He laughed. “Good, Lincoln. Very good to see you’re rolling back into form, hiding your fear. I applaud the attempt. But don’t take it too far.”
There was the ratcheting sound of a round being chambered, and then I felt a hard press of metal at the back of my skull.
“Keep your fear, Lincoln. I’m a man to be afraid of, no matter what I said about wanting to let you live tonight. Don’t forget that.”
The gun lifted away from my head, and I realized I was biting down on my wounded lip, making the blood flow freely again.
“You’re causing some problems,” he said, moving around behind me, shifting to my left side. I could hear nothing but a soft wind and his voice. Wherever we were, it was someplace secluded. That realization wasn’t particularly comforting.
“I believe these problems you’ve caused were inadvertent,” he continued. “That’s just unlucky for you. But now I need to address them.”
“All right.” My lips brushed against the thick bag when I spoke.
“What happened in Indiana? Why were you there, and what happened?”
I stayed silent for a minute, and then I realized how pointless that was. If I didn’t talk, he’d go to work making me talk. That would be fine, if I had something valuable to protect. I had nothing to protect, though. There was nothing I could say that he wouldn’t already know from the papers.
“I went to find Jefferson’s son and tell him his father was dead and he was rich. When I found him, he killed himself, with me watching.”
“How long were you with him?”
“Two minutes, tops.”
“He spoke to you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?” His voice had picked up a new intensity.
I hesitated.
“What did he say?”
“Told me your name and your game,” I said. “A dozen cops are on it right now.”
There was a pause, and then he hit me. It was a swift, staggering blow to the kidneys. I fell forward, and, since I couldn’t put my hands out to protect myself, I landed on my face. I smelled the wet earth for a half second before his hand tightened on the bag and my hair again and jerked me back.
“Why?” he said. “Why do you say that, why do you tell a lie that there’s no reason to tell?”
“Because I’m tired of the bag, dickhead.”
The gun was back then, hard and cold against my skull. “I’ll ask again—what did the man’s son tell you?”
I could feel blood running down my chin. After giving it a long pause, I spoke.
“He told me you had a reason, and all I had was greed. He thought I knew you, thought I was with you. He said that, and then he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”
“You’re lying.”
“That’s what you said last time. Pick one to believe.”
His hand tightened on the bag, pulling my hair painfully. “We’re coming from the same place. I know what you did to Jefferson, and I know what he did to you. I admire you for it, and I sympathize with you. But the score you had to settle? The wrong you suffered? Lincoln, it can’t touch me. You saw him on his best day. I saw him on his worst. And I came to settle up.”
“You killed him.”
“Yes. I would have killed his son, too. But then you got in my way. I’m not happy about that.”
“What does the son have to do with it?”
“Everything. That little shit called his daddy for help in the middle of the night and I paid the price, paid it for five years. But that doesn’t concern you. None of it does, really, and I regret that we’re here, but when you went down to Indiana and left a dead man behind, you created some real problems. You changed the game with that move, even though you can’t see that. We’re going to have to refocus our attention now, and you’ve
“Refocus where?”
“Lincoln, are you hearing me?”
I was shaking now, the wind blowing cold as I sat there on my knees, no jacket over my thin T-shirt, my mouth bleeding, my eyes blind.
“Stay away from Karen,” I said. “Whatever Jefferson did to you, it wasn’t Karen’s fault.”
He spoke with the voice of a frustrated teacher. “You don’t understand a damn thing about this. Can you tell me that? Can you tell me that you don’t understand?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. And that’s a very, very good thing for you. Because I’m going to see that you get home. And home, Lincoln? That’s where you need to stay. You know what I promised Jefferson? I promised him that by the time I was done he’d welcome death. Beg for it. I told him that his would be a welcome grave, Lincoln. I don’t think he believed me. Not at first. He thought he could stop it. But by the end? He believed me by the end.”
He knelt beside me and tapped my skull with the gun.
“Leave the dumb slut alone. I’m disappointed in you even for speaking to her, but I suppose that’s to be expected. No more, though. No more. Another trip to that house may cause you problems that I can’t stop.”
There was silence for a few minutes, and then he rose, and I could hear and feel him pacing around behind me. A few raindrops were falling now, the wind blowing strong and steady, and I couldn’t stop the shivering.
“What did Jefferson’s son tell you?” he asked again.
I shifted forward on my knees, my body beginning to ache from holding the position.
“He didn’t tell me anything. Nothing more than what I’ve already said.”
“He knew what was ahead. That’s why he did it. He’d been told what his father had been told—that his would be a welcome grave—and he didn’t have his father’s arrogance, or his father’s stupidity. He believed me. He knew he couldn’t stop what was coming for him.”
It was quiet, and then he spoke again. “All right.” His voice was thoughtful. “All right.”
I woke up in the bed of my own truck, which was still in the lot behind my building. I groaned, the pain in my head seeming to spread through every inch of my body, and tried to sit up. The sky and earth reeled around me in a crazy dance, and I settled back down, licked my bloody lips, and waited.
It took me three tries to get out of the truck. The bed wall seemed impossibly tall, the ground impossibly far away. When my feet touched the pavement my knees buckled, and if I hadn’t caught myself on the truck I would have collapsed. I hung there on the side of the truck for a while. Maybe five minutes, maybe ten. I took short, shaking breaths and tried to block out the bell choir that was banging away with gusto inside my skull.
My keys were still in my pocket. I fumbled them out with stiff fingers, unlocked the door, and went up the steps one at a time, my hand on the wall for support. Then I had to unlock the apartment door, which took further effort. When I finally staggered across the threshold, I felt like I’d just finished the last leg of a triathalon. If you ran a good portion of a triathalon on your skull, that is. I went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked in the mirror.
“Ho–ly shit,” I said. There was blood on my face and on my neck, and my skin was as pale as I’d ever seen it. I ran some cold water and rinsed my face with it, then turned a white towel red with blood. When I’d gotten my face cleaned off, I saw things weren’t really so bad. The cut on my lip had bled like a bastard, but it wasn’t too traumatic, just one deep slice on the inside. Probably needed stitches, and I definitely should be checked for a concussion. I didn’t know what he’d hit me with, a blackjack maybe, or perhaps brass knuckles, but it had rung me up like a baseball bat swung by Mantle.
I ran my fingertips over the back of my head and felt two large lumps growing there, both on the right side. I
