“We split up. You go right and I go left.”
“That’s it?” Leonard said. “You complained to me that we didn’t have a plan last time, and now your plan is you go one way and I go another.”
“Okay, what’s your plan?”
Leonard was quiet for a moment. “I go left and you go right.”
55
We were about to start our plan when we heard boots on gravel, looked up into the smiling face of Vanilla Ride, standing by the Volkswagen pointing an automatic pistol at us. It certainly seemed to be a big automatic. She had come up like a ghost while we were putting our war room together. She had her golden hair tied back in a ponytail, and she looked like some kind of female goddess of war.
“I have systems on top of systems,” she said. “I knew you were here the moment you entered my perimeter.”
“Damn,” Leonard said. She got a determined look on her face, like she was about to pass an anvil through her bowels, extended the automatic, ready to pop us, and then a shot rang out and the window on the Volkswagen above me splintered and some of the glass rained down. Vanilla took a turn around the Volkswagen on one end, and Leonard and I scrambled around to the other side. We ended up behind a tire, close as lovers, and Vanilla was behind the other tire. When I looked at her, she jerked the automatic at us.
“Truce,” I said. “They want us too.”
She studied me for a long moment.
“You’re wondering if you can trust us,” I said, “and I know this isn’t much right now, but we keep our word. Truce. For now, anyway.”
After a moment, Vanilla Ride nodded, said, “I can kill you anytime I want.”
There was an explosion as a low bullet caught the tire we were behind and rang off the rim and the pressure of the exploding tire blew us back about three feet. Vanilla darted for the A-frame, and Leonard grabbed me by the coat collar and started dragging me. I let him, clinging to my deer rifle like a child with a teddy bear.
When we were inside and the door was slammed, glass began to come out of the windows as shots rained down. It was a two-story house with a short stairway up to what was more a loft than a room. The middle floor had a low section and some standard couches around it. Except for some exercise equipment off to the side of the living room, the place looked as impersonal as a cheap motel room.
I got off my belly and on my knees and looked at Vanilla Ride. She was crawling across the floor toward the corner. She popped the flooring up there with remarkable deftness, took out a long, sleek black weapon with a very large banana clip, and she pulled a spare clip out of there too. She crawled back to where the glass was still dropping from the big window. The glass splattered around her like falling stars and she stood up and let the spare clip drop to the floor and cut loose with the gun. Down below, where their shots were coming from, the dirt leaped up in heaps and the trees whipped and then she went down again, behind the high windowsill where Leonard and I were lurking, but on the opposite end. We were bookends. Same alike. Except we were guys and she was a girl and she had a big gun that would shoot faster than ours.
“They got their car out of the ditch,” Leonard said.
“It was more of a drop-off than a ditch,” I said. “I didn’t think they could turn it off its side and drive it out. Not that easily.”
“You were wrong,” Leonard said.
“Yep,” I said.
“You didn’t do as good as you thought.”
“Nope.”
“Kind of typical, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I said.
“You see, they got it running, and now they are after our ass, and here we are with”—Leonard turned and looked at Vanilla Ride—“her.”
Vanilla looked at us and smiled. Damn, she was a beauty. “How have you two lived this long?” she said.
“Our sterling personalities,” Leonard said. “We charm just about everyone.”
I eased over so I was near the corner of the windowsill and the wall, and then I raised up. I could taste the cold air coming in through the shattered window and smell the pines down the hill, and I could see one of the men coming along where the hill spread up toward the house, and though there wasn’t much light, I could see him well enough. He was the greasy-haired guy and he was stooped slightly, his head down, running for the Volkswagen, the only real cover he had.
I rose up and beaded in and shot and hit him in the top of the head and knocked him rolling down the rise.
I sat down behind the wall and looked at Leonard. He said, “Haven’t lost your touch.”
Vanilla Ride smiled at me.
Leonard said, “You wait until there’s some real light, he can shoot the balls off a dog tick.”
“My guess is they won’t wait until it’s light,” I said. “They like it better this way. Daylight comes we can see them better from here than they can see us, and we got cover. In the light, they got dick, so they’ll either cash in now or come soon. I vote that they come ahead.”
Leonard looked at Vanilla Ride, said, “They may not even be after you, though I’d say that shot hit the Volkswagen was close to all of us.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Vanilla Ride said. “They’ve invaded my home. So have you.”
