“Over here. I’m hurt.”
A few seconds later, they were standing over him.
“Well, well, well. What happened here?” Jimbo seemed to be dressed in every coat he owned. He stood with one fist on his hip. The other hand held a rifle. TJ stood two paces behind, holding his own gun.
“I’m hurt. I was trying to track Cheyenne down when I stepped into a hole.” Griffin pointed. “My ankle’s broken.” He looked past them. “Where’s my dad?”
“Driving the roads, looking for her,” TJ said. Turning to Jimbo, he took a mobile from his pocket. “Should we call Roy?”
“You’re going to have to call someone,” Griffin said. “I can’t walk. You need to get someone out here to help me.”
“Hold on a minute, Teej.” Jimbo cocked his head. “Where’s Cheyenne?”
“She hit me in the head and knocked me out. Didn’t you see my note?”
“We saw the note.” TJ leaned closer to look at Griffin’s ankle. He shook his head. “Did you find her?”
“I was getting close right before I stepped into the hole. I could hear her over there.” Griffin pointed in the opposite direction from the way Cheyenne had gone. “But before you go looking for her, could you call my dad?”
“He’s busy, like we are,” Jimbo said. “Trying to find the stupid girl you let slip through your fingers.”
Griffin didn’t like the way this was going. “Then could you carry me out? I can’t put any weight on my foot at all.”
TJ stretched his free hand in Griffin’s direction, but Jimbo touched his arm, and he stopped. Then Jimbo pointed at something with the nose of his rifle.
“What’s that?”
Griffin looked. Lying next to him was the striped scarf Cheyenne had worn around her neck. It must have come off when she lost her balance and fell, trying to help him up.
“I — I don’t know.”
“Hey, that’s Cheyenne’s,” TJ said slowly. “I thought you said you didn’t catch up to her.”
“I didn’t.” It seemed painfully clear he was lying. “She just dropped it here, and I found it.” It made sense, but he should have said it first thing. Now they would figure out he had let her go.
“You just found it,” Jimbo said. “Lying in the bushes?”
“Yeah. That’s how I knew I was getting close.”
“Okay, Griff, what really happened? Did you get her back for whacking you upside the head?” Jimbo grinned. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” He looked around. “So where did you put her?”
“What are you talking about?”
TJ shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s nothing you need to know.”
Jimbo looked back at Griffin, a sly grin playing across his face. “Where do you think your mama’s been all these years?”
“Chicago,” Griffin said, but when he said the word out loud, it seemed silly somehow. “With her family.” He had always wondered if she had remarried, maybe had another family. A kid who didn’t have scars.
“I told you, don’t tell him,” TJ said urgently. “He doesn’t need to know.”
Jimbo didn’t pay any attention. “Chicago?” he echoed Griffin sarcastically. “Uh-huh. Eating deep-dish pizza and listening to jazz?”
“Why?” Griffin sat all the way up, ignoring the screaming pain in his leg. “Is she, like, in Portland or something?”
“Portland. That’s a good one,” Jimbo muttered. “Portland.”
TJ sighed. “She’s been out in the back, Griffin, underneath a Honda quarter panel. We buried her out there.”
“What?” Griffin didn’t even feel shock. He just felt — nothing. Like he was falling, and there would never be anything to catch him.
“Roy’s always had a temper, you know that,” Jimbo said, shrugging. “Well, things went crossways between him and Janie when you were in the hospital. She was always ragging on him about you getting burned. And one night he gave her a little shove when she had been getting into his face. She tripped and her head hit the fireplace. He left her there to teach her a lesson, and went to bed. And when he got up, she was stone-cold dead.”
“No,” Griffin said. He shook his head violently, not caring that it might jostle his leg. “No.” Even though he could picture it in his head, even though he could see it more clearly than he could see Jimbo and TJ. He started to stand, needing to get to his feet, and then fell back with a cry. His mother was dead?
“Look at him,” Jimbo said in a flat, unaccented voice, like a hypnotist’s. “If we leave him here, then how long is he going to last? I mean, look at him.” TJ turned and together the two men regarded Griffin as calmly as if he were something they had found by the side of the road. “His skin’s already kind of blue. We’ll just tell Roy we never saw him and let nature take its course. And that way we’ll know he’ll never tell anybody about the money.”
It was like Griffin wasn’t even there.
TJ cocked his head to one side. “But what about Roy?”
“That’s not our problem, dummy,” Jimbo said. “If he wants to come out in the woods and start looking, then so be it. We’ll be long gone by then.”
“You’re just going to let him freeze to death?” TJ seemed to have finally grasped what Jimbo was saying.
“He’s already halfway there,” Jimbo said calmly. “Why do we have to intervene?”
Griffin thought it couldn’t get much worse, but his blood turned to ice at TJ’s next words.
“Jeez, if I had a dog like that, I’d shoot him.” TJ pointed his handgun at Griffin’s midsection.
Griffin froze.
Jimbo pushed the barrel of the gun aside. “Don’t be stupid. You do that, they’ll go looking for who shot him. You leave him just like he is, and it will be clear what happened. He caught his foot in a hole, he broke his ankle, and he died. End of story. Nobody asks any questions, and nobody’s in trouble.”
“I’m not stupid. We’ll bury him out here. I’m tired of you saying I’m stupid.”
Griffin’s hand closed on a fist-sized rock. It was ridiculous — like using a slingshot against a bazooka — but he wasn’t going to die just lying on his back on the icy ground.
“I told you,” TJ repeated when Jimbo didn’t respond. “Don’t call me stupid.”
“Why not? It’s the truth.” Jimbo shrugged. “You
Then a gun went off. And Griffin’s heart stopped.
But it was Jimbo who collapsed on the pine needles.
“There,” TJ said. “Who’s stupid now? Who’s stupid now, Jimbo?” He was breathing hard.
Griffin’s ears were ringing. He did not move a muscle. He was dead now. It was only a matter of time until TJ made it official.
But then TJ dropped the gun and leaned over, his hands on his knees. Vomit splattered on the pine needles.
Griffin cut his eyes toward Jimbo and then wished he hadn’t. He adjusted his head a couple of inches so that he wouldn’t accidentally see the body again.
Straightening up, TJ wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. “I’ve never done that before,” he said. “It’s different than you think.”
Griffin was afraid to even meet TJ’s eyes. When he finally did, he saw TJ’s pupils looked too big. And his face looked like he was about ready to laugh or cry — or both.
“Oh, well,” TJ said, “there is one good thing. Jimbo finally, finally shut up.” His laugh was high-pitched. It sounded like glass breaking.
Griffin heard TJ go over to the body, but he still refused to look. Jimbo had landed on his side. He heard TJ pull the backpack off Jimbo’s back.
TJ walked back into Griffin’s line of sight. “It’s half yours,” he said, hefting the backpack.
“That’s okay. I don’t need any.”
TJ unzipped the backpack. There was a long silence. “It’s wet. Why is the money all wet?” His voice arced higher. He reached in and grabbed a fistful of money, pulled it out. Red drops speckled the snow. “It’s blood. Oh, my
