glenn ran Granite Cove Park, the Loon Lake campground and resort that his grandfather built fifty miles north of King City and two miles west off the highway to Canada.
Granite Cove consisted of four red cabins, a general store, a boat dock, a camping area, and the two?story house that the Wade family lived in year?round.
Wade’s parents worked full time at the resort throughout the spring and summer. He and his younger sister, Elizabeth, helped out after school and throughout their summer vacations.
During the late fall and winter, when the resort was closed for the season, Glenn Wade worked full time as a deputy sheriff, one of only a handful enforcing the law on the lake and the surrounding community. He was a deputy during the summer too, but only part time. Since the resort and the boat dock were such a big part of the local economy, it was more important to the community to have him running the place than to have him out on patrol. But he was on call 24?7 if something came up.
Once in a while, Wade rode with his father in his patrol car or in his patrol boat, which was actually just their fishing boat with a county flag on the stern and a bullhorn under the bench. They didn’t talk about much during those ride?alongs, and that was fine with Wade. It was time alone with his dad that didn’t involve washing the boats, patching roofs, cleaning toilets, or raking the beach.
On one such night, when Wade was twelve years old, they were driving the pitch?black roads around the
